The McKettrick Way Page 6

Intrigued, Meg opened the door, flipped on the kitchen lights and stepped inside. All of this was ancient family history to her, but to Angus, it was immediate stuff. "What else were you wrong about?" she asked, removing her coat and hanging it on the peg next to the door, then going to the sink to wash her hands.

  Angus took a seat at the head of the table. In this house, it would have been Holt's place, but Angus was in the habit of taking the lead, even in small things.

  "I ever tell you I had a brother?" he asked.

  Meg, about to brew a pot of tea, stopped and stared at him, stunned out of her fatigue. "No," she said. "You didn't." The McKettricks were raised on legend and lore, cut their teeth on it; the brother came as news. "Are you telling me there could be a whole other branch of the family out there?"

  "Josiah got on fine with the ladies," Angus reminisced. "It would be my guess his tribe is as big as mine."

  Meg forgot all about the tea-brewing. She made her way to the table and sat down heavily on the bench, gaping at Angus.

  "Don't fret about it," he said. "They'd have no claim on this ranch, or any of the take from that McKettrickCo outfit."

  Meg blinked, still trying to assimilate the revelation. "No one has ever mentioned that you had a brother," she said. "In all the diaries, all the letters, all the photographs—"

  "They wouldn't have said anything about Josiah," Angus told her, evidently referring to his sons and their many descen-dents. "They never knew he existed."

  "Why not?"

  "Because he and I had a falling-out, and I didn't want anything to do with him after that. He felt the same way."

  "Why bring it up now—after a century and a half?"

  Angus shifted uncomfortably in his chair and, for a moment, his jawline hardened. "One of them's about to land on your doorstep," he said after a long, molar-grinding silence. "I figured you ought to be warned."

  "Warned? Is this person a serial killer or a crook or something?"

  "No," Angus said. "He's a lawyer. And that's damn near as bad."

  "As a family, we haven't exactly kept a low profile for the last hundred or so years," Meg said slowly. "If Josiah has as many descendants as you do, why haven't any of them contacted us? It's not as if McKettrick is a common name, after all."

  "Josiah took another name," Angus allowed, after more jaw-clamping. "That's what we got into it about, him and me."

  "Why would he do that?" Meg asked.

  Angus fixed her with a glare. Clearly, even after all the time that passed, he hadn't forgiven Josiah for changing his name and for whatever had prompted him to do that.

  "He went to sea, when he was hardly more than a boy," Angus said. "When he came back home to Texas, years later, he was calling himself by another handle and running from the law. Hinted that he'd been a pirate."

  "A pirate?"

  "Left Ma and me to get by on our own, after Pa died," Angus recalled bitterly, looking through Meg to some long-ago reality. "Rode out before they'd finished shoveling dirt into Pa's grave. I ran down the road after him—he was riding a big buckskin horse—but he didn't even look back."

  Tentatively, Meg reached out to touch Angus's arm. Clearly, Josiah had been the elder brother, and Angus a lot younger. He'd adored Josiah McKettrick—that much was plain—and his leaving had been a defining event in Angus's life. So defining, in fact, that he'd never acknowledged the other man's existence.

  Angus bristled. "It was a long time ago," he said.

  "What name did he go by?" Meg asked. She knew she wasn't going to sleep, for worrying about the injured dog and the stallion, and planned to spend the rest of the night at the computer, searching on Google for members of the heretofore unknown Josiah-side of the family.

  "I don't rightly recall," Angus said glumly.

  Meg knew he was lying. She also knew he wasn't going to tell her his brother's assumed name.

  She got up again, went back to brewing tea.

  Angus sat brooding in silence, and the phone rang just as Meg was pouring boiling water over the loose tea leaves in the bottom of Lorelei's pot.

  Glancing at the caller ID panel, she saw no name, just an unfamiliar number with a 615 area code.

  "Hello?"

  "He's going to recover," Brad said.

  Tears rushed to Meg's eyes, and her throat constricted. He was referring to the dog, of course. And using the cell phone he'd carried when he still lived in Tennessee. "Thank God," she managed to say. "Did Olivia operate?"

  "No need," Brad answered. "Once she'd taken X-rays and run a scan, she knew there were no internal injuries. He's pretty torn up—looks like a baseball with all those stitches— but he'll be okay."

  "Was there a microchip?"

  "Yeah," Brad said after a charged silence. "But the phone number's no longer in service. Livie ran an Internet search and found out the original owner died six months ago. Who knows where Willie's been in the meantime."

  "Willie?"

  "The dog," Brad explained. "That's his name. Willie."

  "What's going to happen to Willie now?"

  "He'll be at the clinic for a while," Brad said. "He's in pretty bad shape. Livie will try to find out if anybody adopted him after his owner died, but we're not holding out a lot of hope on that score "

  "He'll go to the pound? When he's well enough to leave the clinic?"

  "No," Brad answered. He sounded as tired as Meg felt. "If nobody has a prior claim on him, he'll come to live with me. I could use a friend—and so could he." He paused. "I hope I didn't wake you or anything."

  "I was still up," Meg said, glancing in Angus's direction only to find that he'd disappeared again.

  "Good," Brad replied.

  A silence fell between them. Meg knew there was something else Brad wanted to say, and that she'd want to hear it. So she waited.

  "I'm riding up into the high country again first thing in the morning," he finally said. "Looking for Ransom. I was wondering if—well—it's probably a stupid idea, but—"

  Meg waited, resisting an urge to rush in and finish the sentence for him.

  'Would you like to go along? Livie has a full schedule tomorrow—one of the other vets is out sick—and she wants to pep an eye on Willie, too. She's going to obsess about this horse until I can tell her he's fine, so I'm going to find him if I can."

  "I'd like to go," Meg said. "What time are you leaving the ranch?" *

  "Soon as the sun's up," Brad answered. "You're sure? The country's pretty rough up there."

  "If you can handle rough country, O'Ballivan, so can I."

  He chuckled. "Okay, McKettrick," he said.

  Meg found herself smiling. "I'll be there by 6:00 a.m., unless that's too early. Shall I bring my own horse?"

  "Six is about right," Brad said. "Don't go to the trouble of trailering another horse—you can ride Cinnamon. Dress warm, though. And bring whatever gear you'd need if we had to spend the night for some reason."

  Alone in her kitchen, Meg blushed. "See you in the morning," she said.

  '"Night," Brad replied.

  "Good night," Meg responded—long after Brad had hung up.

  Giving up on the tea and, at least for that night, researching Josiah McKettrick, and having decided she needed to at least try to sleep, since tomorrow would be an eventful day, Meg locked up, shut off the lights and went upstairs to her room.

  After getting out a pair of thermal pajamas, she took a long shower in the main bathroom across the hall, brushed her teeth, tamed her wet hair as best she could and went to bed.

  Far from tossing and turning, as she'd half expected, she dropped into an immediate, consuming slumber, so deep she remembered none of her dreams.

  Waking, she dressed quickly, in jeans and a sweatshirt, over a set of long underwear, made of some miraculous mi-crofiber and bought for skiing, and finished off her ensemble with two pairs of socks and her sturdiest pair of boots. She shoved toothpaste, a brush and a small tube of moisturizer into a plastic storage bag, rolled up a bla
nket, tied it tightly with twine from the kitchen junk drawer and breakfasted on toast; and coffee.

  She called Jesse on her cell phone as she climbed into the Blazer, after feeding Banshee and the others. Cheyenne, Jesse's wife, answered on the second ring.

  "Hi, it's Meg. Is Jesse around?"

  "Sleeping," Cheyenne said, yawning audibly.

  "I woke you up," Meg said, embarrassed.

  "Jesse's the lay-abed in this family," Cheyenne responded warmly. "I've been up since four. Is anything wrong, Meg? Sierra and the baby—?"

  "They're fine, as far as I know," Meg said, anxious to reassure Cheyenne and, at the same time, very glad she'd gotten Jesse's wife instead of Jesse himself. He'd look after her horses if she asked, but he'd want to know where she was going, and if she replied that she and Brad O'Ballivan were riding off into the sunrise together, he'd tease her unmercifully. "Look, Cheyenne, I need a favor. I'm going on a—on a trail ride with a friend, and I'll probably be back tonight, but—"

  "Would this 'friend' be the famous Brad O'Ballivan?"

  "Yes," Meg said, but reluctantly, backing out of the driveway and turning the Blazer around to head for Stone Creek. It was still dark, but the first pinkish gold rays of sunlight were rimming the eastern hills. "Cheyenne, will you ask Jesse to check on my horses if he doesn't hear from me by six or so tonight?"

  "Of course," Cheyenne said. "So you're going riding with Brad, and it might turn into an overnight thing. Hmmmmm—"

  "It isn't anything romantic," Meg said. "I'm just helping him look for a stallion that might be hurt, that's all."

  "I see," Cheyenne said sweetly.

  "Just out of curiosity, what made you jump to the conclusion that the friend I mentioned was Brad?"

  "It's all over town that you and country music's baddest bad boy met up at the Dixie Dog Drive-In the other day."

  "Oh, great," Meg breathed. "I guess that means Jesse knows, then. And Rance and Keegan."

  Cheyenne laughed softly, but when she spoke, her voice was full of concern. "Rance and Jesse are all for finding Brad and punching his lights out for hurting you so badly all those years ago, but Keegan is the voice of reason. He says give Brad a week to prove himself, then punch his lights out."

  "The McKettrick way," Meg said. Her cousins were as protective as brothers would have been, and she loved them. But in terms of her social life, they weren't any more help than Angus had been.

  "We'll talk later," Cheyenne said practically. "You're probably driving."

  "Thanks, Chey," Meg answered.

  When she got to Stone Creek Ranch, Brad came out of the house to greet her. He was dressed for the trail in jeans, boots, a work shirt and a medium-weight leather coat.

  Meg's breath caught at the sight of him, and she was glad of the mechanics of parking and shutting off the Blazer, because it gave her a few moments to gather her composure.

  Normally, she was unflappable.

  She'd handled some of the toughest negotiations during her career with McKettrickCo, without so much as a flutter of nerves, but there was something about Brad that erased all the years she'd spent developing a thick skin and a poker face.

  He opened the Blazer door before she was quite ready to face him.

  "Hungry?" he asked.

  "I had toast and coffee at home," Meg answered.

  "That'll never hold you till lunch," he said. "Come on inside. I've got some real food on the stove."

  "Okay," Meg said, because short of sitting stubbornly in the car, she couldn't think of a way to avoid accepting his invitation.

  The O'Ballivan house, like the ones on the Triple M, was large and rustic, and it exuded a sense of rich history. The porch wrapped around the whole front of the structure, and the back door was on the side nearest the barn. Meg followed Brad up the porch steps in front and around to another entrance.

  The kitchen was big, and except for the wooden floors, which looked venerable, the room showed no trace of the old days. The countertops were granite, the cupboards gleamed, and the appliances were ultramodern, as were the furnishings.

  Meg felt strangely let down by the sheer glamour of the place. All the kitchens on the Triple M had been modernized, of course, but in all cases, the original wood-burning stoves had been incorporated, and the tables all dated back to Holt, Rafe, Kade and Jeb's time, if not Angus's.

  If Brad noticed her reaction, he didn't mention it. He dished up an omelet for her, and poured her a cup of coffee. You cook?" Meg teased, washing her hands at the gleam-ing stainless steel sink.

  "I'm a fair hand in a kitchen," Brad replied modestly. "Dig in. I'll go saddle the horses while you eat."

  Meg nodded, sat down and tackled the omelet.

  It was delicious, and so was the coffee, but she felt uncom-lortable sitting alone in that kitchen, as fancy as it was. She kept wondering what Maddie O'Ballivan would think, if she could see it, or even Brad's mother. Surely if things had been as difficult financially as Brad had let on the night before, at Jolene's, the renovations were fairly recent.

  Having eaten as much as she could, Meg riftsed her plate, stuck it into the dishwasher, along with her fork and coffee cup, and hurried to the back door. Brad was out in front of the barn, the big paint ready to ride, tightening the cinch on Cinnamon's saddle. He picked her rolled blanket up off the ground and tied it on behind.

  "Not much gear," he said. "Do you know how cold it gets up there?"

  "I'll be fine," Meg said.

  Brad merely shook his head. His own horse was restless, and the rifle was in evidence, too, looking ominous in the worn scabbard.

  "That's quite a kitchen," Meg said as Brad gave her a leg up onto Cinnamon's back.

  "Big John said it was a waste of money," Brad recalled, smiling to himself as he mounted up. "That was my granddad."

  Meg knew who Big John O'Ballivan was—everybody in the county did—but she didn't point that out. If Brad wanted to talk about his family, to pass the time, that was fine with

  Meg. She nudged Cinnamon to keep pace with Brad's horse as they crossed a pasture, headed for the hills beyond.

  "He raised you and your sisters, didn't he?" she asked, though she knew that, too.

  "Yes," Brad said, and the set of his jaw reminded her of the way Angus's had looked, when he told her about his estranged brother.

  Meg's curiosity spiked, but she didn't indulge it. "I take it Willie's still on the mend?"

  Brad's grin was as dazzling as the coming sunrise would be. "Olivia called just before you showed up," he said with a nod. "Willie's going to be fine. In a week or two, I'll bring him home."

  Remembering the way Brad had handled the dog, with such gentleness and such strength, Meg felt a pinch in the center of her heart. "You plan on staying, then?"

  He tossed her a thoughtful look. "I plan on staying," he confirmed. "I told you that, didn't I?"

  You also told me we 'd get married and you 'd love me forever.

  "You told me," she said.

  "Would this be a good time to tell you about my second wife?"

  Meg considered, then shook her head, smiling a little. "Probably not."

  "Okay," Brad said, "then how about my sisters?"

  "Good idea." Meg had known Olivia slightly, but there was a set of twins in the family, too. She'd never met them.

  "Olivia has a thing for animals, as you can see. She needs to get married and channel some of that energy into having a family of her own, but she's got a cussed streak and runs off every man who manages to get close to her. Ashley and Melissa—the twins—are fraternal. Ashley's pretty down-home—she runs a

  bed-and-breakfast in Stone Creek. Melissa's clerking in a law office in Flagstaff." You're close to them?"

  "Yes," Brad said, expelling a long breath. "And, no. Olivia resents my leaving home— I can't seem to get it through her head that we wouldn't have had a home if I hadn't gone to Nashville. The twins are ten years younger than I am, and seem to see me more as a visiting celebrity
than their big brother."

  "When Olivia needed help," Meg reminded him, "she came to you. So maybe she doesn't resent you as much as you think she does." There was something really different about Olivia O'Ballivan, Meg thought, looking back over the night before, but she couldn't quite figure out what it was.

  "I hope you're right," Brad said. "It's fine to love animals—I'm real fond of them myself. But Olivia carries it to a whole new place. So much so that there's no room in her life for much of anything—or anybody—else."

  "She's a veterinarian, Brad," Meg said reasonably. "It's natural that animals are her passion."

  "To the exclusion of everything else?" Brad asked. "She'll be fine," Meg said. "When Olivia meets the right man, she'll make room for him. Just wait and see."

  Brad looked unconvinced. He raised his chin and said, "If we're going to find that horse, we'd better move a little faster."

  Meg nodded in agreement and Cinnamon fell in behind Brad's gelding as they started the twisting, perilous climb up the mountainside.

  Chapter Five

  Looking for that wild stallion was a fool's errand, and Brad knew it. As he'd told Meg, his primary reason for undertaking the quest was to keep Olivia from doing it. Now he wondered how many times, during his long absence, his little sister had climbed this mountain alone, at all hours of the day and night, and in all seasons of the year.

  The thought made him shudder.

  The country above Stone Creek was as rugged as it had ever been. Wolves, coyotes and even javelinas were plentiful, as were rattlesnakes. There were deep crevices in the red earth, some of them hidden by brush, and they'd swallowed many a hapless hiker. But the worst threat was probably the weather—at that elevation, blizzards could strike literally without warning, even in July and August. It was October now, and that only increased the danger.

  Meg, shivering in her too-light coat, rode along beside him without complaint. Being a McKettrick, he thought, with a sad smile turned entirely inward, she'd freeze to death before she'd admit she was cold.

  Inviting her along had been a purely selfish act, and Brad regretted it. Too many things could happen, most of them bad.

  They'd been traveling for an hour or so when he stopped alongside a creek to rest the horses. High banks on either side sheltered them from the wind, and Meg got a chance to warm up.