McKettrick's Choice - Linda Lael Miller [149]
“I could go with you,” Holt offered quietly. “To speak to your father, I mean.”
“It’s something I have to do alone,” Lorelei replied, resigned. There are a great many things I will have to do alone, she thought.
Holt seemed to be in no hurry to head for the jailhouse and break the glad tidings to Gabe. “I’m going to ask you a favor, Lorelei,” he said. “If you get through before I do, don’t head back out to John’s alone. Come over to the jail and wait for me. Will you do that?”
She nodded, tried to smile.
He rode close, touched her cheek and then headed off toward the center of town.
Lorelei reached her father’s house a few minutes later. She tied Seesaw loosely to the picket fence out front, opened the gate and marched up the walk.
The judge took her by surprise by answering the door himself.
His gaze blazed with contempt as he took in her trousers, shirt and boots.
“So,” he said. “You’ve come crawling back after all.”
“I came to say goodbye, Father,” Lorelei replied, standing straight. In that moment, something died inside her—the delicate, unfounded hope that blood really was thicker than water. In this case, it wasn’t. “You burned my house—or you got Mr. Templeton and his men to do it—thinking I’d give up. Well, you were wrong. I’ve sold it to Holt McKettrick.”
The judge paled, then flushed. He smelled of rancid sweat and too much whiskey, and for the briefest flicker of time, Lorelei was a child again, despised for being female, for not being William. “Goddamn it,” he snarled, looking as though he might go for her throat, strangle her right there on the front porch of his large, lonesome house. “You can’t possibly know what you’ve done!”
“I know, all right,” Lorelei said. As far as she was concerned, there was nothing more to say. She turned to walk away, from her father and from that house, for the last time, but he grasped her arm before she could take a step, whirled her around.
His face was gray with hatred and something else—fear, perhaps. “How did it really happen, Lorelei?” he rasped. “You laid yourself down with Holt McKettrick like a common slut, didn’t you? You believed every lie he told you—”
Lorelei pulled free, her face hot with sorrow and indignation. All she could think about was getting away, but before she could make herself move, the judge gave a startled little cry and sank to his knees, one hand to his chest, his eyes round with pain and surprise. In the next instant, he fell forward, onto the plank floorboards of the porch.
Lorelei knelt, struggled with frantic hands to turn him over, but even then she knew it was too late. She didn’t cry out. She didn’t beat on his chest with her fists, though something deep inside raged to do just that. Instead, she leaned forward, letting her forehead rest against his, her tears wetting his face as well as her own.
She heard a team and wagon come to a quick and noisy stop in the street, but she didn’t look up to see who was there. She knew it wasn’t Holt, and that was all that mattered.
The front gate sprang open, creaking on its hinges. Rapid footsteps sounded on the stone walk. A meaty hand came to rest on her shoulder. “What’s happened here?” asked a breathless voice. The accent told her who it was.
“Please fetch the undertaker, Mr. Templeton,” Lorelei said, looking up at last. “My father is dead.”
“YOU’RE A FATHER,” Holt told Gabe, through the bars. R. S. Beauregard was in the cell with him. Except for the sheaf of papers in the lawyer’s hands, Holt would have worried that he’d gotten himself arrested. Most likely, the charge would be public drunkenness.
Gabe, who had been sitting on the edge of his cot, bolted to his feet, grasped the bars in both hands. “Melina—is she all right? The baby?”
“They’re both fine,” Holt said, and paused to clear his throat. All of a sudden, he was a mite choked up. “You’ve got a boy, Gabe.”
The light in Gabe’s dark eyes was something to see. He seemed to stand taller, and the jailhouse stoop in his shoulders vanished. “You’re sure