Linda Lael - McKettrick's Heart

His jaw clamped as he rounded the back of the wagon to confront Thayer Ryan’s mistress.

“What the hell are you doing here?” he growled. He couldn’t recall her name, but he remembered running into her at a swanky restaurant up in Flag one night. She’d been sitting with Ryan, that scumball, at a secluded table, clad in a slinky black cocktail dress and dripping diamonds—gifts, no doubt, from her married lover, and almost certainly charged to Psyche, since Ryan had never had a pot to piss in.

The woman flinched, startled. A pink flush glowed on her cheekbones, and her green eyes flickered with affronted guilt. Still, her gaze was steady, and more defiant than ashamed.

“Keegan McKettrick,” she said. Then she tried to go around him.

He blocked her way. “You have a good memory for names,” he told her. “Yours slips my mind.”

Florence, meanwhile, opened the back of the station wagon, presumably to stow the bags. “I’m not doing this all by myself,” she said.

Keegan remembered his manners—at least partially—and waved Florence back from the luggage. “There’s another bus tonight,” he told the woman whose face and body he recalled so well.

“Molly Shields,” she said, and raised her chin a notch to let him know she wasn’t intimidated. “And I’m not going anywhere. Kindly get out of my way, Mr. McKettrick.”

Keegan leaned in a little. Ms. Shields was a head shorter than he was, and he must have outweighed her by fifty pounds, but she didn’t shrink back, and he had to accord her a certain grudging respect for that. “Psyche’s sick,” he said in a grinding undertone. “Just about the last thing she needs is a visit from her dead husband’s girlfriend.”

The flush deepened, but the spring-green eyes flashed with swift defiance. “Step aside,” she said.

Keegan was still getting over the brass-balls audacity of her attitude when Florence interceded, poking at him with a finger.

“Keegan McKettrick,” the old woman said, “either make yourself useful and load up those bags, or be on your way. And if you can take time out of your busy schedule, you might stop by the house one of these days soon and say hello to Psyche. She’d like to see you.”

Keegan deliberately softened his expression. “How is she?” he asked.

Molly Shields took the opportunity to slip around him, grab one of the suitcases.

“She’s bad sick,” Florence answered, and tears glistened in her eyes. “She invited Molly here, and I’m not any happier about it than you are, but she must have a good reason. And I’d appreciate some cooperation on your part.”

Keegan was both confounded and chagrined. He nodded to Florence, lifted two of the five suitcases by their fancy handles and hurled them unceremoniously into the back of the station wagon, doing his best to ignore Molly Shields, who sidestepped him.

“You tell Psyche,” he said to Florence, “that I’ll be by as soon as she feels up to company.”

“She usually holds up pretty well until around two in the afternoon,” Florence replied. “You come over tomorrow, around noon, and I’ll set out a nice lunch for the two of you, on the sunporch.”

Keegan didn’t miss the phrase “for the two of you” and neither, he saw from the corner of his eye, did Molly, who was wrestling with the largest of the bags. “That sounds fine,” he said, and jerked the handle from Molly’s grasp to throw the suitcase in with the others.

She glared at him.

He went right on ignoring her.

“I’d best pick up some bread and milk while we’re here,” Florence said, addressing Molly this time. With that, she disappeared into the convenience store.

“Does Psyche know you were boinking her husband?” Keegan asked in a furious whisper the moment he and Molly were alone.

Molly gasped.

“Does she know?” Keegan repeated fiercely.

She bit her lower lip. “Yes,” she said very quietly, when he’d just about given up on getting an answer.

“If you’re trying to pull some kind of scam—”

Molly’s shoulders had been stooped a moment before. Now she rallied and looked as though she might be about to slap him. “You heard Mrs. Washington,” she said. “Psyche asked me to come.”

“Not without a lot of setting up on your part, I’ll bet,” Keegan retorted. “What the hell are you up to?”

“I’m not ‘up to’ anything,” Molly answered after an obvious struggle to retain her composure, such as it was. “I’m here because Psyche…needs my help.”

“Psyche,” Keegan rasped, leaning in again until his nose was almost touching Molly’s, “needs her friends. She needs to be home, in the house where she grew up. What she does not need, Ms. Shields, is you. Whatever you’re trying to pull, you’d better rethink it. Psyche’s too weak to fight back, but I assure you, I’m not!”

“Is that a threat?” Molly countered, narrowing her marvelous eyes.

“Yes,” Keegan retorted, “and not an idle one.”

Florence returned with the bread and milk, went around to the other side of the car and put the groceries in the backseat. “If you two are through arguing,” she said, “I’d like to get back to Psyche.”

Keegan sighed.

Molly gave him one last viperous look and got in on the passenger side.

Keegan spoke to Florence over the roof of the ancient station wagon. “I’ll be there at noon tomorrow,” he said. “Should I bring anything?”

He’d be bringing plenty, counting the questions he wanted to ask Psyche.

At last Florence smiled. “Just yourself,” she answered. “My girl will be mighty glad to see that handsome mug of yours.”

Keegan might have grinned if he hadn’t been mad enough to bite the top off one of the propane tanks and spit it to the other side of the road. “See you then,” he said.

He stood watching as Florence fired up the wagon, popped it into gear and zoomed out onto the street.

“I’ll be goddamned,” he muttered.

Five minutes later, well down the road back to the Triple M ranch, where members of the McKettrick clan had lived for a century and a half, he punched a digit on his cell phone.

He got his cousin Rance’s voice mail and cursed while he listened to the spiel. He’d undergone a transformation recently, Rance had, since he’d taken up with Emma Wells, who ran the local bookstore. Given up his high-powered job at McKettrickCo, the family conglomeration, and started ranching in earnest.

The beep sounded. “That bitch Thayer Ryan was screwing around with is in town,” he snapped, without preamble, “and guess where she’s staying? Psyche’s place.”

With that, he thumbed End and put a call through to Jesse, his other cousin. Jesse, who had a type-Z personality, was even harder to reach than Rance, since he refused to carry a cell phone. This time, Keegan didn’t even get voice mail.

He was about to backtrack to town, figuring he’d find Jesse in the poker room behind Lucky’s Bar and Grill, fleecing unsuspecting Texas hold ’em devotees of their hard-earned money, when he remembered that Jesse and his new bride, Cheyenne, were still away on their honeymoon.

A lonely feeling swept over Keegan, one he was glad no one was around to see. Jesse was in love with Cheyenne, Rance with Emma.

And he was alone.

His own marriage hadn’t worked out, and his daughter, Devon, living in Flagstaff with her mother, visited only occasionally. Going back to the big house on the ranch was the last thing he wanted to do, but he couldn’t face returning to the office, either.

A lot of the family members were agitating to take McKettrickCo public, and fight though he did, Keegan was outnumbered. He could already feel the company, the only thing that kept him sane, slipping away.