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“Jeb,” Jesse said.
Sierra nodded.
Liam’s attention remained fixed on the horse. “Can I ride him?”
“Sure,” Jesse replied.
“No way,” said Sierra, at exactly the same moment.
Travis felt sorry for the kid, and it must have shown in his face, because Sierra’s gaze narrowed on him.
“We’ve had a long trip,” she said. “I guess we’ll just go inside.”
“Make yourselves at home,” Travis said, gesturing toward the house. “Don’t worry about your bags. Jesse and I’ll carry them in for you.”
She considered, probably wondering if she’d be obligated in any way if she agreed, then nodded. Catching Liam by the hood of his coat again, she got him turned from the horse and hustled him toward the front door.
“Too bad we’re kin,” Jesse said, following Sierra with his eyes.
“Too bad,” Travis agreed mildly, though privately he didn’t believe it was such a bad thing at all.
The house was a long, sprawling structure, with two stories and a wraparound porch. Sierra’s most immediate impression was of substance and practicality, rather than elegance, and she felt a subtle interior shift, as if she’d been a long time lost in a strange, winding street, thick with fog, and suddenly found herself standing at her own front door.
“Those guys are real cowboys,” Liam said, once they were inside.
Sierra nodded distractedly, taking in the pegged wood floors, gleaming with the patina of venerable age, the double doors and steep staircase on the right, the high ceilings, the antique grandfather clock ticking ponderously beside the door. She peeked into a spacious living room, probably called a parlor when the house was new, and admired the enormous natural-rock fireplace, with its raised hearth and wood-nook. Worn but colorful rugs gave some relief to the otherwise uncompromisingly masculine decor of leather couches and chairs and tables of rough-hewn pine, as did the piano set in an alcove of floor-to-ceiling windows.
An odd nostalgia overtook Sierra; she’d never set foot on the Triple M before that day, let alone entered the home of Holt and Lorelei McKettrick, but she might have, if her dad hadn’t snatched her the day Eve filed for divorce, and carried her off to San Miguel de Allende to share his expatriate lifestyle. She might have spent summers here, as Meg had, picking blackberries, wading in mountain streams, riding horses. Instead, she’d run barefoot through the streets of San Miguel, with no more memory of her mother than a faint scent of expensive perfume, sometimes encountered among the waves of tourists who frequented the markets, shops and restaurants of her home town.
Liam tugged at the sleeve of her coat. “Mom?”
She snapped out of her reverie, looked down at him, and smiled. “You hungry, bud?”
Liam nodded solemnly, but brightened when the door bumped open and Travis came in, lugging two suitcases.
Travis cleared his throat, as though embarrassed. “Plenty of grub in the kitchen,” he said. “Shall I put this stuff upstairs?”
“Yes,” Sierra said. “Thanks.” At least that way she’d know which rooms were hers and Liam’s without having to ask. She might have been concerned, sharing the place with Travis, but Meg had told her he lived in a trailer out by the barn. What Meg hadn’t mentioned was that her resident caretaker was in his early thirties, not his sixties, as Sierra had imagined, and too attractive for comfort, with his lean frame, blue-green eyes and dark-blond hair in need of a trim.
She blushed as these thoughts filled her mind, and shuffled Liam quickly toward the kitchen.
It was a large room, with the same plank floors she’d seen in the front of the house and modern appliances, strangely juxtaposed with the black, chrome-trimmed wood cookstove occupying the far-left-hand corner. The table was long and rustic, with benches on either side and a chair at each end.
“Tables like that are a tradition with the McKettricks,” a male voice said from just behind her.
Sierra jumped, startled, and turned to see Jesse in the doorway.
“Sorry,” he said. He was handsome, Sierra thought. His coloring was similar to Travis’s, and so was his build, and yet the two men didn’t resemble each other at all.
“No problem,” Sierra said.
Liam wrenched open the refrigerator. “Bologna!” he yelled triumphantly.
“Whoopee,” Sierra replied, with a dryness that was lost on her son. “If there’s bologna, there must be white bread, too.”
“Jesse!” Travis’s voice, from the direction of the front door. “Get out here and give me a hand!”
Jesse grinned, nodded affably to Sierra and vanished.
Sierra took off her coat, hung it from a peg next to the back door, and gestured for Liam to remove his, too. He complied, then went straight back to the bologna. He found a loaf of bread in a colorful polka-dot bag and started to build a sandwich.
Watching him, Sierra felt a faint brush of sorrow against the back of her heart. Liam was good at doing things on his own; he’d had a lot of practice, with her working the night shift at the club and sleeping days. Old Mrs. Davis from the apartment across the hall had been a conscientious babysitter, but hardly a mother figure.
She put coffee on to brew, once Liam was settled on a bench at the table. He’d chosen the side against the wall, so he could watch her moving about the kitchen.
“Cool place,” he observed, between bites, “but it’s haunted.”
Sierra took a can of soup from a shelf, opened it and dumped the contents into a saucepan, placing it on the modern gas stove before answering. Liam was an imaginative child, often saying surprising things. Rather than responding instantly, Sierra usually tried to let a couple of beats pass before she answered.
“What makes you say that?”
“Don’t know,” Liam said, chewing. They’d had a drive-through breakfast, but that had been hours ago, and he was obviously starving.
Another jab of guilt struck Sierra, keener than the one before. “Come on,” she prodded. “You must have had a reason.” Of course he’d had a reason, she thought. They’d just been to a graveyard, so it was natural that death would be on his mind. She should have waited, made the pilgrimage on her own, instead of dragging Liam along.
Liam looked thoughtful. “The air sort of…buzzes,” he said. “Can I make another sandwich?”
“Only if you promise to have some of this soup first.”
“Deal,” Liam said.
An old china cabinet stood against a far wall, near the cookstove, and Sierra approached it, even though she didn’t intend to use any of the dishes inside. Priceless antiques, every one.
Her family had eaten off those dishes. Generations of them.
Her gaze caught on a teapot, sturdy looking and, at the same time, exquisite. Spellbound, she opened the glass doors of the cabinet and reached inside to touch the piece, ever so lightly, with just the tips of her fingers.
“Soup’s boiling over,” Liam said mildly.
Sierra gasped, turned on her heel and rushed back to the modern stove to push the saucepan off the flame.
“Mom,” Liam interjected.
“What?”
“Chill out. It’s only soup.”
The inside door swung open, and Travis stuck his head in. “Stuff’s upstairs,” he said. “Anything else you need?”
Sierra stared at him for a long moment, as though he’d spoken in an alien language. “Uh, no,” she said finally. “Thanks.” Pause. “Would you like some lunch?”
“No, thanks,” he said. “Gotta see to that damn horse.”
With that, he ducked out again.
“How come I can’t ride the horse?” Liam asked.
Sierra sighed, setting a bowl of soup in front of him. “Because you don’t know how.”
Liam’s sigh echoed her own, and if they’d been talking about anything but the endangerment of life and limb, it would have been funny.
“How am I supposed to learn how if you won’t let me try? You’re being overprotective. You could scar my psyche. I might develop psychological problems.”
“There are times,” Sierra confessed, sitting down across from him with her own bowl of soup, “when I wish you weren’t quite so smart.”
Liam waggled his eyebrows at her. “I got it from you.”
“Not,” Sierra said. Liam had her eyes, her thick, fine hair, and her dogged persistence, but his remarkable IQ came from his father.
Don’t think about Adam, she told herself.
Travis Reid sidled into her mind.
Even worse.
Liam consumed his soup, along with a second sandwich, and went off to explore the rest of the house while Sierra lingered thoughtfully over her coffee.
The telephone rang.
Sierra got up to fetch the cordless receiver and pressed Talk with her thumb. “Hello?”
“You’re there!” Meg trilled.
Sierra noticed that she’d left the china cabinet doors open and went in that direction, intending to close them. “Yes,” she said. Meg had been kind to her, in a long-distance sort of way, but Sierra had only been two when she’d last seen her half sister, and that made them strangers.
“How do you like it? The ranch house, I mean?”
“I haven’t seen much of it,” Sierra answered. “Liam and I just got here, and then we had lunch….” Her hand went, of its own accord, to the teapot, and she imagined she felt just the faintest charge when she touched it. “Lots of antiques around here,” she said, thinking aloud.
“Don’t be afraid to use them,” Meg replied. “Family tradition.”
Sierra withdrew her hand from the teapot, shut the doors. “Family tradition?”
“McKettrick rules,” Meg said, with a smile in her voice. “Things are meant to be used, no matter how old they are.”
Sierra frowned, uneasy. “But if they get broken—”
“They get broken,” Meg finished for her. “Have you met Travis yet?”
“Yes,” Sierra said. “And he’s not at all what I expected.”
Meg laughed. “What did you expect?”
“Some gimpy old guy, I guess,” Sierra admitted, warming to the friendliness in her sister’s voice. “You said he took care of the place and lived in a trailer by the barn, so I thought—” She broke off, feeling foolish.
“He’s cute and he’s single,” Meg said.
“Even the teapot?” Sierra mused.
“Huh?”
Sierra put a hand to her forehead. Sighed. “Sorry. I guess I missed a segue there. There’s a teapot in the china cabinet in the kitchen—I was just wondering if I could—”
“I know the one,” Meg answered, with a soft fondness in her voice. “It was Lorelei’s. She got it for a wedding present.”
Lorelei. The matriarch of the family. Sierra took a step backward.
“Use it,” Meg said, as if she’d seen Sierra’s reflexive retreat.
Sierra shook her head. “I couldn’t. I had no idea it was that old. If I dropped it—”
“Sierra,” Meg said, “it’s not china. It’s cast iron, with an enamel overlay.”
“Oh.”
“Kind of like the McKettrick women, Mom always says.” Meg went on. “Smooth on the outside, tough as iron on the inside.”
Mom. Sierra closed her eyes against all the conflicting emotions the word brought up in her, but it didn’t help.
“We’ll give you time to settle in,” Meg said gently, when Sierra was too choked up to speak. “Then Mom and I will probably pop in for a visit. If that’s okay with you, of course.”
Both Meg and Eve lived in San Antonio, Texas, where they helped run McKettrickCo, a multinational corporation with interests in everything from software to communication satellites, so they wouldn’t be “popping in” without a little notice.
Sierra swallowed hard. “It’s your house,” she said.
“And yours,” Meg pointed out, very quietly.
After that, Meg made Sierra promise to call if she needed anything. They said goodbye, and the call ended.
Sierra went back to the china cabinet for the teapot.
Liam clattered down the back stairs. “I told you this place was haunted!” he crowed, his small face shining with delight.
The teapot was heavy—definitely cast iron—but Sierra was careful as she set it on the counter, just the same. “What on earth are you talking about?”
“I just saw a kid,” Liam announced. “Upstairs, in my room!”
“You’re imagining things.”
