McKettrick's Luck (8 page)

Cheyenne bit down on her lower lip. “Sure,” she said, with an attempt at humor. “There must be at least one company looking to drive wildlife out of its natural habitat and decimate the tree population. Why was I worried?”

Maybe, answered her practical side, because she'd sold her car and sublet her apartment. Once Nigel pulled the company credit cards and she'd turned in the rental, she'd either have to drive her mother's van or hope her old bike was still stashed in the garage behind the house.

“You must have done well, Cheyenne. Why are you in such a pinch?”

“What makes you think I'm in a pinch?”
How the hell do you know these things? Are you some kind of cowboy psychic?

“I can see it in your eyes. Come on. What's the deal? Maybe I can help.”

She bristled at that. “If you want to help, Jesse, sell me the land. I'm not soliciting donations here. I'm offering you the kind of money most people couldn't even dream of laying their hands on.”

“Take it easy,” Jesse counseled. “I didn't mean to step on your pride. We went to school together, and that makes us old friends. I just want to know what's going on.”

She
would not
cry. “Medical bills,” she said.

“From your brother's accident.”

“Yes.”

“Wasn't there insurance?”

“No. My mother worked as a waitress.”
She isn't a socialite, ordering tables inlaid with turquoise.
“My stepfather was a day laborer when he worked at all, which wasn't often. He was more interested in trying to get some kind of disability check out of the government so he could play pool all day. In fact, if he'd worked half as hard at a real job as he did at getting on the dole, he might have accomplished something.”

“So it all fell on you? You weren't legally responsible, Cheyenne. Why take on something like that?”

“Mitch is my brother,” she said. For her, that was reason enough. The hospitals and doctors had written off a lot of the initial costs, and Mitch received a stipend from Social Security. At nineteen, he was on Medicare. But the gap between the things they wouldn't pay for and the things he needed was wide. “He can survive on his benefits. I want him to do
more
than survive—I want him to have a life.”

“Enough to sacrifice your own?”

Cheyenne was silent for a long time. “I didn't think it was going to be this hard,” she finally admitted, to herself as well as Jesse. “I thought there would be an end to it. That Mitch would walk again. That everything would be normal.”

I wish I could have a job and a girlfriend,
she heard her brother telling her the night before in his room.
I wish I could ride a horse.

“And my selling you five hundred acres of good land would change any of that? Make things ‘normal' again?”

Cheyenne sighed, swallowed more water, pushed back her chair to stand. Plan A was down the swirler; best get cracking with plan B. Whatever the hell
that
was. “No,” she said. “No, it wouldn't.”

She returned to the bathroom then, changed clothes, brought the jeans, boots and flannel shirt back to Jesse.

“I'm sorry,” he said.

She believed him—that was the crazy thing. “Thanks for the ride,” she told him.

He opened the kitchen door for her, walked her to the car.

“Friends?” he asked, once she was behind the wheel.

“Friends,” she said, starting the engine.

“Then maybe you'd do me a favor,” Jesse pressed.

She frowned up at him, puzzled. What kind of favor could she possibly do for him?

“There's a party Saturday night, sort of a prewedding thing my cousin Sierra and her fiancé are throwing. Barbecue, a hayride, that kind of thing. I need a date.”

If there was one thing Jesse McKettrick didn't lack for, besides money, it was available women. “Why me?” she asked.

“Because I like you. Your mom and Mitch can come, too. It'll be a good way for them to get reacquainted with the locals.”

On her own, Cheyenne would certainly have refused the invitation, but she knew Ayanna and Mitch were lonely in Indian Rock. They needed to be a part of the community. “Transportation's a hassle, with Mitch's chair—”

“I'll handle it, Cheyenne,” Jesse said. “Saturday night. Six o'clock.” He grinned. “Get yourself some jeans.”

Cheyenne tried to recall the last time she'd done anything just for the fun of it, and couldn't come up with a single instance. Yes, she did a lot of upscale socializing because of her job, but that was business. “Okay,” she said. “Six o'clock.”

Jesse waved as she drove out, and she was actually feeling cheerful—until she reached the main road, leading into Indian Rock. Two things happened to snap her back to reality—her cell phone jangled and she remembered where she lived. When Jesse came to pick her and Mitch and her mother up that weekend, he'd see the waist-high weeds in the yard, the rusted wire, the old tires.

“Hello, Nigel,” she snapped into the phone.

“You don't sound very happy, Cheyenne,” Nigel said, sounding aggrieved.

“Jesse showed me the land. I showed him the blueprints. He refused to even consider selling, in no uncertain terms.”

“You can change his mind,” Nigel insisted.

“You've obviously never met a McKettrick,” Cheyenne retorted. Suddenly, she felt sick and pulled onto the side of the road, thinking she might have to shove open the door in midconversation and throw up.

“He's an old flame, isn't he?”

“We went to the movies twice, Nigel. I was still in high school. That hardly qualifies as a flicker, let alone a flame.”

“Maybe if you slept with him—”

Cheyenne went rigid. Actually considered pitching the phone out the window, into the brush alongside the road. Would have, if she hadn't known Nigel would deduct the cost of it from her last paycheck. “I can't
believe
you just said that!”

“Come on, Cheyenne. Deals are made that way all the time.”

“Not by me they aren't!”

“You spent a week in Aspen with Dr. What's-His-Name, just last year, and came back with three hundred thousand dollars to invest.”

Cheyenne's blood simmered in her veins. Forget the Native American drum song—this was a war dance. “His
wife
was there, too. You didn't actually think—?”

“Of course I did,” Nigel said. “You've got a killer body and a fabulous face. How
else
could you have persuaded so many smart businessmen to write fat checks to Meerland Ventures?”

“Maybe because I have a brain?”

A pause ensued. Then Nigel went for a save. “Cheyenne, be reasonable. It was only natural to assume—”

“You smarmy son of a bitch!”

“Cheyenne—”

She rolled down the window, flung the phone out and, after checking her trajectory in the side mirror, ran over it before pulling onto the road again, back tires spitting gravel and probably squashed circuitry.

The drive home was an angry blur.

When she arrived, her mother stepped out onto the front porch, looking concerned.

“Nigel called,” Ayanna said gravely, carefully descending the steps to approach. “I swear the phone hadn't been hooked up for five minutes when it rang—”

“Screw Nigel,” Cheyenne said, staring straight through the windshield instead of looking up into her mother's face.

“I take it things didn't go well with Jesse?”

Cheyenne got out of the car, forcing Ayanna to step back quickly, and slammed the door hard behind her. “Things went
fine
with Jesse—if you don't count the fact that he'd probably rather die than sell that land to me or anybody else.”

“Cheyenne.” Ayanna touched her arm. “Oh, honey.”

“I'm all right, Mom.”

Ayanna studied her. Smiled tentatively. “I got a job today,” she said. “Bagging groceries at the market. If I do well, I can move up to checker. That's
union,
Cheyenne. I'd have health insurance and vacation time.”

Cheyenne wanted to cry. Her mother wasn't old by any means, but she was past the point where she should have been on her feet all day, stuffing cans and boxes into bags, schlepping them to people's cars and rounding up carts from all corners of the lot.

“Well,” she said, “at least
one
of us is gainfully employed.”

 

A
FTER
C
HEYENNE DROVE AWAY
, it was all Jesse could do to go back into that house. It was too damn big, and too damn lonely.

He brushed down the horses, made sure they had enough water and feed to get them through until morning, and headed for Indian Rock.

He intended to play a few hands of poker at Lucky's. Instead, he found himself swinging into the lot at McKettrickCo, parking his dusty truck beside Keegan's sleek, shiny black Jag.

Myrna Terp, the receptionist, greeted him with a delighted smile. “You're a day late for the big meeting,” she said.

Jesse doffed his hat. “I'm here to see my cousin,” he said. “And to flirt with you, of course.”

Myrna laughed. Her son Virgil was a good friend of Jesse's, going back to playground days. Something of a western history buff, Myrna had three other sons—Frank, Morgan and Wyatt.

Frank, Morgan and Virgil took their family name in stride, but Wyatt called himself John these days. Jesse didn't blame him. It couldn't be easy going through life answering to a handle like Wyatt Terp.

“I'll give Keegan a buzz,” Myrna said, “but I warn you, he's been a bear all day.”

Jesse didn't wait for the buzz. He started down the hall and was just about to open Keegan's fancy office door when it swung inward and his cousin filled the gap.

“What?” Keegan demanded.

“Hello to you, too,” Jesse replied affably, twirling his hat in his hands.

Keegan sighed, stepped back to let him pass.

“What's going on?” Jesse asked. It had been a long time since he and Keegan had confided in each other, but old habits died hard. So did old hopes.

“I've been on the phone with Shelley's lawyer for the last two hours,” Keegan said. “She's getting married again, and they want to take Devon to Europe.”

“She'd probably enjoy a trip like that. Devon, I mean.”

“Permanently,” Keegan specified.

“Ouch,” Jesse said. He had an impulse to lay a hand on Keegan's shoulder, as he would have done way back when, but he stopped himself. “Shelley can't actually do that, can she? Take the kid out of the country against your wishes?”

“With the divorce settlement I paid her, she could do just about anything. It's not that hard to disappear, Jesse—look what happened when Sierra was little.”

When Eve McKettrick, Sierra's mother, had divorced her loser husband, he'd snatched the child and taken her to live in central Mexico. Although Eve had eventually found her daughter, a lot of complicated circumstances had kept her from reclaiming Sierra. They hadn't been reunited until just a few months ago, and while they were on good terms, the two women were still essentially strangers to each other.

“What are you going to do?” Jesse asked.

Keegan thrust a hand through his hair. “I don't know,” he said.

“Let's just go up to Flagstaff and get Devon, right now. Bring her home to the Triple M.”

Keegan gestured wearily toward a chair, and Jesse dropped into it.

“This isn't a John Wayne movie, Jesse,” Keegan said as he closed the office door. “Shelley's Devon's mother. She has rights. Besides, I don't want to scare my daughter by making a big deal out of this. She's only nine years old, and this whole thing is tough enough for her already.”

Jesse felt helpless, and he hated that. “It might turn into a
hell
of a big deal, all on its own, if you don't do something.”

Keegan collapsed into his own chair behind that gleaming one-acre desk of his. Said nothing.

“Sorry I missed that meeting yesterday,” Jesse said. He wasn't remorseful, and Keegan knew it, but maybe he'd appreciate the gesture anyhow.

Keegan grinned, but he looked tired and a little cornered. “What brings you here, Jess?” he asked.

“I thought maybe we could have a beer together.”

“Try again.”

“I know somebody who needs a job.”

“So do I.
You.
”