“Then—”
“Yes,” Myrna interrupted, pausing to peer down the hallway. “They’re coming,” she whispered. Then, as a parting shot, she added, “So you’re really not moonlighting for Meerland anymore?”
Cheyenne almost swallowed her tongue.
Myrna chuckled. “Incoming,” she warned, before stepping out into the hallway and shutting the door.
Cheyenne laid her head down on her desk and practiced deep breathing.
“DAMN, JESSE,” Travis marveled when the two of them were shut up in his office. “I can see why you’d want to come to terms with Brandi, but a million dollars? Isn’t that a little excessive?”
“Cheap at twice the price,” Jesse said. He tried to make his tone light, but the fact was, he felt dried up and hollowed out. It was as though his soul had hit the trail and left the rest of him in the dust for good.
“Good God,” Travis exclaimed. “It was a week of monkey sex in a Vegas hotel suite, Jesse, not a real marriage.”
“Do it,” Jesse bit out. “It won’t make a dent, anyhow.”
“That isn’t the point.” Travis was a lawyer, after all. He could be expected to argue, Jesse supposed.
He sighed. Rested one booted foot on the opposite knee. He’d dressed up for the visit to McKettrickCo, but not because he expected to run into Cheyenne.
Definitely not because of that.
“What is the point, then?” he asked.
“It wasn’t a real marriage,” Travis reiterated.
“It was real enough to Brandi,” Jesse reasoned. “She’s not a bad person, Trav. She works hard, selling shoes. She’s in law school. She’s getting married after graduation. For real.”
“All of which has what to do with her backing a semitruck into your bank accounts?”
“She could have pressed for a lot more money than I’m offering. She could have played along with Cheyenne and that Meerland yahoo. But she drove all the way from L.A. to Indian Rock to clue me in. The way I see it, she saved me a lot more trouble than she’s causing.”
Now, it was Travis’s turn to sigh. “You realize that you’re going against the advice of your attorney, who also happens to be your best friend?”
“I get that, Trav,” Jesse said. “Just write it up, will you? So I can get out of here?”
“And go where?”
“Not to jump off a bridge, if that’s what you’re thinking,” Jesse answered. He was headed up onto the ridge, once he was through putting paid to the Brandi epic. He planned to assemble some gear, saddle up his favorite horse, gather the others like a pack string and ride for the high country.
No telling when he’d be back.
The land had patched up his soul before. It would do it again.
Travis fixed him with a look that said he wanted an answer, and he wouldn’t give up until he got it.
“I’ll be on the ridge,” Jesse said, willing to give up that much because Travis was his friend, but no more.
Travis nodded to show he understood and pulled a pen from the inside pocket of his spiffy suit coat and reached for a legal pad. “You’d better be back in time for the wedding,” he said.
Jesse grinned. “I’ll be there.”
“Good,” Travis replied. His jawline looked a little tight, but he seemed to be coming around to Jesse’s way of thinking. “Now, we’ve got a figure for the settlement. What’s Brandi’s side of the agreement?”
CHEYENNE WAS JUST SHUTTING down her computer when Mitch came in to get a look at her office.
He gave a low whistle. “Pretty bodacious,” he said.
Cheyenne smiled. “I like it,” she answered.
Mitch turned to shut the door, then scanned the room again. His gaze snagged on the bamboo-shoot-with-panda on her desk, and a small frown creased his forehead.
“What’s this?” he asked rhetorically.
“Myrna gave it to me,” Cheyenne said, skipping the obvious answer, distracted now, rifling through a desk drawer for a file she’d downloaded and printed out earlier. “Welcome-aboard kind of thing.”
“Nanny-cam,” Mitch said.
Cheyenne laughed. “Right,” she scoffed. Where was that file? She was sure she’d put it in her desk drawer.
“I mean it,” Mitch insisted. “See for yourself.”
Cheyenne looked up, saw that Mitch had pulled the panda off the bamboo shoot. Fishing into a little slit in the stuffed animal’s back with his fingers, he brought out a tiny technological wonder with an infinitesimal lens on the front.
“So that’s how she knew.”
“Who?” Mitch asked, frowning. “That’s how who knew what?”
Cheyenne snatched the camera out of her brother’s hand, held it in front of her face and looked into the little glass eye staring back at her. “The game is up, Myrna,” she said. “And if you’ve got any other bugs planted around here, you’d better tell me, because I’m going to take this little piece of equipment straight to Keegan if you don’t.”
“Wow,” Mitch said, full of apparent admiration. “That Myrna is really something.”
“She sure is,” Cheyenne agreed.
A quick, nervous tap sounded at the door.
“Come in, Myrna,” Cheyenne called.
Myrna slunk in, red-faced. “I need twenty-four hours,” she said. “To gather up the surveillance equipment, I mean.”
“Twenty-four hours,” Cheyenne agreed, feeling implacable. “Not one second more.”
Myrna nodded and vanished again, shutting the door behind her.
Cheyenne blew on the Lilliputian camera, like a gunfighter blowing the smoke from the barrel of a pistol, and dropped the thing into a desk drawer.
“Where could she have gotten something like that?” she whispered.
Mitch grinned. “On the Internet, of course,” he said. “$19.95 plus postage and handling. Are you really going to report her to Keegan?”
Cheyenne sighed, deflated. “I don’t know,” she replied.
“You don’t have to whisper,” Mitch told her. “The mic was attached to the camera.”
“Why would anybody want to spy on me?” She didn’t care if Myrna overheard that one, through some bug they hadn’t discovered yet. She intended to ask her about it straight out, when they got a private moment.
“For fun?” Mitch suggested.
Cheyenne remembered Jesse feeding her morsels of sweet-and-sour chicken. Remembered the wager they’d made, and all the talk about full penetration.
“Yikes,” she muttered, wincing.
Mitch changed the subject with abrupt good cheer. “Keegan’s having the Escalade fitted for a lift,” he told her. “That way, we can ride to work together.”
“Sounds good,” Cheyenne said, feeling better in spite of discovering the camera in the panda bear and losing Jesse and all the rest of it. “Ready to go home?”
Mitch nodded. “Rance said to back the Escalade up to the loading dock under the building. That way, we can just roll the chair inside.”
“Great idea,” Cheyenne replied. “I guess that’s why they pay him the big bucks.” It still left the problem of hoisting Mitch up into the passenger seat, but with her help, he could probably manage.
“That and because he’s part owner,” Mitch said. “Let’s get a move on, sis. I have a hot date with Bronwyn tonight. We’re going to a drive-in movie.”
Cheyenne laughed. “Well, I wouldn’t want to interfere with your social life or anything.”
As she closed her office door a couple of minutes later, she noticed that Travis’s was still shut, and low voices came from inside. Jesse was still with him, then. For a moment, Cheyenne devoutly wished she’d planted a few panda-cams of her own, à la Myrna, so she’d know what was going on.
Myrna gave her a guilty glance as she passed the reception desk with Mitch, headed for the elevator.
Mitch pushed the button, and while they waited, Cheyenne approached Myrna, meaning to ask the burning question.
She d
idn’t get the chance because the elevator arrived and because Myrna cut her off with an urgent whisper. “Jesse’s paying that woman a million dollars,” she said, “and he’s going camping on the ridge for who knows how long.”
CHAPTER SEVENTEEN
BEFORE CHEYENNE COULD respond to Myrna’s announcement about the million dollars and the camping trip, she heard Jesse and Travis talking in the hallway.
Unable to face Jesse and endure being freeze-dried again, Cheyenne dashed to the elevator, where Mitch was waiting, impatiently holding it open. She jabbed at the close button with her thumb. As the doors shut, Jesse appeared and their gazes collided, like a pair of heat-seeking missiles over a war zone.
“Sooner or later,” Mitch said looking up at her, “you’re going to have to work this out.”
“No, I’m not,” Cheyenne argued. “Why is this thing so slow?”
They reached the loading dock, finally, and the doors whisked open.
Jesse was standing squarely in front of them, his eyes as glacial as ever—until they dropped to Mitch’s upturned face.
“Hey, buddy,” he said.
“Hey,” Mitch replied.
“I thought you might need a little help getting into the Escalade,” Jesse told Mitch. Cheyenne might have been invisible, for all the notice he gave her.
“He doesn’t need—” Cheyenne began.
Mitch nudged her. “That’d be great, Jesse,” he said.
Cheyenne suppressed a sigh, produced her keys and rushed off to get the Escalade from the parking lot. A couple of minutes later, she was backing up to the waist-high concrete slab where trucks unloaded office supplies, equipment and the like.
Meanwhile, Mitch descended the ramp alongside the stairs and reached to open the door of the Escalade on the passenger side.
“Watch this, Jesse,” he said.
Jesse folded his arms, one side of his mouth quirking in a wan grin. “I’m watching,” he answered.
Mitch strained, got hold of the inside door handle and hauled himself up into the seat. He was sweating, and he’d gone pale, but he looked so pleased with the accomplishment that Cheyenne’s heart threatened to split right down the middle.
It occurred to her that the sensation might have more to do with Jesse being there than Mitch’s newfound ability to get into a big SUV without help, but she instantly dismissed the idea. Hurried up the stairs onto the dock to raise the hatch on the back of the Escalade.
“Excellent,” Jesse said. Again, his attention was solely for Mitch. “I hear you signed on with the outfit.”
Mitch nodded proudly. “Thanks for putting in a good word with Keegan and Rance,” he said.
Cheyenne went still to the very core of her being. He was thanking Jesse? She was the one who’d stuck her neck out.
“Not a problem,” Jesse answered.
He was taking the credit.
Cheyenne simmered, tapped one foot in suppressed exasperation. The sound echoed in the empty chamber like a series of gunshots.
“Guess we’d better go,” Mitch said, suddenly uncomfortable.
Jesse nodded, pushed the chair back up the ramp to the loading dock, elbowed Cheyenne aside, still without the slightest acknowledgment of her presence, and shoved it into the back.
Cheyenne fully intended never to speak to Jesse again. Two could play at the freeze-out game, after all.
“Jesse,” she said instead.
He wouldn’t look at her.
She repeated his name.
He slammed the hatch down, turned and walked away, without so much as a glance in her direction. She might have been a disembodied spirit, a dead person, caught between heaven and earth, trying in vain to communicate with a living one.
That was certainly how she felt.
She would not go after him.
She would not.
Oh, but she wanted to. She wanted to pound on his back with her fists. She wanted to yell. Make him turn around and look at her. Make him—
What?
She drew a deep breath, squared her shoulders and walked down the ramp. Got inside the Escalade and started the engine.
“What did you do to him?” Mitch asked.
Cheyenne shoved the SUV into gear and peeled out with a screech of tires. “What did I do to him?”
“It’s got to be more than the Nigel thing. He is seriously pissed.”
Cheyenne slammed on the brakes at the exit leading up into the parking lot and onto the street. “Now, you listen to me, Mitch Bridges! I don’t want to hear another word about Jesse or Nigel! Not another word!”
“Whoa,” Mitch said, awed.
Cheyenne laid her forehead against the steering wheel, fighting another attack of tears. “I’m sorry, Mitch,” she whispered. “I’m sorry.”
He reached out, patted her back in a tentative, little-brother way. “You know why he’s so mad, Chey?” he asked. “I just figured it out. It’s because he cares so much.”
Cheyenne sniffled. Lifted her head. Drove on.
“Chey?” Mitch persisted.
“I heard what you said, Mitch. I’m simply choosing to ignore it.”
“Why?”
“Because it isn’t true.”
“That’s what you think,” Mitch replied, very quietly. “When Jesse and I went riding, all he talked about was you. He wanted to know what your favorite color was, and whether or not you liked horror movies. That kind of stuff.”
“He was just making conversation. Being polite. And besides, I thought we weren’t going to talk about Jess—him.”
Mitch sighed, and it was such a sad sound that Cheyenne turned to look at him. “Except for Mom,” he said, “Jesse’s the first person in a long time who believed I could do something besides play video games on my laptop.”
“Mitch, I didn’t mean—”
“Yes, you did. And I just want to go home, okay? I’ve already stood Bronwyn up once. She won’t understand if I do it again.”
Cheyenne glanced into the rearview mirror, saw Jesse’s truck behind her. An overwhelming loneliness rose up inside her, swelling, threatening to tear her apart.
“I wouldn’t want to interfere with your love life,” she said stiffly.
“At least I have one,” Mitch countered.
Cheyenne let the remark pass.
Drove down the main street of Indian Rock, Arizona, as if she didn’t have a care in the world. All the while, though, she was painfully conscious of Jesse, following at a distance.
Maybe he was having second thoughts.
Maybe he would be willing to talk things over, like a rational human being. They could go their separate ways afterward, that was inevitable, but at least there would be some closure.
Cheyenne was desperate for closure.
There had been too many loose ends in her life.
She turned off when she came to her road.
Jesse went right on by.
CHAPTER EIGHTEEN
CHEYENNE HATED CASINOS.
Hated the noise, the sense of underlying desperation. The greed.
Most of all, she hated poker.
Now, here she was on a Saturday afternoon in June, set to play in a tournament. Her friends, Sierra, Elaine and Janice, were all counting on her to win. Run this gauntlet and carry the torch to Las Vegas.
She closed her eyes for a moment.
Elaine moved close, whispered, “You can do this, Cheyenne. For the clinic.”
“For us,” Janice added.
Only Sierra seemed uncertain. Little wonder, given that her wedding was one week away. She was probably wondering why she’d ever gotten involved in something this hopeless.
Cheyenne was wondering the very same thing—about herself.
She took a wary step toward the thirty or so preliminary tables, set up in a corner of the busy casino and officially roped off.
Was Jesse around?
God, she hoped not. Hoped he was still on the ridge, where Myrna had said he’d gone, doing whatever i
t was he did up there. Hoped he wasn’t, too, because it had rained every night since the last time she’d seen him, on the loading dock at McKettrickCo. A man could come down with pneumonia, getting drenched like that.
Raining outside. Raining inside.
Cheyenne felt saturated, sodden through to the center of her heart.
“Just do your best,” Sierra whispered
Cheyenne nodded.
Her best wasn’t going to be good enough, that was the problem. Sure, she knew the game, but mostly as an observer. She had a passion for it, equal and entirely opposite to Jesse’s.
She despised it. Wished it had never been invented.
Just one more reason why she’d been a complete idiot to fall for Jesse McKettrick.
She’d come to terms with that much, at least. She’d played with fire, and she’d been burned. She was in love with Jesse, had been since she was a kid, tacking pictures to the wall of her bedroom.
It was just as hopeless now as it had been back then.
End of story.
She and the others signed in at the registration desk, pinned on their name tags, found their widely separated tables, moving between other milling dreamers. Cheyenne had hoped to sit with Sierra. Instead, she found herself among strangers.
She ignored the others at her table—they all seemed to know each other—and sat looking down at her interlaced fingers, longing to get through this day. Put it behind her, along with all the other days she wanted to forget.
Her dad’s voice spoke suddenly inside her head. Things are never so bad they can’t get worse, kiddo.
Startled, Cheyenne looked up.
Jesse was sitting directly across from her. His eyes burned into hers.
Instinct said, Run!
Pride said, Stay.
What did she really have to lose? She was zero-for-nothing as it was.
So she went with pride. Lifted her chin, straightened her spine. Waited out the first deal.
Jesse took the hand, with pocket aces. It didn’t seem to please him, though. He looked grim, like some lesser, scruffier version of his old self, sitting there in a baseball cap and a plain navy-blue sweatshirt. His face was gaunt and he needed a shave.
Cheyenne shook off the impressions, along with the tenderness those stirred in her.
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