McKettrick's Pride

by Linda Lael Miller

  “You did,” Echo said. “And I told you I thought I’d be intruding.”

  “Nonsense,” Cora said. “How else are you going to get to know people if you don’t come to parties? You can bring the dog, too, if you don’t mind letting her ride in the back of my truck. You could squeeze in up front with the girls and me.”

  “I guess I could follow in my car,” Echo said. Cora was right. She was opening a business in Indian Rock, and she would have to get over her shyness and be a part of the community if she wanted this new chapter of her life to be a successful one.

  Cora gave an approving nod. “We’ll leave here around six o’clock,” she said. Then she opened the door of the Curl and Twirl and vanished inside.

  Echo ran damp palms down the thighs of her jeans. Rance wouldn’t be at the party, she reminded herself, and there was no reason to believe the rest of the McKettrick tribe wasn’t nice. Rianna and Maeve were sweet, and Cora was proving to be a good friend.

  “We can do this,” she said.

  Avalon cocked her head to one side, perked up her ears and let her tongue loll, looking just like the digital picture Echo had taken the day before and posted to every lost-pet Web site she could find.

  All of a sudden, Echo wanted to break down and cry, right there on the sidewalk. Because little girls lost their mothers. Because their fathers were too busy to attend birthday parties. Because maybe no one cared enough about this dog to search the Internet and then come to take her home, and because someone might do just exactly that.

  CHAPTER THREE

  WHEN AVALON STAUNCHLY refused to get into the Volkswagen that evening at six sharp, Echo led the way back into the shop and up the stairs to her apartment on the second floor. Cora and the girls, about to drive off in Cora’s pickup truck, trailed after them.

  With a sigh, Avalon settled onto the air mattress she’d appropriated after the furniture arrived, scorning Echo’s brass bed, an estate-sale find she prized very highly.

  “Do you think she’s sick?” Echo asked worriedly, turning to Cora.

  Cora smiled, approached the dog and crouched, gently patting the dog’s belly. “No,” she answered. “I think she’s pregnant.”

  “You mean she’s going to have puppies?” Rianna cried exuberantly, before Echo could present the same question—not so exuberantly.

  “What else would she have, dingbat?” Maeve asked her sister.

  “Puppies?” Echo repeated.

  Cora straightened, smiling. She looked festive in her red jeans, matching boots and silk shirt, causing Echo to wonder, even in the midst of rising panic, if her soft blue broomstick skirt-sweater combo and open-toed sandals were the proper attire for a party on a ranch.

  “I’m no veterinarian,” Cora replied, “but I’ll stand by my diagnosis just the same.”

  “Yikes,” Echo said.

  Cora bent and gave Avalon a long, affectionate stroke with one hand. “You just rest, girl,” she told the animal. “I promise we won’t keep your mistress out late.”

  “Shouldn’t I take her to an emergency clinic or something?” Echo fretted.

  Cora chuckled. “No,” she said. “She’s not in any apparent distress. Just a case of the oogies, I figure.” She smiled fondly down at Avalon. “Right, girl?”

  Avalon sighed, rested her muzzle on her forepaws and closed her eyes.

  Meanwhile, Cora linked arms with Echo. “Come along, now,” she urged. “You’re all dressed up and you’ve got someplace to go. Avalon will be just fine.”

  “Puppies,” Echo reiterated, but she let herself be pulled out of the apartment and down the stairs, casting anxious glances backward every few steps.

  “That’s life for you,” Cora said, out on the sidewalk again, watching as Echo fumbled to lock up the shop. “Do you want to ride with us?”

  “I’ll take my own car,” Echo decided. Cora’s truck would be crowded with her stuffed in there. Besides, she’d probably want to leave early. “I’ll follow you.”

  Cora nodded, ushered the girls into the pickup and climbed aboard herself.

  Echo, offering a silent prayer that Avalon would be okay in her absence, pulled out behind Cora and followed her the length of Main Street, then onto a series of country roads. After about fifteen minutes of travel, they passed beneath a huge, old-fashioned sign marking the entrance to the Triple M Ranch.

  Echo knew little about the spread, just the basic facts she’d been able to scrounge up on the Internet, but passing under that arched wooden sign felt like slipping through a wrinkle in time.

  The Triple M was the fourth largest ranch in the United States, and it had been founded by one Angus McKettrick, in the nineteenth century. Once primarily a cattle operation, the place was now dedicated to historical preservation. The family fortune, apparently considerable, was generated by McKettrickCo, an international corporation. Four houses remained from Wild West days, including the main ranch house, which Angus had built with his own hands, along with the original barns and other outbuildings.

  Barreling along in a cloud of dust from Cora’s pickup, Echo simultaneously worried about her dog and wondered what it would be like to be part of something as vast as the Triple M. According to her brief research, McKettricks had been living on this land for well in excess of a century. Echo, who had never lived in one place for more than a few years, could barely imagine having roots in a piece of ground that had seen so many generations come and go.

  Presently, after many twists and turns, one of the ranch houses came into sight, a huge, sturdy wooden structure as at home on the land as a venerable oak or ancient ponderosa pine.

  Children and dogs chased one another noisily across an expansive front yard, and colored lanterns hung from virtually every tree limb in sight, glowing red and yellow and blue, even though it was still daylight.

  There were cars and trucks slant-parked at every possible angle.

  Feeling self-conscious amid such practical, well-used vehicles, Echo found a place to tuck her pink bug, gathered her forces and got out. She reached behind the seat for the large stuffed pony she’d bought at the drugstore in town, as a birthday gift for Rianna.

  While the girls ran ahead to join the festivities, Cora wended her way from her own distant parking spot to walk with Echo. From the other woman’s expression, Echo gathered she’d half expected Indian Rock’s newest arrival to bolt for town without saying howdy to anybody.

  Since she’d been tempted to do exactly that, Echo blushed slightly and bit her lower lip.

  “They’re all good people,” Cora assured her. Evidently, mind reading numbered among her other skills, like fixing hair and teaching little girls to twirl batons. “If that pony’s for Rianna, you picked a real winner. She’ll love it.”

  Echo straightened the big red bow tied around the toy’s middle. She’d done that herself, in lieu of wrapping paper. “I’m never going to remember everyone’s name,” she confided. Despite the public nature of her job at the museum in Chicago, and the similar ones that had preceded it, she was naturally something of a loner.

  “Not to worry,” Cora assured her. “It takes time to get to know folks. Showing up, that’s the important thing.”

  “Half the town must be here,” Echo observed as she and Cora walked toward the house.

  “Everybody except Rance McKettrick,” Cora said ruefully.

  Sadness whispered against Echo’s heart, made it quiver slightly. She didn’t speak, because she had no right to offer an opinion, though she certainly had one.

  “My Julie would give that man what-for if she could,” Cora added, before putting on a party smile and marching into the happy fray.

  Echo had little choice but to go along, since Cora had once again hooked an arm through hers.

  A tall woman with short, shining brown hair and thoughtful blue eyes approached, smiling. Cora introduced her as Sierra McKettrick, Rance’s cousin.

  “She’s descended from Holt and Lorelei,” Cora informed Echo.
/>   Seeing that Echo was at a loss, Sierra smiled warmly. “We McKettricks are big on family trees,” she explained. “Holt was the firstborn son of Angus, the patriarch. Lorelei was Holt’s wife. The house was theirs.”

  Echo nodded, struck, once again, by a poignant sense of history.

  “Echo owns the new bookstore next to my place,” Cora told Sierra.

  “The whole town’s waiting for your shop to open,” Sierra said, eyes twinkling. “I’ll certainly be a regular customer.”

  Echo thanked her, and Sierra moved away, graciously greeting other guests. After placing the beribboned pony with a mountain of gaily wrapped gifts, she did her best to mingle. Cora came and went, making occasional introductions, bringing her a glass of punch, tacitly encouraging her to work the crowd.

  Echo smiled a lot, scrambling to link names with faces, and soon lost track. Sitting on the porch steps, taking a social breather, she watched as Travis Reid, Sierra’s husband, strung an enormous piñata from a tree branch. Rianna and Maeve and a bevy of young friends and cousins waited eagerly below, while the adults looked on, enjoying the scene.

  Cora plopped down beside Echo with a little sigh.

  “Lordy,” she said, “I’m getting old.”

  “Never,” Echo replied.

  Rianna, being the birthday girl, was to have the first whack at the piñata, now suspended by a rope. Travis tossed the other end to a handsome young man in a wheelchair, who caught it ably.

  Sticks were handed out to all the children, who waited, anxiously polite, while Rianna swung, giggling, at the bobbing piñata.

  A free-for-all followed, and the plaster bird, covered in colorful crepe-paper feathers, finally burst. Candy and small toys rained down, and the kids scrambled for their share of the booty.

  It was a golden, glimmering keepsake of a moment, one Echo tucked away in a quiet corner of her heart.

  A distant flapping sound distracted her, though, and everyone else at the party. As it drew nearer, they all looked up, shading their eyes against the last of the daylight.

  “I’ll be darned,” Cora breathed, a smile breaking over her face, as a helicopter hovered above the field sloping away from the barn, setting the deep grass rippling in waves of green.

  “They invited the president?” Echo asked, only half joking.

  “Better than that,” Cora said, getting to her feet and dusting off the back of her jeans. “That’s Rance, unless I miss my guess, come to do right by his little girl!”

  Echo caught her breath.

  Adults restrained children wanting to dash across the field to the helicopter as it landed.

  The blades blurred, then slowed.

  The door of the copter swung open and, sure enough, out spilled Rance McKettrick like a conquering hero. Stooping until he was clear of the updraft, he grinned as Rianna climbed between two rails of the fence and ran toward him.

  He wore jeans, a white shirt open at the throat, and a brown leather jacket that had seen better days, and the vision of him scooping up his young daughter and spinning her around and around in his arms imprinted itself on Echo’s memory like a living photograph.

  “Just when I’m ready to wring his fool neck,” Cora marveled, with a hint of tears in her voice, “he comes through.”

  Two other men got out of the helicopter, grinning. Another child broke free of the crowd and dashed to meet one of them.

  “The blond one’s Jesse,” Cora explained, “and the other is Keegan. That’s Keegan’s daughter, Devon, hugging his neck.” She paused, smiling and shaking her head. “These McKettricks sure do know how to make an entrance.”

  While Echo was glad, for Rianna’s sake, that Rance had arrived in time for the party, she was also strangely unsettled by his presence.

  It wasn’t just that they’d had words the day she’d arrived—that had been a silly misunderstanding, the kind of thing reasonable adults quickly forget. No, it was the way he made her feel—suddenly and wildly disoriented, as though he’d breached her innermost boundaries, blithely unaware that he was trespassing.

  “I think I’ll go back to town and check on Avalon,” she said to Cora, but she was staring at Rance as he hoisted Rianna over the fence, then climbed nimbly over after her.

  Cora clasped her hand. “You stay right here,” she said.

  It wasn’t as if she could move, anyway. Echo stayed put.

  Rance swung Rianna up onto his shoulders, while Maeve walked alongside, beaming up at her dad. He reached out, put an arm around Maeve’s shoulders and pulled her close.

  Jesse and Keegan followed, Devon leaping fawnlike at Keegan’s side.

  A beautiful dark-haired woman threw her arms around Jesse’s neck as soon as he’d cleared the fence.

  “That’s Cheyenne Bridges,” Cora said, ever helpful. “She and Jesse are getting married next month, up on the ridge.”

  Echo watched as Jesse and Cheyenne kissed, feeling peculiarly alone, like the sole survivor of a shipwreck riding in a rapidly sinking lifeboat.

  She was so caught up in the romantic exchange that she didn’t register Rance’s approach until he was standing directly in front of her. Lifting Rianna down from his shoulders, he grinned.

  Out of all the people at that party, he had to walk right up to her?

  “Hello, Echo Wells,” he said.

  She swallowed. “That was quite an entrance,” she remarked, stealing Cora’s line because nothing else came to mind.

  The grin widened.

  Echo wondered helplessly if it was registered somewhere, that smile, as a lethal weapon and an unfair advantage of cosmic significance.

  “The jet could only bring us as far as Flagstaff,” he told her. “We chartered the helicopter there.”

  Echo, still recovering from the grin, floundered in choppy conversational seas. “Impressive,” she said, because it was impressive, watching a copter land in a field during a little girl’s birthday party.

  Rance’s face changed almost imperceptibly.

  Rianna tugged at his hand. “It’s time for birthday cake, Daddy!” she chimed. “It’s time to blow out my candles and open my presents!”

  Rance nodded, but the expression in his eyes was still serious, and a little perplexed. “You go ahead,” he told the child. “I’ll catch up.”

  Rianna hurried away, toward the cake and the presents, skipping as she went.

  “I live to impress you, Ms. Wells,” Rance said icily.

  “I didn’t mean—”

  He walked away.

  “Numbskull,” Cora put in.

  Echo, having forgotten all about Cora, turned to her with a questioning look.

  “Him, not you,” Cora said, putting one arm around Echo’s shoulders and giving her a squeeze. “Come on. Let’s get some of that cake.”

  Echo wanted nothing so much as to go home to her little apartment above the bookstore, and her dog. There, she could brew herself a cup of tea and put Rance McKettrick right out of her mind.

  Alas, Cora wasn’t about to let her leave and, besides, she didn’t want to give Rance the satisfaction of sending her scuttling for cover. Assuming he’d notice her absence in the first place, which didn’t seem very likely.

  *

  “IS THAT HER?” KEEGAN ASKED, holding a plate of cake in one hand and a glass of punch in the other. “The woman who bought that storefront next to Cora’s shop?”

  Rance followed his cousin’s gaze to where Echo stood, chatting with Cheyenne. His jaw tightened and he wanted to sigh, but he didn’t, because Keegan might read things into that that just weren’t there.

  Or shouldn’t be.

  “That’s her.”

  Keegan grinned. “She’s easy on the eyes,” he said.

  “Forget it,” Rance replied, too quickly. “She’s one of those New Age types. Drives a pink car.”

  Keegan’s gaze sliced straight to his cousin’s face. “Oh, well, then. A pink car? That changes everything.”

  Rance rubbed his chin. He
hadn’t taken time to shave before catching the jet to Flagstaff, and he was getting a stubble. “Not your type,” he said, still watching Echo. She looked like a fairy princess, straight out of a storybook, with her hair pinned up and wispy around her neck, and he wouldn’t have been surprised if she’d whipped out a wand with a twinkling star on one end. “That’s all I meant.”

  “Not my type—or not yours?” Keegan asked.

  Rance shoved a hand through his hair. “Look, if you want to put the moves on the lady, go right ahead. Just don’t say I didn’t warn you.”

  “Why do I get the feeling you’re trying to fool yourself, as well as me?”

  “What the hell do you mean by that?”

  Keegan chuckled. “Hot damn,” he said. “You’re smitten.”

  “Smitten?” Rance scoffed. “Keeg, old buddy, you’re spending way too much time with the lonely hearts club, if you’re using words like that.”

  “I think I’ll ask her out,” Keegan mused.

  Rance’s spine stiffened. “Have at it,” he said, and went to watch Rianna tear into her presents.

  Myrna had come through for him, he saw, when Rianna got to the biggest gift in the bunch, wrapped in shiny paper and tied with a gigantic silver bow. She tore open the package and struggled with the cardboard box inside.

  Even as he helped his daughter with the carton, Rance was aware of Echo, watching from a discreet distance. He wondered if Keegan really intended to ask her out, and what she’d say if he did.

  Rianna let out a shriek of joy when the miniature car was revealed. It was a pink Volkswagen, with its own motor, working headlights and a horn.

  “It’s just like Echo’s!” Rianna shouted, climbing into the little rig and tooting the horn. “It’s just like Echo’s!”

  “I thought it belonged to somebody named Barbie,” Rance said.

  Rianna looked up at him. “Thanks, Daddy,” she whispered, her eyes glowing in the gathering dusk.

  Rance’s voice came out hoarse when he spoke. “Guess you’d better take it for a spin,” he said.