McKettricks of Texas: Austin (31 page)

Libby surrendered the rifle.

“It's probably none of my business what just happened here,” Strivens said, “but when there's a gun involved, I'll be asking just the same.”

Libby sighed, ran her hands down the thighs of her blue jeans, glanced at Paige, then turned back to Strivens. “I happened to see my sister leave the house,” she said, “just after Reese drove up and went into the barn. When Paige didn't come back right away, I got worried and came out here to make sure she was all right.”

“With a gun?” Strivens asked.

“Call it woman's intuition,” Libby said.

Strivens chuckled, shook his head. Deftly, he unloaded the rifle, dropped several shells into his coat pocket and handed the weapon back to Libby.

“Will you be calling the boss to let him know what happened,” he asked her, his eyes full of friendly admiration, “or shall I do it?”

“I'll call Tate,” Libby answered. “Thanks, Ron.”

He nodded and left the barn, and neither Libby nor Paige spoke or moved until he was gone.

The moment they were alone, though, Libby turned to Paige with fire sparking in her eyes. “Paige Remington, what in the
world
were you thinking?”

Paige looked pointedly at the gun. “I was about to ask you a similar question, Annie Oakley,” she replied, feeling a little shaky now that the rush of fight-or-flight chemicals was ebbing. “Since when do you pack heat?”

“Since I moved in with Tate,” Libby responded, straightening her shoulders and lifting her chin up a notch. “He says anybody who lives on a ranch needs to know how to shoot.”

Paige was fascinated. “Really? Why?”

With a sigh, Libby gestured toward the door. The
company truck Strivens drove started up outside, drove away. The bunkhouse was a good distance from the main house. “Because of snakes,” she explained, with exaggerated patience.

“Reese certainly qualifies as one of those,” Paige observed, sort of flinging herself into motion. She was not going to miss those freakin' crutches when it was time to hang them up for good. “Will you teach me?”

They stepped into the cool sunlight of a November afternoon. A plume of dust rolled behind the ranch truck as Strivens and Reese drove toward the bunkhouse. “Teach you what?” Libby asked.

“To shoot,” Paige answered.

Libby sighed. “Sure,” she said, going snarky now that it was all over but the shouting. “It's at the top of my to-do list. ‘Teach Paige to fire a gun.'”

“That man is dangerous,” Paige said, distracted. “Reese, I mean.”

“What gave you your first clue, Sherlock?” Libby countered. Maybe it was the cold breeze, and maybe it was the high of being a gun-totin' mama, but she looked flushed.

“You don't have to be snippy,” Paige told her.

“Evidently, I do,” Libby replied, pausing to wait because Paige was necessarily moving at a much slower pace.

“Does this mean you won't teach me to fire a gun?”

“I'm a novice myself,” Libby admitted after a deep sigh. “I have no business passing on my incompetency to somebody else.”

It was a relief to reach the kitchen. It was warm there, and safe. Plus, Paige could sit down. Her knees felt like jelly. Wishing that the rocking chair hadn't been moved
to her room, she maneuvered herself around backward and plunked down onto one of the long benches at the table.

Libby disappeared through the doorway to the dining room and came back unarmed, having stowed the rifle wherever such things were kept.

“I'm impressed,” Paige said admiringly. For a moment, she was fourteen again, gawky and too smart for social approval, and Libby was seventeen, gorgeous and popular, with a place on the honor roll and Tate McKettrick's class ring hanging from a chain around her neck. “If you won't teach me to handle a gun, do you think Tate might?”

Libby sighed, stomped over to the cupboard and brewed two cups of tea. Paige's first batch had gone cold, of course, and she dumped that down the sink before approaching the table.

“Speaking of Tate,” Libby said, completely ignoring a perfectly reasonable question, “I'd better call him right now, and tell him I just fired one of the ranch hands.”

“You were magnificent,” Paige said with a teasing grin.

“Be sure and tell Tate that, will you?” Libby answered, frowning as she walked over and picked up the receiver for the cordless phone. “Because he's going to be five kinds of pissed off when he finds out about that rifle.”

 

C
LEARLY, THE SITUATION WAS NOT GOOD
.

Someone had tried to uncap one of the wells, and without the equipment required for pumping oil, there could only be one reason for that. They'd planned on setting a fire.

“This happened the night I was shot?” Austin asked, looking from Garrett to Tate. Brogan and the deputy had
already gone back to town, and the three of them were standing around by the well in question.

Tate nodded. “Probably.”

“Damn fool tried to use a crowbar,” Garrett observed.

Austin gave a dry chuckle at that. Shep leaned into him, and he bent, carefully, to pat the dog on the head. “When are the security people going to get here?” he asked.

Tate was about to answer, but his coat pocket rang.

He extracted his cell phone, saw the caller's number and rasped, “Libby?” instead of barking out his name, as was his custom.

Her voice was a high, nervous vibration on the other end of the line. There was a definite charge in the air, too—from the look on Tate's face as he listened, Libby hadn't called to ask him to make a quick run to town for milk and bread before he came home, that was for sure. Both Garrett and Austin tensed, waiting to find out what was going on.

“We'll be right there,” Tate finally said when he could get a word in edgewise. She said something else and he answered, “No, just stay in the house for now. Garrett and Austin are with me—one of them can wait for the kids to get off the school bus and bring them up to the house.”

He said goodbye, dropped the phone into his pocket and started for his truck at a sprint, offering a brief explanation as he went. Libby and Paige had had a run-in with one of the ranch hands out in the barn, and Libby had intervened, with a rifle. She'd fired the man on the spot, and asked Ron Strivens to take things from there.

What the hell was Paige doing in the barn? Austin
wondered. She had a broken ankle, for God's sake. The last time he'd seen her, she hadn't even been dressed.

The three of them had a short conference just before Tate jumped behind the wheel of his truck and started the engine.

It was decided that Garrett would take the Porsche and go to meet the school bus carrying Audrey, Ava and Calvin home to the ranch. Austin and Shep rode with Tate.

When they reached the house, Tate slammed out of the truck and disappeared so fast that Austin had to scramble to catch up. By the time he got there, Tate was standing nose to nose with Libby, who was half furious, half terrified.

He asked if she was all right and she nodded, wobbly-chinned, and her eyes brimmed with tears.

Austin scanned the room, was relieved to see Paige sitting at the table. She'd tucked the crutches beneath the bench and, as far as he could tell, she was none the worse for wear. In fact, her eyes shone and her cheeks glowed pink; except for the bulky cast, she was the picture of well-being.

Tate and Libby headed upstairs, arguing one moment, reassuring each other the next. Watching them go, Austin envied them a little. They might bicker with each other for a while, but then they'd make up.

That would be the fun part.

“Are you going to tell me what happened here,” Austin asked, filling a bowl with kibble and setting it down for Shep to gobble before joining Paige at the table, perching beside her on the bench, “or do I have to wait for the six o'clock news?”

She smiled at him in a way that seemed wistful to
Austin, watching the stairs where Tate and Libby had been until a few moments before.

Paige told him how she'd been brewing herself a cup of tea an hour or so before, she'd glanced through the window above the sink and she'd seen Reese get out of a ranch pickup and head for the barn. She hadn't been suspicious until she'd seen him turn his head, looking to see if anybody was watching him. Worried, she'd pulled on a jacket and headed out there to investigate, all by herself, on crutches, with one foot in a cast and the other in a bedroom slipper.

From there, according to Paige's account, things went downhill, fast.

She and Reese had argued, and then Libby had showed up, armed with a rifle. They'd had hard words, Libby and Reese, and she'd told him to get his things and hit the road.

Ron Strivens had gotten there just in time to defuse the situation, but it was clear from the look in Paige's eyes, even before she went on, that she thought Reese still presented a threat.

“He said you killed his dog,” she finished miserably, her voice small and fretful.

Austin moved to touch her face, half expecting her to flinch away. Instead, she closed her eyes as he stroked her cheek, then her hair.

I love you, Paige Remington,
he thought with such conviction and clarity that, for one horrifying moment, he was sure he'd said the words right out loud.

Paige probably wasn't ready to hear them.

“I was afraid to tell you what happened,” she said, surprising him again. That seemed to be happening on a regular basis.

“Why?” he asked, puzzled and a little alarmed.

“Your
temper,
maybe?” she reminded him, with another of those little smiles and a luminosity in her eyes that struck him as a sadder thing than tears.

“Paige.” The name came out scratchy and hoarse. Austin hesitated, then took her hand, ran the pad of his thumb lightly over her knuckles. “You don't think—I wouldn't hurt you—”

“Not physically,” Paige said. There was tension in her now, and her spine was very straight. “Austin, of course I know that. That isn't what I meant.”

He closed his eyes, let out his breath.
Not physically,
she'd said. She knew he wouldn't lay a hand on her in anger, then, and that was a consolation. But he'd hurt her in other ways, and she was too honest to pretend that he hadn't.

He felt her fingertips come to rest on his arm.

“Austin,” she said very softly. “Look at me.”

He opened his eyes. Met her gaze as directly as he could. “I'm looking,” he said with an attempt at a grin when she didn't say anything right away.

“I was afraid you would go after Reese and get hurt again,” she finally blurted out. And when he started to protest that, damn it all to hell, he could take care of himself, she pressed an index finger to his mouth to prevent it. “
That's
what I meant when I said I was worried about your temper.”

Austin sighed. Shoved a hand through his hair. “Would you mind doing me just one little favor?” he asked.

“Depends,” Paige responded, with a note of mischief in her tone. Her eyes were tired, though, and he'd have bet money her ankle was hurting.

“I want your promise, Paige,” he said, serious as all
get-out and determined to get that across to her. “Give me your word that, next time you think there's trouble, you'll tell me or Tate or Garrett, and not just go barreling straight into the middle of it, all by yourself.”

Paige lifted an eyebrow. “Fair enough,” she said. “As long as you're willing to promise me the same thing in return.”

He narrowed his eyes. “There's a difference,” he said.

“What difference?”

Austin leaned in until his forehead touched hers. “I'm a man,” he told her. “And you're a little bit of a thing—on crutches. What if Libby hadn't seen you follow Reese into the barn, Paige? What if she hadn't gone out there to make sure you were all right?”

“She
did
see me go into the barn and she
did
come out there, Austin,” Paige pointed out.

“You could have been hurt,” Austin insisted, straightening so he could look into her eyes.

“Anybody can be hurt,” Paige retorted. “It's a chance we all take, every day of our lives.”

“Give me your word, Paige,” Austin said darkly.

“Give me yours first,” she countered.

They were sitting there, staring each other down, neither one of them willing to give an inch, when the door leading into the garage swung open and Calvin, Audrey and Ava burst into the kitchen, followed by Garrett.

Paige smiled and turned on the bench to greet them, holding her arms open wide.

All three kids rushed her, and she laughed with delight and widened her embrace to make room for everybody.

Watching her, Austin felt a lump form in his throat, then sink down into his heart.

He'd loved her as a boy. Now that he was a man, he loved her even more. He'd loved her all the years in between.

He could tell Paige all of that, and it would be the truth, and she wouldn't believe it in a million years.

G
RADUALLY, THE REST OF THE FAMILY
gathered in the big kitchen—Libby and Tate came down their stairway, both of them looking a lot more relaxed than when they'd gone
up
it an hour before. Julie, no doubt having heard Garrett's account of the Reese incident that had taken place out in the barn that afternoon, decided to stay home and let the assistant director take charge of the musical rehearsals for that evening. The first performance was coming up the following weekend, and the student performers were now engaged in tech rehearsals. She arrived with several buckets of take-out chicken and all the trimmings.

The kids giggled and chased each other. The dogs chased the kids. The noise and the happy confusion were wonderful.

Paige, having gotten exactly nowhere in the standoff with Austin, crutched off to the guest apartment. There, she got out a long sleep shirt and moved on to the bathroom, where she undressed and then sat down on the lid of the toilet seat, methodically wrapped her cast with a plastic trash bag from the box she found in the cabinet under the sink, cinched the thing shut using red twist ties and finally rose, teetering a little, to start the shower running.

The bag was hardly leakproof, but if she kept it out of the direct line of the spray, it ought to do well enough.

The flow of hot water felt better than perfect, soothing the tension out of Paige's muscles and warming her to the marrow. She lathered up her skin and shampooed and conditioned her hair and shaved her legs and underarms, all while standing on one foot, like a crane, and holding on to the handle of the shower door for balance.

And when she'd finished, she felt human again.

The garbage bag had served its purpose, and she removed it and hung it on the hook on the back of the bathroom door so it would be ready for next time. Maybe she'd secure it with duct tape before she indulged in another shower, just to make sure the cast didn't get wet.

Rather pleased with herself, Paige hummed as she checked her cast and found it dry—well, dry
enough,
anyway—then pulled the clean nightshirt over her head. She got caught inside it, just as she had become entangled in the pullover shirt earlier, and when she finally poked her head through the neckhole and opened the door to let some of the steam roll out, she gave a small, startled gasp.

Austin was standing in the hallway.

She glared at him. “What do you think you're doing?”

“Libby sent me,” Austin answered with a cocky little grin tugging at his mouth. “With your supper.”

Through the slowly clearing fog, Paige saw that he was holding a plate in one hand, piled high with chicken, potato salad, biscuits and an ear of corn.

“And you thought I'd want to eat in the bathroom?” she asked.

He chuckled. “I heard the shower running and waited,” he said. “Just in case you yelled for help or something.”

Paige would have sent him packing, but for the sudden realization that she was hungry.
Very
hungry.

The chicken smelled so fattening and so good.

The corn dripped with butter, and so did the biscuits.

“You're lying,” Paige accused, reaching for her crutches and wedging them under her armpits, where they bit into her flesh like teeth. “Libby would have brought the food herself, thinking I might have been—”

“Naked?” he asked, almost purring the word.

“I'm not naked,” Paige pointed out, feeling testy. It had been a long and trying day, after all, and she just wanted some supper, an hour or two of brainless TV, a pain pill and a decent night's sleep.

Austin ran his gaze slowly over the sleep shirt, as if he could see right through the fabric, and stepped back out of her way.

“Thanks for bringing the food,” she said, reaching the bedroom. “You can go now.”

Again, that grin. “I'm not going anywhere,” he said. “I'm injured, remember? I'm not supposed to climb the stairs.”

Paige huffed out a breath. He didn't look to her as if he'd have any trouble with a set of stairs, but he
had
been shot very recently. “You can sleep in Calvin's old room, then,” she said.

He didn't answer until she'd gone through the awkward process of setting the crutches aside, climbing into bed, arranging the blankets and all the rest.

By the time she'd finished, she was breathless from the effort.

Austin watched, amused. When she was settled, he handed her the plate and some plastic silverware wrapped
in a napkin and sat down in the rocking chair to watch her eat.

Shep wandered in, circled the hooked rug three times and collapsed in comfort.

“I'll be fine now,” Paige told Austin. “Really. You can leave.” A pause. “Any time now.”

He chuckled, rocked idly in the sturdy antique chair, obviously intending to go nowhere. “I'm fine right here,” he said.

“That,” she replied, “is a matter of opinion.”

“I'm spending the night,” Austin informed her. “In that bed. With you.”

Paige hoped he couldn't tell by looking at her that she found the idea almost as intriguing as it was annoying. “Look, I appreciate your concern, but I'll be
fine.
There's no need—”

“Oh,” Austin said, in a throaty drawl, when her voice fell away, “I wouldn't say there was no need. I wouldn't say that at all.”

Paige's heart skittered over a couple of beats. “We agreed—” Again, she couldn't finish the sentence.

“I know what we agreed,” Austin replied, low and easy. “And all I'm planning on doing for sure is holding you in my arms. Anything happens beyond that, it will be your choice.”

Her face burned, not just with indignation, but with desire, too. And no matter how much she might deny the fact, even to herself, she felt scared and shaken and very much in need of holding.

“We're not having sex,” she said. “I mean it, Austin.
We are not having sex.
”

“All right,” Austin replied affably, raising both hands
a little way, palms out. “No sex.” He paused. “Unless, of course, you decide that's what you want.”

“I won't,” she told him too quickly.

He grinned. “We'll see,” he answered.

“You think you're irresistible, don't you?” Paige challenged, after gnawing a few bites off a drumstick, chewing and then swallowing. Swabbing the grease from her mouth with a wadded paper napkin. “Well, I've got
news
for you, Austin McKettrick. You are
highly
resistible. I can resist you with one hand tied behind my back.”

“I wasn't planning on tying you up,” he said, deadpan. “But if that's your thing, we could probably work something out.”

Paige blushed crimson. “I
meant,
” she said, after unclamping her back molars, “that not
every
woman is going to fall into bed with you just because you're—sort of attractive.”

“Sort of?”

“Not so much, right now. Here's a flash for you, McKettrick. I'm immune to your famous charms.”

“Here's your chance to prove it,” he said easily.

Paige glared at him. Waited until she was breathing normally before she answered. “You're on, buddy,” she told him. Then she finished eating in silence, set her plate aside on the bedside table with a thump, squirmed down onto her back and pulled the covers up to her chin.

Austin laughed and shook his head, but he didn't comment. He just got out of the chair, picked up the plate and left the room with it, Shep following hopefully in his wake.

As soon as they were gone, Paige sat up, grabbed her crutches and sprang out of bed again.

In the bathroom, she squeezed paste onto her brush
and scrubbed her teeth, and finally swished mouthwash back and forth between her cheeks, holding her own gaze in the mirror above the sink.

She would not give in to Austin McKettrick. She
would not
let the man make love to her—no way.

No matter how much she might want him to do exactly that.

She'd hoped to get back to bed before Austin returned, and she made it, but just barely.

Determined to ignore him for as long as she could, she groped for the remote and turned on the TV. The sound was muted, which was fine with Paige, because the characters in the “reality” show playing out on the screen were obnoxious enough without being audible. A bunch of women with silicone-enhanced breasts, big hair and too much makeup, were sipping wine in a private dining room at some fancy restaurant in New York or Los Angeles or Palm Beach or wherever, and Paige didn't need to read their chemically plumped lips to know they were arguing.

With any luck at all, Paige thought, oddly detached and yet keeping her eyes fixed on the unfolding drama, there would be a brawl. It would be a chance to vent her own anger, vicariously.

No harm done.

Austin, meanwhile, opened one of the bureau drawers and took out a pair of gray sweatpants. Paige saw all this out of the corner of her eye.

Not that she cared what Austin McKettrick wore to bed.

He vanished into the bathroom and the water in the shower came on.

Paige unmuted the TV.

“You're sleeping with my husband, you bitch,” one of the big-haired women said to another.

The two women squared off, though they didn't get out of their chairs.

Paige rolled her eyes. “He's not worth it,” she told the misguided females.

“He loves me,” the other one said.

There was no question that the scene had been staged. The bad acting ruined any illusion of spontaneity, and yet Paige sat there, watching.

The onscreen bickering escalated.

A commercial came on, and another rollicking segment of Real Life followed. The drama dial was definitely being cranked into the red zone.

Presently, Austin ambled out of the bathroom, wearing the sweatpants and nothing else, unless you counted the damp sheen of moisture on his chest.

Another commercial began and ended, and then the catfight began in earnest. The two women lunged at each other and rolled the length of the table, knocking over glasses and wine bottles and breadbaskets as they went. Far from breaking up the donnybrook, the other three women dove in. The screaming, kicking, clawing, hair pulling and name-calling commenced.

Austin stood in the center of the room, watching with casual interest. “I saw something like that happen in a bar in Phoenix once,” he said. “It was awesome.”

Paige glanced at him. Thumbed the mute button again.

“I'll just bet you did,” she said after a beat or two.

“There must have been ten females involved in that brawl,” Austin recalled, as though Paige hadn't said a word.

She wouldn't eyeball him. She just wouldn't.

No matter how good he looked with his hair curling from the shower steam and his chest bare and his face freshly shaved.

“I suppose that happens a lot around you,” she said, and then could have kicked herself, theoretically, anyway. Under current circumstances, kicking of any kind was way beyond her capabilities.

“What happens a lot around me?” Austin asked, still watching the now-silent battle as it unfolded on the screen. That was probably why he sounded distracted; his attention was engaged by all those skirts riding up, all those flailing limbs.

A high-heeled shoe flew through the air, and then a wig.

“Do they really think those boobs are fooling anybody?” Paige grumbled, feeling positively flat-chested in comparison. She certainly hadn't meant to say
that
out loud, but what the hell? She was on a roll; might as well keep going.

Austin winced as one of the women made the most of her fifteen minutes of fame by emptying the contents of a vase over a waiter's head when the poor man tried to intervene. “I don't think they care one way or the other,” he said, grinning. Then he shook his head and looked at Paige. “If this is your idea of entertainment,” he drawled, “I'm pretty sure I have a better idea.”

“Television
sucks,
” Paige said, frantically thumbing the channel button now. Infomercials flashed by, along with reruns of stupid comedies, people cooking things, a smarmy-looking man selling gold-plated jewelry and police shows featuring actors who had long since died or left the cast.

Austin approached. Gently removed the remote from her hand and turned off the TV.

What a concept.

“Now what?” she asked weakly, looking up at Austin and wondering how in the world she was going to resist the man for an entire night, with him in the same
bed
, for heaven's sake.

On the other hand, he might stay on top of the covers, as he had before. Not bother her at all.

Shep, snug on the rug, yawned noisily.

Austin reached out and shut off the lamp on the bedside table, stood there, gilded in moonlight, looking magnificent, like some half-naked god fresh from Olympus. “Now,” he replied, “I hold you.”

Oh, hell. He was going to hold her. How was she supposed to ignore that?

Tears burned in Paige's eyes, and she was glad he'd turned out the light, because that meant there was a chance he wouldn't see that she was crying and want to know why. She couldn't have answered, because she didn't know. Even making up a lie would have been too much to ask of her, at this point.

Austin walked to the other side of the bed, and Paige felt the covers move and then the mattress shift under his weight. When he stretched out beside her, she was nearly overwhelmed by the heat and the strength of him, by the delicious scent of his hair and skin.

All that, and they weren't even touching.

Yet.

Paige sighed.

Austin chuckled. “Relax,” he said, his voice a quiet rumble in the silver-tinged darkness. He slid his good arm under her, bent the elbow so that she folded into
him, wound up with her cheek resting on the hollow of his throat.