McKettricks of Texas: Tate (15 page)

“Of
course
we have to go to the Ruizes’,” Julie answered, in her big-sister voice, waving to people walking along the sidewalk. “How would it look if we didn’t at least stop by? And it isn’t as if Calvin and Harry are home alone. Mrs. Erskine is looking after them until we get back.”

Paige sighed. She could be dramatic at times—especially when she knew she might come face-to-face with the man she’d dumped before starting nursing school. “I can’t believe Pablo is gone,” she said. “I just saw him at the post office a few days ago. He told me some silly knock-knock joke.”

The caravan of cars and pickup trucks wound out of Blue
River into the countryside; Libby imagined how it would look from high overhead—like a big metal snake.

She shifted in the seat, rolled her window back up when the AC finally kicked in. A sort of delicious unease stirred in her as she recalled making love with Tate—she both dreaded and anticipated seeing him again, up close and personal. Which meant she had no business remarking on Paige’s reluctant fascination with Austin at the funeral.

“Why do things like this happen?” Libby asked, knowing there was no real answer.

“Good question,” Julie said, with a little shudder. “What an awful way to die.”

A silence fell, and a replay of their dad’s lingering death flashed in Libby’s mind. He’d been heavily sedated, in no physical pain to speak of, at least toward the end, but he’d suffered just the same, she’d seen that in his eyes. A proud man enduring the indignities of a failing body.

Her own eyes burned, though they were dry, and her throat tightened until it ached. Julie, who always seemed to know what she was thinking, reached over to pat her arm.

It wasn’t far to the part of the Silver Spur where Pablo and Isabel had made their home for so many years, but the ride seemed interminable that day. Dust boiled up off the winding country roads, sometimes rendering the vehicles ahead all but invisible.

No more was said about Pablo’s death, or about unfortunate romantic attachments to certain men. Of the three of them, Julie was the only one unscathed by the legendary McKettrick charm, though, of course, she had demons of her own.

Gordon Pruett, Calvin’s biological father, for instance.

Julie and Libby talked about the pros and cons of going into business together, turning the Perk Up into a café, but
the conversation was dispirited, stopping and starting at odd times, when one or the other of them remembered why they were driving to the Silver Spur.

They were neither the first nor the last to arrive—there were cars and trucks everywhere, parked at strange angles at the edges of the Ruizes’ expansive lawn. Julie found a place for the Cadillac, wedged it in and thrust out a sigh of resignation.

“Here goes,” she said, shutting off the engine and shoving open her door.

The engine went through the usual sequence of clicks and clatters as it wound down.

Libby unsnapped her seat belt and climbed out, too, teetering a little because the ground was uneven and she wasn’t accustomed to wearing high heels—she owned exactly one pair, relics of her high school prom—but Paige didn’t move at all.

Bending her knees slightly, Libby rapped on the car window.

“I’m coming,” Paige called testily, but she remained still.

The yard was crowded with people, most of them helping themselves to bottles of water jutting from metal tubs full of ice or food set out on long, portable tables tended by ladies from Isabel and Pablo’s church.

Libby followed her sister’s gaze and spotted Austin at the center of things, shaggy-haired but clean-shaven, and spruced up in a suit he probably wore as seldom as possible.

“Come on, Paige,” she urged, growing impatient. She wanted to get on with it, so she could go home, peel off her sweaty clothes and the pantyhose that were chafing the insides of her thighs and take a long, cool shower, and the only way to get there was
through
the next stage of the ordeal. “Austin isn’t going to bite you.”

“That,” Julie remarked, just loudly enough for Paige to hear her through the car window, “might be the problem.”

Paige’s pale, perfect complexion pulsed with pink. She thrust open the door and got out, glaring at Julie, who was characteristically unfazed. She linked arms with Paige, Libby taking the other side, and the three of them forged ahead.

They found Isabel first, and offered their condolences.

They signed the guestbook, and then joined the crowd on the lawn, accepting plates brimming with food they would only nibble at.

They would
circulate,
like the well-mannered Texas women they were, and make their escape at the customary signal from Libby. She was and always had been constitutionally incapable of standing in green grass without taking off her shoes; when she slipped them back on, everyone would say their farewells and converge on the car.

Libby couldn’t have missed Tate, even if she’d tried. He towered over almost everyone else gathered in the Ruiz yard, his hair blue-black in the afternoon sunshine. Aware that he was making his way toward her, pausing to speak to this one and that one, Libby surrendered to the inevitable and waited, her shoes dangling by their narrow straps from her left index finger, her plate sagging in her right hand.

“Pretty good turnout,” he said, when he reached her. Tate had never been good at small talk.

“Yes,” Libby agreed simply, not inclined to make things easy for him.

Color flared up in his neck and under his jawline, then subsided. “About what happened—”

Libby raised both eyebrows, pretending confusion. As if she hadn’t practically dragged the man to bed and then car
ried on like a she-wolf in heat while he did all the right things to her.

“Dammit, Libby,” he muttered, onto the game, “knock off the deer-in-the-headlights routine. This is hard enough.”

The phrase
hard enough
made an inappropriate giggle bubble into the back of her throat. She barely swallowed it in time.

“I assume,” she said, with false ease, “you’re referring to our having sex?”

“Will you keep your voice down?” Tate said, on a rush of breath.

“If I remember correctly,” she continued, in an exaggerated whisper, having already made certain no one was close enough to overhear, “we
did
have sex.”

“I’m not denying that,” Tate snapped.

“Why bring it up?” Libby asked mildly, knowing full well why he’d mentioned the tryst. He wanted to make sure she understood that the encounter had been meaningless, a fling. She mustn’t expect anything more.

“Because,” Tate said, leaning in close, his forehead nearly touching hers, “things have changed.”

The statement took Libby by surprise, and when she widened her eyes and raised her brows this time, she wasn’t pretending. “Changed?” she echoed stupidly.

Tate took her by the elbow, the one on the left, with the shoes dangling from the corresponding finger, and hustled her away from the gathering to stand in the small orchard, under one of Pablo’s cherished apricot trees. She looked around, spotted Julie arguing quietly with Garrett, and Paige and Austin standing with their backs to each other, not a dozen feet apart, both of them stiff-spined.

Clearly, neither of her sisters would ride to her rescue.

“Tate, what…?”

“Stop it,” Tate rasped. “
Something happened,
Libby, and I’m not going to pretend it didn’t.”

Another giggle, this one hysterical, tried to escape Libby, but she dropped her shoes and put her hand over her mouth to keep it in.

Tate let out his breath, and his broad shoulders sagged a little under the fine fabric of the tailored suit he was sweltering in. Once again, Libby imagined a cold shower, but this time Tate joined her in the fantasy, and the resulting surge of heat nearly melted her knees.

“I want another chance with you,” he said, stunning her so thoroughly that he might as well have aimed a Taser gun at her and pulled the trigger. Shoving a hand through his hair, he sighed again. “I know I don’t deserve it,” he went on. “But I’m asking for another shot.”

The plate fell from Libby’s hand, potato salad and cold chicken and something made with green gelatin and sliced bananas plopping at their feet. Both of them ignored it.

“What?”
Libby sputtered, amazed.

An expression of proud misery moved in Tate’s strong face, was gone again in an instant. “A simple ‘no’ would do,” he said. Maybe the misery had gone, but the famous McKettrick pride was still there.

“You—you mean, it wasn’t—well—just one of those things?” Libby managed.

“‘Just one of those things’?” His tone was almost scathing. “Maybe you have that kind of sex all the time, Lib, but
I don’t.
”

This round, the giggle got past all her defenses. It was a shaky sound, a little raspy. “You think I have sex all the time?” she asked, only too aware that she was prattling and completely unable to help herself. Whenever sex and Tate
McKettrick occupied the same conversation, or even the same thought, her IQ seemed to plummet. Incensed by this sudden realization, she raised both hands, palms out, and shoved them hard into Tate’s chest.
“You think I have sex all the time?”

Through the haze surrounding her, Libby sensed that heads were turning.

She caught a glimpse of Julie hurrying in their direction. Paige was probably on the way, too.

“Dammit, Libby,” Tate almost barked, “this is a
wake.
”

Libby shoved him again, and then again. Enjoyed a brief mental movie in which he tumbled backward and landed on his fine McKettrick ass under Pablo’s apricot trees.

Tate proved immovable, though, since he was so much bigger than she was. Just as Julie reached them, he grasped Libby’s wrists to stay the blows.

“Look,” he ground out, “that didn’t come out right. I meant—”

Libby felt dazed, literally beside herself. Her heart pounded, and she was sure she was hyperventilating.

Julie stooped to snatch up Libby’s shoes. “Time to go,” she chimed.

Slowly, Tate released his hold on Libby. “I’m sorry,” he said.

Libby stared at him, nearly blinded by tears. Didn’t resist when Julie tugged her away, keeping to the edge of the crowd.

Paige caught up, double-stepping.

“What just happened here?” Julie asked moderately, when they were all in the car.

Before, the blast of cool hair from the vents on Julie’s dashboard had been a blessed relief; now, it made Libby hug herself and shiver. Her lower lip wobbled, and she couldn’t bring herself to look at her sister.

“I’m not sure,” Libby said brokenly, but only after Julie had put the Cadillac into Reverse, stepped on the gas and negotiated a series of complicated maneuvers, involving a lot of backing up, inching forward and backing up again. “Things just—got out of hand.”

“I’ll say,” Paige commented, from the back seat.

Fresh mortification washed over Libby. “Please tell me we weren’t yelling.”

“You weren’t yelling,” Julie said.

“Really? Or are you just saying that?”

Julie chuckled. “Honey, neither of you
had
to yell. The air crackled like it does before a good ole Texas lightning storm. From the looks of things, the two of you were either going to kill each other or make a baby on the spot.”

Libby slid down in the seat, horrified. “Oh, my God,” she moaned.

“McKettrick men,” Paige offered calmly, “can turn a sane woman crazy.”

Tate’s words came back to Libby.
This is a wake.

“Isabel will never forgive me,” she said.

“Isabel,” Julie soothed, in her practical way, “was inside the house by the time hostilities broke out, lying down with a cold cloth over her eyes. And don’t look now, but sparks flying between you and the McKettricks’ number one son aren’t exactly breaking news around these parts.”

Libby’s embarrassment was now total. How would she face people after making such a scene? What had come over her?

She tried to retrace the conversation in her mind, to pinpoint exactly where she’d stepped on a land mine, but it was all a nonsensical jumble of he said/she said.

Except that Tate had basically accused her of being promiscuous.

Hadn’t he?

“This is it,” Libby decided aloud, as they bumped over the rutted dirt road leading back toward the highway. “I’m leaving town forever. I’ll change my name, dye my hair—”

Paige unhooked her seat belt and poked her head between the front seats. “Don’t be silly,” she said. “Everybody makes a complete and utter fool of themselves now and then.”

“Gee,” Libby nearly snarled, “
that
was a comforting thing to say.”

“If it’s any consolation,” Paige pressed on, undaunted, “Tate looked as if he wished the ground would open up and swallow him.”

“It isn’t,” Libby replied.

“Let’s not bicker,” Julie interjected.

“We’re
not
bickering,” Paige bickered. “I was merely stating a fact. Playing the fool once in a while is only human.”

“Paige?” Julie said sweetly.

“What?”

“Shut the hell up.”

Paige sagged backward, fastened her seat belt back with a metallic snap, grumbling something under her breath.

“
You
never made a fool of yourself,” Libby accused her youngest sister, her gaze colliding with Paige’s in the rearview mirror. “Miss Perfect.”

Paige rolled her eyes. “You’ve got a short memory,” she shot back. “I tried to run Austin McKettrick over with a golf cart once, if you’ll recall.”

“Chased him right down Main Street,” Julie reminisced fondly. “Good thing he was so quick on his feet.”

“Shut up,” Paige said.

“That was my line,” Julie answered.

Libby began to laugh. Like the giggles she’d battled ear
lier, this laughter was more a release of tension than amusement Still, it
had
been funny, watching Austin sprint down the white line, sometimes backward, laughing at Paige as she swerved behind him at lawn-mower speed.

Austin had finally taken refuge on the courthouse steps, gasping for breath, and Paige had plainly intended to drive right up after him. Fortunately, she’d commandeered a golf cart instead of an army tank—the front wheels bumped hard against the bottom stair and then the engine died.
Un
fortunately, she’d nearly been arrested and would probably have gone to jail for attempted assault if Austin hadn’t refused to press charges.