McKettrick's Choice - Linda Lael Miller [141]
She ought to be relieved by that knowledge, but she wasn’t.
“I think you’d tell it better,” Rafe said, jolting her out of her sudden introspection. “I can just see Emmeline and Mandy and Chloe all hovering around you, with their ears bent to hear the tale.”
Emmeline, Mandy and Chloe. The McKettrick wives. Without even knowing the women, Lorelei envied them out of all proportion to reason and good sense. They had husbands, a home, children of their very own. They belonged.
Lorelei swallowed hard. “I’d better get back to Melina,” she said, when she thought the words wouldn’t come out of her throat riding on a sob.
“Wait,” Rafe said, trying to sit up even straighter and wincing from the pain.
Lorelei waited, though she wanted to bolt. Whatever Rafe was about to say, she suddenly didn’t want to hear it.
“Holt was scared today,” he told her. “He’ll never admit it, but between me getting shot and you showing up on that mule, with the bullets and arrows flying every which way—well, it was just about more than he could take.”
Lorelei bit her lower lip.
“I haven’t known you all that long, Miss Lorelei,” Rafe went on, “but in the time we’ve been acquainted, I’ve never seen you give up on anything you wanted. Don’t start with Holt.”
She pretended she hadn’t heard that last part, over all the uproar of the wagon, the horses and a few hundred cattle, and went to rejoin Melina.
It was full dark, with just a slice of moon to provide light, when John Cavanagh gave a ringing shout of delight and slowed the wagon. Lorelei knew, with a lifting of her tired, battered heart, that the rangeland spread out before them was his own.
The stream up ahead, glittering darkly, was the same one that ran past her property. She was almost home, and she’d brought fifty head of cattle with her.
Her jubilation faded a little when she remembered that she might not be staying. It all depended on whether or not she’d conceived a child with Holt—she’d know soon enough, since her monthly, always regular as a Swiss clock, was due in another few days. If it didn’t come, she’d sell her ranch to the newly formed McKettrick Cattle Company, buy Heddy’s rooming house and find a way to get back to Laredo.
Was Laredo far enough away?
The cattle surged past the wagon on all sides, drawn to the stream, fairly trampling each other in their desperate thirst. They would have grass aplenty now, and they could rest. This was a considerable consolation to Lorelei.
When they’d all passed, Lorelei got down from Seesaw just to feel the ground under her feet. Holt wheeled his gelding around and rode back to the wagon.
“Can you make it to town tonight, Rafe, or should I fetch the doctor out here?”
“I reckon I could travel a ways,” Lorelei heard Rafe say, “but I’m not sure about this cowpuncher, here. I think he’s had about all he can take.”
“I’ll get the doc, then,” Holt answered. Then, for good or for ill, he noticed Lorelei, standing nearby, watching the herd lining the bank of the stream. “Well, Miss Fellows,” he added. “That’s your land on the other side, isn’t it? I’ll have the men drive your cattle across when they’ve had their fill of water, but you’d probably better spend the night here.”
Lorelei was too tired to argue the point, though the truth was, she wanted to sleep under her own roof, rustic as the accommodations were. “Whatever you say, Mr. McKettrick,” she said, looking up at him. His shoulders blocked out a good bit of the starry Texas sky.
She thought she saw his jaw tighten, but she couldn’t be sure, for the shadows. If he meant to say anything, Melina interrupted before he formed the words.
“I want to go to town with you,” she told Holt. “So I can see Gabe.”
He shifted in the saddle. “Tomorrow will be soon enough, Melina,” he said carefully. “I’ll take you in first thing.”
Melina laid a small hand on Holt’s boot. “I need to know he’s all right.”
“Frank and I will look in on him,” Holt answered.
“I might be asleep when you get back from town,” Melina protested.
“If you are,” Holt promised, “I’ll