McKettricks of Texas: Austin

by Linda Lael Miller

  Austin’s eyes twinkled and the charm dial was set on High. “You mean, besides me?” he drawled, beaming down on Mary Kate like sunshine on the first real day of spring.

  Mary Kate, suitably captivated, flushed and swatted at his chest with one hand. “Austin McKettrick, the things you say,” she marveled, laughing.

  “You’ll be there, won’t you, Mary Kate?” Austin asked. “At the wedding, I mean?”

  “Mama and I already RSVP’ed,” Mary Kate said with a quick nod. “We wouldn’t miss a shindig like that for anything. I can’t hardly wait for the reception, what with all the food and the fancy clothes and the music.”

  Austin’s voice was a deep, smooth rumble. “You be sure and save a dance for me now,” he said. “I’ll be mighty disappointed if you don’t.”

  Paige turned her head on the off chance that Mary Kate might see her roll her eyes. Dr. Colwin did see—Mary Kate remained enthralled with Austin and probably wouldn’t have noticed a meteor shower—and he grinned to let Paige know it.

  She chuckled. Shook her head.

  Although she’d met the doctor before, when Austin was brought in after the incident at the oil fields, she had naturally been too preoccupied by the emergency at hand to notice that the newcomer was attractive, in a lean, serious-runner kind of way, with dark, close-cropped hair, nice hazel eyes and exceptionally good teeth.

  “Nice to see you again,” Dr. Colwin said, smiling at Paige. She didn’t deliberately check out his left hand—the way he was holding Austin’s chart revealed the pertinent information.

  No wedding ring. Not even the pale line left by the recent removal of said ring. But, then, not all married men wore their wedding bands, as she’d learned the hard way not once but twice in her dating history.

  She liked Dr. Colwin, but she didn’t feel a charge. Dammit.

  “Things are a little less hectic this time around,” Paige remarked pleasantly. Sooner or later, she and Dr. Colwin would be working together, perhaps on the same shifts, and it wouldn’t hurt to get acquainted.

  She was a little surprised when Austin took her hand. It wasn’t as if they went around holding hands a lot, after all.

  “Hungry?” he asked. Now his drawl was even more honeyed than before, when he’d been flirting with Mary Kate.

  Paige looked at him, blinked in confusion. What was he up to?

  “I guess,” she said slowly and with great uncertainty.

  That was evidently answer enough for Austin; he all but pulled her out of the clinic, into the chilly sunshine.

  “What was that all about?” Paige asked when they were both back in Garrett’s car, with the doors shut and their seat belts fastened.

  Austin, engaged in the process of starting the engine, backing out of their parking space with studious care, was the picture of innocence. He did, however, have the decency to redden a little along the strong line of his jaw.

  “I just figured, if we’re going to have steak, we’d best get on with it,” he said. “We’re burnin’ daylight, as they say out on the ranch.”

  “Oh, please,” Paige said, and laughed. “You just had cereal and orange juice. You can’t possibly be all that hungry.”

  Austin sent her a sheepish glance, pausing at the exit from the clinic parking lot to look in both directions. As he put on his sunglasses and looked straight ahead, his profile was so fine that Paige felt a little twitter inside, and her breath caught.

  Why did he have to be so freakin’ good-looking? she wondered. Wasn’t her life complicated enough, with both her sisters getting married in a couple of months, her career in limbo and the renovations on her house taking forever and a day?

  Austin shifted into second gear, careful to stay within the speed limit, then eased into third when they got to a straight stretch. Blue River had one stoplight, and it tended to get stuck on red for as long as ten minutes at a stretch, but since it happened to be right next to the police station, most people just grumbled and waited it out.

  Austin, of course, wasn’t most people.

  Granted, there weren’t any other vehicles in sight, not moving ones, at least, so he drove through.

  The squad car appeared behind him instantly, as if by magic, lights flashing, siren giving one insistent whine.

  “Hell,” Austin growled, swinging the Porsche to the side of the road.

  Paige touched her fingers to her lips, mainly to hide her amusement.

  Tate, being the chief’s closest friend, had nicknamed Brent Brogan “Denzel.” Though he was much younger, Brogan did bear a strong resemblance to the handsome actor.

  The window purred down, and Austin had his good-ole-boy smile ready.

  Chief Brogan bent to look through the gap.

  He was not wearing a smile.

  Paige bit the inside of her lower lip, so she wouldn’t giggle.

  “Where’s the fire?” Brogan growled, pushing his mirrored sunglasses up his nose.

  Austin sighed. “Come on, Brent,” he said. “You know that traffic light doesn’t work like it ought to.”

  “I know,” Brogan said mildly, “that it was red when you went through it like it was green instead.”

  “Will it help if I admit everything and swear I’ll never step off the straight and narrow again?” Austin asked.

  Paige gave her head a slight shake. There were times when being a smart-ass didn’t pay, and this was one of them.

  “It might make me feel a little better,” the chief quipped, “but I doubt it’ll do much for you.”

  Austin spread his hands but said nothing.

  “License and registration, please,” Brogan said.

  “Give me a break,” Austin muttered, but he got out his wallet, extracted his license and handed it over.

  Paige, meanwhile, opened the glove compartment and found the registration. She gave it to Austin, who relayed it to Brogan, who pondered it as though it were written in hieroglyphics.

  Solemnly, he handed the items back to Austin.

  “I’ll just get my ticket book,” Chief Brogan said. “Wait here.”

  “I’ll just get my ticket book,” Austin mimicked, once the chief was out of earshot. “Wait here.”

  Paige could no longer keep from smiling. “You did run the light,” she said.

  “Yes, Paige,” Austin replied evenly, “I’m aware of that. And we’d probably still be sitting there, waiting for it to change if I hadn’t.”

  “And you probably wouldn’t be getting a ticket right now,” Paige pointed out, keeping her tone sweet.

  Chief Brogan returned. He scrawled something in his ticket book, tore the page out, and gave it to Austin.

  Austin looked at it, nodded and stretched to shove it into his pocket, to reside with the prescription Dr. Colwin had given him at the clinic. “Thanks, Chief,” he said.

  Brogan lingered. “Aren’t you going to ask me if I’ve made any progress finding out who shot you?” he wanted to know.

  “I reckon you would have been in touch if you had, Chief.”

  A muscle bunched in Brogan’s jawline. “I’d regard it as a personal favor,” Brogan said, “if you’d be a little more careful until we get a handle on whatever’s going on out there on the Silver Spur. In other words, if you see moving lights, call me before you go rushing off to investigate.”

  “Right,” Austin agreed without much conviction.

  Brogan finally acknowledged Paige. His smile was impressive. “Hello, Paige,” he said.

  “Brent,” Paige responded pleasantly. “How are the kids?”

  “Aunt Gerbera’s been keeping them in line,” he answered. Brent was a widower with two children. Gerbera, his late father’s sister, was a local woman, so Paige knew her quite well.

  “Tell Gerbera I said hey,” Paige said.

  “I’ll do that,” Brent promised affably. Then he pointed an index finger at Austin. “Be more careful,” he said.

  Austin didn’t answer. And maybe he shut the window a little sooner than
necessary.

  They zipped straight to the courthouse.

  Paige waited in the Porsche while Austin went inside, presumably to pay his fine and thus clear his name after his brush with the law.

  When Austin returned, the two of them conferred and decided it was still too early for the steak. So they headed for Paige’s house.

  Although it was a workday, the construction crew was conspicuously absent. That made Paige testy, though she managed to hide her irritation. She used her front door key and they went inside, Paige first, Austin directly behind her.

  Despite all the changes—wonderful new windows, the fireplace, the overall enlargement of the space—Paige’s gaze went straight to the place where her dad’s hospital bed had stood during the final months of his life.

  As a child, yearning for a mother who had chosen a tattoo-artist boyfriend over her husband and daughters, Paige had been hugely dependent on her father first, and her sisters second. Will Remington had done his best to fill the job descriptions of both Dad and Mom, but he hadn’t been superhuman.

  He’d been a regular man, a dedicated teacher, a loving father, doing his best from day to day.

  Paige had adored him. After standing there for a moment, missing her dad with a keenness so sharp that it knifed through her heart and made her sinuses throb with heat and moisture, she dashed at her eyes with the backs of both hands, determined to move on. Go through the house, room by room, and assess the renovation progress.

  But even though she was very careful to avoid Austin’s gaze, he’d seen her grief and recognized it for what it was.

  He took hold of her shoulders and turned her around, pulled her against his chest. She tried to stifle the sob his tenderness brought on, but the effort was a failure.

  “Talk to me,” he said, his voice throaty.

  Her mind remembered everything about his touch, his voice, the nameless emotions he elicited. “It’s nothing,” she lied, but she didn’t withdraw from his embrace.

  Austin threaded his fingers through her hair, tilted her head back a little way. “Paige,” he said, searching her eyes.

  There was no hiding the tears. Well aware that Austin had lost not just one parent but both, in a single tragic accident, she sniffled and squared her shoulders and said, “It was worse for you and Tate and Garrett.”

  “Losing somebody you love isn’t easy for anybody.”

  She watched him closely. There was no way she could disagree, and she didn’t trust herself to speak.

  Gently, his fingers still buried in her hair, he kissed her forehead. “I used to think one day I wouldn’t miss them anymore. It’s been ten years, going on eleven, and that day still hasn’t come.”

  Paige slipped her arms around his middle, because for all that they’d been lovers, mismatched and destined for heartbreak, they had also been friends. She rested her head against his chest and breathed in the scent of his skin and his freshly laundered T-shirt. “I know what you mean,” she replied softly, her voice muffled. “Every once in a while—not often—I dream that my dad is still alive. That he’s still teaching his classes at school and repairing things in this old house and watching out for Libby and Julie and me.”

  Austin curved a finger under Paige’s chin and lifted, so that their eyes met. His mouth quirked up in that familiar grin that wasn’t. “You really plan on living in a place this big all by yourself?” he asked.

  Paige chuckled, though her vision was still a bit blurred. “You’re a fine one to talk,” she pointed out. “I’ve stayed in hotels that were smaller than your house.”

  “It isn’t just my house,” Austin replied, delaying her for just a fraction of a second when she moved to pull away. “Tate and Garrett own equal shares.”

  Paige was leading him toward the kitchen. “Yes. And just the part of it Julie and Garrett and Calvin live in is bigger than this entire place.”

  He followed, and though he was grinning, his eyes looked hollow.

  The man had been seriously injured, Paige reminded herself, and he’d just slept for nearly thirty-six hours in a row. He was starting to run down.

  “Maybe we should just go back to the Silver Spur,” she said gently.

  “Not until I get my steak,” he replied. He ducked his head into the kitchen, craned his neck to look around, take it all in.

  Paige had the feeling he was really looking at things, not just going through the motions to be polite. She made quick work of the rest of the tour, skipping the master bedroom entirely, and they went back out to the Porsche.

  Two streets over and they were back at the town’s one traffic light again. And it was red.

  Austin made a little ceremony of stopping, gearing down, adjusting all the mirrors, resetting the radio to a station he liked. When the light still hadn’t changed after all that and a few other creative gyrations, he rested his forehead against the top of the steering wheel and pretended to snore.

  Paige laughed.

  Someone pulled up behind them in an old car and tooted the horn impatiently.

  The light remained unchanged.

  Austin winked at Paige. Then he unhooked his seat belt, got out of the vehicle and strolled back to chat a while with the other driver. This being Blue River, where almost everybody knew almost everybody else, the exchange appeared to be a friendly one.

  When the light finally changed, Austin sprinted back to the Porsche, climbed in, fastened his seat belt again and drove sedately through the intersection.

  “Very nice,” Paige teased, applauding briefly. “Chief Brogan would be so proud.”

  Austin merely grinned at that.

  Two minutes later, they pulled into the broken-asphalt parking lot beside the Silver Dollar Saloon. A neon beer sign flickered behind a greasy window, and Patsy Cline’s voice spilled through the screen door and out over the weathered wooden sidewalk that probably dated back to Blue River’s wilder days.

  The song was “Crazy.”

  Paige tried not to take it personally.

  THE HINGES ON THE SCREEN DOOR screeched as Austin pulled it open. He waited while Paige crossed the threshold just ahead of him.

  The Silver Dollar looked seedy inside as well as out, but the food was good. A couple of decades back, the Dollar had done a flourishing business selling beer and soda and cheeseburgers to tourists stopping off on their way to Austin or San Antonio, but trade had fallen off considerably.

  A spin rack of bent-cornered postcards, bearing slogans like, “Don’t Mess with Texas” and “A Big Howdy from the Lone Star State,” angled for floor space with shelves displaying everything from cans of motor oil to candy bars in faded wrappers. The pool tables were in use, even though it wasn’t yet noon, and the regulars already lined the bar.

  Flossie Kirk, who had been waiting tables at the Dollar longer than Austin had been alive, hustled over to greet them. Giving Paige a hug that nearly squeezed all the air out of her lungs, Flossie shouted for all to hear, “Well, it’s about damn time you two got back together.”

  Paige blushed and Austin noticed that she was real careful not to look in his direction. Practically everybody in the place was looking at them.

  Austin fully expected Paige to protest that they weren’t “back together” at all. He decided to be chivalrous and step in.

  “I’ve got a hankering for a good steak, Flossie,” he said, automatically resting his hand against the small of Paige’s back as the elderly waitress led the way to an open table. “Think you can fix me up?”

  Wrinkles fanned out all around the woman’s mouth when she smiled, but in her tired eyes, Austin caught a glimpse of a younger Flossie.

  “From what I hear,” she said, stopping in front of a table next to the window, “it took a doctor, some drugs and a needle and thread to fix you up.”

  Folks at the counter and at the other tables, all people both Austin and Paige had known forever, felt free to chime in with remarks and questions.

  “What the hell happened out there in
that oil field, anyhow?” boomed old Charlie Felder, who owned the feed store and sold tractors and farm implements besides. “Brent ain’t talkin’.”

  “That’s what happens when a town don’t have a newspaper no more,” observed one of the chronic boozers at the bar. “Folks don’t get no news.”

  Austin pulled back a chair for Paige, and she sank onto the red vinyl seat, wearing a rueful expression. She was no doubt wishing they’d gone somewhere a little classier than the Silver Dollar, but fine-dining opportunities were few and far between in their part of Texas. About the best they could do were fast-food places and the mediocre restaurant in the Amble On Inn.

  “Now, Roy Lee,” one of the other midday drinkers jived, “you know you never read the newspaper even when the Blue River Weekly was a goin’ concern.”

  “Who do you figure shot you, Austin?” someone else called out.

  “Y’all just hush up now,” Flossie interceded in the raspy voice of a lifelong smoker, “and let these young people eat in peace!”

  Paige was busy studying her menu as though she hadn’t memorized the thing years ago, like most of the people in town.

  Flossie asked for the drink orders, and Austin, who would have enjoyed a beer, chose a soft drink instead. Paige requested unsweetened iced tea.

  The more inquisitive customers, having gotten their ears pinned back by Flossie, commenced to minding their own business.

  Flossie brought the drinks.

  Austin, who figured he must have been craving a thick steak even in his sleep, he was so hungry, ordered a rib eye, rare.

  Paige opted for the salad bar. She was up there piling a plate high with lettuce and not much else, it looked like, when the screen door hinges creaked again. Austin glanced that way out of idle curiosity and saw Cliff Pomeroy walk in.

  Austin hadn’t really thought about his father’s one-time friend very much—he’d been a little busy—but now, waiting for his steak and for Paige to come back with a lunch better suited to a rabbit than a person, he found himself taking the man’s measure.

  Cliff was probably in his late forties, if not his early fifties, and though he’d always been a flashy dresser and a ladies’ man, he’d lost some of his luster since the days when he and Jim McKettrick had been friends.