LITMIR.BIZ

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Rianna looked gravely disappointed. “Well, what’s the use of having a car if you can’t take it anywhere?”

       “End of the driveway and back,” Rance decreed. “No farther.”

       “Across the bridge to Uncle Keegan’s house?” Rianna tried. The kid had a future with the company, as a contract negotiator, if McKettrickCo didn’t go public in the meantime. The fight was still on where that decision was concerned. The meeting in San Antonio had gone on for the better part of three days, with nothing settled.

       “No way,” Rance said.

       Rianna plopped onto one of the benches lining the long table. It was a copy of the one across the creek, on the homestead. “I wanted to give Devon a ride,” she lamented.

       “Devon can’t fit,” Maeve said. “It’s a baby car.”

       “Leave your sister alone, Maeve,” Rance told his elder daughter.

       Maeve subsided, but there was McKettrick thunder in her eyes.

       “Babies don’t drive cars,” Rianna told Maeve.

       “Enough,” Rance interceded.

       “How am I supposed to show Echo that my car is just like hers?” Rianna persisted.

       Rance closed his eyes, remembering how he’d gotten his back up the night before, when Echo had called his arrival by helicopter “impressive.” He’d been ultra touchy, stressed out because the meetings in San Antonio had done nothing but raise more trouble in the McKettrick ranks. He’d felt compelled to leave early so he could be home for Rianna’s party, and when the company jet landed in Flagstaff, there was a delay chartering the chopper. He’d been flat-out wrong to take those things out on Echo by snapping at her the way he had.

       “Echo saw your stupid car last night,” Maeve pointed out.

       “Maybe Avalon could fit,” Rianna speculated.

       Rance sighed.

       Cora stepped in. “Eat your breakfast, both of you.”

       Rance gave her a grateful look.

       “You, too,” she said.

       He took his place at the head of the table—a seat he occupied all too infrequently—and let Cora serve him a plate mounded with fried potatoes, eggs and sausage links. He’d employed a variety of housekeepers and nannies over the years since Julie died, but none of them had lasted. Too much responsibility had fallen on Cora.

       “Looks like a heart attack waiting to happen,” he said appreciatively, and dug into the food.

       Cora laughed. “Well, that’s a fine how-do-you-do,” she replied. “I cook you a meal, and you accuse me of trying to kill you.”

       Maeve’s eyes widened. Her lower lip wobbled and, suddenly, she looked a lot younger than her usual ten-going-on-forty. “You wouldn’t really have a heart attack, would you, Dad?” she asked.

       Rance reached out, ruffled her hair. “No,” he said quietly. “I plan on living to be a hundred and causing you all kinds of trouble in my old age.”

       Maeve relaxed visibly, and her eyes danced. For a moment, he saw Julie again. “Just keep in mind,” she said, “that I’ll have a say in picking out your nursing home.”

       Rance threw back his head and shouted with laughter.

       “I get to help,” Rianna said. “What’s a nursing home?”

       “Never mind,” Cora told her, bending to kiss both her granddaughters on top of the head. “Nobody’s going into a nursing home. Not in the immediate future, anyway.”

       A silence fell, and Rance looked up at his mother-in-law, suddenly realizing that she was getting older. She’d lost weight since Julie died, and there were wrinkles around her eyes and at the corners of her mouth. Her husband had passed away years ago, and she had no family other than Maeve and Rianna—and him.

       “What’s a nursing home?” Rianna repeated.

       “It’s like a hospital,” Maeve explained. “Old people go there.”

       Cora, her gaze locked with Rance’s, suddenly looked away.

       He pushed back his chair, stood and followed his mother-in-law to the sink, where she stood with her back to the room. He laid a hand on her shoulder, just as she had done earlier, when he was at the window.

       “Are you feeling okay, Cora?” he asked quietly. “You’re not sick, are you?”

       She shook her head, tried to smile. “No, Rance—I’m fine.”

       But as she turned from him to tackle the breakfast dishes, it was clear something was on her mind.

       Maybe he ought to tell her he thought he knew what it was.

      CHAPTER FOUR

      ECHO SAT CROSS-LEGGED IN the middle of her featherbed, awash in sunlight from the big windows opening onto the alley behind the shop, laptop open, Avalon snoozing peacefully beside her.

       Four different people, in four different and far-flung parts of the country, had e-mailed offers to adopt Avalon, but no one claimed ownership. Both relieved and discouraged, Echo dispatched electronic thank-you notes and went to her own Web site.

       Seeing it always made her smile.

       It was her delicious little secret.

       And the orders were piling up—more than a hundred had come in since she’d last logged on, before leaving Chicago.

       “Best get cracking,” she told Avalon, who opened her eyes, yawned and then went back to sleep.

       Reaching for the pen and notepad on the bedside table, Echo scrawled a shopping list. Velvet bags. Cording. Certain herbs and stones. Some of the supplies she needed had arrived with her furniture and other belongings, but she would have to contact her wholesalers, just the same.

       Biting her lower lip, she scanned the list of orders again. Something niggled at the periphery of her awareness.

       And then the name jumped out at her.

       Cora Tellington.

       “Cora?” she said aloud. A smile broke over her face as she checked the address. Sure enough, it was the Cora Tellington, of Indian Rock, Arizona.

      Well, she thought happily, I’ll be darned.

       Of course, she could fill the order from supplies on hand and deliver it in person, but Cora might be embarrassed and, besides, Echo wasn’t sure she was ready to reveal her sideline to anyone just yet. Her name didn’t appear on the Web site, and there was no toll-free number or post office box listed, either. Any receipts went directly into an online-payment service account, and she’d always shipped the merchandise from a franchise in the neighborhood.

       Something else caught her attention as she studied Cora’s order on the screen of her laptop.

       Cora wasn’t buying for herself.

       “Hmm,” Echo murmured, confused.

       Then, because she felt a peculiar sense of urgency, she set the computer aside, got off the bed and started rummaging through boxes, gathering the necessary materials.

       A feather.

       A pink agate.

       A prayer, printed on a tiny strip of paper.

       She put all these things into a small blue velvet bag, tied the gold drawstring and placed the works inside a little padded envelope, to be mailed on Monday morning.

       What on earth, she wondered, had prompted Cora Tellington to order a love-spell, not for herself, but for a man?

      THE PACKAGE ARRIVED IN Monday afternoon’s mail. Cora

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