A Lawman's Christmas_ A McKettricks of Texas Novel - Linda Lael Miller [59]
“What about the Christmas tree?” Harriet trilled, from somewhere behind Dara Rose.
“After supper,” she heard herself say, as her heart climbed into her throat. “We’ll tend to it after supper.”
And Clay McKettrick rode away, Chester following, leaving Dara Rose to wonder if he meant to come back.
WHEN HE REACHED the jailhouse, Clay let himself in, started a fire in the potbellied stove and nearly fell over the large crate waiting by his desk.
He approached the box, apparently delivered while he was away, peering down at the return address: The Triple M. Indian Rock, Arizona Territory.
He felt a twinge of homesickness, but it passed quickly.
Much as he loved the ranch, and his family, the Triple M wasn’t home anymore. Home, for better or for worse, was wherever Dara Rose happened to be.
When had he fallen in love with her?
He wasn’t sure. It might have been today, when she sat on his lap in her tiny kitchen and poured out her heart to him.
Or it might have been when he first laid eyes on her, just a few days before.
All he could say for sure was that it felt a lot like being kicked in the belly by a mule, this falling in love.
He was exultant.
He was crushed.
Dara Rose had loved another man, and that man had betrayed her, and if Luke Nolan hadn’t already been dead, Clay would have cheerfully killed him.
His deepest regret? That he hadn’t been there to step in and make things right for her and for the kids, as illogical as that was. Parnell had been the one to rescue her, give his two-timing brother’s family a legal right to the Nolan name.
Clay McKettrick was jealous of a dead man and, at the same time, he knew he could never have settled for the kind of empty marriage Dara Rose and Parnell had had together. He was a young man, and red-blooded, and he needed more.
He wanted everything—wanted Dara Rose’s heart, as well as her body. Wanted to adopt Edrina and Harriet, change their last name for good, raise them as McKettricks.
And he surely wanted to make more babies with Dara Rose.
Oh, yes, he wanted it all.
He drew in a deep breath. Slow down, cowboy, he thought. Get a grip.
There was no telling what Dara Rose thought when he’d walked out on her that way, but he needed to sort things through, needed to think.
That was the kind of man he was.
He fetched a knife, pried up the lid on the crate his mother had sent from the Triple M. She must have paid a hefty freight charge to get it there before Christmas, even by train.
Inside, carefully nestled in straw, he found a dozen succulent oranges, a tin full of exotic nuts and a number of his favorite books, some of which he’d owned since he first learned to read. There was more, but Clay’s eyes were so blurred by then that he was lucky to be able to read his mother’s letter and, even then, he only got this word and that.
“Sawyer wired that you’re married…two stepdaughters…bring them home when you can…we’re all so anxious to welcome your wife and your children to the family—”
Clay closed his eyes, drew a deep breath. That was Chloe McKettrick for you. If he loved a woman, and that woman’s children, then his mother was ready to enfold them in the warmth of her heart, receive them as her own.
It was the McKettrick way. Babies were born into the family, or they arrived by marriage, and it made no difference either way. Once a McKettrick, always a McKettrick.
No matter what happened between him and Dara Rose, Edrina and Harriet were part of the fold, now and forever. If he died tomorrow, or Dara Rose did, his pa and ma, his aunts and uncles and sisters and brothers and cousins—even old Angus and his wife, Concepcion—would take them in and love them like their own flesh and blood.
The knowledge made Clay’s throat tighten and his eyes scald.
He wanted to go back to Dara Rose right then, wanted that more than anything, but he didn’t give in to the desire.
Yes, she was his wife.
And yes, it was a safe bet that she wanted him as much as he wanted her, after that episode in her kitchen.