McKettricks of Texas: Austin (22 page)

Two streets over and they were back at the town's one traffic light again. And it was red.

Austin made a little ceremony of stopping, gearing down, adjusting all the mirrors, resetting the radio to a station he liked. When the light still hadn't changed after all that and a few other creative gyrations, he rested his forehead against the top of the steering wheel and pretended to snore.

Paige laughed.

Someone pulled up behind them in an old car and tooted the horn impatiently.

The light remained unchanged.

Austin winked at Paige. Then he unhooked his seat belt, got out of the vehicle and strolled back to chat a while with the other driver. This being Blue River, where almost everybody knew almost everybody else, the exchange appeared to be a friendly one.

When the light finally changed, Austin sprinted back to the Porsche, climbed in, fastened his seat belt again and drove sedately through the intersection.

“Very nice,” Paige teased, applauding briefly. “Chief Brogan would be so proud.”

Austin merely grinned at that.

Two minutes later, they pulled into the broken-asphalt parking lot beside the Silver Dollar Saloon. A neon beer sign flickered behind a greasy window, and Patsy Cline's voice spilled through the screen door and out over the weathered wooden sidewalk that probably dated back to Blue River's wilder days.

The song was “Crazy.”

Paige tried not to take it personally.

 

T
HE HINGES ON THE SCREEN DOOR
screeched as Austin pulled it open. He waited while Paige crossed the threshold just ahead of him.

The Silver Dollar looked seedy inside as well as out, but the food was good. A couple of decades back, the Dollar had done a flourishing business selling beer and soda and cheeseburgers to tourists stopping off on their way to Austin or San Antonio, but trade had fallen off considerably.

A spin rack of bent-cornered postcards, bearing slogans like, “Don't Mess with Texas” and “A Big Howdy from the Lone Star State,” angled for floor space with shelves displaying everything from cans of motor oil to candy bars in faded wrappers. The pool tables were in use, even though it wasn't yet noon, and the regulars already lined the bar.

Flossie Kirk, who had been waiting tables at the Dollar longer than Austin had been alive, hustled over to greet them. Giving Paige a hug that nearly squeezed all the air out of her lungs, Flossie shouted for all to hear, “Well, it's about damn
time
you two got back together.”

Paige blushed and Austin noticed that she was real careful not to look in his direction. Practically everybody in the place was looking at them.

Austin fully expected Paige to protest that they weren't “back together” at all. He decided to be chivalrous and step in.

“I've got a hankering for a good steak, Flossie,” he said, automatically resting his hand against the small of Paige's back as the elderly waitress led the way to an open table. “Think you can fix me up?”

Wrinkles fanned out all around the woman's mouth when she smiled, but in her tired eyes, Austin caught a glimpse of a younger Flossie.

“From what I hear,” she said, stopping in front of a table next to the window, “it took a doctor, some drugs and a needle and thread to fix
you
up.”

Folks at the counter and at the other tables, all people both Austin and Paige had known forever, felt free to chime in with remarks and questions.

“What the hell happened out there in that oil field, anyhow?” boomed old Charlie Felder, who owned the
feed store and sold tractors and farm implements besides. “Brent ain't talkin'.”

“That's what happens when a town don't have a newspaper no more,” observed one of the chronic boozers at the bar. “Folks don't get no news.”

Austin pulled back a chair for Paige, and she sank onto the red vinyl seat, wearing a rueful expression. She was no doubt wishing they'd gone somewhere a little classier than the Silver Dollar, but fine-dining opportunities were few and far between in their part of Texas. About the best they could do were fast-food places and the mediocre restaurant in the Amble On Inn.

“Now, Roy Lee,” one of the other midday drinkers jived, “you know you never read the newspaper even when the
Blue River Weekly
was a goin' concern.”

“Who do you figure shot you, Austin?” someone else called out.

“Y'all just hush up now,” Flossie interceded in the raspy voice of a lifelong smoker, “and let these young people eat in peace!”

Paige was busy studying her menu as though she hadn't memorized the thing years ago, like most of the people in town.

Flossie asked for the drink orders, and Austin, who would have enjoyed a beer, chose a soft drink instead. Paige requested unsweetened iced tea.

The more inquisitive customers, having gotten their ears pinned back by Flossie, commenced to minding their own business.

Flossie brought the drinks.

Austin, who figured he must have been craving a thick steak even in his sleep, he was so hungry, ordered a rib eye, rare.

Paige opted for the salad bar. She was up there piling a plate high with lettuce and not much else, it looked like, when the screen door hinges creaked again. Austin glanced that way out of idle curiosity and saw Cliff Pomeroy walk in.

Austin hadn't really thought about his father's one-time friend very much—he'd been a little busy—but now, waiting for his steak and for Paige to come back with a lunch better suited to a rabbit than a person, he found himself taking the man's measure.

Cliff was probably in his late forties, if not his early fifties, and though he'd always been a flashy dresser and a ladies' man, he'd lost some of his luster since the days when he and Jim McKettrick had been friends.

Watching as Doc Pomeroy's only son took a stool at the counter, Austin was hard put to say what a man like Jim McKettrick could have had in common with Cliff, besides oil. Once, Cliff had made a lot of money brokering McKettrick crude—millions, probably. Should have been enough to last him, Austin figured, even after the wells were capped for good.

While Austin was doing all this wondering, Paige finished building her salad and came back to the table, glancing over one shoulder at Cliff as she passed him.

“What do you suppose Clifton Pomeroy is doing back in Blue River?” she whispered once she'd settled into her chair again. “Even when Doc had his heart attack three years ago, there was no sign of him.”

Austin spotted Flossie zeroing in with his steak, baked potato and green beans boiled up with bacon and onion, and waited until she was gone again before replying, “Folks do tend to come home to Blue River,” he said
lightly. “No matter how far away they roam or what plans they might have made to the contrary.”

Paige picked up her fork and speared a tomato and a slice of cucumber in one jab. One of her eyebrows rose slightly.

“Did
you
have other plans, Austin?” she asked.

He added salt and pepper to the steak
and
the potato, which was swimming in sour cream and butter. He reckoned Paige would have something to say about cholesterol and saturated fat, but for the moment, she was silent on the issue.

“Did you?” he countered.

“I asked you first,” Paige argued.

He chuckled. Out of the corner of his eye, he saw that Cliff was looking in their direction.

“Yeah,” Austin said. “I had other plans.”

“What were they?”

Cliff had slapped on a smile, and now he was headed over to shoot the breeze.

“They were none of your damn business,” Austin told her pleasantly, cutting into the steak and keeping an eye on Cliff.

Paige blushed a little, but before she could say anything, Cliff was standing beside the table.

“Good to see you out and about, Austin,” he said.

“Thanks, Cliff,” Austin replied easily. “Join us?”

Cliff hesitated, considering the invitation, but finally shook his head. “Dad's over at the office,” he said. “I promised I'd bring back a couple of sandwiches for lunch.”

Austin nodded, expecting the man to walk away.

But Paige scooted one chair over and pushed her salad plate along, too. “You may as well sit with us while you
wait for your order,” she said. Her tone was cheerful, but Austin knew that look. She was fixing to pry.

With an odd combination of eagerness and reluctance, Cliff gave in and sat down, scraping the chair legs against the scarred linoleum floor as he did so.

“You've been away from Blue River for a long time,” Paige said when Cliff didn't launch into an immediate autobiography and outline his exact whereabouts for the last fifteen years or so. “I suppose there were more opportunities in Dallas or Houston or wherever you were.”

Austin didn't say anything, but he was amused, and when he caught Paige's eye, he let her know it. Did she think she was being subtle?

Cliff seemed to sag a little, and his smile, once easy and confident, seemed fixed, even a mite phony. “I was doing real well until my last divorce,” he said. “And the oil business isn't what it used to be, either.”

Again, Austin kept his thoughts to himself. He was enjoying the steak, though. It was thick and juicy and seasoned just the way he liked it.

“I know what you mean,” Paige said, after taking a ladylike sip of iced tea and swallowing. “A
lot
of businesses aren't what they used to be,” she added, her voice both sympathetic and cheerful. “Take my sister's coffee shop, for example. Even before our mother drove Julie's car through the front wall and literally brought down the roof, Libby was barely making it. She probably would have had to close the place anyway.”

Austin frowned, chewing. Where was she going with this?

Cliff nodded sadly. “Things are tough all over,” he said, slanting a look at Austin and rubbing his chin with one hand. “Of course,” he added, “now that Libby is
marrying into the McKettrick clan, she won't have to worry about making a business pay.”

Austin's appetite took a dip, and he put down his knife and fork. Although Cliff hadn't really said anything a man could object to, Austin realized that he
did
object.

“Your other sister is marrying Garrett, isn't she?” Cliff asked, looking at Paige.

“Yes,” Paige said, with a high-beam smile. “Isn't that great?”

Cliff didn't reply. His gaze shifted back to Austin. “I guess you and your brothers are as dead-set on keeping those wells capped as your daddy was,” he said.

If he'd meant to be cagey, it wasn't working for him.

“Pretty much,” Austin replied.

“Still a lot of oil down there, I'd say,” Cliff ventured.

Austin picked up his knife and fork again. He wasn't one to waste a good piece of beef. “Most likely,” he agreed.

A little crinkle formed between Paige's eyebrows; she was taking it all in, but she didn't jump into the conversation.

“Seems like a waste,” Cliff said, shifting to pry his wallet out of his back pocket when Flossie appeared with the bag containing his take-out order.

“Here you go, Cliff,” Flossie said.

Cliff paid the bill and then pushed back his chair to stand. Nodded to Paige and then fixed his gaze on Austin.

“If you and Tate and Garrett ever change your mind about tapping those wells, you let me know.”

Austin didn't rise from his chair and offer his hand for the farewell shake the way he normally did with almost anybody older than he was.

“That isn't very likely, Cliff,” he said.

Cliff's grip tightened on the bag he was holding, so that the paper made a crackling sound. He rustled up another smile, though, and if it hadn't had an edge, it might have approached cordial.

“You never know,” he replied.

With that, he turned and left the Dollar.

The screen door banged shut behind him.

Paige turned in her chair, watching Pomeroy move out of sight. Then she swung back around to Austin. There was a question in her eyes, and Austin knew what it was without her having to ask it out loud.

“It wasn't Cliff,” he said. “Much as he might like to shoot me, he wouldn't have the guts to do it.”

“He clearly wants the oil wells reopened,” Paige said, keeping her voice down.

“Cliff's wanted that ever since Dad decided to shut them down,” Austin told her. “You know the old saying—wish in one hand—”

“Stop right there,” Paige said, pushing her plate away and eyeing Austin's half-finished steak. “Are we through here?”

Austin shoved back his chair, sighed. “We're through,” he confirmed.

He took care of the check while Paige stood spinning the postcard rack around, checking out the pale images.

Watching her made him smile.

The transaction at the cash register completed, Austin exchanged farewell nods with a few folks as he walked to the screen door, held it open for Paige.

Outside, she extended her hand, palm up. “Keys,” she said.

Austin hesitated. He was, after all, a man.

“I'm going to insist,” Paige told him, without lowering her hand.

He sighed, gave up the keys to his brother's car. “If I'd known you were going to drive home,” he said, “I would have had a beer. Maybe even two.”

She chuckled. Then she shrugged. “Let's go fill your prescription,” she said. “Then we'll head for home.”

He liked that she'd called the ranch “home,” even though she probably hadn't meant anything by it.

“It's just more pain stuff,” he said, referring to the prescription Dr. Colwin had given him back at the clinic.

Was Paige attracted to that guy?

“We're filling the prescription,” she said in the same tone she'd used to tell him she meant to drive.

“Okay,” he said, spreading his hands. The truth was, it felt good bantering with Paige like this, just
being
with her.