LITMIR.BIZ

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grinned. “Howdy,” he replied. Meg had said the boy had health problems, but he looked pretty sound to Travis.

      “That sure is an ugly horse,” Liam announced, pointing to wards the trailer.

      Travis turned. Baldy stood spraddle-footed, midway down the ramp, a miserable gray specimen of a critter with pink eyes and liver-colored splotches all over his mangy hide.

      “Sure is,” Travis agreed, and glowered at Jesse for palming the animal off on him. It was like him to pull off a dramatic last-minute rescue, then leave the functional aspects of the problem to somebody else.

      Jesse flashed a grin, and for a moment, Travis felt territorial, wanted to set himself between Sierra and her boy, the pair of them, and one of his oldest friends. He felt off balance, some how, as though he’d been ambushed. What the hell was that all about?

      “Is that a buckin’ bronc?” Liam asked, venturing a step to ward Baldy.

      Sierra reached out quickly, caught hold of the fur-trimmed hood on the kid’s coat and yanked him back. Cold sunlight glinted off the kid’s glasses, making his eyes invisible.

      Jesse laughed. “Back in the day,” he said, “Baldy was a rodeo horse. Cowboys quivered in their boots when they drew him to ride. Now, as you can see, he’s a little past his prime.”

      “And you would be—?” Sierra asked, with a touch of coolness to her tone. Maybe she was the one woman out of a thousand who could see Jesse McKettrick for what he was—a good-natured case of very bad news.

      “Your cousin Jesse.”

      Sierra sized him up, took in his battered jeans, work shirt, sheepskin coat and very expensive boots. “Descended from…?”

      The McKettricks talked like that. Every one of them could trace their lineage back to old Angus, by a variety of paths, and while there would be hell to pay if anybody riled them as a bunch, they mostly kept to their own branch of the family tree.

      “Jeb,” Jesse said.

      Sierra nodded.

      Liam’s attention remained fixed on the horse. “Can I ride him?”

      “Sure,” Jesse replied.

      “No way,” said Sierra, at exactly the same moment.

      Travis felt sorry for the kid, and it must have shown in his face, because Sierra’s gaze narrowed on him.

      “We’ve had a long trip,” she said. “I guess we’ll just go inside.”

      “Make your selves at home,” Travis said, gesturing toward the house. “Don’t worry about your bags. Jesse and I’ll carry them in for you.”

      She considered, probably wondering if she’d be obligated in any way if she agreed, then nodded. Catching Liam by the hood of his coat again, she got him turned from the horse and hustled him toward the front door.

      “Too bad we’re kin,” Jesse said, following Sierra with his eyes.

      “Too bad,” Travis agreed mildly, though privately he didn’t believe it was such a bad thing at all.

      The house was a long, sprawling structure, with two stories and a wrap around 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 her self 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 stair case 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 fire place, 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 life style. She might have spent summers here, as Meg had, picking black berries, 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, some times 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 suit cases.

      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 care taker 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 be fore answering. Liam was an imaginative child, often saying surprising things. Rather

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