Molly shook her head. “I was such a blind fool—”
“Stop,” Psyche said abruptly.
Molly blinked, surprised.
“Yes, you made a mistake,” Psyche allowed. “But something very, very good came of it. And now I’m dying.” She stopped, regrouping. Perhaps absorbing, yet again, the fate she couldn’t escape. “I have no time for hand-wringing or for regrets, yours or mine, so buck up and get over it. The first moment I held Lucas in my arms I forgave you for everything. I blessed you. Now you need to forgive yourself, if only for Lucas’s sake. Can you do that?”
Molly pondered the question, then nodded. “Yes,” she said. “But it won’t be easy.”
“Nobody said anything about easy,” Psyche responded. “Lucas will have fevers, and skinned knees, and all manner of required boy-experiences. Dealing with Keegan won’t be any stroll through the lilies either, but then, I suppose you’ve deduced that already.”
Ruefully Molly nodded again.
“I’ve asked Keegan to be the executor of my estate,” Psyche confirmed. “He wanted to adopt Lucas himself, you know. Leave you completely out of the picture. I refused, because I believe a child needs a mother.”
“How—” Molly choked, cleared her throat, started over. “How can you trust me, after all that happened?”
Psyche smiled. “This wasn’t a spur-of-the-moment decision, Molly. I’m not giving Lucas to you just because you happen to be his birth mother. You’ve been checked out by the best private investigators in Los Angeles.”
“But you said something about not knowing my financial situation.”
“I lied,” Psyche said sweetly.
Molly laughed. Suddenly, unexpectedly, a raw, sob-like guffaw escaped her, and she put a hand over her mouth, too late.
Psyche’s pain-weary eyes twinkled. “Perhaps we can be friends, even this late in the game,” she said. “What do you think?”
“I think I’d be honored to be your friend,” Molly answered.
“Know what?” Psyche asked.
“What?”
“Thayer wasn’t good enough to lick your shoes, either.”
Once again Molly laughed. She laughed so hard that she finally had to lay her head down on her folded arms and cry as though her very soul were bruised.
Which, of course, it was.
AT SUNSET, KEEGAN STOOD looking up at the Ferris wheel looming in the middle of Indian Rock’s small park, trying to work up a celebratory mood. Try as he might, he couldn’t.
Psyche was dying.
McKettrickCo was being torn apart from the inside.
Shelley wanted to take Devon thousands of miles away and install her in some institution so she and the boyfriend could walk the streets of Paris and hold hands in the rain.
What a load.
Keegan, meanwhile, was on tilt, like a pinball machine with a phone book under one leg.
“Dad?”
He looked down, saw Devon standing beside him, flanked by Rianna and Maeve. Rance and Emma would be along later. In the interim, all three of the kids were munching on big pink fluffs of cotton candy, and would most likely be puking up their socks any second now.
“Can we go on the pony ride, Uncle Keegan?” Rianna asked.
“It’s a donkey ride, ding-dong,” Maeve said importantly.
“There’s only one donkey,” Devon pointed out sagely, “so we’ll have to stand in line.”
Keegan sighed. “Sure,” he said.
The girls raced away across the lush grass of the park, past the barbecue being set up under a canvas canopy, and he ambled after them, feeling foolish in his white shirt, dress slacks and gray silk vest. The rest of the men were wearing jeans or chinos.
The donkey was small, and its hide was mangy. It lumbered doggedly around and around a metal center-pole, chained to the mechanism. The creature’s ribs showed, its hooves needed trimming and it kept its head down, as though slogging into the face of a heavy wind. The child on its back kicked it steadily with the heels of his sneakers.
As the animal passed Keegan, making its endless rounds, it turned its head, gazing at him with dull brown eyes. It stumbled, and a wiry little man standing to one side whacked it on the flank with a stick and growled, “Wake up!”
Keegan, in the act of taking out his wallet to give Devon and his nieces money to buy tickets, stopped cold.
The donkey keeper’s gaze sliced to the wallet, as if magnetized, then slithered, snakelike, up to Keegan’s face. Passing him a second time, the donkey stumbled again.
The man raised the switch.
Keegan, without realizing he’d moved at all, was there to jerk it out of the keeper’s hand. He might have flung the stick halfway across the park if there hadn’t been so many kids standing around. Instead, he let it drop to the ground, opening his fingers slowly.
“You got a problem, mister?” the man asked. He wore grease-stained jeans and a grubby white undershirt, and his upper arms were tattooed with intertwined serpents, apparently consuming each other. A plastic name pin pinned to his shirt identified him as “Happy.”
Keegan made a mental note to appreciate the irony later.
“No,” he replied flatly, keeping his voice down. “I don’t have a problem. But you will if you pick up that stick again.”
Happy ruminated, spat. “Old Spud belongs to me,” he said. “I reckon I can do as I please with him.”
“Do you, now?” Keegan inquired, still holding his wallet in his free hand. “You traveling with this carnival? It’s been coming here twice a year for as long as I can remember, but I’ve never seen you before.”
A stream of tobacco juice shot out of the man’s mouth, narrowly missing Keegan’s shoe. “I’m an independent contractor” came the answer. “Not that it’s any never-mind of yours.”
“You have any other donkeys?”
“Just old Spud here. Truth is, he’s about worthless. Gotta pop him one every once in a while, just to keep him going.”
“Dad?” Devon asked at Keegan’s elbow. “Are we going to buy tickets? The line’s getting really long.”
Keegan took in the queue of impatient kids.
“I’d sell him for the right price,” Happy volunteered cagily.
“I imagine you would,” Keegan drawled.
“Dad?” Devon prompted.
Keegan handed his daughter a bill without looking away from Happy’s beady little eyes. “Forget the donkey,” he told her. “Ride the Ferris wheel.”
“But, Dad, we want—”
“The Ferris wheel, Devon.”
Devon heaved a dramatic sigh, but she obeyed. She and Rianna and Maeve immediately headed for the ticket booth.
“How much?” Keegan asked.
Happy named his price, which was, as expected, astronomical.
Keegan counted out the money, flourished it, but didn’t hand it over. “I’ll need a bill of sale,” he said. Then he crossed to the donkey, hoisted the overzealous rider off its back and turned to face the straggling line of kids. “Spud,” he told them, “has just retired.”
There were a few groans of disappointment, but in general the crowd took the news well.
Keegan removed the donkey’s harness, stroked his rough, nubby hide with one hand while the keeper wrote out a receipt on a scrap of paper pulled from his pocket. Spud, barely reaching Keegan’s middle, looked up at him, then nuzzled his arm.
“You didn’t waste much of your profits on feed, did you, Happy?” he asked, looking at Spud’s ladder of ribs while swapping the money for the bill of sale.
“You just made a fool’s bargain,” Happy said, ignoring Keegan’s remark, folding the fat wad of bills and tucking them into a battered wallet attached to one of his belt loops by a tarnished chain. “That critter is stupid, and he’s lazy. Good for nothin’. Now he’s your problem, not mine.”
Keegan took off Spud’s saddle and the worn blanket beneath it, tossed them both aside. That left the bridle. Taking a loose hold on th
e reins, he turned to walk away, and the donkey followed willingly.
Rance had just arrived with Emma, and he spotted Keegan and his four-legged purchase right away. Grinning, Rance approached.
“If you’re short on horses,” he said, looking Spud over, “I could lend you one of ours.”
“You know, Rance,” Keegan replied tersely, “sometimes you’re just so freakin’ hilarious, I can’t stand it.”
Rance’s grin broadened. “What the hell do you want with a jackass?”
“Damned if I know,” Keegan said. “But I’ve got one now.”
“How are you planning to get him out to the ranch?”
Now it was Keegan’s turn to grin. “Well, I figured since you own a horse trailer, you’d haul him out there for me.”
Rance chuckled. Then he took a closer look at Spud and frowned. “He’s half-starved,” he said. “And it’s a wonder he can walk, with his hooves grown out like that.”
“My thoughts exactly,” Keegan said.
Expertly Rance lifted one of Spud’s feet and inspected it. Did the same with the other three. “I’ll go back to the Triple M and hitch the trailer to the back of my truck,” he said when he was finished. Dusting his hands together, he looked Keegan in the eye and grinned again. “If you’re going into the ranching business, Keeg, you’re off to a pretty pitiful start.”
Keegan made a this-is-me-amused face. “Want me to ride out with you? Help with the trailer?”
“In those dandy duds?” Rance joked, shaking his head at Keegan’s clothes. “Do you own any jeans or a decent pair of boots?”
“Never mind my wardrobe,” Keegan said. Until he’d taken up with Emma just a few weeks before, Rance had lived in custom-tailored suits himself.
Rance looked over toward the barbecue area, where the picnic was starting up in earnest. Folks were loading up their plates, and the bar and the cold-drink stand were already doing a brisk business. “There had better be some beer left when I get back,” he warned.
Keegan laughed. He’d added a mangy donkey to all his other problems, but his spirits had risen a little, just the same.
Go figure, he thought.
Rance crossed to Emma, said something to her and headed back to his truck.
Emma wobbled toward Keegan on a pair of pink high-heeled shoes, which matched her cotton-candy dress, sticking in the grass every few steps. Cautiously she reached out to pat Spud on the nose. Then she smiled, and Keegan figured the fireworks would suffer by comparison.
“Molly’s here,” she said. “And the new people.”
Keegan looked around and, sure enough, there was Molly Shields over by the picnic tables, looking delectable in a floaty blue dress and a straw hat with a bent-back brim. Psyche was there, too, seated in a lawn chair, with a blanket covering her lap. Florence, intent on lifting Lucas from his stroller, wore her usual starchy uniform.
As though she felt him watching her, Molly looked his way.
Smiled, probably because of the donkey.
Keegan hooked a finger under his shirt collar, trying to loosen it. It was the heat, he figured. The air seemed charged, and he actually looked up, expecting to see storm clouds.
The first stars winked in a clear, placid sky.
Emma tugged at his sleeve, whispered, “Keegan. You’re staring.”
Molly spoke to Psyche, then strolled his way.
“I guess it’s never too soon to start practicing for the Christmas pageant,” she said, her eyes warming as she took in poor, bedraggled Spud. “Are you playing Joseph this year?”
“I’d better go and find the girls, make sure they don’t eat too much cotton candy and spoil their supper,” Emma said before Keegan could respond, and promptly vanished.
Keegan swallowed.
Molly smiled, clearly enjoying his discomfort. Then, as Emma had done, she stroked Spud’s long face, threw in an ear-ruffling for good measure.
Spud lifted his head and brayed.
Keegan felt like doing the same thing, and that made him set his back teeth.
Molly’s leaf-colored eyes shone with amusement, turned tender when she looked at the donkey again. The blue cloth flower, pinned to the turned-up brim of her hat, bobbed. “We have to be civil to each other, Keegan,” she said quietly. “Because of Lucas.”
He sighed. Wished she’d look at him the way she was looking at the donkey. “I can be civil,” he said without a trace of civility. “And that is a really goofy-looking hat. Does that flower squirt water?”
She laughed, and the sound gave Keegan the same quivery feeling in the pit of his stomach that he used to get when he was rodeoing, back in college, with Rance and Jesse. Just before he climbed the side of a chute and lowered himself onto the back of a pawing, snorting bull, crazy to buck. “I wish it did,” she said. “I’d like nothing better than to let you have it right about now.”
Against his will Keegan grinned. Loosened his hold on Spud’s reins a little so the critter could munch on the well-kept municipal grass. Psyche, sitting up straight in her lawn chair, smiled tentatively and waved.
Keegan’s grin faded. “It isn’t right,” he said.
Molly, still petting the donkey, turned to follow his gaze, looked back at his face. “Don’t spoil this night for her by being sad,” she told him.
He worked up another smile, waved to Psyche. “Better?” he asked.
“Much better,” Molly said.
Lucas came toddling toward them, his face alight. He was barefoot, wearing nothing but a diaper.
Molly probably knew as well as Keegan did that Spud was the big attraction, not either of them. Still, it did something to Keegan, watching that little boy toddle across the grass.
Keegan handed Molly the reins, went to meet Lucas and swept him up in his arms. Over the child’s head he saw Psyche watching with a faint smile.
“Ride!” Lucas crowed, straining for the donkey. “Ride!”
“Not tonight, buddy,” Keegan said, shifting Lucas onto his hip so he could reach out and pat Spud’s neck.
Spud twitched his spindly tail a couple of times.
“Ride!” Lucas yelled.
“Another time,” Keegan told the child quietly, looking into Molly’s eyes again. Feeling as though he’d just tumbled headfirst down some storybook rabbit hole.
“Why not?” Molly asked, reaching for Lucas, soothing him.
“Spud’s been abused,” Keegan said, indicating the donkey with a motion of his head. “He’d probably mind his manners, but until I know that for sure, I’m not putting Psyche’s child on his back.”
Molly’s mouth tightened, probably because he’d said Psyche’s child. The flower on her hat jostled around some more as she bounced Lucas on her hip, whispered to him. The boy whimpered, rested his head on Molly’s shoulder, gave a little shudder as he settled in.
Keegan realized he’d taken back Spud’s reins at some point, and it bothered him that he didn’t remember when it had happened.
“You may have given birth to Lucas,” he told Molly in an undertone, returning the greetings of old friends and passers-by with a rigid smile and a nod, “but Psyche’s his mother. She’s the one who protected him, provided for him, loved him.”
“Do you think I need you to tell me that, you pompous ass?” Molly shot back, doing the smile-and-nod thing herself.
So much for the two of them being civil to each other, Keegan reflected, shoving a hand through his hair.
Molly turned on her heel and marched away, lugging Lucas with her. The boy struggled and reached back, not for Keegan, who was after all a stranger to him, but for the donkey.
Devon appeared, balancing a plate of barbecued chicken, potato salad and coleslaw in one hand. “What do donkeys eat?” she asked, looking as though she might be about to offer Spud her picnic supper.
“The same things horses do,” Keegan answered, still way too aware of Molly. He was practically spinning in her wake. “Grass. Hay. Alfalfa. Grain.”
“H
ow come he’s not giving rides?”
“His carnival career is over. He’s going home with us.”
Devon brightened. “Really? We get to keep him?”
“Yes,” Keegan said, just as a familiar roar filled the air. A sleek jet passed overhead, bearing the McKettrickCo logo, an updated version of Angus’s original brand, on the undersides of the wings.
“They’re back!” Devon cried. “Jesse and Cheyenne are back from their honeymoon!”
“Maybe,” Keegan agreed.
“What do you mean, ‘maybe’?” Devon asked. “Who else could it be?”
Keegan could have named several possibilities—from famous country singers to a detachment of Texas McKettricks bent on taking the company public whether he liked it or not. He sure as hell hoped it was Jesse.
“Dad?” Devon pressed, sounding worried.
“Let’s find a place to park this donkey,” he said, trying to smile. “I’d like a cold beer and some supper.”
“Good idea,” Devon said, relieved.
He’d have eaten with Psyche, but Molly was there, and he’d had enough of her for one night. Make that one lifetime.
In the end they stowed Spud in the churchyard across the street from the park, behind a picket fence. He immediately began dining on the petunias, and Keegan made a mental note to send the pastor a check.
He ate with a flock of women, Emma among them. Cora Tellington, Rance’s former mother-in-law, was there, too. Cora ran the Curl and Twirl, a combination beauty shop and baton-twirling school, and Keegan had always liked her. Since Rance’s first wife, Julie, had died in a riding accident five years before, Cora had taken up the maternal slack with Rianna and Maeve. Rance hadn’t made it easy for her, either.
“You’re looking pretty down in the mouth tonight,” Cora confided affectionately, sitting beside him on a bench at one of the picnic tables and bumping his upper arm with her shoulder.
“I’m fine,” he lied. Fact was, since that last set-to with Molly, he’d been feeling a little sorry for himself, and a hell of a lot sorrier for Devon. Maeve and Rianna had a devoted grandmother in Cora, and Rance’s parents, divorced years before and dating again since they’d hooked up after Jesse and Cheyenne’s wedding, both adored the kids.
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