Read Online McKettrick's Choice by Linda Lael Miller - Free Book Online Page A

flowers were yellow roses, heady with scent. He’d seen them from the street, flourishing in a garden, shortly after leaving Lorelei under the oak tree, and stopped to knock on the front door of the house and ask if he might buy a dozen or so.
    The old woman who’d answered had regarded him solemnly. “Are they for a lady?” she’d asked, when she was through sizing him up. He was glad he’d shaved and put on good clothes.
    â€œYes,” Holt had said, without hesitation, for Olivia had been a lady, in every sense of the word. And she’d given him Lizzie, the single greatest gift of his life.
    â€œReckon she must be right pretty, if a fellow like you wants to give her roses.”
    Holt had smiled, albeit sadly. “She was,” he said. “Prettiest woman in San Antonio. Olivia died of a fever a few years back.”
    Lorelei had slipped into his mind then, out of nowhere, but he’d set her firmly aside.
    â€œI’ll cut them for you,” the woman said.
    Holt had reached for his wallet.
    The old lady shook her head. “It’s a sorry day when I have to take money for a few flowers,” she said. Then she’d slipped back into the cool dimness of the house, returning momentarily wearing a sun bonnet and carrying a pair of shears.
    Now, in the graveyard, Holt arranged the flowers with distracted care.
    Lorelei was seated on a bench, not twenty yards fromhim, her hands clasped in her lap. The breeze danced in the tendrils of dark hair curling at her nape.
    If she saw him, she’d think he was following her. Probably go straight to her father, the judge, and lodge a complaint.
    He might have smiled at the image if he hadn’t been putting flowers on Olivia’s grave, and if Lorelei hadn’t looked as though she might splinter into tiny shards at any moment, like a vase irretrievably broken, caught in that tenuous place between wholeness and utter disintegration.
    He lowered his head, laid a hand on Olivia’s stone. I’m sorry, he told her, in the privacy of his mind. I’d have come back for you, if I’d known about Lizzie. Wouldn’t have left in the first place, if I’d had any sense.
    His eyes took to burning, and he rubbed them with a thumb and forefinger.
    Some sound, or perhaps a scent or a movement, made him look up.
    Lorelei stood opposite him, surveying him with a slight frown marring her otherwise perfect forehead.
    â€œYou loved her,” she surmised.
    He nodded. “Not enough,” he replied hoarsely.
    She bent down, peered at the marker. “Olivia,” she mused quietly. “I knew her. She was a fine seamstress.” Their gazes met across the narrow circle of stones. Lorelei looked thoughtful. “She had a young daughter. Lindy? Libby?”
    Holt got to his feet. He’d left his hat with the horse, perched on the saddle horn, but he reached up as if to touch the brim before remembering that. “Lizzie,” he said.
    Lorelei absorbed that. “Yours?” she asked, very quietly, and after a very long time.
    Holt nodded. He would have told just about anybody else that it was none of their business who had fathered Lizzie, but it seemed a natural question coming from Lorelei, though he couldn’t have said why.
    â€œI see,” Lorelei said, and Holt feared that she did see, all too clearly. Olivia had had to make her own way in the world, and Lizzie’s way as well, with only the help of her sister, Geneva. After Olivia’s passing, Geneva had managed to track Holt to the Arizona Territory, and she’d been on her way to Indian Rock, the nearest town to the Triple M, to leave Lizzie with him, when Jack Barrett had come upon their stagecoach, broken down alongside the road, and decided on robbery. In the course of that, he’d killed both Geneva and the driver. Holt’s brother, Jeb, and the town marshal, Sam Fee, had come upon the stage the next morning, and found