McKettrick's Luck by Linda Lael Miller Read Free Book Online

walk away now without leaving some of her self-respect behind. All he could do was make it as easy as possible. “Knowing the land isn’t a drive-by kind of thing, Cheyenne. You gotta be there, if it’s going to speak to you.”
    â€œMaybe you could just give the plans a glance and I could come back another day—”
    He put up a hand. “Whoa,” he said. “I could let you off the hook here, but you wouldn’t like me for it in the long run, and you’d think even less of yourself.”
    She paused, looked ruefully down at her clothes. Huffed out a sigh. “Just look at the blueprints, Jesse. I’m not prepared—”
    Jesse dug in his heels. He sensed that this was a pivotal moment for both of them, far more important than it seemed on the surface. There was something archetypal going on here, though damned if he could have said what it was, for all those psychology classes he’d taken in college. “As if you’d come back out here, tomorrow or the next day, decked out to ride, and ask for the tour,” he said. He narrowed his eyes. “If you think I’m going to unroll those plans of yours on the kitchen table, see the error of my ways, and ask you where to sign, you’re in need of a reality check.”
    She chewed on that one for a while, and Jesse knew if she hadn’t wanted that land half as badly as she did, she’d have told him what to do with both horses and possibly the barn, turned on one polished heel, stomped back to her car and left him standing there in the proverbial cloud of dust.
    â€œAll right,” she said. The words might as well have been hitched to a winch and hauled out of her.
    â€œAll right, what?”
    Cheyenne sighed. “ All right, I’ll borrow your mother’s clothes and ride that wretched horse,” she told him. “But if I get my neck broken, it will be on your conscience.”
    Jesse indulged in a slow grin. He’d liked Cheyenne all along, but now he respected her, too, and that gave a new dimension to the whole exchange. She’d been brave enough to admit she was scared, and now she was stepping past that to stay in the game. “Nothing like that’s going to happen,” he assured her. “I know you’re a greenhorn, and I wouldn’t put you on a knot-head horse.”
    With that, he led the way inside. While she waited in the kitchen, he scouted up some of his mother’s old jeans, a pair of well-worn boots and a flannel shirt. When he returned, she was looking out the window over the sink, apparently studying the schoolhouse.
    â€œIs it really a one-room school?” she asked when he stepped up beside her and placed the pile of gear in her arms.
    He nodded. “The blackboard’s still there, and a few of the desks,” he said. “It’s pretty much the way it was when old Jeb built it for his bride back in the 1880s.”
    She looked up at him, her eyes wide and solemnly wistful. “Could I see it?”
    â€œSure,” he answered, frowning. “Why the sad look, Cheyenne?”
    She tried to smile, but the operation wasn’t a success. Shrugged both shoulders and tightened her hold on the change of clothes. “Did I look sad? I’m not, really. I was just wondering what it would be like to have a history like you McKettricks do.”
    â€œEverybody has a history,” he said, knowing she’d lied when she’d said she wasn’t sad.
    â€œDo they?” she asked softly. “I never knew my dad’s parents. My maternal grandmother died when I was thirteen. Nobody tells stories. Nobody wrote anything down, or took a lot of pictures. We have a few, but I couldn’t identify more than two or three of the people in them. It’s as if we all just popped up out of nowhere.”
    In that moment, Jesse wanted to kiss Cheyenne Bridges in a way he’d never wanted to kiss another woman. He settled for