The McKettrick Legend: Sierra's Homecoming. Linda Miller Lael

she opened the connecting door a crack and crawled between sheets worn smooth by time.

      She was asleep in an instant.

      1919

      Hannah closed the cover over the piano keys, stacked the sheet music neatly and got to her feet. She’d played as softly as she could, pouring her sadness and her yearning into the music, and when she returned to the upstairs corridor, she saw light under Doss’s door.

      She paused, wondering what he’d do if she went in, took off her clothes and crawled into bed beside him.

      Not that she would, of course, because she’d loved her husband and it wouldn’t be fitting, but there were times when her very soul ached within her, she wanted so badly to be touched and held, and this was one of them.

      She swallowed, mortified by her own wanton thoughts.

      Doss would send her away angrily.

      He’d remind her that she was his brother’s widow—if he ever spoke to her again at all.

      For all that, she took a single, silent step toward the door.

      “Ma?”

      Tobias spoke from behind her. She hadn’t heard him get out of bed, come to the threshold of his room.

      Thanking heaven she was still fully dressed, she turned to face him.

      “What is it?” she asked gently. “Did you have another bad dream?”

      Tobias shook his head. His gaze slipped past Hannah to Doss’s door, then back to her face, solemn and worried. “I wish I had a pa,” he said.

      Hannah’s heart seized. She approached, pulled the boy close, and he allowed it. During the day, he would have balked. “So do I,” she replied, bending to kiss the top of his head. “I wish your pa was here. Wish it so much it hurts.”

      Tobias pulled back, looked up at her. “But Pa’s dead,” he said. “Maybe you and Doss could get hitched. Then he wouldn’t be my uncle any more, would he? He’d be my pa.”

      “Tobias,” Hannah said very softly, praying Doss hadn’t over heard somehow. “That wouldn’t be right.”

      “Why not?” Tobias asked.

      She crouched, looked up into her son’s face. One day, he’d be handsome and square-jawed, like the rest of the McKettrick men. For now he was still a little boy, his features childishly innocent. “I was your pa’s wife. I’ll love him for the rest of my days.”

      “That might be a long time,” Tobias said, with a measure of dubiousness, as well as hope. He dropped his voice to a whisper. “I don’t want Doss to marry somebody else, Ma,” he said. “All the women in Indian Rock are sweet on him, and one of these days he might take a notion to get himself a wife.”

      “Tobias,” Hannah reasoned, “you must put this foolishness out of your head. If Doss chooses to take a bride, that’s certainly his right. But it won’t be me he marries. It’s too hard to explain right now, but Doss was your pa’s brother. I couldn’t—”

      “You’d marry some man in Montana, though, wouldn’t you?” Tobias demanded, suddenly angry, and this time, he made no effort to keep his voice down. “Some stranger who wears a suit to work!”

      “Tobias!”

      “I won’t go to Montana, do you hear me? I won’t leave the Triple M unless Doss goes, too!”

      Hannah reddened with embarrassment and anger— Doss had surely heard—and rose to her full height. “Tobias McKettrick,” she said sternly, “you go to bed this instant, and don’t you ever talk to me like that again!”

      Tobias’s chin jutted out, in the McKettrick way, and his eyes flashed. “You go anyplace you want to,” he told her, turning on one bare heel to flee into his room, “but I’m not going with you!” With that, he slammed the door in her face.

      Hannah took a step toward it, even reached for the knob.

      But in the end she couldn’t face her son.

      “Hannah.”

      Doss.

      She stiffened but didn’t turn. Doss would see too much if she did. Guess too much.

      He caught hold of her arm, brought her gently around.

      She whispered his name, despondent.

      He took her hand, led her to the opposite end of the hall, opened the last door on the right, the one where she kept her sewing machine.

      “What are you—?”

      Doss stepped over the threshold first, turned, and drew her in behind him. Reached around her to shut the door.

      She leaned against the panel. It was hard at her back.

      “Doss,” she said.

      He cupped her face in his hands, bent his head, and kissed her, full on the mouth.

      A sweet shock went through her. She knew she ought to break away, knew he wouldn’t force himself on her if she uttered the slightest protest, but she couldn’t say a word. Her body came alive as he pressed himself against her. His weight was hard and warm and blessedly real.

      Doss reached behind her head, pulled the pins from her hair, let it fall around her shoulders, to her waist. He groaned, buried his face in it, burrowed through to take her earlobe between his lips and nibble on it.

      Hannah gasped with guilty pleasure. Her knees went weak, and Doss held her upright with the lower part of his body.

      She moaned softly.

      “We can’t,” she whispered.

      “We’d damn well better,” Doss answered, “before we both go crazy.”

      “What if Tobias…?”

      Doss leaned back, opened the buttons on her bodice, put his hands inside, under her camisole, to take the weight of her breasts. Chafed the nipples lightly with the sides of his thumbs.

      “He won’t hear,” he said.

      He bent to find a nipple, take it into his mouth. Suckled in the same nibbling, teasing way he’d tasted her earlobe.

      Hannah plunged her fingers into his hair, groaned and tilted her head back, already surrendering. Already lost.

      She tried to bring Gabe’s face to her mind, hoping the image would give her the strength to stop—stop—before it was too late, but it wouldn’t come.

      Doss made free with her breasts, tonguing them until she was in a frenzy.

      She sank against the door, barely able to breathe.

      And then he knelt.

      Hannah trembled. Even though the room was cold, perspiration broke out all over her body. She made a slight whimpering sound when Doss lifted her skirts, went under them and pulled down her drawers.

      She felt him part her private place with his fingers, felt his tongue touch her, like fire. Sobbed his name, under her breath.

      He took her full in his mouth, hungrily.

      Her hips moved frantically, seeking him, and her knees buckled.

      He braced her securely against the door, put her legs over his shoulders, first one, and then the other, and through all that, he drew on her.

      She writhed against him, one hand pressed to her mouth so that the guttural cries pounding at the back of her throat wouldn’t get out.

      He suckled.

      She felt a surge of heat, radiating from her center into every part of her, then stiffened in a spasm of release so violent that she was afraid she would splinter into pieces.

      “Doss,” she pleaded, because she knew it was going to happen again,