McKettrick's Choice - Linda Lael Miller [37]
She’d best not let herself get too taken with this man, Lorelei admonished herself. He might be engaging, and competent, but in the most important sense, he was no better than Creighton.
“Are you threatening me, Mr. McKettrick?”
“Threatening you?” he echoed, in furious amazement.
She stiffened. “This is my land. If you and Mr. Templeton can’t make peace, you’ll have to fight around me.”
“COFFEE’S READY,” Angelina said, from the doorway. The air was charged inside that cabin, and she supposed she should just back away, but something compelled her to stay.
Mr. McKettrick had been holding on to the broom handle. Now, he let it go with a thrusting motion.
The yellow dog whimpered.
“I can’t stay,” McKettrick said, glaring into Lorelei’s pink and stubborn face. “I’ve got a cattle ranch to run.”
With that, he turned his back on Lorelei and came toward the door with such purpose that Angelina hastened out of his way.
The dog hesitated, looking mournfully up at Lorelei, and then followed Mr. McKettrick.
Lorelei took to a furious spate of sweeping, and looked so forlorn that Angelina nearly wept. The poor child.
“I think he is a good man,” Angelina dared, very softly.
Lorelei would not look at her. She just kept swinging that broom, raising more dust than she cleared away. “You are entitled to your opinion, Angelina,” she said tightly.
Angelina sighed. She’d practically raised Lorelei, joining the judge’s household a few days after his wife went away to that hospital in San Francisco. She and Raul had never been blessed with children of their own, and they’d often pretended, just between themselves, that Lorelei was their daughter.
“Raul and I, we are getting old,” she said tentatively. “You’ll need someone to look after you when we’re gone.”
A tear slipped down Lorelei’s cheek, and she rubbed it away with a quick motion of one shoulder. “I can look after myself,” she said, concentrating on her fruitless sweeping.
Angelina crossed to her, took the broom gently from her hands, gathered her close. Lorelei resisted at first, then allowed Angelina to hold her. “Don’t you want a husband, Chiquita?” the older woman asked softly. “Don’t you want babies of your own?”
Lorelei gave a single, raw sob. Angelina remembered her as a little girl, patiently rocking her dolls to sleep, and her heart ached.
“Poor Chiquita,” Angelina crooned softly. “You are too stubborn and too proud. You lost your way when Michael died. Now, you must find it again.”
Lorelei sniffled and drew back, out of Angelina’s embrace. A smile wobbled on her mouth, failed to stick and fell away. “I’ve tried that,” she said, “and look what happened. I found Creighton in bed with someone else, on our wedding day. I’m just no good at this love business.”
Angelina shook her head. “I think you knew Creighton Bannings was not meant to be your husband. That’s why you chose him. It kept your father quiet for a while, but you knew all along that there would never be a wedding.”
Lorelei’s lovely blue eyes widened. She started to speak, then swallowed whatever she’d been about to say.
“You buried your heart with Michael Chandler,” Angelina went on gently. “You must take it back.”
“He was wonderful, Angelina,” Lorelei whispered, and fresh tears gathered along her lower lashes. “He made me laugh. He would never have betrayed me.”
“Chiquita,” Angelina said, taking one of Lorelei’s hands in both of hers, “he is dead. Holt McKettrick is alive. How long will you hide in a tiny corner of yourself, refusing to come out and take your chances like the rest of us?”
Lorelei stared at her for a long moment, her throat working. Then she smiled determinedly and looked around at the boxes of goods from the mercantile.
“I can’t remember if I bought calamine lotion,” she said brightly. “These chigger bites are driving me insane.”
CHAPTER 15
TWO MILES UPSTREAM, Holt got off his horse, hung his hat on the saddle-horn,