swung, giggling, at the bobbing piñata.
A free-for-all followed, and the plaster bird, covered in colorful crepe-paper feathers, finally burst. Candy and small toys rained down, and the kids scrambled for their share of the booty.
It was a golden, glimmering keepsake of a moment, one Echo tucked away in a quiet corner of her heart.
A distant flapping sound distracted her, though, and everyone else at the party. As it drew nearer, they all looked up, shading their eyes against the last of the daylight.
“I’ll be darned,” Cora breathed, a smile breaking over her face, as a helicopter hovered above the field sloping away from the barn, setting the deep grass rippling in waves of green.
“They invited the president?” Echo asked, only half joking.
“Better than that,” Cora said, getting to her feet and dusting off the back of her jeans. “That’s Rance, unless I miss my guess, come to do right by his little girl!”
Echo caught her breath.
Adults restrained children wanting to dash across the field to the helicopter as it landed.
The blades blurred, then slowed.
The door of the copter swung open and, sure enough, out spilled Rance McKettrick like a conquering hero. Stooping until he was clear of the updraft, he grinned as Rianna climbed between two rails of the fence and ran toward him.
He wore jeans, a white shirt open at the throat, and a brown leather jacket that had seen better days, and the vision of him scooping up his young daughter and spinning her around and around in his arms imprinted itself on Echo’s memory like a living photograph.
“Just when I’m ready to wring his fool neck,” Cora marveled, with a hint of tears in her voice, “he comes through.”
Two other men got out of the helicopter, grinning. Another child broke free of the crowd and dashed to meet one of them.
“The blond one’s Jesse,” Cora explained, “and the other is Keegan. That’s Keegan’s daughter, Devon, hugging his neck.” She paused, smiling and shaking her head. “These McKettricks sure do know how to make an entrance.”
While Echo was glad, for Rianna’s sake, that Rance had arrived in time for the party, she was also strangely unsettled by his presence.
It wasn’t just that they’d had words the day she’d arrived—that had been a silly misunderstanding, the kind of thing reasonable adults quickly forget. No, it was the way he made her feel—suddenly and wildly disoriented, as though he’d breached her innermost boundaries, blithely unaware that he was trespassing.
“I think I’ll go back to town and check on Avalon,” she said to Cora, but she was staring at Rance as he hoisted Rianna over the fence, then climbed nimbly over after her.
Cora clasped her hand. “You stay right here,” she said.
It wasn’t as if she could move, anyway. Echo stayed put.
Rance swung Rianna up onto his shoulders, while Maeve walked alongside, beaming up at her dad. He reached out, put an arm around Maeve’s shoulders and pulled her close.
Jesse and Keegan followed, Devon leaping fawnlike at Keegan’s side.
A beautiful dark-haired woman threw her arms around Jesse’s neck as soon as he’d cleared the fence.
“That’s Cheyenne Bridges,” Cora said, ever helpful. “She and Jesse are getting married next month, up on the ridge.”
Echo watched as Jesse and Cheyenne kissed, feeling peculiarly alone, like the sole survivor of a shipwreck riding in a rapidly sinking lifeboat.
She was so caught up in the romantic exchange that she didn’t register Rance’s approach until he was standing directly in front of her. Lifting Rianna down from his shoulders, he grinned.
Out of all the people at that party, he had to walk right up to her?
“Hello, Echo Wells,” he said.
She swallowed. “That was quite an entrance,” she remarked, stealing Cora’s line because nothing else came to mind.
The grin widened.
Echo wondered helplessly if it was registered somewhere, that smile, as a lethal weapon and an unfair advantage of cosmic significance.
“The jet could only bring us as far as Flagstaff,” he told her. “We chartered the helicopter there.”
Echo, still recovering from the grin, floundered in choppy conversational seas. “Impressive,” she said, because it was impressive, watching a copter land in a field during a little girl’s birthday party.
Rance’s face changed almost imperceptibly.
Rianna tugged at his hand. “It’s time for birthday cake, Daddy!” she chimed. “It’s time to blow out my candles and open my presents!”
Rance nodded, but the expression in his eyes was still serious, and a little perplexed. “You go ahead,” he told the child. “I’ll catch up.”
Rianna hurried away, toward the cake and the presents, skipping as she went.
“I live to impress you, Ms. Wells,” Rance said icily.
“I didn’t mean—”
He walked away.
“Numbskull,” Cora put in.
Echo, having forgotten all about Cora, turned to her with a questioning look.
“Him, not you,” Cora said, putting one arm around Echo’s shoulders and giving her a squeeze. “Come on. Let’s get some of that cake.”
Echo wanted nothing so much as to go home to her little apartment above the bookstore, and her dog. There, she could brew herself a cup of tea and put Rance McKettrick right out of her mind.
Alas, Cora wasn’t about to let her leave and, besides, she didn’t want to give Rance the satisfaction of sending her scuttling for cover. Assuming he’d notice her absence in the first place, which didn’t seem very likely.
“IS THAT HER?” KEEGAN ASKED, holding a plate of cake in one hand and a glass of punch in the other. “The woman who bought that storefront next to Cora’s shop?”
Rance followed his cousin’s gaze to where Echo stood, chatting with Cheyenne. His jaw tightened and he wanted to sigh, but he didn’t, because Keegan might read things into that that just weren’t there.
Or shouldn’t be.
“That’s her.”
Keegan grinned. “She’s easy on the eyes,” he said.
“Forget it,” Rance replied, too quickly. “She’s one of those New Age types. Drives a pink car.”
Keegan’s gaze sliced straight to his cousin’s face. “Oh, well, then. A pink car? That changes everything.”
Rance rubbed his chin. He hadn’t taken time to shave before catching the jet to Flagstaff, and he was getting a stubble. “Not your type,” he said, still watching Echo. She looked like a fairy princess, straight out of a storybook, with her hair pinned up and wispy around her neck, and he wouldn’t have been surprised if she’d whipped out a wand with a twinkling star on one end. “That’s all I meant.”
“Not my type—or not yours?” Keegan asked.
Rance shoved a hand through his hair. “Look, if you want to put the moves on the lady, go right ahead. Just don’t say I didn’t warn you.”
“Why do I get the feeling you’re trying to fool yourself, as well as me?”
“What the hell do you mean by that?”
Keegan chuckled. “Hot damn,”