Linda Miller - McKettrick's Pride

Both Jesse and Keegan looked at him with interest, Keegan frowning, Jesse smiling a little.

“I like my women a little broad in the beam,” Jesse said.

“Oh, right,” Keegan countered irritably. Somebody had sure pissed on his parade that morning. It pleased Rance to think it might have been him. “Like Cheyenne. The woman has a body that won’t quit.”

The engines revved, and the jet taxied down the strip, picking up speed.

Jesse grinned. “Eat your heart out,” he said.

“You do need a woman,” Rance told Keegan. “A little nookie might mellow you out.”

Keegan glowered. “The kind you’re getting?” he retorted.

“Boys, boys,” Jesse put in, grinning that Jesse-grin that often made Rance want to put a fist down his throat, “you’ve both got perpetual hard-ons. That’s your problem.”

Both Rance and Keegan glared at Jesse.

He laughed.

“I do not have a hard-on,” Keegan said.

“Not where it shows,” Jesse countered.

Rance’s thoughts strayed back to Echo, and he started imagining what might be under that soft, almost see-through dress of hers.

He shifted in the seat and crossed his legs.

“This meeting had better be good,” he said, desperate to change the subject, along with his developing thought trend. “I’m missing Rianna’s birthday for it.”

“Tell me you remembered to get her a present,” Jesse said. He looked serious now, and Rance recalled what Cora had said, about how Jesse paid more attention to the girls than he did, and it rankled.

“Of course I did,” he lied. He’d call Myrna Terp, back in the Indian Rock office, first chance he got, and ask her to order something, have it delivered in time for the party at Sierra and Travis’s place, out on the ranch. A pony, maybe. Or one of those kid-size cars that ran on a battery pack.

Preferably pink.

He felt better, and unaccountably disturbed.

He’d never bought anything pink in his life.

“How’s Devon?” Jesse asked, turning to Keegan. Devon was Keegan’s ten-year-old daughter, and since the divorce, he didn’t see much of her. She lived in Flagstaff, with the ex, who was threatening to move to Europe with a boyfriend and take the kid with her.

Rance ached a little, thinking what that would be like.

Keegan let out a long sigh, and his broad shoulders, a McKettrick family trait, seemed to sag a little. He shoved a hand through his chestnut-colored hair and gazed down at the tastefully carpeted floor of the jet.

“Travis is picking her up Saturday afternoon, so she can go to Rianna’s party,” Keegan answered, and when he looked up, his face was glum. Travis, now their cousin Sierra’s husband, was a lawyer for McKettrickCo and a childhood friend to all of them, though he was closest to Jesse. “Do you ever wonder if it’s worth it, missing all the stuff we do?” Keegan asked.

“Duh,” Jesse said. He’d never held down a real job in his life. He was a trust fund baby, like the rest of the McKettrick men, and up until he’d run into Cheyenne Bridges again, he’d spent most of his time playing Texas Hold ’Em, chasing women and riding horses. Keegan and Rance had worked since they graduated from college, because it seemed like the right and responsible thing to do. Still, Rance sometimes wondered if Jesse didn’t have the best of it, and he suspected that Keegan asked himself the same question he’d just voiced, in the dark hours of a lonely night.

“Cora gave me hell for leaving,” Rance admitted. “There’s Rianna’s birthday, and Maeve was supposed to get braces put on her teeth on Monday morning.” He paused, shook his head. “I can see why missing the party is a problem, but I’ll be damned if I understand why I ought to be in the orthodontist’s office instead of my own.”

Jesse shook his head. “Because,” he said, “kids are scared of dentists.”

“Maeve isn’t scared of anything,” Rance replied, with some pride.

“That’s what you think,” Jesse said.

Rance studied him, alarmed. “Is there something going on with my daughter that I ought to know about?” he asked, putting a slight emphasis on the words my daughter.

“Why don’t you ask her?” Jesse replied.

“Listen, if she told you something was troubling her, I want to know about it.”

“Do you?” Jesse asked.

“Hell, yes, I do!”

Jesse relented. “You missed her recital. Everybody else’s dad was there—except you.”

“I’ve watched that kid twirl batons for hours on end,” Rance protested. “That’s about all she ever does.”

“Not the same,” Jesse argued coolly. “She had a special outfit for the shindig, and she won a ribbon. She wanted you there, Rance.”

“Well, you were obviously there,” Rance growled.

Jesse nodded, showing no signs of backing down. “Cheyenne and I both went. Took her and Rianna to the Roadhouse afterward, for ice cream. Do you know what the worst part was, Rance? Watching that kid try to pretend it didn’t matter that you couldn’t be bothered to show up.”

The pressurized air seemed to crackle.

“Hold it, both of you,” Keegan said.

“I don’t need some poker-playing, bronc-riding womanizer telling me how to raise my daughter,” Rance bit out.

“You sure as hell need somebody,” Jesse replied, “because you’re not getting it on your own.”

“Enough,” Keegan insisted. “We’re on a jet, not out behind the barn.”

Rance sighed angrily and thrust himself back in his seat.

Jesse turned to look out the window again.

They were landing outside San Antonio before anybody said another word.

ON SATURDAY MORNING, three days after her daddy had left town with her uncles, Keegan and Jesse, Rianna McKettrick opened her eyes and lay very still in her twin-size canopy bed at Granny’s place on Zane Gray Road.

In the bed across from hers, Maeve went on sleeping, breathing softly.

“I’m seven,” Rianna wanted to say, right out loud. “Last night, when I went to bed, I was only six. Now, this morning, I’m seven.”

It seemed a wonderful thing, a thing people ought to be told.

She knew Maeve would just roll her eyes and look at her like she was stupid. It made Rianna sad. The bigger Maeve got, the less she seemed to like her little sister, and try though she might, Rianna couldn’t catch up.

It took some of the fun out of being seven.

With a sigh, she sat up, tossed back her covers and slid out of bed. She padded into the bathroom she and Maeve shared when they were at Granny’s, which was just about all the time. She’d heard her daddy say that they all ought to stay out at the ranch house, but Granny didn’t like to be that far from the Curl and Twirl.

Granny was a businesswoman. She had things to do.

All grown-up people did, it seemed to Rianna. All the time.

She washed her hands and headed for the stairs.

Granny would be down there in the kitchen, listening to the radio and waiting for the coffee to brew. Rianna could smell the familiar aroma already, and that made her sad, too. It reminded her of her daddy. The first thing he did, every morning when they were at home on the ranch, was make coffee.

Last night, after Granny had tucked her and Maeve in, listened to their prayers and left the room, Rianna had whispered to her sister that she thought Daddy might come to the party, after all. He had that jet to travel in, didn’t he?

“Forget it,” Maeve had said. “He won’t be there. He’s busy.”

Remembering, Rianna paused on the stairway, doing her McKettrick-best not to cry. She wished she had a mommy, like the other kids at school.

She thought of Echo—Miss Wells, Granny said to call her—with her sparkly smile and pretty hair. It would be a fine thing to have a mother like Miss Wells, driving a pink Barbie car, pulling up in front of the elementary school and waiting to see Rianna and Maeve come out the door. Taping their drawings and arithmetic papers to the front of the fridge.