McKettricks of Texas: Garrett

Which was exactly why she was going to do it.

CHAPTER FIVE

CALVIN.

On a midnight-black horse.

As Julie drove into the yard at Tate and Libby’s place late that afternoon, the sight of her child made her heart catch. Calvin looked not just happy, but transported, perched in that saddle with Garrett McKettrick behind him.

The reins rested easily in Garrett’s leather-gloved hand, and his hat threw his face into shadow, but Julie felt his eyes on her as she stopped the Cadillac, shut off the motor and got out.

Man, boy and horse.

The image, Julie thought, with a sort of exhilarated terror, would remain in her mind forever, etched in sunlight, with the creek dancing behind and the sky a shade of lavender-blue that scalded her eyes.

“Look, Mom, I’m riding a horse!” Calvin crowed.

Her boy, her baby, was safe within the steely circle of Garrett’s arms, she could see that plainly. And yet Julie’s heart scrambled up into the back of her throat and flailed there as she thought of all the terrible things that could have happened.

A snake might have spooked the horse, causing him to be thrown. Badly hurt, or even killed.

Or something—some dirt mote or bit of pollen—could have brought on one of Calvin’s rare but horrifying asthma attacks.

Did he have his inhaler handy, or was it still stashed in the bottom of his backpack, as usual?

She looked around, saw Tate on another horse nearby, Audrey riding in front of him, Ava holding on from behind. Libby smiled from over by the clothesline, where she was unpegging white sheets and dropping them into a basket.

Julie stared at her sister, amazed, angry, admiring. Libby’s happy grin seemed to dim a little around the edges as she left the basket behind in the grass, billowing with what looked like captured clouds, and came toward her.

“Mom!” Calvin yelled again, evidently thinking Julie hadn’t noticed him. “Look! I’m riding a horse!”

Julie’s smile felt brittle on her face, and slippery, barely holding on to her mouth. Be reasonable, she told herself. No need to panic.

“Isn’t that—wonderful,” she said.

Libby was at her side by then. “He’s all right,” she said, very quietly, and with big-sister firmness. “Garrett wouldn’t let anything happen to Calvin, and Tate and I were right here all the time.”

Julie swallowed, watched as Garrett took off his hat, plunked it down on Calvin’s head. The little boy’s face disappeared inside the crown, and his muffled laugh of delight was sweet anguish to Julie.

Her Calvin.

It hurt to love so much.

“I guess this ride’s over, pardner,” Garrett told Calvin, reclaiming the hat and settling it back on his own head. All the while, the man’s eyes never left Julie’s face, and even caught up in a tangle of conflicting emotions, she would have given a lot to know what Garrett McKettrick was thinking just then.

Keeping one arm around Calvin’s middle, Garrett swung his right leg over the horse’s neck and jumped easily to the ground. Set Calvin on his feet.

Giggling, the little boy staggered slightly and whooped, “Whoa!”

Garrett was still watching Julie.

She marched toward him, gave another rigid smile and reached down to grab Calvin’s hand.

“We have dinner plans,” she said, and while she was looking back at Garrett, she was actually speaking to Calvin.

Wasn’t she?

Calvin looked up at her. The sun lit his hair, and he shielded his eyes with one grubby little hand. “But Tate’s going to barbecue,” he protested. “Hot dogs and hamburgers and everything.”

“Another time,” Julie said.

Calvin jerked his hand free of hers, and she felt stung, somewhere down deep. “But I want to stay here!”

Garrett took off his hat again, held it in one hand as he crouched next to Calvin. “A cowboy always speaks respectfully to a lady,” he told the boy, “especially when that lady is his mama.”

Calvin’s lower lip jutted out. “She’s just mad because I got on a horse without permission,” he said. He turned to Julie again, his round little face and baby-blue eyes full of rebellion. “Aunt Libby said I could ride with Garrett! And she’s the boss of me when you’re not here!”

Inwardly, Julie sighed. Outwardly, she kept her cool.

“We can talk about this in the car, Calvin,” she said evenly. “Get your backpack, please. Right now.”

Furious, Calvin pounded off toward the house to retrieve his belongings.

Garrett rose back to his full height. For a moment, it seemed he was about to say something, but in the end he just turned, stuck a foot in the stirrup and mounted again. He rode up alongside Tate, and one of the twins—Audrey, Julie thought—leaped from her dad’s horse to her uncle’s, whooping like a Comanche on the warpath.

Garrett and Tate turned their horses and rode down the gently sloping creek-bank to let the animals drink.

Which meant Julie and Libby were alone for the moment, with Calvin still inside the house.

“If you didn’t want Calvin to ride,” Libby said mildly, “you should have told me.”

Julie realized she’d been holding her last breath and let it out in a whoosh. “I’m sorry,” she said. “I was just—startled.”

Libby raised one eyebrow, watching Julie closely. “Startled?”

Julie bit her lower lip. “Gordon is in town,” she said, very quietly, watching as Calvin stormed out of the house again, his backpack bump-dragging behind him. “Calvin and I are having dinner with him and the wife.”

“Tonight?” Libby asked.

Julie nodded brusquely. “Yes. How do I prepare Calvin for this? What do I say, Libby? ‘After five years, your father has finally decided he wants to meet you’?”

Libby put an arm around her, gave her a squeeze. “So that’s why you were so peevish and unreasonable.”

“I was not peevish and—”

“Yes, you were,” Libby interrupted, smiling. “It’s okay, Jules. I know you get stressed out about Calvin sometimes. I understand.”

Libby did understand, and the knowledge was so soothing to Julie that she finally began to relax.

“I was having fun!” Calvin declared, standing a few feet away now, and glaring up at Julie. “Until you came along, anyway!”

“Calvin Remington,” Julie said, “that’s quite enough. Get in the car.”

“Goodbye, Aunt Libby,” he said, with all due drama. “If I don’t see you again, because my mother is mad at you for letting me have fun, and she sends me away to military school, I’ll get in touch as soon as I’m eighteen!”

Julie held on to her stern face—Calvin’s behavior was not acceptable—but there was a giggle dancing inside her all the same. Just like the one she saw twinkling in her sister’s eyes.

Libby waggled her fingers at Julie. “See you tomorrow?” she asked.

“See you tomorrow,” Julie confirmed, with a sigh.

“IS THAT HIM?” Calvin whispered, a little over an hour later, when Julie led him into the Amble On Inn’s small café. Gordon rose from a table over by the jukebox as they entered, while the lovely blonde woman accompanying him remained seated. “Is that my dad?”

“Yes,” Julie said. After giving Calvin a lecture for acting like a brat at Libby and Tate’s house, she’d explained about their dinner plans. He’d been unusually quiet since then, hadn’t even protested when she’d made him shower and change clothes. “That’s him.”

It all seemed surreal.

How many times, over the short course of Calvin’s life, had she hoped Gordon would change his mind, take a real interest in their son, be a father to him?

An old saying came to mind: Be careful what you wish for….

Gordon had crossed the room, and now he stood facing them. His gaze connected briefly with Julie’s—he mouthed the word “thanks”—and then dropped to Calvin.

“Hey, buddy,” Gordon said, putting out a hand.

Calvin studied his father’s hand for a few moments, his expression solemn and wary, but finally, he reached out.

They shook hands. “Hey,” Calvin replied, looking the stranger up and down.

Julie gave his back a reassuring pat. Silent-speak for Everything’s going to be okay.

“Anybody hungry?” Gordon asked, gesturing toward the table, where the blonde waited, smiling nervously. She was dressed in a pale rose cotton skirt with a ruffled top to match, and her hair fell past her shoulders in a sumptuous tumble of spun gold. Her skin and teeth were perfect.

“We were supposed to have barbecue at Aunt Libby’s,” Calvin said gravely, though he allowed Gordon to steer him toward the blonde and the table.

The evening to come, Julie knew, would be pivotal, changing all their lives forever, even if it went well. If, on the other hand, things went badly …

Julie reined in her imagination.

“Hush, Calvin,” she said, looking around. The scarred café tables, the patched-vinyl chair seats and backs, the crisply pressed gingham curtains—all of it was familiar, and therefore comforting.

“I’m Dixie,” Gordon’s wife said, as he pulled back a chair for Julie.

“Julie,” she responded—warmly, she hoped—once she was seated. Calvin took the chair beside hers, and Gordon sat with his wife, the two of them beaming at Calvin, drinking him in with their eyes.

A sort of haze descended, at least for Julie. Later, she would remember that Gordon had been wearing a blue-and-white-striped shirt, and that Dixie had ordered a chef’s salad with Thousand Island dressing on the side, and that nothing of staggering importance had been said, but she would not be able to recall what she’d eaten, or what Calvin had, either.

After dessert—there had been dessert, because Calvin had a smudge of something chocolate on the clean shirt he’d put on after his bath, back at the ranch house—Dixie produced a digital camera from the depths of her enormous cloth handbag and took what seemed like dozens of pictures—Calvin by himself, Calvin posing with a crouching, grinning Gordon.

Telephone numbers were swapped, and Dixie promised to e-mail copies of the photographs as soon as she and Gordon got home.

Calvin, though polite, seemed detached, too.

After the goodbyes were said in the parking lot, and he was safely buckled into his car seat in the back of the Cadillac, Julie slipped behind the wheel and waited a beat before speaking.

“So,” she said, as Dixie and Gordon went by in their big blue SUV, Gordon flashing the headlights to bright once, in cheery farewell. “That’s your dad. What do you think?”

Calvin was quiet.

“Calvin?” Julie finally prompted, adjusting the rearview mirror until her son’s face was visible.

At some length, Calvin huffed out a sigh. “I thought it would be different, having a dad,” he said. “I thought he would be different.”

“What do you mean?” Julie asked carefully, making no move to start up the car, though she had pressed the lock button as soon as she and Calvin were both inside.

“I was hoping he’d turn out to be a cowboy,” Calvin admitted. “Like Tate and Garrett and Austin.”

“Oh,” Julie said, at a loss.

“But he’s a builder guy instead,” Calvin mused.

“That’s good, isn’t it? Building things?”

“I guess,” Calvin allowed, sounding way too world-weary for a five-year-old. “I bet he gets to wear a hard hat and a toolbelt and cool stuff like that, but I kind of liked it better when I could still wonder, you know?”

She did know. Calvin’s IQ was off the charts. Young as he was, he’d probably constructed a pretty imaginative Fantasy Father in that busy little head of his. Now, he was going to have to get to know the real one, and he was bright enough to see the challenges ahead.

“Yeah,” she said, very gently. She hadn’t hooked up her seat belt yet, and turned sideways so she could look back at Calvin instead of watching him in the rearview. “Is something else bothering you, big guy?”

Calvin took a long time answering. “Do I have to visit my dad someplace far away, like Audrey and Ava visit their mom in New York sometimes?”

Julie’s heart slipped a notch. “Not unless that’s what you want,” she said, when she’d injected a smile into her voice. “And you don’t have to decide for a long time.”

“Good,” Calvin said, and the note of relief in his voice brought tears to Julie’s eyes—again.

She turned once more, facing forward now, waited a few breaths, hooked on her seat belt and started the car.

“I thought I wanted a dad,” Calvin confided, when they were on the main road and headed out of town. “Now, I’m not so sure. I think maybe having Tate and Garrett and Austin for uncles might be good enough.”

Julie swallowed. “Well,” she said, with manufactured brightness, “like I said, you don’t have to decide right away.” The Welcome to Blue River sign fell behind them, and it seemed to her that the night was subtly darker, the stars a little closer to the earth.

“How come you got so mad about me riding the horse?” Calvin asked, when they were well out of town, almost to the tilted mailbox marking the turnoff to Libby and Tate’s little house. “I wasn’t all by myself, you know. I wouldn’t have gotten hurt, because Garrett was right there, behind me.”

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