With the McKettricks, she heard her father say, as surely as if he were standing there beside her, there are always strings attached.
“Be quiet,” Sierra said, out loud. She was grateful for Eve’s help, and if she had to take the McKettrick name and live on the Triple M Ranch for a year to meet the conditions, so be it. It wasn’t as if she had anyplace better to go.
Resolutely she approached the cemetery entrance, walked under the ornate metal arch way forming the word “McKettrick” in graceful cursive.
A life-size bronze statue of a man on horse back, broad-shouldered and imposing, with a bandanna at his throat and a six-gun riding on his hip, took center stage.
Angus McKettrick, the patriarch. The founder of the Triple M, and the dynasty. Sierra knew little about him, but as she looked up into that hard, determined face, shaped by the rigors of life in the nineteenth century, she felt a kinship.
Ruthless old bastard, said the voice of Hank Breslin. That’s where McKettricks get their arrogance. From him.
“Be quiet,” Sierra repeated, thrusting her hands deeper into her coat pockets. She stood in silence for a long moment, listening to the rattle-throated hum of the station wagon’s engine, the lonely cry of a nearby bird, the thrum of blood in her ears. A piney scent spiced the air.
Sierra turned, saw the marble angels marking the graves of Angus McKettrick’s wives—Georgia, mother of Rafe, Kade and Jeb. Concepcion, mother of Kate.
Look for Holt and Lorelei, Eve had told her, the last time they’d spoken over the telephone. That’s our part of the family.
Sierra caught sight of other bronze statues, smaller than Angus’s but no less impressive in their detail. They were works of art, museum pieces, and if they hadn’t been solidly anchored in cement, they probably would have been stolen. It said something about the McKettrick legend, she supposed, that there had been no vandalism in this lonely, wind-blown place.
Jeb McKettrick, the youngest of the brothers, was represented by a cowboy with his six-gun drawn; his wife, Chloe, by a slender woman in pioneer dress, shading her eyes with one hand and smiling. Their children, grandchildren, great- and a few great-great-grandchildren surrounded them, their costly headstones laid out in neat rows, like the streets of a western town.
Next was Kade McKettrick, easy in his skin, 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 sun bon net 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 care fully, 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
