The McKettrick Legend (28 page)

He took her with a single long, slow, smooth stroke, nestling into her depths. Held himself still as she gasped in wordless welcome.

He kissed her eyelids.

She squirmed beneath him.

He kissed her cheek bones.

Craving friction, desperate for it, Meg tried to move her hips, but he had her pinned, heavily, delectably, to the bed.

She whimpered.

He nibbled at her earlobes, one and then the other.

She ran her hands urgently up and down his back.

He tasted her neck.

She pleaded.

He withdrew, thrust again, but slowly.

She said his name.

He plunged deep.

And Meg came apart in his arms, raising herself high. Clawing, now at his back, now at the bed clothes, surrendering with a long, continuous, keening moan.

The climax was ferocious, but it was only a prelude to what would follow, and knowing that only in creased Meg's need. Her body merged with Brad's, fused to it at the most elemental level, and the instant he began to move upon her she was lost again.

Even as she exploded, like a shattering star, she was aware of his phenomenal self-control, but when she reached her peak, he gave in. She reveled in the flex of his powerful body, the ragged, half groan, half shout of his release. Felt the warmth of his seed spilling inside her—and prayed it would take root.

Finally, he collapsed beside her, his face buried between her neck and the curve of her shoulder, his arms and legs still clenched around her, loosening by small, nearly imperceptible shivers.

Instinctively, Meg tilted her pelvis slightly backward, cradling the warmth.

A long while later, when both their breathing had returned to normal, or some semblance of that, Brad lifted his head. Touched his nose to hers. Started to speak, then thrust out a sigh, instead.

Meg threaded her fingers through his hair. Turned her head so she could kiss his chin.

“Guess you just earned another notch for the bedpost,” she said.

He chuckled. “Yeah,” he said. “Except this is
your
bed, McKettrick.
You
seduced
me.
I want that on record. Either way, since it's obviously an antique, carving the thing up probably wouldn't be the best idea.”

“We're going to regret this in the morning, you know,” she told him.

“That's then,” he murmured, nibbling at her neck again. “This is now.”

“Umm-hmm,” Meg said. She wanted
now
to last forever.

“I kept expecting a helicopter.”

Meg laughed. “Me, too.”

Brad lifted his head again, and in the moonlight she could see the smile in his eyes. “Know what?”

“What?”

“I'm glad it happened this way. In a real bed, and not the floor of some old line shack.” He kissed her, very lightly. “Although I would have settled for anything I could get.”

She pretended to slug him.

He laughed.

She felt him hardening against her, pressed against the outside of her right thigh. Stretching, he found the switch on the bedside lamp and turned it, spilling light over her. The glow of it seemed to seep into her skin, golden. Or was it the other way around? Was
she
the one shining, instead of the lamp?

“God,” Brad whispered, “you
are
beautiful.”

A tigress before, now Meg felt shy. Turned her head to one side, closed her eyes.

Brad caressed her breasts, her stomach and abdomen and the tops of her thighs; his touch so light, so gentle, that it made her breath catch in her throat.

“Look at me,” he said.

She met his eyes. “The light,” she protested weakly.

He slid his fingers between the moist curls at the juncture of her thighs. “So beautiful,” he said.

She gasped as he made slow, sweet circles, deliberately exciting her. “Brad—”

“What?”

She was conscious of the softness of her belly; knew her breasts weren't as firm and high as he remembered. She wanted more of his lovemaking, and still more, but under the cover of darkness and finely woven sheets and the heirloom quilt Lorelei McKettrick had stitched with her own hands, so many years before. “The
light
.”

He made no move to flip the switch off again, but continued to stroke her, watching her responses. When he slipped his fingers inside her, found her G-spot and plied it expertly, she stopped worrying about the light and became a part of it.

 

While Meg slept, Brad slipped out of bed, pulled his borrowed clothes back on and retrieved his own from the bath room where he'd showered earlier. Sat on the edge of the big claw-foot bathtub to pull on his socks and boots, still damp from his ride down the mountainside with Jesse.

Down stairs, he found the old-fashioned thermostat and turned it up. Dusty heat whooshed from the vents. In the kitchen he switched on the lights, filled and set the coffeemaker. Maybe these small courtesies would make up for his leaving before Meg woke up.

He found a pencil and a memo pad over by the phone, planning to scribble a note, but nothing suitable came to mind, at least not right away.

“Thanks” would be in appropriate.

“Goodbye” sounded too blunt.

Only a jerk would write “See you around.”

“I'll call you later”? Too cavalier.

Finally, he settled on “Horses to feed.”

Four of his songs had won Grammies, and all he could come up with was “horses to feed”? He was slipping.

He paused, stood looking up at the ceiling for a few moments, wanting nothing so much as to go back upstairs, crawl in bed with Meg again and make love to her.

Again.

But she'd said they were going to have regrets in the morning, and he didn't want to see those regrets on her face. The two of them would make bumbling excuses, never quite meeting each other's eyes.

And Brad knew he couldn't handle that.

So he left.

 

Meg stood in her warm kitchen, bundled in a terry cloth bathrobe and surrounded by the aroma of freshly brewed coffee, peering at the note Brad had left.

Horses to feed.

“The man's a poet,” she said out loud.

“Do you think it took?” Angus asked.

Meg whirled to find him standing just behind her, almost at her elbow. “You scared me!” she accused, one hand pressed to her heart, which felt as though it might scramble up her esophagus to the back of her throat.

“Sorry,” Angus said, though there was nothing the least bit contrite about his tone or his expression.

“Do I think
what
took?” Meg had barely sputtered the words when the awful realization struck her: Angus was asking if she thought she'd gotten pregnant, which meant—

Oh, God.

“Tell me you weren't here!”

“What do you take me for?” Angus snapped. “Of
course
I wasn't!”

Meg swallowed. Flushed to the roots of her hair. “But you knew—”

“I saw that singing cowboy leave just before sunup,” came the taciturn reply. Now Angus was blushing, too. “Wasn't too hard to guess the rest.”

“Will you stop calling him ‘that singing cowboy'? He has a name. It's Brad O'Ballivan.”

“I know that,” Angus said. “But he's a fair hand with a horse, and he croons a decent tune. To my way of thinking, that makes him a singing cowboy.”

Meg gave him a look, padded to the refrigerator, jerked open the door and rummaged around for something that might constitute break fast. She'd cooked the last of the eggs for Brad, and the remaining choices were severely limited. Three green olives floating in a jar, some withered cheese, the arthritic remains of last week's takeout pizza and a carton of baking soda.

“Food doesn't just appear in an icebox, you know,” Angus announced. “In my day, you had to hunt it down, or grow it in a garden, or harvest it from a field.”

“Yes, and you probably walked ten miles to and from school,” Meg said irritably, “uphill both ways.”

She was starving. She'd have to hit the drive-through in town, then pick up some groceries. All that before her lunch with Cheyenne.

“I never went to school,” Angus replied seriously, not getting the joke. “My ma taught me to read from the Good Book. I learned the rest on my own.”

Meg sighed as an answer, shoved the splayed fingers of one hand through her tangled hair. Although she'd been disappointed at first to wake up and find Brad gone, now she was glad he couldn't see her. She looked like—well—a
woman who had been having howling, sweaty-sheet sex half the night.

She started for the stairs.

“Make yourself at home,” she told Angus, wondering if he'd catch the irony in her tone. For him, “home” was the Great Beyond, or the main ranch house down by the creek.

When she came down again half an hour later, showered and dressed in jeans and a light weight blue sweater, he was sitting in Holt's chair, waiting for her.

“You ever think about wearing a dress or a skirt?” he asked, frowning.

Meg let that pass. “I've got some errands to run. See you later.”

The telephone rang.

Brad?

She checked the caller ID panel.

Her mother.

“Voice mail will pick up,” she told Angus.

“Answer it,” Angus said sternly.

Meg reached for the receiver. “Hello, Mom. I was just on my way out the door—”

“You'd better sit down,” Eve told her.

The pit of Meg's stomach pitched. “Why? Mom, is Sierra all right? Nothing's happened to Liam—”

“Both of them are fine. It's nothing like that.”

Meg let out her breath. Leaned against the kitchen counter for support. “What, then?”

“Your father contacted me this morning. He wants to see you.”

Meg's knees almost gave out. She'd never met her father, never spoken to him on the telephone or received so much as a birthday or Christmas card from him. She wasn't even sure what his name was—he used so many aliases.

“Meg?”

“I'm here,” Meg said. “I don't want to see him.”

“I knew I should have talked to you in person,” Eve sighed. “But I was so alarmed—”

“Mother, did you hear what I just said? I don't want to see my father.”

“He claims he's dying.”

“Well, I'm sincerely sorry to hear that, but I still don't want anything to do with him.”

“Meg—”

“I mean it, Mother. He's been a nonentity in my life. What could he possibly have to say to me now, after all this time?”

“I don't know,” Eve replied.

“And if he wanted to talk to me, why did he call you?” The moment the question left her mouth, Meg wished she hadn't asked it.

“I think he's afraid.”

“But he wasn't afraid of you?”

“He's past that, I think,” Eve said. She'd been down right secretive on the subject of Meg's father from the first. Now, suddenly, she seemed to be urging Meg to make contact with him. What was going on? “Listen, why don't you stop by the hotel, and I'll make you some break fast. We'll talk.”

“Mom—”

“Blue berry pancakes. Maple-cured bacon. Your favorites.”

“All right,” Meg said, because as shaken as she was, she could have eaten the proverbial horse. “I'll be there in twenty minutes.”

“Good,” Eve replied, a little smugly, Meg thought. She was used to getting her way. After all, for almost thirty
years, when Eve McKettrick said “jump,” every body reached for a vaulting pole.

“Are you going to ride shotgun?” Meg asked Angus after she'd hung up.

“I wouldn't miss this for anything,” Angus said with relish.

Less than half an hour later, Meg was knocking on the front door of her mother's hotel suite.

When it opened, a man stood looking down at her, his expression uncertain and at the same time hopeful. She saw her own features reflected in the shape of his face, the set of his shoulders, the curve of his mouth.

“Hello, Meg,” said her long-lost father.

A
FTER THE HORSES HAD BEEN FED,
Brad turned them out to pasture for the day and made his way not into the big, lonely house, but to the copse of trees where Big John was buried. The old man's simple marker looked pain fully new, amid the chipped and moss-covered stone crosses marking the graves of other, earlier O'Ballivans and Black stones.

Brad had meant to visit the small private cemetery first thing, but between one thing and another, he hadn't managed it until now.

Standing there, in the shade of trees already shedding gold and crimson and rust-colored leaves, he moved to take off his hat, remembered that he wasn't wearing one and crouched to brush a scattering of fallen foliage from the now-sunken mound.

About time you showed up,
he heard Big John O'Ballivan's booming voice observe, echoing through the channels of his mind.

Brad gave a lopsided, rueful grin. His eyes smarted, so he blinked a couple of times. “I'm here, old man,” he answered hoarsely. “And I mean to stay. Look after the girls and the place. That ought to make you happy.”

There was no reply from his grandfather, not even in his head.

But Brad felt like talking, so he did.

“I'm seeing Meg McKettrick again,” he said. “Turns out
I got her pregnant, back when we were kids, and she lost the baby. I never knew about it until yesterday.”

Had Big John been there in the flesh, there'd have been a lecture coming. Brad would have welcomed that, even though the old man could peel off a strip of hide when he was riled.

One more reason why you should have stayed here and attended to business,
Big John would have said. And that would have been just the warm-up.

“You never understood,” Brad went on, just as if the old man
had
spoken. “We were going to lose Stone Creek Ranch. Maybe you weren't able to face that, but I had to. Everything Sam and Maddie and the ones who came after did to hold on to this place would have been for nothing.”

The McKettricks would have stepped in if he'd asked for help, Brad knew that. Meg herself, probably her mother, too. Contrary as that Triple M bunch was, they'd bailed more than one neighbor out of financial trouble, saved dozens of smaller farms and ranches when beef prices bottomed out and things got tough. Even after all this time, though, the thought of going to them with his hat in his hands made the back of Brad's throat scald.

Although the ground was hard, wet and cold, he sat, cross-legged, gazing upon his grandfather's grave through a misty haze. He'd paid a high price for his pride, big, fancy career not with standing.

He'd lost the years he might have spent with Meg, the other children that might have come along. He hadn't been around when Big John needed him, and his sisters, though they were all educated, independent women, had been mere girls when he left. Sure, Big John had loved and protected them, in his gruff way, but that didn't excuse
his
absence. He should have been their big brother.

Caught up in these thoughts, and all the emotions they
engendered, Brad heard the approaching rig, but didn't look around. Heard the engine shut off, the door slam.

“Hey,” Olivia said softly from just behind him.

“Hey,” he replied, not ready to look back and meet his sister's gaze.

“Willie's better. I've got him in the truck.”

Brad blinked again. “That's good,” he said. “Guess I'd better go to town and get him some dog food and stuff.”

“I brought everything he needs,” Livie said, her voice quiet. She came and sat down beside Brad. “Missing Big John?”

“Every day,” Brad admitted. Their mother had hit the road when the twins were barely walking, and their dad had died a year later, herding spooked cattle in a lightning storm. Big John had stepped up to raise four young grand-children with out a word of complaint.

“Me, too,” Livie replied softly. “You ever wonder where our mom ended up?”

Brad knew where Della O'Ballivan was—living in a trailer park outside of Independence, Missouri, with the latest in a long line of drunken boy friends—but he'd never shared that information with his sisters. The story, brought to him by the private detective he'd hired on the proceeds from his first hit record, wasn't a pretty one.

“No,” he said in all honesty. “I never wonder.” He'd gone to see Della, once he'd learned her whereabouts. She'd been sloshed and more interested in his stardom, and how it might benefit her, than getting to know him. Ironically, she'd refused the help he
had
offered—immediate ad mission to one of the best treatment centers in the world—standing there in a tattered house coat and scruffy slippers, with lipstick stains in the deep smoker's lines surrounding her mouth. She hadn't even asked about her daughters or the husband she'd left behind.

“She's probably dead,” Livie said with a sigh.

Since Della's existence couldn't be called living, Brad agreed. “Probably,” he replied. Except for periodic requests for a check, which were handled by his accountant, Brad never heard from their mother.

“It's why I don't want to get married, you know,” Livie confided. “Because I might be like her. Just get on a bus one day and leave.”

Just get on a bus one day and leave.

Like he'd done to Meg, Brad reflected, hurting. Maybe he was more like Della than he'd ever want to admit aloud.

“You'd never do that,” he told his sister.

“I used to think she'd come home,” Livie went on sadly. “To see me play Mary in the Christmas program at church, or when I got that award for my 4-H project, back in sixth grade.”

Brad slipped an arm around Livie's shoulders, felt them trembling a little, squeezed. His reaction had been different from Livie's—if Della had come back, especially after their dad was killed, he'd have spit in her face.

“And you figure if you got married and had kids, you'd just up and leave them? Miss all the Christmas plays and the 4-H projects?”

“I remember her, Brad,” Livie said. “Just the lilac smell of her, and that she was pretty, but I remember. She used to sing a lot, hanging clothes out on the line and things like that. She read me stories. And then she was—well—just
gone.
I could never make sense of it. I always figured I must have done something really bad—”

“The flaw was in her, Livie, not you.”

“That's the thing about flaws like that. You never know where they're going to show up. Mom probably didn't expect to abandon us.”

Brad didn't agree, but he couldn't say so without revealing way too much. The Della he knew was an unmedicated bipolar with a penchant for gin, light on the tonic water. She'd probably married Jim O'Ballivan on a manic high, and decided to hit the road on a low—or vice versa. It was a miracle, by Brad's calculations, that she'd stayed on Stone Creek Ranch as long as she had, far from the bright lights and big-town bars, where a practicing drunk might enjoy a degree of anonymity.

Coupled with things Big John had said about his daughter-in-law, “man to man” and in strictest confidence, that she'd hidden bottles around the place and slept with ranch hands when there were any around, Brad had few illusions about her morals.

Livie got to her feet, dusting off her jeans as she rose, and Brad immediately did the same.

“I'd better get Willie settled in,” she said. “I've got a barn full of sick cows to see to, down the road at the Iversons' place.”

“Anything serious?” Brad asked, as Livie headed for the Suburban parked next to his truck, and he kept pace. “The cows, I mean?”

“Some kind of a fever,” Livie answered, looking worried. “I drew some random blood samples the last time I was there, and sent them to the university lab in Tempe for analysis. Nothing anybody's ever seen before.”

“Contagious?”

Livie sighed. Her small shoulders slumped a little, under the weight of her life's calling, and not for the first time, Brad wished she'd gone into a less stressful occupation than veterinary medicine.

“Possibly,” she said.

Brad waited politely until she'd climbed into the Suburban—Willie was curled comfortably in the backseat, in
a nest of old blankets—then got behind the wheel of his truck to follow her to the house.

There, he was annoyed to see a black stretch limo waiting, motor purring.

Phil.

Muttering a curse, Brad did his best to ignore the obvious, got out of the truck and strode to Livie's Suburban to hoist Willie out of the backseat and carry him into the house. Livie was on his heels, arms full of rudimentary dog equipment, but she cast a few curious glances toward the stretch.

They entered through the kitchen door. Olivia set the dog bed down in a sunny corner, and Brad care fully lowered Willie onto it.

“Who's in the big car?” Livie asked.

“Probably Phil Meadowbrook,” Brad said a little tersely.

“Your manager?” Livie's eyes were wary. She was probably thinking Phil would make an offer Brad couldn't refuse, and he'd leave again.

“
Former
manager.”

Willie, his hide criss-crossed with pink shaved strips and stitches, looked up at Brad with luminous, trusting eyes.

Livie was watching him, too. There was something bruised about her expression. She knew him better than Willie did.

“We need you around, Brad,” she said at great cost to her pride. “Not just the twins and me, but the whole community. If the Iversons have to put down all those cows, they'll go under. They're already in debt up to their eyeballs—last year, Mrs. Iverson had a bout with breast cancer, and they didn't have insurance.”

Brad's jaw tightened, and so did the pit of his stomach. “I'll write a check,” he said.

Livie caught hold of his forearm.
“No,”
she said with a vehemence that set him back on his heels a little. “That would make them feel like charity cases. They're good, decent people, Brad.”

“Then what do you want me to do?” Half Brad's attention was on the conversation, the other half on the distant closing of the limo door, so he'd probably sounded abrupt.

“Put on a concert,” Livie said. “There are half a dozen other families around Stone Creek in similar situations. Divvy up the proceeds, and that will spare everybody's dignity.”

Brad frowned down at his sister. “How long has
that
plan been brewing in your busy little head, Dr. Livie?”

She smiled. “Ever since you raised all that money for the animals displaced during Hurricane Katrina,” she said.

A knock sounded at the outside door.

Phil's big schnoz was pressed to the screen.

“Gotta go,” Livie said. She squatted to give Willie a goodbye pat and ducked out of the kitchen, headed for the front.

“Can I come in?” Phil asked plaintively.

“Would it make a difference if I said no?” Brad shot back.

The screen door creaked open. “Of course not,” Phil said, smiling broadly. “I came all the way from New Jersey to talk some sense into your head.”

“I could have saved you the trip,” Brad answered. “I'm not going to Vegas. I'm not going
anywhere.
” He liked Phil, but after the events of the past twenty-four hours, he was something the worse for wear. With his chores done and the overdue visit to Big John's grave behind him, he'd planned to eat something, take a hot shower and fall face-first into his unmade bed.

“Who said anything about Vegas?” Phil asked, the picture of innocent affront. “Maybe I want to deliver a big fat royalty check or something like that.”

“And maybe you're full of crap,” Brad countered. “I just
got
a ‘big, fat royalty check,' according to my accountant. He's fit to be tied because the recording company promised to parcel the money out over at least fifteen years, and it came in a lump sum instead. Says the taxes are going to eat me alive.”

Phil sniffled, pretended to wipe tears from his eyes. “Cry me a river, Mr. Country Music,” he said. “I belong to the you-can-never-be-too-rich school of thought. Until my niece suffered that bout with anorexia—thank God she recovered—I thought you could never be too thin, either, but that theory's down the swirler.”

Brad said nothing.

“What happened to that dog?” Phil asked, after giving Willie the eyeball.

“He was attacked by coyotes—or maybe wolves.”

Livie had lugged in a bag of kibble and a couple of bowls, along with the bed Willie was lounging on now, and she'd set two prescription bottles on the counter, too, though Brad hadn't noticed them until now. He busied himself with reading the labels.

“Why anybody'd want to live in a place where a thing like that is even remotely possible, even if he
is
a dog,” Phil marveled, “is beyond me.”

Willie was to have one of each pill—an anti bio tic and a painkiller—morning and night. With food. “A lot of things are beyond you, Phil,” Brad said, figuring Olivia must have dosed the dog that morning before leaving the clinic, which meant the medication could wait until supper time.

“He's pretty torn up. Wouldn't have happened in Music City, to a dog
or
a man.”

“Evidently,” Brad said, still distracted, “you've repressed the gory memories of my second divorce.”

Phil chuckled. “You could give all that extra royalty money you're so worried about to good ole Cynthia,” he suggested. “Write it off as an extra settlement and let
her
worry about the taxes.”

“You're just full of wisdom today. Some thing else, too.”

Uninvited, Phil drew back a chair at the table and sank into it, one hand pressed dramatically to his heart. “Phew,” he sighed. “The old ticker ain't what it used to be.”