PSYCHE SAT ALONE under a tree, with Lucas snoozing on a blanket nearby. Seeing Keegan returning with Jesse, she beckoned.
Keegan’s heart turned over. She was so brave. By comparison, he felt like a sniveling yellow-belly.
Nonetheless, he approached. Jesse immediately bent and kissed Psyche’s cheek. “Hey, beautiful,” he said. “Welcome home.”
She smiled. “I hear congratulations are in order,” she replied. “The uncatchable Jesse McKettrick has been caught.”
Jesse chuckled, nodded. “Snagged, bagged and tagged,” he said.
“I’d like to meet your wife,” Psyche told him. “I promise I won’t tell her what a rounder you’ve always been.”
Jesse flashed that famous grin. “I think she suspects,” he replied. “I’ll go find her.” With that, he slapped Keegan once on the shoulder and walked away.
“Sit down, Keegan,” Psyche said.
He sat cross-legged in the fragrant grass.
“You and Molly look wonderful together,” Psyche remarked, probably trying to be subtle.
Keegan had known Psyche all his life, and he knew instantly what she was getting at. “No possible way,” he said. “Forget it.”
“Forget what?” Psyche asked innocently.
“You know damn well what,” Keegan answered.
She grinned. “Okay, so I thought it would be nice if you and Molly fell in love and got married. Lucas would have a real family then—he’d be a McKettrick. I can just picture all of you beaming out of one of those photo Christmas cards—‘Happy Holidays from the Four of Us.’”
“Lucas can be a McKettrick,” Keegan said. “All you have to do is let me adopt him, instead of Molly.”
Psyche sighed. “It would be much simpler if you married Molly, and the two of you adopted him together.”
“I had one cheating wife,” Keegan retorted, without intending to. “I don’t need another.”
Psyche held out a hand. After a moment’s hesitation, spent feeling like an idiot for spilling his emotional guts the way he had, and to a dying woman, for God’s sake, Keegan took the hand.
“I always thought Shelley was a real bitch,” she said. “Frankly, I wondered what you saw in her.”
Keegan chuckled. He’d expected something different from Psyche, though he didn’t know exactly what. “I had similar thoughts about you and Thayer,” he said.
She squeezed his hand, then released it—an ordinary gesture, and yet Keegan felt it as a precursor to the permanent parting yawning up ahead like the mouth of a dark cave.
“They dated, you know,” Psyche said. “Thayer and Shelley, I mean. While they were in college. I think it was pretty hot and heavy.”
Keegan remembered. It was, he had to admit, if only to himself, one of the reasons he’d never liked Psyche’s husband. “Yeah,” he said. “I know. It would have saved us a lot of grief if they’d married each other, and left you and me out of the equation.”
“But they didn’t,” Psyche reflected. Her gaze fell on Lucas, his little body covered by part of the blanket he was lying on. “I called Travis this afternoon, about the documents—the adoption, and your appointment as my executor—and he said he’ll have everything ready by Monday.”
Travis and Sierra were away in Scottsdale, with Sierra’s seven-year-old son, Liam, shopping for furniture for the new house they’d just built on the other end of town.
“There’s still time to change your mind,” Keegan said.
“I’m not going to change my mind, Keegan,” Psyche told him pointedly, “so stop nagging me about it. I’ve given this a lot of thought, and I want everything in order before I—well—before. I need your cooperation, damn it.”
Just then, Jesse reappeared with Cheyenne.
Keegan stood.
Jesse introduced the two women.
Marital bliss looked good on Cheyenne, Keegan thought, but then, just about anything would. She was a beauty—dark haired and slender, and smart as hell.
After she and Psyche had exchanged pleasantries and Jesse started chatting Psyche up just as if everything were normal, Cheyenne turned to Keegan and pulled him aside. “You’re ready for the meeting on Monday morning?” she asked.
“What meeting?” He’d left his cell phone in the car and hadn’t been to the office at all that day.
“Eve and Meg are coming in from San Antonio,” Cheyenne told him quietly. Eve McKettrick was Meg and Sierra’s mother, as well as president and CEO of McKettrickCo. “Along with most of the board of directors. This is it, Keegan. They want a final vote on the decision to go public.”
Of course they did. Eve, actually a distant cousin, had been like a mother to him, but when it came to company business, she was a force of nature.
Keegan swore under his breath. “What’s going to happen to your job?” he asked, trying to get some kind of foothold.
Cheyenne touched his arm. “I’ll be all right,” she said. “I might stay on, or go into business for myself. It’s you I’m worried about.”
He sighed. “Has Jesse said anything about how he plans to vote?”
“You’ll have to talk to him about that,” Cheyenne said reasonably.
Alarm coursed through Keegan, like a shock from a live wire. He glanced Jesse’s way, and in that moment he knew. “Damn,” he rasped.
Cheyenne’s voice went soft. “He’s tired of all the fighting,” she said.
Keegan took a step toward Jesse, who was looking at him now, and stopped. This was no time for a confrontation, but Keegan felt betrayed just the same. Jesse had had plenty of time to tell him what he’d decided while they were loading Spud into Rance’s trailer. Instead he’d promised that he and Rance would be there, help him through the imminent loss of one of his closest friends.
“Damn,” Keegan repeated, more fiercely this time.
“Is something wrong?” Psyche asked.
“Nothing at all,” Keegan said, glaring at Jesse.
“You’ll be by Monday afternoon to sign the papers?”
“Monday afternoon,” Keegan promised. Then he turned, without another word, and walked away.
MOLLY STOOD with her back to a tree and a finger in one ear, talking into her cell phone. It wasn’t easy, given that a carnival and town picnic were going on all around her.
“Denby, listen to me—”
“I want a new agent!” Denby Godridge screamed. He was taking it hard, not making the bestseller lists with his last epic novel. Molly had sold it for big bucks on the strength of a Pulitzer Prize won in the 1970s, and the publishers weren’t too pleased, either. “It was bad enough when you worked out of L.A.,” Denby ranted. “Now I’m supposed to deal with someone in Indian Rock, Arizona?”
“Denby, please—”
“You’re fired, Molly!”
Molly closed her eyes.
Denby hung up with a crash.
Tears seeped between Molly’s lashes.
“Boyfriend tired of waiting for the loot to start rolling in?” The voice was only too familiar.
She opened her eyes. Sure enough, there stood Keegan, with his hands jammed into the pockets of his grass-stained slacks, hair mussed, as though he’d been running his fingers through it. Behind him, the pink, green and blue lights of the Ferris wheel blended like colorful amoebas.
She shoved the phone back into her purse, marched over to him, wrenched off her favorite straw hat and slapped him in the belly with it. “You know what, Mr. Smart-Ass Keegan Freaking McKettrick? I’ve had just about enough of your snide remarks and sleazy insinuations!”
His eyes widened when she popped him with the hat. They were the most extraordinary blue, those eyes. The color of new denim.
Then, remarkably, he laughed.
“Are you drunk?” she demanded.
“No,” he said. “But I wish I were.” He paused a beat. “Who made you cry, Molly Shields?”
The question took her aback. She looked down, saw that the flower had fallen off her hat, and bent to retrieve it. Unfortunately, so did Keegan at the same moment, and they conked heads.
“Oww,” Keegan complained, laying a hand to his crown as he straightened. He looked and sounded so much like a small boy that Molly, contending with a skull fracture of her own, laughed right out loud.
Keegan’s eyes softened slightly, and Molly felt a tiny pinch, smack in the center of her heart.
“Who made you cry?” he asked again.
She sighed, fumbling to pin the flower back onto the brim of her hat. “It was nothing,” she said. “I’ve just had a lot of emotional ups and downs lately.”
“Haven’t we all?” Keegan muttered.
“Nobody more than Psyche,” Molly replied, giving up on the flower and shoving it into the twilight zone of her bag, where the phone had already disappeared. A chilly breeze made her hug herself.
“Cold?” Keegan asked.
“I’m fine,” Molly said.
“You look like somebody who could appreciate a good joke.”
She squinted. “Huh?”
“Psyche thinks you and I ought to get married,” Keegan told her, “and adopt Lucas together. How crazy is that?”
“Real crazy,” Molly was quick to say. Now, why did it hurt so much that he thought the idea of marrying her was ludicrous enough to be funny?
His eyes turned serious now, intent. Molly wondered if she had barbecue sauce on her face, and while she was considering the possibility, he took her by surprise with a kiss.
Electricity coursed through her, like a bolt of lightning.
Keegan’s mouth rested lightly on hers, barely more than a breath.
Molly stepped back, blinking and breathless.
“Sorry,” Keegan said.
“You really have a gift for saying the wrong thing, you know that?”
He grimaced. “So I’ve been told.”
Molly trembled. If he noticed, she decided, she’d blame it on the coolness of the evening. “We’ll just pretend it didn’t happen,” she said.
“You’re pretty good at that, aren’t you?”
Five seconds ago the man had kissed her. Sweetly. Tenderly. Made her toes curl. Now he was digging at her again.
“Pretty good at what?” she demanded.
“Pretending things didn’t happen. Like your affair with Thayer Ryan, for instance.”
“I’m not pretending I didn’t have an affair with Thayer Ryan!”
“Yes, you are. Either that, or you have no conscience at all. Molly, how can you do it? How can you move into another woman’s house—take over raising her child, as if nothing had happened?”
The words pelted Molly. Knocked the breath out of her, like a fall onto hard ground.
“Well?” Keegan pressed. They were ruthless now, those impossibly blue eyes, and colder than a January wind.
Molly swallowed, determined not to lose her temper and make a scene at the Fourth of July celebration. Indian Rock was a small town—she had to make a home there for Lucas and she didn’t need the kind of notoriety a screaming match with Keegan McKettrick would bring. “Pay close attention, you lame-brained, arrogant son of a bitch,” she said, acidly pleasant. “I’m not going to say this again. I came here because Psyche asked me to. Because—” Because Lucas is my son and because there were times when I missed him so much, I curled up in a fetal position on the floor and cried until my eyes swelled shut.
Keegan didn’t answer.
Overhead, the first of the fireworks erupted in a splash of blue fire, swelling into a huge flower against the night sky, then spilling gracefully down like the tears of an angel.
Keegan looked up at the display, and so did Molly, but out of the corner of her eye she noticed his profile—the strong jawline, the conservative haircut that didn’t really suit him, the straight nose. He was probably the most obnoxious man she’d ever met, not counting certain waiters and some of the panhandlers on Sunset, and yet something about him stirred her, way down deep.
Maybe it was just the barbecue sauce.
“I’d better go and find my daughter,” he said.
“I’d like to share the experience with my son,” she replied in terse agreement, putting only the slightest emphasis on the last two words.
With that, they went their separate ways.
IT WAS AFTER MIDNIGHT when Molly maneuvered Lucas into his pajamas and laid him in his crib.
“Isn’t he beautiful?”
Molly hadn’t realized Psyche was in the room, and she started slightly before turning to face the other woman. “He is,” she whispered.
Psyche crossed to Lucas’s crib, touched his sweat-curled hair with a tremulous hand. Her eyes glistened in the semidarkness. “Dear God,” she murmured. “What I’d give to see him grow up.”
Had Psyche been anyone but who she was, Molly might have put an arm around her in an effort to lend comfort. But Psyche was the wronged wife, and Molly had played a major part in that betrayal.
“Let’s go downstairs,” Psyche said very softly, tucking Lucas’s favorite blanket around him. “I could really use a glass of wine.”
“Me, too,” Molly admitted.
They rode down in the elevator, neither one speaking.
The kitchen was dark and extra-empty without Florence there, peeling potatoes, warming milk for Lucas or muttering while she listened to the commentators she loved to hate on the countertop radio.
Psyche got out a Napa red while directing Molly to the wineglasses.
Enervated by the day, Psyche soon collapsed into a chair at the table.
Molly wielded the corkscrew and poured.
“It’s a hard thing, dying,” Psyche said.
“I suppose you tried all the treatments,” Molly replied after swallowing hard. She’d been doing that a lot since coming to Indian Rock.
Psyche hoisted her glass in a wry salute. “Everything,” she said. “Trust me, the ‘cure’ definitely is worse than the disease.”
They each sipped their wine.
Then, out of the blue, Psyche said, “Keegan is a good man, Molly.”
“He’s a—well, never mind what he is.”
Psyche smiled, but there was a lot of sadness in her eyes. “I’ve known him since kindergarten,” she mused. “He always fought my battles for me. That’s one of Keegan’s problems, you know. He’s an Old West kind of man, trapped in a modern world.”
“I saw his Jag,” Molly said moderately. “His clothes are expensive. I don’t get the Old West connection.”
Psyche sighed. “Wait till you see him on a horse.”
The image came to Molly’s mind, in living color. Once again she felt an inner shift, painful and sweet.
“You will, you know,” Psyche went on. “See Keegan on a horse, I mean. Because I want Lucas to learn to ride, and there’s no one better to teach him.”
Molly looked into the future, saw it stretching out before her, filled with Lucas growing up through the stages of a typical boyhood. Days, weeks, months and years filled with Keegan McKettrick and his unrelenting contempt for her. She’d tried to establish a truce; he’d thrown it back in her face.
“You could marry him,” Psyche said.
Molly almost choked on her wine, and she was still trying to catch her breath when Psyche went on.
“I bet the sex would be apocalyptic,” she said.
Sex with Keegan McKettrick.
Don’t go there.
“I’m just guessing, mind you,” Psyche continued between sips of merlot. “Keegan and I never slept together. More’s the pity.”
Please, Molly begged silently, uncomfortable with the direction the conversation was taking, don’t ask me how it was between Thayer and me.
“Frankly,” Psyche said, “I didn’t think Thayer was all that great in bed.”
Molly filled her mouth with wine, practically making her cheeks bulge. In the next instant she had to jump up and dash to the sink to spit it out, because she was laughing.
Laughing.
“What?” Psyche asked.
Molly gripped the edge of the sink, her back to Psyche, her shoulders shaking.
“What?”
Molly turned to face the woman whose husband she’d—as Keegan had so inelegantly put it—boinked. Her cheeks were burning, and her eyes hurt.
“Good Lord,” Psyche said. “Are you crying?”
“No,” Molly managed. “I’m laughing.”
“Why?”
“Because this conversation is bizarre, and because you’re right.”
“About Thayer?”
Molly nodded.
Psyche broke up. She held her sides and giggled until Florence, cinched up in a pink chenille bathrobe, stuck her head out of her room adjoining the kitchen and scowled.
“Do you two know what time it is?” she asked. She had one of those little blue breathing strips stretched across her nose, which only increased the hilarity.
“It’s time to laugh,” Psyche said, recovering a little.
Florence’s face softened.
“And laugh and laugh and laugh,” Psyche added. Now there was something frantic in her tone.
And then she began to cry.
Florence went to her, drew a chair up close and took Psyche in her arms. “There, now, baby,” Florence said, holding her tightly and rocking her slightly back and forth. “You just let those tears out. God knows, you got the right.”
Molly stood stricken, and over Psyche’s head her gaze collided with Florence’s. And what Molly saw in Florence’s eyes made Keegan’s disdain seem like unbridled praise.
“I guess I’ll go to bed,” she said, as if anybody gave a damn whether she turned in for the night or jumped off the roof.
“You do that,” Florence said.
“I could help Psyche upstairs—”
“I’ll take care of Psyche,” Florence interrupted.
Molly fled, avoiding the elevator to bound up all three flights of stairs, hoping to exhaust herself.
Nothing doing.
She looked in on Lucas, left the door open between his room and her own. Took a shower. Went to her laptop and checked her e-mail.
Major mistake. At the moment she wasn’t any more popular in New York and Los Angeles than she was in Indian Rock.
She paced.
The elevator ground its way up to the top floor.
Molly peeked out into the hall, and was surprised to see Florence there, without Psyche.
“She’s in a bad way,” Florence said. “Hurting something awful. You’ve got to take her to the clinic. I done called the doctor, and he’ll meet you there.”
Molly didn’t hesitate. She dashed back into her room, exchanged her shorty pajamas for jeans and a tank top, shoved her feet into a pair of sandals and grabbed her purse.
“You’ll look after Lucas?” she asked, in the hallway again.
“Of course I will,” Florence retorted. “You can take the station wagon. Psyche’ll never be able to get into that big SUV of hers. You call me soon as you know anything. Anything at all.”
“I will,” Molly promised. She stole one last peek at Lucas and raced to the elevator, nearly shutting the door in Florence’s face as the housekeeper joined her.
Still in the kitchen, Psyche was bent double and groaning.
Molly realized she didn’t know where the clinic was.
Florence gave her directions, and between the two of them they managed to get Psyche into the garage, then into the car. If Florence hadn’t raised the rolling door from a switch, Molly probably would have backed right through it.
“It hurts,” Psyche moaned. “Oh, God—it hurts—”
Molly’s heart seized. “Hang on,” she said, zooming backward along the driveway and shooting out onto the road.
“What if this is it?” Psyche fretted between groans. “I didn’t get to say goodbye to Lucas….”
“Don’t even think like that,” Molly snapped, spinning the steering wheel of the big station wagon. It was like driving a tank. “And isn’t there an ambulance in this chickenshit town?”
Psyche laughed, despite what must have been almost incomprehensible pain. “It would have to come from Flagstaff,” she said. And then she doubled over again and gave a keening cry that chilled Molly’s blood.
When they screeched to a stop in front of the clinic, there were people with stethoscopes hanging around their necks waiting, thank God. And they had a gurney.
Two nurses and a doctor who looked older than dirt.
Molly’s panic escalated.
The doctor had gray hair and a Hal Holbrook kind of face, kindly and full of character. Gently, with a strength Molly wouldn’t have guessed he had, he lifted Psyche out of the station wagon and single-handedly laid her on the gurney.
“Easy now, sweetheart,” he said to Psyche. “Remember when you were thirteen, and your appendix ruptured? I took care of you then, didn’t I?”
Molly froze, right there on the pavement outside the entrance to the clinic, suddenly unable to move.
In fact, she was still standing in the same place minutes later when the black Jaguar zipped in, passing so close it nearly crushed her toes.
Keegan got out, wearing hastily buttoned jeans and a white T-shirt, partially tucked in. “What happened?” he demanded, as though he thought Molly might have given Psyche a dash of drain cleaner as a nightcap.
Florence must have called him, Molly thought distractedly.
But she did manage an answer. “She’s—Psyche’s in a lot of pain. A lot of pain.”
“And you’re standing out here because—?”
A ferocious anger rose up within Molly, along with something else, some emotion she wasn’t ready to acknowledge, let alone analyze. “Well, because it’s such a nice night!” she yelled, flinging her arms out from her sides.
“Oh, shut up,” Keegan said, starting for the clinic’s entrance.
Molly had to scramble to keep pace. “What if she dies?” she pleaded.
Keegan stopped just inside the double glass doors and looked down into her face, frowning. “Keep up. Psyche has terminal cancer. There isn’t going to be a Hallmark moment.”
“Do you have to be such a prick?” Molly whispered, not even trying to keep back her tears.
From somewhere in the rear of the clinic, Psyche screamed.
Keegan bolted in that direction.
Molly paced.
Her phone rang.
She ferreted it out of her purse, flipped it open and barked an anxious hello.
“You’re fired,” Denby said. Though he’d uttered only two words, it was obvious that he was roaring drunk.
“Denby?” Molly replied. “Screw off.”
Having made that professional and dignified remark, she snapped the phone shut.
The woman behind the reception desk gave her a disapproving look.
Molly homed in on her. “Tell me something about Psyche,” she said.
“She has terminal cancer,” the woman replied. She was about thirty, a little overweight and distinctly homegrown.
“Thanks for the news flash,” Molly said. “I just heard her scream. I want to know what the hell is going on back there!”
“Are you a member of the family?”
“No. I’m a—friend.”
“Then I can’t give you any information without Mrs. Ryan’s permission.”
“Keegan McKettrick is with her. How come he didn’t need permission?”
“Because he’s Keegan McKettrick.”
Molly drew a deep breath, huffed it out, sucked in more air. “Look, let’s start over here, okay?”
“Okay,” the woman said placidly.
“There’s a woman back at Psyche’s place, waiting to hear what’s going on. I need to tell her something.”
“That would be Florence?”
“That would be Florence.”
“I’ll see what I can find out.”
“That would be fabulous of you.”
The woman disappeared into the bowels of the clinic.
Before she returned, a good-looking blond man rushed in, as sleep rumpled as Keegan had been.
The receptionist returned. “Doc’s called for an ambulance,” she told Molly and the blond man. “They’re taking her to Flagstaff.”
“Christ,” the blond man muttered.
And then he disappeared, just as Keegan had.
“I suppose he’s a McKettrick, too,” Molly said tersely, digging for her phone again.
“You suppose right,” said the receptionist.
Molly punched in Psyche’s home number. Florence answered on the first ring.
“Tell me what’s happening to my baby,” she demanded.
“They’re taking her to Flagstaff.”
“Dear God,” Florence said.
Keegan stormed out of the back.
The blond man followed.
Keegan banged out through the front doors, practically springing the hinges.
“Damn it,” said the receptionist. “If they’re going to fight, we might be here until next week patching them up.”
Molly headed for the doors.
Under the outside lights she saw Keegan shove the blond man. The blond man shoved back.
“Molly?” Florence said from the cell phone.
“I’ll keep you updated,” Molly replied, and hung up.
The receptionist shouldered past her. “Keegan!” she yelled. “Jesse! Behave yourselves, or I swear to God, I’ll call Wyatt Terp and have both your asses thrown in the clink!”