McKettrick's Heart

by Linda Lael Miller

  Molly was crying again. Silently. Helplessly.

  “Oh, Molly,” Joanie whispered, squeezing her hand.

  Molly sniffled. Sloshed down some iced tea. Get a grip, for pity’s sake, she scolded herself.

  Joanie glanced toward the closed door leading onto the sunporch. “How about showing me where my room is?” she asked. “You could help me unpack.”

  Molly was on her feet in a moment. Heading for the elevator.

  Once she and Joanie were well away from the kitchen, beyond any possibility of being overheard by Psyche or anyone else in the household, Joanie said, “You really don’t want to marry this guy, do you? Molly, there must be some other way to get custody of Lucas.”

  Molly shook her head, jabbed at the elevator button, realized it was already there and opened the door. Pushed back the metal grate and stepped inside.

  “Keegan is in love with somebody else,” Molly confided when she and Joanie were bumping and jostling their way up from the main floor.

  “What?”

  “Psyche,” Molly said. “He’s in love with Psyche.”

  “But she’s—”

  “Dying,” Molly finished for her.

  Joanie had known Psyche was terminally ill. Keegan’s love for the other woman evidently came as a surprise to her, though. “Oh, my God,” she said.

  “It gets worse,” Molly said.

  “How could it possibly be worse?”

  They reached the third floor, and Molly opened the grate and the outside door. “I’m in love with Keegan,” Molly whispered urgently, even though she knew the two of them had the entire upper section of the house to themselves.

  “You can’t be,” Joanie protested. “You haven’t known him long enough.”

  Molly located the guest room Florence had allocated for Joanie and pushed open the door. It was cool inside, and a little dark, so she went to the window and opened the blinds.

  Below, in the backyard, Lucas toddled happily around in a big circle, playing tag with Devon, who allowed him to catch up to her and toppled into the grass, laughing, at a push of his hand.

  Florence, cutting yellow roses nearby, watched them with a smile on her face.

  Molly’s heart ached.

  “Molly,” Joanie said. “Talk to me.”

  Molly turned from the window, drew a deep breath and straightened her shoulders. “I’m in love with Keegan McKettrick,” she said again.

  Joanie sat down on the edge of the bed, probably testing it for softness, and bounced a little. “Maybe that’s good,” she answered. “It’s certainly going to make it easier to live with him.”

  “Is it?” Molly asked. “Psyche’s going to die soon, Joanie. Very soon. And Keegan knows that’s inevitable, but he’ll still be devastated. My God, you have no idea how much he cares for that woman….”

  Joanie pointed to the rocking chair across from the bed. “Sit,” she said.

  Molly sat, but she couldn’t remain still. She rocked, harder and harder, until the back of the chair thumped into the wall and she had to pull it away.

  “Molly,” Joanie said firmly.

  Molly stopped rocking. “And Devon,” she fretted. “There’s something going on with Devon—and Keegan won’t tell me what it is because he wants to talk to her first.”

  “That’s reasonable, Molly.”

  “I’m marrying into a situation I might not be able to handle,” Molly confessed, to herself as much as Joanie. “I’ve always been so confident. Crazy writers? No problem. I could handle it. Tough editors? Bring them on. Right up to the day I signed Lucas away…”

  “Hush,” Joanie said. “You’re Molly Shields. You raised yourself, and your dad. You built a business anyone could be proud of. And when you let Lucas go, you really thought you were doing the best thing you could for him. You wanted him to have two parents.”

  “I knew Thayer was a liar and a cheat, Joanie. How could I have convinced myself that he’d make a good father, when he was such a lousy husband?”

  “Simple. You weren’t thinking straight. The breakup with Thayer was rough, and then you went through your pregnancy alone. Give yourself some credit.”

  “I deserve to be in this mess,” Molly lamented. “But Psyche doesn’t, Joanie. Psyche doesn’t.”

  “You deserve a second chance with your son,” Joanie said. “And it isn’t your fault that Psyche is dying.” She paused. “You do understand that, don’t you?”

  “Yes,” Molly said fitfully, “but I hurt her.”

  “Thayer hurt her,” Joanie insisted. “You broke it off with him the moment he admitted he was married, didn’t you?”

  Molly nodded, remembering that day. She’d filled her house with flowers, put on soft music, worn a vintage silk caftan. And told Thayer Ryan she was going to have his baby.

  He’d told her so many times how much he wanted children.

  She’d expected joy.

  She’d even expected a proposal.

  Instead, she’d gotten an angry confession. Thayer told her he was married, adding the usual stuff. Psyche didn’t understand him. Psyche didn’t like sex. Psyche didn’t this, Psyche didn’t that.

  Oh, yes, it was all Psyche’s fault.

  And he’d asked Molly to get an abortion.

  Stunned—although even then she’d known she shouldn’t have been—Molly had ordered Thayer out of her house. Told him she’d never, ever in a million years get rid of her baby.

  He’d called her incessantly after that.

  He and Psyche were in counseling, he said. They were gathering the broken pieces of their relationship, fitting them back together.

  Molly had thrown herself into her work, kept up the pace throughout her pregnancy. In the daytime she was the high-powered agent, the wunderkind, the mover and shaker, the maker of megadeals. At night she was depressed, weak and frightened. She paced. She couldn’t sleep. She sat on her terrace and waited for the sun to rise so she’d have an excuse to leave for the office.

  She’d fooled almost everyone back then.

  But not her dad.

  And not Joanie.

  The birth was easy—Molly’s ob-gyn had said she was built to have babies—but the aftermath was not. Postpartum depression had taken hold before she’d even left the delivery room.

  “Keep the baby,” her dad had begged.

  “I’ll help you,” Joanie had promised.

  She’d heard what they said, her father and her best friend, but she hadn’t been able to take it in.

  And then Thayer had visited her hospital room, only hours after the birth. He’d shown her pictures of him and Psyche on a cruise, smiling together. Everything was good between them, he’d said. They’d had counseling. They were back on track.

  She’d risen out of her despair just long enough to name the baby Lucas, for her wonderful, imperfect father.

  And she’d signed the papers to surrender him, her own child, woven within her body, to the Ryans.

  She hadn’t even had the strength to regret it for a long time.

  She’d endured the long depression—that had taken all she had, just the enduring. By the time she was herself again, it was too late.

  “Molly,” Joanie said, bringing her back to the present by shoving a cool washcloth into her hands, “put this on the back of your neck. You’re pale as a ghost, and I really think you might faint.”

  Molly accepted the cloth, pressed it to her nape.

  Joanie returned to her perch on the edge of the mattress. “You need a really strong drink,” she said. “Brandy or something.”

  Molly shook her head.

  “Why not?” Joanie asked.

  “Number one, because my dad is an alcoholic and I don’t want to follow in his footsteps. Number two, I had sex with Keegan, and I might be pregnant.”

  “You’ll never be an alcoholic,” Joanie said confidently, “and it’s very unlikely you’re pregnant after one night in the sack.”

  “I don’t want to drink. Call it a
show of support for my dad.”

  Joanie put up both hands in a gesture of concession. “Okay,” she said.

  “And Lucas was conceived the one night Thayer and I didn’t take precautions. Same point in my cycle, too.”

  Joanie’s eyes widened. “Fertile Myrtle,” she said.

  And Molly laughed.

  It felt so good, she cried.

  IT WAS MORNING.

  Finally.

  Sitting at his kitchen table, with a cup of badly needed coffee at his elbow, Keegan scanned Travis’s draft of the adoption agreement with his one good eye.

  His friend, meanwhile, stood at one of the windows with his back to the room, waiting for Keegan to finish.

  “Raise the initial payment to two million,” he said after giving the document a second reading.

  Travis turned around. With his light hair, and the sun at his back, he looked like Jesse. Keegan felt a pang at that. He didn’t like being on the outs with Jesse, or with Rance.

  He’d told them about the wedding, before the fight behind the barn, but they probably wouldn’t show up.

  Meg would be there for sure, and so would Sierra. Maybe Cheyenne and Emma, too.

  But how could he get married without Jesse and Rance?

  “Two million it is,” Travis said, resigned.

  “It’s not like this is going to break me,” Keegan told him.

  “That isn’t the point,” Travis replied. “I’ve been worried about you for a long time. Now I’m worried about Devon, too. This is a lot to dump on a ten-year-old kid, Keeg. DNA tests, for God’s sake. And Shelley—don’t even get me started on Shelley.”

  “She’s a stone-cold bitch, Travis. She’d sell her own child. There are women in prison who wouldn’t stoop that low. Once you accept the truth, it gets easier.”

  Right.

  “Have you talked to Devon yet?”

  Keegan sighed. Lifted his coffee mug, set it down again without touching it to his sore lips. “No,” he said. “She’s gone to Flagstaff with Molly and a friend to buy some kind of getup for the wedding. Which, as it happens, is tomorrow afternoon.” He paused. “You’ll be there, won’t you?”

  “Hell, yes, I’ll be there. I’m Psyche’s lawyer, too, remember? And I’d have come anyhow, because even though I think you’re compounding one stupidity with another, we’re buddies.”

  “Thanks,” Keegan said gruffly.

  Travis slapped him on the back. “I’ll draw up the final papers and call Shelley’s lawyer in Flag. I imagine he’s waiting for the call.”

  Keegan merely nodded.

  Travis left.

  Keegan finished his coffee and went out to the barn to feed Spud.

  He was brushing the donkey down when he heard the truck pull in outside, and the familiar blare of the horn.

  Jesse?

  Shaking his head, Keegan put the brush aside, left Spud’s stall and walked the length of the breezeway. At the doorway of the barn he stopped.

  Sure enough, it was Jesse, climbing down out of his truck, grinning. He had a hell of a shiner around his left eye, but other than that, he looked like his old cheerful self.

  He gestured toward the trailer hitched to his truck.

  “Brought you a wedding present, Keeg,” he said.

  Keegan’s throat ached.

  Jesse went around behind the trailer and opened the back. Lowered the ramp and scrambled up inside.

  Keegan, standing behind the trailer now, gaped as Jesse led a palomino gelding down the ramp.

  “This one’s yours,” Jesse said proudly, and handed a stunned Keegan the lead rope before disappearing into the gloom again.

  He returned with another gelding, this one a black-and-white pinto, smaller than the palomino. “For Molly,” he said. “He’s real tame.”

  Keegan tried to speak, but nothing came out.

  Jesse let the pinto’s lead rope drop and went back into the trailer for the third time. Came back with a fat little bay pony with a splash of white on his rump.

  “Devon’s,” he said. “I figured she and Lucas could share him for a while.”

  Keegan was almost overcome. “Damn, Jesse,” he managed.

  “You can’t run a ranch without horses,” Jesse said, slapping him on the back. Then he squinted, examining Keegan’s battered face. “Man,” he marveled, “you are going to look bad in the wedding pictures.”

  CHAPTER

  15

  MOLLY STOOD at Joanie’s bedroom window, gripping the sill and staring down into the backyard, where Keegan awaited her. The man she shouldn’t marry. The man she shouldn’t love.

  Florence was there, too, with Lucas. Psyche sat in a wheelchair, in the shade of a great oak tree, hands folded in her lap. Devon worked the small crowd, showing off her bright yellow dress and the corsage on her wrist, moving from Jesse to Rance to Cheyenne to Emma and others, too. But always back to Keegan.

  The bond between Keegan and his daughter was a shining thing, visible to anyone who took the trouble to look, and Molly felt both reverence and envy. She missed her dad keenly on this day of days, wished he could have been half as committed to her as Keegan was to Devon.

  “You look pretty spiffy,” Joanie told her, gently interrupting her thoughts.

  Molly turned from the window, looked down at her own soft yellow dress, the strappy high-heeled sandals she’d bought to match the day before in Flagstaff. Joanie had done her hair, pinned it up in a soft arrangement, set a wreath of tiny roses and baby’s breath on her head and secured it with bobby pins.

  “Why do I want to do this so much?” she asked softly. “When I know it’s going to break my heart?”

  “Because of Lucas,” Joanie reminded her, squeezing both her hands. “And because you love Keegan.”

  Molly bit her lower lip, nodded once, fitfully.

  “Don’t ruin your lipstick,” Joanie said.

  Molly laughed, and for once it didn’t come out as a sob.

  Maybe she’d cried all her tears.

  Maybe pigs really could fly.

  “I guess we’d better do this thing,” she said.

  Joanie nodded.

  They were both silent during the elevator ride down to the first floor, and the walk through the house.

  “Showtime,” Joanie said when they reached the sunporch.

  The minister had taken his position outside, under an arbor draped with climbing roses, the intertwined vines of separate plants producing a bright tangle of pink, yellow and white. Not unlike a marriage, Molly thought, especially one that involved children.

  Keegan was just in front of the minister, resplendent in a tailored gray suit, his face bruised and swollen. Jesse and Rance stood beside him, dressed to the nines and looking as though they’d been in a knock-down, drag-out fight behind a barn on the Triple M.

  Which, of course, they had.

  “Ready?” Joanie asked.

  Molly drew a deep breath, huffed it out. “Yes,” she said.

  No. Well, maybe. Oh, God, what am I doing?

  A bridal bouquet, matching Molly’s not-white dress, waited on the table, where the peonies had been. Beyond that loomed Psyche’s hospital bed, a sad and poignant reminder that this was no ordinary wedding.

  It was the fulfilling of a dying woman’s last wish.

  Joanie pressed the bouquet into Molly’s hands, kissed her on the cheek and headed outside.

  It was an awkward processional. Devon skipped to take her place, and Joanie followed with a determined stride.

  There was no music.

  Molly waited on the back step until Joanie beckoned.

  Keegan’s gaze caught hers and held as she stepped slowly toward him.

  Molly kept walking, head held high. Reached Keegan’s side.

  The minister cleared his throat.

  “Dearly beloved,” he began, “we are gathered here, in the presence of God and these witnesses…”

  Molly didn’t hear another word until the minister got to the do-you
-take-this-man part. Keegan elbowed her gently, grinned down at her.

  “Do you take this man?” he whispered.

  “Yes,” Molly said, addressing him, not the minister.

  There was a silence.

  Molly tried again. “I mean, I do.”

  “Do you, Keegan, take this woman to be your lawful wedded wife?”

  Lawful wedded wife, Molly thought. Yikes.

  “I do,” Keegan answered in a deep, quiet voice. For a man basically being forced into marriage, he was remarkably calm. Or was he simply resigned?

  “Then by the power vested in me,” the minister said, “I now pronounce you man and wife. Keegan, you may kiss your bride.”

  Gently Keegan turned Molly to face him. Curled the fingers of one hand under her chin, and bent to touch his mouth to hers.

  Considering his swollen lips, he did an outstanding job.

  “Ladies and gentlemen,” the minister said, “may I present to you Mr. and Mrs. Keegan McKettrick.”

  Devon began to jump up and down, unable to contain her exuberance.

  And Molly was fiercely grateful, in that moment, that the child was willing to make her welcome. It was no small blessing.

  When Keegan reluctantly released Molly, Jesse stepped forward and kissed her cheek, and so did Rance, both of them grinning out of faces as battered as Keegan’s own. Emma and Cheyenne hugged her, and finally Joanie.

  Molly accepted their congratulations, then sought out Psyche, sitting small and fragile and brave in her wheelchair, under the generous, sheltering branches of the tree.

  “Take good care of him,” Psyche said solemnly, her eyes shining with a mixture of joy and sorrow.

  “I’ll be a good mother to Lucas,” Molly replied.

  “I know,” Psyche said, looking up at her with clear, resigned eyes. “I was talking about Keegan. There’s a lot he probably hasn’t told you, Molly. About the way his parents died, and about Devon’s mother—please, give him every chance to find his way to you.”

  Molly’s throat tightened. Gently she laid her bridal bouquet in Psyche’s lap. “Thank you, Psyche. Thank you for forgiving me, and thank you for Lucas—and for…”