McKettricks of Texas: Garrett (31 page)

“What do you think?” she asked, worried. “A hundred and one is a pretty high temp, isn't it?”

Paige smiled, perched herself on the arm of one of the sitting room chairs, folded her arms in much the same way Calvin had. “If it goes up, we'll worry. It's not unusual for a child to run a fever, Julie, and this one isn't all that high. And he was vaccinated against the more serious strains of influenza, wasn't he?”

Julie nodded. “Of course,” she said. She watched her sister for a long moment, then sat down on the couch, facing her. “I guess you must have run straight into Austin when you got here, huh?” she asked, finally.

The smile faded and Paige looked away. “Yeah,” she admitted. “He opened the back door when I knocked.”

“I'm sorry,” Julie said, very softly.

Paige shrugged. “Don't be,” she replied, with a lightness
she obviously didn't feel. Finally, her gaze connected with Julie's. “It's bound to happen, with Libby and Tate getting married and you—”

A silence fell.

“And me?” Julie prodded, a few moments later.

“Come on, Jules,” Paige said, spreading her hands wide. “I know there's something going on between you and Garrett.”

Julie admitted nothing. She just raised one eyebrow.

Paige grinned, though sparely. “You're glowing like you swallowed a strand of Christmas tree lights. Besides, I'm psychic as far as you and Libby are concerned.” She leaned forward a little and spoke with quiet drama. “You can have no secrets from me.”

Julie rolled her eyes in the direction of Calvin's room, indicating that Paige should be careful what she said.

“He's asleep,” Paige said, referring to her nephew. “And, anyway, give him some credit. My man Calvin is a perceptive guy, even if he
is
only five years old. He's probably figured things out by now, and even if he hasn't, it would be better just to tell him that you and Garrett are dating.”

“We're
not
dating,” Julie whispered fiercely.

Paige widened her eyes in that same mocking way that had driven both Julie and Libby crazy when they were all younger.

“Oh,
right,
” she scoffed.

Julie bit her lower lip, stuck for what to say next.

Paige giggled at her discomfort. “What is it with you?” she teased. “Of the three of us, you were always the boldest one. Why can't you admit that you and Garrett are—?” Her voice dropped to a whisper.
“Doing it?”

“Paige!” Julie protested.

Paige shook her head, and her sleek dark hair gleamed in the thin light flowing in through the windows. It wasn't even October yet, but the weather was wintry.

“You're in love with him,” Paige insisted.

Julie thought of Senator Cox, and the dreadful accident, and the look she'd seen in Garrett's eyes when he announced his mentor's death to a television audience.

Tears filled her eyes, spilled down her cheeks.

Paige left the arm of the chair to sit beside Julie on the couch and slip a sisterly arm around her.

“What, Jules?” she asked. “What is it?”

Julie sniffled. Straightened her spine. “I can't fall in love with Garrett McKettrick,” she said. “I
won't
fall in love with him.”

Paige's voice was gentle. “Why not?”

“Because,” Julie answered, groping a little, finding her feelings hard to put into words, “it would hurt too much to fall back out again.”

A
DEATH IS A COMPLICATED THING
,
and the details took a couple of hours to manage.

Nan's sister and brother-in-law arrived at the hospital within minutes of being summoned and squired her home, where she needed to be. Although the ordeal was just beginning, Nan looked worn through, almost transparent, like the fabric of an old shirt.

Garrett hoped the family would step up, surround her, hold her and the children up until the shock waves stopped coming.

He made calls to various high-level officials, including the president of the United States. He set up a press conference for two o'clock that afternoon, but gave Charlene Bishop the promised lead in the race to break the story first.

Finally, he arranged for Senator Cox's body to be removed to a local funeral home and took a cab to his downtown condo. Overlooking Town Lake and the Congress Avenue Bridge, probably most noted for its periodic eruption of flying bats numbering in the hundreds, the space was large and airy and sparely furnished.

Standing just inside the front door, Garrett took a moment to reorient himself to a place that should have seemed a lot more familiar, given that he'd owned it since
he graduated from law school. But he might have lived there in another incarnation, as an entirely different man, for all the connection he felt to those rooms.

He wandered through to the master bedroom, rifled through his closet, chose a suit from his collection and tossed it onto the bed. In the adjoining bathroom, he showered and shaved, but he couldn't quite bring himself to put on the fancy duds, not yet, anyway.

Garrett still had almost two hours before the press conference, so he dressed in jeans and a black T-shirt and boots. He was standing in front of his refrigerator, studying the contents and feeling totally uninspired, when his doorbell chimed.

Custom-designed, the gizmo tripped through the first few lines of Johnny Cash's “Ring of Fire.”

Frowning, Garrett left the fridge—there was nothing in there he felt brave enough to eat anyhow—crossed the kitchen and entryway and pulled open the door, braced to face down a reporter, if not a pack of them. Austin wasn't a big city; just about everybody in the news business knew where to find him.

But Tate and Austin stood in the corridor, looking too big for the space, with their wide shoulders and their cowboy hats.

“We thought you might need a little moral support,” Tate announced to Garrett, pushing past him.

Austin followed, took off his hat and sailed it onto the surface of the foyer table. “Whether you want us or not,” he added, in a drawl, “here we are.”

Garrett shoved a hand through his hair, momentarily stuck for something to say. Several possibilities came to mind, but they were all too sappy.

He shut the door.

Tate looked him over as he passed, heading for the living room. “You clean up pretty well,” he observed.

Austin got there ahead of them both.

“Thanks,” Garrett said, belatedly.

“You even shaved,” Austin remarked, making himself comfortable by dropping into the best seat in the condo, a leather wingback chair custom-tooled with the name McKettrick and the Silver Spur brand. “I'm impressed.”

Tate set his hat aside and wandered into the kitchen. His question echoed back to Garrett, who was still in the living room. “You got anything to eat in this place?”

“Nothing that might not have medicinal properties,” Garrett replied. The situation was still bad, that hadn't changed, but the rest of the day would be a little easier, now that his brothers were there.

Austin took his phone from the pocket of his denim jacket and tapped at the screen a few times with one index finger. “Hey, Pedro,” he said affably, after a moment or two, a grin spreading across his face. “It's me, Austin McKettrick—”

While Austin placed an order for Mexican food, Tate meandered back from the kitchen. Looking around, he shook his head.

“Not very homey,” he said.

Garrett sighed. “It doesn't have to be ‘homey,'” he countered. “It's just a place to shower and sleep when I'm in town.”

“Get you,” Tate said, with a note of good-tempered mockery. “Keeping a fancy place like this just for a place to crash when you're in this part of the country. You got another one just like it in Washington, D.C.?”

“Extra jalapeños,” Austin told Pedro. “Sure, I'd appre
ciate that,” he told the restaurant owner, who happened to be an old friend of the family. “Send the grub on around the corner to Garrett's place when it's ready.” A pause. Austin's blue gaze flicked to Garrett, and some of the shine went off him. “Yeah. Yeah, it's a pity about the senator. Yeah. I'll pass the word, Pedro. Thanks.”

“I stay in residence hotels when we're in Washington,” Garrett snapped, in answer to Tate's question. Too stressed to sit, he paced instead.

“Just like regular folks,” Tate joked.

Garrett plunked down on the arm of yet another chair, assessing his brothers. “What do
you
know about ‘regular folks'?” he jibed. “Until you took up with Libby and moved into the Ruiz place, you were living pretty high on the hog yourself, over at the main house.”

Tate grinned, but his eyes remained solemn.

Except for a slight shrug of his shoulders, he gave no reply.

Austin, evidently bored with the conversation, had taken to scrolling through stuff on the screen of his phone, frowning as though the future of the free world depended on whatever was behind all those colorful icons.

“About that call I woke you up with last night,” Garrett began, folding his arms.

“Denzel called me this morning,” Tate said,
Denzel
being his nickname for his good friend, Chief Brent Brogan. His tone was flat and a little terse. “Why didn't you tell me you were buzzing rustlers in your plane while we were talking?”

“I figured you'd do something stupid if I did,” Garrett replied.

Tate arched one dark eyebrow. “Like…?”

“Like going after them and getting yourself shot.”

A muscle bunched in Tate's jaw. “So you just figured I
didn't need to know somebody was on the Silver Spur, looting our herd?”

“I figured you didn't need to know it right
then,
” Garrett said, grinning. “Thanks to Brogan, you know it now, and I'll bet you've already checked out the scene of the crime. Did you find anything?”

“Tracks,” Tate answered flatly. “No more dead cattle, so that's a plus.”

“Bates figures the loss at around fifty head this time,” Austin remarked, reluctantly dropping the phone back into his jacket pocket. “If that's a ‘plus', then I'd say we're pretty damn hard up for good news around our outfit.”

Fifty head of cattle represented a serious chunk of change, but it wasn't the loss of money that galled Garrett. It was the goddamn, brass-balls
effrontery
of cutting a man's fences, trespassing on his rangeland, thieving from his herd.

He swore and looked away. He was developing a headache, and there was still the press conference to get through. Wearing a suit.

The food arrived, delivered by one of Pedro's many teenage daughters, nieces or cousins, the majority of whom seemed to be named Maria.

Austin footed the bill and flashed a grin at the girl as he tipped her.

The poor kid would probably still be blushing come the middle of next week. She was so busy looking back at Austin on her way out the door that she nearly crashed into a wall a couple of times before finally clearing the threshold.

Tate disappeared into the kitchen and came back carrying three plates with silverware piled on top. He'd jammed a roll of paper towels under one arm, to serve as napkins.

“It's good to know he's still got it,” Tate quipped, inclin
ing his head toward Austin, who was just closing the door behind Maria, but looking at Garrett.

Garrett grinned. “You were worried that he didn't?”

In the next few minutes, they fell to eating, the three of them gathered around Garrett's table. It was sort of like the old days on the ranch, when the whole family had eaten together almost every night.

Garrett's distracted mind wandered—he thought about the upcoming press conference, the senator's funeral, soon to be held, the inevitable transfer of power—so he snagged on a remark Austin made like a leaf spinning downstream and catching behind a rock.

“—so I open the door and Paige Remington is standing there, big as life, come to take care of Julie's boy—”

Garrett made his reentry into the here-and-now with a jolt. “What's wrong with Calvin?”

“Flu, I guess,” Austin said, scraping a cheesy pile of Pedro's unparalleled nachos onto his plate. “According to Esperanza, the poor little guy was heaving like a drunken sailor at the end of a three-day shore leave.”

Tate pretended to wince, but he went right on shoveling in the ole enchiladas. “Audrey and Ava are just getting over that stuff,” he said. “It's a sumbitch while it's going on, but it doesn't last long.”

Garrett frowned, setting down his fork. “How's Julie?” he asked, and by the time he realized what he'd revealed by raising the question, it was too late.

Austin widened his eyes at Garrett, indulged in a long, slow grin before troubling himself to make a reply. “She looked all right to me,” he said, letting the words roll over that glib tongue of his like so much butter and honey. “
Better
than all right,” he finally clarified.

By then, Garrett was glaring at him. “Paige showed up, huh?” he said, just to get under Austin's hide.

And it worked.

The hinges of Austin's jaws got stuck, or so it appeared, and his eyes narrowed. He looked like he was about to push back his chair, jump to his feet and challenge Garrett to a gunfight, like some old-time gambler in a saloon.

So much for the twinkle and the boyish charm.

“Hey.” Tate waved a hand between them. “Do you think maybe you two could get through lunch without arguing?”

Garrett had largely forgotten about his shiner, but now, for no reason he could rightly make sense of, it reasserted itself, aching like hell, and in perfect rhythm with the beat of his heart.

Austin, who had the instincts of a shark scenting blood in the water, relaxed, grinning again. “I'll read a statement for you at the press conference,” he offered, “if you don't want the whole state of Texas speculating as to who might have punched your lights out for you in the recent past.”

“
Nobody
punched my lights out,” Garrett said, through his teeth.

Austin flexed the fingers of his right hand, watching them move as though there were something downright fascinating about it. He had a pretty good scrape abrading his knuckles, Garrett noticed.

So Austin had been the one to hit him. It freaking figured.

“If it's any comfort,” Austin said to Garrett, “I was aiming to deck Tate, not you.”

“It isn't,” Garrett said.

Tate and Austin both chuckled.

Like it was funny or something.

Garrett scowled. “If you'd like a shiner to match mine, little brother,” he told Austin, “I can arrange it.”

“If we're going to argue,” Tate broke in, very quietly, but with the authority that came with being the eldest of the three, even if it was only by a year, “let's argue over something worthwhile. Like whether you two plan on ranching or playing at rodeo and politics for the rest of your lives, like a couple of trust-fund babies.”

Silence.

Garrett pushed his plate away. He was riled, but Julie was tugging at the edge of his mind, too. Was she all right? Was Calvin?

Watching Tate now, Austin flushed. “I've still got things to do,” he said, his voice low and hard-edged. “People to see. Bulls to ride.”

Tate sighed. “So I guess that's an answer, even if it isn't what I was hoping to hear. You're not ready to settle down and help run the Silver Spur.”

“I'll hire somebody to do my share,” Austin said.

“Don't bother,” Tate replied. “No stranger is going to give two hoots and a holler about the Silver Spur.” He turned his gaze to Garrett, made him feel pinned where he was, like somebody's dusty science project, a dead bug, maybe, tacked to a display board. “Might be, it's time to call it good, go our separate ways. Hell, both of you have been doing that since Mom and Dad were killed anyhow. Might as well make it official and sell out.”

Austin went pale behind his tan. “I'm not selling my third of the ranch,” he said.

“Fine,” Tate retorted. “Maybe you'd like to buy
me
out, then. The old Arnette farm is up for sale—I could pick it
up for a song. Bulldoze that shack of a house and raze the barn, then rebuild. I might even raise some crops.”

If they hadn't gone over this ground earlier, he and Tate, Garrett would have thought Tate was just jerking Austin's chain. Since they had, he was pretty sure Number One Brother was serious.

Even if Austin bought Tate's share of the ranch and hired a whole crew of management types to run it, it wouldn't be the same.

“Why the urgency, Tate?” Garrett asked his older brother, genuinely curious as well as quietly alarmed. Who would he be without that ranch? Who would
any
of them be? “The Silver Spur has been in this family since Clay McKettrick bought the original parcel of land a hundred years ago. Now, all of a sudden, you want everything decided and the property lines redrawn before when? Yesterday?”

“What happened to all that talk about how your daughters needed to grow up on the ranch, because they're McKettricks?” Austin threw in. He'd been pale before, now he was flushed.

“Things change,” Tate said gravely. “People change.”

“And you expect us to believe that
you've
changed that much?” Austin retorted, coldly furious. “Goddamn, if this is what love does to a man, then I hope I die a bachelor!”