Page 5 of Somewhere Along The Way (Mackinnon #3)

Chapter One

“Open up, you bastard!”

Ross Mackinnon broke the kiss and stared down at the face of the woman beneath him.

“I know you’re in there, Mackinnon. Open up before I break the door down.”

The choice of words, each disturbed tone stressed by a fist that pounded like prophecy against the door, went over him like a cold blue norther, and he froze.

“Oh, Lordy, Lordy! It’s my pa,” the woman wailed, clutching pathetically at his arm. “He’s caught us for sure.”

“Don’t bet on it,” Ross said, prying her hands loose and pulling away.

The woman grabbed his arm. Her voice sounded alarmed, frantic. “You can’t go! Not yet! I’ll be ruined!”

His laugh was deep and rumbling. “Sweetheart, you were ruined long before I stumbled into this neck of the woods.” Giving the woman a quick kiss, Ross rolled off the bed. “I sure hate to miss the little reception you had planned, but I’m not much for shotgun weddings.”

Ross made one quick grab for his clothes, which lay across the caned bottom of a fiddleback chair, and tucked them under his arm.

He snatched his boots and tossed them out of the window ahead of his clothes, then looped his gun belt over his arm.

He had just reached for his hat when the voice boomed again, this time backed up by a hard kick against the pitifully thin door of a two-bit room in the cheapest hotel in Corsicana, Texas.

“You might as well open up, Mackinnon. I’ve caught you red-handed this time. I’ve got witnesses that saw Sally Ann come in here with you.”

Sally Ann sat up in a hurry and pulled the sheet upward, holding it pressed against her generous breasts. Seeing what Ross intended, she leaped from the bed, dragging the sheet with her. “Wait!” Then turning toward the door, she shouted, “Papa, don’t shoot!”

“Sally Ann, you stay back away from the door, honey.”

With a groan of defeat, Sally Ann pressed herself flat against the watermarked wallpaper that covered the wall behind her.

She clapped her hands over her ears as three shots put three neat holes in the door and shattered the glass chimney on the hurricane lamp across the room.

She screamed, not out of fright but from the supremely frustrating sight of the best-looking hindquarters she’d ever seen on a man going through the window and out of her clutches.

Outsmarted, outmaneuvered, and outfoxed. Damn! Damn! Damn!

“Come back here!” she shouted, stamping her foot in vexation.

“Come back, you hear? You can’t do this to me, Mackinnon!

” But the only response was the bedeviling sound of Ross Mackinnon’s deep, rolling laugh drifting through the lace curtain to settle over her, where his body had pressed only moments ago.

Her fists doubled with aggravation, she turned against the wall and pounded it repeatedly.

Her father had messed things up good and proper this time.

He could be the most irritating man—always having to be the first hog to the trough.

Couldn’t he have waited and given her time?

Frustration mounting, she pounded her fists again. “Damn! Damn! And double damn!”

The irritant kicked open the door and stepped into the room, looking around. “Where is he?”

Sally Ann stamped her foot again, then wailed, “He’s gone, of course. I told you not to come until I turned out the light. Now we’ll never catch him.” In the depths of despair, Sally Ann fell across the bed and collapsed in a fit of tears.

A few miles out of Corsicana, Ross eased his running horse into a walk.

This one had been a close call. A real close call.

Closer than all the others. He wondered why it always happened to him like this, why he couldn’t get a decent job and settle in a place for more than a week or two before some gal started getting ideas in her head.

As Sally Ann had done. He wasn’t made of cast iron.

Just what was a man supposed to do when he came in bone tired and crawled into bed, falling asleep only to be awakened some time later with a woman’s soft, coaxing hand wrapped around him? Spit in her eye?

Every town had a Sally Ann, and Ross felt as if he had seen them all.

Sometimes he felt he was running out of time.

And towns. Perhaps he was. He wondered if he shouldn’t head on back to the family place on Tehuacana Creek and let things cool down a bit.

The good Lord knew he liked women. He really did.

But just now, he was a bit tired of them.

His oldest brother, Nick, always said, “That pretty face of yours is gonna get you in a passel of trouble, little brother,” and it looked as if Nick was right.

Only Ross couldn’t see that all this trouble could be over a face.

Certainly not one like his. Whenever he looked in the mirror, he just saw the same face he’d been seeing for years—certainly nothing for a woman to get all riled up over.

But something sure as the devil riled them up, and caused more than one woman in every town he drifted into to set her cap for him.

Right now his horse was as tired as he was, but something told him to keep on moving.

He wouldn’t put it past that crazy old man of Sally Ann’s to have the law after him.

Ross laughed at that. Not at the thought of being chased by the law—something he was growing accustomed to—but simply at the irony of it, being chased for making love to a woman he’d never made love to.

‘Course, he would have, if Sally Ann’s pa hadn’t shown up when he did.

Ross grinned. Wouldn’t it be funny if this one time, when he was innocent as all get-out, he would get caught?

He stopped grinning. It could end up changing the direction of his life—and for the worse.

He couldn’t help remembering the way Sally Ann had screamed like a scalded cat for him to come back.

It made him feel good to remember the way he’d laughed and kept right on going while her pa was making threats and blasting holes through the door.

Ross wondered what it was in him that prompted him to get into one scrape after another.

He didn’t know, but it was a damn good way to get his head blown off.

The next morning, Ross rode into Groesbeck to pick up a few supplies before heading out to the Mackinnon place.

Old Herb Catlin, who ran the post office, chased him down, hollering and waving a piece of paper in his hand.

At first Ross simply waved and continued on his merry way.

And why not? He was never on the receiving end of any mail, so it never occurred to him that the piece of paper Herb was waving like the dickens might be a letter—or two.

“Mackinnon, dad-blast your ornery hide! Hold up there a minute, will you?” Ross paused just outside the general store and turned to wait while Herb—his face red and his glasses fogged over—caught up with him.

“What’s your hurry, Mackinnon? You’re moving like someone rinsed your drawers in turpentine. ”

“What drawers?” Herb laughed and Ross said, “What’s all the ruckus about?”

Herb had to breathe a spell before he could answer.

His breathing slowed somewhat, he pulled his handkerchief out and wiped his face.

“I’m glad I saw you come into town. You’ve got a couple of letters here.

They’ve been waiting here for quite a spell.

” Herb handed the letters to Ross, saying, “One of them has been here for a real long spell. It’s from Scotland. ”

Ross eyed the envelope. “Have you read it?”

“Nope,” Herb said, “only what’s on the envelope. I’m honest as the day is long.”

Ross nodded and touched the brim of his hat. “Thanks, Herb.”

Herb turned away, then checked himself. “You in town for good?”

“No. I just dropped by to check on the old place. I won’t be hanging around more than a week or two, then I’ll be shoving off again.”

“Well, it’s good to see you. We don’t see much of you Mackinnons since you boys all hightailed it.”

“No,” Ross said, running his fingers along the crease in the yellowed envelope. “I don’t suppose you do.”

“I’ll be seeing you, then,” Herb said.

Ross waved the envelopes at him. “Thanks for holding the mail.”

“No trouble. No trouble at all.”

The next evening, after a supper of cold beans and under-cooked potatoes, Ross picked up the letter. Without opening it, he studied the envelope, remembering another letter that had come from Scotland a while back; that one had been addressed to his older brother, Nicholas.

He tossed the envelope on the table and stared at it for a few minutes.

It had been quite a spell since he’d heard from Nick and Tavis, or from the twins either, for that matter.

He reflected for a moment. His brothers were as scattered as last year’s leaves.

He looked around the kitchen, trying to remember the way it had looked back then, back when he was just a little tyke and his mother was still alive.

But the image shimmered in the darkness, faint and elusive, just beyond his recall.

Maybe it was just as well. It always made him a little sad to think about his mother.

He knew if she were alive, he would be seeing disappointment in her eyes.

He was a hell-raiser and a heartbreaker and folks said no woman was safe around him.

That wasn’t exactly the kind of testament to make a mother proud of her boy.

He looked at the envelope again. It had come a long way, all the way from the land of his parents’ birth.