McKettricks of Texas: Tate (23 page)

Even after his and Cheryl’s divorce, Libby had been careful to stay away from Tate. She managed pretty well, too, until the day of the twins’ birthday, when he’d walked into the Perk Up and the earth had shifted on its axis.

No, for Libby, sex with this one man was cosmic. It was a personal apocalypse, followed by the formation of new universes.

The one thing it would never be was
just sex.

Libby didn’t even have names for the things she felt when she and Tate were joined physically, and for hours or even days afterward.

“It’s getting late,” she said, avoiding Tate’s eyes because she knew she’d get sucked into them like an unwary planetoid passing too near to a black hole if she let him catch her gaze just at that moment. “Maybe you should go.”

He held her close again. She breathed in the scent of him, knew she would be powerless if he made the slightest move to seduce her.

“You’re okay?” he asked, his voice hoarse, his breath moving through her hair like the faintest breeze. He propped his chin on top of her head, a sigh moving through his chest.

“I’m okay,” she confirmed.

He moved back, curved a finger under her chin, and lifted. “Lib?”

She looked up at him.

Don’t kiss me.

I’ll die if you don’t kiss me.

God help me, I’ve lost my mind.

“Everything’s going to be okay,” he told her.

She nodded. Tears threatened again, but she managed to hold them back.

He kissed her forehead.

And then he drew back, no longer holding her.

He bent to ruffle Hildie’s ears in farewell.

Then he left.

Libby poured the remains of her milk—now cold—down the sink. She listened to Tate’s retreating footsteps, fighting the urge to run after him, call him back, beg him to spend the night. She heard the front door open, close again. Then, distantly, the sound of his truck starting up.

Only then did she walk through the living room to lock up.

She switched off the lamps, went back to the kitchen, let Hildie out into the yard one last time.

Once the dog was inside again, Libby retreated to the bathroom, where she brushed her teeth and shed the robe, hanging it from the peg on the back of the door.

“What a pathetic life I lead,” she said, looking at the robe, limp from so many washings, the once-vibrant color faded, the seams coming open in places.

Hildie, standing beside her, gave a concerned whimper, turned and padded into Libby’s room.

The two of them settled down for the night, Libby expecting to toss and turn all night, sleepless, burning for the touch of Tate’s lips and hands, the warm strength of his arms around her, the sound of his heart beating as she lay with her head on his chest.

Instead, sweet oblivion ambushed her.

She awakened to one of those washed-clean mornings that so often follow a rainstorm, sunlight streaming through her bedroom window.

D
AWN HADN
’
T BROKEN WHEN
Tate got out of bed, but a pinkish-apricot light rimmed the hills to the east. He hauled on jeans, a T-shirt, socks and boots. He’d shower and change and have breakfast later, when the range work was done.

He looked in on his girls in their room, found them sleeping soundly, each with a plump yellow dog curled up at her feet. His heart swelled at the sight, but he was afraid to let himself get too happy.

Things were still delicate with Libby.

And Cheryl could change her mind about New York, the apartment, all of it, at any time—come back to the house in
Blue River and start up the whole split-custody merry-go-round all over again.

The thought made his stomach burn.

Quietly, Tate closed the door to his daughters’ room and made his way along the hallway, toward the back stairs leading down into the kitchen.

The aroma of brewing coffee rose to meet him halfway.

He smiled.

Esperanza was up, then. Maybe he’d have to reconsider his decision not to take time for breakfast, since she might not let him out of the house until he’d eaten something.

Tate paused when he stepped into the brightly lit kitchen.

Garrett stood at the stove, wearing jeans, boots and a long-sleeved work shirt, frying eggs. “Mornin’,” he said affably.

Tate blinked, figuring he was seeing things.

Even when he was on the ranch, which wasn’t all that often, Garrett never got up before sunrise, and he sure as
hell
never cooked.

“You’re dead and I’m seeing your ghost,” Tate said, only half kidding.

Garrett chuckled. There was something rueful in his eyes, something Tate knew he wouldn’t share. “Nope,” he replied. “It’s me, Garrett McKettrick. Live and in person.”

Tate fetched a mug from one of the cupboards, filled it from the still-chortling coffeemaker on the counter, watched his younger brother warily as he sipped. “What are you doing here?”

“I live here,” Garrett said. “Remember?”

“Vaguely,” Tate replied. “To be more specific, what are you doing
in the kitchen, at this hour, cooking,
for God’s sake?”

“I’m hungry,” Garrett answered quietly. “And if you
never went to bed in the first place, it doesn’t count as getting up early, does it?”

“Oh,” Tate said. His brain was still cranking up, unsticking itself from sleep.

“Have some eggs,” Garrett said, looking Tate over, noting his get-up. “Planning on playing cowboy today?”

Tate felt his neck and the underside of his jaw turn hot, recalling Garrett’s earlier jibe about feeling guilty over the money and the land, making a show of working for a living. He took a plate from the long, slatted shelf and shoveled a couple of eggs—“cackleberries,” their grandfather had called them—onto it.

They both sat down at the big table in the center of that massive room, and Tate took his time responding to Garrett.

“Yeah,” he finally ground out. “I’m planning on ‘playing cowboy’ today.” He let his gaze roll over Garrett’s old shirt once, making his point. “Where did you get that rag? From wherever Esperanza stashes the cleaning supplies?”

Garrett chuckled, glancing down at his clothes. “Found them in the back of my closet,” he said. “On the floor.”

“Okay,” Tate said, “I’ll bite. What’s with the getup?”

Garrett sighed. Possibly practicing his political skills, he didn’t exactly answer the question. “The lights were on in the bunkhouse and all the trailers along the creek when I came home a little while ago,” he explained, before a brief shadow of sadness fell over his face. He needed a shave, Tate noticed, and there were dark circles under his eyes. “Except the Ruizes’, of course. That was dark.”

Tate dealt with his own flash of sorrow in silence. He knew Garrett had more to say, so he just waited for him to go on.

“I knew the men were up and around, getting ready for a long day herding cattle or riding fence lines,” Garrett even
tually continued. “I decided to put on the gear, saddle up and see if I still have it in me—a day of real work.”

Tate felt a surge of something—respect, pride? Brotherly love?

He didn’t explore the emotion. “These eggs aren’t half bad,” he said.

“Well,” Garrett answered, “don’t get used to it. I don’t cook, as a general rule.”

Tate chuckled, though it was a dry, raspy sound, pushed back from the table, carried his plate to the sink, rinsed it and set it in the dishwasher. Leaned against the counter and folded his arms, watching as Garrett finished his meal and stood.

“Everything all right?” Tate asked, very quietly.

“Everything’s
fine,
big brother,” Garrett replied. He was lying, of course. From the time he was knee-high to a garden gnome, Garrett hadn’t been able to lie and look Tate in the eye at the same time.

Now, he looked everywhere
but
into Tate’s face.

“Let’s go,” Tate said, after a few moments, making for the door.

Just then, Austin came down his personal stairway, clad in work clothes himself, though his shirt was only half-buttoned and crooked at that, and he had a pretty bad case of bed-head. Wearing one boot and carrying the other, he hopped around at the bottom of the steps until he got into the second boot.

“Is there any grub left?” he asked.

“You’re too late,” Garrett told him.

“Shit,” Austin said, finger-combing his hair. “Story of my life.”

“Cry me a river,” Tate said, with a grin and a roll of his eyes, pulling open the back door.

The predawn breeze felt like the kiss of heaven as it touched him.

He thought about Libby, sleeping warm and soft and deliciously curvy in her bed in town. Since about the last thing he needed right then was a hard-on, he shifted his mind to the day ahead, and the plans he’d made for it.

He strode toward the barn, Garrett and Austin arguing affably behind him, glanced back once to see Austin tucking his shirt into his jeans, none too neatly. It was like the old days, when they were boys, and their dad roused them out of their beds at the crack to do chores, not only in the summer but year-round. The Silver Spur was their ranch, too, Jim McKettrick had often said, and they had to learn how to look after it.

So they fed horses and herded cattle from one pasture to another.

They shoveled out stalls and drove tractors and milked cows and fed chickens.

The chickens and the dairy cows were long gone now, like the big vegetable garden. The quarter-acre plot had been his mother’s province; she and Esperanza had spent hours out there, weeding and watering, hoeing and raking. Tate and his brothers had done their share, too, though usually under duress, grumbling that fussing with a lot of tomatoes and green beans and sweet corn was women’s work.

“You eat, don’t you?” Sally McKettrick had challenged, more than once, shaking a finger under one of their noses. “You eat, you
weed,
bucko. That’s the way the
real world
works.”

Reaching the barn door, Tate smiled to himself, albeit sadly. Most of the bounty from that garden had gone to the ranch hands and their families and to the little food bank in town. And what he wouldn’t give to be sweating under a
summer sun again, with his mom just a few rows over, working like a field hand and enjoying every minute of it.

He switched on the overhead lights.

The good, earthy scents of horse and grass-hay and manure stirred as the animals moved in their stalls, nickering and shifting, snorting as they awakened.

Tending the horses wasn’t new to Tate—he’d taken the job over from a couple of the ranch hands when he and Cheryl split and she moved into the house in town—though he rarely got to the barn this early in the day.

The work went quickly, divided between the three of them.

Austin turned his childhood mount, Bamboozle, out with the other, larger horses, since the little gelding was used to them and they were used to him, but Audrey’s and Ava’s golden ponies had to be kept in a special corral, for their own safety.

In the meantime, Tate saddled Stranger, the aging gelding, a strawberry roan, that had belonged to his father. Garrett chose Windwalker, a long-legged bay, while Austin tacked up a sorrel called Ambush.

In his heyday, Ambush had been a rodeo bronc, and he could still buck like the devil when he took the notion.

Austin, being Austin, probably hoped today was the day.

Tate grinned at the thought, shook his head.

His little brother was stone crazy, but you had to love him.

Most of the time.

The paint stallion kicked and squealed in his holding pen, scenting the other horses, wanting to be turned loose.

“What are you planning on doing with that stud?” Garrett asked, as the three of them rode away from the barn, toward the range.

“Brent said we might have to put him down,” Tate answered. He hated the idea, knew Pablo would have hated it,
too, but there had been a death—and that meant the authorities had a say in the matter.

“And you’re just going to go along with whatever he says?” Austin wanted to know.

Tate bristled. “The law’s the law,” he said. “I’d rather not shoot that horse, but I might not have a choice.”

“You could just let him go,” Garrett suggested. “Say he got out on his own somehow.”

“And lie to Brent?” Tate asked. “Not only the chief of police, but my best friend?”

Garrett went quiet.

Austin didn’t seem to have anything more to say, either.

So they rode on, the purple range slowly greening up ahead of them.

The herd bawled and raised dust in the dawn as cowboys converged from all directions, some coming from the bunkhouse, which had its own rustic but sturdy stables, and from the various trailers along the creek. Some of the men were on horseback, while others drove pickups with the Silver Spur brand painted on the doors.

Tate and his brothers fell in with the others as easily as if they had never been away from the work, driving cattle between different sections of land to conserve the sweet grass, rippling like waves under a rising wind.

Resting the roan, Stranger, at the creek’s edge, Tate nodded as Harley Bates rode up alongside him. Harley had ridden for the McKettrick brand almost as long as Pablo had, though Tate didn’t know him as well. Married when he signed on, Bates lived in one of the coveted trailers, although his wife had long since boarded a bus out of town, never to be seen again.

“It ain’t the same without ole Pablo,” Harley said, re
settling his hat, which, like the rest of his gear, had seen better days.

“No,” Tate agreed.

Bates shifted in his saddle, and the odor of unwashed flesh wafted Tate’s way. “I see you’ve been fixing up that house by the bend in the creek.”

A beat passed before Tate figured out what the man was talking about. He nodded again. “So I have,” he said.

“Guess it’ll go to the new foreman,” Bates speculated. All the men were probably wondering who would replace Pablo Ruiz, and they’d either put Bates up to finding out, or he’d come up with the idea on his own, maybe hoping for a raise in pay and more spacious quarters than the one-bedroom single-wide he banked in now.