Austin

by Linda Lael Miller

  The expression in Garrett’s McKettrick-blue eyes was kind.

  He and Tate, Paige realized with a start, would be the brothers she’d never had. They had already accepted her as part of the family, and they would look out for her, if only because they loved her sisters.

  Her throat ached with an emotion she was glad she didn’t have to define, because there were no words for it.

  Garrett gave her a few moments to recover before he tried to continue. He said his younger brother’s name, hoarsely, and then faltered.

  “Go on,” Paige said very quietly.

  “Austin—needs help. He’s never going to admit that, though.”

  Paige nodded, waited. She knew Austin better than most people did, and nothing Garrett had said so far surprised her.

  Garrett sighed again, thrust a hand through his dark-blond hair. “We—Tate and I, that is—think there ought to be somebody around to sort of keep an eye on Austin when none of us are around, just in case—”

  She didn’t speak, hoping the conclusion she’d just jumped to was wrong.

  “Austin needs a nurse,” Garrett finally said, and his tone was decisive.

  “A nurse,” Paige repeated dully. “Garrett, tell me you’re not suggesting that I—”

  Garrett merely smiled and raised one eyebrow ever so slightly.

  Paige swallowed. “Don’t you think that would be a little—well—awkward?”

  “Awkward?” Garrett, the skilled political spin doctor, was probably playing her, but he sure sounded confused. “It’s not as if you would have to bathe him or anything intimate like that.”

  She met his gaze and held it. “What is Austin’s diagnosis, exactly?”

  “He has a herniated disc,” Garrett answered, his tone genuinely grave now.

  “Will he need surgery?” The question was rhetorical; Paige was thinking out loud. Processing the implications of an injury all too common to athletes, no matter what their sport.

  Garrett rubbed his attractively stubbled chin with one hand as he considered his answer. “That depends,” he finally replied. “If he stays away from the rodeo, gives himself a chance to heal, there’s a good chance he can avoid having an operation.”

  Paige felt faintly sick to her stomach. “You don’t think Austin will actually go along with the idea, do you? I mean, he and I are making an effort to get along—for obvious reasons—but things are still pretty rocky—”

  “Tate and I aren’t planning on giving Austin a choice in the matter,” Garrett said firmly.

  “And you want me to…babysit.”

  A slow grin settled over Garrett’s sensual mouth. “That’s about the size of it,” he said with a little nod.

  “There are a lot of private nurses in the world,” Paige said. “Why me?”

  Austin could be heard at the top of the stairs, talking to the dog.

  Paige lowered her voice and added, “You know I infuriate him.”

  Garrett folded his arms, and if they’d been playing poker, Paige would have thrown in any hand short of a royal flush when she saw the flicker of triumph in his eyes. He leaned in and said in a stage whisper, “That’s the idea. We’d make it worth your while.”

  Paige widened her eyes, but before she could say anything in response to Garrett’s remark, Austin was back.

  He’d pulled on jeans and a raggedy T-shirt and his damp hair showed comb ridges, though he hadn’t shaved. That practiced smile flashed across both Paige and Garrett like the sweep of a searchlight, dazzlingly bright, but somehow distant, and distinctly cool.

  Garrett looked at his watch, pushed back his chair and stood. “Time to play cowboy,” he said. “I was supposed to meet Tate on the east range fifteen minutes ago—better get out there before his lid starts rattling.”

  Austin rolled his eyes. “Can’t have that,” he said.

  “Later,” Garrett responded. Grabbing the keys to his truck from the hook beside the door, he disappeared into the garage.

  Austin rounded slowly, studying Paige. “What were you two talking about, before I came downstairs?” he asked mildly.

  Paige bit her lower lip. “Garrett offered me a job,” she said.

  He frowned. “Doing what?”

  She hadn’t actually accepted the position, but it wouldn’t hurt to bait Austin a little. Paige took pleasure in her reply. “Babysitting.”

  Austin looked relieved. “You’re already doing that, aren’t you?” Not expecting an answer, he took up the mug he’d left on the counter earlier and refilled it at the coffeemaker. Turned to look at Paige again as he took a sip of the brew. “Calvin’s a great kid,” he observed.

  “I wasn’t hired to look after Calvin,” Paige said.

  Austin lowered the cup from his mouth, set it aside with a faint thump. His marvelous eyes narrowed a little. “What?”

  “Garrett asked me to be your nurse, Austin.” No need to add that she hadn’t said yes.

  She was enjoying this way too much, but it was harmless fun, all things considered.

  “In that case,” Austin said evenly, “you’re fired.”

  “You can’t fire me,” Paige told him, delighted by the swift blue flash of his temper and the sudden buzz in the air. “I don’t work for you.”

  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 tot
ally 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 watch
ed 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.