McKettricks of Texas: Austin (26 page)

A
USTIN CROUCHED
in front of Shep's dog bed in the kitchen and flopped the critter's ears around a little with a light pass of his hand. “You stay here and guard the house,” he told the animal solemnly. “We'll be back in a couple of hours.”

Standing in the middle of the room, bundled up and wearing Sally McKettrick's boots, Paige felt an odd little pinch in her heart. It was hard to believe this tough yet tender man was the same person who'd betrayed her in such a cavalier way ten years ago.

Words he'd said the night before replayed in her head.
I didn't know any other way to save either one of us.

Paige bit her lower lip, watched carefully as he straightened, looking for the smallest sign that he wasn't up to riding horseback. She saw nothing in Austin but calm confidence, a man at home in himself, no matter what was going on in the outside world.

Shep didn't make a sound, nor did he try to rise from his resting place.

Paige and Austin exchanged glances as he passed her, but neither one spoke. She followed him outside, into the first pinkish-purple shimmer of a new day, felt revitalized by the snapping chill in the air.

Up ahead, the barn glowed with light, and Paige could
hear the horses stirring inside, snuffling, whinnying and nickering as they greeted each other.

Two horses stood in the breezeway, a pinto gelding and a bay mare, both saddled. Garrett smiled at Paige, held the bay still and used his free hand to steady the stirrup. He was wearing jeans and an old faded shirt and the kind of boots country people call “shit-kickers.”

“Mornin',” he said.

“Morning,” Paige replied. Then she nodded, grabbed hold of the saddle horn and stuck her foot into the stirrup, silently praying that she wouldn't make a fool of herself by not landing smoothly in the saddle.

She succeeded on the first try, though, much to her relief, and looked over to see that Austin was already astride the gelding, the reins resting easy in his left hand as he adjusted his hat with his right.

“Obliged,” he told Garrett, who must have saddled the horses.

Garrett gave a semisalute and asked Austin, “You got your cell phone?”

Austin chuckled and shook his head. “Now, it just ain't cowboy,” he joked, “asking a question like that.”

“Somebody tried to kill you a while back,” Garrett responded easily.
“Have you got your cell phone, Austin?”

Austin reached into the breast pocket of his denim jacket, pulled out a slim phone, held it by two fingers for Garrett to see.

Garrett sighed. “Get out of here,” he said.

Austin ducked as he rode through the doorway of the barn, even though there was no danger of bumping his head.

Paige rode behind him, feeling anxious—it had been
a long,
long
time since she'd been in the saddle—but exhilarated, too. She'd missed riding, missed the unique company of horses.

Out in the barnyard, she leaned forward until the saddle horn pressed into her stomach, closed her eyes and breathed in the familiar smell of the animal's hide.

When she straightened and opened her eyes again, smiling, she saw that Austin had stopped the gelding, turned sideways to watch her. His expression was cryptic, partly because the brim of his hat cast a thin shadow over his features. He reined his horse toward the lower road that ran along the inside of the fence line, letting his mount walk.

Birds were beginning to sing, and Paige could hear the creek flowing in the near distance. It struck her that it was possible to be perfectly happy, not all the time, of course, but in these golden moments that arrived only at their own bidding.

The bay mare—one of those horses that are not content to follow—picked up speed, bent on closing the gap of a dozen yards or so between her and the gelding.

Paige bounced a lot for the first few seconds, then found her stride, bracing her feet in the stirrups, not quite standing, but rising into the rhythm of the animal's movements.

Once alongside Austin and the gelding, the mare was happy.

Austin gave Paige a sidelong grin and adjusted his hat again.

“What's her name?” Paige asked, referring to the mare she was riding.

Austin flashed her a grin that made things quicken
inside her. “Betty,” he said. “She's pretty tame, but she does like to keep up with the herd.”

Paige laughed and patted the mare's neck. “Betty,” she repeated. “I'm not sure I've ever met a horse by that name before.”

“Audrey and Ava named her,” Austin answered. He was quiet for a while, turning his head to scan the rolling land in front of them. Then he cleared his throat and said, “I'm glad you came along, Paige.”

She knew he wanted to nudge the gelding to a trot and then a gallop and then a run—she could actually feel his restraint in her own body—but he continued at an easy walk. Probably, Paige figured, the restraint was for her sake.

“Me, too,” she said, and the words came out sounding odd and a little squeaky.

They rode alongside the creek for a while, and then Austin pointed toward the bank on the opposite side of the road.

“Ready to climb?” he asked.

Paige nodded, leaning forward in the saddle so she wouldn't slide right off Betty's back when she followed the gelding's lead up the side hill. At the top, the land leveled out, and the sight of all that sky and grass and wide-open space snagged Paige's breath in the back of her throat.

They didn't talk, but it struck Paige that talking wasn't necessary anyhow. They were a man and a woman riding two good horses over home ground, and that was communication enough.

When the old mining camp, with its Quonset huts and dry riverbed, came into view, Paige felt a vague prickle of alarm. She stood in the stirrups to stretch her legs and
silently scolded herself for being silly. Still, even in the first fresh light of morning, the place was spooky.

Austin seemed to sense her reluctance, and he glanced back at her with a question in his eyes. Stopped the gelding and then loosened his hold on the reins to let the animal graze for a few moments.

Paige did the same. And a shiver moved down her spine. Knowing Austin had seen, she said, “Do you believe in ghosts?”

Austin took off his hat, held it for a while, leaning forward in the saddle a little way. His grin held both mischief and lively interest. “Nope,” he said. “Do you?”

She smiled. Shook her head. “No,” she said, looking around, taking in the lonely desolation of that once-lively patch of ground. When the mines were running, long before her and Austin's time, there had been a town on this site. Even a schoolhouse and a church. “But I do believe in energy. I think it can linger in a place, especially after something important happens.”

Austin straightened, put his hat back on. “Back when we were kids,” he said, “Garrett and Tate and I, along with some of our friends, used to camp out here. Pretend we were old-time cowpokes—sometimes outlaws—either driving a herd north into Montana or fixing to steal it.”

This brief insight into Austin's boyhood felt sacred to Paige, even as it made her smile. She sensed there was more and held her tongue, not wanting to stem the conversational tide.

“Once the campfire went out,” Austin went on presently, “and everybody else had gone to sleep, I used to lie there in my bedroll and just listen to things. A time or two, I would have sworn I heard that river flowing,
even smelled the water, but it's probably been dry for ten thousand years.”

Paige smiled. Here was another perfect moment, and she meant to savor it.

Austin chuckled hoarsely. “There were some other things, but Tate and Garrett were behind the more creative stuff. Back in those days, they liked to scare me.”

“Did they succeed?”

He turned his head, grinning, and his eyes were the same color as his denim jean jacket. “A couple of times,” he admitted. “But mostly, I just went along with the game. Fact is, I knew something they didn't.”

Paige raised one eyebrow, waited.

The grin intensified to the kind of high wattage that can short-circuit female wiring. “Dad—or Pablo Ruiz—used to camp out somewhere close by, out of sight, to make sure we were safe.”

Sadness touched Paige's heart lightly, like a soft breeze. They were both gone now, Jim McKettrick and his longtime ranch foreman, Pablo Ruiz. And so was her father.

The world, for all its compensations, wasn't the same place without those three men, and it never would be.

Austin rode close, then stopped, so that their horses were side by side, with his facing in one direction and hers in the other. He reached out and cupped her chin with one hand, brushed a lock of windblown hair back from her cheek with his thumb.

“I'd really like to kiss you right about now,” he said.

Even as Paige's better judgment entered a silent protest, something took wing inside her, and soared.

“I think I'd really like to
be
kissed right about now,” she responded.

With a slight grin, Austin leaned in, touched his mouth
to hers. He smelled of good grass and sunshine and wide-open spaces, and the kiss…

Well,
the kiss.

It rocked Paige so thoroughly that she clung to the back of Austin's jacket with her free hand—the other was clasping the saddle horn for dear life—sure she'd tumble right off the horse if she didn't hold on.

Austin chuckled, the sound low and gruff, as he drew back. “I guess we'd better get moving again,” he told her. “Because if we don't, I might wind up doing my damnedest to seduce you, and that would be breaking my word.”

Paige struggled just to breathe. As for the concept of Austin breaking his word, well, it was probably better that she didn't now possess the necessary lung power to say anything at all, right at that moment.

Don't talk to me about breaking your word, Austin McKettrick,
cried the silent but powerful voice of her anger and her pain and her pride.
You promised to love me forever.

With the grace and ease of the lifelong horseman he was, Austin turned the gelding and started him in the direction of the dry riverbed.

Paige would have liked a few moments to recover her composure, but she didn't get them. The mare, Betty, not to be left behind, bolted after Austin's gelding and nearly unseated her.

She had barely regained her balance when the animal did a
Man from Snowy River
down the steep, rocky bank, pitched her headlong into a midair somersault that seemed to last forever and barely missed trampling her.

Paige lay flat on her back, the breath knocked out of her, dazed.

Austin was off the gelding and crouching beside her in what seemed like an instant. “Don't try to move, okay?” he said quietly. “Just lie still.”

Don't try to move.

The injunction struck Paige as funny. She wanted to laugh, to tell Austin he could quit looking so worried, because she was okay. But what came out of her mouth was a barely audible, “Is Betty all right?”

Austin was pale behind his cowboy tan, and his blue eyes also revealed his worry, but his mouth crooked up at one corner. “The horse is fine,” he told her. “Do you hurt anywhere?”

Paige took a thoughtful inventory of her body, starting at the back of her head, which was beginning to throb a little, and scanning down her neck, her spine, across her shoulders, over her stomach and her hips and her pelvis, then both thighs and both knees.

She didn't run into trouble until she got to her right ankle.

“Owwww,”
she moaned.

Austin practically blanched. “What?”

She answered by sitting up, bending her right knee, and grasping at her ankle. “It's—probably—just a sprain,” she told him, “but it hurts like holy-be—yahoo.”

Austin helped her up, and she leaned against him, keeping the injured foot off the ground.

“Help me get back on the horse,” Paige said.

He gave a raspy guffaw at that, and there was no humor in it. “Hell, no,” Austin replied, flashing his cell phone. “I'm calling an ambulance.”

Tears of frustration and pain stung the lining of her sinuses and the spaces behind her eyes. “Don't be silly,” she said. “I don't
need
an ambulance.”

“This is all my fault,” Austin muttered.

Paige tried again. “No,” she said. “It's nobody's fault, Austin. Please, just help me get back on Betty so we can go back to the house—”

Austin hooked his arm around her waist, clasping her against his side, and, with his free hand, fumbled in his coat pocket for the fancy cell phone. A moment later, he barked, “Garrett? We're out at the old mining camp and we need help.”

Paige closed her eyes against a wave of pain-related nausea.

“No, it's Paige,” Austin went on. “I think she's busted her ankle.”

“It's only a sprain,” Paige insisted.

“Yeah,” Austin said in reply to whatever
Garrett
had said. All Paige could make out was the thrum of a masculine voice on the other end. “Somebody will need to bring the horses back home.” Another pause. “Yeah. Thanks.”

“Let's see if we can make it over to that fallen log over there,” Austin told Paige, after he'd dropped the cell phone back into his pocket. “You ought to sit down.”

“There might be snakes—or bugs—” Paige fretted, hopping along beside Austin.

He chuckled. “Snakes might be a concern,” he allowed, “but I can't see why somebody ready to ride five miles with a bum foot would worry about a few ants and spiders.”

The landscape tilted a couple of times before she and Austin reached the log. After feeling around for a solid place, he sat her down, leaning over her and taking a firm grasp on her shoulders when she wavered.