McKettrick's Heart Read Free

support her. “You’d better lie down again,” the older woman said. “I’ll just get you upstairs.”
    â€œMolly,” Psyche put in quickly, almost breathlessly, as though she were afraid of being swept away before her son’s fate was settled, “you come, too. It’s time you got to know Lucas. Florence, you’ll show Molly to her room, won’t you? Help her get settled?”
    Florence passed Molly a poisonous glance. “Whatever you want, Miss Psyche,” she said, “that’s what I’ll do.”
    Molly trailed after the two women, down a hallway, into an elevator with an old-fashioned grate door. The little box lurched, like Molly’s heart, as it sprang upward, shuddered its way past the second floor to the third.
    Psyche slept in a suite of rooms boasting a marble fireplace, antique furniture, probably French, and elegantly faded rugs. A bank of windows overlooked the street on one side and the backyard on the other, and stacks of books teetered everywhere.
    Distracted, yearning to see Lucas, Molly nonetheless spotted the names of several of her authors on the spines of those books.
    â€œThrough that doorway,” Psyche said, pointing, as Florence steered her toward the bed.
    Once again Molly called upon every bit of self-restraint she possessed to keep from running in that direction. Running to Lucas, her son, her baby.
    The nursery, a sizable room in its own right, adjoined Psyche’s. There was a rocking chair over by the windows, shelves jammed with storybooks, an overflowing toy box.
    Molly took all that in peripherally, focused on the crib and the chubby toddler standing up in it, gripping the rails and eyeing her with charitable trepidation.
    He seemed golden, a fairy child bathed in afternoon sunlight, his light hair gleaming and gossamer.
    Molly, who wanted to race across the room and crush him to her, did neither. She stood still, just inside the doorway, letting the boy take her measure with solemn eyes.
    â€œHi,” she said, smiling moistly. “I’m Molly.”
    And I’m your mother.
    Â 
    K EEGAN M C K ETTRICK STOOD impatiently beside his black Jaguar, waiting for the tank to fill and appraising the pile of designer luggage resting between the newspaper box and the display of propane tanks near the entrance to the town’s only gas station/convenience store. Even from a distance, he could tell the bags weren’t knockoffs, and whoever owned them had most likely come in on the four-o’clock bus from Phoenix. He pondered the mystery while his car guzzled liquid money.
    He was replacing the hose when a familiar station wagon bounced off the highway and rolled by, with Florence Washington at the wheel.
    Keegan wanted to duck into the Jag and drive off, pretend he hadn’t seen the other car, but that would have gone against his personal code, so he didn’t. He’d known Psyche Ryan, née Lindsay, was back in town, that she’d come home, with her adopted son, to die.
    He’d geared himself up to go by and see her several times since her return to Indian Rock, but he’d been reluctant to call or knock on the door, in case he disturbed her. If she was as sick as he’d heard she was, she was practically bedridden.
    The station wagon rolled to a stop over by the propane tanks and the Louis Vuitton bags.
    As Keegan squared his shoulders, he saw Florence turn in his direction, gazing balefully through the window.
    He reminded himself that he was a McKettrick, born and bred, and chose to advance instead of retreat, assembling a smile as he did so.
    Meanwhile, the door on the passenger side sprang open, and a slight woman with shoulder-length honey-colored hair got out.
    Keegan glanced at her, looked away, registered who she was and looked back. He felt the smile evaporate from his lips, and forgot all about his plan to ask Florence if Psyche was up to receiving visitors.
    His jaw clamped as he