McKettrick's Heart (12 page)

“Even if I
wanted
the irascible Mr. McKettrick for a husband,” Molly replied hastily, hearing a flush from the bathroom followed by the opening of the taps in the sink and some subsequent splashing, “which I DO NOT, in case there's any mistake, he would probably rather be electrocuted!”

“Close,” Keegan said from the doorway.

Molly stared at him, suddenly speechless.

Florence emerged from the bathroom.

Keegan crossed to Psyche's bed. Leaned down to kiss her forehead, then stroked Lucas's cheek briefly with the backs of his fingers. He ignored Molly, having already delivered the salvo of the hour, and she was surprised at how much it hurt.

“I've got to head back to the Triple M,” Keegan said. “Devon's there, waiting.” He looked up, his gaze sweeping past Molly to connect with Florence's. “You'll call me if there's any change?”

“You go,” Psyche told him, frowning a little. Apparently she hadn't liked being left on the fringes of the question any more than Molly had. “I'm not dying yet. You heard what the doctor said this morning, Keegan—I only needed a change in my medications. I'll probably be home by tomorrow.”

Molly saw the flicker of pain in Keegan's strong face and registered it somewhere down deep inside her. She had a crazy need to lay a hand on his cheek, or touch his shoulder.

Anything to comfort him.

Anything to assuage the impending loss of the woman he clearly loved.

Molly sighed and turned away from the scene to stand looking out the window, unseeing and shaken.

She'd come to Arizona at Psyche's request, not to make amends for her affair with Thayer—nothing so noble as that. No, she'd made the trip simply because she'd hoped so desperately for even a glimpse of Lucas. She'd had no idea the woman was gravely ill, or that she would be willing to give back the precious little boy she'd adopted just eighteen short months before.

Molly wanted Lucas, wanted to raise him as her son.

But why did Psyche have to die? Why?

She rested her head against the glass pane of that hospital window and grieved a deep and grinding, painful grief for a woman she barely knew.

A hand came to rest on her shoulder, and Molly stiffened, thinking it was Keegan's. She turned, ready to pin his ears back, at least verbally, and was paradoxically disappointed to find Florence standing there instead.

“Will you take Lucas downstairs?” she asked quietly, kinder in her weariness and her resignation. “Psyche's worn to a frazzle. She needs to rest.”

Molly looked around, realized that Keegan had gone. She should have been relieved; instead, she felt as though he'd taken something vital from the room, something that might have sustained three sad women and a little boy about to lose his mother.

She nodded.

Took Lucas gently from Psyche's arms.

He fussed a little, then settled against Molly with a sigh that twisted her heart. He was so young. Could he be aware, somehow, that a hole was about to open in the very fabric of his life?

“Mama,” he said.

Molly nodded to Psyche, turned and hurried out of the room, everything within her collapsing.

Somehow she kept going—stepped into the elevator, pressed the button for the first floor. She'd glimpsed a courtyard earlier, when she and Florence entered the hospital with Lucas, a place with flowers and a fountain. An oasis, a sanctuary.

She would wait there, she decided, until Florence returned.

Find a way to pull herself together.

She'd barely taken a seat on a shady bench and rocked Lucas to sleep when Keegan intruded. He had clearly not expected to find her there—his expression told her that—and his obvious discomfort was some compensation for the fresh shock he'd given her by showing up unexpectedly.

“I was looking for Jesse,” he said.

“Well,” Molly said pointedly, “he's not here.”

If he'd had any decency at all, Keegan would have left her alone then. Been satisfied that he'd given her a start, rattled her a little.

But, no. He wanted blood.

“I'll be signing the papers tomorrow,” he said, watching her for a reaction. Maybe he thought she was going to jump up and tear her hair because some dastardly plot had been foiled.

What had happened to this man to make him so suspicious? It was more than just seeing her with Thayer that one time—it had to be.

“If I had a handlebar mustache,” she replied tartly, “I'd twirl one tip, like a villain in a cartoon.”

He gave her another jolt, worse than any that had gone before.

He actually smiled.

Plates shifted beneath the surface of the earth. Fissures opened up, spewing steam and a disturbing kind of fire.

“Psyche's still on that marriage kick,” he said.

Now it was Molly's turn to smile. “Maybe it's the drugs,” she replied.

He chuckled, and the sound was wickedly pleasant—sexy and rumbling. Suddenly Molly could imagine herself naked in bed with this man, skin sleek and sweaty with passion, her back arched to welcome him into her body.

Yikes,
she thought. What was going on with her libido? This was the second time it had kicked into overdrive just because Keegan was in close proximity.

She was so busy dealing with the back-flash of
that
invisible bomb that she missed what he said next. Just in case it had been something requiring immediate and stinging retaliation, she said, “Sorry. I didn't catch that.”

“I said he looks like you.” He nodded to indicate Lucas.

Molly was oddly stricken by the remark; it lodged in her heart like a dart with the tip blunted, and she held her son a little closer. “Thanks. I think. Don't you have somewhere you have to be?”

“I'm waiting for Jesse. I figure he either left without me or parked the truck on the other side of town when he went to pick up breakfast-in-a-bag early this morning.”

“You were here all night.” Molly couldn't figure out exactly
how
she felt about that. Relieved, certainly, for Psyche's sake. Moved by the uncommon gallantry of such an act. And maybe a little envious, too, because she didn't think there was one person in her life who would do that for her. Sleep upright in a hospital chair just to make sure she was all right.

Once, perhaps, her dad would have. Now that he was almost certainly drinking again, probably not.

Keegan nodded. “All night,” he confirmed.

“Jesse stayed, too?”

“Jesse, too,” Keegan said.

A horn honked somewhere nearby. It made an ah-uggah sound, and normally she would have been amused by the unabashed red-neckism of that.

“Jesse?” Molly asked.

“Jesse,” Keegan said.

He turned to go, then turned back.

“Molly?”

“What?”

“Maybe you were right before. About us having to learn to get along—because of Lucas.”

She got that now-familiar prickly feeling behind her eyes, and her throat cinched itself up tight. “Okay,” she croaked.

The horn sounded again, more insistently this time.
Ah-uuuuuugah!

“You'd better go,” Molly said.

Keegan nodded, and left the courtyard. A truck door slammed.

Molly's cell phone rang from sixteen fathoms down in her purse. The sound woke Lucas from his doze, and he struggled to get off her lap so he could toddle over and pull the heads off several petunias nodding in a big stone planter.

By the time she'd corralled him the phone had stopped ringing, but she got it out anyway to check the caller ID panel. If it was Denby Godridge, or some other maniac from her old life of endless glamour and excitement, they'd have to wait.

But the number was her dad's.

Molly hesitated. It was early, so maybe he wasn't drunk yet.

He could also be in the backseat of a police car or on his way to a hospital, though. She gave him time to leave a message on her voice mail, then listened.

“Hey, sweetheart,” he said. “It's Dad.” He sounded sober, which was encouraging. “Call me back, okay? I've been waiting to hear how things are going in Arizona.”

I've been waiting to hear how things are going in Arizona.

She'd called him twice since she'd arrived. Told him about Lucas and about Psyche. Said she'd be back in L.A. to get some of her stuff soon, but she was planning to stay in Indian Rock indefinitely.

As in, until Lucas went to college.

Obviously her father not only didn't remember what she'd said, but didn't remember that she'd called at all.

She was used to it, but it still struck her in the stomach like a punch.

She hit the digit to speed-dial his landline. He'd lost their little house in Los Feliz long ago—now he lived in a condo in Santa Monica. Molly had bought it for him with her first big commission, and her name was still on the deed.

“Molly?” he said, instead of “hello.” She could just see him squinting at her number on his phone before he answered. He needed glasses, but he was too vain to wear them.

“Hi, Dad. You been going to your AA meetings?”

He took instant offense. “Do I sound drunk to you?”

“No,” she replied, keeping an eye on Lucas as he sat on the stone floor of the courtyard at her feet, playing with the keys to her classic Thunderbird convertible. She missed that car suddenly. Missed her dad, troublesome as he was.

So she decided not to mention her previous calls.

“Where have you been?” he asked. “I was worried when I didn't hear from you.”

Molly bit her lower lip. “Just busy,” she said.

“Did you do anything for the Fourth?”

“I went to a picnic,” Molly said. “There were fireworks.” She flashed back, for an instant, to the night before, when she and Keegan had stood watching color splash the sky.

“When are you coming home?”

“I'm not, Dad. Not to stay, anyway.” Quickly, keeping her voice low, she told him—again—about Psyche's illness, about Lucas, about her promise to stay in Indian Rock for the duration.

“That's stupid,” he said abruptly. “You have a business here in California. You have a house. You have a—”

“Father,” Molly finished for him when he suddenly got tongue-tied.

“I know all that, Dad, believe me. But I've read the draft of the agreement Psyche wants, and it's ironclad. If I don't promise to stay here and raise Lucas in the family home, I don't get to adopt him.”

“The woman is going to die,” Luke Shields said. “She won't know the difference once she's gone. You and the kid can hop a plane then, and come home.”

Molly closed her eyes for a moment. Who was this man who took over her father's body during his cyclical lapses from sobriety? The
real
Luke Shields was honest, a straight shooter. He cared about other people, not just himself. “I can't do that, Dad. Make a promise and then break it. I've been given a second chance with Lucas—your
grandson
—and I'm not about to blow it.”

“What about me? Do you expect me to move to Indigo Rock, or whatever it is?”

A shiver went through Molly. She loved her dad, but she didn't want him around Lucas if he was going to drink. “Indian Rock,” she said carefully, injecting a bright note into her voice. “You wouldn't like it. It's small and it's a long way from everything.”
Like your favorite watering holes.
“But not to worry. Lucas and I can visit, once he's had some time to adjust—”

“What am I supposed to do in the meantime?”

“Dad, this isn't about you. It's about Lucas.”

“No, it isn't,” her dad argued. “It's about you. You mess around with a married man, you get pregnant, you
finally
do the sensible thing and give the kid up. Then, just because the wronged wife holds up a hoop, you jump through it!”

“Dad,” Molly said, struggling to keep what little patience Keegan McKettrick hadn't already drained out of her. “Psyche is
dying.
”

“Is that your problem?”

A tear slipped down Molly's cheek, and she dashed it away with the back of one hand. Lucas got to his feet and jingled the car keys under her nose, giggling.

“Ride,” he said. “Ride!”

It was one of the few words she'd heard him say.

She smiled at her baby. “Ride,” she repeated.

“What?” her dad snapped.

“I was talking to Lucas,” Molly explained gently.

Luke cleared his throat. It was both a good sign and a bad one. He was going to let the other subject go, but he had another one ready to spring on her. “Listen, honey, I'm a little short of cash—you know how it is….”