McKettrick's Luck (25 page)

Brandi?
his conscience prompted.

Damn. He hated that voice.

“Let's go make that call,” he said, feeling a little subdued. “Then I'll saddle a couple of horses.”

Mitch's expression was luminous at the idea of riding a horse, of having legs again, even if they were borrowed. “Okay, Jesse,” he said.

Okay, Jesse.
The phrase rang with trust.

Why did that make him feel guilty?

K
EEGAN STOOD IN THE
doorway of Cheyenne's office, dangling a set of keys. There was something reminiscent of Jesse about him, she thought, even though the two men didn't resemble each other physically.

“Your car has been delivered,” Keegan said. “And it's almost six o'clock. When were you planning on calling it a day?”

Cheyenne would have countered that she could have asked the same question of him, if she'd known him better. As it was, she smiled and switched her computer to Standby. “My secret is out,” she said. “I'm a workaholic. Six o'clock is the middle of the day to me.”

Keegan approached, set the keys in the middle of her blotter. “Me, too,” he said. “But sometimes I wonder if Jesse isn't right to spend his days playing poker, riding the range and just taking things as they come.”

Cheyenne reddened a little. Jesse took things as they came, all right. Like her, for instance. She certainly didn't want to talk about him, at least in the office, because it reminded her of the bet. That
X
he'd drawn on her calendar? He might as well have tattooed it on her flesh.

“Workaholism is a noble addiction,” she said.

“But still an addiction,” Keegan reasoned thoughtfully. “Go home, Cheyenne. The project will still be here in the morning.”

Cheyenne nodded. Swallowed. Echoed the question Mitch had put to her, concerning a job at McKettrickCo. “How do you feel about nepotism?”

Keegan laughed. Perched on the edge of her desk, he folded his arms. He was powerfully built, where Jesse was leaner, more—agile. Rance, in contrast to both his cousins, was built like a linebacker. Despite these dissimilarities, there was an indefinable similarity between the three of them, as though their souls had all been cut from the same cloth.

“I'm a McKettrick,” he answered. “I eat, sleep and drink nepotism. Why?”

The look in his eyes told her he already
knew
why, but he wanted her to say it aloud. “I'm hoping there might be a place for my brother, Mitch. In the work-study program, I mean.”

Was
she hoping that?

Since when?

She lived to protect Mitch. To shelter him. Even a month ago, she'd have said he wasn't cut out for the business world. But the relationship was changing; the dynamics were different. Since Jesse.

She shook off that thought. The shift in her perception of Mitch had nothing to do with Jesse.

Did it?

She recalled the joy in Mitch's face, and the terror in her own heart, when he'd ridden that horse out at the Triple M, the night of the party. Then there was Bronwyn. Mitch obviously liked the girl. He didn't know—or was it that he didn't care?—how dangerous it was to hope for something you would probably never have.

“I talked with Mitch a little out at Sierra's place,” Keegan said with a nod of recollection, as if he'd gone back there, in his mind, and had the whole conversation all over again. “He seems like a bright kid, and Jesse thinks highly of him.”

“Is that a recommendation?” Cheyenne asked quietly, without weighing the words first. “Jesse's opinion, I mean?”

Keegan thrust out a sigh, ran a hand through his hair, the same way Jesse did. “Jesse,” he said, “is Jesse. Sometimes he frustrates me—I'd like to drag him away from the poker table, or off some horse, and beat the hell out of him. He likes to play the laid-back country boy, but he's got one of the finest minds I've ever run across. So, yeah, if he says your brother is a good bet, I'm inclined to take it seriously.”

“Thanks,” Cheyenne said and glanced down at the keys resting on her blotter. Thought of Nigel. Looked up. “Keegan, I—”

Just then, Myrna stuck her head in at the door.

“I'm leaving,” she announced. “Shall I lock up?”

“I'll do it,” Keegan said.

“You're not staying? Burning the midnight oil?”

Keegan sighed. “Not tonight,” he said.

Myrna nodded her approval. “Maybe there's hope for you yet,
Mr.
McKettrick.”

“That's
Keegan
to you,” he replied lightly, in a way that made Cheyenne wonder what it was like to be part of a circle, a close community of friends and fellow workers, a member of a large extended family, sharing the same history.

She had grown up in Indian Rock.

Why did she feel as though she had no roots? No place where she truly belonged?

And what was with all this bloody introspection?

“Thanks for sharing your sandwich, Myrna,” she said. Already full of the sweet-and-sour chicken Jesse had hand-fed her, Cheyenne hadn't had the heart to refuse the offer. The other woman's gesture, while ordinary, had meant a lot to her. So did the bamboo and the little panda bear, sitting prominently on the corner of her desk.

“No problem,” Myrna said. “See you tomorrow.” With that, she was gone, heels clicking a fading drumbeat on the floor as she walked down the corridor.

Cheyenne took her purse out of the big drawer in her desk, slipped the strap over one shoulder and stood. “Guess I'd better run,” she said to Keegan. “I'm supposed to be at Sierra's in an hour or so.”

Keegan led the way out of the office, along the corridor, to the front door. “That's yours,” he said, pointing out the only remaining vehicle in the lot, besides his black Jaguar. A forest-green Escalade.

Thinking there must be some mistake, she looked around.

Following her gaze as he locked up, Keegan chuckled. “I know it's pretty showy,” he said, “but it was all they had available.”

“Hey,” Cheyenne said, “I'll adjust.”

Keegan laughed. Then looked solemn again. “Is it serious, between you and Jesse?”

“It's—something,” she said, after a long time. “I'm not sure what.”

“Then I won't ask you out to dinner,” Keegan said. “Damn it.”

He walked Cheyenne to the Escalade, opened the door for her.

She was glad she'd worn pants instead of her usual suit with a straight skirt. Long-legged as she was, it was a climb into that rig. She sat still behind the wheel for a few seconds, staring through the windshield, struggling with her conscience, feeling like a car thief about to go on a joyride.

She decided to bite the bullet. Risk it all. She turned. “Keegan—”

He was already getting into the Jag. After a brief wave, he shut the door and started the engine.

Cheyenne could have rolled down the window, called to him, spilled her guts about the contract with Nigel. But the time for bullet-biting was past—Keegan was backing out of his parking space.

Her purse rang.

Muttering, she rummaged for the phone—Nigel's phone—and answered with a brisk, “What do you want?”

“Still charming,” Nigel sang.

“Go to hell, Nigel,” she said.

“Did you find out anything? Within the hallowed halls of McKettrickCo, I mean?”

“Yes.” Cheyenne stuck the key in the ignition, studied the controls and fired up the Escalade. Wait until her mother and Mitch saw it. They'd want to go for a spin. “I found out what it means to have a
real
job. With an office and a desk. You're suffering by contrast, Nigel.”

Nigel laughed. “I generally do,” he said.

“I'm not going to spy,” Cheyenne insisted, hitting the speaker button and laying the phone in the console, so she could drive with both hands. “You might as well know that I'm going to bank my paychecks and give them back to you when my contract expires. If you have any decency at all, you'll fire me and be done with it.”

Jesse crept back into her mind. He was betting a lot—the land—on her being unable to resist his charms over the next thirty days. Surely he hadn't been serious, though.

Nigel interrupted her thoughts. “Fortunately,” he said, “decency is not one of my shortcomings.
I need that land,
Cheyenne. My grandmother is calling in the loans, and if I—we—don't pull this deal together, my slice of the American dream is going down the swirler. I will do whatever I have to do to make this happen, and I'm counting on you to help.”

“Maybe you should be talking to your grandmother,” Cheyenne reasoned, testy, looking both ways before she pulled out onto the highway fronting McKettrickCo's Indian Rock offices. “Not me.”

“My grandmother is in Knightsbridge, thinking of ways to cut off my balls and cauterize the wound. I am most definitely talking to
you.
”

“How many times do I have to tell you? I'm not doing this. I'm not digging up dirt on Jesse McKettrick so you can force him into selling you the land. There
isn't
any dirt, Nigel. Get that through your head.”

“Don't be so sure,” Nigel retorted slyly. “Get that through
your
head. If you do anything to blow this deal, I'll keep you tied up in court until the next ice age.”

“It's not going to happen,” she said.

“See that it does,” Nigel warned. “I've been getting a lot of calls from the investors. They've seen the plans for the condos. They love them. They're wondering when we can get this thing rolling. With every day that passes, they're a little less convinced that I'm Wonder Boy.”

“Build the development somewhere else,” Cheyenne said. It wasn't the first time she'd made the suggestion, and she knew Nigel wouldn't listen. She felt like the lone voice of reason, calling in the wilderness. And her throat was getting raw.

“They want that property.
I
want that property.”

She'd reached the turnoff to home without being aware of the drive from work, which was disturbing. She signaled, bumped over the railroad tracks. “Do you know what your problem is, Nigel? You're spoiled. The land belongs to Jesse. He loves it. He's not giving it up, okay? Let this go.”

Let me go.

“He owns a third of the Triple M,” Nigel argued. “He doesn't need that five-hundred acres.”

“There's a spring up there,” Cheyenne said. “It feeds the creek that flows through the middle of the ranch. They depend on the water, at least part of the year.”

“Promise him the rights to it, then.”

“I tried that. Jesse's not stupid, Nigel. He knows a promise like that isn't worth the proverbial paper it's written on.”

Her purse rang again. She remembered the second cell phone, the one Keegan had given her that morning. Most likely, nobody else had the number yet. “Gotta go,” she said. “My boss is calling.”

“
I'm
your boss!”

Cheyenne brought the Escalade to a stop in the yard, thumbed Nigel into satellite-oblivion and fumbled for the other phone.

“Hello?”

There was a smile in Keegan's voice. “Just checking to see if the phone works,” he said. “Hope I'm not interrupting anything.”

Cheyenne swallowed. Something popped and she looked into the rearview mirror to see Ayanna chortling in behind her in the van. “I'm glad you called, Keegan. I really need to talk to you.”

“So talk.”

“Not on the phone.”

“Okay,” Keegan said. “We can meet somewhere. Back at the office? Your place? Mine?”

“I promised to play poker at Sierra's tonight.”

“I could stop by there.”

“It isn't something I want anybody else to know about. Just you and Rance.”

“I'll be in the office early tomorrow morning,” Keegan said. “Around eight? I'll bring breakfast.”

Ayanna was out of the van and reacting to the Escalade with humorous exaggeration, like a mime.

“Eight,” Cheyenne agreed.

Ayanna tapped on the driver's-side window.

“Gotta go,” Cheyenne said.

“See you tomorrow,” Keegan replied.

They disconnected.

“I'm in big trouble,” Cheyenne told her mother after shutting off the engine and climbing down from the SUV.

Ayanna widened her eyes. “Oh, I can see that,” she teased. “You're driving a Cadillac, on McKettrickCo's dime. Things just seem to go from bad to worse.”

Cheyenne sighed. “You know what I mean,” she said, starting toward the house. She was due at Sierra's in a little under an hour, and she wanted to switch out the pantsuit for jeans and a T-shirt, loosen up her hair, find out how Mitch's day had gone.

Her mother fell into step beside her. “I take it you didn't tell Keegan the truth today.”

Probably because she knew she was in the wrong, the remark stung. “I wouldn't be driving an Escalade if I had,” she said, with her voice drawn back as tautly as her hair. “I'd have had to hitchhike home.”