The McKettrick Way Read online

Time to face the proverbial music.

  ***

  Meg drove slowly back to the Triple M, going the long way to pass the main ranch house, Angus's old stomping grounds, in the vain hope that he would decide to haunt it for a while, instead of her. A descendant of Angus's eldest son, Holt, and daughter-in-law Lorelei, Meg called their place home.

  As they bumped across the creek bridge, Angus assessed the large log structure, added onto over the years, and well-maintained.

  Though close, all the McKettricks were proud of their par-ticular branch of the family tree. Keegan, who occupied the main house now, along with his wife, Molly, daughter, Devon, and young son, Lucas, could trace his lineage back to Kade, another of Angus's four sons.

  Rance, along with his daughters, was Rafe's progeny. He and the girls and his bride, Emma, lived in the grandly rustic structure on the other side of the creek from Keegan's place.

  Finally, there was Jesse. He was Jeb's descendant, and resided, when he wasn't off somewhere participating in a rodeo or a poker tournament, in the house Jeb had built for his wife, Chloe, high on a hill on the southwestern section of the ranch. Jesse was happily married to a hometown girl, the former Cheyenne Bridges, and like Keegan's Molly and Rance's Emma, Cheyenne was expecting a baby.

  Everybody, it seemed to Meg, was expecting a baby.

  Except her, of course.

  She bit her lower lip.

  "I bet if you got yourself pregnant by that singing cowboy," Angus observed, "he'd have the decency to make an honest woman out of you."

  Angus had an uncanny ability to tap into Meg's wavelength; though he swore he couldn't read her mind, she wondered sometimes.

  "Great idea," she scoffed. "And for your information, I am an honest woman."

  Keegan was just coming out of the barn as Meg passed; he smiled and waved. She tooted the Blazer's horn in greeting.

  "He sure looks like Kade," Angus said. "Jesse looks like Jeb, and Rance looks like Rafe." He sighed. "It sure makes me lonesome for my boys."

  Meg felt a grudging sympathy for Angus. He'd ruined a lot of dates, being an almost constant companion, but she loved him. "Why can't you be where they are?" she asked softly. "Wherever that is."

  "I've got to see to you," he answered. "You're the last holdout."

  "I'd be all right, Angus," she said. She'd asked him about the afterlife, but all he'd ever been willing to say was that there was no such thing as dying, just a change of perspective. Time wasn't linear, he claimed, but simultaneous. The "whole ball of string," as he put it, was happening at once—past, present and future. Some of the experiences the women in her family, including herself and Sierra, had had up at Holt's house lent credence to the theory.

  Sierra claimed that, before her marriage to Travis and the subsequent move to the new semi-mansion in town, she and her young son, Liam, had shared the old house with a previous generation of McKettricks—Doss and Hannah and a little boy called Tobias. Sierra had offered journals and photograph albums as proof, and Meg had to admit, her half sister made a compelling case.

  Still, and for all that she'd been keeping company with a benevolent ghost since she was little, Meg was a left-brain type.

  When Angus didn't comment on her insistence that she'd get along fine if he went on to the great roundup in the sky, or whatever, Meg tried again. "Look," she said gently, "when I was little, and Sierra disappeared, and Mom was so frantic to find her that she couldn't take care of me, I really needed you. But I'm a grown woman now, Angus. I'm independent. I have a life."

  Out of the corner of her eye, she saw Angus's jaw tighten. "That Hank Breslin," he said, "was no good for Eve. No better than your father was. Every time the right man came along, she was so busy cozying up to the wrong one that she didn't even notice what was right in front of her."

  Hank Breslin was Sierra's father. He'd kidnapped Sierra, only two years old at the time, when Eve served him with divorce papers, and raised her in Mexico. For a variety of reasons, Eve hadn't reconnected with her lost daughter until recently. Meg's own father, about whom she knew little, had died in an accident a month before she was born. Nobody liked to talk about him—even his name was a mystery.

  "And you think I'll make the same mistakes my mother did?" Meg said.

  "Hell," Angus said, sparing her a reluctant grin, "right now, even a mistake would be progress."

  "With all due respect," Meg replied, "having you around all the time is not exactly conducive to romance."

  They started the long climb uphill, headed for the house that now belonged to her and Sierra. Meg had always loved that house—it had been a refuge for her, full of cousins. Looking back, she wondered why, given that Eve had rarely accompanied her on those summer visits, had instead left her daughter in the care of a succession of nannies and, later, aunts and uncles.

  Sierra's kidnapping had been a traumatic event, for certain, but the problems Eve had subsequently developed because of it had left Meg relatively unmarked. She hadn't been lonely as a child, mainly because of Angus.

  "I'll stay clear tomorrow night, when you go to Stone Creek for that drink," Angus said.

  "You like Brad."

  "Always did. Liked Travis, too. 'Course, I knew he was meant for your sister, that they'd meet up in time."

  Meg and Sierra's husband, Travis, were old friends. They'd tried to get something going, convinced they were perfect for each other, but it hadn't worked. Now that Travis and Sierra were together, and ecstatically happy, Meg was glad.

  "Don't get your hopes up," she said. "About Brad and me, I mean."

  Angus didn't reply. He appeared to be deep in thought. Or maybe as he looked out at the surrounding countryside, he was remembering his youth, when he'd staked a claim to this land and held it with blood and sweat and sheer McKettrick stubbornness.

  "You must have known the O'Ballivans," Meg reflected, musing. Like her own family, Brad's had been pioneers in this part of Arizona.

  "I was older than dirt by the time Sam O'Ballivan brought his bride, Maddie, up from Haven. Might have seen them once or twice. But I knew Major Blackstone, all right." Angus smiled at some memory. "He and I used to arm wrestle sometimes, in the card room back of Jolene Bell's Saloon, when we couldn't best each other at poker."

  "Who won?" Meg asked, smiling slightly at the image.

  "Same as the poker," Angus answered with a sigh. "We'd always come out about even. He'd win half the time, me the other half."

  The house came in sight, the barn towering nearby. Angus's expression took on a wistful aspect.

  "When you're here," Meg ventured, "can you see Doss and Hannah and Tobias? Talk to them?"

  "No," Angus said flatly.

  "Why not?" Meg persisted, even though she knew Angus didn't want to pursue the subject.

  "Because they're not dead," he said. "They're just on the other side, like my boys."

  "Well, I'm not dead, either," Meg said reasonably. She retrained from adding that she could have shown him their graves, up in the McKettrick cemetery. Shown him his own, for that matter. It would have been unkind, of course, but there1 was another reason for her reluctance, too. In some version of that cemetery, given what he'd told her about time, there was surely a headstone with her name on it.

  "You wouldn't understand," Angus told her. He always said that, when she tried to find out how it was for him, where he went when he wasn't following her around.

  "Try me," she said.

  He vanished.

  Resigned, Meg pulled up in front of the garage, added onto the original house sometime in the 1950s, and equipped with an automatic door opener, and pushed the button so she could drive in.

  She half expected to find Angus sitting at the kitchen table when she went into the house, but he wasn't there.

  What she needed, she decided, was a cup of tea.

  She got Lorelei's teapot out of the built-in china cabinet and set it firmly on the counter. The piece was legendary in the family; it had a way of moving bac
k to the cupboard of its own volition, from the table or the counter, and vice versa.

  Meg filled the electric kettle at the sink and plugged it in to heat.

  Tea was not going to cure what ailed her.

  Brad O'Ballivan was back.

  Compared to that, ghosts, the mysteries of time and space, and teleporting teapots seemed downright mundane.

  And she'd agreed, like a fool, to meet him in Stone Creek for a drink. What had she been thinking?

  Standing there in her kitchen, Meg leaned against the counter and folded her arms, waiting for the tea water to boil. Brad had hurt her so badly, she'd thought she'd never recover. For years after he'd dumped her to go to Nashville, she'd barely been able to come back to Indian Rock, and when she had, she'd driven straight to the Dixie Dog, against her will, sat in some rental car, and cried like an idiot.

  There are some things I'd like to say to you, Brad had told her, that very day.

  "What things?" she asked now, aloud.

  The teakettle whistled.

  She unplugged it, measured loose orange pekoe into Lorelei's pot and poured steaming water over it.

  It was just a drink, Meg reminded herself. An innocent drink.

  She should call Brad, cancel gracefully.

  Or, better yet, she could just stand him up. Not show up at all. Just as he'd done to her, way back when, when she'd loved him with all her heart and soul, when she'd believed he meant to make a place for her in his busy, exciting life.

  Musing, Meg laid a hand to her lower abdomen.

  She'd stopped believing in a lot of things when Brad O'Ballivan ditched her.

  Maybe he wanted to apologize.

  She gave a teary snort of laughter.

  And maybe he really had fans on other planets.

  A rap at the back door made her start. Angus? He never knocked—he just appeared. Usually at the most inconvenient possible time.

  Meg went to the door, peered through the old, thick panes of greenish glass, saw Travis Reid looming on the other side. She wrestled with the lock and let him in.

  "I'm here on reconnaissance," he announced, taking off his cowboy hat and hanging it on the peg next to the door. "Sierra's worried about you, and so is Eve."

  Meg put a hand to her forehead. She'd left the baby shower abruptly to go meet Brad at the Dixie Dog Drive-in. "I'm sorry," she said, stepping back so Travis could come inside. "I'm all right, really. You shouldn't have come all the way out here—"

  "Eve tried your cell—which is evidently off—and Sierra left three or four messages on voice mail," he said with a nod toward the kitchen telephone. "Consider yourself fortunate that I got here before they called out the National Guard."

  Meg laughed, closed the door against the chilly October twilight, and watched as Travis took off his sheepskin-lined coat and hung it next to the hat. "I was just feeling a little—overwhelmed."

  "Overwhelmed?" She'd been possessed.

  Travis went to the telephone, punched in a sequence of numbers and waited. "Hi, honey," he said presently, when Sierra answered. "Meg's alive and well. No armed intruders. No bloody accident. She was just—overwhelmed."

  "Tell her I'll call her later," Meg said. "Mom, too."

  "She'll call you later," Travis repeated dutifully. "Eve, too." He listened again, promised to pick up a gallon of milk and a loaf of bread on the way home and hung up.

  Knowing Travis wasn't fond of tea, Meg offered him a cup of instant coffee, instead.

  He accepted, taking a seat at the table where generations of McKettricks, from Holt and Lorelei on down, had taken their meals. "What's really going on, Meg?" he asked quietly, watching her as she poured herself some tea and joined him.

  "What makes you think anything is going on?"

  "I know you. We tried to fall in love, remember?"

  "Brad O'Ballivan's back," she said.

  Travis nodded. "And this means—?"

  "Nothing," Meg answered, much too quickly. "It means nothing. I just—"

  Travis settled back in his chair, folded his arms, and waited.

  "Okay, it was a shock," Meg admitted. She sat up a little straighten "But you already knew."

  "Jesse told me."

  "And nobody thought to mention it to me?"

  "I guess we assumed you'd talked to Brad."

  "Why would I do that?"

  "Because—" Travis paused, looked uncomfortable. "It's no secret that the two of you had a thing going, Meg. Indian Rock and Stone Creek are small places, forty miles apart. Things get around."

  Meg's face burned. She'd thought, she'd truly believed, that no one on earth knew Brad had broken her heart. She'd pretended it didn't matter that he'd left town so abruptly. Even laughed about it. Gone on to finish college, thrown herself into that first entry-level job at McKettrickCo. Dated other men, including the then-single Travis.

  And she hadn't fooled anyone.

  "Are you going to see him again?"

  Meg pressed the tips of her fingers hard into her closed eyes. Nodded. Then shook her head from side to side.

  Travis chuckled. "Make a decision, Meg," he said.

  "We're supposed to have a drink together tomorrow night, at a cowboy bar in Stone Creek. I don't know why I said I'd meet him—after all this time, what do we have to say to each other?"

  '"How've ya been?'" Travis suggested.

  "I know how he's been—rich and famous, married twice, busy building a reputation that makes Jesse's look tame," she said. "I, on the other hand have been a workaholic. Period."

  "Aren't you being a little hard on yourself? Not to mention Brad?" A grin quirked the corner of Travis's mouth. "Comparing him to Jesse?"

  Jesse had been a wild man, if a good-hearted, well-intentioned one, until he'd met up with Cheyenne Bridges. When he'd fallen, he'd fallen hard, and for the duration, the way bad boys so often do.

  "Maybe Brad's changed," Travis said.

  "Maybe not," Meg countered.

  "Well, I guess you could leave town for a while. Stay out of his way." Travis was trying hard not to smile. "Volunteer for a space mission or something."

  "I am not going to run," Meg said. "I've always wanted to live right here, on this ranch, in this house. Besides, I intend to be here when the baby comes."

  Travis's face softened at the mention of the impending birth. Until Sierra came along, Meg hadn't thought he'd ever settle down. He'd had his share of demons to overcome, not the least of which was the tragic death of his younger brother. Travis had blamed himself for what happened to Brody. "Good," he said. "But what do you actually do here? You're used to the fast lane, Meg."

  "I take care of the horses," she said.

  "That takes, what—two hours a day? According to Eve, you spend most of your time in your pajamas. She thinks you're depressed."

  "Well, I'm not," Meg said. "I'm just—catching up on my rest."

  "Okay," Travis said, drawing out the word.

  "I'm not drinking alone and I'm not watching soap operas," Meg said. "I'm vegging. It's a concept my mother doesn't understand."

  "She loves you, Meg. She's worried. She's not the enemy."

  "I wish she'd go back to Texas."

  "Wish away. She's not going anywhere, with a grandchild coming."

  At least Eve hadn't taken up residence on the ranch; that was some comfort. She lived in a small suite at the only hotel in Indian Rock, and kept herself busy shopping, day trading on her laptop and spoiling Liam.

  Oh, yes. And nagging Meg.

  Travis finished his coffee, carried his cup to the sink, rinsed it out. After hesitating for a few moments, he said, "It's this thing about seeing Angus's ghost. She thinks you're obsessed."

  Meg made a soft, strangled sound of frustration.

  "It's not that she doesn't believe you," Travis added.

  "She just thinks I'm a little crazy."

  "No," Travis said. "Nobody thinks that."

  "But I should get a life, as the saying goes?"

&
nbsp; "It would be a good idea, don't you think?"

  "Go home. Your pregnant wife needs a gallon of milk and a loaf of bread."

  Travis went to the door, put on his coat, took his hat from the hook. "What do you need, Meg? That's the question."

  "Not Brad O'Ballivan, that's for sure."

  Travis grinned again. Set his hat on his head and turned the doorknob. "Did I mention him?" he asked lightly.

  Meg glared at him.

  "See you," Travis said. And then he was gone.

  "He puts me in mind of that O'Ballivan fella," Angus announced, nearly startling Meg out of her skin.

  She turned to see him standing over by the china cabinet. Was it her imagination, or did he look a little older than he had that afternoon?

  "Jesse looks like Jeb. Rance looks like Rafe. Keegan looks like Kade. You're seeing things, Angus."

  "Have it your way," Angus said.

  Like any McKettrick had ever said that and meant it.

  "What's for supper?"

  "What do you care? You never eat."

  "Neither do you. You're starting to look like a bag of bones."

  "If I were you, I wouldn't make comments about bones. Being dead and all, I mean."

  "The problem with you young people is, you have no respect for your elders."

  Meg sighed, got up from her chair at the table, stomped over to the refrigerator and selected a boxed dinner from the stack in the freezer. The box was coated with frost.

  "I'm sorry," Meg said. "Is that a hint of silver I see at your temples?"

  Self-consciously, Angus shifted his weight from one booted foot to the other. "If I'm going gray," he scowled, "it's on account of you. None of my boys ever gave me half as much trouble as you, or my Katie, either. And they were plum full of the dickens, all of them."

  Meg's heart pinched. Katie was Angus's youngest child, and his only daughter. He rarely mentioned her, since she'd caused some kind of scandal by eloping on her wedding day—with someone other than the groom. Although she and Angus had eventually reconciled, he'd been on his deathbed at the time.

  "I'm all right, Angus," she told him. "You can go. Really."

  "You eat food that could be used to drive railroad spikes into hard ground. You don't have a husband. You rattle around in this old house like some—ghost. I'm not leaving until I know you'll be happy."