Cora, evidently having entered the house from a side or back door, appeared on the front porch, beckoning.
“There’s lemonade in the fridge,” she called.
Maeve opened the creaking gate, and they all trooped through. Looking at that wonderfully simple house, with its gleaming windows and neatly kept lawn, flower beds and shrubbery, Echo felt another pang.
What would it have been like to grow up in such a place?
She imagined snow at Christmas, a festive wreath on the door and colorful tree lights glowing in the living room window. In the autumn, there would be jack-o’-lanterns on the step, while crimson and gold leaves pooled around the trunk of the maple. In the spring, pansies, nasturtiums and geraniums would billow brightly over the edges of terra-cotta pots.
Echo’s throat tightened with an impossible longing.
Rianna, young as she was, seemed to understand. She took Echo’s hand and squeezed it lightly. “I miss my mom,” she whispered.
Tears burned behind Echo’s eyes.
Maeve’s small back stiffened, and she turned to face her sister. “You don’t remember Mom,” she accused.
“I still miss her,” Rianna insisted.
“Let’s get some of that lemonade,” Echo said.
“We all need to wet our whistles,” Cora added. She was smiling, but her eyes were sad and serious as she gathered her granddaughters close against her sides. Over their heads, Echo’s and Cora’s gazes connected.
They had cold lemonade in the backyard, at a wicker table, and then the children played with Avalon while Cora and Echo sat quietly in the leaf-dappled sunshine.
“Their mother grew up right here under this roof,” Cora said softly. “She played in the grass, with her dog, Farky, just like Rianna and Maeve are doing now. I never thought I’d still be here, and my Julie gone.”
Echo didn’t know how to respond.
Cora managed a resolute smile. “I’m an old fool, running on about somebody you didn’t even know,” she said. “Forgive me.”
“I don’t mind listening, Cora,” Echo answered. “And you’re anything but an ‘old fool.’”
“Would you like to look at some pictures?” Cora asked, with touching shyness. “Of Julie, I mean?”
“I’d like that very much,” Echo said.
Cora hurried into the house and soon returned with an album, well worn. She pulled a chair closer to Echo’s and laid the large book reverently on the tabletop, opening to the first page.
There was a much younger Cora, smiling, posed in front of a Christmas tree and holding a beautiful baby clad in pink. “My husband, Mike, took that picture,” she said.
Maeve and Rianna appeared, as if magnetized, standing on either side of their grandmother to peer, rapt, over her shoulders. Undoubtedly, they’d seen the photographs in that album often enough to memorize every detail of every image, but from their expressions, they might have been seeing them for the first time.
“Show Echo the one of Mommy in the cowgirl outfit,” Rianna prompted breathlessly. Looking up at Echo, she added proudly, “Mommy was Little Miss Rodeo when she was five.”
“Wow,” Echo said, honestly impressed. Julie Tellington was Shirley Temple–cute in her fringed skirt, vest and boots, beaming into the camera lens with the confidence of a thoroughly cherished child.
“She wasn’t the least bit spoiled, either,” Cora related fondly, devouring the photo with her eyes. “We tried to have more children, Mike and I did, but we felt blessed to raise our Julie.”
Echo couldn’t speak. She yearned for a child of her own, one she would love as fiercely as Cora had loved hers. “She was beautiful.”
Cora nodded. Sniffled slightly. Her hand curved around the edge of the aging picture with a tenderness that bruised Echo’s very soul. To love the way Cora had was a terrible risk, laying the heart bare, with all its most delicate nerves exposed.
How had Cora borne such a loss?
Rianna reached out with grubby, grass-stained fingers and touched the photograph briefly. Echo was glad when Cora didn’t reprimand the little girl, but waited until Rianna slowly withdrew her hand.
A series of sequential photos followed—Julie on the first day of school, competing in various baton-twirling contests, always in an outfit as elaborate as the cowgirl costume, and probably hand-made, opening presents on her birthdays, and at Christmas. Dressed for trick-or-treating, in a variety of imaginative getups—a bumblebee one year, a giant hot dog the next, then a sunflower with floppy yellow petals and green felt leaves.
Cora admitted modestly that she’d sewn constantly when Julie was little, and still made costumes for Rianna and Maeve when they were called for.
Midway through the album, Rance began to appear—a teenager clowning as he and Julie washed an old car, the spray of the hose frozen forever in a bright geyser, a handsome young man standing proudly beside Julie on prom night, their wedding. Later, he posed with Julie and the kids, and their smiles seemed to light up the picture.
There were more photos—taken at picnics, on holidays. Echo wondered sadly if anyone else had noticed Julie’s smile growing almost imperceptibly dimmer, from one occasion to the next.
Finally, they reached the album’s end.
Avalon gave an uncertain little yelp, and everyone looked up to see Rance standing in the yard, watching them. His face was in shadow, but he came out of the shade smiling.
Echo’s heart caught painfully.
“I hope I didn’t miss supper,” he said.
Avalon approached him, and Echo watched, oddly stricken, as he leaned down to pet the dog in greeting.
“We didn’t eat yet,” Rianna informed her father.
“Good,” he said, looking at Echo as he came nearer. His gaze dropped, momentarily, to the album.
“I’ll get you some lemonade,” Cora said, getting up and clutching the album against her chest, almost as though she feared he might snatch it from her.
“Thanks,” he said mildly, still watching Echo.
Cora went inside the house, taking the photo album with her.
Rianna and Maeve followed, leaving Rance and Echo alone in the backyard, except for Avalon, who waited for Rance to sit down at the table, then settled companionably at his feet.
“Long day?” Echo asked, noting the signs of fatigue around Rance’s eyes, barely suppressing an urge to smooth his slightly rumpled hair.
“The usual,” he said. “I take it Cora showed you one of her albums.”
She nodded. “Julie was lovely,” she said.
Rance acknowledged that with a brief motion of his head. Relaxed a little.
Rianna returned with a glass of lemonade. “Are we going public?” she asked, handing the drink to her father.
The moment quivered.
Then Rance laughed, both at his daughter’s words and Echo’s obvious confusion. “That hasn’t been decided yet,” he told Rianna. “As of right now, McKettrickCo is still a family business.”
Echo, having finally caught up with the conversation, wanted to ask which side Rance was on, and promptly decided it was none of her business.
“Are we for or against?” Rianna inquired.
“We’re undecided,” Rance replied.
“Uncle Jesse?”
“Undecided,” Rance said.
“Uncle Keegan is definitely against,” Rianna declared.
“Is he ever,” Rance confirmed. “Far be it from him to live out the rest of his days as a man of leisure.”
“What would you do, Daddy? If you didn’t have to work at McKettrickCo anymore, I mean?” Rianna looked so hopeful as she asked that question that Echo had to avert her eyes.
“I’d spend more time with you and your sister,” Rance said quietly.
Echo’s gaze flew to his face.
“That would be good,” Rianna said, beaming. In that moment, despite her Rance-dark hair, the child looked to Echo so much like Julie that it was as though she’d come back to life.
/> Rance took a sip of his lemonade. “That would be good,” he agreed.
Maeve came out of the back door then, carrying a stack of plates topped with silverware. Cora was right behind her, bearing a blue-and-white casserole dish in both hands.
Avalon sat up on her haunches and sniffed appreciatively.
Cora took one of the plates, once Maeve had set them on the table, dished up a portion of the savory-smelling concoction, and put it on the ground for Avalon.
“I hope you don’t mind,” Cora said, after the fact, glancing at Echo.
“I don’t mind,” Echo whispered, wishing, just as she had the night before, on Rance’s patio, that time would stand still, instead of flowing on and on, like the creek in front of the ranch house. Knowing it wouldn’t, she folded the homey backyard tableau carefully and tucked it away in the mental scrapbook where she kept only the most precious things.
CHAPTER SIX
TWILIGHT THICKENED INTO dusky darkness, there in Cora’s backyard, the girls playing with Avalon, Cora watering her flower beds with a trickle from the hose, Echo and Rance sitting quietly at the table, now cleared of supper dishes.
Echo’s feelings—a sense of calm renewal, contrasted with the uneasy conviction that she was on dangerous ground—showed clearly in her face.
Rance watched, both wary and fascinated, while her expressions changed—now a soft, reflective smile as she watched the kids and the dog romp in the fresh-cut grass, then a slight worried frown, creasing the smooth skin between her eyebrows. Periodically, she settled back in her chair, relaxed. In the next moment, though, she would be on its edge again, stealing surreptitious glances at her watch.
Finally, with a sigh of resolution, she got to her feet.
Rance’s gaze focused first on her bare legs, below the ragged fringe of her denim shorts, then rose with purposeful deliberation to connect with her eyes.
She flushed, probably caught somewhere between flustered irritation at his audacity and a tacit acknowledgment of their mutual attraction. It was primordial, this thing happening between them, as elemental as a volcanic eruption, and as unstoppable.
They were going to collide, like two powerfully opposing weather systems, high in an uneasy sky. It was irrational, it was bound to be cataclysmic, and it was inevitable.
Category five, Rance thought.
He stood because Echo had. An old-fashioned gesture, yes. And one imprinted on the DNA of every McKettrick male. No matter what kind of scoundrel you were, in business or any other area of life, you rose when a lady did. You opened doors and you carried heavy things.
“You’re not leaving already, are you?” Cora asked, turning from the flower beds to look at Echo.
Echo wrenched her attention from Rance—he literally felt the shock, like old paint being stripped from a wall—and smiled at Cora. “It’s almost eight o’clock,” she said reasonably.
She was a princess, with invisible wings. Perhaps, at some unknown hour, she would turn into a frog.
Rance frowned inwardly. Or was frogdom solely the province of princes? He was a little sketchy when it came to fairy tales.
Cora made a face, then shut off the hose and wound it into a green, shiny coil. “I promised I’d help you unpack books tonight, and I always keep my word.”
“You’re tired,” Echo protested. She seemed to have forgotten Rance existed, but he wasn’t fooled. She was aware of him in every cell of her body, just as he was of her. She was deliberately ignoring him. Pretending he wasn’t there.
Good luck, he thought. Women sometimes disliked or even hated him. They threw things and they yelled and cried. More often, they crooned and wheedled and flirted, and scored his bare back with their fingernails when he made love to them.
But they never ignored him.
“Nonsense,” Cora argued. “I’m full of energy.”
“We can help,” Rianna said hopefully. “Can’t we?” But even as she spoke, she was yawning.
“Tell you what,” Rance interjected, knowing what he was about to suggest would throw the proverbial wrench into Echo’s works and loving the prospect because it electrified the atmosphere. “It sounds like there’s some heavy lifting to do. You girls stay here with Granny, and I’ll help out with the books.”
“It really isn’t necessary,” Echo said, with delicious uncertainty. “The job can wait until tomorrow.”
“Not if you want to be open for business on Saturday morning, it can’t,” Cora put in. Even in the gathering darkness, Rance saw the spark in his mother-in-law’s eyes. She didn’t miss a whole hell of a lot. She yawned copiously, just as Rianna had done, and Maeve did the same. “Now that you mention it,” Cora added, “I could stand to put up my feet for a while. Maybe watch a little TV.”
Echo bit her lower lip, glanced uncomfortably in Rance’s direction. He could tell she was torn and, rounder that he was, he was enjoying the crackle, and the quicksilver thoughts flickering in her wondrous eyes, like a slide show on fast-forward.
Get lost, a part of her said.
Make love to me until neither of us has anything left to give, said another.
Decisions, decisions.
Rance smiled to himself. Always glad to oblige a lady, he thought.
“It seems we keep getting thrown together,” she said fitfully.
“Go figure,” Rance answered.
“You two run along now,” Cora added, with a shooing motion of both hands. “The girls and I will have some ice cream and see what’s on the tube.”
Echo flushed again, rousing something primitive in Rance—not a desire to conquer, as he might have expected, but to protect.
Resigned, Echo thanked Cora for supper, said good-night to the girls, and called Avalon to her side.
Rance promised to pick the girls up in an hour or two, and walked Echo and the dog to her car, parked out front, wheels touching the sidewalk. The SUV loomed behind it, and Rance couldn’t help drawing a parallel between the vehicles and Echo and himself.
He backed off a little, both physically and mentally.
Waiting until she’d settled the dog and then herself in the pink bug, he then climbed into the SUV, started the engine and followed her through quiet residential streets lined with simple, well-kept houses onto the main road, back to her bookshop.
An old truck was parked out front, and a man got out of it as soon as Echo pulled up.
Rance felt uneasy, though he couldn’t have given a solid reason for it. He’d never met a man he was physically afraid of, which probably meant he was feeling territorial. Unless Rance missed his guess, and that didn’t happen often, the stranger wasn’t Echo’s type—he was too scruffy for that. Needed a shower, a haircut and a shave, for starters. Probably a job, too, from the looks of his clothing and his rig.
Echo hesitated after she got out of the bug, then made a visible decision to round the car and step up onto the sidewalk, where the man waited. Rance shut off his own rig and was standing beside her before she’d come to a full stop.
“I’m Bud Willand,” the stranger said.
Rance noticed that Echo had left the dog in the car.
“Echo Wells,” she replied. Her voice was small and a little tremulous—she hadn’t wanted to give up her name. Or to have this conversation at all, most likely.
Willand sized Rance up, the way men do when matters of primitive instinct might arise, and wisely kept his distance. Turning his attention to Avalon, who was watching them all through the passenger-side window, tongue lolling, he said, “That looks like Whitey, all right.”
Echo tensed.
Rance wanted to put an arm around her shoulder, but refrained.
Willand turned slightly, toward Echo’s car. “Hello there, girl,” he said to the dog. “Looks like you been livin’ in style since you jumped the fence down home.”
Avalon shrank back a little in the seat, trying to see around Willand’s bulky frame and find Echo.
She stepped into view. “It’s okay, Avalon,�
�� she said very softly.
Willand moved toward the car.
“Wait,” Echo said, but it was too late.
He opened the door and Avalon snarled, then lunged. She became a blur of white, struggling so wildly against the seat belt that she got tangled in it. If she hadn’t, she’d have bitten a chunk out of Willand’s hide for sure.
Willand cursed and jumped back, stumbling against the curb and nearly landing on his ass on the sidewalk.
Echo moved between him and White Fang. Her eyes glittered as she looked back at Willand, and her chin stuck out a little. Meanwhile, Avalon settled down.
“This isn’t your dog,” Echo said clearly.
“The hell it isn’t!” Willand snapped. “She’s just as damn mean as ever, too!”
“Avalon,” Echo said evenly, glancing briefly at Rance before facing Willand again, “is not mean.” She stepped closer to the dog, soothed it with a few gentle pats on the head and some shushes.
“Avalon!” Willand spat. “What kind of stupid New Age name is that for a dog?” He glared at the animal. So much for the jovial approach.
Slowly, Echo unfastened the seat belt. The dog sat quietly, leaning against her mistress, but Avalon’s gaze, a strange mixture of predator and prey, was fixed on Willand. “Call her,” Echo said. “If she’s yours, she’ll come to you.”
Willand swore again, this time more viciously than before.
Rance waited, every muscle poised.
Willand went around the back of his pickup and lowered the tailgate with a bang. “Whitey,” he called. “You git in this truck!”
Avalon growled, low, and then looked piteously up into Echo’s face.
“You’re not taking this dog anywhere,” Echo said.
“The hell I’m not,” Willand argued, lumbering back to the sidewalk. “That’s a purebred, right there, and she’s worth a lot of money.”
Rance stepped in front of Willand when the stranger would have advanced on Echo. Maybe he planned on beating the dog into submission, and maybe he was just stupid. “Seems to me the matter has been decided,” Rance said. “The dog stays.”
Willand gave him a look of pure hatred. “If you know what’s good for you, mister,” he said, “you’ll stay the hell out of this.”
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