McKettrick's Choice - Linda Lael Miller [107]
The Captain rose from the step, empty plate in hand, and came into the kitchen. He stood watching Holt, his expression solemn. “How far do you reckon Reynosa is from here?” he asked, very quietly.
Lorelei felt a strange tension stretch between the two men.
“Four or five days,” Holt said, at some length. His gaze swung to Lorelei. “Three, without the wagon and the women.”
Lorelei’s throat closed, and her face heated. She couldn’t have spoken for anything, not then.
“We need the wagon, Holt,” Rafe put in. “You can’t expect those wranglers to live on rattlesnake and jackrabbits. And the women have been keeping up just fine.”
Holt was still glaring at Lorelei, and a muscle bunched in the hard line of his jaw. “I don’t suppose you’d trust me,” he said, very quietly, “to buy those damn cattle of yours without you standing at my elbow.”
Lorelei straightened her backbone, stalled by dabbing at her mouth with her table napkin. “It is not a matter of trust, Mr. McKettrick,” she said, just as quietly. “If I’m going to run a ranch, I need to know, firsthand, how to purchase the appropriate livestock.”
“You think every rancher who buys a cow goes straight to the source, Miss Fellows?” Holt asked, in a falsely moderate tone that got under Lorelei’s skin like a chigger.
“I have no idea how ‘every rancher’ conducts business,” Lorelei replied. “I’m concerned with my own transactions.”
Holt narrowed his eyes at her, and when she didn’t shrink under his unfriendly regard, he pushed back his chair, stood up and strode right out the back door.
“Don’t you want any pie?” Heddy called after him. Hastily, she got up from the rocking chair and thrust Pearl into Tillie’s arms. “I’d better take him a slice of that dried apple,” she fretted, grabbing for a plate and dishing up a generous serving. “He’s some fond of dried apple pie.”
As if he’d starve without it, Lorelei thought uncharitably.
She stood, with her food only half-finished, and scraped the leavings into the scrap pan. The silence in that kitchen seemed to hum, once Heddy had chased Holt into the dooryard with his blasted pie, and Lorelei would have sworn everyone was staring at her.
Her worst suspicions were confirmed when she finally worked up the courage to look and see.
Rafe regarded her thoughtfully.
Melina looked sympathetic.
John, the Captain and Tillie were staring at her, too.
“They’re my cattle!” she burst out, on the verge of tears but too proud, by half, to shed them in front of a crowd.
“Yes, ma’am,” said the Captain mildly. “They are. How about that poker game you promised me?”
“THAT WOMAN’S HEAD is made out of granite,” Holt growled, as Heddy offered him a plate of her coveted apple pie.
Heddy chuckled. “But her heart isn’t,” she said.
After a few moments of hesitation, Holt took the plate, picked up the slice of pie and bit off a hunk. He didn’t want to talk about Lorelei’s heart, or any other part of her anatomy.
“What are you so scared of, Holt?” Heddy pressed. The crickets were putting up a racket, and a dog howled mournfully, somewhere nearby.
Holt chewed, swallowed and nearly choked. It wasn’t Heddy’s good pie sticking in his throat, though, and he knew it. “I’m not scared of anything,” he growled.
“I’d allow as how that might have been true—up until the time you met Miss Lorelei, that is,” Heddy said. She smoothed the back of her calico skirts and sat right down on the chopping block next to the woodpile. “She sure put a kink in your lariat, though, didn’t she?”
Since he doubted that Heddy had ever read a book in her life, and therefore could not be held accountable for the metaphor, he didn’t comment on it. “I wish she’d stayed in San Antonio. Better yet, I wish she’d married that crooked lawyer she was engaged to and gone to Timbuktu on her honeymoon. Instead, she sets fire to her wedding dress in front of God and everybody, and my life goes straight to hell faster than a log on a greased flume!”
Heddy made a creditable attempt not to smile and failed completely. Even in the twilight, he could see her eyes twinkling. “She burned