McKettrick's Choice - Linda Lael Miller [57]
“What if she has it here?” Rafe countered. “All alone except for the lively Miss Fellows?” He toasted Lorelei affably with his coffee mug, as if to say there was no offense intended. “I figure the two of them could get into all kinds of trouble on their own. Who knows what they might take it into their heads to do?”
Lorelei flushed with indignation and a strange, dizzying hope. She wanted to go on the trail drive, wanted it with a staggering intensity—even if it did mean being in close proximity with Holt McKettrick for an indeterminate length of time. It was her chance—maybe her only chance—to buy the cattle and hire the men she needed.
She waited, staring at Holt.
“You don’t know how to ride,” he said.
“I can learn,” she replied.
He sighed. “Give me some of that whiskey,” he said. “Hold the coffee.”
Was he weakening? Lorelei couldn’t tell. She held her breath while Melina poured more of Raul’s liquor into a cup and held it out to Holt.
He downed it all in a single gulp, shuddered with a curious mixture of satisfaction and shock.
“There will be Indians,” he told her, wiping his mouth with the back of one hand.
“I’m not afraid,” Lorelei insisted. It was a lie, of course, but if people never did anything frightening, how could they expect to get anywhere? She’d spent her life marking time, waiting for something, anything, to change. Now, she was through waiting. She was prepared to take risks and make mistakes and deal with the consequences.
“You should be,” Holt said reasonably. “Do you have any idea how many things can go wrong on a cattle drive?”
She didn’t, actually, which was probably a mercy, in her opinion.
“You might be carried off by Comanches. You might be bitten by a snake, or thrown from a horse. You might be trampled to death in a stampede, or drowned crossing a river. Only I might not be there to pull you out.”
Lorelei drew a deep breath—it felt as if it went clear to her toes—and let it out slowly. “If those things don’t stop you,” she said, “why should they stop me?” Rafe grinned.
Melina folded her arms, her head tilted to one side, watching Holt expectantly.
Holt rubbed the back of his neck.
“Oh, the hell with it,” he said. “Get your things together. We’ll pass the night at John’s, and leave at dawn.”
“Which one of us is going to break that mule to ride?” Rafe asked, half an hour later, nodding toward Seesaw, who was nibbling grass a few yards away. He’d saddled Melina’s pony, and tied her pitiful bundle of belongings behind the cantle. Holt had already sent Lorelei back to the house twice, to lighten her pack, and he was purely exasperated—with her, for wanting to take a party dress and dancing slippers on a trail drive, with himself, for agreeing to take her along, and with Rafe for bringing up the whole lame-brained idea in the first place.
“I thought we’d leave him here,” Holt said. He figured it would be better if he didn’t look at Rafe for a while, because looking at him would make him want to take a few strips out of his miserable hide. “Lorelei can ride with Tillie.”
“Miss Fellows will never agree to that,” Rafe replied, cocksure as usual. “That’s her mule, and if she’s said it once, she’s said it half a dozen times…she paid thirty-five dollars for him and she wants her money’s worth.”
Lorelei came out of the ranch house with her rigging, hopefully minus the frilly getup and the collected works of Mr. William Shakespeare she’d tried to sneak past him on the first round.
Holt bit the proverbial bullet. “We won’t need the mule,” he told her.
“He’s mine, and he’s going,” Lorelei replied.
Rafe chuckled. He loved to be right, the bastard. “Goddamn it,” Holt bit out. “Last time I looked, I was still running this outfit, and you’ll do what I tell you, Miss Fellows.”
“Within reason,” Lorelei allowed, with stiff grace. “I paid—”
“I know, I know,” Holt broke in, wholly disgusted.
“You paid thirty-five dollars for that mule and—”
“He’s going,” Lorelei finished.
Holt flung out his hands, startling the Appaloosa,