The Mckettrick Way

Brad sighed. Meg was a stickler for detail; good thing she hadn’t gone to law school, like she’d once planned. She probably would have represented his second ex-wife in the divorce and stripped his stock portfolio clean. “I tried. Phil works freestyle, and he sure knew how to pack the concert halls.”

Meg pointed the fork at him. “You packed the concert halls, Brad. You and your music.”

“You like my music?” It was a shy question; he hadn’t quite dared to ask if she liked him as well. He knew too well what the answer might be.

“It’s…nice,” she said.

Nice? Half a dozen Grammies and CMT awards, weeks at number one on every chart that mattered, and she thought his music was “nice”?

Whatever she thought, Brad finally concluded, that was all she was going to give up, and he had to be satisfied with it.

For now.

He started on the steak, but he hadn’t eaten more than two bites when there was a fuss at the entrance to the restaurant and Livie came storming in, striding right to his table.

Sparing a nod for Meg, Brad’s sister turned immediately to him. “He’s hurt,” she said. Her clothes were covered with straw and a few things that would have upset the health department, being that she was in a place where food was being served to the general public.

“Who’s hurt?” Brad asked calmly, sliding out of the booth to stand.

“Ransom,” she answered, near tears. “He got himself cut up in a tangle of rusty barbed wire. I’d spotted him with binoculars, but before I could get there to help, he’d torn free and headed for the hills. He’s hurt bad, and I’m not going to be able to get to him in the Suburban—we need to saddle up and go after him.”

“Liv,” Brad said carefully, “it’s dark out.”

“He’s bleeding, and probably weak. The wolves could take him down!” At the thought of that, Livie’s eyes glistened with moisture. “If you won’t help, I’ll go by myself.”

Distractedly, Brad pulled out his wallet and threw down the money for the dinner he and Meg hadn’t gotten a chance to finish.

Meg was on her feet, the salad forgotten. “Count me in, Olivia,” she said. “That is, if you’ve got an extra horse and some gear. I could go back out to the Triple M for Banshee, but by the time I hitched up the trailer, loaded him and gathered the tack—”

“You can ride Cinnamon,” Olivia told Meg, after sizing her up as to whether she’d be a help or a hindrance on the trail. “It’ll be cold and dark up there in the high country,” she added. “Could be a long, uncomfortable night.”

“No room service?” Meg quipped.

Livie spared her a smile, but when she turned to Brad again, her blue eyes were full of obstinate challenge. “Are you going or not—cowboy?”

“Hell, yes, I’m going,” Brad said. Riding a horse was a thing you never forgot how to do, but it had been a while since he’d been in the saddle, and that meant he’d be groaning-sore before this adventure was over. “What about the stock on the Triple M, Meg? Who’s going to feed your horses, if this takes all night?”

“They’re good till morning,” Meg answered. “If I’m not back by then, I’ll ask Jesse or Rance or Keegan to check on them.”

Livie led the caravan in her Suburban, with Brad following in his truck, and Meg right behind, in the Blazer. He was worried about Ransom, and about Livie’s obsession with the animal, but there was one bright spot in the whole thing.

He was going to get to spend the night with Meg McKettrick, albeit on the hard, half-frozen ground, and the least he could do, as a gentleman, was share his sleeping bag—and his body warmth.

“Right smart of you to go along,” Angus commented, appearing in the passenger seat of Meg’s rig. “There might be some hope for you yet.”

Meg answered without moving her mouth, just in case Brad happened to glance into his rearview mirror and catch her talking to nobody. “I thought you were giving me some elbow room on this one,” she said.

“Don’t worry,” Angus replied. “If you go to bed down with him or something like that, I’ll skedaddle.”

“I’m not going to ‘bed down’ with Brad O’Ballivan.”

Angus sighed. Adjusted his sweat-stained cowboy hat. Since he usually didn’t wear one, Meg read it as a sign bad weather was on its way. “Might be a good thing if you did. Only way to snag some men.”

“I will not dignify that remark with a reply,” Meg said, flooring the gas pedal to keep up with Brad, now that they were out on the open road, where the speed limit was higher. She’d never actually been to Stone Creek Ranch, but she knew where it was. Knew all about King’s Ransom, too. Her cousin Jesse, practically a horse-whisperer, claimed the animal was nothing more than a legend, pieced together around a hundred campfires, over as many years, after all the lesser tales had been told.

Meg wanted to see for herself.

Wanted to help Olivia, whom she’d always liked but barely knew.

Spending the night on a mountain with Brad O’Ballivan didn’t enter into the decision at all. Much.

“Is he real?” she asked. “The horse, I mean?”

Angus adjusted his hat again. “Sure he is,” he said, his voice quiet, but gruff. Sometimes a look came into his eyes, a sort of hunger for the old days and the old ways.

“Is there anything you can do to help us find him?”

Angus shook his head. “You’ve got to do that yourselves, you and the singing cowboy and the girl.”

“Olivia is not a girl. She’s a grown woman and a veterinarian.”

“She’s a snippet,” Angus said. “But there’s fire in her. That O’Ballivan blood runs hot as coffee brewed on a cook-stove in hell. She needs a man, though. The knot in her lasso is way too tight.”

“I hope that reference wasn’t sexual,” Meg said stiffly, “because I do not need to be carrying on that type of conversation with my dead multi-great grandfather.”

“It makes me feel old when you talk about me like I helped Moses carry the commandments down off the mountain,” Angus complained. “I was young once, you know. Sired four strapping sons and a daughter by three different women—Ellie, Georgia and Concepcion. And I’m not dead, neither. Just…different.”

Olivia had stopped suddenly for a gate up ahead, and Meg nearly rear-ended Brad before she got the Blazer reined in.

“Different as in dead,” Meg said, watching through the windshield, in the glow of her headlights, as Brad got out of his truck and strode back to speak to her, leaving the driver’s-side door gaping behind him.

He didn’t look angry—just earnest.

“If you want to ride with me,” he said when Meg had buzzed down her window, “fine. But if you’re planning to drive this rig up into the bed of my truck, you might want to wait until I park it in a hole and lower the tailgate.”

“Sorry,” Meg said after making a face.

Brad shook his head and went back to his truck. By then, Olivia had the gate open, and he drove ahead onto an unpaved road winding upward between the juniper and Joshua trees clinging to the red dirt of the hillside.

“What was that about?” Meg mused, following Brad and Olivia’s vehicles through the gap and not really addressing Angus, who answered, nonetheless.

“Guess he’s prideful about the paint on that fancy jitney of his,” he said. “Didn’t want you denting up his buggy.”

Meg didn’t comment. Angus was full of the nineteenth-century equivalent of “woman driver” stories, and she didn’t care to hear any of them.

They topped a rise, Olivia still in the lead, and dipped down into what was probably a broad valley, given what little Meg knew about the landscape on Stone Creek Ranch. Lights glimmered off to the right, revealing a good-size house and a barn.

Meg was about to ask if Angus had ever visited the ranch when he suddenly vanished.

She shut off the Blazer, got out and followed Brad and Olivia toward the barn. She wished it hadn’t been so dark—it would have been interesting to see the place in the daylight.

Inside the barn, which was as big as any of the ones on the Triple M and boasted all the modern conveniences, Olivia and Brad were already saddling horses.

“That’s Cinnamon over there,” Olivia said with a nod to a tall chestnut in the stall across the wide breezeway from the one she was standing in, busily preparing a palomino to ride. “His gear’s in the tack room, third saddle rack on the right.”

Meg didn’t hesitate, as she suspected Olivia had expected her to do, but found the tack room and Cinnamon’s gear, and lugged it back to his stall. Brad and his sister were already mounted and waiting at the end of the breezeway when Meg led the gelding out, however.

“Need a boost?” Brad asked, in a teasing drawl, saddle leather creaking as he shifted to step down from the big paint he was riding and help Meg mount up.

Cinnamon was a big fella, taller by several hands than any of the horses in Meg’s barn, but she’d been riding since she was in diapers, and she didn’t need a boost from a “singing cowboy,” as Angus described Brad.

“I can do it,” she replied, straining to grip the saddle horn and get a foot into the high stirrup. It was going to be a stretch.

In the next instant, she felt two strong hands pushing on her backside, hoisting her easily onto Cinnamon’s broad back.

Thanks, Angus, she said silently.

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