McKettrick's Luck Read Online Free

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…
    â€œOkay,” 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.
    â€œIt’s good to see you again, Cheyenne,” he said.
    â€œYou, 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.
    â€œAs 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
    J ESSE 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.
    â€œDamn,” 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 on 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