McKettrick's Choice - Linda Lael Miller [134]
“Heddy,” Lorelei pleaded, while they waited, taking both the woman’s hands in her own, “what if Mr. Cavanagh says no?”
“He won’t, ’less he’s a damn fool,” Heddy replied, bristling a little.
“What about your rooming house? All your things? Will you just walk away and leave everything you’ve worked so hard to build?”
“Don’t amount to a hill of beans if you’re lonesome,” Heddy told her. “I’d as soon set a match to the place as live in it one more day, once Tillie and that baby are gone.”
Lorelei thought of the featherbeds, and the pretty dishes. The hooked rugs and the lace curtains. Nobody knew her in Laredo. No one would point at her, if her belly started to swell, and say she’d made a fool of herself with Holt McKettrick.
She could start over right here.
The thought filled her with sweet sorrow. She almost made Heddy an offer on the spot, but there was still the matter of Mr. Cavanagh’s accepting or refusing the other woman’s proposal of marriage.
“Will you be back tonight? After you’ve talked to Mr. Cavanagh, I mean?”
Heddy beamed. “Maybe,” she said, full of coarse confidence. “I reckon that depends on how things go when I put my question to him.”
Lorelei kissed Heddy’s cheek. “Good luck,” she said, and blinked back tears of sadness and admiration.
Holt drove the buggy out of the barn and jumped to the ground. Heddy trekked over, climbed aboard, and took up the reins.
“Took you long enough,” she told Holt, and drove away.
Holt stared after her, baffled.
“Do you think he’ll say yes?” Lorelei asked. “Mr. Cavanagh, I mean?”
“Hell,” Holt growled, resettling his hat and watching the buggy disappear into the darkness, “I don’t know.”
“You wouldn’t try to head out tomorrow, without Tillie and Melina and Pearl and me, would you?”
Holt turned back to Lorelei, and though his face was in shadow, she saw exasperation in every line of his body. “I might, if I didn’t think you’d follow and get yourselves killed by Comanches.”
She smiled, enjoying his discomfiture. All the while, her heart mourned. Her dreams were dying, dreams she hadn’t even known she had until Holt McKettrick offered to pay her off like a discarded mistress.
“John will come by with the wagon first thing,” he said, when she didn’t respond to his gibe. “Be ready.”
Lorelei ducked her head, because all of a sudden, there were tears in her eyes, and she’d die if he saw them.
He took a step toward her.
Lorelei froze, waiting.
But then he turned away, took Traveler’s reins and mounted up. “Good night,” he said. And then he was gone.
Lorelei stood on that very spot until she couldn’t hear his horse’s hooves on the road anymore. Then she went inside, expecting Melina and Tillie to be there, either giggling over Heddy’s impulsive decision, or waiting, wide-eyed, for an explanation from Lorelei.
But the kitchen was empty.
Lorelei sagged into one of the chairs, folded her arms on the tabletop and laid her head on them. Heddy’s clock ticked loudly on the wall. The house settled noisily on its foundations, as if to sleep. A piece of wood collapsed in the stove, with a whoosh of invisible sparks.
I should get up, Lorelei thought groggily. Get myself to bed.
But she didn’t move. She simply didn’t have the will to lift her head, let alone climb the stairs, exchange her calico dress for a nightgown and all the rest.
THE NEXT THING she knew, someone was shaking her awake.
She started, looked up blearily. Heddy stood over her, rimmed in the first pinkish light of a new day.
“Better get a move on, Miss Lorelei,” she said, grinning from ear to ear. “My man’ll be here with that wagon before you know it.”
Lorelei sat bolt upright, blinking. “You mean he said yes?”
Heddy’s grin stretched even wider. “Soon as we get to San Antone,” she said, “we’ll make it legal.”
“Drink this,” Tillie said, appearing from behind Heddy’s girth with a cup of steaming coffee in one hand.
“You done slept too long to get breakfast, but Melina’s packing up your things right now. She said to let you sleep as long as you could, so I did.” She paused for