McKettrick's Luck (10 page)

“The peach cobbler's good today,” she said. Only then, apparently, did she notice the latest addition to the corner booth. “Oh. Hi, Jesse.”

Cheyenne allowed a moment of smugness to distract her from her irritation over Jesse's glib promise to put Mitch on horseback. Obviously, there
were
women who were oblivious to the McKettrick charm.

“Hi,” Jesse said amiably. His thigh was still pressing against Cheyenne's, and she couldn't seem to muster the coordination to move away. “I'll have the cobbler, please.”

Mitch and Ayanna both followed suit.

“Ice water,” Cheyenne said when Bronwyn gave her a questioning glance.

“It won't help,” Jesse observed, as if the two of them were alone.

“Shut up,” Cheyenne told him.

“Cheyenne!” Ayanna protested.

Cheyenne subsided. Folded her arms and slid as close to the wall as she could get. Even with several inches of distance between them though, she still felt the heat and substance of Jesse's body. They might as well have been in full contact.

Jesse turned and looked down into Cheyenne's eyes. “My cousin Keegan is trying to reach you,” he said bluntly.

“Why?” Cheyenne asked.

Jesse's jaw tightened, but the move was so slight that Cheyenne almost missed it. “He wants to set up an interview at McKettrickCo.”

“For what?”

“A job.”

“Jesse, I
told
you—”

Cheyenne felt her mother's heel digging into her instep.

“You can always say no,” Jesse reasoned. “You did tell me you were about to be out of work, didn't you?”

“Out of work?” Mitch put in proudly, probably more for Bronwyn's benefit than anyone else's. The girl lingered, though she'd already taken the order for three cobblers and Cheyenne's ice water. “She's getting a company car.”

Cheyenne's cheeks heated.
Now
what was she supposed to say to Jesse?

Change of plans. I have three weeks to do the impossible.

Oh, and before I forget, my boss is probably looking for your Achilles' heel right this very moment. You don't have one—do you?

Jesse frowned. “So you still think you can change my mind?” It was clearly a rhetorical question. Why else would she be staying in Indian Rock and getting a car as a perk after telling Jesse only that morning she'd almost certainly be fired as soon as Nigel heard what his decision was?

She opened her mouth and promptly closed it again, because anything she would have said could only have gotten her in deeper.

Bronwyn left, reluctantly, and returned with desserts.

“This cobbler,” Ayanna piped up hastily, “is
delicious.
”

It was an interesting observation, Cheyenne thought, since she hadn't actually
tasted
the stuff yet.

Jesse sat with his fork poised in midair, and Cheyenne didn't reach for her glass of water. Suddenly, he flashed that wicked grin, but his eyes were stone serious.

“You might want to consider working for McKettrickCo,” he said. “I can't promise a company car, but I
can
tell you this—you won't be asked to ruin a tract of land that's been pretty much the same since God spoke it into existence.”

With that, he stood, tossed enough money to pay for his untouched cobbler onto the table and left the Roadhouse.

Mitch and Ayanna sat in uncomfortable silence.

After a moment's hesitation and a muttered swearword, Cheyenne got up and hurried after Jesse, nearly running over Bronwyn in the process. She caught up to him in the parking lot, just as he was about to climb into his truck.

“Jesse, wait.”

He turned slowly to look at her, and it struck her that he didn't look angry. He looked hurt.

“Are we still on for Saturday night?” she asked, feeling foolish.

Jesse didn't speak.

“My mother and brother are counting on going.”

“I'll be around at six,” Jesse told her flatly. “Just like I said I would.”

“I bought jeans and everything,” she said. He'd just answered her question. Why was she prattling like this? And why couldn't she simply cut her losses and run?

He took a step toward her. “You just don't give up, do you?”

“I can't, Jesse.”

“Because of the company car?”

“Because of my family.”

He sighed, reached into the truck for his hat and settled it on his head. “I've got a family, too, Cheyenne. Sure, that whole creek thing got by me, but the fact is, we depend pretty heavily on that water in dry years, down on the Triple M. Even if I wanted to sell that land to a developer—and we've already established that I don't—I couldn't put the ranch in jeopardy like that.”

Cheyenne clasped her hands together behind her back. “I know all that, Jesse,” she said. “And believe it or not, I respect you for taking a stand. But I've got to try to change your mind, because it's my job.”

Jesse surprised her with another grin. Even standing at least ten feet from him, she felt the impact of it, and had to catch her breath. The feeling roughly corresponded to being French-kissed without warning.

“I can't say I'm averse to being persuaded,” he said. “As long as you understand that you don't have a chance in the furthest corner of hell.” He climbed into the truck, spoke to her from behind the wheel. “Tell your brother and mother it was good to see them.”

Cheyenne took a step toward him. “About saddling that horse for Mitch—”

He held up a hand to stop the flow of words. “That,” he said, “is between Mitch and me.” With that, he closed the truck door, started the engine and backed out, waving once as he passed.

Cheyenne stood rooted to that potholed parking lot, watching him drive away.

 

T
HE NEXT MORNING
, she was breaking in one of her new pairs of jeans and an old cotton shirt of her mother's when Jesse pulled into the front yard, with a bunch of new lumber sticking out of the bed of his truck.

Cheyenne had been clearing away debris since just after sunup, in an effort to make the place look halfway decent, but she was still waist-high in weeds. Sweat dampened her scalp and forehead, and her hair was coming down from the loose clip on top of her head.

She sighed and tried to ignore the strange jubilation she felt.

“Mornin',” Jesse said, climbing out of the pickup. He took off his hat, tossed it onto the passenger seat and approached.

“What are you doing here?” Cheyenne asked, embarrassed by both her own appearance and that of the property.

“Just a neighborly visit,” he answered and rounded the truck to begin unloading the lumber. “I brought a box of doughnuts, hoping you'd contribute the coffee.”

Cheyenne approached. “What—?”

“Okay, I admit it,” Jesse said with another shameless grin. “I cruised by the place last night, after I left you at the Roadhouse, and noticed you needed a ramp for Mitch's wheelchair.”

Cheyenne's pride kicked in. “We have—”

Jesse nodded toward the half-rotted boards stretching between the porch and the ground. “Recipe for disaster,” he said.

“I appreciate your concern, but we really don't need—”

Ayanna came out onto the porch, dressed in jeans and the red cotton shirt provided by the supermarket. “Jesse,” she called. “What a nice surprise!”

“You're supposed to be friendly to me, remember?” Jesse whispered, close—much
too
close—to Cheyenne's ear. “Try to get on my good side, so I'll sell you that five hundred acres?”

“But you don't have any intention of doing that,” Cheyenne protested, whispering, too.

“No,” Jesse said, “I don't. But l will enjoy your efforts at persuasion. You might start by taking the doughnuts inside, and giving up a cup of coffee. I take it black.”

“This is crazy!”

“Yeah,” Jesse grinned. “I don't know what's come over me.”

Cheyenne gave up—at least temporarily—and went to the passenger side of the truck for the doughnuts. She and her mother bumped shoulders as they passed in the yard, Cheyenne on her way into the house, Ayanna headed straight for Jesse.

“Behave,” Ayanna ordered under her breath.

Cheyenne stiffened her spine and kept walking.

When she returned a few minutes later, with Jesse's coffee and three doughnuts on a cracked plate, Ayanna was pulling out in the van, on her way to work. She must have met the rental-car people on the bend in the driveway because she'd just disappeared into the stand of cottonwoods when two guys showed up in a minibus.

Cheyenne shoved the coffee and doughnuts at Jesse and went to sign off on the car and surrender the keys. She felt oddly bereft as she watched the two vehicles speed away.

When she turned to look at Jesse, he was sipping coffee and holding a doughnut with a big bite out of one side.

“Guess you're on foot for the time being,” he said.

Cheyenne lifted her wrist, then remembered she wasn't wearing a watch. “Not for long,” she replied. “What are you up to, Jesse?”

“Just doing a kindness for a friend,” he said.

Mitch wheeled out onto the porch, which took some maneuvering, since the door was barely wide enough to accommodate his chair. “Hey, Jesse,” he said.

“Hey, dude,” Jesse replied.

“What's with the boards?” Mitch asked, but the expression in his eyes said he knew, or hoped he did.

“Building a ramp,” Jesse said. He finished the doughnut, set his coffee down and walked back to the truck, returning almost immediately with a toolbox swinging from one hand.

Mitch's smile broadened. “Can I help?”

Cheyenne held her breath.

“Sure,” Jesse said. “You didn't expect to just sit around and watch, did you?”

J
ESSE'S SWEAT-DAMPENED HAIR
curled at the nape of his neck as he bent over the ramp, arousing an unwanted and fragile tenderness in Cheyenne and, to make matters infinitely worse, he'd taken off his shirt. Between the deep tan of his skin and the play of well-defined muscles in his back and shoulders, Cheyenne was hard put to look away.

Mitch stayed right beside him, there in the tall grass, leaning forward in his wheelchair to hand Jesse nails and carrying on a rambling, one-sided conversation. Jesse hammered away, paused now and then to run a forearm across his brow, and listened in a holistic way—much as he'd taken in the view of those five hundred acres when he and Cheyenne had ridden up to the ridge the day before. Even though he wasn't looking at Mitch, he seemed to be catching every word and nuance, assimilating and integrating it, somehow making it a part of himself.

Cheyenne had never known anyone who used his senses quite the way Jesse did, and the insight both rankled and intrigued her. Wild though he was, there was an innate and wholly paradoxical stillness about him, even when he was moving, as though he revolved around some inner core rooted in the very heart of creation.

What would it be like to make love with a man like that? A man capable of that elemental concentration? That strange singleness of heart, mind and body?

Cheyenne flushed and fanned herself with the first thing that came to hand—yesterday's newspaper—and went back to her own work, hacking at weeds with the dull hoe she'd found earlier in the shed out back. She was soaked with perspiration, blisters burned her palms, and she knew her muscles would ache like crazy by the following day, but there was something deeply satisfying about chopping away at that undergrowth.

Because of that, and because she wanted to avoid snagging her gaze on Jesse again, she focused on swinging the hoe, and wouldn't have noticed the two cars coming up the driveway if one of the drivers hadn't honked his horn.

She stopped, leaned on the hoe handle and squinted.

First came a black sedan, then a sporty blue compact.

Jesse quit hammering, and he and Mitch watched the vehicles roll to dusty stops at the edge of the yard.

Nigel got out of the dark sedan, smiling, dressed in his usual natty tailored suit and shiny shoes. His fine brown hair had that floppy look Cheyenne secretly thought of as inherently English. He pulled off his expensive sunglasses, the kind that made him look like the captain of an alien space ship, and strode toward her, nodding at Jesse and Mitch as he passed.

“Surprise!” he said. “I come bearing gifts.” He gestured grandly, in an apparent attempt to draw Cheyenne's attention to the blue car. The promised company ride, no doubt.

Because she could so easily imagine Nigel putting his well-shod foot into his big mouth by making some overconfident reference to Jesse and the land deal, she made the introductions quickly. “Nigel, this is Jesse McKettrick,” she said. “Jesse, my boss, Nigel Meerland. I think you know Mitch.”

Nigel tried to play it cool, but he reacted visibly to Jesse's name, stiffening a little and turning to give him a second look. Then he rallied. “Of course I know Mitch,” he said, approaching to put out his hand, first to Jesse, then to Mitch.

Jesse's gaze slid to Cheyenne, and she wondered if he'd known she was warning Nigel not to say anything about the condo development.

Impossible, she decided. Jesse was disturbingly perceptive, but he wasn't a mind reader.

“I've brought your car, your new telephone and a stack of files,” Nigel announced, shifting the formidable force and energy of his presence back to Cheyenne. “I'd love to stay and help you with your various…projects…but I've got a plane to catch. Important meeting in L.A. tonight.” He waggled his eyebrows, as if to let her know he was transmitting a secret message.

Just the thought of Nigel pounding nails or clearing weeds made Cheyenne smile. And even though the reference to the L.A. meeting troubled her a little, for reasons based more on instinct than on reason, she put it aside.

Nigel arched one eyebrow. “A word, please?”

Still smiling, Cheyenne walked him back to the sedan. Waited while he got behind the wheel and started the engine.

“That's him?” he asked, stealing a glance in Jesse's direction.

Jesse, meanwhile, had gone back to working on the ramp.

“That's him,” Cheyenne confirmed.

“Looks as if you've got him right where you want him.”

Cheyenne kept her feathers smooth. Where
did
she want Jesse? In her bed, for one place, she realized with a cold-water shock, followed by a surge of searing heat, though she wasn't about to let that happen—or confide the desire to Nigel. “What makes you say that?” she asked, to give herself time to recover.

“He wants you,” Nigel said. “That's why he's here, doing manly man work with his shirt off. Don't tell me you don't get the message, Pocahontas. I thought your people were supposed to be intuitive.”

Holy shit,
Cheyenne thought. Nigel was a nincompoop, for the most part, but occasionally he hit on a solid insight.

“My people?” she echoed, indignant.

“Indians,” Nigel said. He could be politically correct when it suited him, but right now, evidently, it didn't.

“Native Americans,” she insisted.

“Whatever,” Nigel replied. He looked at her intently as the man who'd driven the other car approached. “Say, you wouldn't happen to have a stake in a casino or something like that? Some kind of tribal rights?”

“Nigel,” Cheyenne said evenly, “thank you for the car. Thank you for the new cell phone. And get out.”

He grinned.

The guy from the leasing company handed Cheyenne a set of keys and got into Nigel's car on the passenger side.

Nigel honked again, a jaunty toot-toot of a goodbye, and they were off, turning around in the deep grass and barreling back down the driveway.

Cheyenne watched until they were out of sight, and so was a little startled when she realized Jesse was standing beside her.

“Nice save,” he said.

She looked up at him and was relieved to see a grin on his dirty face. “I don't know what you're talking about,” she lied.

“Yes, you do,” Jesse countered good-naturedly. “You were afraid the boss would assume I was a handyman and give you a pep talk about sticking it to me.”

Cheyenne sighed. “Nobody wants to stick anything to you, Jesse,” she said, and immediately wished she hadn't phrased her answer quite that way. “It's a fair offer.”

“Right,” Jesse said, pleasantly skeptical.

“That development would bring a lot of business to Indian Rock. It would be good for everybody.”

“Except the McKettricks, and about a dozen different species of critters,” Jesse replied.

“We were getting along so well,” Cheyenne said ruefully.

Jesse's mouth quirked at the corner. “Only because we weren't talking,” he replied. “By the way, you'll never get this ground cleared with that hoe. Why don't you rent a tiller?”

“Why didn't I think of that?” she asked cheerfully. She
had
thought of it, of course, but she was reluctant to stretch the budget even that far.

“Guess I'd better finish that ramp,” Jesse said with an implied shrug and turned away. Mitch waited patiently, clasping a handful of nails.

Cheyenne tucked her car key into the pocket of her new jeans and went to examine her car. Boxes containing a laptop, the promised cell phone and half a dozen fat file folders sat in the backseat.

She carried the stuff inside the house in relays, piling it all on the kitchen table, and headed for the sink. There, she splashed her face and neck with cool water, then washed her hands.

After checking the pitiful store of food supplies Ayanna had brought from Phoenix, she made iced tea.

Outside, the hammering continued.

Mitch's voice was an eager drone on the hot, weighted air.

The telephone rang and, against her better judgment, Cheyenne took the receiver off the wall. This phone, like the one in the living room, dated from the fifties, so there was no caller ID.

Alas, she didn't need it.

“Hello?” she said, hoping she was wrong.

“He wants you,” Nigel told her. “Use it.”

 

J
ESSE EYED THE RAMP
, nearly completed now, and the tumbledown porch he was about to attach it to, wondering if it would hold.

“How about letting me take a spin in that chair?” he said to Mitch.

Mitch grinned. “You want to?”

“Sure,” Jesse answered with a grin.

Mitch buzzed through the grass, hoisted himself off the chair to sit on the edge of the porch and beckoned.

Jesse crossed the yard, sat down in the chair and inspected the controls. The thing was electric, but that was about all that could be said for it. Like the house and the yard, it was well past its prime.

He stood up again, dragged the ramp over to the porch and set it in place. Then he returned to the chair, whipped it into Reverse, did a 360, and tried for a wheelie.

Mitch laughed aloud.

Cheyenne appeared in the front doorway, frowning.

Jesse zipped up the boards and back down again in reverse.

Yep, he thought, the ramp would hold. For the time being, anyway. Attaching it to that porch was like putting a Band-Aid on a bullet wound, though. It was a stopgap measure at best.

He looked up at Cheyenne.

Still frowning, she turned and fled back into the house.

“What's with her?” he asked.

“She's just way too serious,” Mitch replied.

Jesse remembered the shy but funny girl Cheyenne had been, before she'd left Indian Rock to start college. “I guess she's had a rough time,” he said. He was fishing and he knew it, but he couldn't help it.

Mitch's face changed and he nodded. “She used to be different,” he said sadly. “Before the accident.”

Jesse steered the wheelchair within Mitch's reach and got out of it. “That was a hell of a thing,” he said. “I'm sorry it happened.”

Mitch shrugged. “Life goes on. There are a lot of things I could do, if Cheyenne and Mom weren't so scared I'd get hurt again.”

Jesse perched on the edge of the porch, waiting while Mitch transferred himself back to the chair. “Like what?” he asked easily.

“I'm good with computers,” Mitch said. “I could be a technician or even write programs. But they—” he nodded toward the house “—are afraid nobody would hire me. You know, because of the chair.”

“You don't need legs to write programs,” Jesse said.

Mitch grinned, his whole face going as bright as a harvest moon on a clear night. “You still going to saddle up a horse for me at the party tomorrow night?”

Jesse nodded. “You bet.”

“Mom might be okay with that, but Cheyenne will pitch a fit.”

Jesse turned his head toward the open doorway. For a moment, it was as if he could see through the sagging walls of that old house, catch sight of Cheyenne in there, wishing he'd go away.

“She'll get over it,” he said.

“You don't know my sister,” Mitch told him.

Jesse shook his head. No, the truth was, he
didn't
know Cheyenne, but he'd like to. Inside and out. He wanted to explore her most secrets thoughts, touch the bruised places on her soul, lay her down on a bed in some cool, shadowy room and make love to her until they both passed out from exhaustion.

“What does she do for fun?” he asked.

“Cheyenne doesn't
have
fun,” Mitch answered. “All she does is work and worry, as far as I can tell.”

“Maybe it's time somebody changed that,” Jesse mused.

“Good luck,” Mitch scoffed, but when Jesse looked at his face, he saw a hope so desperate that it twisted something deep inside him.

Jesse stood. “Guess I'd better gather up my tools and get out of here. You want to give the ramp a try before I go?”

He'd planned to spend what remained of the day playing poker in the back room at Lucky's, but now he needed a shower and a change of clothes. Instead of going all the way out to the ranch, he decided to stop by McKettrickCo—Rance and Keegan had an executive gym there, equipped with the necessary facilities, and he knew Keegan always kept extra duds on hand.

As it happened, he wanted a word with his cousin anyway.

Mitch navigated the ramp with the deftness of a skateboarder going over a jump.

Jesse decided the thing ought to have side rails and made a mental note to stop by the lumber yard again for more boards.

“Thanks, Jesse,” Mitch said from up on the porch.