McKettrick's Choice (30 page)

“Guess I'd better fetch Tillie in from the barn,” Mr. Cavanagh said, grinning and rubbing the stubble of beard on his jaws. “She's been hidin' out there, with little Pearl, waitin' for Melina's travail to pass.” They'd all been humoring Tillie with regards to the boy's name; in time, they'd persuade her to grant him a new and more suitable one.

The Captain flung down a cigarette he'd probably rolled himself and smashed it out with his boot. “Somebody ought to take the news to Rafe and that poor cowpoke,” he said. “Like as not, they're thinkin' there's been another massacre.” He sighed, and smiled sadly at Lorelei. “Might as well be me, I reckon,” he finished.

As he passed her, he touched her arm. “Holt told me about your place,” he said. “Right sorry.”

Lorelei had been strong, because she'd had to be, for Melina and the baby, but now she stood utterly still, afraid if she moved, she'd fall into tiny, brittle pieces that tinkled as they struck the ground.

Holt approached only when the others were gone. She could tell he wanted to touch her, but he didn't. He kept his hands loose at his sides.

“You did a brave thing in there, Lorelei,” he said quietly. She would always cherish those words, for here was a man who valued courage above just about everything else. When new trouble came, as it surely would, she could warm herself at the memory, like a winter traveler come upon a campfire.

A tear slipped down her cheek. “Don't you go being kind to me, Holt McKettrick,” she whispered. “I won't be able to bear it if you do.”

He crooked an eyebrow, and a hint of a grin curved his mouth. “You'd rather I was mean?”

She lifted her chin, sniffled inelegantly. Fixed her teary gaze on a point just over his left shoulder. “You'll be going back to town with the doctor, I guess. To tell Gabe he has a son.” A shudder went through her. “I'd like to go with you. It's time I spoke with my father.”

“All right,” Holt said, but he sounded doubtful. “I don't suppose there's a grasshopper's chance in hell that you'd stay right here and let me handle this?”

“No,” she replied, and made herself meet his eyes. She'd changed since the time—was it really such a short while ago?—when she'd marched out of Judge Fellows's house for good. She'd seen so much, learned so much.
Changed
so much. “I know you believe Mr. Templeton and his men burned my place, and you might be right. But if they did, it was at the judge's urging. I have to face my father, once and for all, and tell him that no matter what he does, he can't break me.”

“Lorelei,” Holt murmured. Then, in a stronger voice, he added, “You don't have to tell him or anybody else a damn thing. Let them see for themselves that you're somebody to be reckoned with.”

She was startled. “You really think that?”

He chuckled, turning his hat in his hands. “You're damn right I do,” he said. “You are Texas-tough, through and through, and I'm proud to know you.”

Lorelei stared at him, speechless.

He lifted his right hand, ran the backs of his knuckles lightly along the length of her cheek.

“Do—do you still want to buy my land? The house is gone, I know, but the grass will grow back—”

He frowned. “What?”

“If Heddy's willing to sell,” Lorelei said bravely, “I mean to buy her rooming house in Laredo. Set myself up in business.”

Holt did not look pleased by this idea. No doubt, he was still thinking she and her father would reconcile, despite all that had happened, and she'd settle happily back into a spinster's life. That way, when he went back to Arizona, he could leave in good conscience, or at least telling himself he hadn't done too much harm. “Has it escaped your recollection,” he said, “what the country
between here and Laredo is like? How do you expect to get back there?”

“I'll ride the Wells Fargo stage,” Lorelei said. “They have outriders, so it should be safe.”

“Safe?”
He slapped his hat against his thigh, then plopped it on his head.

“Perhaps it wouldn't be too far out of their way to stop by the Davis ranch, so I could give Mary her blue-and-white gingham.”

“Oh,
hell
yes!” Holt snapped. “Wells Fargo delivers gingham to the middle of nowhere
all the time!
”

Lorelei felt better now that they were arguing, like usual. It would be easier, remembering moments like this one, when he went away. “It can't hurt to ask,” she maintained.

Holt began to pace, the way Gabe might have done if he'd been there to wait out Melina's labor. “Lorelei,
will
you talk sense, for once in your life? You can't go back to Laredo and run some
rooming house,
and you sure as
hell
have no business risking your life for a bolt of cloth!”

“What would you suggest I do instead?”

He stopped his pacing. Stared at her. “Go back to San Antonio?” he asked hopelessly, because he already knew the answer.

“No,” she said. “After I speak with my father, and say goodbye to Angelina and Raul, I'm going to put my offer to Heddy and make arrangements to leave for Laredo.” She drew a deep breath, hoping he didn't hear the tremulousness in it. “Now, will you buy my land or not?”

“What if I say no?”

“Then I'll sell it to Mr. Templeton.”

His eyes narrowed to slits, and he jerked the hat off his
head again and poked at her with it. “You wouldn't—after all he's done—”

“I would if I had no other choice,” Lorelei answered, with a lot more certainty than she felt. The truth of it was, she hadn't even asked Heddy about buying the place in Laredo yet. There hadn't been time, between Rafe and the cowboy needing care, and then Melina having the baby.

“Fine!” Holt shouted. “I'll buy it, then! Name your price!”

She folded her arms. “Make me an offer.”

He did.

She put out her hand. “Sold,” she said.

Holt didn't take her up on the handshake. He pushed past her and stormed into the house, leaving her standing in the tall grass, wondering how she'd bear it when she didn't have him to fight with anymore.

 

T
WO HOURS LATER
, when Lorelei, Holt and Dr. Brown headed for town, Lorelei wore trousers and a shirt, borrowed from Tillie, and rode straight-backed on Seesaw. Her father would be scandalized when he saw her in that getup, with a mule for transportation, and that was fine with her.

For all that she'd tried to prepare herself, the sight of what had once been her ranch house nearly knocked the wind out of her. Gone, the cabin that had been her mother's childhood home, with all the earthly belongings she could rightfully claim inside.

Here, in this place, Lorelei had first planted her two feet and declared her independence. Now, there was nothing left but ash and charred wood; even the trees, old-timers with their roots going deep into the land, had been desecrated.

An unholy rage welled up within Lorelei as she took it all in, there on the bank of the creek, herself and her mule dripping water from the crossing.

Holt stayed close by.

“The trees,” she whispered brokenly.

“They'll come back, Lorelei,” he said gravely, and reached across, from his horse, to touch her arm. “Even now, the seeds are there, under the dirt, fixing to grow.”

She turned to him. There were times when he amazed her, this complicated man. He'd fight the very devil himself, bare-handed, and laugh when he told the tale. The Comanche had never drawn breath who could make him break a sweat. And yet, in the face of this murderous destruction, he spoke of seeds, and the promise of life stirring under the soil.

“Holt McKettrick,” she said, “if I live to be an old, old woman, I will never figure you out.”

He grinned. “Waste of time trying,” he said, taking Seesaw by the bridle strap and deftly steering both mule and woman forward—always forward. “When you get down to it, I'm not sure there's anything to make sense of, anyhow.”

Her throat felt tight. There were so many things she wanted to say in that moment, but they wouldn't come together in her mind.

“Give that mule your heels, Miss Lorelei,” he said, looking deep into her eyes. Into her very soul, it seemed.

“We're burning daylight.”

She laughed, but the sound came out tangled with a sob. She prodded Seesaw hard, and he took off for the hillside leading up to the road, a streak of jackass, gobbling up ground with his plain, sturdy legs.

Holt stayed with her easily, on that Appaloosa of his,
but he pretended it was a battle, keeping up with her and the doc on his squat, trotting pony.

She loved him for the effort. Loved him for the things he'd said about the trees coming back.

Loved him.

The realization of that was far more shattering than her father's betrayal could ever have been.

She couldn't love Holt McKettrick. She
wouldn't.
After that talk in Reynosa, when he'd suggested forming a “partnership,” he'd never mentioned marriage again. He'd either been talking through his hat, or he'd changed his mind since then.

He'd leave, that was what he would do, provided he lived through the confrontation with Isaac Templeton that was bound to happen. He'd leave, when Gabe Navarro was free.

He would leave and never come back.
That was the pure, brutal truth of the matter.

What would comfort her then? What seeds would stir beneath the ashes of her dreams, destined to grow tall and strong against the fierce Texas sky?

The answer made her press the palm of one hand hard to her middle. She was startled by a swift and terrible joy, a certainty too elemental to explain.
She was carrying Holt's child.
Her eyes widened, and her heart began to beat like the hooves of a wild horse, running free. Life would be hard from now on, but it would be wonderful, too.

“Lorelei?” Holt asked worriedly, from beside her. “You all right?”

“Sturdy as a Texas oak tree,” she replied, and even though there were tears standing in her eyes, she smiled.

 

D
R.
B
ROWN
tipped his hat to Holt and Lorelei at the outskirts of San Antonio. “Raul and Angelina will have a place with me as long as they want it, Miss Fellows,” he said, in parting. “Holt, you keep that brother of yours off the trail for a while. I don't want that wound getting infected. Send for me if the boy has trouble with his leg, but the splint should hold.”

Holt nodded and tugged at his hat brim. “Obliged, Doc,” he said.

Lorelei watched Dr. Brown until he disappeared around a corner, headed for home, where, no doubt, other patients waited.

“I could go with you,” Holt offered quietly. “To speak to your father, I mean.”

“It's something I have to do alone,” Lorelei replied, resigned.
There are a great many things I will have to do alone,
she thought.

Holt seemed to be in no hurry to head for the jailhouse and break the glad tidings to Gabe. “I'm going to ask you a favor, Lorelei,” he said. “If you get through before I do, don't head back out to John's alone. Come over to the jail and wait for me. Will you do that?”

She nodded, tried to smile.

He rode close, touched her cheek and then headed off toward the center of town.

Lorelei reached her father's house a few minutes later. She tied Seesaw loosely to the picket fence out front, opened the gate and marched up the walk.

The judge took her by surprise by answering the door himself.

His gaze blazed with contempt as he took in her trousers, shirt and boots.

“So,” he said. “You've come crawling back after all.”

“I came to say goodbye, Father,” Lorelei replied,
standing straight. In that moment, something died inside her—the delicate, unfounded hope that blood really was thicker than water. In this case, it wasn't. “You burned my house—or you got Mr. Templeton and his men to do it—thinking I'd give up. Well, you were wrong. I've sold it to Holt McKettrick.”

The judge paled, then flushed. He smelled of rancid sweat and too much whiskey, and for the briefest flicker of time, Lorelei was a child again, despised for being female, for
not
being William. “God
damn
it,” he snarled, looking as though he might go for her throat, strangle her right there on the front porch of his large, lonesome house. “You can't possibly know what you've done!”

“I know, all right,” Lorelei said. As far as she was concerned, there was nothing more to say. She turned to walk away, from her father and from that house, for the last time, but he grasped her arm before she could take a step, whirled her around.

His face was gray with hatred and something else—fear, perhaps. “How did it
really
happen, Lorelei?” he rasped. “You laid yourself down with Holt McKettrick like a common slut, didn't you? You believed every lie he told you—”

Lorelei pulled free, her face hot with sorrow and indignation. All she could think about was getting away, but before she could make herself move, the judge gave a startled little cry and sank to his knees, one hand to his chest, his eyes round with pain and surprise. In the next instant, he fell forward, onto the plank floorboards of the porch.

Lorelei knelt, struggled with frantic hands to turn him over, but even then she knew it was too late. She didn't cry out. She didn't beat on his chest with her fists, though something deep inside raged to do just that. Instead, she
leaned forward, letting her forehead rest against his, her tears wetting his face as well as her own.

She heard a team and wagon come to a quick and noisy stop in the street, but she didn't look up to see who was there. She knew it wasn't Holt, and that was all that mattered.