McKettricks of Texas: Austin (5 page)

Paige sighed as she let herself in through the back door and drew in the scents of sawdust and new drywall. She flipped on the overhead light and was gratified, and a little surprised, that it worked.

The kitchen, twice its former size, boasted a new slate-tile floor and an alcove set into a semicircle of floor-to-ceiling windows, but it was a long way from usable.

Paige shoved her hands into the pockets of her jacket and moved farther into the house.

The living room was all new; the floors were hardwood
and the molding around the edges of the raised ceiling had been salvaged from an old mansion in Dallas. There was an elegant marble fireplace, with an antique mantel, and the windows, like the ones in the kitchen, stood taller than Paige did.

Black against the night, the glass threw her reflection back at her—a trim woman in jeans, a T-shirt and a jacket, with dark, chin-length hair and the saddest eyes.

A lot of changes had been made, but this was still the place—the very room—where her dad had died.

It was the same house her mother had left, for good, when she and Libby and Julie needed her most.

The same house where she'd waited in vain for Marva to come back. Where she'd cried over Austin McKettrick and grieved after her father's death.

Julie and Libby had both signed their shares over to her. And she would live here, a spinster, growing stranger and stranger with each passing year. Adopting dozens and dozens of cats, and playing bingo three nights a week, cutting beer cans into panels, punching holes in the sides and crocheting them together into hats.

Paige sank down onto the raised hearth of the fireplace and tried to make up her mind whether to laugh or cry. It was a tough choice.

A
USTIN WAS ONLY HALF LISTENING
to his brothers' conversation that evening, there in Garrett's small, well-lit courtyard; a big part of his mind was on Paige. He'd heard her car door slam, listened as she started the engine, and it had been all he could do not to let himself out through the gate and run down the driveway after her, like some damn fool in a bad movie.

Lounging at the picnic table, watching the kids and the dogs dash around in the grass, Austin sipped his beer and savored the smoky scent of beef cooking on an outdoor grill.

Julie and Libby came down the back steps from Garrett's terrace, Libby carrying a salad, Julie holding a tray of empty glasses and a pitcher of iced tea. While Austin couldn't rightly think of a place he'd rather be just then, he wished Paige hadn't left.

Remembering his manners—better late than never, he supposed wryly—he rose, crossed the yard and took the tray out of Julie's hands.

Julie thanked him. She and Libby exchanged glances, and both of them looked flustered.

Austin carried the tray back to the picnic table, set it down and turned to see both his brothers watching him.

When he realized that they thought he might have done
himself permanent injury by carrying the tray, he gave a brief, ragged chuckle and shook his head.

Tate and Garrett had the good grace to look chagrined, and went back to turning steaks and talking ranch business.

The meal was served, and they all sat down at the long picnic table, kids and adults, with the dogs sitting quietly—and hopefully—nearby.

“Where's Aunt Paige?” Calvin piped up, barely visible over the hamburger towering on his plate.

An awkward little silence fell, broken only by the distant lowing of cattle and the sound of a car somewhere down the road.

“Eat your supper, sweetheart,” Julie told her son gently.

“What about
Aunt Paige's
supper?” Calvin persisted. “Is she going to have any?”

“I'm sure your aunt will be fine,” Julie assured him.

Silverware clinked against dishes, and the wind whispered in the limbs of the oak trees nearest the house. It was November, and turning colder, but thanks to a pair of outdoor heaters, the patio was warm enough.

“Maybe she ran away,” Ava, one of Tate's twins, speculated, after chewing and swallowing a big bite of burger and bun.

Calvin took immediate offense, stiffening and glaring across the table at Ava.
“Did not!”

“Hush,” Julie said, ruffling the boy's hair.

Ava blinked behind her glasses and then jutted out her fine McKettrick chin, stubborn to the bone. “Did, too!” she insisted.
“Maybe.”

“Grown-ups don't run away!” Calvin said.

“Sometimes they do!” Ava argued.

“Ava,” Tate said quietly. “That will be enough.”

Ava subsided, but not graciously.

And her sister, Audrey, by far the more outgoing of the pair, spoke right up. “Our mom ran away,” she said. “She went all the way to New York City, and she's never coming back.”

Another silence.

Then Libby, sitting next to Audrey, slipped an arm around the child. Over the girls' heads, her gaze connected with Tate's. “Your mother came to visit just last month,” Libby reminded her softly. “She took you and Ava to the ballet in Austin, and you stayed in a hotel.”

Tate sighed, pushed his plate away.

Austin felt a pang of sympathy, watching his brother. Tate's first marriage, to the twins' mother, had been a mistake from the beginning. He and Cheryl had been divorced since the twins were babies, but they still butted heads now and then over the kids. Cheryl, probably jealous of Libby, was always playing some kind of head game.

Just one more reason, as far as Austin was concerned, to stay single. And if the idea gave him a lonesome feeling, well, he concluded, nobody had everything.

Garrett, meanwhile, managed to shift Calvin onto his lap without making a big fat production of it. “Your Aunt Paige wouldn't run away,” he told the boy, looking straight at Austin. “She probably just didn't feel like having steak for supper.”

Austin felt color rise to his face. What was Garrett implying? That it was
his
fault Paige didn't want to join the rest of the family for a meal?

Maybe it
was
his fault.

Austin decided he wasn't all that hungry. He excused himself, as he'd been taught to do, having been raised by a good Texas mama, and left the table. Carried his plate inside and left it in the sink in Garrett's kitchen.

Shep joined him on the short walk to the door of his own apartment, just down the hall from Garrett's.

In the terrible days immediately after their folks were killed, nothing had made sense to any of the three brothers, and little wonder. They'd been eighteen, nineteen and twenty years old at the time. For the last ten years, they'd shared the main floor of the ranch house, where the big kitchen and the pool and the media room were, among other things, but back then, for reasons Austin couldn't recall, they'd divided the rest of the house into three separate living areas.

As little kids, still on their first set of teeth, Tate, Garrett and Austin had shared one wide, long room, with lots of windows. When Tate entered tenth grade, the original space was sectioned off into three connecting squares, all the same size but distinctly separate.

Now, those rooms were gone, too, making up the wide corridor. Only the long row of tall windows remained.

Austin shoved a hand through his hair as he entered his own part of the house. The kitchen, living room and master suite were on that floor, while an office and two guest rooms shared the third with a huge attic.

Like Tate and Garrett, Austin had his own stairway.

God forbid they should have to share one.

Bleakly, he wandered to the windows, gazed out over the range, toward the main road. No question about it—he wanted to see headlights, and not just
any
headlights, either. He was looking for Paige's car.

No sign of it, though.

He finally turned away, took in the stark simplicity of his living room and longed for the old days, when things had been different. When the folks were alive and they'd lived like a family, not a bunch of strangers.

The Silver Spur ranch house had been just that, a
house,
before the folks died; a big one, granted, but still a family home, with one kitchen, one living room, one dining room.

One turkey at Thanksgiving.

One tree at Christmas.

Now, it was more like a grand hotel, or an apartment building.

It sure as hell wasn't a home anymore. Nobody really
lived
there; they were all just passing through, doing their own thing, on their way to somewhere else.

 

P
AIGE WOKE UP LATE THE NEXT MORNING,
having tossed and turned until all hours. Glancing at the bedside clock, she gasped, threw back the covers, and leaped out of bed. She showered quickly, put on black slacks and a simple white blouse, gave each of her cheeks a pass with the blush brush, and sped out into the kitchen.

Garrett and Austin were there, Garrett drinking coffee and reading a newspaper at the table, Austin leaning indolently against one of the counters, wearing nothing but a pair of rag-bag sweatpants, a case of bedhead and an obnoxious grin.

Shep, wolfing down kibble from a bowl nearby, spared her a glance but went right on eating.

“Did Julie leave already?” Paige asked. “I was supposed to drive Calvin to school this morning—”

Garrett smiled easily and rose from his chair, remained
standing until Paige waved him back into his seat. “Julie didn't want to wake you,” he said. “She took Calvin over to Libby and Tate's to ride the school bus to town later on with the twins.”

Paige was aware of Austin at the periphery of her vision, lounging like he had nothing better to do than stand around in the kitchen on a weekday morning.

And maybe he didn't.

“Have some coffee,” Austin said in an easy drawl that brought back all sorts of sensory memories, all of which were purely physical. “There's no hurry now, is there?”

Garrett glanced back at his brother, and something passed between them, though Paige had no idea what.

“All right,” Paige said.

Austin moved to the coffeemaker, filled a mug, brought it to Paige. His hair was a mess. His chest was bare. His sweatpants were in disreputable shape.

And just looking at him made Paige wish she were lying flat on her back in his bed, instead of standing in a kitchen awash in morning light.

“Thanks,” she said out loud, taking the mug he offered.

“Guess I'd better throw on some clothes,” he said without the least trace of self-consciousness in either his tone or his manner. “As Dad always said, we're burnin' daylight.”

Paige didn't respond. She
couldn't
have responded, because her throat had closed.

With a nod, Austin left, heading up his set of stairs, the dog trotting behind him.

Garrett stood up again, gestured for Paige to take a seat.

She slumped onto the bench, curled both hands around the mug.

Garrett sank back into his chair. “Are you all right?” he asked.

Paige, realizing that she'd clenched her eyes shut, opened them and drummed up a smile. “Yes,” she said. “But Julie was counting on me to look after Calvin and I overslept and—”

“Calvin is fine,” Garrett said, covering her hand with his very briefly.

Paige sighed, and with the outward thrust of her breath, her shoulders relaxed. She felt the familiar rush of love for her only nephew; she could not have loved Calvin more if he'd been her own child.

Garrett cleared his throat subtly, and glanced toward the stairs Austin and Shep had mounted only moments before.

“Tate and I were wondering…” he began. But then his voice fell away, and he looked strangely shy for a man whose self-confidence seemed to rise from the cellular level.

“What?” she asked. God knew it had complicated her life when Libby and Tate had fallen in love and, soon after that, Garrett and Julie. Austin was their brother; it would, of course, be almost impossible to avoid coming into contact with him on a fairly regular basis.

Still, Paige liked her future brothers-in-law, and she was certainly glad they were making her sisters so happy.

Garrett scooted his chair in a little closer to the table. Lowered his voice, even though Austin was nowhere in sight and couldn't possibly have overheard.

“Julie says you're between jobs right now,” he ventured carefully.

Paige felt a brief sting of embarrassment; she'd worked since high school and being unemployed was new to her. Fortunately, the feeling passed quickly.

“I guess you could say that,” she said with a little smile. If Julie had confided that her sister was “between jobs,” she'd explained the circumstances, too, but Paige saw no reason to point that out. “I was supposed to replace one of the nurses at Blue River Clinic—Alice was planning on enlisting in the Navy. There was some kind of hitch, though, and it will be another few months before she starts her training.”

The expression in Garrett's McKettrick-blue eyes was kind.

He and Tate, Paige realized with a start, would be the brothers she'd never had. They had already accepted her as part of the family, and they would look out for her, if only because they loved her sisters.

Her throat ached with an emotion she was glad she didn't have to define, because there were no words for it.

Garrett gave her a few moments to recover before he tried to continue. He said his younger brother's name, hoarsely, and then faltered.

“Go on,” Paige said very quietly.

“Austin—needs help. He's never going to admit that, though.”

Paige nodded, waited. She knew Austin better than most people did, and nothing Garrett had said so far surprised her.

Garrett sighed again, thrust a hand through his dark-blond hair. “We—Tate and I, that is—think there ought
to be somebody around to sort of keep an eye on Austin when none of us are around, just in case—”

She didn't speak, hoping the conclusion she'd just jumped to was wrong.

“Austin needs a nurse,” Garrett finally said, and his tone was decisive.

“A nurse,” Paige repeated dully. “Garrett, tell me you're not suggesting that I—”

Garrett merely smiled and raised one eyebrow ever so slightly.

Paige swallowed. “Don't you think that would be a little—well—
awkward?
”

“Awkward?” Garrett, the skilled political spin doctor, was probably playing her, but he sure
sounded
confused. “It's not as if you would have to bathe him or anything intimate like that.”

She met his gaze and held it. “What
is
Austin's diagnosis, exactly?”

“He has a herniated disc,” Garrett answered, his tone genuinely grave now.

“Will he need surgery?” The question was rhetorical; Paige was thinking out loud. Processing the implications of an injury all too common to athletes, no matter what their sport.

Garrett rubbed his attractively stubbled chin with one hand as he considered his answer. “That depends,” he finally replied. “If he stays away from the rodeo, gives himself a chance to heal, there's a good chance he can avoid having an operation.”

Paige felt faintly sick to her stomach. “You don't think Austin will actually go along with the idea, do you? I mean, he and I
are
making an effort to get along—for obvious reasons—but things are still pretty rocky—”

“Tate and I aren't planning on giving Austin a choice in the matter,” Garrett said firmly.

“And you want me to…babysit.”

A slow grin settled over Garrett's sensual mouth. “That's about the size of it,” he said with a little nod.