McKettricks of Texas: Austin (4 page)

The best part was, he didn't have to say any of that.

She wrenched the car over to the side of the highway, shifted into Park, and flipped on the hazard lights.

Paige sort of pivoted in the seat then, and he watched as
a tremor of anger—and possibly passion—moved through that compact, curvy little body of hers and then made the leap across the console and turned him instantly, obviously hard.

“Maybe,” he said, “we ought to just have sex and get it over with.”

She simply stared at him.

Mentally, Austin pulled his foot out of his mouth. Shoved a hand through his hair and wished his hard-on weren't pressing itself into the ridges of his zipper—he'd have a scar, if this kept up.

“Let me rephrase that,” he said.

Paige blinked.

Time stretched.

Cars passed, the drivers tooting the horns to say howdy.

Polar ice caps melted.

New species developed, reached the pinnacle of evolution and became extinct.

“I'm waiting,” Paige said finally. A little lilt of fury threaded its way through her tone.

“For what?”

“For you to ‘rephrase' that ridiculous statement you just made. ‘Maybe we ought to just have sex and get it over with,' I think it was.” She adjusted her sunglasses, smoothed the thighs of her jeans, as she might have done with a skirt. “It's hard to imagine how, Austin, but I'm sure you can make things even
worse
if you try.”

It wasn't as if he had to try, he thought bleakly. When it came to Paige Remington, he could make things worse without even opening his mouth.

“It was just a thought,” he said, disgruntled. “There's no need to overreact.”

“Overreact.”
Paige huffed out the word, made a big show of facing forward again. With prim indignation, she resettled herself, switched off the blinkers and leaned to consult the rearview mirror before pulling back out onto the highway. “You are
such
a jerk,” she told him.

Austin couldn't think of a damn thing to say in reply to that—nothing that wouldn't get him in deeper, anyhow.

“I can't
believe
you said that,” Paige marveled.

Austin's response was part growl, part groan. He'd forgotten just how impossible this woman could be when she got her tail into a twist about something—or how little it took to piss her off.

Shep whined again.

“You're scaring the dog,” Paige said.

“
I'm
scaring the dog?” Austin shot back, keeping his voice low. “
You
started this, Paige, by calling me a jerk!”

“You
are
a jerk,” Paige replied, raising her chin, her spine stiff as a ramrod, her face turned straight ahead. “And
you
started this by saying—by saying what you said.”

He couldn't resist, even though he knew he should. “That we ought to have sex and get it over with, you mean?”

She glared at him. Even through the lenses of her sunglasses, he felt her eyes burning into his hide.

He grinned at her. “Well,” he drawled, “now that you bring it up, maybe a roll in the hay wouldn't be such a bad idea. We could get it out of our systems, put the whole thing behind us, get on with our lives.”

Her neck went crimson, and she just sat there, her back rigid, her knuckles white from her grip on the wheel. “Oh,
that's a
fine
idea, Austin. Just what I would have expected from you!”

“You have a better one?”

She said nothing.

“I didn't think so,” Austin said smugly.

 

A
USTIN HAD BEEN BAITING HER,
Paige knew that.

But knowing hadn't kept her from taking the hook.

Get it out of our systems.

Put the whole thing behind us, get on with our lives.

Indeed.

Standing at the counter in Julie and Garrett's kitchen, upstairs at the Silver Spur ranch house, Paige whacked hard at the green onions she was chopping for the salad. Julie reached out, stopped her by grasping her wrist.

“Whoa,” she said. “If you're not careful, you'll chop off a finger.”

Libby, standing nearby and busy pouring white wine into three elegant glasses, grinned knowingly at her two younger sisters.

All three of the McKettrick men were outside, in the small, private courtyard at the bottom of a flight of stucco steps, barbecuing steaks and hamburgers. Calvin, Tate's twin daughters and the pack of dogs were with them.

“You know, Paige,” Libby observed, handing her a glass, “if I didn't know better, I'd think you and Austin were—back on, or something.”

Julie's eyes twinkled as she accepted a wineglass for herself and took a sip. “Or something,” she murmured after swallowing.

“Stop it, both of you,” Paige protested. “Austin and I are
not
‘back on.' The man infuriates me.”

Libby smiled, resting a hip against the side of the
counter, but said nothing. The firstborn daughter in the Remington family, Libby had light brown hair and expressive blue eyes. She and Tate were crazy about each other, and they would have beautiful children together.

“Why?” Julie asked. The second sister, a year younger than Libby and a year older than Paige, Julie had chameleon eyes. They seemed a fierce shade of bluish green at the moment, though the color changed with what she was wearing and often looked hazel, and her coppery hair fell naturally into wonderful, spiraling curls past her shoulders.

“Why?” Paige echoed, stalling.

“Why does Austin infuriate you?” Julie wanted to know.

“Because he's so—sure of himself,” Paige said. There were probably a million reasons, but that was the first to come to mind.

Libby raised both eyebrows. “This is a
bad
thing?” she asked.

Paige wanted her sisters to understand. Take her side. If anybody knew how badly her heart had been broken, they did. “He's arrogant.”

Julie laughed. “No,” she said with a shake of her head, “he's a
McKettrick.
”

Paige took a sip from her wineglass—and nearly choked. She set the drink aside and promptly forgot all about it. “The difference being…?”

Julie and Libby exchanged knowing glances over the rims of their wineglasses.

“If you still care about Austin,” Julie said presently, after a visible gathering of internal forces, “there's nothing wrong with that. You're not in high school anymore,
after all, and there's no denying that the man is all McKettrick.”

Paige folded her arms. “Look,” she said, “I know you're both madly in love with McKettrick men, and I'm happy for you—I really,
truly
am—but if you think I'm going to decide all is forgiven and fall into Austin's bed as if nothing ever happened, you're sadly mistaken.”

“She's not going to fall into Austin's bed,” Libby said to Julie very seriously.

“She's not going to fall
back
into Austin's bed,” Julie said.

Paige stepped between them and waved both arms. “Hello? I'm in the room,” she told her sisters. “I can hear everything you're saying.”

Libby and Julie laughed. And they raised their wineglasses to each other.

“I give them seventy-two hours,” Libby said.

“Nonsense,” Julie replied matter-of-factly. “Paige will be twisting the sheets with Austin by tomorrow night at the latest.”

“You're both crazy,” Paige said, flustered. “Just because neither of
you
can resist a McKettrick man, doesn't mean
I
can't!”

“She's got it bad,” Libby told Julie.

“Worst case I've ever seen,” Julie decreed.

Paige simmered.

“About the bridesmaid's dress,” Libby said, evidently determined to make bad matters worse. “I was thinking daffodil yellow, with ruffles, pearl buttons and lots of lace trim—”

“Lavender,” Julie countered cheerfully. “With a
bustle.
”

That did it. “Why not throw in a lamb and one of those
hoops you roll with a stick?” Paige erupted. “And maybe I could
skip
down the aisle?”

The picture must have delighted Libby and Julie, because they both laughed uproariously.

Libby refilled her own wineglass, and Julie's. Paige's was still full.

Julie elbowed Paige aside to finish making the salad. She was, after all, the cook in the family.

“You're really afraid of The Dress, aren't you, Paige?” Libby asked, her eyes sparkling with happiness and well-being.

“I'm the Lone Bridesmaid,” Paige pointed out, calmer now but still discouraged. “I have nightmares about that dress.”

“To hear her tell it,” Julie told Libby, “neither of us has any taste at all.”

“Will you two stop talking as though I'm not even here?” Paige asked. “If you'd just agree to let
me
pick out my gown, since I'm the one who has to wear it—”

“What fun would
that
be?” Libby said to Julie. “We're the brides, after all.”

Paige, as the youngest, flashed back to the old days, when the three of them were kids and her older sisters had tossed a ball back and forth between them, over her head, making sure it was always out of her reach. They called the game “Keep Away.”

The term seemed especially apt that night, though she couldn't have explained the idea. If ever two people had had her back, no matter what the situation might be, her sisters were those two people.

As a kid, she'd tagged after them, wanting so badly to go wherever they went, do whatever they did, to be part of their circle.

Growing up, she'd loved wearing their clothes and mimicking their voices and copying their mannerisms. Now, they were marrying brothers. Was some unconscious part of her still trying to follow in Libby and Julie's footsteps? The possibility was chilling to consider.

“That's it,” Paige said decisively, though without rancor. “I'm dropping out of the wedding party. You both have plenty of friends, and I'm sure some of them are willing to make absolute fools of themselves at the ceremony by wearing some god-awful dress—lavender with a bustle, or yellow, with ruffles—”

“Maybe we shouldn't have teased her,” Julie told Libby.

“Of
course
we should have teased her,” Libby said. “She's our little sister.”

Julie looked speculative. “If you married Austin,” she ruminated, turning to Paige, “we could have a
triple
wedding, and you wouldn't have to worry about hoops and lambs and bustles, because you'd be wearing a
bridal gown.
”

Paige flung both hands out from her sides. “Why didn't
I
think of that?” she scoffed. “I'll just
marry Austin.
To hell with my goals, my plans, my personal standards. To hell with everything!”

Julie reached out to touch Paige's arm. “Honey,” she said softly, “we didn't mean to upset you—”

Paige drew in a deep, sharp breath, let it out slowly. Shook her head. “It's all right, I just—I just need some time alone, that's all.”

Having said that, she left Garrett's glam second-story apartment—one of three such spaces comprising that floor of the house and part of a third—and to their
credit, neither Julie nor Libby called her back or tried to follow.

Downstairs, Paige crossed the main kitchen, retrieved her jacket and purse from the guest apartment and slipped out through the back door. It was dark, and stars glittered from horizon to horizon in great silvery splotches of faraway light.

On the other side of the courtyard wall, the kids were laughing, the dogs were barking, while the men talked in quiet voices.

Paige couldn't make out their words, wouldn't have tried. She needed quiet to collect her scattered thoughts, get some perspective. So she walked to her car—which she'd parked near the barn instead of in the garage as she usually did, flustered, at the time, because of Austin's close proximity—got in and started the engine.

She drove down the long driveway, through the open iron gates, and out onto the highway, headed for town. She switched on the radio, choosing a classical spot on the dial instead of her favorite country station. Paige felt too raw to listen to country music at the moment, and she was woman enough to admit it, by God.

This last thought made her smile.

Drive,
she told herself.
Don't think about him.

Between the soft piano concerto flowing out of the dashboard speakers and the semihypnotic effect of driving alone over a rural road, cosseted in purple twilight and under a canopy of stars, Paige was finally able to relax a little—and then a little more.

It was as though Austin McKettrick possessed his own magnetic field; the farther she got from him, the easier it was to breathe, to reason. To simply
be.

Reaching the outskirts of town, Paige slowed down,
drove automatically toward the house where she and Libby and Julie had grown up, with their dad. Libby had lived there, before and after Will Remington's death from pancreatic cancer, with her dog, Hildie, and had run the Perk Up Coffee Shop to support herself.

Now, thanks largely to their mother, Marva, and her questionable driving skills, the shop was gone, along with the mom-and-pop grocery store that had once stood beside it, the lot totally empty.

Rumor had it that a bank would be built on the site, but as Paige bumped along the alley toward the detached garage behind the old house, she saw no signs of construction.

After parking her car in the narrow space the garage afforded, Paige got out, walked to the back gate and let herself into the yard.

Here, there were
definitely
signs of construction. The old cupboards, newly pulled away from the kitchen walls, stood near the porch, seeming to crouch under blue plastic tarps. The bathtub, so outdated that it was probably about to come back into style again, rested in one of the flowerbeds, with the matching green toilet perched inside it.