“I’m surprised Eve hasn’t shown up,” he said, to get the conversation started.
Sierra’s cheeks pinkened a little, and she avoided his gaze. Poked at the faux meat loaf with a water-spotted fork.
“I don’t know what I’m going to say to her,” she said. “Beyond ‘thank you,’ I mean.”
“How about, ‘hello’?” Travis joked.
Sierra didn’t look amused. Just nervous, like a rat cornered by a barn cat.
He reached across the table, closed his hand briefly over hers. “Look, Sierra, this doesn’t have to be hard. Eve will probably do most of the talking, at least in the beginning, and she’ll feed you your lines.”
She smiled again. Another tentative flicker, there and gone.
They ate in silence for a while.
“It’s not as if I hate her,” Sierra said, out of the blue. “Eve, I mean.”
Travis waited, knowing they were on uneven ground. Sierra was as skittish as a spring fawn, and he didn’t want to speak at the wrong time and send her bolting for the emotional underbrush.
“I don’t know her,” Sierra went on. “My own mother. I saw her picture on the McKettrickCo Web site, but she told me it didn’t look a thing like her.”
Still, Travis waited.
“What’s she like?” Sierra asked, almost plaintively. “Really?”
“Eve is a beautiful woman,” Travis said. Like you, he added silently. “She’s smart, and when it comes to negotiating a business deal, she’s as tough as they come. She’s remarkable, Sierra. Give her a chance.”
Sierra’s lower lip wobbled, ever so slightly. Her blue, blue eyes were limpid with feelings Travis could only guess at. He wanted to dive into them, like a swimmer, and explore the vast inner landscape he sensed within her.
“You know what happened, don’t you?” she asked, very softly. “Back when my mother and father were divorced.”
“Some of it,” Travis said, cautious, like a man touching a tender bruise.
“Dad took me to Mexico when I was two,” she said, “right after someone from Eve’s lawyer’s office served the papers.”
Travis nodded. “Meg told me that much.”
“As little as I was, I remembered what she smelled like, what it felt like when she held me, the sound of her voice.” A spasm of pain flinched in Sierra’s eyes. “No matter how I tried, I could never recall her face. Dad made sure there weren’t any pictures, and—”
He ached for her. The soupy mashed potatoes went pulpy in his mouth, and they went down like so much barbed wire when he swallowed. “What kind of man would—”
He caught himself.
None of your business, Trav.
To his surprise she smiled again, and warmth rose in her eyes. “Dad was never a model father, more like a buddy. But he took good care of me. I grew up with the kind of freedom most kids never know—running the streets of San Miguel in my bare feet. I knew all the vendors in the marketplace, and writers and artists gathered at our casita almost every night. Dad’s mistress, Magdalena, home-schooled me. I attracted stray dogs wherever I went, and Dad always let me keep them.”
“Not a traumatic childhood,” Travis observed, still careful.
She shook her head. “Not at all. But I missed my mother desperately, just the same. For a while, I thought she’d come for me. That one day a car would pull up in front of the casita, and there she’d be, smiling, with her arms open. Then when there was no sign of her, and no letters came—well, I decided she must be dead. It was only after I got old enough to surf the Internet that I found her.”
“You didn’t call or write?”
“It was a shock, realizing she was alive—that if I could find her, she could have found me. And she didn’t. With the resources she must have had—”
Travis felt a sting of anger on Sierra’s behalf. Pushed away his tray. “I used to work for Eve,” he said. “And I’ve known her for most of my life. I can’t imagine why she wouldn’t have gone in with an army, once she knew where you were.”
Sierra bit her lower lip again, so hard Travis almost expected it to bleed. Her eyes glistened with tears she was probably too proud to shed, at least for herself. She’d wept plenty for Liam, he suspected, alone and in secret. It paralyzed him when a woman cried, and yet in that moment he’d have rewritten history if he could have. He’d have been there, in the thick of Sierra’s sorrows, whatever they were, to put his arms around her, promise that everything would be all right and move heaven and earth to make it so.
But the plain truth was, he hadn’t been.
“I’d better get back to Liam,” she said.
He nodded.
They carried their trays to the dropping-off place, went upstairs again, entered Liam’s room.
He was asleep, with the DVD player still running on his lap.
Travis went to speak to one of the nurses, a woman he knew from college, and when he came back, he found Sierra stretched out beside her son, dead to the world.
He sighed, watching the pair of them.
He’d kept himself apart, even before Brody died, busy with his career. Dated lots of women and steered clear of anything heavy.
Now, without warning, the whole equation had shifted, and there was a good chance he was in big trouble.
1919
The air was so cold it bit through the bearskin throws and Hannah’s many layers of wool to her flesh. She could see her breath billowing out in front of her, blue white, like Doss’s. Like Tobias’s.
Her boy looked feverishly gleeful, nestled between her and Doss, as the sleigh moved over an icy trail, drawn by the big draft horses, Cain and Abel. The animals usually languished in the barn all winter; in the spring, they pulled plows in the hayfields, in the fall, harvest wagons. Summers, they grazed. They seemed spry and vigorous to Hannah, gladly surprised to be working.
Where other horses or even mules might have floundered in the deep, crusted snow, the sons of Adam, as Gabe liked to call them, pranced along as easily as they would over dry ground.
Doss held the reins in his gloved hands, hunkered down into the collar of his sheepskin-lined coat, his earlobes red under the brim of his hat. Once in a while he glanced Hannah’s way, but mostly when he spared a look, it was for Tobias.
“You warm enough?” he’d asked.
And each time Tobias would nod. If his blood had been frozen in his veins, he’d have nodded, Hannah knew that, even if Doss didn’t. He idolized his uncle, always had.
Would he forget Gabe entirely, once she and Doss were married?
Everything within Hannah rankled at the thought.
Why hadn’t she left for Montana before it was too late?
Now she was about to tie herself, for good, to a man she lusted after but would never love.
Of course she could still go home to her folks—she knew they’d welcome her and Tobias—but suppose she was carrying Doss’s child? Once her pregnancy became apparent, they’d know she’d behaved shamefully. The whole world would know.
How could she bear that?
No. She would go ahead and marry Doss, and let sharing her bed with him be her private consolation. She’d find a way to endure the rest, like his trying to give her orders all the time and maybe yearning after other women because he’d taken a wife out of honor, not choice.
She’d be his cross to bear, and he would be hers.
There was a perverse kind of justice in that.
They reached the outskirts of Indian Rock in the late afternoon, with the sun about to go down. Doss drove straight to Dr. Willaby’s big house on Third Street, secured the horses and reached into the sleigh for Tobias before Hannah got herself unwrapped enough to get out of the sleigh.
Doc Willaby’s daughter, Constance, met them at the door. She was a beautiful young woman, and she’d pursued Gabe right up to the day he’d put a gold band on Hannah’s finger. Now, from the way she looked at Doss, she was ready to settle for his younger brother.
The th
ought stirred Hannah to fury, though she’d have buttered, baked and eaten both her shoes before admitting it.
“We have need of a doctor,” Doss said to Constance, holding Tobias’s bundled form in both arms.
“Come in,” Constance said. She had bright-auburn hair and very green eyes, and her shape, though slender, was voluptuous. What, Hannah wondered, did Doss think when he looked at her? “Papa’s ill,” the other woman went on, “but my cousin is here, and he’ll see to the boy.”
Hannah put aside whatever it was she’d felt, seeing Constance, for relief. Tobias would be looked after by a real doctor. He’d be all right now, and nothing else mattered but that.
She would darn Doss McKettrick’s socks for the rest of her life. She would cook his meals and trim his hair and wash his back. She would take him water and sandwiches in summer, when he was herding cattle or working in the hayfields. She’d bite her tongue, when he galled her, which would surely be often, and let him win at cards on winter nights.
The one thing she would never do was love him—her heart would always belong to Gabe—but no one on earth, save the two of them, was ever going to know the plain, regrettable truth.
“It’s a bad cold,” the younger doctor said, after carefully examining Tobias in a room set aside for the purpose. He was a very slender man, almost delicate, with dark hair and sideburns. He wore a good suit and carried a gold watch, which he consulted often. He was a city dweller, Hannah reflected, used to schedules. “I’d recommend taking a room at the hotel for a few days, though, because he shouldn’t be exposed to this weather.”
Doss took out his wallet, like it was his place to pay the doctor bills, and Hannah stepped in front of him. She was Tobias’s mother, and she was still responsible for costs such as these.
“That’ll be one dollar,” the doctor said, glancing from Hannah’s face, which felt pink with conviction and cold, to Doss’s.
Hannah shoved the money into his hand.
“Give the boy whisky,” the physician added, folding the dollar bill and tucking it into the pocket of his fine tailored coat. “Mixed with honey and lemon juice, if the hotel dining room’s got any such thing on hand.”
Doss, to his credit, did not give Hannah a triumphant look at this official prescription for a remedy he’d already suggested and she’d disdained, but she elbowed him in the ribs anyway, just as if he had.
They checked into the Arizona Hotel, which, like many of the businesses in Indian Rock, was McKettrick owned. Rafe’s motherin-law, Becky Lewis, had run the place for years, with the help of her daughter, Emmeline. Now it was in the hands of a manager, a Mr. Thomas Crenshaw, hired out of Phoenix.
Doss was greeted like a visiting potentate when he walked in, once again carrying Tobias. A clerk was dispatched to take the sleigh and horses to the livery stable, and they were shown, the three of them, to the best rooms in the place.
The quarters were joined by a door in between, and Hannah would have preferred to be across the hall from Doss instead, but she made no comment. While Mr. Crenshaw hadn’t gone quite so far as to put them all in the same room, it was clearly his assumption, and probably that of the rest of Indian Rock, too, that she and Doss were intimate. She could imagine how the reasoning went: Doss and his brother’s widow shared a house, after all, way out in the country, and heaven only knew what they were up to, with only the boy around. He’d be easy to fool, being only eight years old.
Hannah went bright red as these thoughts moved through her mind.
Doss dismissed the manager and put Tobias on the nearest bed.
“I’ll go downstairs and fetch that whisky concoction,” he said, when it was just the three of them.
Tobias had never stayed in a hotel and, sick as he was, he was caught up in the experience. He nestled down in the bearskins, cupped his hands behind his head and gazed smiling up at the ceiling.
“Do as you please,” Hannah told Doss, removing her heavy cloak and bonnet and laying them aside.
He sighed. “While we’re in town, we’d best get married,” he said.
“Yes,” Hannah agreed acerbically. “And let’s not forget to place an order at the feed-and-grain, buy groceries, pay the light bill and renew our subscription to the newspaper.”
Doss gave a ragged chuckle and shook his head. “Guess I’d better dose you up with whisky, too,” he replied. “Maybe that way you’ll be able to stand the honeymoon.”
Hannah’s temper flared, but before she could respond, Doss was out the door, closing it smartly behind him.
“I like this place,” Tobias said.
“Good,” Hannah answered irritably, pulling off her gloves.
“What’s a honeymoon,” Tobias asked, “and how come you need whisky to stand it?”
Hannah pretended she hadn’t heard the question.
She’d packed hastily before leaving the house, things for Tobias and for herself, but nothing for a wedding and certainly nothing for a wedding night. If the valises had been brought upstairs, she’d have something to do, shaking out garments, hanging them in the wardrobes, but as it was, her choices were limited. She could either pace or fuss over Tobias.
She paced, because Tobias would not endure fussing.
Doss returned with their bags, followed by a woman from the kitchen carrying two steaming mugs on a tray. She set the works down on a table, accepted a gratuity from Doss, stole a boldly speculative look at Hannah and bustled out.
“Drink up,” Doss said cheerfully, handing one mug to Hannah and carrying the other to Tobias, who sat up eagerly to accept it.
Hannah sniffed the whisky mixture, took a tentative sip and was surprised at how good the stuff tasted. “Where’s yours?” she asked, turning to Doss.
“I’m not the one dreading tonight,” he answered.
Hannah’s hands trembled. She set the mug down, beckoned for Doss to follow, and swept into the adjoining room. “What do you mean, tonight?” she whispered, though of course she knew.
Doss closed the door, examined the bed from a distance and proceeded to walk over to it and press hard on the mattress several times, evidently testing the springs.
Hannah’s temper surged again, but she was speechless this time.
“Good to know the bed won’t creak,” Doss observed.
She found her voice, but it came out as a sputter. “Doss McKettrick—”
He ran his eyes over her, which left a trail of sensation, just as surely as if he’d stripped her naked and caressed her with his hands. “The preacher will be here in an hour,” he said. “He’ll marry us downstairs, in the office behind the reception desk. If Tobias is well enough to attend, he can. If not, we’ll tell him about it later.”
Hannah was appalled. “You made arrangements like that without consulting me first?”
“I thought we’d said all there was to say.”
“Maybe I wanted time to get used to the idea. Did you ever think of that?”
“Maybe you’ll never get used to the idea,” Doss reasoned, sitting now, on the edge of the bed he clearly intended to share with her that very night. He stood, stretched in a way that could only have been called risqué. “I’m going out for a while,” he announced.
“Out where?” Hannah asked, and then hated herself for caring.
He stepped in close—too close.
She tried to retreat and found she couldn’t move.
Doss hooked a finger under her chin and made her look at him. “To buy a wedding band, among other things,” he said. She felt his breath on her lips, and it made them tingle. “I’ll send a wire to my folks and one to yours, too, if you want.”
Hannah swallowed. Shook her head. “I’ll write to Mama and Papa myself, when it’s over,” she said.
Sad amusement moved in Doss’s eyes. “Suit yourself,” he said.
And then he left her standing there.
She heard him speak quietly to Tobias, then the opening and closing of a door. After a few moments she returned to the
next room.
Tobias had finished his medicinal whisky, and his eyelids were drooping. Hannah tucked the covers in around him and kissed his forehead. Whatever else was happening, he seemed to be out of danger. She clung to that blessing and tried not to dwell on her own fate.
He yawned. “Will Uncle Doss be my pa, once you and him are married?” he asked drowsily.
“No,” Hannah said, her voice firm. “He’ll still be your uncle.” Tobias looked so disheartened that she added, “And your stepfather, of course.”
“So he’ll be sort of my father?”
“Sort of,” Hannah agreed, relenting.
“I guess we won’t be going to Montana now,” Tobias mumbled, settling into his pillow.
“Maybe in the spring,” Hannah said.
“You go,” Tobias replied, barely awake now. “I’ll stay here with Uncle Pa.”
It wounded Hannah that Tobias preferred Doss’s company to hers and that of her family, but the boy was ill and she wasn’t going to argue with him. “Go to sleep, Tobias,” she told him.
As if he’d needed her permission, the little boy lapsed into slumber.
Hannah sat watching him sleep for a long time. Then, seeing snow drift past the windows in the glow of a gas streetlamp, she stood and went to stand with her hands resting on the wide sill, looking out.
It was dark by then, and the general store, the only place in Indian Rock where a wedding band could be found, had probably been closed for an hour. All Doss would have to do was rap on the door, though, and they’d open the place to him. Same as the telegraph office, or any other establishment in town.
After all, he was a McKettrick.
A tear slipped down her cheek.
She was a bride, and she should be happier.
Instead she felt as if she was betraying Gabe’s memory. Letting down her folks, too, because they’d hoped she’d come home and eventually marry a local man, though they hadn’t actually come out and said that last part. Now, because she’d been foolish enough, needy enough, to lie with Doss, not once but twice, she’d have to stay on the Triple M until she died of old age.
Sierra's Homecoming Page 11