McKettrick's Choice (21 page)

Lorelei's throat closed, and her face heated. She couldn't have spoken for anything, not then.

“We need the wagon, Holt,” Rafe put in. “You can't expect those wranglers to live on rattlesnake and jackrabbits. And the women have been keeping up just fine.”

Holt was still glaring at Lorelei, and a muscle bunched in the hard line of his jaw. “I don't suppose you'd trust me,” he said, very quietly, “to buy those damn cattle of yours without you standing at my elbow.”

Lorelei straightened her backbone, stalled by dabbing at her mouth with her table napkin. “It is not a matter of trust, Mr. McKettrick,” she said, just as quietly. “If I'm
going to run a ranch, I need to know, firsthand, how to purchase the appropriate livestock.”

“You think every rancher who buys a cow goes straight to the source, Miss Fellows?” Holt asked, in a falsely moderate tone that got under Lorelei's skin like a chigger.

“I have no idea how ‘every rancher' conducts business,” Lorelei replied. “I'm concerned with my
own
transactions.”

Holt narrowed his eyes at her, and when she didn't shrink under his unfriendly regard, he pushed back his chair, stood up and strode right out the back door.

“Don't you want any pie?” Heddy called after him. Hastily, she got up from the rocking chair and thrust Pearl into Tillie's arms. “I'd better take him a slice of that dried apple,” she fretted, grabbing for a plate and dishing up a generous serving. “He's some fond of dried apple pie.”

As if he'd starve without it,
Lorelei thought uncharitably.

She stood, with her food only half-finished, and scraped the leavings into the scrap pan. The silence in that kitchen seemed to hum, once Heddy had chased Holt into the dooryard with his blasted pie, and Lorelei would have sworn everyone was staring at her.

Her worst suspicions were confirmed when she finally worked up the courage to look and see.

Rafe regarded her thoughtfully.

Melina looked sympathetic.

John, the Captain and Tillie were staring at her, too.

“They're my cattle!” she burst out, on the verge of tears but too proud, by half, to shed them in front of a crowd.

“Yes, ma'am,” said the Captain mildly. “They are. How about that poker game you promised me?”

 

“T
HAT WOMAN'S HEAD
is made out of granite,” Holt growled, as Heddy offered him a plate of her coveted apple pie.

Heddy chuckled. “But her heart isn't,” she said.

After a few moments of hesitation, Holt took the plate, picked up the slice of pie and bit off a hunk. He didn't want to talk about Lorelei's heart, or any other part of her anatomy.

“What are you so scared of, Holt?” Heddy pressed. The crickets were putting up a racket, and a dog howled mournfully, somewhere nearby.

Holt chewed, swallowed and nearly choked. It wasn't Heddy's good pie sticking in his throat, though, and he knew it. “I'm not scared of anything,” he growled.

“I'd allow as how that might have been true—up until the time you met Miss Lorelei, that is,” Heddy said. She smoothed the back of her calico skirts and sat right down on the chopping block next to the woodpile. “She sure put a kink in your lariat, though, didn't she?”

Since he doubted that Heddy had ever read a book in her life, and therefore could not be held accountable for the metaphor, he didn't comment on it. “I wish she'd stayed in San Antonio. Better yet, I wish she'd married that crooked lawyer she was engaged to and gone to Timbuktu on her honeymoon. Instead, she sets fire to her wedding dress in front of God and everybody, and my life goes straight to hell faster than a log on a greased flume!”

Heddy made a creditable attempt not to smile and failed completely. Even in the twilight, he could see her eyes twinkling. “She burned her wedding dress?” His
old friend gave a hoot of celebratory laughter. “What I wouldn't have given to see that!”

“Better you than me,” Holt grumbled, and took another bite of pie.

“You're scared she'll get hurt out there on the trail, aren't you?”

He remembered the night he'd pulled all those leeches off her, and felt a little better. “No,” he said.

“Not as long as you've got a breath in you, anyhow?” Heddy prompted.

“I've got a friend in jail in San Antonio, set to hang in less than a month,” Holt ranted, as if she hadn't spoken.

“John's going to lose his ranch if I don't help him rebuild his herd, and even then he's got Templeton to deal with. I can't find Frank Corrales. Rafe's down here, risking his scalp to help, when he ought to be on the Triple M with his wife and child. I've got a bunch of bunglers, drunks and petty thieves for cowhands, and
that woman
wants to handpick every single head of beef she buys!”

Heddy sat calmly on the chopping block, still grinning. Her big, work-reddened hands rested serenely on her broad thighs. “I've knowed you to handle a heck of a lot worse,” she said. “How 'bout that time those renegade Comanches jumped you and Gabe outside of Crystal City? Killed your horses, if I remember correct, and the two of you barely got out of there with your hides still on. Walked across near forty miles of desert in the bargain. If I'd heard that story from anybody but you, I'd have figured it for a tall tale, but it was you that told me, Holt. And you weren't scared, neither. Just mad as hops over them dead horses.”

Holt looked away, pretended an interest in the chicken coop. The pie had gone sour on his tongue, so he gave the rest of it to Sorrowful. “That was different,” he said.

“Why? Cause it was you that might have been scalped, skinned or God knows what else, and not Lorelei?”

Holt was still holding the pie plate, and he would have liked to send it sailing across the yard, in pure frustration, but he knew Heddy prized her dishes, so he refrained. “She's got no idea what those savages can do to a woman,” he said, miserably and after a long silence. “Do you know where we found that baby in there, Heddy?”

“Tillie told me,” Heddy said. “It's a shame about those folks, murdered like that, but it happens all the time, Holt, and you know it. Them settlers know what they're riskin' when they stake out a claim in the middle of Comanche country.”

“Do they?” Holt mused, and handed the plate over to Heddy for safekeeping. He rubbed his chin with one hand. “There were two little girls, Heddy. Their mother shot them, and then herself—”

“Let it go, Holt,” Heddy told him, in a tone as close to gentle as he'd ever heard her use. “The boy's alive. That's what matters now. And you can't keep Lorelei back from whatever she means to do. How to live her life, that's her choice to make.”

He didn't say anything. Didn't trust himself to sound sensible.

“Why'd you let her come along in the first place,” Heddy asked, hoisting herself to her feet with a loud sigh, “if you were so all-fired worried about her?”

“She wanted those damn cattle. She's got some hare-brained idea about starting up a ranch on a little patch of ground she managed to get hold of, up by San Antonio. She would have followed us, on her own, and gotten herself killed, one way or another.”

“So if you leave her here, you figure she won't stay put?”

“I
know
she won't.”

“Then I guess you'd better stop fussin' over it and get on with your business,” Heddy advised. “Like you just told me, you've got plenty to do without tryin' to hogtie Lorelei and get her to see things your way.” With that, she headed for the house, the plate in one hand, Sorrowful galloping after her, probably hoping for more pie.

He stayed outside a while, and when he'd cooled off enough to go back into the kitchen, he found Rafe, the Captain and Lorelei playing poker at the table. John looked on, sipping his evening cup of coffee.

Standing behind Lorelei, Holt saw that she'd drawn a lousy hand. Moreover, she didn't seem to realize it was lousy, for she pushed three nickels into the pot and said brightly, “I'll see your five cents and raise you ten.”

Smiling to himself, Holt caught Rafe's eye and folded his arms. As far as his face was concerned, he gave nothing away.

“See you ten and raise you another nickel,” the Captain said. He kept his cards close to his chest.

Rafe threw his in. “Too rich for my blood,” he said, still watching Holt.

As much to spite his brother as anything, Holt drew back a chair across from Lorelei and said, “Deal me in on the next hand.”

Lorelei's cards were fanned, and covered the lower half of her face, but he still saw her cheeks go pink. She didn't look at him, though he suspected it cost her an effort to avoid it. After squirming a little—he wasn't sure if it was the cards or the fact that he meant to join the game—Lorelei tossed in a quarter. What the hell
was she doing? Those cards she was holding weren't for shit.

The Captain considered long and hard, ruminating, rearranging his hand, then ruminating some more. Finally, he thrust out a gusty sigh and folded.

“Bluff!” Lorelei cried joyously, and scooped up the pot.

“Not so fast,” the Captain said politely. “In this outfit it's customary to show your cards, Miss Lorelei.”

She laid out a pitiful mix, each from a different suit, and not so much as a pair of deuces among them. Her eyes shone with defiant triumph when she met Holt's gaze across the table.

“Damnation,” said the Captain.

“Go ahead and take your money,” Rafe urged Lorelei, but he was looking at Holt, and his expression was anything but brotherly.

“You deal,” the Captain said, shoving the deck over to Holt.

Holt picked up the cards and bent the ends back with the thumb and forefinger of his right hand. When he let them go, they snaked into his other palm, neat as could be.

Lorelei's eyes widened, then narrowed.

“Name your poison, Miss Fellows,” he said.

She blinked. “Poison?”

Holt flipped the cards back the other way, caught them as deftly as he always did.

“Five card stud,” Rafe said, planting himself beside Lorelei.

Holt slapped the deck down in front of the Captain. “Cut,” he said.

 

“H
E CHEATS
,” Lorelei complained, in a whisper, two hours later, as she struggled into her nightgown in the bedroom upstairs.

Melina, who had been reading an outdated newspaper by the light of a lantern, looked up, obviously confused. Tillie and the baby were already asleep. “Who?”

“Holt McKettrick, of course,” Lorelei sputtered.

“I guess you lost,” Melina observed, smiling a little.

“Lost? I was robbed.”

Melina chuckled.

“It's not funny,” Lorelei said, flinging back the covers on her bed. “The man is a sharp. Have you ever seen the way he shuffles? I swear he was dealing those cards from the bottom of the deck.”

“Not Holt,” Melina said, with quiet certainty.

“Why
not
Holt?” Lorelei demanded.

“He likes to win too much. Cheating would take the fun out of it.”

Lorelei flopped down on the bed and wrenched the covers up to her chin, even though it was a hot night and she'd probably kick them off again before she managed to go to sleep. “He
enjoyed
taking my money.”

“And you wouldn't have enjoyed taking his?”

Lorelei sat up. If Tillie and the baby hadn't been sleeping in the next bed, she might have flung her pillow at Melina. “Whose side are you on, anyhow?”

“When it comes to you and Holt, I'm not sure,” Melina answered sagely. “I kind of like watching the two of you go at it.”

Lorelei muttered an exclamation.

“That's the way it is with Gabe and me,” Melina said, very softly. “It's the way we make love when we can't be alone together.”

Lorelei sat up, gulped and lay down again. “That's ridiculous,” she said, but suddenly she wanted to cry, and it wasn't just because she felt so sorry for Melina.

“You're in love with Holt McKettrick,” Melina told her, folding the newspaper and turning down the wick in the lantern until the light guttered and died. “I am
not
in love with that man!”

She'd been in love with Michael. She'd
tried
to love Creighton, to please her father. Michael had never once made her angry. Neither had Creighton—until their wedding day. She'd been in a fine temper then, yes she had, and if there might have been a sense of relief mixed in, well, that had no bearing on anything.

“Good night,” Melina said cheerfully. There were rustling sounds as she got into bed beside Tillie and the baby.

“I am not in love!” Lorelei repeated.

Melina sighed, a settling-in kind of sound. “Whatever you say, Lorelei,” she replied sweetly.

“I loved Michael,” Lorelei insisted.

Melina yawned. “You told me all about him on the trail,” she said. “How sweet he was. How gentle. Nothing like Holt McKettrick, I'd say.”

“Of course he was nothing like Holt McKettrick! Michael was sweet-tempered, and he never
once
raised his voice to me.”

“You never said he was strong.”

“He didn't have to be.”

“I guess he never needed to be brave, either.”

“He would have been brave, if the situation called for it,” Lorelei argued.

“I think you liked him because he let you have your way and never talked back. That's what
I
think, Lorelei Fellows.”

Tillie stirred, sat up. “If you two are going to scrap like a pair of cats,” she grumbled, “do it someplace else. I've got to get up and make breakfast before dawn.”

“Well!” Lorelei said.

Melina giggled and was soon asleep, snoring softly.