McKettricks Bundle

by Linda Lael Miller

  Jesse just couldn’t let it alone. “What the hell’s the matter with you, Keeg? You know better than to treat a woman the way you did Molly—It’s a wonder old Angus didn’t rise up out of his grave, get you by the scruff and douse you in a horse trough.”

  “Now you’re an expert on chivalry?” Keegan snorted. “Maybe you ought to write a book.” He needed to distance himself from what was happening to Psyche, if only for a few more minutes. He’d have fought Jesse in a bare-knuckle brawl, not giving a damn whether he won or got his ass kicked, just for the brief distraction, for time enough to get his emotional bearings.

  An ambulance pulled into the lot, lights whirling, no siren.

  “Christ,” Keegan rasped.

  Jesse laid a hand on his shoulder. “You’ve got to stay on this bull till the buzzer goes off, Keeg,” he said, grave and quiet. “McKettrick-tough.”

  The backs of Keegan’s eyes burned like acid. “McKettrick-tough,” he replied gruffly.

  “MARRY HER.”

  Keegan, who’d spent the night in a Flagstaff hospital room in a chair next to Psyche’s bed, sat up straight, blinking himself awake.

  Psyche was watching him, looking as white as the pillows behind her head. The oxygen machine made a rhythmic puff-puff sound, and various monitors beeped out their dismal chorus.

  For her sake, he worked up a grin. “You know,” he said, “I’d swear I heard you say—”

  “Marry her,” Psyche repeated.

  “No,” Keegan said after scrounging around for a politer word and coming up dry.

  “Not even if it’s my last wish?”

  “Come on, Psyche. Play fair.”

  “Why should I? I’m dying.” She reached out, caught his hand, squeezed it with surprising strength, considering her condition. Smiled. “I’m going for broke, Keeg,” she went on, barely whispering. “My son’s future is at stake. Lucas needs a mother as well as a father.”

  “I don’t love her,” Keegan said, figuring that ought to matter.

  He should have known better. After all, he was dealing with another species: female.

  “I’ve never seen you so stirred up.” Psyche paused, gave a small, slightly wistful smile. “When it comes to Molly, you don’t know whether to turn tail and run or slam her up against the wall and kiss her senseless.”

  Just then, Jesse reentered that dismal atmosphere, with the tumbling, end-over-end energy of a space capsule. He carried a cup of coffee in one hand, and he looked about as bad as Keegan felt—as if he’d been dragged backward through a knothole, as the old-timers used to say. “Much as I hate to interrupt such a fascinating conversation,” he said easily, moving languidly to Keegan’s side, “Florence and Molly are here for a visit. They brought Lucas along.”

  Psyche’s face lit up, but the look she tossed Keegan before focusing her gaze on the doorway held a silent plea.

  Molly came in first, holding Lucas in both arms.

  Florence followed.

  “My baby,” Psyche whispered, reaching for her child.

  Keegan had to look away.

  “Let’s get you some coffee,” Jesse told him, and steered him out into the corridor. Herded him along it, toward the elevators.

  “I don’t want any goddamned coffee,” Keegan rasped.

  Jesse’s grin was wan. “Well,” he said, “I checked, but they don’t serve whiskey in this place, so you’re going to have to settle.”

  They got into one of the elevators, rode down to the first floor in silence.

  There was a franchise coffee place next to the pharmacy, and Keegan bought a cup. Jesse led the way out into a sunny courtyard, walled in stucco, with benches and trees and a fountain in the center.

  Keegan gulped in the fresh air, but the peace of the place eluded him.

  Jesse stood at a little distance, with one booted foot resting on the seat of a metal bench. Except for a wizened old man in a wheelchair, clutching a folded newspaper and muttering to an unseen companion, Jesse and Keegan had the space to themselves.

  “Talk to me, Keeg,” Jesse said after a long time.

  “Okay,” Keegan answered. “Cheyenne told me how you plan to vote tomorrow, at the big meeting. You’re selling McKettrickCo right down the river. Thanks a heap.”

  “So that’s what’s gotten under your hide,” Jesse mused, sipping his coffee.

  “You might have mentioned it.”

  “I didn’t figure the Independence Day picnic was the place for a conversation like that.” Jesse took a few more sips of coffee, looking thoughtful. “At least I understand now why you tried to goad me into a fight in the clinic parking lot last night.”

  “What did you think it was about?”

  Jesse raised one shoulder in a brief, idle shrug, but the look in his eyes was sharp and direct. “Psyche,” he said.

  Keegan sagged a little, at least inwardly. “Psyche,” he repeated.

  Finishing his coffee, Jesse crumpled the cup and tossed it into a trash bin. “I’m heading back to the ranch,” he told Keegan. “You coming along? I can take you back to your car, but I’m sure you could hitch a ride with Molly and Florence if you want to stay a while.”

  “Right,” Keegan scoffed quietly. “I’m sure as hell going to do that.” Devon was still at Rance’s, watching the road for his car. He had to get back.

  “Why do you hate her so much?” Jesse asked. “Molly, I mean.”

  “I told you,” Keegan said.

  The newspaper slid off the old man’s lap, and Jesse bent to pick it up and give it back.

  “You told Rance,” Jesse argued. “And he told me.”

  “Well, then, you just answered your own question. And I don’t hate her. I just don’t trust her.”

  Jesse folded his arms, rocked once on the worn heels of his cowboy boots. “Hmm,” he said. “Could be you’ve got a sore spot because of Shelley.”

  “Oh, good—more cowboy psychology.”

  “Yeah. And here’s my diagnosis—you’re acting like a self-righteous, judgmental asshole, Keeg. Psyche’s right—you don’t know whether to make love to Molly or head for the hills.” He paused, grinned again. “I know the feeling,” he said.

  Keegan instantly bristled. Threw the rest of his coffee, along with the cup, into the trash. “This isn’t like it was with you and Cheyenne,” he asserted.

  “I wouldn’t be too sure of that if I were you,” Jesse said. The old man’s newspaper slipped to the ground again, and Jesse retrieved it. “Nobody ever pissed me off the way Cheyenne did. Imagine my surprise when what I was feeling turned out to be passion.”

  “Imagine,” Keegan said dryly.

  A nurse came out of the hospital, wheeled the old man inside.

  “I’ll go get the truck,” Jesse said. “If you want to ride with me, you’d better go tell Psyche you’re leaving.”

  Keegan nodded. He didn’t like leaving Psyche, and he wasn’t too wild about the prospect of running into Molly, either. Unfortunately, he didn’t have much of a choice either way.

  “NO,” MOLLY TOLD PSYCHE flatly, whispering so Florence, who was in the bathroom, wouldn’t overhear. Lucas, snuggling against Psyche’s side, was half-asleep and sucking his thumb. It made Molly’s heart ache the way he clung to his adoptive mother, as though he knew she was slipping away. “I will not marry Keegan McKettrick.”

  Psyche looked down at Lucas, stroked his hair lightly with a veined hand. “I could make it a condition of the adoption,” she said, instantly freezing Molly’s blood.

  “Even if I wanted the irascible Mr. McKettrick for a husband,” Molly replied hastily, hearing a flush from the bathroom followed by the opening of the taps in the sink and some subsequent splashing, “which I DO NOT, in case there’s any mistake, he would probably rather be electrocuted!”

  “Close,” Keegan said from the doorway.

  Molly stared at him, suddenly speechless.

  Florence emerged from the bathroom.

  Keegan crossed to Psyche’s bed
. Leaned down to kiss her forehead, then stroked Lucas’s cheek briefly with the backs of his fingers. He ignored Molly, having already delivered the salvo of the hour, and she was surprised at how much it hurt.

  “I’ve got to head back to the Triple M,” Keegan said. “Devon’s there, waiting.” He looked up, his gaze sweeping past Molly to connect with Florence’s. “You’ll call me if there’s any change?”

  “You go,” Psyche told him, frowning a little. Apparently she hadn’t liked being left on the fringes of the question any more than Molly had. “I’m not dying yet. You heard what the doctor said this morning, Keegan—I only needed a change in my medications. I’ll probably be home by tomorrow.”

  Molly saw the flicker of pain in Keegan’s strong face and registered it somewhere down deep inside her. She had a crazy need to lay a hand on his cheek, or touch his shoulder.

  Anything to comfort him.

  Anything to assuage the impending loss of the woman he clearly loved.

  Molly sighed and turned away from the scene to stand looking out the window, unseeing and shaken.

  She’d come to Arizona at Psyche’s request, not to make amends for her affair with Thayer—nothing so noble as that. No, she’d made the trip simply because she’d hoped so desperately for even a glimpse of Lucas. She’d had no idea the woman was gravely ill, or that she would be willing to give back the precious little boy she’d adopted just eighteen short months before.

  Molly wanted Lucas, wanted to raise him as her son.

  But why did Psyche have to die? Why?

  She rested her head against the glass pane of that hospital window and grieved a deep and grinding, painful grief for a woman she barely knew.

  A hand came to rest on her shoulder, and Molly stiffened, thinking it was Keegan’s. She turned, ready to pin his ears back, at least verbally, and was paradoxically disappointed to find Florence standing there instead.

  “Will you take Lucas downstairs?” she asked quietly, kinder in her weariness and her resignation. “Psyche’s worn to a frazzle. She needs to rest.”

  Molly looked around, realized that Keegan had gone. She should have been relieved; instead, she felt as though he’d taken something vital from the room, something that might have sustained three sad women and a little boy about to lose his mother.

  She nodded.

  Took Lucas gently from Psyche’s arms.

  He fussed a little, then settled against Molly with a sigh that twisted her heart. He was so young. Could he be aware, somehow, that a hole was about to open in the very fabric of his life?

  “Mama,” he said.

  Molly nodded to Psyche, turned and hurried out of the room, everything within her collapsing.

  Somehow she kept going—stepped into the elevator, pressed the button for the first floor. She’d glimpsed a courtyard earlier, when she and Florence entered the hospital with Lucas, a place with flowers and a fountain. An oasis, a sanctuary.

  She would wait there, she decided, until Florence returned.

  Find a way to pull herself together.

  She’d barely taken a seat on a shady bench and rocked Lucas to sleep when Keegan intruded. He had clearly not expected to find her there—his expression told her that—and his obvious discomfort was some compensation for the fresh shock he’d given her by showing up unexpectedly.

  “I was looking for Jesse,” he said.

  “Well,” Molly said pointedly, “he’s not here.”

  If he’d had any decency at all, Keegan would have left her alone then. Been satisfied that he’d given her a start, rattled her a little.

  But, no. He wanted blood.

  “I’ll be signing the papers tomorrow,” he said, watching her for a reaction. Maybe he thought she was going to jump up and tear her hair because some dastardly plot had been foiled.

  What had happened to this man to make him so suspicious? It was more than just seeing her with Thayer that one time—it had to be.

  “If I had a handlebar mustache,” she replied tartly, “I’d twirl one tip, like a villain in a cartoon.”

  He gave her another jolt, worse than any that had gone before.

  He actually smiled.

  Plates shifted beneath the surface of the earth. Fissures opened up, spewing steam and a disturbing kind of fire.

  “Psyche’s still on that marriage kick,” he said.

  Now it was Molly’s turn to smile. “Maybe it’s the drugs,” she replied.

  He chuckled, and the sound was wickedly pleasant—sexy and rumbling. Suddenly Molly could imagine herself naked in bed with this man, skin sleek and sweaty with passion, her back arched to welcome him into her body.

  Yikes, she thought. What was going on with her libido? This was the second time it had kicked into overdrive just because Keegan was in close proximity.

  She was so busy dealing with the back-flash of that invisible bomb that she missed what he said next. Just in case it had been something requiring immediate and stinging retaliation, she said, “Sorry. I didn’t catch that.”

  “I said he looks like you.” He nodded to indicate Lucas.

  Molly was oddly stricken by the remark; it lodged in her heart like a dart with the tip blunted, and she held her son a little closer. “Thanks. I think. Don’t you have somewhere you have to be?”

  “I’m waiting for Jesse. I figure he either left without me or parked the truck on the other side of town when he went to pick up breakfastin-a-bag early this morning.”

  “You were here all night.” Molly couldn’t figure out exactly how she felt about that. Relieved, certainly, for Psyche’s sake. Moved by the uncommon gallantry of such an act. And maybe a little envious, too, because she didn’t think there was one person in her life who would do that for her. Sleep upright in a hospital chair just to make sure she was all right.

  Once, perhaps, her dad would have. Now that he was almost certainly drinking again, probably not.

  Keegan nodded. “All night,” he confirmed.

  “Jesse stayed, too?”

  “Jesse, too,” Keegan said.

  A horn honked somewhere nearby. It made an ah-uggah sound, and normally she would have been amused by the unabashed redneckism of that.

  “Jesse?” Molly asked.

  “Jesse,” Keegan said.

  He turned to go, then turned back.

  “Molly?”

  “What?”

  “Maybe you were right before. About us having to learn to get along—because of Lucas.”

  She got that now-familiar prickly feeling behind her eyes, and her throat cinched itself up tight. “Okay,” she croaked.

  The horn sounded again, more insistently this time. Ah-uuuuuugah!

  “You’d better go,” Molly said.

  Keegan nodded, and left the courtyard. A truck door slammed.

  Molly’s cell phone rang from sixteen fathoms down in her purse. The sound woke Lucas from his doze, and he struggled to get off her lap so he could toddle over and pull the heads off several petunias nodding in a big stone planter.

  By the time she’d corralled him the phone had stopped ringing, but she got it out anyway to check the caller ID panel. If it was Denby Godridge, or some other maniac from her old life of endless glamour and excitement, they’d have to wait.

  But the number was her dad’s.

  Molly hesitated. It was early, so maybe he wasn’t drunk yet.

  He could also be in the backseat of a police car or on his way to a hospital, though. She gave him time to leave a message on her voice mail, then listened.

  “Hey, sweetheart,” he said. “It’s Dad.” He sounded sober, which was encouraging. “Call me back, okay? I’ve been waiting to hear how things are going in Arizona.”

  I’ve been waiting to hear how things are going in Arizona.

  She’d called him twice since she’d arrived. Told him about Lucas and about Psyche. Said she’d be back in L.A. to get some of her stuff soon, but she was planning to stay in Indian Rock indefinitely.


  As in, until Lucas went to college.

  Obviously her father not only didn’t remember what she’d said, but didn’t remember that she’d called at all.

  She was used to it, but it still struck her in the stomach like a punch.

  She hit the digit to speed-dial his landline. He’d lost their little house in Los Feliz long ago—now he lived in a condo in Santa Monica. Molly had bought it for him with her first big commission, and her name was still on the deed.

  “Molly?” he said, instead of “hello.” She could just see him squinting at her number on his phone before he answered. He needed glasses, but he was too vain to wear them.

  “Hi, Dad. You been going to your AA meetings?”

  He took instant offense. “Do I sound drunk to you?”

  “No,” she replied, keeping an eye on Lucas as he sat on the stone floor of the courtyard at her feet, playing with the keys to her classic Thunderbird convertible. She missed that car suddenly. Missed her dad, troublesome as he was.

  So she decided not to mention her previous calls.

  “Where have you been?” he asked. “I was worried when I didn’t hear from you.”

  Molly bit her lower lip. “Just busy,” she said.

  “Did you do anything for the Fourth?”

  “I went to a picnic,” Molly said. “There were fireworks.” She flashed back, for an instant, to the night before, when she and Keegan had stood watching color splash the sky.

  “When are you coming home?”

  “I’m not, Dad. Not to stay, anyway.” Quickly, keeping her voice low, she told him—again—about Psyche’s illness, about Lucas, about her promise to stay in Indian Rock for the duration.

  “That’s stupid,” he said abruptly. “You have a business here in California. You have a house. You have a—”

  “Father,” Molly finished for him when he suddenly got tongue-tied.

  “I know all that, Dad, believe me. But I’ve read the draft of the agreement Psyche wants, and it’s ironclad. If I don’t promise to stay here and raise Lucas in the family home, I don’t get to adopt him.”

  “The woman is going to die,” Luke Shields said. “She won’t know the difference once she’s gone. You and the kid can hop a plane then, and come home.”