“I’ve never resented that, Mom. As young as I was, I knew you loved me, and that the things that were happening didn’t change that for a moment. Besides, I had Angus.”
The clock on the mantelpiece ticked ponderously, marking off the hours, the minutes, the seconds, as it had been doing for over a hundred years. It had ticked and tocked through the lives of Holt and Lorelei and their children, and the generations to follow.
The sound reminded Meg of something she’d always known, at least unconsciously. Life seemed long, but it was finite, too. One day, some future McKettrick would sit listening to that same clock, and Meg herself would be a memory. An ancestor in a photo.
“Gotta go pick Carly up at school,” she said, standing up.
Time to find Brad, she added silently, and introduce him to his wife.
“Hello,” I’ll say, as if we’re meeting for the first time. “My name is Meg O’Ballivan.”
CHAPTER FIFTEEN
THAT LATE MARCH DAY WAS blustery and cold, but there was a fresh, piney tinge to the air. Brad, Meg and Carly stood watching from a short distance as Olivia squared her shoulders, walked to the far gate, sprung the latch and opened the way for Ransom to go.
A part of Meg hoped he’d choose to stay, but it wasn’t to be.
Ransom approached the path to freedom cautiously at first, the mares straggling behind him, still shaggy with their winter coats.
When the great stallion drew abreast of Olivia, he paused, nickered and tossed his magnificent head once, as if to bid her goodbye. Tears slipped down Olivia’s cheeks, and she made no attempt to wipe them away. She’d arrived during break fast that morning and said Ransom had told her it was time.
Meg, who had after all seen a ghost from child hood, didn’t question her sister-in-law’s ability to communicate with animals. Even Brad, quietly skeptical about such things, couldn’t write it all off to coincidence.
Carly, her own face wet, leaned into Brad a little. Meg sniffled, trying to be brave and philosophical.
He put one arm around her shoulders and one around Carly’s. Glancing up at him, Meg didn’t see the sorrow she and Carly and Olivia were feeling, but an expression of almost trans ported wonder and awe.
Ransom walked through the gate, turned a little way beyond and reared onto his hind legs, a startlingly beautiful sight against the early-spring sky, summoning his mares with a loud whinny.
“I guess being in a couple of movie scenes went to his head,” Brad joked, a rasp in his voice. “He thinks he’s Flicka.” The filming was over now, and things were settling down on the ranch, and around town. Local attention had turned to the new animal shelter, now under construction just off Main Street.
Meg’s throat was so clogged with emotion, she couldn’t speak. She rested her head against Brad’s shoulder and watched, riveted, as Ransom shot off across the meadow, headed back up the mountain.
The mares followed, tails high.
Olivia watched them out of sight. Then, with a visible sigh and another squaring of her shoulders, she slowly closed the gate.
Meg started toward her, but Brad caught hold of her hand and held her back.
Olivia passed them by as if they were in visible, climbed agilely over the inside fence, and moved toward her perennially dusty Suburban.
“She’ll be all right,” Brad assured Meg quietly, watching his sister go.
Together, Brad, Carly and Meg returned to the house, saying little.
Life went on. Willie needed to go out. The phone was ringing. The fax machine in Brad’s study was spewing paper.
Business as usual, Meg thought, quietly happy, despite her sadness over the departure of Ransom and the mares. She knew, as Brad did, and certainly Olivia, that they might never see those horses again.
“I don’t suppose I could stay home from school, just for today?” Carly ventured, as Brad answered the phone and Meg started a fresh pot of coffee.
Outside, the toot of a horn announced the arrival of the school bus, and Brad cocked a thumb in that direction and gave Carly a mock stern look.
She sighed dramatically, still angling for an Oscar, as Brad had once observed, but grabbed up her backpack and left the house.
“No, Phil,” Brad said into the telephone receiver, “I’m still not doing that gig in Vegas. I don’t care how good the buzz is about the movie—”
Meg smiled.
Brad rolled his eyes, listening. “I am so not over the way you stuck me with Cynthia for a leading lady,” he went on. “You owe me for that one, big-time.”
When the call was over, though, Brad found his guitar and settled into a chair in the living room, looking out over the land, playing soft thoughtful chords.
Meg knew, without being told, that he was writing a new song. She loved listening to him, loved being his wife. While he was still adamant about not doing concert tours, they’d been drawing up plans for weeks for a recording studio to be constructed out behind the house. Brad O’Ballivan was filled with music, and he had to have some outlet for it.
He didn’t seem to long for the old life, though. First and foremost, he was a family man. He and Meg had legally adopted Carly, though he was still Brad to her, and Ted would always be Dad. He looked forward to the baby’s birth as much as Meg did, and had even gone so far as to have the first sonogram framed.
Their son, McKettrick “Mac” O’Ballivan, was strong and sturdy within Meg’s womb. He was due on the Fourth of July.
Meg paused by Brad’s chair, bent to kiss the top of his head.
He looked up at her, grinned and went on strumming and murmuring lyrics.
When a knock came at the front door, Willie growled half heartedly but didn’t get up from his favorite lounging place, the thick rug in front of the fire.
Meg went to answer, and felt a strange shock of recognition as she gazed into the face of a stranger, some where in his midthirties.
His hair was dark, and so were his eyes, and yet he bore a striking resemblance to Jesse. Dressed casually in clean, good-quality Western clothes, he took off his hat and smiled, and only then did Meg remember Angus’s prediction.
One of them’s about to land on your doorstep, he’d said.
“Meg McKettrick?” the man asked, showing white teeth as he smiled.
“Meg O’Ballivan,” she clarified. Brad was standing behind her now, clearly curious.
“My name is Logan Creed,” said the cowboy. “And I believe you and I are kissin’ cousins.”
ISBN: 978-1-4268-7908-1
THE MCKETTRICK LEGEND
Copyright © 2010 by Harlequin Books S.A.
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SIERRA’S HOMECOMING
Copyright © 2006 by Linda Lael Miller
THE MCKETTRICK WAY
Copyright © 2007 by Linda Lael Miller
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