McKettrick's Choice - Linda Lael Miller [56]
“Are you trying to kill yourself?” Holt ranted on, sparing his brother another halfhearted wave of the hat, as though he were a pesky fly.
“Lorelei and I will make some,” Melina said eagerly, rushing in to grasp Lorelei’s hand and drag her toward the house. “Right now.”
“Why does he always show up at the worst possible time?” Lorelei hissed, once they were inside. She’d ducked behind a blanket suspended from one of the roof beams and began peeling off her sodden clothes.
“I’d say it was the best possible time,” Melina answered, busy at the stove. “If they hadn’t come along when they did, you probably would have drowned.”
A lump rose in Lorelei’s throat and, for a moment, she was stricken to utter stillness at the thought of her own untimely demise. Would anyone mourn her? she wondered. Not her father, surely. Not Creighton Bannings.
Suddenly cold, standing there in her soaked bloomers and camisole, she began to shiver. Her teeth chattered so that she feared she might be suffering some sort of convulsion—next, she’d bite off her tongue.
Raul and Angelina would have wept at her funeral, she consoled herself, snatching dry clothes from one of the everlasting boxes.
Raul and Angelina.
How could she have forgotten?
She peered around the edge of the blanket, careful of her modesty. Holt and Rafe were standing outside the door, both of them gesturing, arguing about something in hoarse undertones.
“How is Raul?” Lorelei called, struggling into her spare calico.
Both Holt and Rafe turned toward her, as though surprised to find her there. Holt’s expression darkened.
“It’s kind of you to ask,” he drawled. “I wondered when you’d finally get around to it.”
Rafe shook his head, plainly exasperated with his brother. “We stopped by Doc Brown’s before we left town,” he said, quite kindly. “Raul’s going to be laid up a while. Angelina plans to keep house for the doc in return for their room and board. She says there’s room for you, too.”
Lorelei put a hand to her throat, silently thanking God and all his angels that she hadn’t killed or crippled Raul by buying that accursed mule.
Holt stepped into the doorway, leaned against the frame. His wet clothes hugged his body, stirring things inside Lorelei that were better left to lie fallow. “Not that you’d have the good sense to take her up on the offer,” he said.
Lorelei stiffened. “I have a perfectly good home right here,” she replied.
“Yes,” Holt shot back, but quietly, “and tomorrow is a bright new day. Maybe you can find still another way to break your damn fool neck.”
“Holt,” Rafe protested.
“You can’t stay here by yourself,” Holt persisted, ignoring him.
“I’m not by myself,” Lorelei reasoned, making sure she was properly buttoned up before stepping from behind the blanket. “Melina is here. Not that it’s any of your business anyway.”
Holt gave a derisive snort. “Oh, well,” he said. “That decides it. Two women, one of them pregnant, and the other with no more sense than God gave a fence post, against Templeton and whatever other outlaws might be running the roads.” Lorelei reddened. A fence post?
“Better take them with us,” Rafe said, edging past Holt to stand near Melina. “You got any whiskey to put in that coffee?”
“I wouldn’t dream of going anywhere with either of you,” Lorelei said.
Rafe arched a dark eyebrow and accepted the mug of coffee Melina offered. She added a generous dollop of Raul’s whiskey, standing on tiptoe to do it. “Not even if it meant a chance to buy cattle and hire cowpunchers, so you could turn this place into a real ranch?”
Lorelei’s heartbeat quickened. She didn’t dare look at Holt, though she felt his temper like another presence in the room.
“That would be different,” she said guardedly.
“Oh, no, it wouldn’t,” Holt argued.
Lorelei looked at Melina. “Could you manage it—a cattle drive, I mean? In your condition?”
Melina’s smile was luminous. “Sure I could,” she said.
“No,” Holt maintained, “you couldn’t.”
“Would you rather leave them here?” Rafe asked, after a noisy sip from his mug.
“What if she has that baby