LITMIR.BIZ

      The house was a long, sprawling structure, with two stories and a wraparound porch. Sierra’s most immediate impression was of substance and practicality, rather than elegance, and she felt a subtle interior shift, as if she’d been a long time lost in a strange, winding street, thick with fog, and suddenly found herself standing at her own front door.

      “Those guys are real cowboys,” Liam said, once they were inside.

      Sierra nodded distractedly, taking in the pegged wood floors, gleaming with the patina of venerable age, the double doors and steep staircase on the right, the high ceilings, the antique grandfather clock ticking ponderously beside the door. She peeked into a spacious living room, probably called a parlor when the house was new, and admired the enormous natural-rock fireplace, with its raised hearth and wood-nook. Worn but colorful rugs gave some relief to the otherwise uncompromisingly masculine decor of leather couches and chairs and tables of rough-hewn pine, as did the piano set in an alcove of floor-to-ceiling windows.

      An odd nostalgia overtook Sierra; she’d never set foot on the Triple M before that day, let alone entered the home of Holt and Lorelei McKettrick, but she might have, if her dad hadn’t snatched her the day Eve filed for divorce, and carried her off to San Miguel de Allende to share his expatriate lifestyle. She might have spent summers here, as Meg had, picking blackberries, wading in mountain streams, riding horses. Instead, she’d run barefoot through the streets of San Miguel, with no more memory of her mother than a faint scent of expensive perfume, sometimes encountered among the waves of tourists who frequented the markets, shops and restaurants of her home town.

      Liam tugged at the sleeve of her coat. “Mom?”

      She snapped out of her reverie, looked down at him, and smiled. “You hungry, bud?”

      Liam nodded solemnly, but brightened when the door bumped open and Travis came in, lugging two suitcases.

      Travis cleared his throat, as though embarrassed. “Plenty of grub in the kitchen,” he said. “Shall I put this stuff upstairs?”

      “Yes,” Sierra said. “Thanks.” At least that way she’d know which rooms were hers and Liam’s without having to ask. She might have been concerned, sharing the place with Travis, but Meg had told her he lived in a trailer out by the barn. What Meg hadn’t mentioned was that her resident caretaker was in his early thirties, not his sixties, as Sierra had imagined, and too attractive for comfort, with his lean frame, blue-green eyes and dark-blond hair in need of a trim.

      She blushed as these thoughts filled her mind, and shuffled Liam quickly toward the kitchen.

      It was a large room, with the same plank floors she’d seen in the front of the house and modern appliances, strangely juxtaposed with the black, chrome-trimmed wood cookstove occupying the far-left-hand corner. The table was long and rustic, with benches on either side and a chair at each end.

      “Tables like that are a tradition with the McKettricks,” a male voice said from just behind her.

      Sierra jumped, startled, and turned to see Jesse in the doorway.

      “Sorry,” he said. He was handsome, Sierra thought. His coloring was similar to Travis’s, and so was his build, and yet the two men didn’t resemble each other at all.

      “No problem,” Sierra said.

      Liam wrenched open the refrigerator. “Bologna!” he yelled triumphantly.

      “Whoopee,” Sierra replied, with a dryness that was lost on her son. “If there’s bologna, there must be white bread, too.”

      “Jesse!” Travis’s voice, from the direction of the front door. “Get out here and give me a hand!”

      Jesse grinned, nodded affably to Sierra and vanished.

      Sierra took off her coat, hung it from a peg next to the back door, and gestured for Liam to remove his, too. He complied, then went straight back to the bologna. He found a loaf of bread in a colorful polka-dot bag and started to build a sandwich.

      Watching him, Sierra felt a faint brush of sorrow against the back of her heart. Liam was good at doing things on his own; he’d had a lot of practice, with her working the night shift at the club and sleeping days. Old Mrs. Davis from the apartment across the hall had been a conscientious babysitter, but hardly a mother figure.

      She put coffee on to brew, once Liam was settled on a bench at the table. He’d chosen the side against the wall, so he could watch her moving about the kitchen.

      “Cool place,” he observed, between bites, “but it’s haunted.”

      Sierra took a can of soup from a shelf, opened it and dumped the contents into a saucepan, placing it on the modern gas stove before answering. Liam was an imaginative child, often saying surprising things. Rather than responding instantly, Sierra usually tried to let a couple of beats pass before she answered.

      “What makes you say that?”

      “Don’t know,” Liam said, chewing. They’d had a drive-through breakfast, but that had been hours ago, and he was obviously starving.

      Another jab of guilt struck Sierra, keener than the one before. “Come on,” she prodded. “You must have had a reason.” Of course he’d had a reason, she thought. They’d just been to a graveyard, so it was natural that death would be on his mind. She should have waited, made the pilgrimage on her own, instead of dragging Liam along.

      Liam looked thoughtful. “The air sort of…buzzes,” he said. “Can I make another sandwich?”

      “Only if you promise to have some of this soup first.”

      “Deal,” Liam said.

      An old china cabinet stood against a far wall, near the cookstove, and Sierra approached it, even though she didn’t intend to use any of the dishes inside. Priceless antiques, every one.

      Her family had eaten off those dishes. Generations of them.

      Her gaze caught on a teapot, sturdy looking and, at the same time, exquisite. Spellbound, she opened the glass doors of the cabinet and reached inside to touch the piece, ever so lightly, with just the tips of her fingers.

      “Soup’s boiling over,” Liam said mildly.

      Sierra gasped, turned on her heel and rushed back to the modern stove to push the saucepan off the flame.

      “Mom,” Liam interjected.

      “What?”

      “Chill out. It’s only soup.”

      The inside door swung open, and Travis stuck his head in. “Stuff’s upstairs,” he said. “Anything else you need?”

      Sierra stared at him for a long moment, as though he’d spoken in an alien language. “Uh, no,” she said finally. “Thanks.” Pause. “Would you like some lunch?”

      “No, thanks,” he said. “Gotta see to that damn horse.”

      With that, he ducked out again.

      “How come I can’t ride the horse?” Liam asked.

      Sierra sighed, setting a bowl of soup in front of him. “Because you don’t know how.”

      Liam’s sigh echoed her own, and if they’d been talking about anything but the endangerment of life and limb, it would have been funny.

      “How am I supposed to learn how if you won’t let me try? You’re being overprotective. You could scar my psyche. I might develop psychological problems.”

      “There are times,” Sierra confessed, sitting down across from him with her own bowl of soup, “when I wish you weren’t quite so smart.”

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