Linda Miller - McKettrick's Luck

Don’t let me love that land too much, she prayed.

Jesse slowed his horse with no discernible pull on the reins. Reached over to take hold of Pardner’s bridle strap with one hand and bring him back to a sedate walk. “Do you ever wish you could do anything else?” he asked.

The question confused Cheyenne at first because she was concentrating on two things: not falling off the horse, and not throwing away everything she’d worked for because she liked the scenery. Then she realized Jesse was asking whether or not she liked her job.

“It’s a challenge,” she allowed carefully. “Very rewarding at times, and very frustrating at others. Our last development was geared to the mid-income crowd, and it was nice to know younger families would be moving in, raising kids there.”

Nigel had lost his shirt on that development, but Jesse didn’t need to know that. Naturally, the investors hadn’t been pleased, which was why Cheyenne’s boss was so desperate to secure the prime acres she was about to see in person for the first time.

She’d offered to buy one of the condos in the batch Nigel had privately called El Fiasco, for Ayanna and Mitch to live in. The price had been right—next to nothing, since they’d practically been giving the places away by the time the project had limped to a halt. Ayanna had toured the demo condo, thanked Cheyenne for the thought, and had graciously refused, saying she’d rather live in a tepee.

The refusal still stung. This from a woman who subsists in public housing, she thought. A place where the Dumpsters overflow and the outside walls are covered with graffiti.

“Where was this development?” Jesse asked.

“Outside of Phoenix,” Cheyenne answered. They were riding up a steep incline now. Then, before he could ask, she added, “You wouldn’t have heard of it.”

“What was it called?”

She wet her lips and avoided his eyes. There was another gate up ahead, and beyond it, trees. Magnificent pines, their tips fiercely green against the soft sky. “Casa de Meerland,” she said.

“Catchy name,” Jesse said dryly. “I read about that in the Republic.”

Great, Cheyenne thought. He knew about the delays, the lawsuits, the unsold units, the angry investors. “As I told you last night,” she said, carefully cheerful, “we’re prepared to pay cash. You needn’t worry about the company’s reputation—we’re rock solid.”

“Your company’s reputation is just about the last thing I’d ever worry about,” Jesse said. “Mowing down old-growth timber and covering the meadows with concrete—now, that’s another matter.”

Cheyenne tensed. She knew her smile looked as fixed as it felt, hanging there on her face like an old window shutter clinging to a casing by one rusted hinge. “We have a deal,” she said. “I’ll look at the land, and you’ll give the blueprints a chance. I sincerely hope you’re not about to renege on your end of it.”

“I never go back on my word,” Jesse told her.

Cheyenne held her tongue. If he never went back on his word, it was probably only because he so rarely gave it in the first place.

“What do you do when you’re not pillaging the environment?” he asked. They were approaching a second gate, held shut by another loop of wire.

She glared at him.

He laughed.

“I don’t have time for hobbies,” she said. Wearing Jesse’s mother’s jeans and boots reminded her of the woman she’d seen only from a distance, around Indian Rock, always dressed in custom-made suits or slacks and a blazer. Evidently, there was another, earthier side to Callie McKettrick.

“I could give you riding lessons.”

“Thanks, but no thanks,” she answered, a little too quickly and a little too tightly.

“Suppose I completely lost my head and agreed to sell you this land. Would you be in town for a while afterward?”

The question shook Cheyenne, though she thought she did a pretty good job of hiding her reaction. Was there a glimmer of hope that he’d agree to the deal? And what did he want her to say? That she’d be gone before the ink was dry on the contract, or that she’d stay on indefinitely?

In the end, it didn’t matter what he wanted. The truth was the truth, and while Cheyenne liked to dole it out in measured doses, she was a lousy liar. “I’d be here for six months to a year, overseeing the construction end and setting up a sales office.”

They’d reached the upper gate, and again, Jesse leaned to open it. She couldn’t get a clear look at his face, but she sensed something new in his manner—a sort of quiet conflict. He’d been so clear about his intention to hold on to the land. Was he relenting?

She felt a peculiar mixture of hope and disappointment.

“I guess you could rent that empty storefront next to Cora’s Curl and Twirl,” he said as she rode through the opening. “For a sales office, I mean.”

Cheyenne’s heart fluttered its wings, then settled onto its roost again, afraid to fly. “I remember the Curl and Twirl,” she said. The balance was delicate, and she knew an ill-chosen word could tip things in the wrong direction. “Cora’s still cutting hair and teaching little girls to twirl batons?”

Jesse grinned at her before riding slowly back to close the gate again. “Not much changes in Indian Rock,” he observed. “Did you ever take lessons from Cora?”

Something spiky lodged in Cheyenne’s throat. God, she’d longed for a pink tutu and a baton with sparkly fringe on each end, longed to be one of those fortunate kids, spilling out of station wagons and pickup trucks, rushing into the Curl and Twirl for a Saturday-morning session. But there had never been enough money—Cash Bridges had needed every cent the family could scrape together to drink, play cards and bail his cronies out of jail. After all, Cheyenne remembered hearing him tell Ayanna gravely, they’d do the same for him.

“No,” Cheyenne said flatly. She tried for a lighter note because she didn’t want to talk about her father or any other part of her past. “Did you?”

Jesse chuckled. “Nope,” he answered. “But my sisters went for it in a big way.”

Ah, yes, Cheyenne thought. The McKettrick sisters. They’d been grown and gone by the time she’d got out of kindergarten, Sarah and Victoria had, but their legend lingered on. Always the most beautiful, always the most popular, always the best-dressed. They’d been cheerleaders and prom queens, as well as honor students and class presidents. One had married a movie executive, the other a CEO.

Some people were born under a lucky star.

She’d been born under a dark cloud instead.

“There’s the trail,” Jesse told her, indicating a narrow, stony path that seemed to go straight up. “Follow me, and lean forward in the saddle when it gets steep.”

When it gets steep? Cheyenne swallowed hard and lifted her chin a notch or two. As for the following, the horse did that part. She concentrated on staying in the saddle and avoiding the backlash of tree branches as Jesse forged ahead.

She was sweating when they finally reached the top and Pardner stepped up beside Jesse’s horse. What was its name? Something Greek and mythological.

The land spilled away from the ridge, and nothing could have prepared her for the sight of it. Trees by the thousands. Sun-kissed meadows where deer grazed. A twisting creek, gleaming like a tassel pulled from the end of one of the batons at Cora’s Curl and Twirl.

Tears sprang to Cheyenne’s eyes, and that drumbeat started up again, in her very blood, thrumming through her veins.

Jesse swung a leg over the gelding’s neck and landed deftly on his feet. He wound the reins loosely around the saddle horn.

“I told you it would take your breath away,” he said quietly.