McKettrick's Heart (19 page)

“Right,” Keegan said. Damn him, he was
loving
this. “Florence told me about the old guy who came all the way to Indian Rock to fire you for about the tenth time. I think she's got a crush on his chauffeur.”

Molly started to laugh. It was, she figured, an hysterical reaction.

“Come on,” Keegan said, shuffling her toward his Jag, which was parked by the curb. “I'll take you home.”

“Where would that be?” she asked.

Keegan eased her into the front seat of his car and even went so far as to lean in and fasten her seat belt for her. “Since Los Angeles is out of the question, I guess I'll take you back to Psyche's.”

It was remarkable, Molly thought, how a person could be laughing one minute and crying the next.

Keegan thrust out a sigh. “Okay,” he said.

“Okay?” Molly asked. “What's that supposed to mean?”

He went around the car, opened the door on the driver's side, got in. “It means ‘okay,'” he said. “And stop trying to pretend you're not crying.”

She sniffled. “I'm not crying,” she said.

“Bullshit,” Keegan answered charitably.

Molly expected him to head straight for Psyche's house, but he didn't. He turned the wrong way on the highway and pulled into the lot of a place called the Roadhouse.

“You're hungry,” he said when Molly gave him a questioning look.

“I am not,” she lied.

“Well,” Keegan answered, “
I
am.” He shut off the car, got out and came around to open Molly's door. “You can sit here and starve if you want to,” he told her when she didn't move. “But it would be stupid and, believe me, it won't keep me from enjoying a double cheeseburger deluxe with everything.”

“Lucas—”

“Lucas is fine,” he said.

Molly unsnapped her seat belt and got out of the car. Keegan rested a hand on the small of her back and steered her toward the entrance of the restaurant.

“I'm sorry, Keegan,” she said, without intending to say anything of the kind. She had to stop ambushing herself like this.

A hostess led them to a corner booth. Keegan didn't take his hand off Molly's back. He didn't answer, either.

“About Dave,” she clarified. “Florence got a terrible scare, and so did Psyche. And you had to leave your family up on the mountain.”

Keegan opened a menu and studied it as though he hadn't already decided on a double cheeseburger deluxe with everything.

For some reason, Molly found his silence almost impossible to bear.

“Say something,” she said.

“You really need to look into other career opportunities,” he replied.

Suddenly her sinuses clogged up again, and her eyes burned. “I thought I had a whole new career lined up,” she told him. “I was going to be my son's mother.”

Keegan closed the menu.

The waitress came back and, without taking his eyes off Molly, he ordered for both of them.

“I'm staying at Psyche's place tonight,” he announced when the food-service professional had gone. “Just in case another of your clients shows up to do research.”

P
SYCHE
, L
UCAS AND
F
LORENCE
were all sound asleep on the sunporch when Keegan and Molly returned to the house—Psyche in her hospital bed, Florence in a chair pulled back from the table, and Lucas in his playpen.

The sight had a curious effect on Keegan; they were a brave little band of three, lost in some strange and uncertain place and huddled together for safety.

Molly moved to approach Lucas, probably intending to carry him upstairs and put him to bed in his crib, but Keegan reached out, stopped her. Shook his head when she gave him a curious, somewhat wary look.

He put a finger to his lips when she would have spoken and stepped back into the kitchen. Molly followed, and he reached past her to pull the sliding door shut, careful to make as little noise as possible.

“Sit down,” he said when Molly began to look rebellious.

She balked, then shrugged stiffly, went to the table and sat. “What?” she asked in a testy whisper. Evidently the salutary effects of a double cheeseburger with everything were already wearing off.

Keegan sat down across from her. Hesitated. “This is going to sound crazy,” he said.

Molly leaned forward a little, lowered her brows slightly, practically daring him to say anything she could possibly take issue with. And she waited.

“It's not just going to sound crazy,” Keegan went on. “It
is
crazy.”

Molly threw him off with a quick and totally unexpected smile. “It can't be any worse than what Davis Jerritt did,” she said. “In terms of crazy, I mean.”

Keegan wasn't so sure of that. He drew a deep breath and let it out slowly. “We could get married.”

The smile faded. She looked wary again. “If this is some kind of joke,” she said, “it's not funny.”

“It's not a joke,” Keegan said. “Maybe it should be, but it isn't.”

“You?” Molly pointed to him. “And me?” Pointing back to herself.

“I don't see anybody else around here,” he said. “
Yes,
you and me.”

“But…”

He saw realization dawn in her face. As a kid, she'd probably been cute. As a woman, she was beautiful—even with puffy eyes from all that crying.

“It's what Psyche wants,” he said. “And we could raise Lucas. Together.” He paused, suddenly very uncomfortable, and cleared his throat. “Of course, we wouldn't have sex or anything like that.”

Molly leaned back a little way, folded her arms across her chest in a reflexive motion, then let them fall to her sides again. “Of course not,” she agreed, but she looked skeptical. “What's in this for you, Keegan?”

“Lucas,” he said simply.

“You and I don't get along very well,” she reminded him. As if he needed reminding.

“Not a problem,” he answered.

“
Not a problem?
How do you figure that? Psyche wants Lucas to have a family. She has a fantasy, I think, that we'll fall madly in love, you and I, and live happily ever after, if she can just get us together. We
both
know that isn't going to happen.”

“We'll agree to live under the same roof. Most of the time you can go your way, and I'll go mine. We might not love each other, but we both love Lucas.”

“What kind of home would that be for him?” Molly asked. “And maybe
you
don't mind going the rest of your natural life without sex, but I'm not ready to give up on it yet. For one thing, I'd like to have more children—someday.”

“Okay,” Keegan said generously. “If you want sex, I'll oblige.”

Molly widened her eyes at him. “Gee, thanks,” she said.

He shook his head. “You are deliberately not understanding this,” he said.

“I understand only too well,” Molly replied. “What happens if one of us falls in love with somebody else? There'd be a divorce then, and Psyche doesn't want that for Lucas. Neither do I.”

“Trust me,” Keegan said. “I'm not going to fall in love with anybody. Been there, done that.”

“Well,
I've
never been in love—” She fell silent suddenly, blushing.

“Not even with Thayer?” Keegan asked carefully. He was a man walking through a minefield, and he had to step lightly.

“That wasn't love,” Molly said. “It wasn't even lust.”

“What was it, then?”

“Stupidity,” she answered with flushed certainty.

“Look, if sex is such a big thing to you, we could give it a trial run.”

Molly's mouth fell open. She snapped it closed, drew a couple of breaths in through her flared nostrils and steamed them back out again. “A
trial run?
I've met some jerks in my life, Keegan McKettrick, but you take the freaking prize!”

“How do you know you wouldn't like it?” he asked. He was in so deep by then, there was nothing to do but keep wading and hope his boots didn't fill up, figuratively speaking.

She blinked. “Why, you
arrogant
—”

He put up a hand. “Molly,” he said, “I'm offering you a choice between busing it back to L.A. empty-handed and staying right here in Indian Rock to raise your son. Think about it. Little League baseball games. School pictures. Trail rides. The kind of things Psyche wants for Lucas.”

“If—if I agreed to this, where would we live?”

“Definitely on the Triple M. This mausoleum is no place for a kid to grow up.”

“You think Psyche would agree? This is her family home, and one of the original terms was that Lucas had to grow up here.” She paused, swallowed. Beneath her thin T-shirt her nipples hardened visibly. Not that Keegan was looking at her breasts. Much. “Besides, she'd surely suspect that it wasn't a real marriage.”

“She's betting on both of us falling hard, sooner or later. And what she doesn't know won't hurt her.”

Molly gnawed on her lower lip. “No, but it might hurt Lucas.”

“Not if we act like civilized adults, it won't.”

“This is a seriously mental idea. Did Dave Jerritt suggest it?”

Keegan ignored that. “That's the offer, Molly. Take it or leave it. Psyche made her terms pretty clear.”

She wanted to agree, he could see that.

He could also see the nipples, pressing against the front of her shirt.

“You don't trust me,” she reasoned. “Why would you want to
marry
me?”

“I don't. I want to raise Lucas. So do you. Connect the dots, Molly.”

“But there's a tremendous risk—”

“There's
always
a risk,” he interrupted, “tremendous or otherwise.”

She got up out of her chair unexpectedly, and crossed the room to ease open the sliding door and peek in at Lucas. Apparently he was still sound asleep, because she closed it again, very quietly, and turned back to face Keegan.

“I want the trial run,” she said.

Keegan was so stunned, he couldn't answer for a moment.

She smiled. “What's the matter, McKettrick?” she asked. “Are you chicken?”

“Molly, we can't just…”

“Why not? We can ‘just' get married. We can ‘just' agree to raise a child together. I'm not going for this until I know you can deliver, buckaroo.”

Heat surged through Keegan, partly indignation, partly every cell in his body yelling
yahoo.
“Are you on the pill?” he asked.

She shook her head. “No reason,” she said. “I'm not involved with anybody at the moment.”

What did she mean by “at the moment”? he wondered. Was there another married man in L.A.?

“I didn't bring…”

“You can't seem to finish a sentence,” she pointed out, clearly enjoying the fact that she'd turned the tables on him somewhere along the line. “If you were about to say you didn't bring a condom, no problem—I don't want you to wear one.”

“Why—” He had to stop and swallow. “Why not?”

“Because I wouldn't mind getting pregnant,” she said. “I know I can't replace Lucas, no matter how many babies I have, but if this whole thing blows up in our faces and Psyche decides to give Lucas to Travis and Sierra anyway, I might go back to California with something more than a broken heart.”

Keegan pushed back his chair, but quietly, and got to his feet. “There's one flaw in your logic,” he said fiercely. “If we make love and you get pregnant, the baby would be just as much mine as yours. There's
no possible
way I'd let you just vanish into LaLa Land with my child.”

“If you knew there was a child in the first place,” she said.

Oh, she was a negotiator, all right. Probably very good at her job.

But she was overlooking one important fact. He wasn't half-bad at driving a bargain, either.

“I'll know, Molly,” he told her, and he could see by the expression on her face that she believed him.

She jutted her chin out a little way. “Fair enough,” she said.

Then she started off through the kitchen, toward the dining room.

Keegan followed, wondering what the hell he was getting himself into. Moreover, what was he getting
Devon
into, and Lucas?

They moved through the dining room, into the huge entryway.

Molly jabbed at the elevator button, a challenge in her eyes. And there was something else, too—she thought he was going to back down.

Breaking news: he wasn't.

The elevator came and they got in, standing as far from each other as they could without plastering themselves against the walls.

Keegan pushed the button for the third floor.

They jolted upward.

Presently the elevator stopped.

Keegan pushed back the folding grate, opened the door beyond.

Molly's eyes were huge. It was beginning to dawn on her that he was about to call her bluff, big-time. She could always change her mind—it went without saying that he wasn't going to force her into anything—but he was betting her pride wouldn't let her back down. And since she'd said she wanted a trial run, she was going to have to be the one to call a halt.

She stood still for a moment in the elevator, then pushed past him into the hallway, marched to the door of her room and pushed it open. Of course, she could still slam it in his face. He certainly wouldn't try to break it down.

He waited, fascinated and—he wouldn't have denied it—horny as hell.

Molly left the door open.

He smiled to himself and followed her as far as the threshold. Stood there, waiting for a cue from her.

She dragged the T-shirt off over her head, threw it defiantly aside. Her bra was pink and lacy, a gossamer thing with about as much substance as a breath. He couldn't be sure, with nothing but a little moonlight to go by, but he thought it had one of those catches at the front. One motion of his thumb and her breasts would spill, warm and deliciously natural, into his hands.

Keegan stepped into the room, closed the door and took off his shirt.

Molly waited a beat, then kicked off her boots.

Keegan, grinning a little in the semidarkness, did the same. Damn, but he'd been hoping the bra would go next, even though he relished the prospect of removing it personally.

She unsnapped her jeans, shimmied out of them, kicked them away. The moon gilded her slender thighs in silver. She was wearing a skimpy pair of panties, pink like the bra.

Keegan was so hard, it hurt. He unfastened his belt buckle, then his jeans. And he enjoyed the look of shock on Molly's face, visible even in that thin light, when she realized he wasn't wearing anything underneath.

He was naked.

She was still wearing panties and a bra.

She knew it was her move, and whatever else she was, she was a sport. She hooked her thumbs under the elastic in those panties and pushed them down. Stepped out of them.

He went to her then, more because he couldn't
not
go to her than because he had any specific intention. He cupped her face in his hands, bent his head and kissed her—

Keegan's lips seared Molly's, and his tongue—well, if this kiss was anything to go by, he knew how to use it. The possibilities made her knees go weak, and she might actually have lost her balance if he hadn't caught her, his hands strong on her bare hips, and held her upright.

And still the kiss went on.

She'd issued a challenge, down there in the kitchen and again when he'd paused on the threshold a few moments before. She'd expected him to backpedal, been surprised and thrilled when he hadn't.