AFTER SUPPER, RIANNA EXCUSED herself, left the patio and soon came speeding around the corner of the ranch house in her miniature pink Volkswagen. With a delighted smile, she tooted the horn.
Echo was oddly moved by the sight, as well as amused. She laughed, peripherally aware of Rance’s glance, lighting briefly on her, then shifting back to Rianna.
“It’s just like your car!” Rianna cried.
“So it is,” Echo said softly.
“Except that Echo can actually drive hers,” Maeve put in, with an air of implacable practicality.
“I can drive,” Rianna argued. “I betcha I could go all the way to Indian Rock, if Daddy would let me!”
“We’ve been over that,” Rance interjected.
“I can’t even take it across the bridge to Uncle Keegan’s house,” Rianna said, pouting now.
“Go and play,” Rance told his daughters. “Both of you.”
Rianna shot off down the driveway, horn blasting, with Maeve running beside her. Avalon raised herself off the patio stones, yawned and ambled off in halfhearted pursuit.
“I don’t know what I was thinking, buying that thing,” Rance admitted. “The kid will be sixteen soon enough, and driving a real car.”
Impulsively, Echo reached out to pat Rance’s hand. Her skin seared where she’d touched him, and he flinched as though he’d felt it, too. Both of them drew in an audible breath.
Color pulsed in Echo’s cheeks. “She loves it,” she said, somewhat lamely. “And she loves you, obviously.”
“I’m not sure I deserve it,” Rance said. Then he took Echo’s hand, chafing her knuckles lightly with the pad of his thumb. “What about you, Echo Wells?” he asked. “Who loves you?”
She tensed, recovered and tried for a smile. The obvious answer was Nobody, but she couldn’t bring herself to say it out loud. For one thing, it would sound pathetic, and for another, it would hurt too much.
“I’m kind of a loner,” she said.
Rance did not release her hand, but his grip wasn’t tight. Once the series of visceral charges subsided, it was nice. “You don’t strike me as the loner type,” he replied. “You said your family moved around a lot. Does that mean you’re not close to any of them?”
“Yes,” she answered, and looked away, because suddenly there were tears in her eyes, and she’d die if he saw them. “That’s what it means.”
Rance didn’t answer. Nor did he let go of her hand.
Dusk was gathering, and a paper-thin moon was visible directly above the main chimney of Keegan McKettrick’s house.
“It’s so beautiful here,” Echo said quietly. She wanted to pull away, knew she should, but the message was short-circuited somewhere between her brain and the muscles in her hand.
“More beautiful tonight than usual,” Rance agreed.
She glanced at him, her gaze colliding with his and skittering away. It was a line, of course, but it beat “Haven’t I seen you somewhere before?”
Gently, she pulled her hand from his. It would be easy to tumble into bed with him, on this or some other night—only too easy. Maybe other encounters would follow, but then Rance would move on, and she would be left with the landscape of her soul scorched bare.
It had happened before—with Justin—and Echo knew she couldn’t afford a repeat performance.
She stood, began clearing the table.
“Echo,” Rance said, without rising from his chair. “Stop.”
She paused, watched as Maeve, Rianna and Avalon came back up the driveway, a plume of dust trailing behind the little pink car.
“I should get back to town,” she said.
Rance stood. “All right,” he answered, but he sounded reluctant, as though he’d like to suggest something else.
She forced herself to meet his eyes. “I—it was a lovely evening—”
He smiled, though a certain sadness lingered in his eyes. “Something spooked you, Echo,” he said gently. “What was it?”
She bit her lower lip. How could she explain that he spooked her? He and all he caused her to feel? In one evening, he’d reawakened dreams she’d long since put to rest, dreams that could never come true because the two of them were so different.
He was rich, she merely got by.
He had a vast extended family, she was alone in the world.
He was practical, while she had a tendency toward magical thinking.
It would never work.
“I don’t know,” she lied.
He cupped her chin in one hand, brushed the side of his thumb across her mouth in a caress so gentle that it sent hot shivers through her. “I think you do,” he countered. “But if you’re not ready to tell me, that’s fine.”
Rianna zipped up in her minibug and sent one of the chairs crashing loudly onto the flagstones.
“Park it,” Rance ordered. “Time for a pit stop.”
Rianna sighed, sounding resigned to the unreasonable demands of grown-ups, and climbed out of the little car.
Echo reached for her shoulder bag.
“You’re leaving?” Rianna asked.
“Big day tomorrow,” Echo said. She intended to drive to Flagstaff and buy a cash register and credit-card processor. When the stock for her shop started to arrive, she wanted to be ready.
Rianna’s small shoulders sagged. “Oh,” she murmured.
“Say good night to Miss Wells and get ready for bed,” Rance told his daughter. “Maeve, you too.”
“But it isn’t even dark yet!” Maeve protested.
“Do it,” Rance said.
“Good night, Miss Wells,” Maeve and Rianna chorused glumly. After giving Avalon a few farewell pats, the children disappeared into the house.
Rance walked Echo to her car, Avalon keeping pace at her other side.
Echo was busy for a few moments, getting Avalon settled on the car seat, and when she turned around, she smashed directly into Rance. He felt like a stone wall, and the impact dizzied her a little.
He slipped his arms loosely around her waist, bent his head and touched his lips to hers. It was a brief kiss, over in a heartbeat, but it left Echo shaken and confused—and absolutely certain that her earlier premonition was correct.
Sooner or later, Rance McKettrick was going to seduce her and, against all sense and reason, she was going to let him.
RANCE BARELY SLEPT THAT night, and the next morning he took the girls to town for breakfast at the Roadhouse before dropping them off at Cora’s shop. He was disappointed to notice that Echo’s ridiculous pink car was gone, though he figured it was just as well if they didn’t run into each other right away. He’d enjoyed the previous evening a bit too much for comfortable reflection.
His mother-in-law, alone in the Curl and Twirl except for an old lady swathed in a plastic cape and sitting under one of the hair dryers, took in his slacks, white shirt and tie.
“Are you planning to board that jet again?” Cora asked warily, once Rianna and Maeve had gone into the adjoining studio to practice their baton-twirling. The value of such a skill mystified Rance, there being no market for it in the real world, and he put it down to the fathomless peculiarity of the female mind.
Rance shook his head, both at Cora’s question and the feminine gender. “I’ll be in my office at McKettrickCo,” he said. “More meetings. If the girls get to be too much for you, I can pick them up, take them back to work with me.”
“They’re never too much for me,” Cora said. Then her mouth softened into a smile, and her eyes twinkled with mischief. “How was supper last night?” she asked.
“It was delicious,” Rance hedged. “Trout. I fried them up myself.”
“You know that isn’t what I meant,” Cora persisted. He’d called when he got back to the ranch and invited her to join the party, but she’d demurred, as soon as he’d mentioned that Echo would be there.
Rance grinned and leaned in, in case the old lady could hear over the roar of that hair dryer, which covered the top of her head like a space helmet. “Well,” he said, “first I sent the girls to bed. Then, when I was sure they were asleep, I stripped Echo naked, threw her down in the tall grass and ravished her.”
Cora’s eyes widened. Then she punched him. “You scoundrel,” she said. “You had me going for a moment there!”
Rance laughed, wishing he had ravished Echo. He might have gotten a decent night’s sleep then, instead of tossing and turning until the wee small hours. He was about to leave for work when Cora stopped him.
“Why don’t you have supper at my place tonight? You and the girls.”
He raised an eyebrow. “Do I smell a trap?”
“I might invite Echo, if that’s what you mean,” Cora said. “She’s lonely, Rance, and I don’t think she eats right. She’s too thin.”
Personally, Rance thought Echo’s figure was perfect, but he wasn’t going to argue the point with Cora. He frowned. “She seemed to have a good appetite last night,” he said. More than that, she’d wanted him as much as he’d wanted her—another insight he wasn’t about to share.
She was scared, maybe just of him, maybe of all men.
“She’s been burned,” he mused aloud, without intending to voice the thought in the first place.
Cora nodded sagely, glanced back at the woman under the dryer, who was immersed in a tattered copy of People, and confided, “His name was Justin. She flew all the way to Vegas to marry him in one of those silly little chapels, and he didn’t show up.”
Rance was surprised at how this news impacted him; he felt it like a blow. He was at once grateful that Echo hadn’t gone through with the marriage and sorely tempted to find this Justin character and change the shape of his face.
“She told you that?”
“Women tell other women things they’d never say to a man in a million years,” Cora said wisely. “Not directly, anyhow.”
The reminder nettled. Women did keep secrets, and they spoke a language all their own. It had been that way with Julie; she hadn’t said a word to him when she wasn’t happy, at least in the beginning, when they could have turned things around—she’d gone to Cora instead. He’d found his wife crying, several times, asked what was wrong, and gotten the same answer: Nothing. That “nothing” had grown into a pretty big “something.”
He wondered if Julie had confided all of it to Cora, a question that had kept him awake many a night, but he couldn’t bring himself to ask. McKettrick pride. It was one of his best qualities—allowing him to succeed on a scale well beyond the reach of McKettrickCo—and one of his worst.
“I’ll think about supper,” he promised Cora in parting, and he would. But it would be at the tail end of a lot of other things he wanted to ponder.
WHEN ECHO AND AVALON returned to the shop that afternoon with the cash register and the credit card machine, Echo, feeling oddly ill at ease, went to her laptop, resting on the counter, and logged on. The e-mail was waiting, along with six more orders for love spells.
“Pitcher looks like my dog,” the spelling-challenged stranger had written. “She run off from my back yard in Dry Creek, Arizona, three weeks ago. She’s gonna have pups and there worth some real money, so I want to get her home. Ain’t paying no rewards.” The man had signed his name, Bud Willand, and contact information followed.
Echo glanced at Avalon, who was resting quietly in a patch of sunlight streaming in through the display window. She’d passed by the exit for Dry Creek on her way north from Tucson.
“Did you belong to somebody named Bud Willand?” she asked.
Avalon sighed and stretched.
After hesitating to wrestle with her conscience, Echo dialed the phone number listed in the e-mail. She couldn’t not call, but she had a very bad feeling, just the same.
“Yo” came the brusque answer.
“Is this Mr. Willand?” Echo asked.
“Bud,” Mr. Willand confirmed.
“I believe you sent me an e-mail about a lost pet? Can you tell me what you call her?” It would be an easy enough test; if Avalon was Bud Willand’s dog, she would respond to her name.
Willand gave a gruff, faintly contemptuous chuckle. “Kids named her Whitey, not that it matters. Damn critter never comes when you call her, anyhow.”
“Whitey,” Echo repeated, watching Avalon for any sign of recognition.
The dog didn’t so much as twitch.
“I don’t think this is Whitey,” she said.
“I’d like to take a look at her just the same,” Willand replied. “Kids miss her somethin’ awful. And, like I said, she don’t answer to nothing but a bowl of table scraps.”
“I really don’t—”
“She’s a good huntin’ dog, though. Take her out every fall in my camper.”
Echo closed her eyes, remembering the way Avalon had clawed so desperately at the door of that RV, the night of Rianna’s birthday party, and been virtually inconsolable when the woman inside wasn’t her owner.
She couldn’t imagine gentle Avalon as a hunter, though. Couldn’t bear to think of her tied up in someone’s backyard, subsisting on table scraps.
Still, there was the camper reference—she hadn’t mentioned anything like that on the missing-pet Web sites, although she had updated the information once since that night—and it wouldn’t be right or fair to ignore that.
Echo gave Bud Willand directions to Indian Rock and her shop, hoping all the while that he wouldn’t show up.
Within half an hour, she’d forgotten all about Mr. Willand and any claims he might have on Avalon. The first shipment of books arrived, and she got busy sorting them and entering them into an inventory database on her computer.
It was just after five when Cora dropped in.
“Place is starting to look like a bookstore,” she commented happily.
Echo grinned, pleased and exhausted. “It’s coming together,” she said. It would take a lot of work to open the shop by Saturday morning, but she was determined to do so.
“I’d be glad to help,” Cora said. “First, though, I think you ought to come over to my place for a good supper.” She glanced fondly down at Avalon, who was still sunning herself. “You can bring the pooch, too, of course.”
“That’s so kind of you,” Echo answered, pushing back sweat-dampened bangs and giving a tired sigh, “but I was planning to grab some yogurt and keep working.”
“Yogurt,” Cora scoffed good-naturedly, “can’t compete with my three-bean-bacon casserole.”
Echo’s stomach grumbled. “Probably not.”
“You come on home with me,” Cora insisted. “After supper, we’ll head back here and finish up.”
Avalon stood and stretched, went to Cora’s side and licked her hand.
Echo laughed. “I guess it’s decided,” she said. “Just let me clean up a little.”
“You look fine,” Cora said. “I’ve got to stop by McKettrickCo to pick up the girls. Rance came and got them—took them out to lunch, then back to his office. I’m beginning to think there might be hope for that man yet.”
Echo smiled, though any reference to Rance made her nervous. “He’ll be joining us?” she asked tentatively.
“That depends,” Cora answered. “Big things happening in the company right now. There’s a possibility they might go public, and since the McKettrick clan is divided on the issue, Rance may be up to his backside in alligators right about now.”
“Oh,” Echo said, at a loss. She knew nothing about McKettrickCo except that it was an international corporation and, as such, probably chopping down rain forests and exploiting unskilled laborers.
“Come on, now,” Cora prodded. “We’ll have us a good time, whether Rance shows up or not.”
Five minutes later, Echo was in the Volks, with Avalon buckled in on the passenger side, following Cora to McKettrickCo’s local offices. The building was impressive, fitting in well with the landscape, and there were a number of cars parked in the lot, although it was surely past closing time.
Echo waited in her car, hoping Rance would join them at Cora’s for supper and, with equal intensity, hoping he wouldn’t. She felt like a giant rubber band, stretched to its limits.
When Cora came outside again, Rianna and Maeve were with her, but there was no sign of Rance.
Rianna and Maeve waved to Echo, grinning, and Cora shepherded them into her truck. When she started the engine and backed out of her parking space, Echo pulled in behind her.
Cora’s house was a two-story Victorian, painted white and trimmed in forest green, with a picket fence and lilac bushes blooming in the front yard. A flag waved from a metal holder fixed to a pillar of the wraparound porch, which was partly screened in. A big maple tree provided shade, and a wooden swing hung from one of its sturdy branches. The driveway was gravel, leading to an old-fashioned detached garage.
Cora parked the truck inside, while Maeve and Rianna bounded back through the open door to meet Echo and Avalon on the sidewalk.
The girls greeted Avalon with a lot of exuberant ear-rumpling and some back-stroking, and Echo would have sworn the dog was smiling as she basked in their attention.
Echo thought briefly of Bud Willand and his children. Was Avalon the missing Whitey? Would the Willand kids welcome her the way Rianna and Maeve had, with happy, rollicking love?
The pit of Echo’s stomach quavered a little. If Avalon was Whitey, she would have to give her up, and the prospect filled her with dread.
“How come you look so sad?” Rianna asked, pausing to study Echo’s face with solemn interest.
“I’m just a little tired,” Echo hastened to explain.
Cora, evidently having entered the house from a side or back door, appeared on the front porch, beckoning.
“There’s lemonade in the fridge,” she called.
Maeve opened the creaking gate, and they all trooped through. Looking at that wonderfully simple house, with its gleaming windows and neatly kept lawn, flower beds and shrubbery, Echo felt another pang.
What would it have been like to grow up in such a place?
She imagined snow at Christmas, a festive wreath on the door and colorful tree lights glowing in the living room window. In the autumn, there would be jack-o’-lanterns on the step, while crimson and gold leaves pooled around the trunk of the maple. In the spring, pansies, nasturtiums and geraniums would billow brightly over the edges of terra-cotta pots.
Echo’s throat tightened with an impossible longing.
Rianna, young as she was, seemed to understand. She took Echo’s hand and squeezed it lightly. “I miss my mom,” she whispered.
Tears burned behind Echo’s eyes.
Maeve’s small back stiffened, and she turned to face her sister. “You don’t remember Mom,” she accused.
“I still miss her,” Rianna insisted.
“Let’s get some of that lemonade,” Echo said.
“We all need to wet our whistles,” Cora added. She was smiling, but her eyes were sad and serious as she gathered her granddaughters close against her sides. Over their heads, Echo’s and Cora’s gazes connected.
They had cold lemonade in the backyard, at a wicker table, and then the children played with Avalon while Cora and Echo sat quietly in the leaf-dappled sunshine.
“Their mother grew up right here under this roof,” Cora said softly. “She played in the grass, with her dog, Farky, just like Rianna and Maeve are doing now. I never thought I’d still be here, and my Julie gone. “
Echo didn’t know how to respond.
Cora managed a resolute smile. “I’m an old fool, running on about somebody you didn’t even know,” she said. “Forgive me.”
“I don’t mind listening, Cora,” Echo answered. “And you’re anything but an ‘old fool.’”
“Would you like to look at some pictures?” Cora asked, with touching shyness. “Of Julie, I mean?”
“I’d like that very much,” Echo said.
Cora hurried into the house and soon returned with an album, well worn. She pulled a chair closer to Echo’s and laid the large book reverently on the tabletop, opening to the first page.
There was a much younger Cora, smiling, posed in front of a Christmas tree and holding a beautiful baby clad in pink. “My husband, Mike, took that picture,” she said.
Maeve and Rianna appeared, as if magnetized, standing on either side of their grandmother to peer, rapt, over her shoulders. Undoubtedly, they’d seen the photographs in that album often enough to memorize every detail of every image, but from their expressions, they might have been seeing them for the first time.
“Show Echo the one of Mommy in the cowgirl outfit,” Rianna prompted breathlessly. Looking up at Echo, she added proudly, “Mommy was Little Miss Rodeo when she was five.”
“Wow,” Echo said, honestly impressed. Julie Tellington was Shirley Temple–cute in her fringed skirt, vest and boots, beaming into the camera lens with the confidence of a thoroughly cherished child.
“She wasn’t the least bit spoiled, either,” Cora related fondly, devouring the photo with her eyes. “We tried to have more children, Mike and I did, but we felt blessed to raise our Julie.”
Echo couldn’t speak. She yearned for a child of her own, one she would love as fiercely as Cora had loved hers. “She was beautiful.”
Cora nodded. Sniffled slightly. Her hand curved around the edge of the aging picture with a tenderness that bruised Echo’s very soul. To love the way Cora had was a terrible risk, laying the heart bare, with all its most delicate nerves exposed.
How had Cora borne such a loss?
Rianna reached out with grubby, grass-stained fingers and touched the photograph briefly. Echo was glad when Cora didn’t reprimand the little girl, but waited until Rianna slowly withdrew her hand.
A series of sequential photos followed—Julie on the first day of school, competing in various baton-twirling contests, always in an outfit as elaborate as the cowgirl costume, and probably hand-made, opening presents on her birthdays, and at Christmas. Dressed for trick-or-treating, in a variety of imaginative getups—a bumblebee one year, a giant hot dog the next, then a sunflower with floppy yellow petals and green felt leaves.
Cora admitted modestly that she’d sewn constantly when Julie was little, and still made costumes for Rianna and Maeve when they were called for.
Midway through the album, Rance began to appear—a teenager clowning as he and Julie washed an old car, the spray of the hose frozen forever in a bright geyser, a handsome young man standing proudly beside Julie on prom night, their wedding. Later, he posed with Julie and the kids, and their smiles seemed to light up the picture.
There were more photos—taken at picnics, on holidays. Echo wondered sadly if anyone else had noticed Julie’s smile growing almost imperceptibly dimmer, from one occasion to the next.
Finally, they reached the album’s end.
Avalon gave an uncertain little yelp, and everyone looked up to see Rance standing in the yard, watching them. His face was in shadow, but he came out of the shade smiling.
Echo’s heart caught painfully.
“I hope I didn’t miss supper,” he said.
Avalon approached him, and Echo watched, oddly stricken, as he leaned down to pet the dog in greeting.
“We didn’t eat yet,” Rianna informed her father.
“Good,” he said, looking at Echo as he came nearer. His gaze dropped, momentarily, to the album.
“I’ll get you some lemonade,” Cora said, getting up and clutching the album against her chest, almost as though she feared he might snatch it from her.
“Thanks,” he said mildly, still watching Echo.
Cora went inside the house, taking the photo album with her.
Rianna and Maeve followed, leaving Rance and Echo alone in the backyard, except for Avalon, who waited for Rance to sit down at the table, then settled companionably at his feet.
“Long day?” Echo asked, noting the signs of fatigue around Rance’s eyes, barely suppressing an urge to smooth his slightly rumpled hair.
“The usual,” he said. “I take it Cora showed you one of her albums.”
She nodded. “Julie was lovely,” she said.
Rance acknowledged that with a brief motion of his head. Relaxed a little.
Rianna returned with a glass of lemonade. “Are we going public?” she asked, handing the drink to her father.
The moment quivered.
Then Rance laughed, both at his daughter’s words and Echo’s obvious confusion. “That hasn’t been decided yet,” he told Rianna. “As of right now, McKettrickCo is still a family business.”
Echo, having finally caught up with the conversation, wanted to ask which side Rance was on, and promptly decided it was none of her business.
“Are we for or against?” Rianna inquired.
“We’re undecided,” Rance replied.
“Uncle Jesse?”
“Undecided,” Rance said.
“Uncle Keegan is definitely against,” Rianna declared.
“Is he ever,” Rance confirmed. “Far be it from him to live out the rest of his days as a man of leisure.”
“What would you do, Daddy? If you didn’t have to work at McKettrickCo anymore, I mean?” Rianna looked so hopeful as she asked that question that Echo had to avert her eyes.
“I’d spend more time with you and your sister,” Rance said quietly.
Echo’s gaze flew to his face.
“That would be good,” Rianna said, beaming. In that moment, despite her Rance-dark hair, the child looked to Echo so much like Julie that it was as though she’d come back to life.
Rance took a sip of his lemonade. “That would be good,” he agreed.
Maeve came out of the back door then, carrying a stack of plates topped with silverware. Cora was right behind her, bearing a blue-and-white casserole dish in both hands.
Avalon sat up on her haunches and sniffed appreciatively.
Cora took one of the plates, once Maeve had set them on the table, dished up a portion of the savory-smelling concoction, and put it on the ground for Avalon.
“I hope you don’t mind,” Cora said, after the fact, glancing at Echo.
“I don’t mind,” Echo whispered, wishing, just as she had the night before, on Rance’s patio, that time would stand still, instead of flowing on and on, like the creek in front of the ranch house. Knowing it wouldn’t, she folded the homey backyard tableau carefully and tucked it away in the mental scrap-book where she kept only the most precious things.