McKettrick's Heart (30 page)

Molly longed to slide her arms around his waist, lay her cheek against his chest, but she couldn't, because the force field was still firmly in place. “It will, you know,” she told him. “Get easier, I mean.”

Keegan looked unconvinced, even skeptical, as without another word he turned and headed for the stairs.

 

“D
EV
?”

She'd upended one of Molly's boxes, and there were shoes all over the bedroom floor. The pair on her feet were black, with pink polka dots and fussy little bows and very high heels. “Molly said it was okay,” she told him as he scanned the wreckage.

He stepped into the room, leaving the door open. “I know, honey,” he said. Sat down in a rocking chair so old that Angus's second wife, Georgia, had nursed her babies, Rafe, Kade and Jeb, there. He'd been rocked in that chair himself as an infant, and so had generations of other McKettricks, from way back until now.

Devon stood absolutely still, her small shoulders straight, braced, because she knew he was about to lay some unbearable burden on them. “I have to go to Paris, don't I?” she asked.

“No,” Keegan said.

“Then what?”

“Sit down, Dev.”

She hesitated, then plopped down on the edge of the neatly made bed. Folded her hands in her lap.

“Your mom and I have been—negotiating the past couple of days. She's agreed to let you live here, with me, for good.”

Devon's eyes lit up, then dimmed with sudden uncertainty. “That's great—isn't it? Maybe with Molly and Lucas here, it will be too crowded—”

“Dev,” Keegan interrupted, “if this house was one-tenth the size it is, there would still be room for you. It's not that.”

“What, then?”

Keegan closed his eyes for a long moment. What if he was making a mistake? Maybe there was no need to tell Devon she wasn't his child. Shelley might be satisfied with the money, and too busy settling into her Parisian apartment with the boyfriend to stir up trouble stateside.

Maybe, hell. Shelley
lived
to stir up trouble, and she didn't give a damn who got hurt in the process. As her daughter, Devon should have been exempt, but Keegan knew she wasn't. And
Shelley
knew that the best—the only—way to get to him was to hurt Devon.

“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.”

 

M
OLLY 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.

“Molly?”

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.