The McKettrick Legend (22 page)

“Nonsense,” Eve said. “If you could have gotten away with it, you would have stayed home today, wandering around that old house in your pajamas, with no makeup on and your hair sticking out in every direction.”

It was true, but beside the point. With Eve McKettrick for a mother, Meg couldn't get away with much of anything. “I'm here,” she said. “Give me a break, will you?”

She pulled off her coat, handed it to Eve, and sidled into the nearest group, a small band of women. Meg, who had spent all her child hood summers in Indian Rock, didn't recognize any of them.

“It's all over the tabloids,” remarked a tall, thin woman wearing a lot of jewelry. “Brad O'Ballivan is in rehab again.”

Meg caught her breath at the name, and nearly dropped the cup of punch someone shoved into her hands.

“Nonsense,” a second woman replied. “Last week those rags were reporting that he'd been abducted by aliens.”

“He's handsome enough to have fans on other planets,” observed a third, sighing wistfully.

Meg tried to ease out of the circle, but it had closed around her. She felt dizzy.

“My cousin Evelyn works at the post office over in Stone Creek,” said yet another woman, with authority. “Accord
ing to her, Brad's fan mail is being for warded to the family ranch, just outside of town. He's not in rehab, and he's not on another planet. He's
home
. Evelyn says they'll have to build a second barn just to hold all those letters.”

Meg smiled rigidly, but on the inside, she was scrambling for balance.

Suddenly, woman #1 focused on her. “You used to date Brad O'Ballivan, didn't you, Meg?”

“That—that was a long time ago,” Meg said as graciously as she could, given that she was right in the middle of a panic attack. “We were just kids, and it was a summer thing—” Frantically, she calculated the distance between Indian Rock and Stone Creek—a mere forty miles. Not nearly far enough.

“I'm sure Meg has dated a lot of famous people,” one of the other women said. “Working for McKettrickCo the way she did, flying all over the place in the company jet—”

“Brad wasn't famous when I knew him,” Meg said lamely.

“You must miss your old life,” someone else commented.

While it was true that Meg was having some trouble shifting from full throttle to a comparative stand still, since the family conglomerate had gone public a few months before, and her job as an executive vice president had gone with it, she
didn't
miss the meetings and the sixty-hour work weeks all that much. Money certainly wasn't a problem; she had a trust fund, as well as a personal investment portfolio thicker than the Los Angeles phone book.

A stir at the front door saved her from commenting.

Sierra came in, looking baffled.

“Surprise!” the crowd shouted as one.

The surprise is on me,
Meg thought bleakly.
Brad O'Ballivan is back.

 

Brad shoved the truck into gear and drove to the bottom of the hill, where the road forked. Turn left, and he'd be home in five minutes. Turn right, and he was headed for Indian Rock.

He had no damn business going to Indian Rock.

He had nothing to say to Meg McKettrick, and if he never set eyes on the woman again, it would be two weeks too soon.

He turned right.

He couldn't have said why.

He just drove.

At one point, needing noise, he switched on the truck radio, fiddled with the dial until he found a country-western station. A recording of his own voice filled the cab of the pickup, thundering from all the speakers.

He'd written that ballad for Meg.

He turned the dial to Off.

Almost simultaneously, his cell phone jangled in the pocket of his jacket; he considered ignoring it—there were a number of people he didn't want to talk to—but suppose it was one of his sisters calling? Suppose they needed help?

He flipped the phone open, not taking his eyes off the curvy mountain road to check the caller ID panel first. “O'Ballivan,” he said.

“Have you come to your senses yet?” demanded his manager, Phil Meadowbrook. “Shall I tell you again just
how much
money those people in Vegas are offering? They're willing to build you your own
theater,
for God's sake. This is a three-year gig—”

“Phil?” Brad broke in.

“Say yes,” Phil pleaded. “I'm retired.”

“You're thirty-five,” Phil argued. “
Nobody
retires at thirty-five!”

“We've already had this conversation, Phil.”

“Don't hang up!”

Brad, who'd been about to thumb the Off button, sighed.

“What the hell are you going to do in Stone Creek, Arizona?” Phil demanded. “Herd cattle? Sing to your horse? Think of the money, Brad. Think of the women, throwing their under wear at your feet—”

“I've been working real hard to repress that image,” Brad said. “Thanks a lot for the reminder.”

“Okay, forget the under wear,” Phil shot back, without missing a beat. “But think of the money!”

“I've already got more of that than I need, Phil, and so do you, so spare me the riff where your grandchildren are homeless waifs picking through garbage behind the supermarket.”

“I've used that one, huh?” Phil asked.

“Oh, yeah,” Brad answered.

“What are you doing, right this moment?”

“I'm headed for the Dixie Dog Drive-In.”

“The
what?
”

“Goodbye, Phil.”

“What are you going to do at the Dixie-Whatever Drive-In that you couldn't do in Music City? Or Vegas?”

“You wouldn't understand,” Brad said. “And I can't say I blame you, because I don't really understand it myself.”

Back in the day, he and Meg used to meet at the Dixie Dog, by tacit agreement, when either of them had been away. It had been some kind of universe-thing, purely intuitive. He guessed he wanted to see if it still worked—and he'd be damned if he'd try to explain that to Phil.

“Look,” Phil said, revving up for another sales pitch, “I
can't put these casino people off forever. You're riding high right now, but things are bound to cool off. I've got to tell them
something
—”

“Tell them ‘thanks, but no thanks,'” Brad suggested. This time, he broke the connection.

Phil, being Phil, tried to call twice before he finally gave up.

Passing familiar land marks, Brad told himself he ought to turn around. The old days were gone, things had ended badly between him and Meg anyhow, and she wasn't going to be at the Dixie Dog.

He kept driving.

He went by the Welcome To Indian Rock sign, and the Road house, a popular beer-and-burger stop for truckers, tourists and locals, and was glad to see the place was still open. He slowed for Main Street, smiled as he passed Cora's Curl and Twirl, squinted at the bookshop next door. That was new.

He frowned. Things changed, places changed.

What if the Dixie Dog had closed down?

What if it was boarded up, with litter and sage brush tumbling through a deserted parking lot?

And what the hell did it matter, anyhow?

Brad shoved a hand through his hair. Maybe Phil and every body else was right—maybe he was crazy to turn down the Vegas deal. Maybe he
would
end up sitting in the barn, serenading a bunch of horses.

He rounded a bend, and there was the Dixie Dog, still open. Its big neon sign, a giant hot dog, was all lit up and going through its corny sequence—first it was covered in red squiggles of light, meant to suggest catsup, and then yellow, for mustard. There were a few cars lined up in the drive-through lane, a few more in the parking lot.

Brad pulled into one of the slots next to a speaker and rolled down the truck window.

“Welcome to the Dixie Dog Drive-In,” a youthful female voice chirped over the bad wiring. “What can I get you today?”

Brad hadn't thought that far, but he was starved. He peered at the light-up menu box under the chunky metal speaker. Then the obvious choice struck him and he said, “I'll take a Dixie Dog,” he said. “Hold the chili and onions.”

“Coming right up” was the cheerful response. “Any thing to drink?”

“Chocolate shake,” he decided. “Extra thick.”

His cell phone rang again.

He ignored it again.

The girl thanked him and roller-skated out with the order about five minutes later.

When she wheeled up to the driver's-side window, smiling, her eyes went wide with recognition, and she dropped the tray with a clatter.

Silently, Brad swore. Damn if he hadn't forgotten he was famous.

The girl, a skinny thing wearing too much eye makeup, immediately started to cry. “I'm sorry!” she sobbed, squatting to gather up the mess.

“It's okay,” Brad answered quietly, leaning to look down at her, catching a glimpse of her plastic name tag. “It's okay, Mandy. No harm done.”

“I'll get you another dog and a shake right away, Mr. O'Ballivan!”

“Mandy?”

She stared up at him pitifully, sniffling. Thanks to the copious tears, most of the goop on her eyes had slid south.

“Yes?”

“When you go back inside, could you not mention seeing me?”

“But you're Brad O'Ballivan!”

“Yeah,” he answered, suppressing a sigh. “I know.”

She was standing up again by then, the tray of gathered debris clasped in both hands. She seemed to sway a little on her rollers. “Meeting you is just about the most important thing that's ever happened to me in my whole entire
life
. I don't know if I could keep it a secret even if I tried!”

Brad leaned his head against the back of the truck seat and closed his eyes. “Not forever, Mandy,” he said. “Just long enough for me to eat a Dixie Dog in peace.”

She rolled a little closer. “You wouldn't happen to have a picture you could au to graph for me, would you?”

“Not with me,” Brad answered. There were boxes of publicity pictures in storage, along with the requisite T-shirts, slick concert programs and other souvenirs commonly sold on the road. He never carried them, much to Phil's annoyance.

“You could sign this napkin, though,” Mandy said. “It's only got a little chocolate on the corner.”

Brad took the paper napkin, and her order pen, and scrawled his name. Handed both items back through the window.

“Now I can tell my grandchildren I spilled your lunch all over the pavement at the Dixie Dog Drive-In, and here's my proof.” Mandy beamed, waggling the chocolate-stained napkin.

“Just imagine,” Brad said. The slight irony in his tone was wasted on Mandy, which was probably a good thing.

“I won't tell anybody I saw you until you drive away,” Mandy said with eager resolve. “I
think
I can last that long.”

“That would be good,” Brad told her.

She turned and whizzed back toward the side entrance to the Dixie Dog.

Brad waited, marveling that he hadn't considered incidents like this one before he'd decided to come back home. In retrospect, it seemed shortsighted, to say the least, but the truth was, he'd expected to be—Brad O'Ballivan.

Presently, Mandy skated back out again, and this time, she managed to hold on to the tray.

“I didn't tell a soul!” she whispered. “But Heather and Darlene
both
asked me why my mascara was all smeared.” Efficiently, she hooked the tray onto the bottom edge of the window.

Brad extended payment, but Mandy shook her head.

“The boss said it's on the house, since I dumped your first order on the ground.”

He smiled. “Okay, then. Thanks.”

Mandy retreated, and Brad was just reaching for the food when a bright red Blazer whipped into the space beside his. The driver's-side door sprang open, crashing into the metal speaker, and somebody got out, in a hurry.

Some thing quickened inside Brad.

And in the next moment, Meg McKettrick was standing practically on his running board, her blue eyes blazing.

Brad grinned. “I guess you're not over me after all,” he said.

A
FTER
S
IERRA HAD OPENED
all her shower presents, and cake and punch had been served, Meg had felt the old, familiar tug in the middle of her solar plexus and headed straight for the Dixie Dog Drive-In. Now that she was there, standing next to a truck and all but nose to nose with Brad O'Ballivan through the open window, she didn't know what to do—or say.

Angus poked her from behind, and she flinched.

“Speak up,” her dead ancestor prodded.

“Stay out of this,” she answered, without thinking.

Puzzlement showed in Brad's affably handsome face. “Huh?”

“Never mind,” Meg said. She took a step back, straightened. “And I am
so
over you.”

Brad grinned. “Damned if it didn't work,” he marveled. He climbed out of the truck to stand facing Meg, ducking around the tray hooked to the door. His dark-blond hair was artfully rumpled, and his clothes were down right ordinary. “
What
worked?” Meg demanded, even though she knew.

Laughter sparked in his blue-green eyes, along with considerable pain, and he didn't bother to comment.

“What are you doing here?” she asked.

Brad spread his hands. Hands that had once played Meg's
body as skill fully as any guitar. Oh, yes. Brad O'Ballivan knew how to set all the chords vibrating.

“Free country,” he said. “Or has Indian Rock finally seceded from the Union with the ranch house on the Triple M for a capitol?”

Since she felt a strong urge to bolt for the Blazer and lay rubber getting out of the Dixie Dog's parking lot, Meg planted her feet and hoisted her chin.
McKettricks,
she reminded herself silently,
don't run.

“I heard you were in rehab,” she said, hoping to get under his hide.

“That's a nasty rumor,” Brad replied cheer fully.

“How about the two ex-wives and that scandal with the actress?”

His grin, insouciant in the first place, merely widened. “Unfortunately, I can't deny the two ex-wives,” he said. “As for the actress—well, it all depends on whether you believe her version or mine. Have you been following my career, Meg McKettrick?”

Meg reddened.

“Tell him the truth,” Angus counseled. “You never forgot him.”

“No,” Meg said, addressing both Brad
and
Angus.

Brad looked unconvinced. He was probably just egotistical enough to think she logged onto his website regularly, bought all his CDs and read every tabloid article about him that she could get her hands on. Which she did, but that was
not
the point.

“You're still the best-looking woman I've ever laid eyes on,” he said. “That hasn't changed, anyhow.”

“I'm not a member of your fan club, O'Ballivan,” Meg informed him. “So hold the in sincere flattery, okay?”

One corner of his mouth tilted upward in a half grin, but his eyes were sad. He glanced back toward the truck,
then met Meg's gaze again. “I don't flatter anybody,” Brad said. Then he sighed. “I guess I'd better get back to Stone Creek.”

Some thing in his tone piqued Meg's interest.

Who was she kidding?

Everything
about him piqued her interest. As much as she didn't want that to be true, it was.

“I was sorry to hear about Big John's passing,” she said. She almost touched his arm, but managed to catch herself just short of it. If she laid a hand on Brad O'Ballivan, who knew what would happen?

“Thanks,” he replied.

A girl on roller skates wheeled out of the drive-in to collect the tray from the window edge of Brad's truck, her cheeks pink with care fully restrained excitement. “I might have said something to Heather and Darleen,” the teenager confessed, after a curious glance at Meg. “About you being who you are and the au to graph and everything.”

Brad muttered something.

The girl skated away.

“I've gotta go,” Brad told Meg, looking toward the drive-in. Numerous faces were pressed against the glass door; in another minute, there would probably be a stampede. “I don't suppose we could have dinner together or something? Maybe tomorrow night? There are—well, there are somethings I'd like to say to you.”

“Say yes,” Angus told her.

“I don't think that would be a good idea,” Meg said.

“A drink, then? There's a redneck bar in Stone Creek—”

“Don't be such a damned prig,” Angus protested, nudging her again.

“I'm not a prig.”

Brad frowned, threw another nervous look toward the
drive-in and all those grinning faces. “I never said you were,” he replied.

“I wasn't—” Meg paused, bit her lower lip.
I wasn't talking to you. No, siree, I was talking to Angus McKettrick's ghost.
“Okay,” she agreed, to cover her lapse. “I guess one drink couldn't do any harm.”

Brad climbed into his truck. The door of the drive-in crashed open, and the adoring hordes poured out, screaming with delight.

“Go!” Meg told him.

“Six o'clock tomorrow night,” Brad reminded her. He backed the truck out, made a narrow turn to avoid running over the approaching herd of admirers and peeled out of the lot.

Meg turned to the disappointed fans. “Brad O'Ballivan,” she said diplomatically, “has left the building.”

Nobody got the joke.

 

The sun was setting, red-gold shot through with purple, when Brad crested the last hill before home and looked down on Stone Creek Ranch for the first time since his grandfather's funeral. The creek coursed, silvery-blue, through the middle of the land. The barn and the main house, built by Sam O'Ballivan's own hands and shored up by every generation to follow, stood as sturdy and imposing as ever. Once, there had been two houses on the place, but the one belonging to Major John Black stone, the original land owner, had been torn down long ago. Now a copse of oak trees stood where the major had lived, surrounding a few old graves.

Big John was buried there, by special dispensation from the Arizona state government.

A lump formed in Brad's throat.
You see that I'm laid to
rest with the old-timers when the bell tolls,
Big John had told him once.
Not in that cemetery in town.

It had taken some doing, but Brad had made it happen.

He wanted to head straight for Big John's final resting place, pay his respects first thing, but there was a cluster of cars parked in front of the ranch house. His sisters were waiting to welcome him home.

Brad blinked a couple of times, rubbed his eyes with a thumb and fore finger, and headed for the house.

Time to face the proverbial music.

 

Meg drove slowly back to the Triple M, going the long way to pass the main ranch house, Angus's old stomping grounds, in the vain hope that he would decide to haunt it for a while, instead of her. A descendant of Angus's eldest son, Holt, and daughter-in-law Lorelei, Meg called their place home.

As they bumped across the creek bridge, Angus assessed the large log structure, added onto over the years, and well-maintained.

Though close, all the McKettricks were proud of their particular branch of the family tree. Keegan, who occupied the main house now, along with his wife, Molly, daughter, Devon, and young son, Lucas, could trace his lineage back to Kade, another of Angus's four sons.

Rance, along with his daughters, was Rafe's progeny. He and the girls and his bride, Emma, lived in the grandly rustic structure on the other side of the creek from Keegan's place.

Finally, there was Jesse. He was Jeb's descendant, and resided, when he wasn't off some where participating in a rodeo or a poker tournament, in the house Jeb had built for his wife, Chloe, high on a hill on the south western section of the ranch. Jesse was happily married to a hometown girl,
the former Cheyenne Bridges, and like Keegan's Molly and Rance's Emma, Cheyenne was expecting a baby.

Every body, it seemed to Meg, was expecting a baby.

Except her, of course.

She bit her lower lip.

“I bet if you got yourself pregnant by that singing cowboy,” Angus observed, “he'd have the decency to make an honest woman out of you.”

Angus had an uncanny ability to tap into Meg's wavelength; though he swore he couldn't read her mind, she wondered some times.

“Great idea,” she scoffed. “And for your information, I
am
an honest woman.”

Keegan was just coming out of the barn as Meg passed; he smiled and waved. She tooted the Blazer's horn in greeting.

“He sure looks like Kade,” Angus said. “Jesse looks like Jeb, and Rance looks like Rafe.” He sighed. “It sure makes me lonesome for my boys.”

Meg felt a grudging sympathy for Angus. He'd ruined a lot of dates, being an almost constant companion, but she loved him. “Why can't you be where they are?” she asked softly. “Wherever that is.”

“I've got to see to you,” he answered. “You're the last holdout.”

“I'd be all right, Angus,” she said. She'd asked him about the after life, but all he'd ever been willing to say was that there was no such thing as dying, just a change of perspective. Time wasn't linear, he claimed, but simultaneous. The “whole ball of string,” as he put it, was happening at once—past, present and future. Some of the experiences the women in her family, including herself and Sierra, had had up at Holt's house lent credence to the theory.

Sierra claimed that, before her marriage to Travis and
the subsequent move to the new semi-mansion in town, she and her young son, Liam, had shared the old house with a previous generation of McKettricks—Doss and Hannah and a little boy called Tobias. Sierra had offered journals and photograph albums as proof, and Meg had to admit, her half sister made a compelling case.

Still, and for all that she'd been keeping company with a benevolent ghost since she was little, Meg was a left-brain type.

When Angus didn't comment on her insistence that she'd get along fine if he went on to the great roundup in the sky, or whatever, Meg tried again. “Look,” she said gently, “when I was little, and Sierra disappeared, and Mom was so frantic to find her that she couldn't take care of me, I really needed you. But I'm a grown woman now, Angus. I'm independent. I have a life.”

Out of the corner of her eye, she saw Angus's jaw tighten. “That Hank Breslin,” he said, “was no good for Eve. No better than
your
father was. Every time the right man came along, she was so busy cozying up to the
wrong
one that she didn't even notice what was right in front of her.”

Hank Breslin was Sierra's father. He'd kidnapped Sierra, only two years old at the time, when Eve served him with divorce papers, and raised her in Mexico. For a variety of reasons, Eve hadn't reconnected with her lost daughter until recently. Meg's own father, about whom she knew little, had died in an accident a month before she was born. Nobody liked to talk about him—even his name was a mystery.

“And you think I'll make the same mistakes my mother did?” Meg said.

“Hell,” Angus said, sparing her a reluctant grin, “right now, even a
mistake
would be progress.”

“With all due respect,” Meg replied, “having you around all the time is not exactly conducive to romance.”

They started the long climb uphill, headed for the house that now belonged to her and Sierra. Meg had always loved that house—it had been a refuge for her, full of cousins. Looking back, she wondered why, given that Eve had rarely accompanied her on those summer visits, had instead left her daughter in the care of a succession of nannies and, later, aunts and uncles.

Sierra's kidnapping had been a traumatic event, for certain, but the problems Eve had subsequently developed because of it had left Meg relatively unmarked. She hadn't been lonely as a child, mainly because of Angus.

“I'll stay clear tomorrow night, when you go to Stone Creek for that drink,” Angus said.

“You like Brad.”

“Always did. Liked Travis, too. 'Course, I knew he was meant for your sister, that they'd meet up in time.”

Meg and Sierra's husband, Travis, were old friends. They'd tried to get something going, convinced they were perfect for each other, but it hadn't worked. Now that Travis and Sierra were together, and ecstatically happy, Meg was glad.

“Don't get your hopes up,” she said. “About Brad and me, I mean.”

Angus didn't reply. He appeared to be deep in thought. Or maybe as he looked out at the surrounding country side, he was remembering his youth, when he'd staked a claim to this land and held it with blood and sweat and sheer McKettrick stubbornness.

“You must have known the O'Ballivans,” Meg reflected, musing. Like her own family, Brad's had been pioneers in this part of Arizona.

“I was older than dirt by the time Sam O'Ballivan brought his bride, Maddie, up from Haven. Might have seen them once or twice. But I knew Major Black stone, all right.”
Angus smiled at some memory. “He and I used to arm wrestle some times, in the card room back of Jolene Bell's Saloon, when we couldn't best each other at poker.”

“Who won?” Meg asked, smiling slightly at the image.

“Same as the poker,” Angus answered with a sigh. “We'd always come out about even. He'd win half the time, me the other half.”

The house came in sight, the barn towering nearby. Angus's expression took on a wistful aspect.

“When you're here,” Meg ventured, “can you see Doss and Hannah and Tobias? Talk to them?”

“No,” Angus said flatly.

“Why not?” Meg persisted, even though she knew Angus didn't want to pursue the subject.

“Because they're not dead,” he said. “They're just on the other side, like my boys.”