THE DONKEY STOOD contentedly in a barn stall built for an animal three times his size, happily munching alfalfa pellets. Spud appeared to like the Triple M, at least so far.
Devon, perched on a cross board of the stall door with Keegan standing beside her, sighed.
“He sure poops a lot,” she said.
Keegan, who’d showered, shaved and donned chinos and a blue sport shirt after picking up his daughter at Rance’s, chuckled at the observation.
“Yeah,” he agreed. “Better get the pitchfork and the wheelbarrow.”
“You look real tired, Dad,” Devon told him solemnly, studying his face. “I wouldn’t mind if you went inside and crashed for a while.”
Keegan was, if anything, too tired to sleep. And maybe too cowardly. Once, dozing in his chair beside Psyche’s hospital bed the night before, he’d been flung upward, soaked in a cold, clammy sweat and breathless with alarm, from the dregs of a dream he hadn’t had for years.
In it, he’d seen a plane spiraling toward the ground, nose-first. Known his parents were aboard. He’d heard the roar of the explosion, seen the fireball bulge against an otherwise placid blue sky, felt the scorching heat blistering his skin. He’d tried to get through, even though he knew it was hopeless—he couldn’t save his mom and dad—but the blaze had turned solid as a wall.
“Dad?” Devon said.
He smiled. “Your mom will be here to pick you up in a few hours,” he said. “I can sleep later.”
Devon’s shoulders slumped a little under her yellow T-shirt. “I wish I could stay,” she told him. “Live here all the time. I could do chores, like Rianna and Maeve. It would be my job to feed Spud and shovel out his stall.”
Keegan laid a hand on Devon’s nape, squeezed slightly. Sunday afternoons were bittersweet when she spent the weekend. He enjoyed every minute with her, and yet he was conscious all the while that their time together was slipping away. It bothered him, too, that she apparently thought she had to earn her keep.
“Sorry about being gone so much this time,” he said. There was a lot more he wanted, needed, to say, but he couldn’t seem to find the right words.
She jumped down off the stall door and stood close, resting her head against his side. “You couldn’t help it,” she told him. “Your friend is sick.”
Before Keegan could answer, he heard a car drive up outside, then the slamming of a door.
He frowned, checked his watch.
Devon stiffened, clung a little more tightly. “It’s too early for Mom to be here,” she protested.
“It could be somebody else,” Keegan reasoned, but he knew, as Devon clearly did, that when they stepped out the barn door Shelley’s Lexus would be parked in the driveway. The purr of the engine was distinctive.
“Let’s pretend we’re not here,” Devon whispered. “Maybe she’ll go away.”
Keegan ruffled his daughter’s hair, gently disengaged from her. “No such luck, kid,” he said. And he went outside.
For a moment the sunlight dazzled him, but Shelley came into focus quickly enough, picking her way across the barnyard in pointy heels. Her hair was pinned up, and she wore a tailored gray pantsuit—not her usual uniform for a visit to the Triple M, brief though her stays always were.
Seeing him, she smiled winningly.
He wondered, as he invariably did during these encounters, what he’d ever seen in her. How had he overlooked the callousness, the calculation, the cold, relentlessly self-serving dynamics that powered her? Sex would have been an easy excuse—but the truth was, that didn’t wash, either.
The sex hadn’t been that good with Shelley.
“You’re early,” Keegan accused, aware of Devon standing just behind him.
Shelley beamed apologetically. Spread her hands.
What the hell was she up to?
Keegan waited.
Shelley tilted to one side, tracking Devon, who was trying to hide, like a heat-seeking missile. “Go say hello to Rory, sweetheart,” Shelley said. “I need to talk to your dad for a few minutes.”
“I don’t want to talk to Rory,” Devon said.
“It’s okay,” Keegan told her. Rory was at the wheel of the Lexus, a slouching shadow, no doubt hoping to go unnoticed.
Reluctantly Devon crossed the grassy expanse between the barn and the Lexus. The window on the driver’s side whirred down.
Shelley looked back, watching the exchange for a moment, then turned to Keegan again. The high-beam smile went on like a floodlight.
Keegan folded his arms.
Shelley blushed prettily. “Rory surprised me with tickets to Paris,” she said. “For my birthday.”
“I bet that was a surprise,” Keegan drawled.
Shelley let the gibe pass. “First class,” she said. “His sister works for one of those online travel agencies.”
“And there’s always my American Express card for pesky little incidentals like food and hotel rooms,” Keegan said evenly, but his heart, jolted by a sudden rush of adrenaline, beat a little faster, thrumming in his ears.
“Well, it is my birthday,” Shelley said. “Not that I would have expected you to remember.”
“We’ve already discussed this, Shelley,” he reminded her. “You’re not taking Devon out of the country.”
Shelley lowered her voice to an earnest, almost desperate whisper after glancing back at Devon again. “That’s sort of what I wanted to talk to you about. Rory could only get two tickets….”
There it was, the reason for the adrenaline rush.
She was going to ask if Devon could stay with him. Keegan was exultant, but he didn’t let it show, and he didn’t let Shelley off the hook, either.
“I was hoping Devon could stay here until we get back,” Shelley said. “With you.”
“Which will be when?” Keegan asked.
“I—I’m not sure,” Shelley said. He knew she wanted to take his head off, but she couldn’t afford to be snippy. He loved that.
“You’re not sure.”
“The tickets are open-ended. Rory and I were going to look at apartments while we’re over there, and Devon is out of school for the summer, so—”
“Okay,” Keegan said.
“Okay?” The stadium-light smile faltered a little, and he saw her temper, forcibly restrained, roiling in her eyes. About to bust loose. “What does that mean, exactly?”
“Devon can stay.”
The real Shelley came through. She narrowed her eyes to slits and set her hands on her hips. “You enjoyed that, didn’t you? Making me squirm?”
“Immensely,” Keegan replied.
“Bastard,” Shelley said.
He smiled. “Now, there’s an opinion I can value.”
“You still have to pay child support.”
“No problem,” Keegan said.
“And you’d better not cancel my credit cards as soon as I drive out of here, either.”
“I wouldn’t do a thing like that.”
“Like hell you wouldn’t. I’m doing you a favor, Keegan, by letting Devon stay here. I could have taken her to my mother’s, you know.”
“Your mother lives in Boise. My guess is the plane to Paris leaves Phoenix around eight o’clock tonight. You don’t have time to dump Devon on your mom’s doorstep.”
Shelley’s face reddened with frustration. “Why can’t you just let this be easy?” she demanded in a furious whisper.
Keegan let his glance slide to Rory, then back to Shelley again. “You’re easy enough for both of us,” he said. “The word ought to be tattooed on your ass.”
“I don’t have to stand here and listen to this, Keegan!”
“No,” he said. “You don’t. You can get in the car, head for Phoenix and jet off to the City of Light with lover boy.”
“And I’m not easy,” Shelley sputtered, a beat or two behind, just like always. “Rory and I are in love—not that you’d ever understand such a concept.”
Keegan laid a hand to his heart. “It’s a beautiful thing to see,” he said.
“Screw you, Keegan!”
“Oh, you already did that—with a lot of help from your lawyers.”
Rory must have mentioned the trip to Paris to Devon, and broken the news that she wasn’t invited, because she started jumping up and down. Muscleman got out of the car, taking care not to look in Keegan’s direction, and opened the trunk. Hauled out a couple of small suitcases and plunked them on the ground.
Shelley, meanwhile, glared at Keegan once more, then turned and minced her way back toward Devon.
Keegan watched as mother and daughter embraced.
Rory was already back in the car, with the engine running.
Keegan enjoyed a brief fantasy in which he walked over, dragged Rory from behind the wheel and beat the crap out of him on the spot. He wouldn’t actually do it, of course, because Devon was there, because it wasn’t the McKettrick way and because deep down he was grateful to the meathead for carrying his job as a personal trainer to a whole new level.
The day he’d walked in on Rory and Shelley, caught them enjoying a nooner in the exercise studio at the back of the house in Flag, he’d expected to feel rage.
Instead, he’d been jubilant. Dizzy with relief.
Shelley gave Devon one last distracted hug, then got into the Lexus. She and Rory sped away, leaving the child gazing happily after them in a spinning plume of dust.
Keegan walked toward her, grinning. Took a suitcase handle in each hand and started for the house.
Devon scampered after him, fairly dancing with glee. “Can I go across the creek and tell Rianna and Maeve I get to stay?” she prattled. “Can we have hot dogs for supper? If I feed Spud and clean out his stall every day, will you raise my allowance?”
Keegan laughed. “Yes to the hot dogs and the raise. As for crossing the creek, you’d better call first.”
Inside the ranch house kitchen, Devon bolted for the phone.
Keegan watched her, suddenly so bone tired he could barely keep his eyes open, but happier than he would have believed he could be, too. Psyche was still dying. McKettrickCo was still going down the tubes. But Devon was staying, at least for a while. Good things were still possible.
Devon chattered into the phone for a minute or so, then listened, then held the receiver out to Keegan.
“Hey,” Emma said when he took it and said the obligatory hello.
“Hey,” he replied.
“Good news on the kid front,” Emma remarked.
“The best,” Keegan answered.
“Cheyenne tells me you and Jesse were at the hospital all night, up in Flag, standing guard over Psyche Ryan.”
Keegan yawned. “Yeah,” he said.
“Big meeting tomorrow, too,” Emma said. “At McKettrickCo.”
The reminder nettled Keegan, but it wasn’t Emma’s fault and he didn’t take it out on her. “Is there a point to this conversation?” he asked warmly.
She laughed. “Yes. And here it is—Rance and I will keep Devon overnight. You’d better get some sleep.”
“Emma?”
“What?”
“You are an angel.”
She laughed again. “Tell that to Rance, will you? We’ve been arguing about what color to paint the kitchen for three days, and I think he’s about ready to drown me in the creek.”
“I’ll tell him,” Keegan promised.
“Here’s your chance,” Emma said. “He’s crossing the bridge to your place even as we speak.”
Devon, who had vanished up the rear staircase when Keegan took the phone, thundered back down with the pink bear, a pair of pajamas and her toothbrush.
Keegan said goodbye to Emma and hung up.
Devon dashed to the back door. “He’s here!” she shouted. “And he’s on a horse!”
Keegan followed his daughter outside. Sure enough, there was Rance, in old-time McKettrick mode, mounted on one of his growing collection of geldings. This one was black, with three white stockings.
Seeing Keegan, Rance tugged at the brim of his hat. Then he slipped one foot out of the stirrup, so Devon could put her own there, leaned down and hoisted her up behind him, pink bear, pajamas and all.
Keegan should have left well enough alone, but he couldn’t. “You going to vote with Jesse tomorrow?” he asked Rance.
Rance adjusted his hat, shifted in the saddle. Devon wrapped both arms around his middle, bouncing a little because she wanted to go.
“I’m going to vote the way I damn well please,” Rance answered easily. “Get some shut-eye, because it could turn out to be one hell of a row, with all those McKettricks crammed into one room.”
With that, he started to rein the horse around, toward home.
“Rance?” Keegan said.
He looked back. “What?”
“Let Emma paint the kitchen whatever color she wants.”
Rance chuckled. Shook his head. “A pink kitchen? I’d have to shoot myself.”
Keegan reconsidered. “Pink, huh?”
“Pink,” Rance confirmed. “The woman’s obsessed with it.”
“A man has to draw the line somewhere,” Keegan decided.
Rance nodded. “And that line,” he drawled, “lies just this side of pink.”
Devon waved. For a kid who’d wanted so much to stay, she was sure in a hurry to leave.
Keegan waved back. “Be good,” he told his daughter, and something about the way he spoke made Rance take a closer look at him.
“I’m all right,” Keegan insisted.
Rance was a long time looking away. Finally, though, he and Devon were headed for the bridge spanning the creek. On the far side the reflected light of the setting sun glowed crimson on the windows.
A lump rose in Keegan’s throat.
Devon’s voice flowed back to him, riding softly on the breeze. “Go fast, Uncle Rance!” she pleaded.
Rance gave a yee-haw and heeled the horse into a trot.
Keegan waited until they’d cleared the bridge before going inside the house. Stood just over the threshold, more aware of the history of the place than usual, soaking it in through his pores and the raw-edged holes in his heart.
It gave him solace to know old Angus McKettrick had built the heart of that house with his own hands. He’d raised his three younger sons and a daughter, too, right here in these rooms.
They’d taken meals cooked on the old wood-burning stove over in the far corner of the room. These days, it was used only to provide heat and a pleasant crackle on cold winter mornings, though it was still in good working order. Keegan’s once-a-week cleaning service kept it dusted off, and the chrome gleamed.
As a kid, he’d sometimes heard the stove lids rattle in the middle of the night when he knew nobody was downstairs. Heard the clink of horseshoes striking a metal stake in the side yard, too. His dad had said it was Angus and the boys out there, trying to best each other at the game.
“You’ll scare him,” his mother had protested.
But Keegan had never been afraid. He’d liked the idea of sharing the sturdy old house with those who’d worked and fought to make sure it stayed in the family.
The memories just kept coming, even after Keegan went to the refrigerator in search of something remotely edible. His grocery-shopping skills needed work, and he seldom bothered.
Now, alone in the house, he gave himself up to remembering. On summer days his mother, along with Rance’s and Jesse’s, had put up preserves in this kitchen—peaches and pears from the orchard a little way down the creek, now neglected and overgrown. He and Jesse and Rance, and sometimes Meg, had run in and out constantly, slamming the screen door off the side porch.
“Stop slamming that door!” one of the mothers would yell.
Keegan straightened, a beer in one hand, and closed the fridge. What he wouldn’t have given, right then, to hear that door slam again.
Nobody used the side porch anymore. Nobody put fruit up in gleaming jars anymore, either. Women didn’t gather in the kitchen, laughing and talking and always ready to make room in their hearts for one more noisy, sunburned, skinned-kneed, mosquito-bitten kid.
He popped the top on the beer and took a guzzle.
Damn, he thought. He was getting sentimental in his old age.
Behind him one of the stove lids rattled.
Keegan almost choked on a mouthful of beer. Spun around to look.
Of course there was no one there. Most likely the house was settling, that was all, or there’d been an earth tremor, the kind that usually went unnoticed.
The light rap at the kitchen door shook him up all over again.
He hoped he didn’t look too spooked when he turned and saw Rance coming in.
“Got any more beer?” Rance asked mildly, hanging his hat on a peg next to the door, the way generations of McKettrick men had done before him.
Keegan tightened inside. First Jesse, riding herd on him last night when he’d gone chasing off to town to the clinic because of Psyche, and now Rance, riding back across the creek and pretending it was a casual visit.
“Am I on the watch list or something?” Keegan asked, none too politely.
Rance went to the fridge, helped himself to a brew and pulled the tab. Took a drink before answering. “Hell,” he said, “you’re not half interesting enough for that.”
“Then what are you doing here?”
“I just thought I’d come over and try to get under your hide a little.” He paused for another gulp. “Looks like I succeeded, too.”
Keegan went to the long table, swung a leg over one of the benches lining it on both sides and sat. “Mission accomplished,” he said. “You can leave now.”
Rance hauled back the chair that had been Angus’s, back in those thrilling days of yesteryear, turned it around and sat astraddle it, Western-style. “I’ll go when I’m damn good and ready,” he replied—when he was damn good and ready.
“Devon’ll be staying on for a while,” Keegan said.
Rance nodded. “I know.” His shirt pocket rang then. So much for the cowboy image. He grimaced and answered with a gruff hello, watching Keegan while he listened to whoever was on the other end.
Keegan drank more beer and waited.
“Yeah,” Rance said. “He’s right here.”
More listening.
“Looks like hell, if you want the truth.” Rance grinned at Keegan’s scowl. “My guess is he’s working himself right up to a three-beer binge.”
Keegan snorted. “If you’re going to talk about me,” he said, “at least put that damn thing on speaker so I can defend myself.”
Rance shrugged, thumbed the appropriate button and set his cell phone on the table. “You’re talking to the whole room now,” he told the caller.
“I always appreciate an audience,” Jesse said.
“You two can stop babysitting me anytime now,” Keegan grumbled.
Rance interlaced his fingers on the scarred old tabletop and watched Keegan solemnly. “You’d better get down here,” he told Jesse. “We need to talk about the vote. In person.”
“Give me twenty minutes,” Jesse said. “I assume you’re at the main ranch house?”
“Look,” Keegan growled, “there’s no point—”
“Yep,” Rance answered, right over the top of Keegan.
Jesse hung up.
Keegan set his elbows on the table, splayed the fingers of both hands and jammed them into his hair.
Rance got up, went back to the fridge, returned with two more beers.
“Don’t think I don’t know what’s going on here,” Keegan said, glaring at him. “You and Jesse plan on telling me the top ten reasons for dumping McKettrickCo onto the stock market—and I don’t want to hear it.”
Rance straddled the chair again. “How’s Psyche?” he asked.
“Still dying,” Keegan said, and almost strangled on the words, same as he had earlier on the beer when he’d thought he heard the stove lid clinking.
Rance’s expression didn’t change. “Are they managing the pain?”
“She’s hurting worse than she lets on,” Keegan said.
“So are you,” Rance observed.
“She doesn’t deserve this.”
“Nobody does, Keeg.”
“Do me a favor, will you, Rance? Get Jesse on the horn and tell him not to come. I’m not up to this.”
“He’s left his place by now, and you know he doesn’t carry a cell phone. We need to settle a few things, Keeg, and we need to do it before that meeting tomorrow.”
“What’s there to settle? Jesse’s made up his mind, and so have you. I’m outnumbered. I’ll get over it.”
“Will you?”
“Yeah.”
Rance left his chair again, went back to the fridge even though he hadn’t finished his beer. He rummaged around, came up with a carton of eggs, a block of cheese and a few limp salad onions.
“Make yourself at home,” Keegan said with irony.
Rance chuckled, setting the grub on the counter to wash his hands at the sink. “Damn,” he remarked, “you’re about as companionable as an old bear with a stick up its ass.”
“What are you doing?”
“Making an omelet,” Rance answered, getting out a well-seasoned cast-iron skillet, another holdover from days of old, setting it on a stove burner and lobbing in a chunk of butter. Turning up the heat. “Unlike some people around here, I work every day, and I’m hungry.”
Keegan gave up. Waited in stubborn silence while Rance did his cooking thing. Didn’t even trouble himself to argue the obvious—that he worked every day, too. When Devon wasn’t around, he lived at McKettrickCo.
Jesse showed up just in time to load up a plate and take a place at the table directly opposite Keegan. He salted the omelet and dug in, just as if he’d actually been invited to supper.
“That company’s going to kill you, Keeg,” he said. “When was the last time you rode a horse, anyway?”
Keegan bristled, but he was hungry, too, and it turned out that Rance wasn’t half-bad as a cook. He filled his mouth with the egg concoction so he wouldn’t have to answer right away.
“Maybe he needs the money,” Rance said to Jesse.
“Yeah,” Jesse agreed. “It’s tough when you’re down to your last twenty or thirty million.”
“Look at it this way, Keeg.” Rance grinned. “Your net worth will probably double once McKettrickCo goes public. You can pay Shelley twice the alimony she’s getting now. She’ll be so busy shopping, it’ll be as if she didn’t exist.”
Keegan leaned in, lowered his voice as though to breathe some great secret. “This isn’t making me feel better.”
“Right now,” Jesse observed, “there isn’t much that could do that.”
“Losing McKettrickCo sure as hell isn’t going to help,” Keegan snapped.
Jesse sighed. Glanced at Rance.
Something silent passed between them, something Keegan wasn’t privy to, and that rankled him.
“Okay,” Rance said decisively.
“Okay, what?” Keegan asked.
“Okay, we’ll vote with you,” Jesse said.
“Against our better judgment,” Rance added.
Jesse nodded thoughtfully. “And with no guarantee that we’ll win.”
Keegan looked from one man to the other. “You’re doing this because…?”
“Because we’re going soft,” Rance lamented.
“Speak for yourself,” Jesse told him. Then he fixed his gaze on Keegan. “Trouble with you is,” he went on, “you spend way too much time in your head. It isn’t healthy.”
Keegan heaved a great sigh. “Thanks,” he said, and realized he wasn’t thanking Rance and Jesse so much for promising to vote his way regarding McKettrickCo’s fate, but for standing with him.
They stayed long enough to finish off Rance’s monster omelet, set their plates and silverware in the sink and advise Keegan to get some sleep.
He was glad to comply.