Sierra's Homecoming. Linda Lael Miller

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СКАЧАТЬ wearing a six-shooter, like his brother, but with an open book in his hand. His wife, Mandy, wore trousers, a loose-fitting shirt, boots and a hat, and held a shotgun. Like Chloe, she was smiling. Judging by the number of other graves around theirs, these two had also been prolific parents.

      The statue of Rafe McKettrick revealed a big, powerfully built man with a stubborn set to his jaw. His bride, Emmeline, stood close against his side; their arms were linked and she rested her head against the outside of his upper arm.

      Sierra smiled. Again, their progeny was plentiful.

      The last statue brought up an unexpected surge of emotion in Sierra. Here, then, was Holt, half brother to Rafe, Kade and Jeb, and to Kate. In his long trail coat, he looked both handsome and tough. A pair of very detailed ammunition belts criss-crossed his chest, and the badge pinned to his wide lapel read, “Texas Ranger.”

      Sierra stared into those bronze eyes and, once again, felt something stir deep inside her. I came from this man, she thought. We’ve got the same DNA.

      Liam gave a jarring blast of the car horn, impatient to get to the ranch house that would be their home for the next twelve months.

      Sierra waved in acknowledgment but moved on to the statue of Lorelei. She was mounted on a mule, long, lace-trimmed skirts spilling on either side of her impossibly small waist, face shadowed, not by a sunbonnet but by a man’s hat. Her spirited gaze rested lovingly on her husband, Holt.

      Liam laid on the horn.

      Fearing he might decide to take the wheel and drive to the ranch house on his own, Sierra turned reluctantly from the markers and followed a path littered with pine needles and the dead leaves of the six towering white oaks that shared the space, heading back to the car.

      Back to her son.

      “Are all the McKettricks dead?” Liam asked, when Sierra settled into the driver’s seat and fastened the belt.

      “No,” Sierra answered, waiting for some stray part of herself to finish meandering among those graves, making the acquaintance of ancestors, and catch up. “We’re McKettricks, and we’re not dead. Neither is your grandmother, or Meg.” She knew there were cousins, too, descended from Rafe, Kade and Jeb, but it was too big a subject to explain to a seven-year-old boy. Besides, she was still trying to square them all away in her own mind.

      “I thought my name was Liam Breslin,” the little boy said practically.

      It should have been Liam Douglas, Sierra thought, remembering her first and only lover. As always, when Liam’s father, Adam, came to mind, she felt a pang, a complicated mixture of passion, sorrow and helpless fury. She and Adam had never been married, so she’d given Liam her maiden name.

      “We’re McKettricks now,” Sierra said with a sigh. “You’ll understand when you’re older.”

      She backed the car out carefully, keenly aware of the steep descent on all sides, and made the wide turn that would take them back on to the network of dirt roads bisecting the Triple M.

      “I can understand now,” Liam asserted, having duly pondered the matter in his solemn way. “After all, I’m gifted.”

      “You may be gifted,” Sierra replied, concentrating on her driving, “but you’re still seven.”

      “Do I get to be a cowboy and ride bucking broncs and stuff like that?”

      Sierra suppressed a shudder. “No,” she said.

      “That bites,” Liam answered, folding his arms and settling deeper into the heavy nylon coat she’d bought him on the road, when they’d reached the first of the cold-weather states. “What’s the good of living on a ranch if you can’t be a cowboy?”

      Chapter Two

      The elderly station wagon banged into the yard, bald tires crunching half-thawed gravel, and came to an obstreperous stop. Travis Reid paused behind the horse trailer hitched to Jesse McKettrick’s mud-splattered black truck, pushed his hat to the back of his head with one leather-gloved finger and grinned, waiting for something to fall off the rig. Nothing did, which just went to prove that the age of miracles was not past.

      Jesse appeared at the back of the trailer, leading old Baldy by his halter rope. “Who’s that?” he asked, squinting in the wintry late afternoon sunshine.

      Travis spared him no more than a glance. “A long-lost relative of yours, unless I miss my guess,” he said easily.

      The station wagon belched some smoke and died. Travis figured it for a permanent condition. He looked on with interest as a good-looking woman climbed out from behind the wheel, looked the old car over, and gave the driver’s-side door a good kick with her right foot.

      She was a McKettrick, all right. Of the female persuasion, too.

      Jesse left Baldy standing to jump down from the bed of the trailer and lower the ramp to the ground. “Meg’s half sister?” he asked. “The one who grew up in Mexico with her crazy, drunken father?”

      “Reckon so,” Travis said. He and Meg communicated regularly, most often by e-mail, and she’d filled him in on Sierra as far as she could. Nobody in the family knew her very well, including her mother, Eve, so the information was sparse. She had a seven-year-old son—now getting out of the car—and she’d been serving cocktails in Florida for the last few years, and that was about all Travis knew about her. As Meg’s caretaker and resident horse trainer, not to mention her friend, Travis had stocked the cupboards and refrigerator, made sure the temperamental furnace was working and none of the plumbing had frozen, and started up Meg’s Blazer every day, just to make sure it was running.

      From the looks of that station wagon, it was a good thing he’d followed the boss-lady’s orders.

      “You gonna help me with this horse,” Jesse asked testily, “or just stand there gawking?”

      Travis chuckled. “Right now,” he said, “I’m all for gawking.”

      Sierra McKettrick was tall and slender, with short, gleaming brown hair the color of a good chestnut horse. Her eyes were huge and probably blue, though she was still a stride or two too far away for him to tell.

      Jesse swore and stomped back up the ramp, making plenty of noise as he did so. Like most of the McKettricks, Jesse was used to getting his way, and while he was a known womanizer, he’d evidently dismissed Sierra out of hand. After all, she was a blood relative—no sense driving his herd into that canyon.

      Travis took a step toward the woman and the boy, who was staring at him with his mouth open.

      “Is this Meg’s house?” Sierra asked.

      “Yes,” Travis said, putting out his hand, pulling it back to remove his work gloves, and offering it again. “Travis Reid,” he told her.

      “Sierra Bres—McKettrick,” she replied. Her grip was firm. And her eyes were definitely blue. The kind of blue that pierces something in a man’s middle. She smiled, but tentatively. Somewhere along the line, she’d learned to be sparing with her smiles. “This is my son, Liam.”

      “Howdy,” Liam said, squaring his small shoulders.

      Travis СКАЧАТЬ