Sierra's Homecoming. Linda Miller Lael

      If you’re anything like your sister.

      The words saddened Sierra, settled bleak and heavy over her heart. She didn’t know whether she was like her sister or not; until Meg had e-mailed her a smiling picture a few weeks ago, she wouldn’t have recognized her on the street.

      “Did I say something wrong?” Travis asked.

      “No,” Sierra said quickly. “It was—thoughtful of you to bring the chicken.”

      Liam must have heard Travis’s voice, because he came pounding into the room, all smiles.

      “Hey, Travis,” he said.

      “Hey, cowpoke,” Travis replied.

      “The computer’s making a dinging noise,” Liam reported.

      Travis smiled, set the bag of chicken on the counter but made no move to take off his hat and coat. “Meg’s got it set to do that, so she’ll remember to check her e-mail when she’s here,” he said.

      “Mom won’t let me log on,” Liam told him.

      Travis glanced at Sierra, turned to Liam again. “Rules are rules, cowpoke,” he said.

      “Rules bite,” Liam said.

      “Ninety-five percent of the time,” Travis agreed.

      Liam recovered quickly. “Are you going to stay and eat with us?”

      Travis shook his head. “I’d like that a lot, but I’m expected somewhere else for supper,” he answered.

      Liam looked sorely disappointed.

      Sierra wondered where that “somewhere else” was, and with whom Travis would be sharing a meal, and was irritated with herself. It was none of her business, and besides, she didn’t care what he did or who he did it with anyway. Not the least little bit.

      “Maybe another time,” Travis said.

      Liam sighed and retreated to the study and his allotted hour of television.

      “You shouldn’t have,” Sierra said, indicating their supper with a nod.

      “It’s your first night here,” Travis answered, opening the door to leave. “Seemed like the neighborly thing to do.”

      “Thank you,” Sierra said, but he’d already closed the door between them.

      Travis started up his truck, just in case Sierra was listening for the engine, drove it around behind the barn and parked. After stopping to check on Baldy and the three other horses in his care, he shrugged down into the collar of his coat and slogged to his trailer.

      The quarters were close, smaller than the closet off his master bedroom at home in Flagstaff, but he didn’t need much space. He had a bed, kitchen facilities, a bathroom and a place for his laptop. It was enough.

      More than Brody was ever going to have.

      He took off his hat and coat and tossed them on to the built-in, padded bench that passed for a couch. He tried not to think about Brody, and in the daytime, he stayed busy enough to succeed. At night, it was another matter. There just wasn’t enough to do after dark, especially out here in the boonies, once he’d nuked a frozen dinner and watched the news.

      He thought about Sierra and the boy, in there in the big house, eating the chicken and fixings he’d picked up in the deli at the one and only supermarket in Indian Rock. He’d never intended to join them, since they’d just arrived and were settling in, but he could picture himself sitting down at that long table in the kitchen, just the same.

      He rooted through his refrigerator, something he had to crouch to do, and chose between Salisbury steak, Salisbury steak and Salisbury steak.

      While the sectioned plastic plate was whirling round and round in the lilliputian microwave that came with the trailer, he made coffee and remembered his last visit from Rance McKettrick. Widowed, Rance lived alone in the house his legendary ancestor, Rafe, had built for his wife, Emmeline, and their children, back in the 1880s. He had two daughters, whom he largely ignored.

      “This place is just a fancy coffin,” Rance had observed, in his blunt way, when he’d stepped into the trailer. “Brody’s the one that’s dead, Trav, not you.”

      Travis rubbed his eyes with a thumb and forefinger. Brody was dead, all right. No getting around that. Seventeen, with everything to live for, and he’d blown himself up in the back room of a slum house in Phoenix, making meth.

      He looked into the window over the sink, saw his own reflection.

      Turned away.

      His cell phone rang, and he considered letting voice mail pick up, but couldn’t make himself do it. If he’d answered the night Brody called…

      He fished the thing out, snapped it open and said, “Reid.”

      “Whatever happened to ‘hello’?” Meg asked.

      The bell on the microwave rang, and Travis reached in to retrieve his supper, burned his hand and cursed.

      She laughed. “Better and better.”

      “I’m not in the mood for banter, Meg,” he replied, turning on the water with his free hand and then switching to shove his scorched fingers into the flow.

      “You never are,” she said.

      “The horses are fine.”

      “I know. You would have called me if they weren’t.”

      “Then what do you want?”

      “My, my, we are testy tonight. I called, you big grouch, to ask about my sister and my nephew. Are they okay? How do they look? Sierra is so private, she’s almost standoffish.”

      “You can say that again.”

      “Thank you, but in the interest of brevity, I won’t.”

      “Since when do you give a damn about brevity?” Travis inquired, but he was grinning by then.

      Once again Meg laughed. Once again Travis wished he’d been able to fall in love with her. They’d tried, the two of them, to get something going, on more than one occasion. Meg wanted a baby, and he wanted not to be alone, so it made sense. The trouble was, it hadn’t worked.

      There was no chemistry.

      There was no passion.

      They were never going to be anything more than what they were—the best of friends. He was mostly resigned to that, but in lonely moments, he ached for things to be different.

      “Tell me about my sister,” Meg insisted.

      “She’s pretty,” Travis said. Real pretty, added a voice in his mind. “She’s proud, and overprotective as hell of the kid.”

      “Liam has asthma,” Meg said quietly. “According to Sierra, he nearly died of it a couple of times.”

      Travis forgot his burned fingers, his Salisbury steak and his private sorrow. “What?”

      Meg let out a long breath. “That’s the only reason Sierra’s willing to have anything to do with Mom and me. Mom put her on the company health plan and arranged for Liam to see a specialist in Flagstaff on a regular basis. In return, Sierra had to agree to spend a year on the ranch.”

      Travis stood still, absorbing it all. “Why here?” he asked. “Why not with you and Eve in San Antonio?”

      “Mom and I would love that,” Meg said, “but Sierra needs…distance. Time to get used to us.”

      “Time to get used to two McKettrick women. So we’re talking, say, the year 2050, give or take a decade?”

      “Very funny. Sierra is a McKettrick woman, remember? She’s up to the challenge.”

      “She