McKettricks of Texas: Tate (24 page)

“Yep,” Tate answered, standing in the stirrups to stretch his legs a little before turning to meet the other man’s gaze. “You’re looking at the new foreman,” he said. “For the time being, anyway. I’ll be moving into the Ruiz place myself, as soon as the renovations are finished.”

Whatever Harley Bates had expected to hear, it wasn’t that. His small eyes popped a little, and his jaws worked as though he were chewing on a mouthful of gristle. “
You’re
the new foreman?”

Tate nodded. He couldn’t blame the other man for being surprised, even skeptical. After all, the foreman did real work, especially on a spread the size of the Silver Spur. Although Tate could ride and brand and drive post holes with the best of them, he couldn’t claim that he’d filled his dad’s boots.

And that was why he’d decided to take on the job. If he was going to run the Silver Spur, he had to get serious about it. He had to learn all there was to know about every aspect of running the ranch.

Although it stung, he knew Garrett had been at least partly right, accusing him of playing at being a rancher.

Bates took off his hat, slammed it once against his thigh, and slapped it on again with such force that it bent the tops of his ears.

Tate suppressed a sigh. “Tell the men there’ll be a meeting tonight,” he said. “Six o’clock, at the new place.”

“You mean, the Ruiz place?” Bates all but snarled.

“I mean, the new place,” Tate answered evenly. “Six o’clock. I’ll provide the chicken and the beer.”

Bates scowled, nodded once, wheeled his horse around and rode away.

T
ATE APPEARED
at the Perk Up at four-thirty that afternoon, with his daughters and their dogs, though Buford and Ambrose waited in the truck.

Julie stayed in the kitchen, but Calvin stood at Libby’s side, watching as Audrey and Ava bounced into the shop. They were wearing jean shorts and matching cotton blouses, blue and white checked.

“It was nice of you to give us your castle,” Calvin said, very solemnly. “Thanks.” Although he had yet to be elected king, he apparently considered himself a spokesperson for the community.

And by
us,
of course, Calvin meant the town of Blue River—the wonder toy was now installed on the lawn at the community center, and according to Julie, so many kids wanted to play in and around the thing that parents had been recruited to supervise. A few people even wanted to sell tickets.

Audrey and Ava looked at each other, then up at Tate, then at Calvin.

“You’re welcome,” Ava said, with great formality. She was definitely the more serious twin, Libby noted, though no less confident than her sister.

“Daddy made us do it,” Audrey added forthrightly. “But we still have our ponies.”

“You have
ponies?
” Calvin said, with wonder in his voice. Then, again, as though such a thing were almost beyond the outer reaches of credibility,
“You have ponies?”

Audrey nodded at him. “Three, if you count Uncle Austin’s. His horse is Bamboozle, but we call him Boozle for short, and he’s really old, and we haven’t named our ponies yet—they’re twins, like we are, or at least they
look
like twins. They’re not, really, but they’re the same age and the same color and—” She paused, though not for very long, to haul in a breath. “Are you a friend of Libby’s?”

Tate and Libby exchanged amused glances.

“She’s my aunt,” Calvin replied, with a note of pride that warmed Libby’s heart.

Audrey smiled at him. “Maybe you can come out to our place sometime, and ride Boozle. He’s old, like I said. Uncle Austin got him when he was ten. Uncle Austin was ten, I mean, not the pony.”

“How come you weren’t at our birthday party?” Ava asked. “We know you from daycare at the community center. Your name is Calvin.”

Calvin was unfazed. “I don’t think I was invited,” he said reasonably.

“Oh,” Ava said.

“How old are you?” Audrey wanted to know.

“Four,” Calvin admitted, squaring his little shoulders.

“Well, that’s probably why,” Ava said matter-of-factly. “You’re practically a baby.”

“I am
not
a baby!” Calvin asserted indignantly.

Libby rested a hand on his shoulder.

“You talk like a grown-up,” Audrey allowed, and after surveying Calvin thoughtfully for a moment or so, she graciously conferred her approval. “He’s right, Ava. He’s not a baby.”

“Guess not,” Ava agreed, with the barest hint of reluctance.

Calvin was clearly mollified. Grinning toothily and adjusting his glasses yet again with the poke of one slightly grubby finger, he said, “It was probably a real girly party, anyhow. Lots of pink stuff.”

Tate chuckled, subtly steering the girls toward the stools at the short counter. Libby had noticed, and appreciated, the way he’d paid careful attention to the exchange between the three children but hadn’t intervened.

“Of course it was girly,” Ava said, looking back at Calvin over one shoulder. “We’re
girls.
”

“Orange smoothies all around?” Libby piped up, figuring it was time to change the subject.

“Yes, please,” Ava said, speaking like a miniature adult.

“Please,” Audrey echoed, scrambling up onto a stool.

“Me, too, Aunt Libby,” Calvin chirped, getting into the spirit of the thing. “But I want strawberry, please.”

Julie stuck her head out of the kitchen. Nothing wrong with her hearing, Libby thought, with an inward smile. It was probably a mother thing.

“No way, José,” Julie told Calvin. “You’ll spoil your supper.”

“It’s not even five o’clock yet,” Calvin complained.

“Grandma’s coming over for meat loaf,” Julie reminded him, “and she likes to eat early, so she can get back to her condo in time to watch her TV shows. We’re picking her up in a little while, and we have to run a few errands first.”

Calvin sighed his weight-of-the-world sigh. It rarely worked with Julie, and this instance was no exception, but with Calvin, hope sprang eternal.

“You’d be welcome to come out to the Silver Spur some
time soon and ride Bamboozle,” Tate told the little boy quietly, his gaze shifting to Julie’s face. “If it’s all right with your mom, that is.”

Julie smiled. She liked Calvin to have new experiences, and riding horses on the McKettrick ranch certainly qualified. As kids, Julie, Paige and Libby had been to lots of parties on the Silver Spur, but those days seemed long ago and far away.

In fact, Libby hadn’t been on a horse since before she and Tate broke up over Cheryl.

“That would be nice,” Julie told Tate. “Thank you.”

He nodded. He looked ridiculously good in his dark blue T-shirt and battered jeans, and the shadow of a beard growing in only added to the testosterone-rich effect. “My pleasure,” he drawled.

The timbre of his voice found a place inside Libby and tingled there.

She shook off the sensation and finished brewing up the orange smoothies, setting them in front of Audrey and Ava and smiling.

“There you go,” she said.

They smiled back at her.

Several moments of silence passed.

“Audrey needs a tutu,” Ava announced, without preamble, after poking a straw into her smoothie and slurping some up. She rolled her lovely blue eyes at Libby and giggled. “She’s pixilated.”

Tate took the third stool, next to the cash register. Rested his muscular forearms on the countertop and intertwined his fingers loosely. He had an easy way about him, as if it were no trouble to wait around.

Not every man was that patient, Libby thought.

“Pixilated?” she asked, to get her mind off Tate’s patience and his muscular forearms and his five-o’clock shadow.

She was only partly successful.

“Ava’s talking about the Pixie Pageant,” Tate said easily.

Libby liked the way he could just sit there, not needing to fiddle with something to keep his fingers busy. There was a great
quietness
in Tate McKettrick, a safety and serenity that reached beyond the boundaries of his skin, big enough to take in his daughters, the old dog, Crockett, his family and the whole of the Silver Spur Ranch.

And maybe her, too.

Libby met his eyes, an effort because she felt shaken now, as though something profound had just happened between her and Tate. Which was silly, because the situation couldn’t have been more ordinary, nor could the conversation.

“I guess things checked out okay, then? The Pixie Pageant is a go?”

Tate nodded, looking beleaguered but mildly amused.
Females,
his manner seemed to say:
Sometimes there’s no figuring them out.

“Yeah,” he said. “It checked out, and it’s a go. A lot depends on your definition of
okay,
though.”

She smiled, resisting an impulse to pat Tate’s shoulder, and poured him a cup of coffee. “On the house,” she said.

Libby realized she’d lost track of her sister and her nephew, shifted her focus.

“Julie?”

Julie, it turned out, was ready to leave; she’d gathered her belongings and her son and was standing almost at Libby’s elbow, a knowing and slightly bemused smile resting prettily on her mouth.

Of course Libby knew what was going through her
sister’s mind; Julie and Paige could stop worrying about their big sister if Libby and Tate got back together.

“See you tomorrow?” Libby asked, wishing Julie would stay just a little longer.

“Sure,” Julie replied hastily, barely looking back. “Tomorrow.”

“Bring scones,” Libby called after her.

Julie laughed, gave a comical half salute and left the shop. The bell jingled over the door, and Calvin looked back, one hand smudging the glass, his eyes full of yearning.

The sight gave Libby a pang. She knew the feeling: on the outside, looking in. It grieved her to see the knowledge in Calvin—he was so young, and she loved him so much.

“We just came from the country club,” Tate told Libby, when Julie and Calvin had left, and she’d snapped out of the ache over her nephew’s little-boy loneliness. He watched with an expression of mystified fondness as his daughters giggled over their drinks. “The pageant is a one-day thing. As far as I can tell, it’s no big deal.”

“You have to have a talent to win,” Ava interjected.

Audrey elbowed her. “I
have
a talent,” she said.

“Oh, yeah?” Ava countered. “
What
talent?”

“That’s enough,” Tate said, though he seemed as still and as calm as ever. “Both of you.”

“I
do too
have a talent,” Audrey insisted, as though he hadn’t spoken. What were these two going to be like as
teenagers?
“I can sing. Mom says so.”

Tate tried again. “Girls,” he said.

“If you call that singing,” Ava said, with a little shrug and a flip of her ebony hair. “I think you sound awful. Anyhow, you know how Mom is about this pageant thing. Her eyes get all funny when she talks about it.”

Although the reference to Cheryl made her mildly uncomfortable, Tate’s expression made Libby want to smile. But since that might have undermined his parental authority, she didn’t.

For all his calm, he was obviously at a loss, too. What to do?

The answer, Libby could have told him, was nothing at all. This was simply the way sisters related—twins or not. She and Paige and Julie still bickered, but it didn’t mean they didn’t love each other. There was nothing Libby wouldn’t have done for Paige and Julie, and she knew the reverse was true, as well.

Libby opened her mouth to make a stab at explaining, realized she didn’t have the words, and closed it again.

“One more word,” Tate told the children, “and nobody rides horseback, swims in the pool, goes to the library or plays a video game for a whole month.”

Two sets of cornflower blue eyes widened.

“Okay,” Ava breathed, looking and sounding put-upon. She adjusted her glasses, though not by shoving them upward at the bridge of her nose, the way Calvin did.

“That’s a word,” Audrey pointed out triumphantly. “
Okay
is a word!”

“You just said a
whole bunch
of words!” Ava cried.

“Let’s go pick up the fried chicken and beer,” Tate said, shoving off his stool to stand, and the girls scrambled off their stools, too, orange smoothies in hand.

He paid for the drinks.

“Daddy’s having a cowboy meeting at the house where Mr. and Mrs. Ruiz used to live,” Ava said to Libby, her tone and expression serious. “He’s going to tell them where the bear shit in the buckwheat.”

Tate flushed, the color throbbing in his neck and then pulsing briefly above his jawline and darkening his ears a little.
“Ava.”

“That’s what you told Uncle Austin,” the little girl retorted. “I
heard
you.”

“Esperanza’s going to take care of us while Daddy’s at the cowboy meeting,” Audrey explained, rapid-fire. “Because cowboys cuss and we shouldn’t be around to hear things like that. So we get to have tacos for supper and make popcorn and spend the whole night in Esperanza’s suite and watch as many movies as we want to, even if it’s a hundred!”

“Wow,” Libby said, very seriously, widening her eyes a little for emphasis, “a hundred movies?”

“More like one movie, a hundred times,” Tate said dryly.

Libby laughed.

Ava spoke up again. “I don’t see why it takes a whole meeting just to tell people where a bear—”

Tate cupped a hand around the child’s mouth. “Maybe I could stop by your place later, so we could talk about the tutu and stuff?” he said, his eyes practically pleading with Libby to agree.

The image of Tate McKettrick shopping for a tutu was beyond funny. She could hold back another burst of laughter, but not the twinkle she knew was sparkling in her eyes as she enjoyed the mind-picture.

“What time does the buckwheat meeting get over?” Libby asked sweetly, resting her hands on her hips and heartily enjoying Tate’s obvious discomfort. At the same time, it touched her heart, the way he cared so much about being a good father, getting things right.

Even to the extent of shopping for tutus, when it came to that.

Her throat ached. Her dad had been the same way.

She missed him so much.

“Eight o’clock, maybe,” Tate said, looking hopeful. “Is that too late?”

“Not for me,” Libby answered, “but
you
look a little tired, cowboy.”

He flashed her a grin, maybe to prove he wasn’t all
that
tired.

The twins were at the shop door by then, still squabbling.

Tate bent his head, spoke quietly into Libby’s ear. “I’ll save you some chicken and beer,” he said. “Meet me at the new place later, and bring the dog if you want to.”

“Maybe,” Libby said firmly, unsettled now. “Last time—”

The patented McKettrick grin came again, even more dazzling than before. “Yes,” Tate said. “I remember.”

Libby was wavering, and she didn’t want him to know that.

She all but pushed Tate to the door, and that made the girls laugh.

“Later?” he asked. His voice was a sexy rumble.

“Don’t count on it,” Libby said, but she was rattled and planning on showing up at his place for sure and they both knew it.

Tate smiled and left, shepherding his daughters across the street, hoisting them into the back seat of the truck, assisting with buckles and belts affixed to safety seats while gently fending off a pair of overjoyed pups.

Libby watched, resting her forehead against the glass in the front door of the Perk Up.

When she sensed that Tate was about to turn in her direction, she pulled back quickly and turned the “Open” sign to “Closed.”

She locked the door.