The Mckettrick Way. Linda Lael Miller

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СКАЧАТЬ all the way. Women don’t define themselves by whether they’re married or not.” She paused, sucked in a calming breath. “Here’s an idea—why don’t you wait in the car? Or, better yet, go ride some happy trail.”

      Angus kept pace with her as she crossed the road, clomping along in his perpetually muddy boots. As always, he wore a long, cape-shouldered canvas coat over a rough-spun shirt of butternut cotton and denim trousers that weren’t quite jeans. The handle of his ever-present pistol, a long-barreled Colt .45, made a bulge behind his right coat pocket. He wore a hat only when there was a threat of rain, and since the early-October weather was mild, he was bareheaded that evening.

      “It might be your testy nature that’s the problem,” Angus ruminated. “You’re downright pricklish, that’s what you are. A woman ought to have a little sass to her, to spice things up a mite. You’ve got more than your share, though, and it ain’t becoming.”

      Meg ignored him, and the bad grammar he always affected when he wanted to impart folksy wisdom, as she tromped up the front steps, shuffling the bulky package in her arms to jab at the doorbell. Here comes your nineteenth noncommittal yellow layette, she thought, wishing she’d opted for the sterling baby rattles instead. If Sierra and Travis knew the sex of their unborn child, they weren’t telling, which made shopping even more of a pain than normal.

      The door swung open and Eve, Meg and Sierra’s mother, stood frowning in the chasm. “It’s about time you got here,” she said, pulling Meg inside. Then, in a whisper, “Is he with you?”

      “Of course he is,” Meg answered, as her mother peered past her shoulder, searching in vain for Angus. “He never misses a family gathering.”

      Eve sniffed, straightened her elegant shoulders. “You’re late,” she said. “Sierra will be here any minute!”

      “It’s not as if she’s going to be surprised, Mom,” Meg said, setting the present atop a mountain of others of a suspiciously similar size and shape. “There must be a hundred cars parked out there.”

      Eve shut the door smartly and then, before Meg could shrug out of her navy blue peacoat, gripped her firmly by the shoulders. “You’ve lost weight,” she accused. “And there are dark circles under your eyes. Aren’t you sleeping well?”

      “I’m fine,” Meg insisted. And she was fine—for an old maid.

      Angus, never one to be daunted by a little thing like a closed door, materialized just behind Eve, looked around at his assembled brood with pleased amazement. The place was jammed with McKettrick cousins, their wives and husbands, their growing families.

      Something tightened in the pit of Meg’s stomach.

      “Nonsense,” Eve said. “If you could have gotten away with it, you would have stayed home today, wandering around that old house in your pajamas, with no makeup on and your hair sticking out in every direction.”

      It was true, but beside the point. With Eve McKettrick for a mother, Meg couldn’t get away with much of anything. “I’m here,” she said. “Give me a break, will you?”

      She pulled off her coat, handed it to Eve, and sidled into the nearest group, a small band of women. Meg, who had spent all her childhood summers in Indian Rock, didn’t recognize any of them.

      “It’s all over the tabloids,” remarked a tall, thin woman wearing a lot of jewelry. “Brad O’Ballivan is in rehab again.”

      Meg caught her breath at the name, and nearly dropped the cup of punch someone shoved into her hands.

      “Nonsense,” a second woman replied. “Last week those rags were reporting that he’d been abducted by aliens.”

      “He’s handsome enough to have fans on other planets,” observed a third, sighing wistfully.

      Meg tried to ease out of the circle, but it had closed around her. She felt dizzy.

      “My cousin Evelyn works at the post office over in Stone Creek,” said yet another woman, with authority. “According to her, Brad’s fan mail is being forwarded to the family ranch, just outside of town. He’s not in rehab, and he’s not on another planet. He’s home. Evelyn says they’ll have to build a second barn just to hold all those letters.”

      Meg smiled rigidly, but on the inside, she was scrambling for balance.

      Suddenly, woman #1 focused on her. “You used to date Brad O’Ballivan, didn’t you, Meg?”

      “That—that was a long time ago,” Meg said as graciously as she could, given that she was right in the middle of a panic attack. “We were just kids, and it was a summer thing—” Frantically, she calculated the distance between Indian Rock and Stone Creek—a mere forty miles. Not nearly far enough.

      “I’m sure Meg has dated a lot of famous people,” one of the other women said. “Working for McKettrickCo the way she did, flying all over the place in the company jet—”

      “Brad wasn’t famous when I knew him,” Meg said lamely.

      “You must miss your old life,” someone else commented.

      While it was true that Meg was having some trouble shifting from full throttle to a comparative standstill, since the family conglomerate had gone public a few months before, and her job as an executive vice president had gone with it, she didn’t miss the meetings and the sixty-hour workweeks all that much. Money certainly wasn’t a problem; she had a trust fund, as well as a personal investment portfolio thicker than the Los Angeles phone book.

      A stir at the front door saved her from commenting.

      Sierra came in, looking baffled.

      “Surprise!” the crowd shouted as one.

      The surprise is on me, Meg thought bleakly. Brad O’Ballivan is back.

      Brad shoved the truck into gear and drove to the bottom of the hill, where the road forked. Turn left, and he’d be home in five minutes. Turn right, and he was headed for Indian Rock.

      He had no damn business going to Indian Rock.

      He had nothing to say to Meg McKettrick, and if he never set eyes on the woman again, it would be two weeks too soon.

      He turned right.

      He couldn’t have said why.

      He just drove.

      At one point, needing noise, he switched on the truck radio, fiddled with the dial until he found a country-western station. A recording of his own voice filled the cab of the pickup, thundering from all the speakers.

      He’d written that ballad for Meg.

      He turned the dial to Off.

      Almost simultaneously, his cell phone jangled in the pocket of his jacket; he considered ignoring it—there were a number of people he didn’t want to talk to—but suppose it was one of his sisters calling? Suppose they needed help?

      He flipped the phone open, not taking his eyes off the curvy mountain road to check the caller ID panel first. “O’Ballivan,” СКАЧАТЬ