McKettricks of Texas: Austin

Austin shoved a hand through his hair, sucked in a breath and released it, summoned up a casual smile. Paige recognized the tactic from days of old; he was still annoyed, but she wasn’t supposed to notice.

“Do I look as though I need medical supervision?” he asked reasonably, spreading his hands.

He looked like sugar-coated sin, not that Paige would have said so. “All I know,” she said, trying to look and sound innocent, “is that I’ve been hired to take care of you.”

She should have put on the brakes right then and there, admitted she was only teasing, that she thought the idea of signing on as his nurse was as ludicrous as he did.

For whatever reason, she didn’t straighten him out.

Austin crossed to one of the row of fancy refrigerators, wrenched open a door and promptly slammed it shut again, without taking anything out.

Turning back to face Paige, he snapped, “Fine.”

“Fine,” she repeated with a nod, tucking her hands behind her back and hooking her index fingers together. Rocking back on her heels.

“Don’t do that,” Austin growled, storming over to another cupboard, taking out a loaf of bread, extracting two slices and dropping them into the toaster.

“Don’t do what?” Paige asked.

“Don’t repeat what I say.”

“I was only agreeing with you.”

“You’re enjoying this,” he accused.

“Enjoying what?”

“You know damn well what.”

Paige smiled blandly. Watched as he ranged all over the kitchen, getting a plate down from a shelf, then a knife from a drawer, then butter and jam from another one of the refrigerators.

Such an enormous amount of fuss just to make toast.

The bread popped up.

Austin grabbed both slices at once, plunked them down on the plate, spread butter and jam.

Finally walked over to the table and stood stiffly at one end of the bench. “Sit down,” he said. When Paige didn’t move, he added, “I can’t until you do.”

Ah, yes. His manners.

The irony made her want to chuckle, but she didn’t give in to the impulse.

He sat. Ate some of his toast, tore off a piece of buttery crust and gave it to Shep, who wolfed it down.

“You shouldn’t give a dog people food,” Paige said.

“Gosh,” Austin answered, “thanks for straightening me out on that point, Nurse Remington.”

“You don’t have to be such an asshole,” she told him.

He smiled as though weighing the accuracy of the accusation, then dismissed it with a shake of his head. “I don’t know what it is,” he said in his own good time, after chewing and swallowing, “but something about you just totally pisses me off.”

She smiled back. “I feel exactly the same way about you,” she said with a note of saucy surprise.

That was when he laughed. It was a ragged sound, and there was some bitterness in it, though she suspected that had less to do with her than Garrett. Austin had always been prickly about being the youngest of the three McKettrick brothers.

Paige, being the youngest of three sisters, thought she understood. She loved Libby and Julie with all her heart, but she did tend to compare herself to them, and in her own mind, she didn’t always measure up.

“Austin,” she said very gently.

He had finished his toast, pushed away his plate. When he raised his eyes to hers, she was, once again, struck by their very blueness, and by the way that color pierced her in so many tender and nameless places.

“Your brothers are worried about you,” she said, thick-throated. “They just want you to be okay.”

Austin was quiet, absorbing that. He’d lowered his head a little, and his eyes didn’t meet Paige’s, not right away, at least. “My brothers,” he said slowly, “ought to stop treating me like I’m Calvin’s age and let me work things out on my own.”

“What things?” Paige ventured. She was on thin emotional ice here, couldn’t have said why she’d voiced such an intimate question in the first place.

He thrust a hand through his hair. For the briefest of moments, she thought he might answer honestly, but in the end, he simply sighed again and shook his head. The effect was so chilly and distant that he might as well have pushed her away physically.

“I don’t want a nurse,” he said after a long time.

Paige didn’t answer.

Austin left her then, heading upstairs, Shep scrambling at his heels.

Paige just sat there, at the long trestle table where several generations of McKettricks had not only taken their meals, but argued and made peace, borne their singular sorrows alone or shared them with each other. She sat there and thought about families—how precious they were, and how complicated, and how damnably inconvenient sometimes.

It was because of her sisters and their McKettrick men that she was in this fix, after all. If Libby hadn’t decided to marry Tate, and Julie Garrett, then she, Paige, would have no earthly reason to pass the time of day with Austin, let alone serve as his glorified babysitter.

Paige stiffened her spine, jutted out her chin.

After the big wedding on New Year’s Eve, she could leave Blue River, start her life over somewhere else. She’d often thought about going back to school, maybe becoming a physician’s assistant or even a doctor. And there were other options, too, like joining one of the international relief organizations, where her skills and experience, instead of just looking good on a résumé and qualifying her for a top-level salary, would make a real difference.

The hardest part of leaving wouldn’t be parting from her sisters, though the three of them had always been close. No, the prospect that closed Paige’s throat and made her sinuses burn was not being able to see her five-year-old nephew as often as they both liked.

Although Calvin’s birth father was back in his life—sort of—Julie was a single mother. Libby and Paige, both devoted aunts, had done a lot of pinch-hitting, right from the beginning. Paige loved her sister’s child as fiercely as if he were her own, and so did Libby.

On top of that, Blue River was and always would be home, at least to Paige. Like her sisters, she’d been born there, in the old brick hospital that had burned down while she was still in elementary school.

Paige stood up, determined not to follow the memory trail, but it was already too late. Even as she gathered her purse and her coat and her car keys, all with no particular destination in mind, the past unfolded in her mind.

She’d grown up in the modest house her parents had bought when they were newlyweds, probably convinced, being young and naive, that they would be together always.

Inwardly, Paige sighed.

She raised the garage door from the control on the wall and climbed into her car.

Her mom and dad had had three babies in three years. Will Remington, a born husband and father and a gifted teacher, had thrived on family life. Marva? Not so much.

Paige started the car engine, backed carefully out onto the concrete that comprised the upper driveway.

Even though years had passed since Marva had found herself a tattooed boyfriend, announced that she “just wasn’t happy” being a wife and mother and hit the road with barely a backward glance, the hurt still surfaced sometimes.

Marva had eventually come back to Blue River, having made up her mind to reconnect with the daughters she’d abandoned as small children, and she’d succeeded, to a certain degree. Still a gypsy at heart, it would seem, dear old Mom had stayed long enough to demolish Libby’s coffee shop by driving through the front wall and present each of her children with a sizable windfall, the proceeds of an old life insurance policy, prudently invested. With a classic my-work-here-is-done flair, Marva had then given up her apartment and returned to her retired-proctologist husband and their home in Costa Rica.

Paige had not been sorry to see her go. Not like the first time, anyhow.

Reaching the main gates, Paige met Tate, driving his flashy pickup truck and pulling a horse trailer behind. Garrett, riding shotgun, smiled and greeted her with a tug at the brim of his hat.

Paige, no longer distracted by thoughts of her mother, waggled her fingers and then backed up, so Tate could make the wide turn onto the ranch road.

The driver’s-side window zipped down, and Tate took off his hat, set it aside. “Did Austin manage to run you off already?” he asked with a worried grin.

Paige laughed, though her face warmed. She refrained from pointing out that she hadn’t formally accepted the job Garrett had offered her earlier. Instead she replied, “I wouldn’t say that. He is in a mood, though.”

“He’s always in a mood,” Tate said wearily, shoving splayed fingers through his dark hair and then replacing his hat.

Paige indicated the trailer with a nod of her head. “New horse?”

Tate nodded, and now there was a grim set to his mouth. “A little mare,” he answered. “She’s half starved—according to Libby’s friend at the animal shelter, Molly’s owners moved away, nobody’s sure exactly when, and left her behind to fend for herself.”

Paige’s heart slipped a notch. Her sister was always finding homes for unwanted pets of all kinds—dogs, cats, horses, birds, even a few snakes over the years. Before she could make a reply, Garrett leaned from the passenger side of the truck to favor her with a grin.

“So,” he said, “are you taking the job or not?”

A smile tugged at Paige’s mouth. “You’re only slightly less impossible than your younger brother, Garrett McKettrick,” she told him. “The truth is, I haven’t decided.”

Tate flashed the grin that had always made Libby’s heart pound. “It’s a pretty tough assignment, riding herd on Austin. Not everybody’s cut out to do it.”

She was about to call her future brother-in-law on his attempt to manipulate her with flattery, but Libby pulled up just then, tooting the horn of a classic red Corvette Paige didn’t recognize.

After parking behind the truck and horse trailer, Libby got out of the sports car and approached, beaming.

“What do you think?” she asked Paige, gesturing toward the shining vehicle.

Paige blinked. “I think it’s really—red,” she answered, and then laughed, not out of amusement, but out of joy. Her big sister was so happy.

Libby, meanwhile, climbed onto the running board of Tate’s truck, and the two of them exchanged a quick kiss through the open window. That done, she turned toward Paige again.

“Were you going somewhere?” she asked.

Paige sighed, shook her head. “Not really,” she answered.

Tate said he and Garrett would be up at the barn, and the two of them drove off.

Libby watched them go, a special light glowing in her eyes, then smiled at Paige and gestured toward the Corvette.

“It won’t do, of course,” Libby said, “but it’s sure fun test-driving the thing.”

“Why won’t it do?” Paige asked, thinking of her sister’s ancient Impala, with its rust marks and temperamental engine.

“There’s no room for the twins,” Libby told her, with a tolerant grin. “Or for babies or for the dogs, or for groceries or feed sacks—”

Paige laughed. “I get the point,” she said. Then, resigned to the fact that she wasn’t going anywhere, for the moment at least, she watched as Libby walked back to the Corvette, got in and started the engine with a deliberate roar.

As soon as Libby sped by, a flash of red, Paige turned her boring subcompact around and followed her sister up the driveway.

Why fool herself?

She probably could have resisted Austin.

Resisting Molly, the rescued mare, was a whole other matter, though.

CHAPTER FOUR

IT WAS THE sight of a horse trailer that brought Austin out of the house, Shep and Harry, the three-legged beagle, Calvin’s dog, scuttling to keep pace.

Garrett and Tate gave him passing nods but didn’t speak. They were intent on unloading the new arrival.

Austin, curious, unable to resist making the acquaintance of yet another four-legged hay burner, hung around, watching. Garrett opened the trailer and pulled down the ramp.

The small horse lay in the narrow bed of the trailer, delicate legs turned under, barely strong enough, it seemed to Austin, to hold up its head. A black-and-white paint, under all the scruff and dried mud and thistle burrs, the poor critter had been hard done by, that was clear. Its ribs jutted out from its side, each one as clearly differentiated from the next as the rungs on a ladder.

Austin spat out a swear word and started forward just as Libby and Paige drove up in two different vehicles—Libby was driving a jazzy red ’Vette, while Paige was in her dull subcompact.

As if by tacit agreement, Tate and Garrett stepped back out of the way so Austin could climb into the trailer. Squatting beside the animal, he ran a slow hand along the length of her neck. The hide felt gritty against Austin’s palm, and damp with sweat.

“Meet Molly,” Tate said, his voice gruff. Briefly, he sketched in the outlines of the call Libby had gotten from her friends at the animal shelter in town, told how he and Garrett had gone straight to the sparse pasture where the mare had apparently been abandoned—they weren’t sure how long ago.

Never taking his eyes off Molly, Austin listened to the account, swore again, once he’d heard it all and processed it. The mare’s halter was so old and so tight that it was partially embedded in the hide on one side of her head—evidently, somebody had put it on her and then just left it. Her slatted sides heaved with the effort to breathe, and the look of sorrowing hope in her eyes as she gazed at Austin sent his heart into a slow, backward roll.

“You’re going to be all right now, Molly,” he promised the mare.

She nickered, the sound barely audible, then nuzzled him in the shoulder.

The backs of Austin’s eyes stung. He stood and got out of the way, feeling worse than useless, so Garrett and Tate could get the mare to her feet, a process that involved considerable kindly cajoling and some lifting, too. Molly stumbled a few times crossing the barnyard, and they had to stop twice so she could rest, but finally she made it into her new stall.

Some of the other horses whinnied in greeting, watching with interest as the mare took her place among them.

Molly had spent her strength, and she immediately folded into the thick bed of wood shavings covering the stall floor.

“Farley’s on his way,” Garrett said, standing behind Austin in the breezeway, laying a hand on his shoulder.

Farley Pomeroy was the local large-animal vet; he’d been taking care of McKettrick livestock for some forty-odd years. When their dad, Jim, was ten or twelve, he’d fallen off the hay truck one summer day and splintered the bone in his right forearm so badly that he required surgery. It had been Doc Pomeroy, who happened to be on the ranch at the time, ministering to a sick calf, who treated Jim for shock and rigged up a splint and a sling for the fifty-mile trip to the hospital.

Austin nodded to let Garrett know he’d heard. If ever a horse had needed Farley’s expert attention, it was this one.

Tate came out of Molly’s stall, took off his hat.

Austin realized then that Libby and Paige were standing nearby.

“You’ll wait for Farley?” Tate asked, meeting Austin’s gaze.

Once again, Austin nodded. “I’ll wait.”

He was aware of it when Tate and Garrett and Libby left the barn, aware too, even without looking, that Paige had stayed behind.

Austin opened the stall door and stepped through it, dropping to one knee beside the little mare.

He didn’t ask her to do it, but Paige found a bucket, filled it from a nearby faucet, and brought it into the stall. Set it down within Molly’s reach. Austin murmured a thanks without looking back at Paige and steadied the bucket with both hands, so the animal could drink.

“Slow, now,” he told Molly. “Real slow.”

When she’d emptied the bucket, Paige took it and went back for more water.

Molly drank thirstily, then rolled onto her side, thrusting her legs out from under her and making both Austin and Paige move quickly to get out of the way.

Shep peered into the stall from the breezeway, Harry at his side.

The dogs made such a picture standing there that Austin gave a ragged chuckle and shook his head. Molly didn’t seem frightened of them, but he stroked her neck just to reassure her, told her she was among friends now, and there was no need to worry.

“Shall I take them into the house?” Paige asked.

“Might be better if they weren’t underfoot when Doc gets here,” Austin answered, not looking at her. “Thanks.”

She left the stall and then the barn, and while Harry was cooperative, it took some doing to get Shep to go along with the plan. He wanted to stick around and help out with the horse-tending, it seemed.

Insisting to himself that it didn’t matter one way or the other, Austin wondered if Paige would come back out to wait with him or stay inside the house.

She returned within five minutes, handed him an icy bottle of water.

He thanked her again, unscrewed the top and drank deeply. His back didn’t hurt, but he knew he’d be asking for it if he continued to crouch, so he stood, stretched his legs, finished off the water.

Paige looked almost like a ranch wife, standing there in that horse stall, her arms folded and her face worried. Maybe it was the jeans.

“How can things like this happen?” she muttered, staring at poor Molly.

Austin knew Paige didn’t expect an answer; she was thinking out loud, that was all. He wanted to put an arm around her shoulders right about then and just hold her against his side for a little while, but he wrote it off as a bad idea and kept his distance—insofar as that was possible in an eight-by-eight-foot stall.

A silence fell between the two of them, but it was a comfortable one. Austin moved out into the breezeway, and he and Paige stood side by side in front of the half door of the stall, both of them focused on the mare.

Soon, Doc Pomeroy’s old rig rattled up outside, backfired, then did some clanking and clattering as the engine shut down.

Austin and Paige exchanged glances, not quite smiles but almost, and turned to watch as the old man trundled into the barn, carrying his battered bag in one gnarled hand. Probably pushing eighty, Doc still had powerful shoulders, a fine head of white hair and the stamina of a much younger man.

“Come on in here, Clifton,” he said, half turning to address the figure hesitating in the wide, sunlit doorway. “I might need a hand.”

Clifton Pomeroy, Doc’s only son, hadn’t shown his face in or around Blue River in a long time. Not since Jim and Sally McKettrick’s funeral, in fact.

As kids, Cliff and Jim McKettrick had been the best of friends. Later on, they’d been business partners. When Jim had shut down the oil wells on the Silver Spur, though, Cliff had objected strenuously, since he’d been making a lot of money brokering McKettrick crude to various small independents. The association—and the friendship—had ended soon after that.

Austin’s dad had never said what happened—giving reasons for things he regarded as his own business had not been Jim McKettrick’s way. On the rare occasions when Cliff Pomeroy’s name had come up, Jim had always clamped his jaw and either left the room or changed the subject.

Now, finding himself back on a ranch he’d left on bad terms, Cliff hung back for a few moments, sizing things up. Then, in that vaguely slick way he had, he strolled easily into the barn, approaching Austin with one hand extended in greeting. His smile was broad and a little too bright, reminiscent of Garrett’s late boss, Senator Morgan Cox.

Because there was no way to avoid doing so without hurting Doc’s feelings, Austin shook hands with Cliff and said hello.

By then, Doc was in the stall with Molly and Garrett. Tate and Libby were entering the barn.

Everybody clustered in front of the stall door.

Doc, crouching next to the mare, looked up and frowned. “What is this?” he demanded. “Some kind of convention?”

Doc had always been a cranky old coot, but he knew his business.

Cliff chuckled nervously, took off his baseball cap and ran a hand through his thinning brown hair. “You want a hand or not, Dad?” he asked, his tone falsely cheerful.

Austin recalled his mom saying that Clifton Pomeroy must have taken after his mother’s people, since he looked nothing like his father.

Doc opened his bag and rooted around inside with one of his pawlike hands. Brought out a round tin and a packet of gauze. Catching Austin’s eye, he said, “You’ll do. The rest of you had better occupy yourselves elsewhere and give this poor horse room to breathe.”

They all stepped away from the door, so Austin could go through.

Garrett struck up a conversation with Cliff, and the whole bunch receded, including Libby and Paige.

By then, Doc had filled one large syringe, set it carefully aside and filled another, and his expression was so grim that Austin was momentarily alarmed.

“What is that stuff?” he rasped, kneeling next to the veterinarian, near Molly’s head.

Doc’s mouth twitched, but he probably hadn’t smiled, or even grinned, in decades, and he didn’t break his record now. “Antibiotics, a mild sedative and a painkiller.”

Austin nodded, scratching lightly behind Molly’s ears and speaking to her in a soothing tone while Doc administered the shots, one right after the other.

The mare flinched, but that must have been all the resistance she had in her, because she lapsed into a noisy sleep right away.

Doc used some hand sanitizer from a bottle in his bag and began pulling away the half-rotted remains of Molly’s halter. Now and then, some hair and hide came away with it, and there were places where scabs had grown right over the strips of nylon.

Austin felt sick to his stomach.

“There are sterile wipes in my bag,” Doc told him quietly in a tone that indicated both understanding and stern competence. “Disinfect your hands, boy, then start cleaning the wounds as I uncover them. We’ll apply some ointment after that, and hope to God an infection doesn’t set in.”

Austin did as he was told, working quickly.

Maybe forty-five minutes had gone by when they’d finished. Molly came to right away, shook off the sedative and even scrambled to her feet.

Doc finished cleaning her up and dabbed on more ointment.

“She’s a good strong girl, then,” the old man proclaimed, patting Molly’s flank. “What she needs now is some supper and some rest and a whole lot of TLC.”

Austin fetched an armload of grass hay and dropped it into Molly’s feeder, then made sure the automatic waterer in her stall was working. Doc tarried long enough to watch her eat for a few moments, then picked up his bag and left the stall.

Austin shut and latched Molly’s door.

The other horses snorted and nickered, calling for room service.

“Thanks,” Austin told Doc.

Doc merely nodded. He wasn’t much for idle conversation.

While Austin fed the rest of the critters, Doc washed up at the sink in the tack room. Austin finished the chow chores pretty fast and washed up, too.

For some reason, Doc lingered in the tack room, rolling down the sleeves of his shirt, carefully buttoning the cuffs.

He and Austin left the barn at the same time, while Tate and Garrett came out of the main house by way of the kitchen door. Clifton was with them.

Austin looked for Paige, but there was no sign of her.

Probably for the best, he thought.

But he wasn’t quite convinced.

Libby hooked her arm through his and smiled up at him. “Paige went to town to fetch Calvin,” she said.

Austin chuckled, shook his head. He liked Libby, liked Julie, too—they were the sisters he’d never had. Paige was harder to categorize.