Not trusting herself to say another word, Cheyenne turned, wrenched open the screen door and went inside. The rusted spring pulled the door shut with a crash.
“DAMN IT,” JESSE MUTTERED, watching Cheyenne vanish into the house, flinching when the screen door slammed.
Hard to believe she was the same woman he’d made love to the night before.
Ayanna approached, laid a hand on his arm. “Thanks, Jesse,” she said quietly as Mitch rolled up the ramp to the porch. “For taking my boy out riding, I mean.”
Ayanna was grateful. Mitch was grateful. But the Bridges vote clearly wasn’t unanimous.
Jesse sighed. “You’re welcome,” he answered dismally.
She smiled. “Cheyenne’s been through a lot,” she said. “She’s not used to things going well. Always waiting for the other shoe to drop—the next terrible thing to happen. Give her a little time, Jesse. And then ask her about Nigel.”
The uneasiness was back, with a wallop. Jesse had managed to elude it all day because he could escape just about anything on horseback, but now he was on foot again. “Nigel?” he repeated. “Her old boss?”
“Ask her,” Ayanna said. She paused, staring at the house for a long, long time. When she turned back to Jesse, her eyes were full of ancient sorrows. “I’d invite you in,” she told him, “but right now, things are a little awkward.”
“Awkward doesn’t cover it,” he said. “Anyway, I’ve got a game in Flag.”
Ayanna nodded.
Jesse said goodbye, turned and went back to his truck.
There was no game in Flag.
But he’d find one if he looked.
He drove out onto the highway, headed for Indian Rock. Passed through town, saw Keegan’s Jag and Rance’s SUV parked outside the Roadhouse.
On an impulse, and because for some curious reason he didn’t want to play poker with a bunch of strangers, or even back at Lucky’s with the usual suspects, he stopped, parked and went inside.
His cousins sat at a corner table, deep in some earnest discussion.
Jesse waved off Roselle’s offer to escort him, with a grin meant to soften the rejection, and joined the party.
“Is this a private argument,” Jesse asked, dragging back a chair, “or can anybody join in?”
Rance leaned back abruptly.
Keegan looked as if he were going to slam his palms down on top of the table. “Sit right down,” he drawled ironically, since Jesse was already sitting.
“What’s going on?” Jesse asked, reaching for a menu.
“Nothing,” Rance snapped.
“Try again,” Jesse said. Sirloin steak? Fried chicken? He sighed. What he wanted wasn’t on any menu. He closed the vinyl-clad folder and set it back in its customary place between the napkin holder and the salt and pepper. “The two of you are about ready to tear each other’s ears off.”
Rance and Keegan exchanged glares.
“It’s none of your damn business how I raise my kids,” Rance told Keegan. “Mr. Divorced Father.”
“And I thought it was about going public,” Jesse said moderately. “Just goes to show I’m out of touch.”
“You’ve been out of touch since high school,” Keegan told him.
“Nice to be in the bosom of my family,” Jesse replied. “I can always depend on you two for a warm welcome.”
Both of them turned to him, still glaring.
“What?” he asked, spreading his hands.
“Don’t you have a poker game or something?” Rance asked.
Jesse pretended to be hurt. “Are you trying to get rid of me?”
Keegan huffed out a sigh. Ignored Jesse and focused on Rance. “Look, maybe I shouldn’t have said anything. But it can’t be good, your leaving Rianna and Maeve with Cora so much.”
“Cora is their grandmother,” Rance said, but there wasn’t much steam behind the words. “She loves them.”
“You’re their father,” Keegan answered. “They need you.”
Rance looked away. There was something bleak in the way he held his head and the set of his shoulders.
Jesse scooted his chair back. “Maybe I’ll go find a game after all,” he said.
“Stay,” Keegan said huskily.
Jesse pulled up close to the table again. “Are we through with the heavy stuff?”
“It’s family stuff,” Rance pointed out.
“Speaking of family stuff,” Keegan said, eyeing Jesse’s jeans and cotton shirt, “Travis and Sierra are getting married Saturday after next. You picked up your tux yet?”
“No,” Jesse replied. He’d sent the suit to the cleaner’s after his last trip to New York, about six months back, and had forgotten all about it.
“You’re the best man,” Keegan reminded him.
Jesse grinned. “Jealous?”
Keegan laughed. “Hell, no,” he said. “But if you show up at that wedding looking as though you’ve been herding cattle, like you do right now, I wouldn’t give a plugged nickel for your hide.”
Rance signaled the waitress, ordered three draft beers and a double order of nachos with everything. The steaks would come later, if at all.
“How did Cheyenne’s first day go?” Jesse asked. He’d intended to put that question to Cheyenne herself, but she wasn’t speaking to him.
“She’s settling in,” Keegan said.
“Something wrong there,” Rance reflected, after downing half his beer.
“Like what?” Jesse asked.
“Yeah,” Keegan agreed. “Like what?”
Rance shrugged his big shoulders. “She’s a beauty,” he said, staring off into space. “Really brightens up the office. But she’s up to something.”
Since Rance wasn’t known for his people skills, the remark seemed odd.
“Cheyenne has a degree in business and plenty of experience,” Keegan said, as if it were his place to defend Cheyenne. “She does one hell of a lot more than ‘brighten up the office’!”
“Take a breath,” Rance said, sounding bored. “I was just making a comment.”
“You know what you are?” Keegan demanded. “You’re a chauvinist.”
Rance laughed. “You just figuring that out?”
The nachos arrived. Jesse helped himself. “You ought to spring for some furniture,” he said to Keegan. “For Cheyenne’s office, I mean. The place looks like a monk’s cell.”
“When did you see it?” Keegan asked. “Or a monk’s cell, for that matter.”
“Today. I would have said hello, but neither of you were around.”
“She has a desk, a credenza, all that,” Keegan said. “What else does she need?”
“Maybe a couch,” Jesse said, snagging a few extra jalapeño slices off the nachos to sprinkle over his own portion.
Rance grinned.
Keegan went red in the neck. “A couch?”
Jesse munched for a while. “You have one in your office. So does Rance. What’s the big deal?”
Rance gave a chuckle.
“Jesse,” Keegan warned. “What the hell do you care if Cheyenne has a couch in her office or not?”
“And you think I’ve been alone too long,” Rance said, rolling his eyes.
Keegan narrowed his. “Jesse?”
“Oh, get a grip, Keegan,” Rance put in. “He’s already sleeping with the woman.”
“What makes you think that?” Jesse asked, sounding as innocent as he could.
“I met her on the road this morning,” Rance answered. “The sun was barely up. Since Keegan’s place is across the creek from mine, I’d have noticed an extra car over there. She sure didn’t spend the night with me, so, by process of elimination, she must have been at your place. Add that to the way you two were dancing at Travis and Sierra’s shindig, and the books balance to the penny.”
“Damn it,” Keegan said.
“I know you like her, Keeg,” Rance reasoned, sounding mellow and wise, like some visiting therapist on a radio talk show, “but she’s obvious
ly fallen for the cowboy, here. Do yourself a favor and stop hoping the cards are going to turn.”
Keegan and Jesse did some glaring of their own across the plate of nachos.
“And while I’m giving out sage advice,” Rance went on, focusing on Jesse now, and as full of shit as ever, “you’d do well to watch your step. Something’s not right. You’re in over your head.”
“Is that right?” Jesse asked with deceptive mildness. One more beer and they’d have all the ingredients for good old-fashioned fisticuffs in the parking lot. He loved his cousins like brothers, but it might feel good to throw a few punches, the way they used to do out at the ranch, behind the old barn.
“I’m not saying she’s bad, Jesse,” Rance said, and this time, he sounded damnably sincere. Even concerned. “There are folks around here who would remind you that she’s Cash Bridges’s daughter and the huckleberry doesn’t fall far from the bush, but I’m not one of them. All I’m telling you is, I’ve got the same feeling I did just before I stepped on that rattler, down by the creek, when I was a kid.”
Jesse remembered the incident. He and Keegan had been there when it had happened. Rance, nine or ten at the time, had been rushed to a hospital in Flagstaff, and he’d nearly died on the way. He’d had to have surgery, once the doctors had pumped him full of antivenom and stabilized him and, ever since then, he’d been proud of the scar.
“Now you’re psychic,” Keegan scoffed. “You didn’t have a premonition that day. You were trying to run off with the mess of trout I caught. You jumped over a log and stepped on the snake.”
The waitress came back. They ordered another round of beer and T-bone steaks.
“We keep drinking like this,” Keegan said, being the practical one, “and we’re going to need a designated driver.”
Rance belched copiously. “And who are we going to designate, genius?”
“You could call Cora. She’s right down the street.”
“Sure,” Rance said. “I’m going to get my mother-in-law on the horn and tell her I’m too drunk to drive.”
“Better than calling her from jail,” Keegan said.
“Or,” Jesse suggested, “we could stay sober.”
Keegan and Rance considered the idea.
“Naaahhh,” they said in chorus.
It was all downhill from there.
CHAPTER FIFTEEN
“I PAID OUR ENTRANCE FEES for the tournament,” Elaine announced when the ladies’ poker club convened on the screened sunporch running alongside Sierra’s family home. For party leftovers, the spread was pretty fancy—barbecued spareribs, coleslaw, cold chicken and about nine kinds of dessert. “We’re in!”
Cheyenne, who had been thinking about whether or not the house was haunted, when she wasn’t wishing she hadn’t been so quick to cut Jesse off at the pockets when he’d brought Mitch home, snapped back to the here and now in an instant. “When is the tournament?”
“The preliminary round is next Saturday afternoon,” Elaine answered. “At the casino down the road.” She held out her hand, palm up. “Fifty bucks from each of you. Fork it over.”
Sierra, Janice and Cheyenne all paid up.
“This was a crazy idea,” Sierra said. She was probably thinking about her wedding, which was scheduled for the Saturday following the tournament. “We’re all terrible at this, except for Cheyenne.”
“You’re not terrible,” Cheyenne lied.
“Yes, we are,” Janice said, resigned.
“Do you think everybody on the World Poker Tour is a seasoned pro?” Elaine asked, separating twenties from tens and tucking the bills into her wallet. “Why, some of those people are rank amateurs. And they win big bucks.”
“Rank is the word for us.” Janice sighed.
“We’ve paid our entrance fee and told half the town we’re going to help pay for the in-patient wing on the clinic,” Elaine said. “Now you want to just forget it?”
Please, God, Cheyenne prayed silently.
“No!” Elaine cried, with all the verve of an old-time preacher rallying a revival crowd to seek salvation. “We’re going to follow through. And one of us is going all the way, too!”
“Don’t mind her,” Janice whispered loudly behind one hand. “Elaine’s in sales, so she listens to a lot of motivational CDs in her car. She goes to seminars, too.”
“It wouldn’t hurt you,” Elaine complained indignantly, “to think about something besides soap operas and feeding the cows.”
“Time out,” Sierra said. “We started this. We might as well finish. And it’s not as if any of us are really going to end up at the final table in Vegas.”
She was right about that, Cheyenne thought. What was the harm in playing in a local tournament? They’d be aced out in the first few hands of cards anyway. Then they could all go back to their regular lives—Sierra to being a bride, Elaine to selling houses, Janice to feeding cows and watching soap operas.
And what was her regular life? Cheyenne asked herself.
She had her new job—and, regrettably, her old one, too. She had her family.
She had screaming orgasms with Jesse.
Provided he hadn’t written her off.
“Thoughts,” Elaine lectured, shaking her finger at one and all, “are things. If you don’t believe you’ll succeed, you won’t.”
Everybody nodded, tacitly promising to believe.
Believing, hopeless as it was, was easier than arguing with Elaine.
The evening went by rapidly, probably because Cheyenne was having fun, and she had absolutely nothing to look forward to when it was over. At least there had been some comic relief while they were playing.
Janice had gone all in on a seven and a three, off-suit.
Elaine was as serious as a kidney stone, the whole time, studying her cards like holy writ.
Sierra bet on a king and queen, figuring that made a marriage.
Oh, yeah, Cheyenne thought. Dolly Brunson, eat your heart out.
After Elaine and Janice left, Cheyenne stayed to help Sierra clean up. Liam had already gone to bed, and there was no sign of Travis. The house was quiet, in an expectant sort of way.
“You promised to tell me about the ghosts,” Cheyenne said shyly, as they stood side by side at the sink, Cheyenne rinsing plates, glasses and silverware, and Sierra sticking them in the dishwasher.
Sierra smiled. “They’re not ghosts,” she said. “Not really.”
“What, then?” Cheyenne asked. She was being nosy, but she couldn’t help it. Anything supernatural gave her delicious shivers.
“It’s hard to explain,” Sierra told her. “But have you ever thought about how time might not be linear—you know, past, present, future—but all of it happening simultaneously instead?”
“I’ve considered it,” Cheyenne said. “You’re talking about different dimensions, existing side by side?”
Sierra nodded. “And sometimes intersecting,” she added. “Liam sees Tobias on a regular basis. Once, I saw Hannah—Hannah McKettrick, that is—she was an ancestor of mine, and lived—lives—in this house.”
Cheyenne shut off the faucet, groped for a dish towel and dried her hands. “But you don’t think she’s a ghost?”
“I think she’s as real—and as alive—as we are.”
“Wow,” Cheyenne marveled.
Sierra bit her lower lip, then looked directly into Cheyenne’s eyes. “I don’t talk about this a lot,” she said carefully. “I mean, there have been rumors about this house for years, according to my mother and a few other people who would be in a position to know. But I don’t want to stir up talk. It could be hard on Liam, at school.”
“I understand,” Cheyenne said. “I won’t say anything to anyone else.”
Sierra’s smile was sudden and dazzling. “Thanks,” she said.
Twenty minutes later, driving toward town, Cheyenne considered taking a detour. Pictured herself heading up Jesse’s long driveway, knocking on his door.
When he ans
wered—if he answered—she’d apologize for the way she’d acted when he’d brought Mitch home earlier in the evening. Try to explain that sometimes the fear of seeing her brother get hurt again just surged up out of her psyche, like a banshee, and possessed her.
On the other hand, what Jesse had done was reckless. Mitch was normal, and it was good of Jesse to treat him that way, but he was also vulnerable. Another injury would not only crush his body; it would crush his spirit, too.
He’d almost given up the first time, Mitch had.
Cheyenne and Ayanna had simply refused to let him go.
They’d kept vigils by his bedside, even when he’d been unconscious, holding his hand. Whispering to him. Telling him to hold on, to fight with everything he had, to come back.
Weeks after he’d regained consciousness, Mitch had admitted that he’d heard them. Followed their voices home to his body. Back to the pain, and the limitations.
Once or twice, Cheyenne had seen a reproachful question in his eyes.
Why didn’t you let me go?
Cheyenne drove past Jesse’s road.
He wouldn’t understand.
WYATT TERP AMBLED into the Roadhouse on about the umpteenth round of microbrews. With the unerring instincts of his almost-namesake, he zeroed right in on the McKettrick table.
“I know you boys aren’t planning to drive,” he said amiably.
Rance gave him a bleary once-over. “Did somebody call you?” he asked and cast a suspicious glance around the restaurant.
“Nobody called me,” Wyatt answered, leaning in and bracing his hands against the table edge. “I stop by the Roadhouse three or four times on every shift. You know that. Now, is this a celebration, or a wake?”
“Something in between,” Keegan said. He probably hadn’t been this drunk since college, and Jesse could see, even in his own profound state of inebriation, that his cousin’s regular, buttoned-down self was wondering what the hell had hit him.
Wyatt’s gaze moved to Jesse. “I bet you couldn’t touch the floor with your hat right about now,” he observed. “By the way, those rounders from Lucky’s haven’t been back since I gave them a speeding ticket and told them to keep moving.”
“Good work, Wyatt,” Jesse said with a salute.
“John,” Wyatt said.
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