Jesse nodded. “You bet.”
“Mom might be okay with that, but Cheyenne will pitch a fit.”
Jesse turned his head toward the open doorway. For a moment, it was as if he could see through the sagging walls of that old house, catch sight of Cheyenne in there, wishing he’d go away.
“She’ll get over it,” he said.
“You don’t know my sister,” Mitch told him.
Jesse shook his head. No, the truth was, he didn’t know Cheyenne, but he’d like to. Inside and out. He wanted to explore her most secrets thoughts, touch the bruised places on her soul, lay her down on a bed in some cool, shadowy room and make love to her until they both passed out from exhaustion.
“What does she do for fun?” he asked.
“Cheyenne doesn’t have fun,” Mitch answered. “All she does is work and worry, as far as I can tell.”
“Maybe it’s time somebody changed that,” Jesse mused.
“Good luck,” Mitch scoffed, but when Jesse looked at his face, he saw a hope so desperate that it twisted something deep inside him.
Jesse stood. “Guess I’d better gather up my tools and get out of here. You want to give the ramp a try before I go?”
He’d planned to spend what remained of the day playing poker in the back room at Lucky’s, but now he needed a shower and a change of clothes. Instead of going all the way out to the ranch, he decided to stop by McKettrickCo—Rance and Keegan had an executive gym there, equipped with the necessary facilities, and he knew Keegan always kept extra duds on hand.
As it happened, he wanted a word with his cousin anyway.
Mitch navigated the ramp with the deftness of a skateboarder going over a jump.
Jesse decided the thing ought to have side rails and made a mental note to stop by the lumber yard again for more boards.
“Thanks, Jesse,” Mitch said from up on the porch.
“No problem,” Jesse answered, wondering if he ought to go inside and say goodbye to Cheyenne. In the end, he decided against it because it might seem as though he wanted something from her, and even though he did want something, it wouldn’t be smart to let on.
Mitch was still going up and down the new ramp as Jesse drove away, and just before he turned the bend, he saw Cheyenne in his rearview mirror, giving a halfhearted wave from the doorway.
“NICE CLOTHES,” KEEGAN remarked, when Jesse came out of the workout room at McKettrickCo, freshly showered and wearing black slacks with knife-edge creases and a long-sleeved polo shirt the manufacturer would probably have described as sea-foam green. “The boots add an interesting touch.”
Jesse grinned and looked down at his favorite pair of shit-kickers. “I don’t mind duding up a little,” he said, “but I draw the line at wearing oxfords.”
Keegan chuckled and shook his head. “Downright noble of you to stoop to stealing from my wardrobe,” he said. “And I’d pay money to see you in oxfords.” He looked tired as hell, and it occurred to Jesse that his cousin might not have gone home at all the night before. He could have had his dinner brought in, worked until his eyes wouldn’t focus, and stretched out on the couch in his office for a snooze. Since the divorce, he’d done that a lot, according to Myrna Terp.
“You said something yesterday about wanting to hire somebody who was good with computers,” Jesse said, figuring he might as well launch right in. No sense in beating around the bush.
Keegan sighed. “What are you doing, starting an employment agency? I tried to call Cheyenne a couple of times, but evidently she doesn’t have voice mail.”
“I don’t think she’s looking for a job,” Jesse replied, turning to the mirror over one of the line of sinks and getting a start for his trouble. He looked like any other corporate grunt, heading out to play eighteen holes on the golf course. The idea made him shudder. “She’s still trying to persuade me to sell her the land.”
Keegan, leaning one shoulder against the doorjamb, folded his arms. “You’re not stringing her along, are you, Jesse? Just to see where it might lead?”
Jesse turned from the mirror, crossed the room and glared at his cousin. “I told Cheyenne flat out that I won’t accept the deal on any terms. If she still wants a chance to convince me, well, I’m up for that.”
“I imagine you are.”
The words hurt more than Jesse would ever have let on. “My reputation must be worse than I thought,” he said.
“Your reputation,” Keegan replied, “is worse than you could possibly imagine. Do you actually know somebody who can handle a computer?”
“Yes,” Jesse said. “Mitch Bridges. He’s willing to learn, anyway. You could institute some kind of work-study program, couldn’t you? On-the-job training?”
Keegan huffed out another sigh. “Cheyenne’s brother? He’s in a wheelchair, isn’t he?”
Jesse bristled. “Yes, he’s Cheyenne’s brother. And so what if he’s in a wheelchair? There’s nothing wrong with his brain. He’s young and I think he’d work hard.”
“Okay,” Keegan said, laying a conciliatory hand on Jesse’s shoulder. “If he knows the basics, I’ll send him up to Flagstaff for a crash course. And maybe some kind of local training program wouldn’t be a bad idea. McKettrickCo likes to give back to the community.”
“Thanks, Keeg,” Jesse said.
“The kid’s got to produce, Jesse,” Keegan warned. “I’m not running a charity organization here.”
“Maybe you ought to be.”
Keegan shoved a hand through his hair.
“How come you look so worried?” Jesse asked. “More bad news on the ex-wife front?”
“It just keeps coming,” Keegan admitted. “When I went to pick Devon up last night, Shelley said she was spending the night with a friend. And the board of directors is thinking of taking the company public.”
By then, they were in the corridor. Keegan’s office was at the end, with Rance’s next to it. Rance’s door was partway open—either he was back from his latest business trip, or the cleaning crew was inside.
“So you’re just giving up?” Jesse asked. “This is your weekend with Devon—you told me that yesterday.”
“I’m leaving in a few minutes to go get her. Devon’s out of school today—teacher meetings or something—and I was going to take her riding.”
Rance poked his head out of his office. His dark hair looked as though he’d been ramming his fingers through it. “Well,” he drawled, looking Jesse over, “if it isn’t the Player. Golf your game these days?”
Jesse returned the look. “I thought you were in China making us all richer,” he said. Then he remembered what Sierra had said on the telephone the other day, about Rance and Keegan clearing their schedules to come to the party on the ranch.
“Obviously,” Rance retorted, stepping into the hallway, “I’m back. And it’s a damn good thing. Keeg’s got the bit in his teeth about letting us go public. Says it’s a big mistake and he’ll block it any way he can.”
“Gee,” Jesse said, turning to Keegan. “A shitload of money and nobody in the whole damn family has to work for the rest of their days. That is an awful prospect.”
“Since when did you ever work?” Keegan snapped.
Since this morning, Jesse thought, but he didn’t plan on mentioning the ramp-building enterprise over at the Bridges place. There was something way too personal about it, and he knew both Rance and Keegan would ask a lot of questions if they knew.
“Why work?” Jesse retorted. “I won five million dollars playing poker, and my dividend checks come in faster than I can spend them.”
Keegan threw up his hands. “I tried,” he told the hallway ceiling.
“How are the kids?” Jesse asked Rance. He truly wanted to know, and he also wanted to put a bend in the subject so it would head in another direction—away from Cheyenne and Mitch and his own state of chronic unemployment.
Rance smiled. He loved his daughters, but since his wife, Julie, had died a few years before, he’d left t
hem with their grandmother a lot, while he jetted around the world making deals and soaking up smaller companies. A couple of the major news magazines had called him a pirate, and when it came to doing business, he played for keeps, no holds barred, taking no prisoners, though Jesse had never known him to do anything illegal. “Cora closed up the Curl and Twirl and took them to Disneyland for a week,” Rance said. “They’ll be back sometime tonight.”
Jesse nodded. “You’ll be bringing them to Sierra and Travis’s party, then?”
“Yep,” Rance confirmed.
“See you there,” Jesse said on his way out.
“Make sure you bring my clothes with you,” Keegan called after him.
Jesse turned, saluted and left.
CHEYENNE, FRESHLY SHOWERED and shampooed, clad in her bathrobe with her hair wrapped in a towel, set a plate of bologna sandwiches in the middle of the table, along with the iced tea she’d brewed earlier. Mitch, having already wheeled to the table, grinned up at her. “That’s a seriously cool car Nigel brought you,” he said. “We ought to take a spin. Maybe motor down to the supermarket and show it to Mom.”
“Later,” Cheyenne said. Hard as she tried to corral them, her thoughts kept straying back to Jesse. The way he looked without his shirt. The knowing glint in his eyes when he’d said, Nice save.
Mitch took in the boxes Nigel had left, now sitting on top of the dryer jammed up alongside the washer in the tiny kitchen. Cheyenne’s jeans and T-shirt were thumping through the spin cycle. “Want me to set up the laptop and the phone for you?” he asked.
“Sure,” she answered and sank into a chair to reach for half a sandwich. “I’d appreciate that. Thanks.”
“I like Jesse,” Mitch said solemnly, as if it were some big secret.
“Ummm,” Cheyenne said.
“Do you like him, Cheyenne?”
She put her sandwich down on one of her grandmother’s chipped plates. They’d been cheap in the first place, those dishes, but Gram had treasured them. Collected them carefully during an advertising promotion at the grocery store.
Suddenly, Cheyenne’s throat tightened again, and her eyes threatened to mist over. Gram. Her mother’s mother, clinging to the Apache ways, and at the same time trying to function in a predominantly white world.
“Cheyenne?” Mitch pressed, looking worried.
“I like Jesse well enough,” she said.
“You have a date with him tomorrow night,” Mitch prodded.
“Yes,” Cheyenne replied dryly, “I remember.”
“So you must like him better than ‘well enough.’ You like Nigel ‘well enough, ’but you’ve never gone out with him.” A horrified look crossed Mitch’s face. He was nineteen, and because of what he’d suffered, he was mature for his age, but at times he seemed younger, and this was one of them. “Have you?”
“Nooooo,” Cheyenne said. “I haven’t.” She didn’t believe in mixing business and pleasure. But, then, she’d never had to do business with Jesse McKettrick before, and the man was built for pleasure.
“I think Nigel’s a shit,” Mitch told her, going for another sandwich.
“I think you’re right,” Cheyenne agreed.
Mitch’s forehead furrowed with confusion. “Then why do you work for him? Why don’t you get another job?”
“Because it’s not that easy,” Cheyenne answered. “The economy isn’t exactly booming.”
“You could apply at McKettrickCo.”
“Mitch,” Cheyenne said carefully, pushing her chair back a couple of inches, “don’t get carried away, here, okay? Yes, Jesse built the ramp, and that was nice of him. He invited us to the party tomorrow night, and that was nice, too. But the McKettricks are the McKettricks, and the Bridgeses are the Bridgeses. They live on the Triple M and we live—well, here. You think those railroad tracks out there are just railroad tracks? They’re not, Mitch. They might as well be a stone wall, twenty feet thick and a hundred feet tall.”
Mitch shook his head pityingly. “God, Chey, that’s depressing.”
“Maybe so,” Cheyenne said. Her appetite was gone, so she put the remains of her sandwich in the fridge and cleared her side of the table. “But it’s true.”
“Is it?” Mitch countered, popping his chair into reverse and scooting back far enough to look her up and down. “I feel sorry for you, Chey. You’ve given up,” he accused. “What happened to all those dreams you used to tell me about, when I was in the hospital? You were going to get married and have kids. Start your own company, so you wouldn’t have to take orders from anybody. You said I could do the same thing, do whatever I wanted. Were you just shining me on? Trying to cheer up the poor cripple?”
“Mitch—”
“When did you stop believing life could be good, Cheyenne? Really good?”
“I didn’t stop bel—”
“Yes, you did!” Mitch shouted. With that, he spun around and left the room.
“Mitch!” Cheyenne yelled after him.
She heard his bedroom door slam in the distance.
She stood very still.
Had she given up, stopped believing her dreams could come true, dreams for herself and for Mitch and her mother as well?
“No,” she whispered. She’d come to Indian Rock to buy the land to build the most beautiful condominium development ever designed. If she succeeded, the bonus she received would set Ayanna and Mitch up for life, and enable her to go out on her own, once her contract with Nigel expired.
But how could she succeed?
Jesse wasn’t about to give in. She was building a house of cards, and it was bound to fall.
What kind of game was she playing with herself, with Jesse?
Did she really think she could change his mind?
Or did she simply want an excuse to spend more time with him?
Her cheeks burned.
The washer pounded to a thunking stop.
Cheyenne crossed the kitchen, took her jeans and T-shirt out of the machine and flung them into the dryer. Fifteen minutes later, she was sitting on the back porch, towel-drying her hair, when she heard her mother’s van chortle up out front.
It was too early for Ayanna to be off work. Had she been fired?
Cheyenne couldn’t work up the energy to go and find out.
She stayed where she was, gazing at the backyard, which looked even worse than the front. There was the old tire swing, where her dad used to push her when she was little. When he hadn’t been drinking, or playing cards, or locked up in jail, that was.
He’d made so many promises back then.
I’ll take care of you, princess.
You and me and your mother, we’ll get us a house of our own, in some other town, where we can start new.
Soon as I draw that royal flush, princess. Soon as I draw that royal flush.
Cheyenne wrapped her arms around her knees, laid her head down.
The screen door opened behind her.
“Everything okay?” Ayanna asked softly.
Cheyenne didn’t look up. She was going to have a chenille imprint on her forehead from her bathrobe, but she didn’t care. “I might ask you the same question,” she replied.
“I’m on my lunch break,” Ayanna said. Cheyenne felt her mother plunk down on the step beside her. Give her a shoulder-bump. “That’s some company car out there, and the ramp looks great. So where’s Mitch and what’s with the communal glum mood?”
“Who says there’s a glum mood, communal or otherwise?”
“Well, you’re sitting on the back step in your bathrobe, in the middle of the day. You won’t look at me. Your brother must be shut up in his room, and he isn’t playing a video game unless he switched the sound off on his laptop. The atmosphere around here is thick as yesterday’s gravy. I don’t have to call the psychic hotline to know there’s something going on.” She began to rub Cheyenne’s back in slow, comforting circles. “Come on, kiddo. What’s up?”
Cheyenne turned her head on her knees, looked
into her mother’s kind, tired face. “You’ve been through so much, Mom,” she began. “Dad. Mitch’s accident. Pete taking off when you needed him most. How can you keep the faith the way you do? How do you stay so optimistic?”
“I have my down times,” Ayanna said quietly. “But there are plenty of things to be thankful for. Mitch could have been killed when that four-wheeler rolled over, but he wasn’t. You’ve made me so proud, working your way through college, landing such a good job.”
“I’m a complete fraud,” Cheyenne moaned and pressed her face into her knees again.
Ayanna laughed softly and continued the back rub. “How so, sweetheart?”
“You saw that car out front. Nigel brought it, after you left for work, along with another phone and a new computer. He still believes I can get that land. I know I can’t. I’ve accepted all that stuff on false pretenses—along with a continuing paycheck.”
“Business is speculative, Cheyenne. Yours more than most. Methinks something—or someone—else is bothering you.”
Cheyenne didn’t reply.
Ayanna got up, without another word, went into the house and came back a few minutes later, nudging Cheyenne until she sat up straight.
“What’s that?” Cheyenne asked. Her mother was holding a battered shoe box in both hands.
“See for yourself,” Ayanna said, placing the box in Cheyenne’s lap.
Cheyenne lifted the lid, and inside were the pictures of Jesse she’d collected in high school, and the clippings, with yellowed edges now and smidgens of tape still clinging to their corners.
Cheyenne’s throat went dry.
“That’s why you came back to Indian Rock,” Ayanna said, and then she left Cheyenne alone again, with her box of memories.
CHAPTER SEVEN
BRANDI BISHOP SHIFTED uncomfortably in her chair and checked her watch for the third time since she’d arrived at the little street-corner café near her Santa Monica beach condo. She drew the usual number of sidelong looks from the men at the surrounding tables, to the usual irritation of the women they were with. She’d finished work for the day, but she still had three hours of class ahead, and her poor dog, Shimmy, was at home, waiting to take his walk.
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