McKettricks of Texas: Tate (18 page)

It was generally agreed that when it came to dousing people with a hose, their mother was still the all-around champ. She’d had an advantage, of course—raised Southern, none of them would have considered wresting the thing out of her hands and soaking her in retribution, the way they would have done with each other.

Sober and a little chilled, Tate was about to head upstairs to take a hot shower and hit the sack, the dogs set to follow on his heels, when his cell phone rang.

He picked it up off the table, checked the digital panel to see who was calling and flipped it open. “Cheryl? Are the kids all right?”

“Yes,” Cheryl said. “They’re fine. Sound asleep.”

Tate glanced at the clock; it was after eleven. “And you’re calling me at this hour because—?”

“Don’t be mean,” she purred.

Good God. Was she
drunk?
What if the house caught fire, or one of the kids got sick?

“Cheryl, are you all right?”

Austin scraped back his chair and rose from the kitchen table, shaking his head. Garrett gave Tate a pitying look and headed for his own part of the house. Evidently, he’d forgotten the senator’s “emergency,” whatever it was.

“No,” Cheryl burst out, sobbing all of the sudden. It still amazed Tate, the way she could change emotional gears so quickly. “I’m
not
all right. I’m divorced. I’m an attractive, educated woman, in the prime of my life, stuck in Blue River, Texas, for the next twelve years—”

“Have you been drinking?”

“Would you care if I had been?”

“Hell, yes, I’d care,” Tate snapped. “You’re alone with my children.”

“I’m perfectly sober, and they’re
my
children, too.”

Tate drew in a long, deep breath, released it slowly. This was no time to needle her. “Yes,” he said, in what he hoped was a reassuring tone of voice. “They’re your children, too.”

Cheryl was quiet for a few moments, so quiet that Tate began to wonder if she’d hung up. “We could try again, Tate,” she said tremulously. “You and me. We could try again, make it work this time.”

Tate closed his eyes. If she wasn’t drunk, she must have snorted something. The subject of reconciliation had come up before, usually after she and some boyfriend had had a falling-out and gone their separate ways.

“No, Cheryl,” he said, when he figured he could trust himself to speak. “You don’t really want that, and neither do I.”

“Because of Libby Remington,” she said, with a trace of bitterness. “That’s why you won’t try to save our marriage. Did you think I wouldn’t hear about you and Libby, Tate?”

Save their marriage?
They’d been divorced for five years.

“We’re not going to talk about Libby,” Tate replied, silently commending himself for not reminding her that this marriage she wanted to save had long since died an acrimonious—and permanent—death. “Not tonight, anyway.”

“I hate this town.” Three-sixties were common with Cheryl when she was upset. There was no telling where she’d try to take the conversation next.

“The solution is simple, Cheryl,” Tate reasoned. “Let Audrey and Ava live with me. You’d be free to do whatever you wanted, then. You could live anyplace, practice law again.”

“You’d like that, wouldn’t you?” The question, though softly put, was a loaded one, and Tate proceeded accordingly.

He was already on his feet, heedless of his damp clothes, rummaging for his truck keys. Austin lingered, leaning against one of the counters, sipping reheated coffee and not even bothering to pretend he wasn’t eavesdropping. The dogs waited patiently to go upstairs, wagging their tails.

“I’ll take care of the mutts,” Austin said, between swallows of coffee.

Cheryl’s rant continued, rising in volume and making less and less sense.

Tate nodded his thanks to his brother and stepped into the garage.

“Are you
listening,
Tate McKettrick?” Cheryl demanded.

“I’m listening,” Tate said, climbing into his truck and pushing the button to open the garage door behind him. It rolled up silently, an electronic wonder. “Keep talking.”

She started crying again. “It would have been so perfect!”

“What would have been perfect?” Tate asked, backing out into the moonlit Texas night, stars splattered from one horizon to the other.

“Our life together,” Cheryl said, after a small, choked sob.

“How do you figure that?” There was a limit to Tate’s ability to play games, and he’d almost reached it.

“We could have had it all, if only—”

Tate frowned, turning the truck around, pointing it toward town. “If only what?”

“If only you hadn’t been in love with Libby Remington the whole time,” Cheryl said. “She came between us, from the very beginning. You never got over her.”

“That’s crazy, Cheryl,” he said, racing down the driveway to the main road.

She went off on another tangent, something about her lonely childhood, and how money didn’t buy happiness, and she’d
always
wanted a real family of her own.

You could have fooled me,
Tate thought.

But he listened, and when she ran down, he got her talking again.

Long minutes later, he braked in front of Cheryl’s house, bolted from the truck, leaving the door open and the engine running, and strode to the front door.

“Let me in,” he said, into his cell phone.

“Let you in? Where are you?”

Tate shoved his free hand through his hair and let out his breath. “On your porch,” he said. “Open the damn door, Cheryl.
Now.
”

C
HERYL SWUNG
her front door open slowly, and Tate, just snapping his cell phone shut on their disturbing conversation, which had spanned the distance between the ranch and her house in town, was stunned. He’d expected to find his ex-wife an emotional train wreck, given the way she’d whined and fussed. Instead, her skin glowed with what looked like arousal, her makeup was perfect, her dark hair wound neatly into a single, glossy braid reaching nearly to her waist. And in her eyes, Tate saw a guarded glint of triumph.

“Come in,” she said, her voice throaty and all Texased-up with heat and honey, a neat trick since she didn’t have a drop of Southern blood in her.

And the keyword was
trick.

Tate stood stiffly on the doormat. If he allowed his gaze to drop, even slightly, he knew he’d get the full impact of what she was wearing—a sexy nightgown that revealed a lot more than it covered up and barely breezed past her thighs. She held a glass of white wine in one hand.

“Want some?” she asked, ever the mistress of the double entendre, and took a sip.

“This was a
setup?
” The question was rhetorical, of course, and the situation wasn’t all that surprising, but Tate seethed with indignation just the same. She’d cast her line
into the water using the kids as the bait—something she often accused
him
of doing—knowing he’d have no choice but to take the hook.

In that moment, Tate’s dislike for his former wife deepened to outright contempt.

Cheryl retreated a step, an oddly graceful move, almost dancelike, and then he couldn’t help taking her in. He waited for a visceral response—though mad as a cornered rattler, he was as well-supplied with testosterone as any other man—and was a little surprised when it didn’t come.

“A setup?” Cheryl replied softly, her lower lip jutting out in a pout. “I wouldn’t exactly put it
that
way.”

Tate swayed slightly on his feet, caught in a swift, spinning backwash of fury, averted his eyes and shoved a hand through his hair. “I need to see the kids,” he said, on a long, raspy breath. “Then I’m leaving.”

Even without looking directly at Cheryl, he knew when her face crumbled. He also knew the reaction didn’t stem from the heartbreak of unrequited love. Cheryl had never loved him, any more than he’d loved her. They’d simply collided, at an unfortunate intersection of their two lives, both of them distracted by unrelated concerns, and two innocent and very precious children had been the result.

She stepped back again, gesturing with her left hand, still holding the wine, slopping some onto the spotless white carpet as she did so. “They’re asleep. They won’t even know you’re here,” she said wearily. “But suit yourself. You always do.”

Tate turned sideways to pass her, headed straight for the stairs. The words
You always do
lodged between his shoulder blades like a knife, but he shook them off out of habit. All he wanted to do right then was gather his girls up, one in each arm, and carry them out of there, take them
home,
where they belonged. Audrey and Ava were McKettricks—they needed to grow up on the land.

Cheryl, however dysfunctional, was neither drunk nor high. Pissed off as he was, Tate had realized that the moment she’d opened the door. Under the terms of their custody agreement, this was Cheryl’s week with the twins, and he couldn’t rightly intervene.

At the same time, he wasn’t about to leave that house without making sure Audrey and Ava were okay. If there were consequences, so be it.

He was halfway up the staircase when his daughters appeared at the top, barefoot and sleepy-eyed, wearing their matching pink pajamas, the ones with the teddy bears printed on the fabric. They huddled close to each other, their small shoulders touching.

Even as babies, they’d done that. They’d only begun to thrive, in fact, when some perceptive pediatric nurse had cornered their doctor and persuaded him to let them share an incubator.

Tate’s heart did a slow, backward tumble at the memory.

The idea had made sense to him then, and it made sense to him now. Audrey and Ava had been together in Cheryl’s womb, aware of each other on some level, possibly since conception. Born too early, each had still needed the proximity of the other.

“What’s wrong, Daddy?” asked Audrey, always quick to read his expression and generally the first to speak her mind.

Tate turned his head to look back over one shoulder at Cheryl. By some devious magic, she’d donned a rumpled robe made of that bumpy cloth—he could never remember what it was called—pale lavender and worn thin in places. She was projecting Mommy vibes so effectively that, for one
moment, he thought he must have imagined the sexy nightgown she’d had on when she’d answered the door, the glass of wine in her hand.

“Want some?”

It was the gotcha look in Cheryl’s green eyes that convinced Tate he was still sane, though that probably wasn’t the reaction she’d been going for. This whole thing was some kind of game to her; she got a weird satisfaction out of jacking him around, and when she felt thwarted, the next attempt was bound to be a real son-of-a-bitch.

“Daddy?” Ava prompted, clasping Audrey’s hand tightly now, leaning into her sister a little more. “Is everything okay?”

Tate put Cheryl out of his mind, focused all his attention on his children.
We have to stop this,
he thought.
Somehow, Cheryl and I have got to call a truce.

“Everything’s fine,” he said, with a lightness he hoped was convincing. “I was in town, so I came by to tuck you in and say good-night, that’s all.”

Both girls looked relieved.

“Did you bring Ambrose and Buford?” Audrey asked.

Tate shook his head. “No, sweetie,” he answered. “They were headed off to bunk in with your uncle Austin when I left the house.”

Behind him, Cheryl cleared her throat, an eloquent little sound. Tate made no attempt to decode it.

“I’d be happy to tuck both of you in,” she told her daughters, her tone sunny. “Unless you’d really rather have your daddy kiss you good-night than me.”

Tate closed his eyes, sickened.
Unless you’d really rather have your daddy kiss you goodnight than me.
With Cheryl, everything was a contest, a case of either/or—even the love of their children.

“Why can’t you
both
kiss us good-night?” Ava asked, her voice fragile.

Tate gazed up at his daughters, full of love and despair and tremendous guilt. They were tearing these children apart, he and Cheryl, and whether he wanted to believe it or not, he was equally responsible.

It had to stop—no matter what.

“One at a time, though,” Audrey said. “Because you always fight when you’re in the same room.”

God in heaven,
Tate thought.

“Daddy first,” Ava said.

“Certainly,” Cheryl chimed, and Tate knew by her voice that she’d turned away. “Why consider
my
feelings? I’m only your mother.”

“Cheryl,” Tate ground out, not daring to face his ex-wife. “Don’t.
Please,
don’t.”

Cheryl said nothing, but he could feel her bristling somewhere behind him, a little off to the side, a porcupine about to throw quills in every direction.

By deliberate effort, Tate unfroze his muscles and climbed the stairs, forcing a smile. Reaching the top, he herded the little girls, now giggling, in the direction of the large, pink and frilly room they shared.

He tucked them back into their matching canopy beds.

He kissed their foreheads.

He told them he loved them.

And he waited, perched on the cushioned seat set beneath the bay windows overlooking the street, until, at long last, they slept.

Tate dreaded going downstairs again, because it might mean another run-in with Cheryl. He wasn’t sure how much self-restraint he had left, and while he’d never struck a
woman in his life and didn’t intend to start now, words could be used as effectively as fists, and the ones crowding the back of his throat in those moments were as hard and cold as steel.

Fortunately, there was no sign of Cheryl, although as soon as he’d stepped over the threshold onto the porch, he heard the dead bolt engage behind him with a resolute thump. She must have been lurking just inside the living room.

He started down the walk, wasn’t even half surprised when Brent Brogan’s cruiser pulled in behind his truck. While he’d been saying good-night to Audrey and Ava, waiting for them to drift off into peaceful, little-girl dreams, Cheryl had been summoning the police.

Another segment in the continuing drama.

Suppressing a sigh, Tate opened the gate in the picket fence and stepped through it, onto the sidewalk. “Evenin’,” he said, with a half salute, when Brent rolled down his driver’s side window to look him up and down. “Slow night, Chief?”

Brogan shook his head. “Not according to the former Mrs. McKettrick,” he said, with a nod toward the house. “What are you doing here, Tate? It’s pretty late, in case you haven’t figured that out already.”

Tate stayed where he was, shoved his thumbs into the waistband of his jeans, which were still a little damp from the water fight with Garrett and Austin, hours before. He found that strangely comforting. “She called you,” he said flatly.

“She called me,” Brent confirmed. “Cheryl said she felt threatened.”

Tate gave a raspy chuckle. Thrust the splayed fingers of his right hand through his hair. “Did she? Well, Denzel, that’s bullshit and you know it. About forty-five minutes ago, she called
me,
too, and I’d have sworn she was either high or drunk, going by the things she said and the way she
sounded. I got here as fast as I could, because, as you may recall, my
kids
live here when they’re not on the ranch.”

Brent shut off the cruiser’s engine, pushed open the door, got out to stand facing Tate there beside the quiet street. He was wearing civilian clothes, instead of his uniform, which meant he was off duty. “I’ve got to knock on that door, see Ms. Darbrey with my own eyes, and hear her say she’s all right,” he said. And when Tate started to speak, Brogan held up a hand to silence him. “It’s procedure. She’s a citizen, she called in a complaint, and whatever my personal opinion of the lady might be, it’s my job to follow through. “

Tate understood, though it rubbed him a little raw in places that, even for professional reasons, Brent couldn’t take him at his word. After all, they’d been buddies since second grade, when his friend’s dad, Jock Brogan, had come to work on the Silver Spur as a wrangler and all-around handyman, glad to have a steady paycheck and a trailer to live in. Jock’s seven-year-old son had arrived by bus a week later, right on time for the first day of school, sweating in the suit and bow tie he’d worn to his mother’s funeral a month before, as it turned out, and scared shitless.

It had taken some time, but eventually Brent, a city boy, had loosened up a little, gotten used to ranch life, and asked Tate to teach him “something about horses.” Within a couple of months, the new kid was riding like a Comanche warrior, keeping up with Tate and Garrett, Austin and Nico Ruiz as easily as if he’d been born in the saddle. Being in the same class at school, and with a lot of common interests, Tate and Brent had formed a special bond.

They’d competed in junior rodeos together.

Played on the same baseball and basketball teams in their teens.

On the day they graduated from high school, Brent announced that he was joining the Air Force instead of going on to the university with Tate, the way they’d always planned. Jock Brogan had scrimped and done without and worked overtime to save enough to cover the better part of his son’s college expenses, Brent said, and he wasn’t going to take a dime of that money. He’d always wanted to be a cop, he’d reminded Tate, and the military was willing to provide all the training he needed and pay him wages in the bargain.

He could be an asset to his dad from then on, instead of a liability.

Standing there in the night, waiting for Brent to satisfy himself that Cheryl was still in one piece, the words Garrett had thrown in his face earlier that night came back to Tate.

—inside, you’re still the rich kid from the biggest ranch in four counties, feeling like you ought to apologize to folks who have to earn a living—

Tate tipped his head back, looked up at the blanket of stars spilling lavishly across the Texas sky.
Was
he “still that rich kid,” always wishing he could make up somehow for having more, just by virtue of being born a McKettrick, than so many other people did?

People like Brent Brogan.

People like Libby.

Did he want a second chance with her because what she made him feel was real love—or was he just feeling guilty because she’d had a tough road from early childhood on, while he’d coasted blithely through life until a truck crossed the median one night and crashed into his parents’ car, leaving both of them fatally injured?

Brent returned, slapped him companionably on the back.
“Uh-oh,” he joked. “You’re looking introspective. And that’s almost
always
a bad sign, old buddy.”

Tate sighed. Managed a grin. He did have a tendency to think too damn much, there was no denying that.

“Did you find my ex-wife tied up in a closet? Swathed in duct tape?” he asked.

Brent grinned. “No.”

“Damn the luck,” Tate said.

“Let’s get a cup of coffee,” Brent suggested.

“Look, it’s been one hell of a day and—” Tate began, but the protest fell away, half-finished. There was no reason to hurry home—the kids weren’t there, and Austin, while not the most dependable person on earth, could be trusted to take care of two sleeping dogs.

“Don’t I
know
it’s been one hell of a day,” Brent agreed wearily. “I was at the funeral, remember, and the wake, too. Had a long talk with Nico, in fact, once the leftovers had been stuffed into Isabel’s fridge and most everybody else had gone home. Follow me to my place, and I’ll brew up some java and tell you about it.”