Rianna quickly found the ignition button, pushed it and drove right out of the carton. She did a few figure-eights, like a little clown in a circus parade, and flashed her headlights.
Laughing, people jumped out of her way.
Rance laughed, too, once he got over wanting to cry.
To think he’d almost missed this.
*
AVALON HAD PERKED UP by the time Echo got home, around nine that night. Hooking a leash onto the dog’s collar, Echo took her down the stairs and outside.
Since almost everybody in town was apparently still at Rianna’s party on the Triple M, the streets were empty. The sky was clear, speckled with stars, and there was a soft breeze, scented with newly mown grass, lilacs and roses in full bloom. Somewhere nearby, the faint whoosh-whoosh of a lawn sprinkler sounded.
“This is why I wanted to live in a small town,” Echo told Avalon, who squatted dutifully. Using a plastic bag she’d brought for the purpose, Echo disposed of the evidence, dropping it into a trash can at the end of somebody’s driveway. “It’s so peaceful.”
They came to a park, with a bandstand in the center, and lots of swing sets and trees. Since there was no one around, Echo decided to let Avalon off her leash to run, and was alarmed when the dog suddenly bolted across the grass toward an RV parked on the far side.
She was breathless when she caught up.
Avalon stood on her hind legs, yelping and scratching frantically at the door of the RV.
A light came on inside, and a woman stuck her head out. “Well, what’s this?” she asked.
“I’m sorry,” Echo said quickly. “I hope she didn’t leave any marks on the paint.”
Suddenly deflated, Avalon turned and slunk back to Echo, her head down.
“I’m sure she didn’t do any harm,” the woman said. “What a nice dog.”
Echo reattached the leash, then crouched to rub Avalon’s ears, trying to comfort her. The dog slouched against her, actually rested her head against Echo’s shoulder, and gave a deep, shuddery sigh.
“Did your people drive a motor home like that one?” Echo whispered sadly, almost expecting the dog to answer.
Avalon gave a soft, despairing whimper.
“We’ll find them,” Echo told her, even as her eyes filled at the prospect of parting with her wayfaring friend. “I promise, we’ll find them.”
That night, Avalon foreswore the air bed and slept with Echo, curled despondently against her side and chasing something in her dreams. Echo, meanwhile, lay awake, wondering about Rance McKettrick.
What made him tick?
And why did she give a damn?
*
“OF ALL THE DERN FOOL THINGS to give a seven-year-old child,” Cora scolded affectionately the next morning, as she made breakfast in the sunny kitchen of Rance’s house. She’d spent the night in a guest room, since the girls had been too exhausted from all the excitement to make the trip back to town. “She must have run over my toes half a dozen times.”
Rance, sipping fresh coffee and leaning against the counter, gazed out the window at the creek flowing by, shining in the sun. Keegan’s house, the first one on the place, loomed augustly on the other side of the stream. “I told Myrna to get a Barbie car,” he said, by way of explanation. He hadn’t actually remembered what he’d told Myrna, until he asked her at the party, but Cora didn’t need to know that.
He crossed to the window, squinting a little, trying to see if Keegan’s Jag was parked in its usual place. The homestead, a log structure like Rance’s own house, was old, and it didn’t have a garage.
“Did you happen to see Keegan drive off this morning?” he asked, and then could have kicked himself. Cora possessed uncanny abilities of perception—women’s intuition, she called it—and he wouldn’t be a damn bit surprised if she guessed what he was really worried about.
“It’s not my day to watch Keegan McKettrick,” Cora said. “But since Devon’s there, I imagine he’s probably at home. If he’s got a lick of sense, he’ll take a few days off, instead of putting in twelve hours at McKettrickCo like he usually does.”
Rance didn’t dare turn around and look at his mother-in-law. He was afraid she’d see something in his face if he did. Not that there was anything to see—he just didn’t want her misunderstanding his concern about where Keegan might have passed the night, that was all.
He was a little startled when Cora’s hand came to rest on his shoulder; he hadn’t heard her approaching. “That was a fine thing you did, Rance,” she said quietly. “Getting back here for Rianna’s party, I mean.”
He looked down at her, not used to her praise. Once, they’d been close, he and Cora, but Julie had been the link between them, and things had changed after she died. The girls might have bridged the gap; instead, they were cause for argument, most of the time.
“I shouldn’t have left in the first place,” he said, to himself as much as to Cora. “I don’t know what the hell I was thinking.”
Cora’s hand still rested against his shoulder. “Maeve and Rianna remind you of Julie,” she said gently. “It’s been five years, Rance. You need to let her go and concentrate on raising your daughters. Start seeing them for themselves.”
Rance’s throat closed. He set his coffee cup down on the wide sill of the window. Rafe McKettrick, his ancestor and Angus’s second son, had hewn that sill himself and hammered it into place. Rafe had had two daughters, too, with his wife, Emmeline. Rance wondered if he’d ever felt as confounded, raising girls, as he did.
Fortunately, before he had to say anything, Rianna and Maeve erupted into the kitchen like a couple of bullets.
“Can I drive my car all the way to town, Daddy?” Rianna demanded.
Rance turned, grinning down at his daughter, trying his best to see the child behind the overlay of Julie that always clouded his vision where Maeve and Rianna were concerned.
“No,” he said.
“It’s thirty miles to town, you dummy,” Maeve remarked.
“No name-calling,” Rance told his eldest daughter. The truth was, all of a sudden he saw two individuals standing there, in baby-doll pajamas and bare feet, with only a trace of Julie showing around their eyes.
“I’ll be careful,” Rianna said, “and I won’t speed. Cross my heart.”
Rance laughed. “Your rig tops out at about two miles an hour, kiddo,” he answered. “Take you a couple of days to get to Indian Rock, and your battery would die before you got to the main road.”
Rianna looked gravely disappointed. “Well, what’s the use of having a car if you can’t take it anywhere?”
“End of the driveway and back,” Rance decreed. “No farther.”
“Across the bridge to Uncle Keegan’s house?” Rianna tried. The kid had a future with the company, as a contract negotiator, if McKettrickCo didn’t go public in the meantime. The fight was still on where that decision was concerned. The meeting in San Antonio had gone on for the better part of three days, with nothing settled.
“No way,” Rance said.
Rianna plopped onto one of the benches lining the long table. It was a copy of the one across the creek, on the homestead. “I wanted to give Devon a ride,” she lamented.
“Devon can’t fit,” Maeve said. “It’s a baby car.”
“Leave your sister alone, Maeve,” Rance told his elder daughter.
Maeve subsided, but there was McKettrick thunder in her eyes.
“Babies don’t drive cars,” Rianna told Maeve.
“Enough,” Rance interceded.
“How am I supposed to show Echo that my car is just like hers?” Rianna persisted.
Rance closed his eyes, remembering how he’d gotten his back up the night before, when Echo had called his arrival by helicopter “impressive.” He’d been ultra touchy, stressed out because the meetings in San Antonio had done nothing but raise more trouble in the McKettrick ranks. He’d felt compelled to leave early so he could be home for Rianna’s party, and when the co
mpany jet landed in Flagstaff, there was a delay chartering the chopper. He’d been flat-out wrong to take those things out on Echo by snapping at her the way he had.
“Echo saw your stupid car last night,” Maeve pointed out.
“Maybe Avalon could fit,” Rianna speculated.
Rance sighed.
Cora stepped in. “Eat your breakfast, both of you.”
Rance gave her a grateful look.
“You, too,” she said.
He took his place at the head of the table—a seat he occupied all too infrequently—and let Cora serve him a plate mounded with fried potatoes, eggs and sausage links. He’d employed a variety of housekeepers and nannies over the years since Julie died, but none of them had lasted. Too much responsibility had fallen on Cora.
“Looks like a heart attack waiting to happen,” he said appreciatively, and dug into the food.
Cora laughed. “Well, that’s a fine how-do-you-do,” she replied. “I cook you a meal, and you accuse me of trying to kill you.”
Maeve’s eyes widened. Her lower lip wobbled and, suddenly, she looked a lot younger than her usual ten-going-on-forty. “You wouldn’t really have a heart attack, would you, Dad?” she asked.
Rance reached out, ruffled her hair. “No,” he said quietly. “I plan on living to be a hundred and causing you all kinds of trouble in my old age.”
Maeve relaxed visibly, and her eyes danced. For a moment, he saw Julie again. “Just keep in mind,” she said, “that I’ll have a say in picking out your nursing home.”
Rance threw back his head and shouted with laughter.
“I get to help,” Rianna said. “What’s a nursing home?”
“Never mind,” Cora told her, bending to kiss both her granddaughters on top of the head. “Nobody’s going into a nursing home. Not in the immediate future, anyway.”
A silence fell, and Rance looked up at his mother-in-law, suddenly realizing that she was getting older. She’d lost weight since Julie died, and there were wrinkles around her eyes and at the corners of her mouth. Her husband had passed away years ago, and she had no family other than Maeve and Rianna—and him.
“What’s a nursing home?” Rianna repeated.
“It’s like a hospital,” Maeve explained. “Old people go there.”
Cora, her gaze locked with Rance’s, suddenly looked away.
He pushed back his chair, stood and followed his mother-in-law to the sink, where she stood with her back to the room. He laid a hand on her shoulder, just as she had done earlier, when he was at the window.
“Are you feeling okay, Cora?” he asked quietly. “You’re not sick, are you?”
She shook her head, tried to smile. “No, Rance—I’m fine.”
But as she turned from him to tackle the breakfast dishes, it was clear something was on her mind.
Maybe he ought to tell her he thought he knew what it was.
CHAPTER FOUR
ECHO SAT CROSS-LEGGED IN the middle of her featherbed, awash in sunlight from the big windows opening onto the alley behind the shop, laptop open, Avalon snoozing peacefully beside her.
Four different people, in four different and far-flung parts of the country, had e-mailed offers to adopt Avalon, but no one claimed ownership. Both relieved and discouraged, Echo dispatched electronic thank-you notes and went to her own Web site.
Seeing it always made her smile.
It was her delicious little secret.
And the orders were piling up—more than a hundred had come in since she’d last logged on, before leaving Chicago.
“Best get cracking,” she told Avalon, who opened her eyes, yawned and then went back to sleep.
Reaching for the pen and notepad on the bedside table, Echo scrawled a shopping list. Velvet bags. Cording. Certain herbs and stones. Some of the supplies she needed had arrived with her furniture and other belongings, but she would have to contact her wholesalers, just the same.
Biting her lower lip, she scanned the list of orders again. Something niggled at the periphery of her awareness.
And then the name jumped out at her.
Cora Tellington.
“Cora?” she said aloud. A smile broke over her face as she checked the address. Sure enough, it was the Cora Tellington, of Indian Rock, Arizona.
Well, she thought happily, I’ll be darned.
Of course, she could fill the order from supplies on hand and deliver it in person, but Cora might be embarrassed and, besides, Echo wasn’t sure she was ready to reveal her sideline to anyone just yet. Her name didn’t appear on the Web site, and there was no toll-free number or post office box listed, either. Any receipts went directly into an online-payment service account, and she’d always shipped the merchandise from a franchise in the neighborhood.
Something else caught her attention as she studied Cora’s order on the screen of her laptop.
Cora wasn’t buying for herself.
“Hmm,” Echo murmured, confused.
Then, because she felt a peculiar sense of urgency, she set the computer aside, got off the bed and started rummaging through boxes, gathering the necessary materials.
A feather.
A pink agate.
A prayer, printed on a tiny strip of paper.
She put all these things into a small blue velvet bag, tied the gold drawstring and placed the works inside a little padded envelope, to be mailed on Monday morning.
What on earth, she wondered, had prompted Cora Tellington to order a love-spell, not for herself, but for a man?
*
THE PACKAGE ARRIVED IN Monday afternoon’s mail. Cora smiled when she saw it, felt a shiver of excitement and secreted it away in her purse before Maggie or any of her other employees caught a glimpse.
It was silly, she knew, to place her hopes in this kind of magic, but desperate times called for desperate measures. She’d tried just about everything else, and she was fresh out of ideas.
Of course, she could have gone to Sedona and talked to a psychic, but people knew her there. She didn’t want anybody spilling the beans—if word of what she was up to ever got back to Rance, he’d have a fit and fall in it.
I did it for you, Julie, she said silently. And for your girls.
Julie would have laughed, Cora knew that. Her daughter had been the practical, pragmatic type, just like Rance. Indeed, the two of them had been very much alike, believing only in what they could see, hear and touch.
It was sad.
Cora came back from her mental sojourn. Hammering sounded from next door, at Echo’s shop, and Eddie Walters’s old truck was still parked out front.
Needing a break, after giving three perms and a weave, Cora decided to go over and see how the new shelves were coming along.
Echo was up on a ladder, painting the ceiling. Barefoot, wearing a fitted T-shirt, her long, firm legs revealed by a pair of denim shorts, she looked like a wood nymph. The dog was nowhere in sight.
“Wow,” Cora said, admiring Eddie’s work as well as Echo’s. “The place looks great.”
Echo smiled and descended the ladder, laying her paint roller in the tray and resting her hands on her hips. “The first shipment of books is due to arrive on Thursday,” she said. “I might be open for business by Saturday morning.”
It pleased Cora to see the old shop coming alive again. She’d bought it years ago, along with the space next door, planning to expand her own business one day. As it turned out, though, she’d had her hands full with the Curl and Twirl, and now she was thinking more and more often of retiring, maybe doing a little traveling.
Of course, she couldn’t do that with Rance still running hither and yon like some crazy man, trying to work himself into an early grave, or outrun memories of a past he tended to idealize.
Cora had loved her daughter, but Julie had been a flesh-and-blood woman, with all the accompanying faults and foibles, not a paragon of virtue. In some ways, it was unfair, Rance’s remembering her the way he did. He’d forgotten the way the
two of them butted heads, because they were too much alike. Stiff-necked, both of them. Used to getting their own way.
A curious expression came over Echo’s face; she seemed to be pondering Cora, like the blank spaces in a crossword puzzle.
“I haven’t seen the girls in a few days,” Echo said, brightening.
“Rance took them camping up on Jesse’s ridge,” Cora explained, relieved. “Where’s Avalon?”
“Hiding under my bed, I think,” Echo replied. “All this hammering and sawing is probably giving her a headache.”
Eddie grinned sheepishly and waded into the conversation. “Almost done,” he said.
Cora had known Eddie all his life. Known his mother, and his grandmother, too, God rest their souls. He wasn’t a bright boy, but he was good with his hands. When somebody in Indian Rock needed shelves put up, or walls painted, or pipes and wiring fixed, Eddie was the person they called. That was why Cora had recommended him to Echo.
“Looks like you did a good job,” Cora told him. “Just like always.”
Eddie beamed, already putting away his tools. The floor was covered with sawdust, and Cora, being Cora, found a broom in the corner and started sweeping.
“You don’t have to do that,” Echo protested, a slight frown puckering her brow.
Cora remembered that she’d come from Chicago. Like as not, folks in a big city like that didn’t sweep one another’s floors, but this was Indian Rock, not Chicago. Cora went right on with her sweeping.
Echo watched solemnly, and she looked like a person with something to say. When Eddie finished up, Echo wrote him a check, and he left with his toolbox.
Avalon came downstairs the moment the door closed behind him.
“How ya doin’ today, little mama?” Cora asked the dog. She’d always liked critters, but she had a special place in her heart for this one. Echo had told her about finding Avalon outside a truck stop down by Tucson, lost and soaked to the skin.
“I was walking her on Saturday night, after I got back from the party,” Echo said suddenly, patting the dog’s head. “We came to a park, so I let her off the leash for a run. She headed straight for an RV parked on the opposite side and about clawed the door down trying to get in.”
McKettrick's Pride Page 5