Linda Miller - McKettrick's Luck

Mitch smiled sadly, turned away again and brought the war game back up on his computer screen. Blip-blip-kabang.

Cheyenne sat helplessly on the bed for a few moments, then got to her feet, laid a hand briefly on her brother’s shoulder, and left the room, closing the door behind her.

THE HEADLIGHTS OF JESSE’S truck swept across the old log schoolhouse his great-great-great grandfather, Jeb McKettrick, had built for his teacher bride, Chloe. Jesse’s sisters had used the place as a playhouse when they were kids, and Jesse, being a decade younger, had made a fort of it. Now, on the rare occasions when his parents came back to the ranch, it served as an office.

He pulled up beside the barn, and the motion lights came on.

Inside, he checked on the horses, six of them altogether, though the number varied. They’d been fed and turned out for some exercise that morning, before he’d left for town, but he added flakes of dried Bermuda grass to their feeders now just the same, to make up for being gone so long.

They were forgiving, like always, and grateful for the attention he gave them.

He took the time to groom them, one by one, but eventually, there was nothing to do but face that empty house.

It was big; generations of McKettricks had added on to it—a room here, a story there. Now that his folks spent the majority of their time in Palm Beach, playing golf and socializing, and Victoria and Sarah were busy jet-setting with their wealthy husbands, Jesse was the unofficial owner.

He entered through the kitchen door, switched on the lights.

The house his cousins, Meg and Sierra, owned was reportedly haunted. Jesse often wished this one was, too, because at least then he wouldn’t have been alone.

He went to the walk-in Sub-Zero, took out a beer and popped the top. What he ought to do was get a dog, but he was gone too much. It wouldn’t be fair to consign some poor unsuspecting mutt to a lonely life, just so he could come home to somebody who’d always be happy to see him.

“You’re losing it, McKettrick,” he said aloud.

He thought about Cheyenne—had been thinking about her, on one level or another, ever since they’d parted in the Roadhouse parking lot.

Thought about her long legs and her expressive eyes, and the fullness of her mouth. She was good-looking, all right, and smart, too.

He wondered how far she’d go to persuade him to sell that five hundred acres she wanted.

The phone rang, nearly startling him out of his hide.

He scowled, set down his beer and picked up the receiver. “Yo,” he said. “This is Jesse.”

“Yo, yourself,” Sierra replied. She was set to marry Travis Reid, one of his closest friends, in a month. Jesse would be best man at the ceremony, and until tonight, when he’d run into Cheyenne, he’d wished Sierra wasn’t a blood relative so he could at least fantasize about taking her away from Travis.

“What’s up?” he asked and grinned. Most likely, if anything was up, it was Travis. The man had been at full mast ever since he’d first laid eyes on Sierra one day last winter.

“We’re having a prewedding party,” Sierra said. “Saturday night. Live music. A hayride and a barbecue. The whole works. Be there, and bring a date.”

“I’ve got a big tournament that night,” Jesse protested. “Cliffcastle Casino. No limit and plenty of tourists who think they know the game because they watch the World Poker Tour on TV.”

“Come on, Jesse. You spend too much time at the tables as it is. And don’t make me play the guilt card. As in, you’re the best man and this is part of the gig.”

“I wouldn’t think of making you play the guilt card,” Jesse said dryly, downing a big swig of beer. “Except that you just did.”

She laughed. “It could get worse. Liam’s counting on seeing you. Meg’s flying in from San Antonio, and Rance and Keegan have both cleared their schedules to come. Since it would be really crass of me to point out that that involves more than missing a poker tournament, I won’t.”

Jesse sighed. “Okay,” he said. “But I want something in return.”

“Like what?”

“Send over a ghost, will you? It’s way too quiet around here.”

CHAPTER THREE

CHEYENNE SHOWED UP at the ranch the next morning, as agreed, at nine o’clock sharp. Jesse had just turned all but two of the horses out to graze in the pastures beyond the corral gate. He’d saddled his black-and-white paint gelding, Minotaur, first, and was finishing up with Pardner when she pulled in.

Standing just outside the barn door, Jesse yanked the cinch tighter around the horse’s belly, grinned and shook his head slightly when Cheyenne stepped out of the car and he saw what she was wearing. A trim beige pantsuit, tailored at the waist, and stack-heeled shoes with tasteful brass buckles, shiny enough to signal a rider five miles away. She’d wound her hair into the same businesslike do at the back of her head—did she sleep with it up like that?—and he wondered idly how long it was, and how it would feel to let the strands slide between his fingers.

Smiling gamely, Cheyenne minced her way across the rutted barnyard toward him. Her gaze touched the horses warily and ricocheted off again, with a reverberation like the ping of a bullet, only soundless. “It’s a beautiful morning,” she said.

Jesse gave a partial nod, tugged at his hat brim before thinking better of the idea. Talk about tells. Why not just have a billboard put up? Cheyenne Bridges Intrigues Me. Sincerely, Jesse McKettrick. “Always is, out here. Year-round.”

She drew an audible breath, that brave smile wobbling a little on her sensuous mouth, and huffed out an exhale. Adjusted the strap of that honking purse again. “Let’s go have a look at the land,” she said, jingling her keys in her right hand.

Jesse ran his gaze over her outfit, glanced toward Pardner and Minotaur, who were waiting patiently in full tack, reins dangling, tails switching. “That little car of yours,” he said, watching with amused enjoyment as realization dawned in her face, “will never make it onto the ridge. Nothing up there but old logging trails.”

She swallowed visibly, took in the horses again and shook her head. “You’re not suggesting we—ride?” The hesitation was so brief it might have gone unnoticed, if Jesse hadn’t had so much practice at picking out the very things other people tried to hide. “On horseback?”

He waited, arms folded. “That’s the usual purpose of saddling up,” he said. “Two people. Two horses. No special mental acuity required to figure it out.”

Cheyenne shifted on the soles of her fancy shoes. They’d work in a boardroom, those shoes, but on the Triple M, they were almost laughable. “I wasn’t expecting to ride a horse.”

“I can see that,” Jesse observed. “You do realize that those five hundred acres you’re so anxious to bulldoze, pave and cover with condos are pretty rugged, and not a little remote?”

“Of course I do,” she said, faltering now. “I’ve done weeks of research. I know my business, Mr. McKettrick.”

“It’s Jesse,” he corrected. “And what kind of ‘research’ did you do, exactly? Maybe you dredged up some plat maps online? Checked out the access to power and the water situation?” He waited a beat to let his meaning sink in, then gave the suit another once-over. “At least you had sense enough to wear pants,” he added charitably.

“I beg your pardon?”

“Do you even own a pair of jeans?”

“I don’t wear jeans when I’m working,” she retorted. Her tone was moderate, but if she’d been a porcupine, her quills would have been bristling.

“I guess that lets boots out, too, then.”

She paused before answering, and looked so flustered that Jesse began to feel a little sorry for her. “I guess it does,” she said, and her shoulders slackened so that she had to grab the purse and resituate it before the strap slid down her arm.