Rance adjusted his hat, shifted in the saddle. Devon wrapped both arms around his middle, bouncing a little because she wanted to go.
“I’m going to vote the way I damn well please,” Rance answered easily. “Get some shut-eye, because it could turn out to be one hell of a row, with all those McKettricks crammed into one room.”
With that, he started to rein the horse around, toward home.
“Rance?” Keegan said.
He looked back. “What?”
“Let Emma paint the kitchen whatever color she wants.”
Rance chuckled. Shook his head. “A pink kitchen? I’d have to shoot myself.”
Keegan reconsidered. “Pink, huh?”
“Pink,” Rance confirmed. “The woman’s obsessed with it.”
“A man has to draw the line somewhere,” Keegan decided.
Rance nodded. “And that line,” he drawled, “lies just this side of pink.”
Devon waved. For a kid who’d wanted so much to stay, she was sure in a hurry to leave.
Keegan waved back. “Be good,” he told his daughter, and something about the way he spoke made Rance take a closer look at him.
“I’m all right,” Keegan insisted.
Rance was a long time looking away. Finally, though, he and Devon were headed for the bridge spanning the creek. On the far side the reflected light of the setting sun glowed crimson on the windows.
A lump rose in Keegan’s throat.
Devon’s voice flowed back to him, riding softly on the breeze. “Go fast, Uncle Rance!” she pleaded.
Rance gave a yee-haw and heeled the horse into a trot.
Keegan waited until they’d cleared the bridge before going inside the house. Stood just over the threshold, more aware of the history of the place than usual, soaking it in through his pores and the raw-edged holes in his heart.
It gave him solace to know old Angus McKettrick had built the heart of that house with his own hands. He’d raised his three younger sons and a daughter, too, right here in these rooms.
They’d taken meals cooked on the old wood-burning stove over in the far corner of the room. These days, it was used only to provide heat and a pleasant crackle on cold winter mornings, though it was still in good working order. Keegan’s once-a-week cleaning service kept it dusted off, and the chrome gleamed.
As a kid, he’d sometimes heard the stove lids rattle in the middle of the night when he knew nobody was downstairs. Heard the clink of horseshoes striking a metal stake in the side yard, too. His dad had said it was Angus and the boys out there, trying to best each other at the game.
“You’ll scare him,” his mother had protested.
But Keegan had never been afraid. He’d liked the idea of sharing the sturdy old house with those who’d worked and fought to make sure it stayed in the family.
The memories just kept coming, even after Keegan went to the refrigerator in search of something remotely edible. His grocery-shopping skills needed work, and he seldom bothered.
Now, alone in the house, he gave himself up to remembering. On summer days his mother, along with Rance’s and Jesse’s, had put up preserves in this kitchen—peaches and pears from the orchard a little way down the creek, now neglected and overgrown. He and Jesse and Rance, and sometimes Meg, had run in and out constantly, slamming the screen door off the side porch.
“Stop slamming that door!” one of the mothers would yell.
Keegan straightened, a beer in one hand, and closed the fridge. What he wouldn’t have given, right then, to hear that door slam again.
Nobody used the side porch anymore. Nobody put fruit up in gleaming jars anymore, either. Women didn’t gather in the kitchen, laughing and talking and always ready to make room in their hearts for one more noisy, sunburned, skinned-kneed, mosquito-bitten kid.
He popped the top on the beer and took a guzzle.
Damn, he thought. He was getting sentimental in his old age.
Behind him one of the stove lids rattled.
Keegan almost choked on a mouthful of beer. Spun around to look.
Of course there was no one there. Most likely the house was settling, that was all, or there’d been an earth tremor, the kind that usually went unnoticed.
The light rap at the kitchen door shook him up all over again.
He hoped he didn’t look too spooked when he turned and saw Rance coming in.
“Got any more beer?” Rance asked mildly, hanging his hat on a peg next to the door, the way generations of McKettrick men had done before him.
Keegan tightened inside. First Jesse, riding herd on him last night when he’d gone chasing off to town to the clinic because of Psyche, and now Rance, riding back across the creek and pretending it was a casual visit.
“Am I on the watch list or something?” Keegan asked, none too politely.
Rance went to the fridge, helped himself to a brew and pulled the tab. Took a drink before answering. “Hell,” he said, “you’re not half interesting enough for that.”
“Then what are you doing here?”
“I just thought I’d come over and try to get under your hide a little.” He paused for another gulp. “Looks like I succeeded, too.”
Keegan went to the long table, swung a leg over one of the benches lining it on both sides and sat. “Mission accomplished,” he said. “You can leave now.”
Rance hauled back the chair that had been Angus’s, back in those thrilling days of yesteryear, turned it around and sat astraddle it, Western-style. “I’ll go when I’m damn good and ready,” he replied—when he was damn good and ready.
“Devon’ll be staying on for a while,” Keegan said.
Rance nodded. “I know.” His shirt pocket rang then. So much for the cowboy image. He grimaced and answered with a gruff hello, watching Keegan while he listened to whoever was on the other end.
Keegan drank more beer and waited.
“Yeah,” Rance said. “He’s right here.”
More listening.
“Looks like hell, if you want the truth.” Rance grinned at Keegan’s scowl. “My guess is he’s working himself right up to a three-beer binge.”
Keegan snorted. “If you’re going to talk about me,” he said, “at least put that damn thing on speaker so I can defend myself.”
Rance shrugged, thumbed the appropriate button and set his cell phone on the table. “You’re talking to the whole room now,” he told the caller.
“I always appreciate an audience,” Jesse said.
“You two can stop babysitting me anytime now,” Keegan grumbled.
Rance interlaced his fingers on the scarred old tabletop and watched Keegan solemnly. “You’d better get down here,” he told Jesse. “We need to talk about the vote. In person.”
“Give me twenty minutes,” Jesse said. “I assume you’re at the main ranch house?”
“Look,” Keegan growled, “there’s no point—”
“Yep,” Rance answered, right over the top of Keegan.
Jesse hung up.
Keegan set his elbows on the table, splayed the fingers of both hands and jammed them into his hair.
Rance got up, went back to the fridge, returned with two more beers.
“Don’t think I don’t know what’s going on here,” Keegan said, glaring at him. “You and Jesse plan on telling me the top ten reasons for dumping McKettrickCo onto the stock market—and I don’t want to hear it.”
Rance straddled the chair again. “How’s Psyche?” he asked.
“Still dying,” Keegan said, and almost strangled on the words, same as he had earlier on the beer when he’d thought he heard the stove lid clinking.
Rance’s expression didn’t change. “Are they managing the pain?”
“She’s hurting worse than she lets on,” Keegan said.
“So are you,” Rance observed.
“She doesn’t deserve this.”
“Nobody does, Keeg.”
“Do me a favor, will you, Rance? Get Jesse on
the horn and tell him not to come. I’m not up to this.”
“He’s left his place by now, and you know he doesn’t carry a cell phone. We need to settle a few things, Keeg, and we need to do it before that meeting tomorrow.”
“What’s there to settle? Jesse’s made up his mind, and so have you. I’m outnumbered. I’ll get over it.”
“Will you?”
“Yeah.”
Rance left his chair again, went back to the fridge even though he hadn’t finished his beer. He rummaged around, came up with a carton of eggs, a block of cheese and a few limp salad onions.
“Make yourself at home,” Keegan said with irony.
Rance chuckled, setting the grub on the counter to wash his hands at the sink. “Damn,” he remarked, “you’re about as companionable as an old bear with a stick up its ass.”
“What are you doing?”
“Making an omelet,” Rance answered, getting out a well-seasoned cast-iron skillet, another holdover from days of old, setting it on a stove burner and lobbing in a chunk of butter. Turning up the heat. “Unlike some people around here, I work every day, and I’m hungry.”
Keegan gave up. Waited in stubborn silence while Rance did his cooking thing. Didn’t even trouble himself to argue the obvious—that he worked every day, too. When Devon wasn’t around, he lived at McKettrickCo.
Jesse showed up just in time to load up a plate and take a place at the table directly opposite Keegan. He salted the omelet and dug in, just as if he’d actually been invited to supper.
“That company’s going to kill you, Keeg,” he said. “When was the last time you rode a horse, anyway?”
Keegan bristled, but he was hungry, too, and it turned out that Rance wasn’t half-bad as a cook. He filled his mouth with the egg concoction so he wouldn’t have to answer right away.
“Maybe he needs the money,” Rance said to Jesse.
“Yeah,” Jesse agreed. “It’s tough when you’re down to your last twenty or thirty million.”
“Look at it this way, Keeg.” Rance grinned. “Your net worth will probably double once McKettrickCo goes public. You can pay Shelley twice the alimony she’s getting now. She’ll be so busy shopping, it’ll be as if she didn’t exist.”
Keegan leaned in, lowered his voice as though to breathe some great secret. “This isn’t making me feel better.”
“Right now,” Jesse observed, “there isn’t much that could do that.”
“Losing McKettrickCo sure as hell isn’t going to help,” Keegan snapped.
Jesse sighed. Glanced at Rance.
Something silent passed between them, something Keegan wasn’t privy to, and that rankled him.
“Okay,” Rance said decisively.
“Okay, what?” Keegan asked.
“Okay, we’ll vote with you,” Jesse said.
“Against our better judgment,” Rance added.
Jesse nodded thoughtfully. “And with no guarantee that we’ll win.”
Keegan looked from one man to the other. “You’re doing this because…?”
“Because we’re going soft,” Rance lamented.
“Speak for yourself,” Jesse told him. Then he fixed his gaze on Keegan. “Trouble with you is,” he went on, “you spend way too much time in your head. It isn’t healthy.”
Keegan heaved a great sigh. “Thanks,” he said, and realized he wasn’t thanking Rance and Jesse so much for promising to vote his way regarding McKettrickCo’s fate, but for standing with him.
They stayed long enough to finish off Rance’s monster omelet, set their plates and silverware in the sink and advise Keegan to get some sleep.
He was glad to comply.
CHAPTER 8
MOLLY SAT UP IN BED, blinking. Two floors below, somebody was laying on the doorbell.
Beside her, Lucas stirred, opened his eyes, looked at her in wonder. He’d been fitful in the night, she remembered, and she’d changed his diaper, settled him in with her.
She groped for the small clock on her night table, peered at the digits.
Eight thirty-five.
Not good. She was usually up by six at the latest. Today she felt rummy and wished she could go right on sleeping.
The doorbell chimed again, bonging loudly through its Westminster bit.
“We slept in, buddy,” Molly told Lucas, sitting up and hastily reaching for her robe. “We slept way in.”
Lucas giggled. Headed on all fours for the edge of the mattress, heedless, like all small children, of the law of gravity.
Molly grabbed him before he could tumble off the side—he was soaked—and nuzzled his neck.
Whoever was downstairs could wait.
But where was Florence?
Suddenly alarmed, Molly took a tighter hold on Lucas, detoured through the nursery to snatch a fresh diaper from the box and made for the elevator.
When they got to the first floor she hurried to the front door.
A deliveryman stood on the porch, about to turn away. “We got a hospital bed on the truck,” he said when Molly peered at him through the screen.
“I’ll show you where to put it,” Molly said, balancing Lucas on her hip, now moist from the leakage.
The man nodded.
Thoughts of rape and pillage went through Molly’s mind—she was secretly addicted to TV shows like Forensic Files and Body of Evidence—and she peered past him, to make sure there really was a delivery truck at the curb. Psychotic killers used many ruses.
There was a truck, and it said, “Acme Hospital Supply” on the side in big letters. Despite the grave reality of the situation, she smiled, inwardly and very slightly, wondering if Wile E. Coyote and the Road Runner were around somewhere.
Molly raised the hook on the screen door. “Follow me,” she said in a businesslike tone.
Once she’d blazed a path to the back of the house, where Psyche wanted to spend her last days with a view of the garden, the deliveryman left, leaving his clipboard behind on the little table where Psyche and Keegan had lunched just a few days before.
The white peonies Keegan had sent Psyche were still there, like little sentinels keeping a lonely vigil, mildly bedraggled but still bravely holding up their heads.
Molly swallowed hard, changed Lucas on the chaise longue at the other end of the glassed-in porch and carried him back to the kitchen, depositing the saturated diaper in the trash.
Florence was there, wearing her familiar chenille bathrobe. “I don’t know what’s wrong with me today,” she lamented. “I’m usually up at the crack of dawn, but last night I slept like a dead woman.” She flinched at her own choice of words.
Molly didn’t make a comment. Instead, she scanned the room, found one of Lucas’s several playpens and put him inside it, handing him a toy. She washed her hands at the sink, watching out of the corner of her eye as Florence fumbled with the coffeepot.
“I’d better call the hospital,” Florence said. “Make sure there’s an ambulance to bring Psyche back home.”
The deliveryman returned with a partner, the two of them making a resounding clatter as they rolled the rented hospital bed over priceless hardwood floors.
Lucas stood up in his playpen, watching with wide, curious eyes.
“There’s a crazy guy outside,” one of the deliverymen said in passing.
Molly frowned. “What?”
“An old dude. Says he’s here to fire his agent. Like he’s some Hollywood actor or something.”
“Ask me,” commented the second man, “he’s three sheets to the wind.”
“Damn,” Molly muttered.
“I’ll call Wyatt,” Florence said, already reaching for the phone.
“He’s harmless,” Molly said. “Just keep an eye on Lucas. I’ll deal with the crazy dude.”
Sure enough, Denby Godridge stood on the front porch, dramatically clad in black trousers and a matching turtleneck sweater. His white hair was in wild disarray, his paunch had expanded since the last time Molly had seen him a
nd his big nose was even redder and more purple veined than usual.
“I came to fire you,” he said with ominous portent.
“Get in here before the neighbors see you,” Molly muttered.
Denby’s bloodshot eyes widened. “You’re fired.”
“Yes,” Molly said, taking him by the arm and dragging him in off the porch. “I get it, Denby. I’m eighty-sixed. Out of here. Pink-slipped. Toast. History. Do you have anything to add?”
Denby looked baffled. Then he drew his drunken self up and said importantly, “No.”
“Please tell me you didn’t drive here in your condition.”
“My condition?”
“You’re obviously blotto, Denby. Schnockered—”
“Spare me the colloquial adjectives, if you don’t mind,” Denby said with lofty disdain, chest swelling in indignation. “I did win a Pulitzer Prize, you know.”
“Then act like it,” Molly whispered. “Have a little class.”
Denby’s tape skipped, not an unusual occurrence of late. “It just so happens that I came to this backwater burg in a private jet, and there was a limo waiting,” he imparted. “As befits my station in life.”
Molly heaved a sigh of relief. At least Denby was no threat to people on the road.
The deliverymen reappeared, gave Denby a wide berth as they made for the door. Evidently Florence had done clipboard duty and signed for the bed.
“Follow me,” Molly told Denby sternly.
She led the way to the kitchen.
Florence stared at Denby.
“Haven’t you ever seen a Pulitzer Prize winner before?” Denby snapped.
“Mind your manners,” Molly said to him, “or I’ll rip your lips off.”
“Who is this nut?” Florence wanted to know.
Molly poured fresh coffee, set it down on the table and ordered Denby to sit. Amazingly, he did.
“Denby Godridge,” she said in answer to the housekeeper’s perfectly reasonable question, “meet Florence Washington.”
“Charmed,” Denby said.
“Whatever,” Florence retorted with a sniff.
Denby bridled, but fortunately the phone rang, and Florence was constrained to answer, buying Molly a few more minutes before she would have to explain. Evidently Psyche hadn’t told the august Mrs. Washington that Molly was a literary agent.
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