Austin

by Linda Lael Miller

  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.

  Watching as Doc Pomeroy’s only son took a stool at the counter, Austin was hard put to say what a man like Jim McKettrick could have had in common with Cliff, besides oil. Once, Cliff had made a lot of money brokering McKettrick crude—millions, probably. Should have been enough to last him, Austin figured, even after the wells were capped for good.

  While Austin was doing all this wondering, Paige finished building her salad and came back to the table, glancing over one shoulder at Cliff as she passed him.

  “What do you suppose Clifton Pomeroy is doing back in Blue River?” she whispered once she’d settled into her chair again. “Even when Doc had his heart attack three years ago, there was no sign of him.”

  Austin spotted Flossie zeroing in with his steak, baked potato and green beans boiled up with bacon and onion, and waited until she was gone again before replying, “Folks do tend to come home to Blue River,” he said lightly. “No matter how far away they roam or what plans they might have made to the contrary.”

  Paige picked up her fork and speared a tomato and a slice of cucumber in one jab. One of her eyebrows rose slightly.

  “Did you have other plans, Austin?” she asked.

  He added salt and pepper to the steak and the potato, which was swimming in sour cream and butter. He reckoned Paige would have something to say about cholesterol and saturated fat, but for the moment, she was silent on the issue.

  “Did you?” he countered.

  “I asked you first,” Paige argued.

  He chuckled. Out of the corner of his eye, he saw that Cliff was looking in their direction.

  “Yeah,” Austin said. “I had other plans.”

  “What were they?”

  Cliff had slapped on a smile, and now he was headed over to shoot the breeze.

  “They were none of your damn business,” Austin told her pleasantly, cutting into the steak and keeping an eye on Cliff.

  Paige blushed a little, but before she could say anything, Cliff was standing beside the table.

  “Good to see you out and about, Austin,” he said.

  “Thanks, Cliff,” Austin replied easily. “Join us?”

  Cliff hesitated, considering the invitation, but finally shook his head. “Dad’s over at the office,” he said. “I promised I’d bring back a couple of sandwiches for lunch.”

  Austin nodded, expecting the man to walk away.

  But Paige scooted one chair over and pushed her salad plate along, too. “You may as well sit with us while you wait for your order,” she said. Her tone was cheerful, but Austin knew that look. She was fixing to pry.

  With an odd combination of eagerness and reluctance, Cliff gave in and sat down, scraping the chair legs against the scarred linoleum floor as he did so.

  “You’ve been away from Blue River for a long time,” Paige said when Cliff didn’t launch into an immediate autobiography and outline his exact whereabouts for the last fifteen years or so. “I suppose there were more opportunities in Dallas or Houston or wherever you were.”

  Austin didn’t say anything, but he was amused, and when he caught Paige’s eye, he let her know it. Did she think she was being subtle?

  Cliff seemed to sag a little, and his smile, once easy and confident, seemed fixed, even a mite phony. “I was doing real well until my last divorce,” he said. “And the oil business isn’t what it used to be, either.”

  Again, Austin kept his thoughts to himself. He was enjoying the steak, though. It was thick and juicy and seasoned just the way he liked it.

  “I know what you mean,” Paige said, after taking a ladylike sip of iced tea and swallowing. “A lot of businesses aren’t what they used to be,” she added, her voice both sympathetic and cheerful. “Take my sister’s coffee shop, for example. Even before our mother drove Julie’s car through the front wall and literally brought down the roof, Libby was barely making it. She probably would have had to close the place anyway.”

  Austin frowned, chewing. Where was she going with this?

  Cliff nodded sadly. “Things are tough all over,” he said, slanting a look at Austin and rubbing his chin with one hand. “Of course,” he added, “now that Libby is marrying into the McKettrick clan, she won’t have to worry about making a business pay.”

  Austin’s appetite took a dip, and he put down his knife and fork. Although Cliff hadn’t really said anything a man could object to, Austin realized that he did object.

  “Your other sister is marrying Garrett, isn’t she?” Cliff asked, looking at Paige.

  “Yes,” Paige said, with a high-beam smile. “Isn’t that great?”

  Cliff didn’t reply. His gaze shifted back to Austin. “I guess you and your brothers are as dead-set on keeping those wells capped as your daddy was,” he said.

  If he’d meant to be cagey, it wasn’t working for him.

  “Pretty much,” Austin replied.

  “Still a lot of oil down there, I’d say,” Cliff ventured.

  Austin picked up his knife and fork again. He wasn’t one to waste a good piece of beef. “Most likely,” he agreed.

  A little crinkle formed between Paige’s eyebrows; she was taking it all in, but she didn’t jump into the conversation.

  “Seems like a waste,” Cliff said, shifting to pry his wallet out of his back pocket when Flossie appeared with the bag containing his take-out order.

  “Here you go, Cliff,” Flossie said.

  Cliff paid the bill and then pushed back his chair to stand. Nodded to Paige and then fixed his gaze on Austin.

  “If you and Tate and Garrett ever change your mind about tapping those wells, you let me know.”

  Austin didn’t rise from his chair and offer his hand for the farewell shake the way he normally did with almost anybody older than he was.

  “That isn’t very likely, Cliff,” he said.

  Cliff’s grip tightened on the bag he was holding, so that the paper made a crackling sound. He rustled up another smile, though, and if it hadn’t had an edge, it might have approached cordial.

  “You never know,” he replied.

  With that, he turned and left the Dollar.

  The screen door banged shut behind him.

  Paige turned in her chair, watching Pomeroy move out of sight. Then she swung back around to Austin. There was a question in her eyes, and Austin knew what it was without her having to ask it out loud.

  “It wasn’t Cliff,” he said. “Much as he might like to shoot me, he wouldn’t have the guts to do it.”

  “He clearly wants the oil wells reopened,” Paige said, keeping her voice down.

  “Cliff’s wanted that ever since Dad decided to shut them down,” Austin told her. “You know the old saying—wish in one hand—”

  “Stop right there,” Paige said, pushing her plate away and eyeing Austin’s half-finished steak. “Are we through here?”

  Austin shoved back his chair, sighed. “We’re through,” he confirmed.

  He took care of the check while Paige stood spinning the postcard rack around, checking out the pale images.

  Watching her made him smile.

  The transaction at the cash register completed, Austin exchanged farewell nods with a few folks as he walked to the screen door, held it open for Paige.

  Outside, she extended her hand, palm up. “Keys,” she said.

  Austin hesitated. He was, after all, a man.

  “I’m going to insist,” Paige told him, without lowering her hand.

  He sighed, gave up the keys to his brother’s car. “If I’d
known you were going to drive home,” he said, “I would have had a beer. Maybe even two.”

  She chuckled. Then she shrugged. “Let’s go fill your prescription,” she said. “Then we’ll head for home.”

  He liked that she’d called the ranch “home,” even though she probably hadn’t meant anything by it.

  “It’s just more pain stuff,” he said, referring to the prescription Dr. Colwin had given him back at the clinic.

  Was Paige attracted to that guy?

  “We’re filling the prescription,” she said in the same tone she’d used to tell him she meant to drive.

  “Okay,” he said, spreading his hands. The truth was, it felt good bantering with Paige like this, just being with her.

  Too bad it wasn’t likely to last.

  CHAPTER TWELVE

  EVEN THOUGH HE SWORE he wasn’t tired, Austin hadn’t been back home for more than an hour before he fell sound asleep in the downstairs guest bed, the ever-loyal Shep curled protectively at his feet.

  The sight made Paige smile.

  They made quite a pair, this man and his dog.

  Thinking Austin didn’t need so much staring at, now that he was officially on the road to recovery, Paige picked up her laptop and headed for the main kitchen. She set the computer on the table, and then headed to the counter, planning to brew a cup of tea.

  It was a little after 2:00 p.m.; normally at this time of day, she would have been getting ready to pick Calvin up at the community center, making sure he had something other than fast food to eat, and then stopping by the high school auditorium so he could spend twenty minutes or so with Julie. But since she’d been working as Austin’s private nurse, Libby and Garrett had been taking turns looking after Calvin when Julie was working.

  Paige sighed. Her nephew lived in the same house she did, so it wasn’t as if she didn’t see him often, but things were still different enough to make her feel an odd and poignant nostalgia.

  Their lives were all changing so fast. And they were changing forever.

  “Get a grip,” Paige mumbled to herself, trying to blink away the burning sensation in her eyes and concentrate on the simple task at hand.

  She knew where the mugs were kept, but she opened and closed a few cupboard doors before locating the tea supply, which was sparse, probably because this had been a household of men for such a long time.

  Taking comfort in measuring out the small movements involved, Paige filled the mug from the special hot-water spigot on the sink and dropped in a bag. Watched as the water darkened, breathed in the familiar and very soothing aroma.

  Returning to the table, she set the cup down, took a seat on the long bench and flipped open the laptop. After logging on, Paige went straight to a popular search engine and typed in the name “Clifton Pomeroy.”

  Not surprisingly, a lot of people in the world went by that name, so she did some narrowing down. It took nearly fifteen minutes to find Doc’s only son, but eventually, he turned up.

  Paige sipped her rapidly cooling tea, studying the screen.

  No deep, dark secrets here: Cliff had been married four times—apparently none of these unions had resulted in children—and he’d declared bankruptcy some fifteen years ago. Until the last divorce, final only a month before, he’d resided in one of the best sections of Dallas.

  Alas, the house belonged to Wife #3, a member of a prominent Texas family, so Cliff was out on his ear. Now, possibly having nowhere else to go, he’d come home to Daddy.

  Paige sighed again and squeezed the bridge of her nose between a thumb and a forefinger. She was a nurse, she reminded herself, not a detective. Okay, so Cliff had made it pretty clear when she and Austin met up with him at the Silver Dollar that he wanted the McKettrick oil wells reopened—he probably wasn’t alone in that. Where there was oil, there was money—big money—and that was reason enough, for some people, to commit a crime.

  She dropped her head forward to stretch the taut muscles in the back of her neck, and when that didn’t help, put both hands to her nape and kneaded with all ten fingers.

  At a sound coming from one of the staircases, Paige looked up and saw Tate standing with one arm hooked around the newel post, grinning at her.

  “Job getting to you already?” he asked with good-humored sympathy. “Riding herd on Austin, I mean.”

  Paige chuckled, logged off and shut the laptop. “He’s sleeping right now,” she replied with a little shake of her head. “No trouble at all.”

  Tate laughed, approached the table and sat down across from her. Resting his powerful forearms on the surface, he interlaced his fingers and replied, “Austin’s always been at his most tractable when he’s asleep.”

  She smiled, got up from the bench, holding her mug up. “I’m having more tea,” she said. “Would you like some?”

  “I’m okay, thanks,” he said with a shake of his head, starting to rise.

  “Oh, for heaven’s sake,” Paige said, “sit down. I’m only going to the sink for more hot water.”

  Tate’s grin was a mite sheepish, but he didn’t comply until Paige was back at the table and seated.

  “Old habits die hard,” he said, dropping back to the bench.

  Paige smiled. She remembered Sally McKettrick; the mistress of this house had been a true Southern lady, with a good sense of humor, and she’d raised her three sons to be gentlemen. “It must be pretty ingrained,” she observed. “This standing-up-in-the-presence-of-a-lady thing.”

  “I don’t remember a time when it wasn’t a reflex.” Tate grinned.

  Paige waited, knowing there was more he wanted to say. Her patience was rewarded. Sort of.

  “Libby’s worried about you,” Tate said, after a few moments of silent struggle, and he had the decency to at least seem reluctant.

  “About what?” Paige asked mildly. It was only the first of several questions she had for him.

  Tate drew in a breath, sighed it out heavily. “She thinks it might be too hard for you, being in such close proximity with Austin all the time.”

  Paige felt a sting behind her cheekbones and hoped it didn’t show on the surface. “And my big sister didn’t bring this up with me herself because…”

  Tate looked distinctly uncomfortable. “She will,” he said. “I just thought—since Garrett and I came up with the bright idea of hiring you as Austin’s nurse in the first place, I mean—that it was sort of our responsibility to straighten things out.” He cleared his throat. “And since I lost the coin toss, here we are.”

  Paige smiled. He was there because he’d lost a coin toss. At least Tate was being honest. “Are you unhappy with my work?” she asked.

  Tate looked genuinely surprised. “No,” he said quickly. “It isn’t that. It’s just—well—what Libby said. We might have come on a little strong, Garrett and I. Put too much pressure on you to accept the job. If you’d rather back out, we’ll understand.”

  The poor man looked so miserable that Paige almost felt sorry for him. Almost.

  “Back out? You mean, quit, Tate?”

  His neck reddened, and he tugged at his collar, even though his white Western shirt was already open to his sternum. Had there ever been a McKettrick who wasn’t violently allergic to the word quit or any of its synonyms?

  “I wouldn’t put it that way,” he said.

  “Of course you wouldn’t. You’re a McKettrick, and McKettricks don’t know what it means to quit, do they?”

  “There are times,” Tate allowed, “when we might be better off if we did.”

  “But you don’t,” Paige pressed.

  His voice was gruff and he looked away for a moment. “No,” he admitted.

  Paige leaned forward and spoke firmly, but not unkindly. She wasn’t angry, she just wanted to make her point. “Well,” she said, “the Remingtons don’t quit, either. Even when we ought to.”

  Tate grinned, shifted on the bench. He was quiet for a few moments, then he asked, “Austin saw his doctor today, didn’t he
? What’s the prognosis?”

  “I wasn’t in the exam room,” Paige said, “but he’s still bandaged. His appetite is fair to good—we stopped at the Silver Dollar for lunch today, and he made a pretty good dent in a sixteen-ounce steak—”

  “But?” Tate prompted when she fell silent.

  “Cliff Pomeroy came in while we were there,” Paige said, thoughtful. What was it about the man that bothered her so much? “He sat with us for a while, and the conversation came around to the oil wells. The ones here on the Silver Spur, I mean. Cliff said he’d like to see the fields operational again.” She paused, swallowed. “I couldn’t help wondering…”

  Tate raised one dark eyebrow. “If Cliff might have been the one to shoot Austin the other night?”

  “Someone had been tampering with one of the wells before he got there,” Paige said, and she felt slightly defensive because she could already see Tate’s answer taking shape in his face. Even before he spoke, she had a pretty good idea what he was going to say.

  “Cliff wouldn’t do a thing like that,” Tate replied, confirming her prediction. “He and our dad were good friends, Paige, for a very long time.”

  “But then something happened?” Paige pressed. “Between Cliff and your father, that is. And then they weren’t friends anymore?”

  Tate sighed, shoved a hand through his dark hair. “What happened was, there were some environmental concerns, and Dad decided to shut down the wells. That made Cliff mad as hell, because he’d been raking in a lot of money brokering deals, and they argued. But I wouldn’t say the friendship was over for good, just the partnership. They’d known each other all their lives, been buddies since they were younger than Calvin. And I never heard Dad say a word against Cliff.”

  Paige didn’t point out that the reverse might not be true, that Cliff might have had plenty to say against Jim McKettrick. That maybe he wasn’t just looking for business opportunities, but revenge against the family who’d cut him off.