JESSE’S SWEAT-DAMPENED HAIR curled at the nape of his neck as he bent over the ramp, arousing an unwanted and fragile tenderness in Cheyenne and, to make matters infinitely worse, he’d taken off his shirt. Between the deep tan of his skin and the play of well-defined muscles in his back and shoulders, Cheyenne was hard put to look away.
Mitch stayed right beside him, there in the tall grass, leaning forward in his wheelchair to hand Jesse nails and carrying on a rambling, one-sided conversation. Jesse hammered away, paused now and then to run a forearm across his brow, and listened in a holistic way—much as he’d taken in the view of those five hundred acres when he and Cheyenne had ridden up to the ridge the day before. Even though he wasn’t looking at Mitch, he seemed to be catching every word and nuance, assimilating and integrating it, somehow making it a part of himself.
Cheyenne had never known anyone who used his senses quite the way Jesse did, and the insight both rankled and intrigued her. Wild though he was, there was an innate and wholly paradoxical stillness about him, even when he was moving, as though he revolved around some inner core rooted in the very heart of creation.
What would it be like to make love with a man like that? A man capable of that elemental concentration? That strange singleness of heart, mind and body?
Cheyenne flushed and fanned herself with the first thing that came to hand—yesterday’s newspaper—and went back to her own work, hacking at weeds with the dull hoe she’d found earlier in the shed out back. She was soaked with perspiration, blisters burned her palms, and she knew her muscles would ache like crazy by the following day, but there was something deeply satisfying about chopping away at that undergrowth.
Because of that, and because she wanted to avoid snagging her gaze on Jesse again, she focused on swinging the hoe, and wouldn’t have noticed the two cars coming up the driveway if one of the drivers hadn’t honked his horn.
She stopped, leaned on the hoe handle and squinted.
First came a black sedan, then a sporty blue compact.
Jesse quit hammering, and he and Mitch watched the vehicles roll to dusty stops at the edge of the yard.
Nigel got out of the dark sedan, smiling, dressed in his usual natty tailored suit and shiny shoes. His fine brown hair had that floppy look Cheyenne secretly thought of as inherently English. He pulled off his expensive sunglasses, the kind that made him look like the captain of an alien space ship, and strode toward her, nodding at Jesse and Mitch as he passed.
“Surprise!” he said. “I come bearing gifts.” He gestured grandly, in an apparent attempt to draw Cheyenne’s attention to the blue car. The promised company ride, no doubt.
Because she could so easily imagine Nigel putting his well-shod foot into his big mouth by making some overconfident reference to Jesse and the land deal, she made the introductions quickly. “Nigel, this is Jesse McKettrick,” she said. “Jesse, my boss, Nigel Meerland. I think you know Mitch.”
Nigel tried to play it cool, but he reacted visibly to Jesse’s name, stiffening a little and turning to give him a second look. Then he rallied. “Of course I know Mitch,” he said, approaching to put out his hand, first to Jesse, then to Mitch.
Jesse’s gaze slid to Cheyenne, and she wondered if he’d known she was warning Nigel not to say anything about the condo development.
Impossible, she decided. Jesse was disturbingly perceptive, but he wasn’t a mind reader.
“I’ve brought your car, your new telephone and a stack of files,” Nigel announced, shifting the formidable force and energy of his presence back to Cheyenne. “I’d love to stay and help you with your various…projects…but I’ve got a plane to catch. Important meeting in L.A. tonight.” He waggled his eyebrows, as if to let her know he was transmitting a secret message.
Just the thought of Nigel pounding nails or clearing weeds made Cheyenne smile. And even though the reference to the L.A. meeting troubled her a little, for reasons based more on instinct than on reason, she put it aside.
Nigel arched one eyebrow. “A word, please?”
Still smiling, Cheyenne walked him back to the sedan. Waited while he got behind the wheel and started the engine.
“That’s him?” he asked, stealing a glance in Jesse’s direction.
Jesse, meanwhile, had gone back to working on the ramp.
“That’s him,” Cheyenne confirmed.
“Looks as if you’ve got him right where you want him.”
Cheyenne kept her feathers smooth. Where did she want Jesse? In her bed, for one place, she realized with a cold-water shock, followed by a surge of searing heat, though she wasn’t about to let that happen—or confide the desire to Nigel. “What makes you say that?” she asked, to give herself time to recover.
“He wants you,” Nigel said. “That’s why he’s here, doing manly man work with his shirt off. Don’t tell me you don’t get the message, Pocahontas. I thought your people were supposed to be intuitive.”
Holy shit, Cheyenne thought. Nigel was a nincompoop, for the most part, but occasionally he hit on a solid insight.
“My people?” she echoed, indignant.
“Indians,” Nigel said. He could be politically correct when it suited him, but right now, evidently, it didn’t.
“Native Americans,” she insisted.
“Whatever,” Nigel replied. He looked at her intently as the man who’d driven the other car approached. “Say, you wouldn’t happen to have a stake in a casino or something like that? Some kind of tribal rights?”
“Nigel,” Cheyenne said evenly, “thank you for the car. Thank you for the new cell phone. And get out.”
He grinned.
The guy from the leasing company handed Cheyenne a set of keys and got into Nigel’s car on the passenger side.
Nigel honked again, a jaunty toot-toot of a goodbye, and they were off, turning around in the deep grass and barreling back down the driveway.
Cheyenne watched until they were out of sight, and so was a little startled when she realized Jesse was standing beside her.
“Nice save,” he said.
She looked up at him and was relieved to see a grin on his dirty face. “I don’t know what you’re talking about,” she lied.
“Yes, you do,” Jesse countered good-naturedly. “You were afraid the boss would assume I was a handyman and give you a pep talk about sticking it to me.”
Cheyenne sighed. “Nobody wants to stick anything to you, Jesse,” she said, and immediately wished she hadn’t phrased her answer quite that way. “It’s a fair offer.”
“Right,” Jesse said, pleasantly skeptical.
“That development would bring a lot of business to Indian Rock. It would be good for everybody.”
“Except the McKettricks, and about a dozen different species of critters,” Jesse replied.
“We were getting along so well,” Cheyenne said ruefully.
Jesse’s mouth quirked at the corner. “Only because we weren’t talking,” he replied. “By the way, you’ll never get this ground cleared with that hoe. Why don’t you rent a tiller?”
“Why didn’t I think of that?” she asked cheerfully. She had thought of it, of course, but she was reluctant to stretch the budget even that far.
“Guess I’d better finish that ramp,” Jesse said with an implied shrug and turned away. Mitch waited patiently, clasping a handful of nails.
Cheyenne tucked her car key into the pocket of her new jeans and went to examine her car. Boxes containing a laptop, the promised cell phone and half a dozen fat file folders sat in the backseat.
She carried the stuff inside the house in relays, piling it all on the kitchen table, and headed for the sink. There, she splashed her face and neck with cool water, then washed her hands.
After checking the pitiful store of food supplies Ayanna had brought from Phoenix, she made iced tea.
Outside, the hammering continued.
Mitch’s voice was an eager drone on the hot, weighted air.
The telephone rang and, against her better judgment, Cheyenne took the receiver off the wall. This phone, like the one in the living room, dated from the fifties, so there was no caller ID.
Alas, she didn’t need it.
“Hello?” she said, hoping she was wrong.
“He wants you,” Nigel told her. “Use it.”
JESSE EYED THE RAMP, nearly completed now, and the tumbledown porch he was about to attach it to, wondering if it would hold.
“How about letting me take a spin in that chair?” he said to Mitch.
Mitch grinned. “You want to?”
“Sure,” Jesse answered with a grin.
Mitch buzzed through the grass, hoisted himself off the chair to sit on the edge of the porch and beckoned.
Jesse crossed the yard, sat down in the chair and inspected the controls. The thing was electric, but that was about all that could be said for it. Like the house and the yard, it was well past its prime.
He stood up again, dragged the ramp over to the porch and set it in place. Then he returned to the chair, whipped it into Reverse, did a 360, and tried for a wheelie.
Mitch laughed aloud.
Cheyenne appeared in the front doorway, frowning.
Jesse zipped up the boards and back down again in reverse.
Yep, he thought, the ramp would hold. For the time being, anyway. Attaching it to that porch was like putting a Band-Aid on a bullet wound, though. It was a stopgap measure at best.
He looked up at Cheyenne.
Still frowning, she turned and fled back into the house.
“What’s with her?” he asked.
“She’s just way too serious,” Mitch replied.
Jesse remembered the shy but funny girl Cheyenne had been, before she’d left Indian Rock to start college. “I guess she’s had a rough time,” he said. He was fishing and he knew it, but he couldn’t help it.
Mitch’s face changed and he nodded. “She used to be different,” he said sadly. “Before the accident.”
Jesse steered the wheelchair within Mitch’s reach and got out of it. “That was a hell of a thing,” he said. “I’m sorry it happened.”
Mitch shrugged. “Life goes on. There are a lot of things I could do, if Cheyenne and Mom weren’t so scared I’d get hurt again.”
Jesse perched on the edge of the porch, waiting while Mitch transferred himself back to the chair. “Like what?” he asked easily.
“I’m good with computers,” Mitch said. “I could be a technician or even write programs. But they—” he nodded toward the house “—are afraid nobody would hire me. You know, because of the chair.”
“You don’t need legs to write programs,” Jesse said.
Mitch grinned, his whole face going as bright as a harvest moon on a clear night. “You still going to saddle up a horse for me at the party tomorrow night?”
Jesse nodded. “You bet.”
“Mom might be okay with that, but Cheyenne will pitch a fit.”
Jesse turned his head toward the open doorway. For a moment, it was as if he could see through the sagging walls of that old house, catch sight of Cheyenne in there, wishing he’d go away.
“She’ll get over it,” he said.
“You don’t know my sister,” Mitch told him.
Jesse shook his head. No, the truth was, he didn’t know Cheyenne, but he’d like to. Inside and out. He wanted to explore her most secrets thoughts, touch the bruised places on her soul, lay her down on a bed in some cool, shadowy room and make love to her until they both passed out from exhaustion.
“What does she do for fun?” he asked.
“Cheyenne doesn’t have fun,” Mitch answered. “All she does is work and worry, as far as I can tell.”
“Maybe it’s time somebody changed that,” Jesse mused.
“Good luck,” Mitch scoffed, but when Jesse looked at his face, he saw a hope so desperate that it twisted something deep inside him.
Jesse stood. “Guess I’d better gather up my tools and get out of here. You want to give the ramp a try before I go?”
He’d planned to spend what remained of the day playing poker in the back room at Lucky’s, but now he needed a shower and a change of clothes. Instead of going all the way out to the ranch, he decided to stop by McKettrickCo—Rance and Keegan had an executive gym there, equipped with the necessary facilities, and he knew Keegan always kept extra duds on hand.
As it happened, he wanted a word with his cousin anyway.
Mitch navigated the ramp with the deftness of a skateboarder going over a jump.
Jesse decided the thing ought to have side rails and made a mental note to stop by the lumber yard again for more boards.
“Thanks, Jesse,” Mitch said from up on the porch.
“No problem,” Jesse answered, wondering if he ought to go inside and say goodbye to Cheyenne. In the end, he decided against it because it might seem as though he wanted something from her, and even though he did want something, it wouldn’t be smart to let on.
Mitch was still going up and down the new ramp as Jesse drove away, and just before he turned the bend, he saw Cheyenne in his rearview mirror, giving a halfhearted wave from the doorway.
“NICE CLOTHES,” KEEGAN remarked, when Jesse came out of the workout room at McKettrickCo, freshly showered and wearing black slacks with knife-edge creases and a long-sleeved polo shirt the manufacturer would probably have described as sea-foam green. “The boots add an interesting touch.”
Jesse grinned and looked down at his favorite pair of shit-kickers. “I don’t mind duding up a little,” he said, “but I draw the line at wearing oxfords.”
Keegan chuckled and shook his head. “Downright noble of you to stoop to stealing from my wardrobe,” he said. “And I’d pay money to see you in oxfords.” He looked tired as hell, and it occurred to Jesse that his cousin might not have gone home at all the night before. He could have had his dinner brought in, worked until his eyes wouldn’t focus, and stretched out on the couch in his office for a snooze. Since the divorce, he’d done that a lot, according to Myrna Terp.
“You said something yesterday about wanting to hire somebody who was good with computers,” Jesse said, figuring he might as well launch right in. No sense in beating around the bush.
Keegan sighed. “What are you doing, starting an employment agency? I tried to call Cheyenne a couple of times, but evidently she doesn’t have voice mail.”
“I don’t think she’s looking for a job,” Jesse replied, turning to the mirror over one of the line of sinks and getting a start for his trouble. He looked like any other corporate grunt, heading out to play eighteen holes on the golf course. The idea made him shudder. “She’s still trying to persuade me to sell her the land.”
Keegan, leaning one shoulder against the doorjamb, folded his arms. “You’re not stringing her along, are you, Jesse? Just to see where it might lead?”
Jesse turned from the mirror, crossed the room and glared at his cousin. “I told Cheyenne flat out that I won’t accept the deal on any terms. If she still wants a chance to convince me, well, I’m up for that.”
“I imagine you are.”
The words hurt more than Jesse would ever have let on. “My reputation must be worse than I thought,” he said.
“Your reputation,” Keegan replied, “is worse than you could possibly imagine. Do you actually know somebody who can handle a computer?”
“Yes,” Jesse said. “Mitch Bridges. He’s willing to learn, anyway. You could institute some kind of work-study program, couldn’t you? On-the-job training?”
Keegan huffed out another sigh. “Cheyenne’s brother? He’s in a wheelchair, isn’t he?”
Jesse bristled. “Yes, he’s Cheyenne’s brother. And so what if he’s in a wheelchair? There’s nothing wrong with his brain. He’s young and I think he’d work hard.”
“Okay,” Keegan said, laying a conciliatory hand on Jesse’s shoulder. “If he knows the basics, I’ll send him up to Flagstaff for a crash course. And maybe some kind of local training program wouldn’t be a bad idea. McKettrickCo likes to give back to the community.”
“Thanks, Keeg,” Jesse said.
“The kid’s got to produce, Jesse,” Keegan warned. “I’m not running a charity organization here.”
“Maybe you ought to be.”
Keegan shoved a hand through his hair.
“How come you look so worried?” Jesse asked. “More bad news on the ex-wife front?”
“It just keeps coming,” Keegan admitted. “When I went to pick Devon up last night, Shelley said she was spending the night with a friend. And the board of directors is thinking of taking the company public.”
By then, they were in the corridor. Keegan’s office was at the end, with Rance’s next to it. Rance’s door was partway open—either he was back from his latest business trip, or the cleaning crew was inside.
“So you’re just giving up?” Jesse asked. “This is your weekend with Devon—you told me that yesterday.”
“I’m leaving in a few minutes to go get her. Devon’s out of school today—teacher meetings or something—and I was going to take her riding.”
Rance poked his head out of his office. His dark hair looked as though he’d been ramming his fingers through it. “Well,” he drawled, looking Jesse over, “if it isn’t the Player. Golf your game these days?”
Jesse returned the look. “I thought you were in China making us all richer,” he said. Then he remembered what Sierra had said on the telephone the other day, about Rance and Keegan clearing their schedules to come to the party on the ranch.
“Obviously,” Rance retorted, stepping into the hallway, “I’m back. And it’s a damn good thing. Keeg’s got the bit in his teeth about letting us go public. Says it’s a big mistake and he’ll block it any way he can.”
“Gee,” Jesse said, turning to Keegan. “A shitload of money and nobody in the whole damn family has to work for the rest of their days. That is an awful prospect.”
“Since when did you ever work?” Keegan snapped.
Since this morning, Jesse thought, but he didn’t plan on mentioning the ramp-building enterprise over at the Bridges place. There was something way too personal about it, and he knew both Rance and Keegan would ask a lot of questions if they knew.
“Why work?” Jesse retorted. “I won five million dollars playing poker, and my dividend checks come in faster than I can spend them.”
Keegan threw up his hands. “I tried,” he told the hallway ceiling.
“How are the kids?” Jesse asked Rance. He truly wanted to know, and he also wanted to put a bend in the subject so it would head in another direction—away from Cheyenne and Mitch and his own state of chronic unemployment.
Rance smiled. He loved his daughters, but since his wife, Julie, had died a few years before, he’d left them with their grandmother a lot, while he jetted around the world making deals and soaking up smaller companies. A couple of the major news magazines had called him a pirate, and when it came to doing business, he played for keeps, no holds barred, taking no prisoners, though Jesse had never known him to do anything illegal. “Cora closed up the Curl and Twirl and took them to Disneyland for a week,” Rance said. “They’ll be back sometime tonight.”
Jesse nodded. “You’ll be bringing them to Sierra and Travis’s party, then?”
“Yep,” Rance confirmed.
“See you there,” Jesse said on his way out.
“Make sure you bring my clothes with you,” Keegan called after him.
Jesse turned, saluted and left.
CHEYENNE, FRESHLY SHOWERED and shampooed, clad in her bathrobe with her hair wrapped in a towel, set a plate of bologna sandwiches in the middle of the table, along with the iced tea she’d brewed earlier. Mitch, having already wheeled to the table, grinned up at her. “That’s a seriously cool car Nigel brought you,” he said. “We ought to take a spin. Maybe motor down to the supermarket and show it to Mom.”
“Later,” Cheyenne said. Hard as she tried to corral them, her thoughts kept straying back to Jesse. The way he looked without his shirt. The knowing glint in his eyes when he’d said, Nice save.
Mitch took in the boxes Nigel had left, now sitting on top of the dryer jammed up alongside the washer in the tiny kitchen. Cheyenne’s jeans and T-shirt were thumping through the spin cycle. “Want me to set up the laptop and the phone for you?” he asked.
“Sure,” she answered and sank into a chair to reach for half a sandwich. “I’d appreciate that. Thanks.”
“I like Jesse,” Mitch said solemnly, as if it were some big secret.
“Ummm,” Cheyenne said.
“Do you like him, Cheyenne?”
She put her sandwich down on one of her grandmother’s chipped plates. They’d been cheap in the first place, those dishes, but Gram had treasured them. Collected them carefully during an advertising promotion at the grocery store.
Suddenly, Cheyenne’s throat tightened again, and her eyes threatened to mist over. Gram. Her mother’s mother, clinging to the Apache ways, and at the same time trying to function in a predominantly white world.
“Cheyenne?” Mitch pressed, looking worried.
“I like Jesse well enough,” she said.
“You have a date with him tomorrow night,” Mitch prodded.
“Yes,” Cheyenne replied dryly, “I remember.”
“So you must like him better than ‘well enough.’ You like Nigel ‘well enough,’ but you’ve never gone out with him.” A horrified look crossed Mitch’s face. He was nineteen, and because of what he’d suffered, he was mature for his age, but at times he seemed younger, and this was one of them. “Have you?”
“Nooooo,” Cheyenne said. “I haven’t.” She didn’t believe in mixing business and pleasure. But, then, she’d never had to do business with Jesse McKettrick before, and the man was built for pleasure.
“I think Nigel’s a shit,” Mitch told her, going for another sandwich.
“I think you’re right,” Cheyenne agreed.
Mitch’s forehead furrowed with confusion. “Then why do you work for him? Why don’t you get another job?”
“Because it’s not that easy,” Cheyenne answered. “The economy isn’t exactly booming.”
“You could apply at McKettrickCo.”
“Mitch,” Cheyenne said carefully, pushing her chair back a couple of inches, “don’t get carried away, here, okay? Yes, Jesse built the ramp, and that was nice of him. He invited us to the party tomorrow night, and that was nice, too. But the McKettricks are the McKettricks, and the Bridgeses are the Bridgeses. They live on the Triple M and we live—well, here. You think those railroad tracks out there are just railroad tracks? They’re not, Mitch. They might as well be a stone wall, twenty feet thick and a hundred feet tall.”
Mitch shook his head pityingly. “God, Chey, that’s depressing.”
“Maybe so,” Cheyenne said. Her appetite was gone, so she put the remains of her sandwich in the fridge and cleared her side of the table. “But it’s true.”
“Is it?” Mitch countered, popping his chair into reverse and scooting back far enough to look her up and down. “I feel sorry for you, Chey. You’ve given up,” he accused. “What happened to all those dreams you used to tell me about, when I was in the hospital? You were going to get married and have kids. Start your own company, so you wouldn’t have to take orders from anybody. You said I could do the same thing, do whatever I wanted. Were you just shining me on? Trying to cheer up the poor cripple?”
“Mitch—”
“When did you stop believing life could be good, Cheyenne? Really good?”
“I didn’t stop bel—”
“Yes, you did!” Mitch shouted. With that, he spun around and left the room.
“Mitch!” Cheyenne yelled after him.
She heard his bedroom door slam in the distance.
She stood very still.
Had she given up, stopped believing her dreams could come true, dreams for herself and for Mitch and her mother as well?
“No,” she whispered. She’d come to Indian Rock to buy the land to build the most beautiful condominium development ever designed. If she succeeded, the bonus she received would set Ayanna and Mitch up for life, and enable her to go out on her own, once her contract with Nigel expired.
But how could she succeed?
Jesse wasn’t about to give in. She was building a house of cards, and it was bound to fall.
What kind of game was she playing with herself, with Jesse?
Did she really think she could change his mind?
Or did she simply want an excuse to spend more time with him?
Her cheeks burned.
The washer pounded to a thunking stop.
Cheyenne crossed the kitchen, took her jeans and T-shirt out of the machine and flung them into the dryer. Fifteen minutes later, she was sitting on the back porch, towel-drying her hair, when she heard her mother’s van chortle up out front.
It was too early for Ayanna to be off work. Had she been fired?
Cheyenne couldn’t work up the energy to go and find out.
She stayed where she was, gazing at the backyard, which looked even worse than the front. There was the old tire swing, where her dad used to push her when she was little. When he hadn’t been drinking, or playing cards, or locked up in jail, that was.
He’d made so many promises back then.
I’ll take care of you, princess.
You and me and your mother, we’ll get us a house of our own, in some other town, where we can start new.
Soon as I draw that royal flush, princess. Soon as I draw that royal flush.
Cheyenne wrapped her arms around her knees, laid her head down.
The screen door opened behind her.
“Everything okay?” Ayanna asked softly.
Cheyenne didn’t look up. She was going to have a chenille imprint on her forehead from her bathrobe, but she didn’t care. “I might ask you the same question,” she replied.
“I’m on my lunch break,” Ayanna said. Cheyenne felt her mother plunk down on the step beside her. Give her a shoulder-bump. “That’s some company car out there, and the ramp looks great. So where’s Mitch and what’s with the communal glum mood?”
“Who says there’s a glum mood, communal or otherwise?”
“Well, you’re sitting on the back step in your bathrobe, in the middle of the day. You won’t look at me. Your brother must be shut up in his room, and he isn’t playing a video game unless he switched the sound off on his laptop. The atmosphere around here is thick as yesterday’s gravy. I don’t have to call the psychic hotline to know there’s something going on.” She began to rub Cheyenne’s back in slow, comforting circles. “Come on, kiddo. What’s up?”
Cheyenne turned her head on her knees, looked into her mother’s kind, tired face. “You’ve been through so much, Mom,” she began. “Dad. Mitch’s accident. Pete taking off when you needed him most. How can you keep the faith the way you do? How do you stay so optimistic?”
“I have my down times,” Ayanna said quietly. “But there are plenty of things to be thankful for. Mitch could have been killed when that four-wheeler rolled over, but he wasn’t. You’ve made me so proud, working your way through college, landing such a good job.”
“I’m a complete fraud,” Cheyenne moaned and pressed her face into her knees again.
Ayanna laughed softly and continued the back rub. “How so, sweetheart?”
“You saw that car out front. Nigel brought it, after you left for work, along with another phone and a new computer. He still believes I can get that land. I know I can’t. I’ve accepted all that stuff on false pretenses—along with a continuing paycheck.”
“Business is speculative, Cheyenne. Yours more than most. Methinks something—or someone—else is bothering you.”
Cheyenne didn’t reply.
Ayanna got up, without another word, went into the house and came back a few minutes later, nudging Cheyenne until she sat up straight.
“What’s that?” Cheyenne asked. Her mother was holding a battered shoe box in both hands.
“See for yourself,” Ayanna said, placing the box in Cheyenne’s lap.
Cheyenne lifted the lid, and inside were the pictures of Jesse she’d collected in high school, and the clippings, with yellowed edges now and smidgens of tape still clinging to their corners.
Cheyenne’s throat went dry.
“That’s why you came back to Indian Rock,” Ayanna said, and then she left Cheyenne alone again, with her box of memories.