McKettrick's Luck (24 page)

He stepped inside, closed the office door and looked around speculatively. There was barely any furniture—just a credenza, bookshelf, and her desk and chair. No pictures on the walls. No coffee mug with something silly imprinted on it.

Cheyenne blushed harder. She was there to
work.
She hadn't had time to make any kind of personal imprint on the room and, besides, she'd read in one of the million and one self-help books she'd devoured over her lifetime that women shouldn't have cozy offices if they wanted to be taken seriously in the business world.

“You a betting woman, Cheyenne?” Jesse asked.

“Rhetorical question,” she said, recovering a little from the initial shock of having to deal with Jesse on the morning after. “You know I am. At least, when it comes to poker.”

He set the deliciously fragrant bags on the corner of her desk. Came around to place both hands on the arms of her chair and look straight into her eyes. “I'll bet we make love, right here in this office, before the month is out.”

Cheyenne's temper flared, along with a visceral need to lose the bet, and devil take waiting a month. “You're on,” she said.

Jesse's lips were a fraction of an inch from hers. “If I win,” he said, “you've got to wear your hair down, like it was last night, every day for a year.”

Heat surged through her.

She remembered a movie she'd rented, a long time ago.

9 1/2 Weeks
was the title, and sexual obsession was the theme.

Her pelvis bones seemed to widen, even though her legs were clasped tightly together. “Yeah? Suppose I win? What do I get?”

“Anything you want.”

“Anything?”

“Anything,” Jesse drawled. He reached for her desk calendar, flipped ahead thirty days, picked up a pen and covered one whole page with an
X.

She swallowed. “What if I want you to sell me that land you're so determined to hold on to?”

His cool blue eyes seemed to sizzle. His breath was warm on her mouth; she felt her pulse there.

Cheyenne figured she'd be lucky if she didn't lose the bet in the next five minutes, let alone in a month.

“I'm willing to take that chance,” Jesse drawled, damnably confident.

Unsettled, Cheyenne tried to peer around him, afraid Myrna would come in with the tuna on rye and catch Jesse with his hands on either side of her chair and her trembling like Kim Basinger in that movie.

“We'd better agree on some terms, don't you think?” Jesse went on when she didn't speak.

“What kind of terms?”

“What constitutes making love, for one thing.” He touched his mouth to hers. “You're a responsive woman, Cheyenne. I can think of at least half a dozen ways to bring you to a climax.”

She couldn't deny that. He'd had her in every position in the
Kama Sutra
the night before, and her body was still singing at the memory.

“Say I were to kneel,” Jesse went on, “and set your legs over the arms of this chair—”

Cheyenne suppressed a groan. Closed her eyes. “Jesse,
stop.
”

“Suppose I used my tongue—”

“Jesse.”

“Would that count?”

Cheyenne trembled, just imagining the scene. “No,” she said. “It wouldn't count. Making love is—”

“What?” He kissed her lightly. “What is making love, Cheyenne?”

“Damn you, Jesse. Get out of here. I have
work
to do, unlike some people I could name—”

He nibbled the length of her neck. Tasted her earlobe. “What is making love, Cheyenne?” he repeated, murmuring the words. “Full penetration?”

“Yes,” she said, breathless. Maybe if she went along with him, he'd leave and she could get back to the task at hand. “Full penetration.”

“In this office.”

She gulped, mortified at the prospect—and the depths of her own desire to indulge the fantasy in real time. “In this office,” she agreed.

“It's a deal,” he said.

A lusciously spicy scent wafted from the bags of Chinese food. “Do I smell sweet-and-sour chicken?” she asked, desperate to ground herself in the real world. Desperate to distract Jesse from seducing her.

“Yes,” Jesse said, grinning as he pushed back. Then he opened the bags, took out a carton, and proceeded to feed her morsels of sugary, savory chicken, bite by bite.

By the time they got to the fortune cookies, Cheyenne was moist in places that should have been dry.

 

I
F
J
ESSE HADN'T KNOWN
Rance and Keegan would have asked too many questions, he would have slipped into the gym for a cold shower before he left McKettrickCo.

As it was, he was as hard as petrified tamarack.

No relief in sight, either.

Cheyenne wouldn't be joining him on the ranch that night. She had a date to play poker with the girls at Sierra's place.

He got out of the truck in Cheyenne's front yard, or what passed for one, hauled his tool box from the back and approached the pile of lumber he'd unloaded the day before.

How exactly
did
a person build rails for a wheelchair ramp, anyhow?

He wished he'd asked his dad about it, while they'd been on the phone that morning. Woodworking was one of Martin's hobbies—he'd built the deck and all the bookshelves in the house with his own hands.

Jesse shoved a hand through his hair. He hadn't even picked up a hammer yet, and he was already sweating. A big part of him was still back in that office, feeding Cheyenne sweet-and-sour chicken.

Another
big part of him hurt like all hell.

Maybe there was a garden hose around somewhere. He could turn on the spigot full blast and stand under the spray.

He laughed at the thought, glanced toward the house.

Cheyenne was at work, of course, and Ayanna, too. Maybe Mitch was around; he'd say hello and see if the kid wanted to hold nails or something.

He rapped on the door.

No answer.

Jesse frowned. Could be Mitch was sleeping, or playing a video game, or maybe he just wanted to be left alone.

He knocked again, a little harder.

The image of the tractor overturning flashed into his mind.

What if Mitch had fallen again? What if he was in some kind of trouble?

Jesse tried the knob, found the door unlocked. That wasn't unusual in Indian Rock—like most towns, it had its share of petty crime, but most folks had lost track of their house keys years before.

He stepped inside. Called out, “Mitch?”

Nothing. The place felt empty, as if it were waiting for its people to come home. Still, how many places could Mitch have gone, confined to a wheelchair and with no other visible form of transportation?

Jesse scanned the living room. Linoleum floors. Old furniture. Dust-free surfaces. A console TV with a channel knob, and aluminum frozen-food trays duct-taped to the antenna. Poor people, making the best of a tough situation.

He headed for the hallway. “Mitch?”

Nothing.

Get out of here,
he thought.
You're trespassing.

Then he heard the groan. It was distant, and so low that he almost missed it.

He raised his voice. “Mitch!”

The answer was more a feeling than a sound. A shift in the atmosphere, a silent grinding of gears, like when a poker game was about to turn sour.

Jesse opened the door of the first bedroom. Nothing.

The hall was dark, since there were no windows. He backtracked, found the light switch and flipped it.

Mitch was sprawled on the floor, his wheelchair out of reach.

“I tried to yell when Bronwyn came to the door,” Mitch choked out. “I guess she didn't hear me—”

“It's okay, buddy,” Jesse said, crouching beside Mitch. “What happened? Do you hurt anywhere?”

“I thought maybe it was all a mistake. My being crippled, I mean. Maybe I could walk if I just tried hard enough—”

Jesse wanted to look away from the despair he saw in Mitch's face, but he didn't because that would have added to the indignity. “That was a damn fool thing to do,” he said.

“Help me up.”

“I'm not sure I ought to move you.”

“I'm
okay,
Jesse,” Mitch said. His words came out evenly, but there was a plea in them. “Please—don't call anybody. Mom and Cheyenne will freak if we have to go through the whole ambulance thing.”

Within himself, Jesse debated the matter. His instincts said Mitch was telling the truth—he was all right—but what if those instincts were wrong? What if there were internal injuries? What if the kid had broken a bone or something?

“Just get me back in the chair,” Mitch said.

“We're taking a chance here, buddy.”

“Just get me back in the chair.”

Jesse sighed. “Okay,” he said. He stood up, rolled the wheelchair within reach, then stooped to put both hands under Mitch's arms and lug him semi-upright, then backward, into the seat.

Mitch just sat there for a few moments, probably getting a grip. He was dressed up, wearing chinos and a polo shirt. He closed his eyes.

“You were going someplace with Bronwyn?” Jesse asked, to give Mitch a way out of the silence.

“Sedona,” Mitch said bleakly. “I should have known it wasn't going to work out.”

Jesse set a hand on his friend's shoulder. “You shouldn't have tried to stand up,” he said. “But that's where the shoulds and shouldn'ts end. Bronwyn's a pretty girl. Of
course
you wanted to go to Sedona with her.”

The look of sorrow in Mitch's gaze bruised something in Jesse. “I ought to accept reality,” he said. “Face it. I'm never going to have a life.”

“Bullshit,” Jesse said with certainty. Then he got behind the chair, took hold of the handles and started pushing it back down the hallway, toward the living room. “Come on, cowboy. You're not dressed for a day on the range, but what the hell. The cattle don't care if you look like a dude.”

Mitch looked back at him, and the hope Jesse saw in his expression was almost as hard to swallow as the sorrow had been. “A day on the—?”

“We'll saddle up and ride.”

“Cheyenne will flip out,” Mitch said, grinning tentatively at the prospect.

“I can handle Cheyenne.”

Mitch went solemn again. “Can you, Jesse? Things—things aren't what they seem.”

They'd reached the front door, and Jesse moved ahead onto the porch, holding the screen open so Mitch could pass. “What do you mean, ‘things aren't what they seem'?”

Mitch wouldn't meet his eyes. “They just aren't, that's all.”

Jesse recalled that morning, back at the house, and the sense that Cheyenne wanted to tell him something, but couldn't quite bring herself to do it. It made him a little uneasy, but it wasn't his nature to dwell on things, especially when there wasn't squat he could do about them.

“Fair enough,” he said.

Mitch flipped on the juice, and the chair whirred as he zipped down the ramp, heading for the truck. Jesse lingered only a second or two on the porch, watching him go and wondering.

“You hungry?” he asked after loading Mitch into the passenger seat and his chair into the back.

“I could use a burger,” Mitch admitted.

They whipped through McDonald's and ate on the road.

Out at the ranch, Jesse reversed the loading process.

Mitch's mood had changed on the way out. Maybe it was the burger and fries. Maybe it was the chance to go somewhere, get out of the house.

“Bronwyn probably thinks I stood her up,” Mitch mused, but he looked happy as he did a three-sixty in his chair, taking in the barn, the house and the scenery.

There was nothing like that scenery, Jesse reflected. It had the power to heal a man's soul, if not his body.

“You can call her from inside,” Jesse said.

Mitch nodded, looking solemn again. “What do I tell her? I don't want to lie, but I'm not too thrilled with the idea of saying I tried to walk, either.”

“Just tell her the truth,” Jesse counseled.

Good advice, McKettrick,
he thought.
Maybe you ought to follow it. Tell Cheyenne a thing or two.

The voice ambushed him, gave him pause. He hadn't lied to her, had he?