McKettrick's Choice. Linda Miller Lael

a fine woman and learned that two of the best friends he’d ever had were in trouble. Jeb had a wife to look after, and a baby daughter, barely walking. Rafe and Kade were in the same situation, since all three of their brides had managed to come a-crop with babies a year ago last Independence Day.

      “This is my fight,” Holt said. “I’ll handle it.”

      Rafe looked thoughtful. “John Cavanagh. That’s the man who raised you, isn’t it?”

      Holt nodded, though Rafe’s assessment didn’t begin to cover what Cavanagh meant to him. “He’s got a spread outside San Antonio.”

      “And this Gabe yahoo…?” Jeb fished. “Who’s he?”

      “We were Rangers together,” Holt explained. Gabe Navarro was a wild man—part Comanche, part Mexican, part devil—but he was neither a murderer nor a horse thief. Holt had known him too long and too well ever to believe either accusation.

      Apparently satisfied, Kade headed into the barn to get Holt’s horse, Traveler, ready.

      Rafe and Jeb went to the feast table and commenced gathering food for the journey. Holt looked for Lizzie and found her still in Angus’s arms, her head resting against the old man’s broad shoulder.

      “Here, now,” Angus murmured, giving his eldest son an unfriendly but resigned glance as Holt approached. “You talk to your papa, Lizzie-beth. It’s no good parting without saying what needs to be said.”

      Lizzie sniffled, raised her head, and met Holt’s gaze.

      Angus squeezed her upper arm, then favoring Holt with a withering glare, he walked away.

      “Are you coming back?” Lizzie wanted to know.

      “Yes,” Holt said, with certainty. He wasn’t through with Texas—he’d left too many things undone there—but in the deepest part of his heart, he knew the Arizona Territory and the Triple M were home. He belonged on this stretch of red, rocky dirt, with his impossible father, his rowdy brothers and his spirited daughter.

      She dashed at her face with the back of one hand. “You promise?”

      “You have my word.”

      “What if you can’t come home? What if somebody shoots you?”

      “I will come back, Lizzie.”

      “I guess I have to believe you.”

      He chuckled, extended an arm. Lizzie hesitated, then curled against his chest, clinging a little. “You be a good girl,” he said, resting his chin on top of her dark head, wishing he didn’t have to leave her behind. “Mind Concepcion and your grandfather.”

      She trembled, tugged a cherished blue ribbon from her hair and tucked it into Holt’s vest pocket. “A remembrance,” she said softly, and Holt’s heart ached. Before he could find words to assure his daughter that forgetting her would be impossible, she went on, “Are you going to visit Mama’s grave? She’s buried in San Antonio, in the cemetery behind Saint Ambrose’s.”

      He nodded, still choked up. Lizzie’s mother, Olivia, was part of the unfinished business waiting for him in Texas. He needed to say a proper goodbye to her, put her to rest in his mind and his heart, even though it was too late for her to hear the words.

      “Will you take her flowers—the best you can find—for me?”

      Holt’s throat still wouldn’t open. He nodded again.

      Lizzie stared into his face, looking, perhaps, for the half-truths people tell to children, or even a bold-faced lie. Finding only truth, she straightened her shoulders and hoisted her chin.

      “All right, then,” she said. “I guess you’d better ride while there’s still enough daylight to see the trail.”

      He smiled, cupped her chin in one hand. “Don’t eat too much cake,” he said.

      Her eyes glistened with tears. “Don’t get yourself shot,” she countered.

      And that was their farewell.

      Lizzie was a woman-child, with the run of one of the biggest ranches in the Arizona Territory. She could already ride like a pony soldier, and Kade’s wife, Mandy, a sharpshooter, had taught her niece to handle a shotgun as well as a side arm. Lizzie had lost her mother to a fever and seen her aunt murdered in cold blood alongside a stagecoach. She knew only too well that life was fragile, the world was a dangerous place and that some partings were permanent.

      This one wouldn’t be, Holt promised himself as he rode out, Lizzie’s ribbon in his pocket.

      CHAPTER 2

      San Antonio, Texas, August 25

      THE WEDDING DRESS was a voluminous cloud of silk and tulle, billowing in Lorelei Fellows’s arms as she marched into the center of the square and dumped it in a heap next to the fountain.

      She did not look at the crowd, gathered on all sides, their silence as still and heavy as the hot, humid afternoon. With a flourish, she took a small metal box from the waistband of her skirt, extracted a match and struck it against the bottom of one high-button shoe.

      The acrid smell of sulphur wavered in the thick air, and the flame leaped to life. Lorelei stared at it for a moment, then dropped the match into the folds of the dress.

      It went up with a satisfying whoosh, and Lorelei stepped back, a fraction of a moment before her skirt would have caught fire.

      The crowd was silent, except for the man behind the barred window of the stockade overlooking the square. His grin flashed white in the gloom. He put his brown hands between the bars and applauded—once, twice, a third time.

      Bits of flaming lace rose from the pyre of Lorelei’s dreams and shriveled into wafting embers. Her throat caught, and she almost put a hand to her mouth.

      I will not cry, she vowed silently.

      She was about to walk away, counting on her pride to hold her up despite her buckling knees, when she heard the click of a horse’s hooves on the paving stones.

      Beside her, a tall man swung down from the saddle, covered in trail dust and sweating through his clothes, and proceeded to stomp out the conflagration with both feet. Lorelei stared at him, amazed at his interference. Once the fire was out, he had the effrontery to take hold of her arm.

      “Are you crazy?” he demanded, and his hazel eyes blazed like the flames he’d just squelched.

      The question touched a nerve, though she couldn’t have said why. Blood surged up her neck, and she tried to wrench free, but the stranger’s grasp only tightened. “Release me immediately,” she heard herself say.

      Instead, he held on, glaring at her. The anger in his eyes turned to puzzlement, then back to anger.

      “Holt?” called the man in the stockade, the one who’d clapped earlier. “Holt Cavanagh? Is that you?”

      A grin spread over Cavanagh’s beard-stubbled face, and he turned his head, though his grip on Lorelei’s arm was as tight as ever.

      “Gabe?” he called back.

      “You’d best let go of Judge Fellows’s daughter, Holt,” Gabe replied, still grinning like a jackal. For a man sentenced to hang in a little more than a month, he was certainly cheerful—not to mention bold. “She might just gnaw off your arm if you don’t.”

      Lorelei blushed again.

      Holt turned to look down into her face. He tried to assume a serious expression, but his mouth quirked at one corner. “A judge’s daughter,” he said. “My, my. That makes you an important personage.”

      “Let—me—go,” Lorelei ordered.

      He waited a beat, then released her so abruptly that she nearly tripped over her hem and fell.

      “You must be an