McKettrick's Choice. Linda Miller Lael

lady shook her head. “It’s a sorry day when I have to take money for a few flowers,” she said. Then she’d slipped back into the cool dimness of the house, returning momentarily wearing a sun bonnet and carrying a pair of shears.

      Now, in the graveyard, Holt arranged the flowers with distracted care.

      Lorelei was seated on a bench, not twenty yards from him, her hands clasped in her lap. The breeze danced in the tendrils of dark hair curling at her nape.

      If she saw him, she’d think he was following her. Probably go straight to her father, the judge, and lodge a complaint.

      He might have smiled at the image if he hadn’t been putting flowers on Olivia’s grave, and if Lorelei hadn’t looked as though she might splinter into tiny shards at any moment, like a vase irretrievably broken, caught in that tenuous place between wholeness and utter disintegration.

      He lowered his head, laid a hand on Olivia’s stone. I’m sorry, he told her, in the privacy of his mind. I’d have come back for you, if I’d known about Lizzie. Wouldn’t have left in the first place, if I’d had any sense.

      His eyes took to burning, and he rubbed them with a thumb and forefinger.

      Some sound, or perhaps a scent or a movement, made him look up.

      Lorelei stood opposite him, surveying him with a slight frown marring her otherwise perfect forehead.

      “You loved her,” she surmised.

      He nodded. “Not enough,” he replied hoarsely.

      She bent down, peered at the marker. “Olivia,” she mused quietly. “I knew her. She was a fine seamstress.” Their gazes met across the narrow circle of stones. Lorelei looked thoughtful. “She had a young daughter. Lindy? Libby?”

      Holt got to his feet. He’d left his hat with the horse, perched on the saddle horn, but he reached up as if to touch the brim before remembering that. “Lizzie,” he said.

      Lorelei absorbed that. “Yours?” she asked, very quietly, and after a very long time.

      Holt nodded. He would have told just about anybody else that it was none of their business who had fathered Lizzie, but it seemed a natural question coming from Lorelei, though he couldn’t have said why.

      “I see,” Lorelei said, and Holt feared that she did see, all too clearly. Olivia had had to make her own way in the world, and Lizzie’s way as well, with only the help of her sister, Geneva. After Olivia’s passing, Geneva had managed to track Holt to the Arizona Territory, and she’d been on her way to Indian Rock, the nearest town to the Triple M, to leave Lizzie with him, when Jack Barrett had come upon their stagecoach, broken down alongside the road, and decided on robbery. In the course of that, he’d killed both Geneva and the driver. Holt’s brother, Jeb, and the town marshal, Sam Fee, had come upon the stage the next morning, and found Lizzie there, alone and scared.

      Holt set his back teeth. It had fallen to Jeb to deal with Barrett, when the time came, but every time he thought of that night, Holt wished he’d been the one to put the bastard out of his misery.

      “I won’t keep you, Mr. McKettrick,” Lorelei said, and by the look on her face, he knew she’d judged him and found him wanting. He’d left his woman and his daughter to fend for themselves, that was the fact of the matter. There wasn’t much he could say in his own defense.

      He simply nodded, and watched as Lorelei turned and walked away.

      He wasn’t given to excuses or explanations.

      So why did he want to hurry after her and make some kind of case for himself? Say he hadn’t known about Lizzie—that he’d always meant to patch things up with Olivia but had never found the time. Never gotten past his stupid pride.

      He swore under his breath. If his hat hadn’t been with the horse, he’d have wrenched it off his head and slapped it against one thigh in sheer aggravation.

      CHAPTER 9

      JOHN CAVANAGH felt a prickle trip down his spine, the same one he’d felt back in ’64, just before a rebel cannonball took off a piece of his thigh. He looked around for Tillie—saw her on the other side of the draw, bouncing along on the back of her mule, with that worthless yellow dog bringing up the rear.

      She was probably out of rifle range, so he didn’t shout a warning, though one sure as hell surged up into the back of his throat, bitter and raw.

      Holt was in town, trying, among other things, to hire a lawyer for Gabe and the new man, Kahill, was rounding up strays. The herd, once two hundred head of cattle strong, had dwindled down to less than fifty, by John’s reckoning, and they needed every one they could drive out of the brush.

      The prickle came again. Somebody was watching him, from someplace nearby, and probably looking down the barrel of a gun.

      He drew back on the reins, looked around.

      The rider sat at the top of the draw, under a stand of oak trees.

      He recognized the man by his shape and bulk. Templeton.

      John spat, ran one arm across his mouth and headed straight for the trespassing sum-bitch.

      Templeton waited, the barrel of his rifle resting easy across the front of his saddle. He wore a fancy bowler hat and the kind of duds a Texan would get married—or buried—in but never take out of mothballs otherwise. His sandy mustache twitched slightly, and he shouldered away the fly buzzing around his muttonchop whiskers. Something meant to pass as a smile played on his bow-shaped mouth.

      “Afternoon, John,” he said. His accent was English, and right fancy. Better suited to a tea party in some castle than the Texas range.

      John let his gaze travel to the rifle. “You hunting something?” he asked.

      “This is rough country,” Templeton replied smoothly.

      “A man can’t be too careful.”

      “That’s for sure and certain,” John answered, resettling his hat. The band itched, soaked with sweat. “I don’t reckon you’d mistake any of my cattle for game. Fine sportsman like you.”

      Templeton heaved a great sigh. “The poor beasts look pretty scrawny to me,” he said, with mock regret. “Hair, hide, hooves and horns, that’s about all you’ve got here. Not worth driving to market, as far as I can see.”

      “Then I reckon you ain’t looked far enough,” John replied evenly.

      The Englishman spared a thin smile. “I hear you sold out. I’m disappointed, John. I would have given you a good price.”

      John smiled back and spat again. “I’d sooner deed this place over to the devil,” he said. “And you were planning on buying this spread from the bank, pennies on the dollar.”

      Templeton shifted in the saddle. Cradled the rifle as gently as a babe just drawing its first breath. “That fellow McKettrick. Is he really your son?”

      “Good as,” John said.

      “I’ve been expecting him to pay me a call.”

      “He’s had better things to do.”

      With a mocking air, Templeton put a hand to his heart, fingers splayed, as though to cover a fresh wound. The rifle barely moved. The Englishman’s smile sent that prickle rolling along John’s spine again. “Now that was an unkind thing to say,” Templeton drawled. His gaze moved past John, tracking Tillie and the mule in the distance, like a snake about to spring at a field mouse. John’s aging heart lurched over a beat. “Looks as if you’re pretty hard up for ranch hands.”

      John sat up straighter in the saddle and fondled the handle of the .45 strapped to his hip just to draw Templeton’s eyes back to him and, therefore, off Tillie. “That’s the truth,” he allowed. “Holt’s hiring, though. Like as not, he’ll have that bunkhouse filled in no time.”

      “You