LITMIR.BIZ

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his intention to hold on to the land. Was he relenting?

       She felt a peculiar mixture of hope and disappointment.

       “I guess you could rent that empty storefront next to Cora’s Curl and Twirl,” he said as she rode through the opening. “For a sales office, I mean.”

       Cheyenne’s heart fluttered its wings, then settled onto its roost again, afraid to fly. “I remember the Curl and Twirl,” she said. The balance was delicate, and she knew an ill-chosen word could tip things in the wrong direction. “Cora’s still cutting hair and teaching little girls to twirl batons?”

       Jesse grinned at her before riding slowly back to close the gate again. “Not much changes in Indian Rock,” he observed. “Did you ever take lessons from Cora?”

       Something spiky lodged in Cheyenne’s throat. God, she’d longed for a pink tutu and a baton with sparkly fringe on each end, longed to be one of those fortunate kids, spilling out of station wagons and pickup trucks, rushing into the Curl and Twirl for a Saturday-morning session. But there had never been enough money—Cash Bridges had needed every cent the family could scrape together to drink, play cards and bail his cronies out of jail. After all, Cheyenne remembered hearing him tell Ayanna gravely, they’d do the same for him.

       “No,” Cheyenne said flatly. She tried for a lighter note because she didn’t want to talk about her father or any other part of her past. “Did you?”

       Jesse chuckled. “Nope,” he answered. “But my sisters went for it in a big way.”

       Ah, yes, Cheyenne thought. The McKettrick sisters. They’d been grown and gone by the time she’d got out of kindergarten, Sarah and Victoria had, but their legend lingered on. Always the most beautiful, always the most popular, always the best-dressed. They’d been cheerleaders and prom queens, as well as honor students and class presidents. One had married a movie executive, the other a CEO.

       Some people were born under a lucky star.

      She’d been born under a dark cloud instead.

       “There’s the trail,” Jesse told her, indicating a narrow, stony path that seemed to go straight up. “Follow me, and lean forward in the saddle when it gets steep.”

       When it gets steep? Cheyenne swallowed hard and lifted her chin a notch or two. As for the following, the horse did that part. She concentrated on staying in the saddle and avoiding the backlash of tree branches as Jesse forged ahead.

       She was sweating when they finally reached the top and Pardner stepped up beside Jesse’s horse. What was its name? Something Greek and mythological.

       The land spilled away from the ridge, and nothing could have prepared her for the sight of it. Trees by the thousands. Sun-kissed meadows where deer grazed. A twisting creek, gleaming like a tassel pulled from the end of one of the batons at Cora’s Curl and Twirl.

       Tears sprang to Cheyenne’s eyes, and that drumbeat started up again, in her very blood, thrumming through her veins.

       Jesse swung a leg over the gelding’s neck and landed deftly on his feet. He wound the reins loosely around the saddle horn.

       “I told you it would take your breath away,” he said quietly.

       Cheyenne was speechless.

       Jesse reached up, helped her down to the ground.

       The bottoms of her feet stung at the impact, and she was grateful for the pain because it broke the spell.

       “It’s magnificent,” she said, almost whispering.

       Jesse nodded, took off his hat as reverently as if he’d just entered a cathedral. Looking up at him, she saw his face change, as though he were drinking in that land, not just with his eyes, but through the pores of his skin.

       Cheyenne reminded herself that the tract wasn’t part of the Triple M; if it had been, there wouldn’t have been a hope in hell of developing so much as an inch of it. She’d been over the public records a dozen times, knew Jesse had purchased the land two years ago from the state. It must have taken a chunk out of his trust fund, even though the price he’d paid was a fraction of what Nigel was willing to pony up.

       As if he’d heard her thoughts, Jesse turned slightly and looked down into her eyes. “When we were kids, Rance and Keegan and I used to camp up here. I still like to bring a bedroll and sleep under the stars once in a while. A couple of years back, about the time the governor of Arizona decided not to turn it into a state park, I won a big poker tournament, and I bought it outright.”

       “That must have been some tournament,” Cheyenne said, as casually as she could.

       “World championship,” Jesse answered, with a verbal shrug. “I’m going back to Vegas in a couple of months to defend my title.” He turned to survey the land again, gesturing with his hat. “That creek practically jumps with trout every spring. There are deer, as you can see, as well as wolves and bobcats and coyotes and bear—just about any kind of critter you’d expect to run across in this country.” He watched her for a few moments, choosing his words, turning his hat in his hands just the way any one of his cowboy ancestors might have done. “Where do you figure they’d go, if you and your company put in a hundred stucco boxes and a putting green?”

      CHAPTER FOUR

      CHEYENNE LOOKED away, blinked. Wished the land would disappear, and Jesse’s question with it.

      Remember your mother, she thought. Remember Mitch.

       Jesse turned her gently to face him. “When Angus McKettrick came here in the mid 1800s,” he said, “the whole northern part of the state must have looked pretty much like this. He cut down trees to build a house and a barn, and used windfall for firewood. He put up fences to keep his cattle in, too, but other than that he didn’t change the land much. His sons built houses, too, when they married—my place, the main ranch house where Keegan now lives, and the one across the creek from it. That belongs to Rance. They’ve been added onto, those houses, and modernized, but that’s the extent of it. No short-platting. No tennis courts. We McKettricks like to sit light on the land, Cheyenne, and I don’t intend to be the one to break that tradition.”

       Cheyenne gazed up at him, full of frustration and admiration and that infernal drumbeat, rising from her own core to pound in her ears. The majesty of the land seemed to reply, like a great, invisible heart, thumping an elemental rhythm of its own. “You promised you’d look at the blueprints,” she said. It was lame, and she could feel all her hopes slipping away, but still she couldn’t let go.

       Jesse put his hat on again, helped Cheyenne back up onto her horse, and mounted the gelding. Neither of them said anything during the ride to the ranch house.

       “I do care what happens to the land,” she told him, quietly earnest, when they’d reached the barn and dismounted again.

       “Do you?” Jesse asked, but he clearly didn’t expect an answer. “Get your blueprints,” he urged with a nod toward her rental car. “I’ll put Pardner and Minotaur away and meet you in the schoolhouse.”

       She ran damp palms down the thighs of Callie McKettrick’s jeans and returned his nod. She watched until he disappeared into the barn, leading both horses behind him.

       “What do I do now?” she asked softly, tilting her head back to look up at the sky.

       She stood there for a few seconds longer, then turned and went to the rental car. Plucked the thick roll of blueprints from the backseat.

       The schoolhouse was cool and shadowy, and dust particles, stirred by her entrance, bobbed like little golden flecks in the still air.

       Cheyenne laid the roll on a large table with an old chair behind it, and looked around with interest. Someone had scrawled a list of stock quotes on the blackboard, and there was an old-fashioned rotary phone on the table next to a vintage globe, but beyond those things, the place probably hadn’t changed much

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