“The thing I want you to remember,” Keegan began miserably, “is that I love you. And nothing is going to change that.”
“You’re not sick, like Psyche was, are you?”
The fear behind her words pierced Keegan’s heart like a dart. “No,” he said. “It’s not that.”
He had to say it. Get it out.
Until he did, the secret would be the emotional equivalent of live ordnance. It was a bitter irony that to protect Devon from her own mother he had to tell her something that would shake the foundations of her identity.
“I’m—I’m not your father,” Keegan said. “Not biologically.”
Did she understand what “biologically” meant? She wasn’t even eleven years old yet.
She went white. She’d been kicking her feet back and forth, the high heels dangling from her toes, but now the motion stopped. Her voice was so small that Keegan barely heard what she said. “I’m not a McKettrick?”
“You are a McKettrick, Dev.”
“But if you’re not my dad—”
“I am your dad. By choice, Dev.”
“Mom was with somebody else?”
Keegan swallowed a curse. He hated that a child as young as Devon understood the mechanics of infidelity—not to mention sex. “Yes,” he said.
One of the high heels toppled to the floor with a thunk. “If you’re not my dad, who is?”
“I don’t know,” Keegan said. He wasn’t ready to tell her about Thayer Ryan, and she wasn’t ready to hear it. He’d only suspected that Ryan was Devon’s father—based on a gut feeling and the fact that Thayer and Shelley had had a thing going—until he, Keegan, and Psyche had had their final conversation.
Some of Travis’s papers had gotten mixed up with the copies of the documents concerning Psyche’s estate and Lucas’s adoption. She’d asked why he was in the process of adopting Devon, too.
And he’d told her, there on the sunporch, minutes after the backyard wedding.
In retrospect, Psyche hadn’t looked all that surprised. Gazing through the window, her eyes locked on Lucas, she’d smiled a little. Wasn’t fate a funny thing? she’d asked. Lucas and Devon had had the same father, and now they were going to grow up together. It was, Psyche had mused, just the way it should be.
For all that he’d suspected Thayer was Devon’s father, the news had still stunned Keegan. He’d asked how Psyche knew. She’d replied that her husband had thrown it up to her once, during a fight. You think you should have married Keegan McKettrick? Thayer had taunted, according to Psyche. Well, let me tell you a little secret…
Devon was that little secret.
The joke was on Keegan—and, of course, on Psyche.
And watching Devon now, sitting on the edge of his and Molly’s bed, Keegan’s heart broke, right down the middle. He would not let her be a victim of other people’s mistakes, no matter what he had to do.
“I love you, Dev,” he said.
She hesitated, then crossed the room to him, crawled into his lap the way she had when she was small, the way Lucas did with Molly now, and rested her head against his chest. “It’s all going to be okay, isn’t it?”
Keegan rested his chin on the top of his daughter’s head, and for the first time since his parents had been killed, he let tears come to his eyes. Travis had told him to spend some time in his heart, and he was doing that.
Nothing could have prepared him for the way it hurt.
“Yeah,” he said hoarsely. “It’s all going to be okay.”
MOLLY MADE tuna sandwiches. She cut the crusts away, stacked the quarters artfully on a blue plate she found in a cupboard and waited for someone to come and eat them.
Presently Keegan came down the stairs, alone.
He paused next to the playpen to look down at Lucas, who slept, one thumb in his half-open mouth.
Molly rubbed damp palms down the legs of her jean shorts.
“My mom and dad,” Keegan said, meeting her eyes, “were killed in a plane crash when I was sixteen.”
She swallowed. Sensed that she shouldn’t speak, or move.
“My first marriage wasn’t good,” he went on. “Shelley told me she was expecting my baby, and I married her. Turned out she’d been with somebody else.”
Molly’s eyes filled with tears. Oh, Lord, she thought. He’d just told Devon she was another man’s child. No wonder he’d been on the ragged edge, and to have the whole thing compounded by Psyche’s death—
“Your turn,” Keegan said, jolting her a little.
“My turn?”
“I don’t know anything about you, Molly.” He looked at Lucas again. A muscle bunched in his jaw. “Beyond the basic facts.”
Molly’s cheeks heated. She knew all too well what those “basic facts” were, at least in his mind. “I like chocolate ice cream with marshmallows,” she said. “My secret vice.”
“Not good enough,” Keegan replied.
“My dad is an alcoholic,” she told him. “He’s in treatment—for the umpteenth time—which is why he couldn’t be at our wedding.”
Something moved in Keegan’s eyes—sympathy, perhaps. Just so long as it wasn’t pity.
Devon came down the stairs, wearing Molly’s red satin flats with the crystal buckles. They’d cost the earth, but as far as Molly was concerned, the kid could wear them to the barnyard if she wanted.
“I’m starved,” Devon said. Her face was streaked with tears, and her eyes were puffy, but she was smiling.
“Eat up,” Molly told her, gesturing toward the plate of sandwiches waiting on the table, covered by a linen napkin.
“You actually cook?” Devon marveled, zeroing in on the food. “My mom says that’s the sign of a woman with nothing better to do.”
Keegan’s eyes never left Molly’s. “She’d know,” he said. “And wash your hands first, Dev.”
That was how they all sat down at the same table together for the first time, Keegan in the chair that had been Angus’s. Devon took a place on the bench nearest the wall, and Molly sat with her back to the kitchen.
Molly could have sworn she heard one of the lids on the old cookstove rattle, and turned to look. When she turned back, Keegan was watching her with a faint, speculative smile on his face.
Devon gobbled down her meal, then went upstairs to change her clothes before heading for the barn to look in on Spud and clean his stall. That being, she proudly announced, her job.
When the door closed behind Devon, Molly said, “I’m sorry about your folks, Keegan.”
He moved as if he might take her hand, then reached for another sandwich instead. “And I’m sorry that your dad has a drinking problem,” he said.
“Me, too. He’s a good guy otherwise. You’d probably like him if…” She paused, felt her cheeks go pink again.
“If what?”
“Well, if this were the kind of situation where liking my dad was pertinent.”
“What kind of situation is this, Molly?”
“You know damn well what kind of situation it is,” she said, squirming a little on the bench. Keegan could strip her naked with his eyes, and that was what he was doing right then. If he thought for one second she was going upstairs with him in the middle of the day, with two kids around—
“I know the sex is pretty hot,” he said, well aware, damn him, of the effect he had on her. “What I keep wondering is when you’re going to get bored with ranch life and jet off to Los Angeles.”
Molly gaped at him. “Bored? How can I get bored? There’s always something going on—you and Jesse and Rance fighting behind the barn…horses magically appearing in stalls…trail rides straight up the side of a mountain….”
He laughed. God, it was good to hear him laugh, even though he’d been baiting her a little.
Her eyes smarted.
“Are you okay?” Keegan asked.
Just perfect, Molly thought. I’m in love with a man who loves somebody else. Oh but, hey, the sex is good.
“Mo
lly?”
A tear spilled over, slipped down her cheek.
Keegan wiped it away with the side of his thumb. “You’re not okay,” he said.
“Brilliant deduction, Sherlock,” Molly said, starting to get up. The kitchen was spotless, but she’d putter anyway.
Keegan caught hold of her wrist before she could move away, just firmly enough to make her sit down again. “What’s up with all the crying?” he asked.
How could she possibly tell him the whole truth? Because, damn it, I went and fell in love with you. “I’m just emotional. Everything happened so fast, Keegan. We got married, then Psyche—then—”
He pulled her onto his lap and she landed facing him, astraddle his thighs. Deftly he slid his hands up under her top and beneath her bra, making her catch her breath.
“Keegan, it’s broad daylight….”
He grinned, chafed her nipples to peaks. “Welcome to the Triple M, Mrs. McKettrick,” he drawled.
“Keegan. Devon could walk in—”
“She’ll be forty-five minutes cleaning up after the donkey,” he said. “And Lucas is sound asleep.” He uncovered one of her breasts and tongued her nipple until she moaned. “When I was listing all the places I intend to have you,” he murmured, “did I mention against a wall?”
Molly hadn’t completely lost her senses. Just mostly. “We are not going to do it against the kitchen wall.”
“Who said anything about the kitchen?” he asked.
Then he set her on her feet, stood and led her down the corridor, past a bathroom door and around a corner, into a little out-of-the-way nook.
And sure enough, he had her against the wall.
Well, she didn’t have to give him the satisfaction of making her come.
Except she did. Three times, burying her face in his shoulder so her cries of release wouldn’t carry to the kitchen and wake Lucas.
When it was over, Molly nearly sagged to the floor.
Keegan grinned, righted her clothes, then his own.
Forty-five minutes later Devon came in from the barn. She was a little subdued, Molly noticed, but not visibly traumatized by the new knowledge concerning her paternity.
“You guys look happy,” she said, sounding surprised.
Molly, mixing cake batter at the counter, blushed and looked away.
Keegan, reading a book at the kitchen table, with a freshly changed Lucas in the curve of his arm, balanced on his knee, caught Molly’s gaze, held it effortlessly for a charged moment and grinned wickedly.
“Do we?” he asked mildly, his eyes promising another McKettrick welcome—soon.
CHAPTER 17
One month later…
MOLLY STOOD in the ranch house kitchen, the phone receiver pressed to one ear, squinting at the calendar.
“Hurry up, Dev,” she heard Keegan call, upstairs. “The wedding starts in less than an hour!”
“Molly,” Joanie said from California, “don’t panic. It could be a false alarm.”
“I’m late,” she whispered, fretting over the date on the slick block of days hanging from the wall near the pantry door. “I’m never late!”
“You should be telling Keegan this, not me,” Joanie counseled. Since returning to California after Molly and Keegan’s wedding, she’d realigned the agency almost single-handedly. Molly had been amazed at her friend’s business acumen, and she was content to be a mostly silent partner. It was her job to read new manuscripts, sent to the ranch in batches, and she loved weeding out the contenders from the try-again-laters.
“I can’t,” Molly said, casting an anxious glance toward the stairs. She and Lucas were dressed in the appropriate finery and ready to roll, and Keegan was likely to appear at any moment.
“You can sleep with the man, but you can’t tell him you think you’re pregnant?” Joanie asked reasonably. “What’s wrong with this picture, Moll?”
“He’ll think I did it on purpose.”
“Didn’t you?”
“Well, yes,” Molly admitted, frustrated, “but not so I’d have something to hold over his head.”
“May I point out that even if you did do this dastardly thing, he participated?”
“Participated is not the word,” Molly said, smiling a little. Keegan didn’t participate in anything. He steam-rolled. He managed. And he’d met his match in Molly Shields McKettrick.
“Did it ever occur to you that Keegan might be happy when he finds out?” asked the sage of Los Angeles.
Just then, Keegan materialized at the top of the stairs, resplendent in a tuxedo bought and fitted especially for the occasion. His chestnut hair was a little longer than when Molly had first met him, curling at the collar, and his eyes gleamed with the lingering satisfaction of their early morning lovemaking.
“I’ll talk to you later, Dad,” Molly said.
She heard Joanie laugh as she hung up.
“You look delicious,” Keegan said, running his gaze over her pink satin suit. As bridesmaids’ outfits went, it wasn’t too bad.
“So do you,” Molly replied.
Tell him, urged the still, small voice within.
No, she answered silently. He doesn’t love me. And anyway, this isn’t the time.
Keegan turned, shouted over his shoulder. “Dev! Get a move on—we’re burning daylight!”
“All right!” Devon yelled back.
“Ten years old,” Keegan said dryly, “and she’s already acting like a teenager.”
Molly grinned, went to him—after just the briefest hesitation—and straightened his lapels. He smelled faintly of soap and, touching him, she couldn’t help remembering the shower they’d shared. “Just you wait,” she said. “You ain’t seen nothin’ yet.”
“Well, that’s comforting,” Keegan said. He lowered his head, gave her a nibbling kiss. Under any other circumstances, things might have escalated from there—Keegan had an amazing ability to kindle instant need in Molly.
Devon clattered down the back stairs. “Well, let’s go already,” she said, “if you guys can stop kissing long enough.”
Keegan rolled his eyes.
Molly laughed, shook her head. Men just didn’t understand these things. Devon was rebelling a little because she felt utterly safe in Keegan’s love; she knew he wasn’t going anywhere and, thanks to the settlement with Shelley, now happily settled in a Parisian apartment, Devon wasn’t going anywhere, either.
Lucas jumped up and down in the playpen, arms upraised. “Go!” he cried jubilantly. “Go!”
Keegan chuckled and picked Lucas up, giving him a little swing in the process. The child loved nothing better than riding on Keegan’s shoulders, and young as he was, he was already learning to sit a horse. Sometimes, when Keegan went across the creek to help Rance herd cattle from one pasture to another, Lucas and Devon went along, Lucas in the saddle with Keegan, Devon mounted on the little pony that had been part of Jesse’s wedding gift to all of them.
Molly was still cautious around horses, but she knew, with Keegan’s patient instruction, she’d get the hang of it.
Lucas chortled, bouncing in Keegan’s arms.
Devon opened the back door and huffed out a long-suffering sigh. “Are we going?”
Keegan grinned down at Molly once more, and they left the house.
Spud and the three horses looked on from the corral as they all got into the Jaguar. Keegan had slipped out of bed before dawn to feed the animals, then come back to tease Molly awake. She’d been in the throes of a sweet, sleepy orgasm before she’d even opened her eyes.
Remembering, she blushed slightly, watching Keegan out of the corner of one eye.
He grinned, as if reading her mind, and reached over to stroke her thigh.
The little church was already swelling with guests when they arrived.
Rance, the bridegroom, stood nervously in the yard, enduring while Cheyenne fiddled with his tie. He looked handsome in his spiffy black tuxedo, and seemed to be taking Jesse’s inevitable ribbing in hi
s stride.
Keegan parked the car, leaned across Molly to open the door, his shoulder brushing lightly across her breast. Fire shot through her system, and though she tried to hide her reaction, he knew. His chuckle was proof of that.
Devon, meanwhile, got out of the backseat and rushed off to find Rianna and Maeve. Members of the wedding, all three of them.
“Go!” Lucas fretted. “Go!”
Keegan pulled back just far enough to look into Molly’s eyes. “Do you wish we’d had a big traditional shindig like this?” he asked.
He never failed to surprise her.
“No,” she said. But I wish you loved me.
He shifted a little, opened the glove compartment. “I was going to give you this later,” he said. “But now seems to be the moment.”
Molly blinked, confused, and suddenly fiercely hopeful.
Keegan took out a black velvet jeweler’s box, held it in the palm of his hand.
Her heartbeat speeded up.
“Go!” Lucas bellowed.
Molly accepted the box, but couldn’t bring herself to open it. Keegan had given her a broad, diamond-studded band the day they were married—so what could this be? And what had he meant by Now seems to be the moment?
He lifted the hinged lid when Molly made no move to do so.
A gold heart-shaped locket glittered inside.
Molly caught her breath.
“Go-o-o-o!” Lucas insisted.
“Hush,” Keegan told him.
Amazingly, Lucas obeyed.
“Molly?” Keegan prompted.
“It’s—it’s beautiful,” Molly whispered.
Keegan curved a finger under her chin, lifted her face to his. Smiled a little at her confusion, which must have been clearly visible in her eyes.
“What does it mean?” she heard herself ask.
Keegan opened the locket with a motion of his thumb. Inside were pictures—Devon and Lucas on one side, himself and Molly on the other. The second picture had been taken on their wedding day, and Keegan had a shiner and a swollen lip.
“It means I love you, Molly,” he said simply.
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