“Any relation to—?” He paused, stooped slightly to look into her face. Recollection dawned. “Wait a second. Cheyenne Bridges.” He grinned. “I remember you—Cash’s daughter. We went to the movies a couple of times.”
She swallowed, nodded, hiked her chin up a notch. “That’s right,” she said carefully. Cash’s daughter, that’s who she was to him. A shy teenager he’d dated twice and then lost interest in. He didn’t know, she reminded herself silently, that she’d tacked every picture of him she could get to the wall of her bedroom in that shack out beyond the railroad tracks, the way most girls did photos of rock stars and film idols. He didn’t know she’d loved him with the kind of desperate, hopeless adoration only a sixteen-year-old can feel.
He didn’t know she’d prayed that he’d fall madly in love with her. That she’d imagined their wedding, their honeymoon and the birth of their four children so often that sometimes it felt like a memory of something that had really happened, rather than the fantasy it was.
Thank God Jesse didn’t know any of those things. She wouldn’t have been able to face him if he had, even with Mitch and her mom and Nigel all depending on her to persuade him to sell five hundred unspoiled acres of land to her company.
“I heard about your brother’s accident,” he said. “I’m sorry.”
Shaken out of her reverie, Cheyenne nodded again. “Thanks.”
“Your dad, too.”
Her eyes stung. She tried to speak, swallowed instead.
Jesse smiled, took a light grip on her elbow. “Do you always do business in alleys?” he teased.
For a moment, she was affronted. Then she realized it was a perfectly reasonable question. “No,” she said.
“I was just heading for the Roadhouse to grab some supper. Want to come along?” He gestured toward the muddy truck.
The Roadhouse, also known as the Roadkill Café, was an institution in Indian Rock, a haven for truck drivers, bikers, cowboys and state patrolmen. Ironically, families dined at Lucky’s, probably pretending that the card room behind it didn’t exist.
“I’ll meet you there,” Cheyenne said. She’d have been safe enough with Jesse, but no way was she climbing into that truck in a straight skirt. She had some dignity, after all, even if she did feel like the scrawny ten-year-old who’d parked her bike in this alley and gone inside to beg her father, with a stellar lack of success, to come home for supper. Or to watch her perform in the class play. Or to take Gram to the hospital because she couldn’t catch her breath.…
“Okay,” Jesse said easily. He walked her to the rental car, which looked nondescript beside his truck. Like his boots, the vehicle had seen its share of action. Like his boots, it was top-of-the-line, with dual tires and an extended cab. Definitely leather seats, custom CD player and a GPS, too.
Once she was behind the wheel of the rental, with the window rolled down, Jesse leaned easily against the door and looked in at her.
“It’s good to see you again, Cheyenne,” he said.
“You, too,” she replied. But a lump rose in her throat. Don’t go there, she told herself sternly. This is business. You’ll buy the land. You’ll help Nigel get the construction project rolling. You’ll collect your bonus and take care of Mitch and your mother. And then you’ll go back to San Diego and forget Jesse McKettrick ever existed.
“As if,” she muttered aloud.
Jesse, in the process of turning away to head for his truck, turned back. “Did you say something?”
She gave him her best smile. “See you there,” she said.
He waved. Hoisted himself into the truck and fired up the engine.
Cheyenne waited until he pulled out, and then followed.
If she’d been as smart as other people thought she was, she thought grimly, she’d have kept on going. Sped right out of Indian Rock, past the Roadhouse, past Jesse and all the other memories and impossible dreams he represented, and never looked back.
CHAPTER TWO
JESSE REACHED THE Roadhouse first and waited in his truck for Cheyenne to catch up. Things had been dull around Indian Rock lately, with nothing much to do besides play poker and feed horses, but he had a feeling life was about to get a little more interesting.
Smiling slightly, he pulled Cheyenne’s business card from his pocket and read it again. Meerland Real Estate Ventures, Ltd.
This time, it clicked.
The smile faded to black.
She wanted the land.
“Damn,” he muttered, watching in the side mirror as Cheyenne’s car turned into the lot and pulled up beside him.
He sighed. She’d been pretty, as a girl. Strangely alert, too, like a deer raising its head at a watering hole at the snap of a twig, sniffing the wind for the scent of danger. Now, as a woman, Cheyenne Bridges was beautiful. Slight in adolescence, she’d rounded out real well, and if she’d let that rich dark hair down from the prim French twist and ditch the librarian gear, she’d be a showstopper.
Jesse got out of the truck, waited stiffly while Cheyenne pushed open her car door to stand teetering in those ridiculous shoes. She smiled tentatively and touched her hair.
In poker, that move would be an eloquent tell: Cheyenne was nervous.
And if his suspicions were right, she had cause to be nervous. He retallied the facts in his head—she worked for a real-estate company, of the “ventures” variety, and back there in the alley behind Lucky’s she’d said she wanted to discuss a business proposition.
In those few moments while they both stood in the gap between silence and speech, between uncertainty and decision, he considered sparing her fruitless expectations. He wasn’t about to sell the acres just beyond the eastern boundaries of the Triple M, if that was what she wanted. That land was the only thing he’d ever gotten on his own and not by virtue of being born a McKettrick.
Then again, he supposed he ought to at least hear her out. Maybe he was wrong, and she was beating the brush for investors. Being a gambler, he might be able to get behind something like that, if only because it would mean spending time with Cheyenne, unraveling some of the mysteries.
One thing was obvious. Cheyenne had come a long way since she’d left Indian Rock. The car was nothing special—probably rented—but the clothes were upscale. And while she still used her maiden name, that didn’t mean she wasn’t married. His older sisters, Sarah and Victoria, both had husbands, but still they went by McKettrick.
He glanced at Cheyenne’s left hand, looking for a ring, but the hand was hidden by the wide strap of her purse.
“Shall we?” he asked and gestured toward the entrance of the Roadhouse.
She looked relieved. “Sure,” she said. She walked a little ahead, and he opened the door for her.
Jesse had been eating at the Roadhouse all his life, but as he followed Cheyenne over the threshold, it seemed strange to him, a place he’d never been before. The sounds and smells and colors spun around him, and he felt disoriented, as though he’d just leaped off some great wheel while it was still spinning. He was a second or two getting his bearings.
He’d gone to school with the hostess, from kindergarten through his senior year at Indian Rock High, but as he and Cheyenne followed the woman to a corner booth, he couldn’t have said what her name was.
What the hell was wrong with him?
Cheyenne slid into the red vinyl seat, and Jesse sat opposite, placing his hat on the wide windowsill behind the miniature jukebox. He ordered coffee, she asked for sparkling mineral water with a twist of lime.