McKettrick's Choice (23 page)

Holt scanned the horizon, though it was barely visible, in the gathering twilight. “So did mine,” he said quietly. “I wish I remembered her.”

The backs of their hands touched as they walked.
Quickly, Lorelei folded her arms, so it wouldn't happen again. “I'm sorry,” she said, and she meant it. She knew how hard it was to grow up without a mother, what a hole it left. As a child, she'd ached when dusk came and the women of the neighborhood called their broods in to supper. Angelina had tried her best to fill the gaps during those difficult years, but it hadn't been the same.

All of a sudden, Holt stopped and turned to face her. The question he asked was so direct that it almost took her breath away. “Do you want kids, Lorelei?”

For a moment, she felt as bereft as she had on those long ago nights, standing in the yard in front of her father's house, listening to the voices of other children's mothers. How she'd longed to hear someone call
her
name.

“I think it's too late,” she said, and nearly choked on the words.

“Too late?” Holt echoed, plainly surprised.

She looked away, looked back by force of will. “When I set fire to my wedding dress in the square that day,” she told him, trying for a smile and failing, “it was an ending. I'll probably never get another chance.”

His expression went from disbelief to a certain unnerving speculation. “You don't really believe that—do you? You're still young, Lorelei. Some man's bound to want you for a wife.”

She felt a flash of temper, but it died quickly, doused by the discouragement that threatened to swamp her. “Yes,” she said forthrightly, “I
do
believe it. Most women are married by the time they're twenty, and I'll be thirty come December. As for ‘some man' doing me the grand favor of
wanting
me—”

“Damn it,” Holt broke in tersely, “there you go, twisting what I say—” He'd been carrying his hat; now, in a
restrained fit of irritation, he slapped it against his right thigh once, then plopped it back on his head. “What if it was a business deal?” he asked.

Lorelei's mouth fell open, and indignation surged through her, closely followed by curiosity. “A
business deal?
Oh, I will thank you to explain
that
question, Mr. McKettrick!”

He must have set his back teeth, because his jawline hardened visibly. “I wouldn't mind having a wife and more kids,” he said, after a few moments of agitated silence. She'd have sworn he was working up his nerve, but this was Holt. He had a
surplus
of nerve. “Lizzie's almost thirteen. Before I know it, she'll be all grown-up, getting married or going away to school. It makes me lonesome just to think about that.”

Lorelei was amazed. Holt McKettrick, admitting to a human weakness? “I'm sure there are a lot of women who would like to marry you,” she said, reeling a little.

“I want a woman with some spirit,” he replied. “Some gumption.”

Lorelei felt as though she were caught in a current, being swept downstream at a breathtaking pace. And there was a huge waterfall just around the next bend. “That woman you left at the altar,” she blurted, hugging herself against a nonexistent chill. “Wasn't she
spirited
enough for you?”

He glared at her, perhaps surprised that she knew. “No,” he ground out. “As a matter of fact, she wasn't. And I didn't ‘leave her at the altar.' I told her I'd go ahead and marry her, even though I'd still have to come here to Texas, one way or the other, and she refused.”

Lorelei put her fingertips to her temples. “Of course she refused,” she whispered. “She knew you didn't love her.”

“That's the thing,” Holt said, calmer now, looking deeply into Lorelei's eyes. She felt as though she had a harp inside her, and he was plucking at the strings. “About love, I mean. I loved Lizzie's mother—I know that now—but the realization was a bit slow catching up to me.”

“Mr. McKettrick,” Lorelei began, with exaggerated patience, “where
is
this conversation headed?”

His answer practically knocked her back on her heels. “I want a wife,” he said. “You need a husband. Maybe we ought to team up.”

“‘Team up'?” Lorelei was incensed—or was it exhilaration she was feeling? “Like a pair of mules pulling the same wagon?”

He grinned. “That's not a very romantic way to put it.”

Lorelei folded her arms, partly to form a barrier and partly to keep her heart from flying right out of her chest and perching beside his. “How would
you
put it?”

“Like I said, it would be a business arrangement in the beginning—”

“And you think that's romantic?”

“I think parts of it would be.”

Lorelei blushed. She might be a spinster, and a virgin to boot, but she had a pretty good idea what those “parts” would be. “You,” she said, “are a scoundrel. Are you—are you suggesting…?”

“That we'd be good together?” He had the decency to lower his voice, at least, but that didn't make the proposal any less outrageous. “Yes. Especially in bed.”

That did it. Lorelei drew back her hand, ready to slap him silly.

He caught hold of her wrist, rubbed at the pulse there
with the pad of his thumb. “You're not afraid, are you?” he taunted.

“No!” she spat. Everything inside her was churning like debris caught up in a twister. She couldn't think straight.

“I think you are.”

“Well, guess what, Mr. Trail Boss—you're wrong!”

“Am I?”

She wrenched free of his grasp and immediately wished she hadn't been so rash. She moved to fidget with her skirts before realizing she was wearing trousers instead. “It's pretty obvious what
you
would gain from such an arrangement,” she sputtered. “The benefit to me, on the other hand, is more of a mystery!”

He touched her nose with the tip of one index finger, and even that slight touch sent fire roaring through her. “You'd have a husband. A home. Children.”

“A
hateful
husband,” Lorelei pointed out. “A home I've never seen and might well despise—” But the children. Oh, the children. There was a prospect she couldn't argue against. Suddenly, she wanted them so desperately that they might already have existed. She could almost see their faces, hear her own voice calling their names from the front porch of some distant ranch house….

“I'm not hateful,” Holt said, with damnable confidence and despite mountains of evidence to the contrary. “The Triple M is one of the biggest ranches in the Arizona Territory, and I have a fine house. You'd like it, Lorelei, and you'd like me—at least part of the time. I'd be on the range all day, and at night—well, I think we'd get along just fine.”

“You are insufferable!”

He shrugged. “Maybe so, but you know I'm right.”

“I know nothing of the sort!”

He smiled. “I could prove it. Tomorrow night, in Reynosa.”

Lorelei opened her mouth, then closed it again. “Can you possibly have the effrontery to suggest…?”

“That we spend the night together? That's exactly what I'm suggesting.”

If the idea hadn't appealed to her so much, Lorelei wouldn't have been so furious. “Why, you—you
rooster!
”

Holt laughed. “Better a rooster than a chicken,” he taunted.

“If you think you can goad me into immoral behavior—”

“Would you rather go back to that pissant place of yours and play at being a rancher?” Holt challenged.

“You and I both know it's just a game, a way to spite your father.”

She gave him her back, started to walk away, back to the heart of camp, where there were people. Where she would be safe from Holt McKettrick's audacious brand of persuasion, if not from Comanches. But he stopped her with one more challenge.

“We'll be spending tomorrow night at an inn in Reynosa,” he said. “If you want to live your life, instead of just
pretending
to live it, leave your door unlatched.”

Lorelei didn't turn to face him. She was too afraid of what he might see in her eyes if she did. “Good
night,
Mr. McKettrick,” she said.

He laughed again. “Good night, Lorelei,” he replied smoothly. “Not that you'll sleep very much.”

 

H
OLT HAD BARELY
closed his eyes when dawn crept over the eastern horizon and teased him awake. The things he'd said to Lorelei—what the
hell
was he thinking?—had
doubled back on him like a herd of frightened longhorns turning from the edge of a canyon.

He crawled out of his bedroll, rubbed the back of his neck and reached for his hat. Rafe snored on the ground beside him, but John was already up, with coffee brewing over the campfire.

Lorelei crawled out from under the wagon, sent a poisonous glance his way and headed for the bushes.

The sight of her cheered Holt, though the truth of it was, if he could have taken back the challenge he'd issued the night before, he would have done it.

He glanced down at his brother. If he told Rafe about the deal he'd offered Lorelei, his brother would either laugh out loud or punch him in the mouth, one of the two. Since he didn't need the aggravation, Holt decided to keep it to himself.

Lorelei had returned to camp by the time Holt got to the coffeepot. She looked fitful, and a bit frazzled, and he felt a stab of guilt. She'd been thinking about his rash proposal, the same as he had—probably for the better part of the night.

She came to a stop, like a coyote at the dim edges of a campfire's light, and gazed with naked yearning, not at him but at the coffee.

Some of Holt's guilt receded. He took a languid sip from his mug, let his eyes smile at her over the rim.

She blushed. Took a step forward, halted again.

John, watching from the other side of the fire, where he was mixing batter for what he called pancakes, flung a sour look in Holt's direction, reached for a cup and filled it with coffee. He carried the mug to Lorelei, extended it to her.

Her hands shook slightly, Holt noticed, as she reached out for it.

The guilt came back.

Holt shoved a hand through his hair. Wished he could walk over there and tell her he was sorry for baiting her the way he had, but the truth was that he'd meant what he'd said, so he couldn't rightly take it back. He'd wanted Lorelei Fellows from the moment he saw her burning that wedding dress back in San Antonio, but it had taken a while to face the fact.

Did he love her?

No, he decided. Probably not.

On the other hand, he'd believed the same thing about Olivia, Lizzie's mother. And he'd found out, too late, that he was wrong.

The problem was, he reckoned, that he didn't have an adequate definition for love. He got it confused with passion, and a host of other emotions.

He thought of his father, and Angus's second wife, Concepcion. Their alliance had begun as a partnership; after Rafe, Jeb and Kade's mother, Georgia, had died, Angus was left with three boys to raise. Concepcion, a widow herself, had stepped in, and at some point their common goal had turned into the best kind of love—the sort that endured.

Then there was Rafe and Emmeline. They'd done battle from the beginning. Now, they had a happy home and a child together.

Same with Kade and Mandy. What started out as warfare became an unbreakable bond.

Jeb—and Chloe. She'd come after Jeb with a buggy-whip, called him all manner of worthless and borne him a beautiful child. Once a rascal, Jeb was now the most devoted of husbands.

Holt sighed. For a while, he'd believed he loved Chloe, loved her fire and her intelligence and her go-to-hell
attitude. But he'd known, even in the grip of the quiet passion he'd felt, that she could never care for any man but Jeb, and he'd been prepared to get himself out of the way, leave the Triple M for good, if that was what it took. If it hadn't been for Jeb, he'd have pursued Chloe, used all his powers of persuasion to win her. They'd be long-married by now, and Lizzie would no longer be an only child.

Back then, Angus had said the feelings would pass, and he'd been right. Holt thought of Chloe as a sister now, and that was the way it should be.

Here, today, watching Lorelei drinking that coffee, he knew this was entirely different. If she'd loved one of his brothers, nothing in the world would have driven him away. He'd have fought, tooth and nail, foul or fair, any way he had to, for any length of time. And if she'd married Rafe or Kade or Jeb, he wouldn't have interfered—but he would have bided his time. Waited as long as need be.

The implications of this scared him in a way the whole Comanche nation couldn't have done. What the hell did it mean?

Rafe startled him with a nudge, nearly causing Holt to spill his coffee. “Better pull your tongue back in your head,” Rafe advised, “before you step on it.”

Holt felt heat gather in his neck and rush into his face. Rafe was his brother and one of his closest friends, but right then he could cheerfully have knocked his brother's teeth down his throat. He whirled on Rafe, one hand bunched into a fist.

Rafe chuckled and pretended to leap back.

“Damn you, Rafe,” Holt bit out.

His brother was undaunted. As usual. “Why don't you
sweet talk her a little, instead of always trying to get her mad?”

Holt relaxed, even smiled. “I like the way she looks when she's furious,” he said. “Which is most of the time.”

“I felt that way about Emmeline in the beginning,” Rafe remarked, slurping his coffee and squinting a little in the smoke from the campfire. “Still do, sometimes. But life's a lot easier when I just accept that she's the boss and do as she tells me.”