THE SHIFT HAPPENED between one heartbeat and the next.
Lying there on her bed, facing Tate, Libby felt her heart soar and then plummet, as though she were riding some cosmic roller coaster. She’d loved this man since he was a boy and she was a little girl, barely older than Audrey and Ava were now.
Over the years, that love had changed, always finding its level. Like a river, it had sometimes overflowed its banks, and she’d been swept away by its force. After Cheryl arrived on the scene, it had gone underground, leaving only cracks and debris on the surface.
Now, the river was rising rapidly, springing up from some elemental and seemingly inexhaustible source of devotion, not only within Libby, but beyond her, bubbling and churning, swirling into violent eddies. This time, there would be no stopping it, no changing its course, no stemming the tide.
It would be what it was, and what it was becoming, and that was that.
Powerless before the enormity of it, Libby wept in stricken silence.
Tate must have felt her tears through his shirt, because he turned her gently onto her back, so he could look down into her face.
“What?” he asked, breathing the word, rather than saying it.
Libby shook her head. Even if she hadn’t been afraid to tell him what she was feeling, she wouldn’t have known how to put it into words. It was as though she’d died, and then been resurrected as a different woman, with a new soul.
Tate kissed her cheekbones, her eyelids. “Lib,” he persisted, his voice husky. “What is it?”
A sob tore itself from her throat, raw and hurting, and, shaking her head again, she tried to roll onto her other side, turn her back to him. But he didn’t allow it.
The former Libby, practical and wary, emotionally bruised and battered, had stopped him from making love to her for a lot of very good reasons.
The new one wanted him with an incomprehensible ferocity, an instinctual craving that would not be refused, delayed or modified.
Libby took Tate’s hand, brought it to her mouth, and flicked at his palm with the tip of her tongue.
He made a low sound in his throat, but he never closed his eyes. He consumed her with them, drew her into that boundless blue, where all but her most primitive instincts faded away.
She moved his hand again, this time to cup her right breast, crooned when he used the side of one thumb to caress her nipple through the gossamer cloth of her dress and the thin silk bra beneath. Her back arched, of its own accord, and her heart thrummed so loudly that the sound of it seemed to fill the room, push at the walls.
Libby knew, in those moments, only one word—his name.
It came out of her, that name, on a long, low groan, and she struggled to get free of the dress, would have ripped it away as though it were burning, if Tate hadn’t pulled the garment up and then off over her head.
She felt her bra go next, her bare breasts spilling free.
Tate closed his mouth over one aching nipple, then the other, and at the same time slipped his hand inside her panties to part her, tease her with gentle plucking motions of his fingers.
Libby cried out, flailing and whimpering, desperate to be naked, to be utterly vulnerable to him in every way. When the panties were gone, first dragged down over her thighs and knees and ankles so she could kick free of them, he parted her legs and, with the heel of his palm, made slow circles at her center until she was wet with the need of him.
To his credit, Tate tried to reason with her, his voice low and ragged, reminding her that only minutes before, she’d wanted to wait, take things slowly. But he couldn’t have known about the river flowing within her, flowing through her from some other world, with all the force of an ocean surging behind it.
At some point, he must have realized there would be no turning back, because he knelt astraddle of her thighs, pulling his shirt out of his jeans, working the buttons, tossing the shirt aside.
When he leaned over to kiss her, Libby ran her hands over his chest, his shoulders, up and down his arms and his sides, frantic to touch him, to chart the once-familiar terrain of his body.
The kiss was devastating, a thorough taking in its own right, and Libby struggled to breathe when Tate broke away from her, nibbled his way down the length of her neck, suckled at one breast and then the other.
And still Libby spoke a language composed of a single word.
“Tate.” She reveled in the sound of it. “Tate.”
He moved down then, slid his hands under her, squeezing, hoisting her high off the bed. When he nuzzled through and took her into his mouth, she instantly splintered, shouting now, riding a ghost horse made of fire.
The long climax convulsed her, time and again, drove the breath from her lungs and melted her very bones, leaving her limp in its aftermath. She couldn’t see or hear or speak—she could only feel.
And Tate wasn’t through with her.
He draped her legs over his shoulders, squeezing her buttocks slightly as he continued to use his mouth on her, now nibbling, now sucking, now flicking at her with his tongue.
The next release was cataclysmic; and it, too, went on and on, something eternal.
Transported, Libby gave one continuous, straining moan as her body buckled and seized, rose and fell, quivered and went still.
Tate was relentless, feasting on her, summoning up every sensation she was capable of feeling.
She flung her head from side to side, pleaded and threatened and coaxed, all by uttering his name alone.
He sucked on her until she’d given him everything, and then he demanded even more.
Aware of him viscerally, in every fiber and cell, though he might have been an invisible lover for all she could see through the haze of near-desperate satisfaction that had settled over her after that last orgasm, she knew when he moved to take off his jeans.
She moaned and parted her legs for him when he covered her again, an act that took all the strength she had left.
“Libby,” she heard him say, through the blissful void, “if you want me to stop, say so now, because once I’m inside you, I’m not going to pull out until it’s over.”
She managed only the slightest demur, still floating in a warm sea of sweet ambrosia. She wanted him inside her, deep, deep inside her, but not because she expected another climax. She’d come so many times, with so much intensity, that she was soft and moist and peaceful inside.
Until he took her in earnest, that is.
With the first powerful thrust, he opened a whole new well of need, a blazing lake of fire. Libby’s eyes flew open, and she gasped in wanting and alarm.
He drove into her, nearly withdrew, drove again.
Libby went wild beneath him, digging her heels into the bed to thrust herself upward to meet him, stroke for stroke, clawing at his back and his shoulders and any part of him she could get hold of, calling to him, raging at him in her one-word litany.
They shattered simultaneously, Tate holding her high and driving into her with short, rapid thrusts. Through a storm of dazzling light, as her own body convulsed in helpless ecstasy, she saw him throw back his head, as majestic and powerful as a stallion claiming a mare. She saw the muscles straining in his neck and chest and felt the warmth of his seed spilling into her.
When it was over, he collapsed beside her with a hoarse exclamation, still spanning her with one arm and one leg.
Libby drifted, seemingly outside her body, and it was a long time before she settled back into herself. The landing was soft, featherlight—at first. But as her scattered wits began to find their way home, flapping their wings and roosting in her heart and her brain and the pit of her stomach, her very spirit began to ache.
What had she done?
What if she was pregnant?
What if she wasn’t?
Tears gathered inside her, filled her, but she could not shed them, even though she yearned for the relief crying would bring.
Tate held her, brushing her forehead with his lips, murmuring t
o her that everything would be all right. She’d see, he promised. Everything would be all right.
For him, it would be. After all, he was a man.
He would get up, shower, get dressed and go back to his regular life—to his beautiful children and his sprawling ranch and all the rest of it.
The lovemaking hadn’t changed him; he knew who he was, who he had always been and always would be: Tate McKettrick.
Libby, on the other hand, had been permanently altered by the experience they’d just shared, and she was going to have to get to know herself all over again.
The task seemed so daunting, so huge, so impossible, that she didn’t know where to start.
She slept, awakened, slept again.
When she woke up the next time, Tate was gone.
His absence blew cold and bitter through her soul, like a winter wind.
Except for the aftershocks still rocking her sated body at regular intervals, she might have dreamed the whole thing.
Now came reality.
AUSTIN AND GARRETT WERE sitting at the kitchen table when Tate got home that night, a little after midnight.
Seeing his brothers, he immediately tucked in his shirt, something he’d forgotten to do before he left Libby’s house. He felt heat rise in his neck and pulse along his jawline as Austin gave him that familiar, knowing once-over.
“Been with a woman,” Austin said to Garrett. Except that he was thinner, and his brownish hair was in even worse need of barbering than usual, Austin resembled his old, pre-Buzzsaw self.
Physically, Tate knew, Austin had largely recovered.
But something deeper had been injured that day in the rodeo arena, and the jury was still out on whether or not he would come back from that.
“Yep,” Garrett agreed sagely, shoving a hand through his dark blond hair. His fancy white politician’s shirt was open to the middle of his chest, and, like Austin, he was nursing a glass of whiskey. Scotch on the rocks, unless Tate missed his guess. “He’s definitely been with a woman.”
Tate chose to skip the Scotch and have coffee instead. Since Esperanza had long since scrubbed out the pot and set it for the morning, he brewed a cup of instant, using the special spigot on the sink. “You can both shut up,” he grumbled, “any old time now.”
With all he’d felt making love to Libby Remington again, there was a lot of mental and emotional sorting to do. Dealing with his brothers was something he would have preferred to avoid, at least until morning.
Austin laughed, and something in the tone of that laugh brought home a previously unconsidered reality to Tate. His kid brother probably hadn’t been in rehab all that long; more likely, he’d been shacked up someplace with a woman.
Maybe several.
“At least he didn’t give my present to the twins to the community center,” Austin told Garrett, more than slightly smug. No matter how much Tate protested, they both spoiled their only nieces extravagantly. Cheryl allowed it, but it galled Tate.
He didn’t want Audrey and Ava growing up thinking they were entitled to everything they wanted.
Garrett scowled. “It’s a perfectly good castle,” he said, and belched unceremoniously.
Tate wondered how long the both of them had been swilling Scotch and swapping lies. “Maybe,” he growled, “you two could stop talking about me as though I’m not even here.”
“Would that be fun?” Austin asked Garrett. In Austin’s world, everything had to be fun. He was the Western version of Peter Pan; Tate had long since given up the hope that his kid brother would ever grow up. He had more money than sense, and his looks—fatal to women—worked against him, in Tate’s opinion.
Austin was used to coasting. Everything came too easily to him, and the effect on his character was less than impressive.
“No,” Garrett said, after due and bleary consideration. “It would not be fun.”
Tate took a jar of freeze-dried coffee from the cupboard and set it on the counter with more force than the enterprise really called for. “Some things never change,” he said. “You’re both as dumb as you ever were.”
“Well, he’s in a mood,” Garrett remarked, and, after belching again, poured himself another double shot.
“God,” Tate said, stirring coffee crystals into hot water and then approaching the table, “I hope you never get elected president. Two-and-a-quarter-plus centuries down the swirler. Everything Washington, Lincoln and FDR accomplished, gone.”
Garrett belched again. “Now that was just plain low,” he said.
“Downright mean-spirited,” Austin agreed.
“You’re both sloshed,” Tate accused.
“Of course we’re sloshed,” Garrett said, his eyes suddenly haunted. “Pablo is dead. Jesus, stomped to death by a horse.”
Austin looked away, but not before Tate saw that his eyes were wet. Ever quick to compose himself, Austin soon met Tate’s gaze. “You found him?”
Tate nodded.
“Christ,” Austin commiserated, shoving the bottle in Tate’s direction. “Here. Put some of that in your chamomile tea, or whatever it is you’re drinking.”
“Austin?” Tate said quietly.
“Yeah?”
“Fuck off.”
“So who’s the woman?” Austin asked, typically unfazed. It had taken a murderous bull named Buzzsaw to get to him.
“Not Cheryl, I hope,” Garrett said.
“Watch it,” Tate warned, before lowering his voice to add, “She might be a bitch, but she’s also the mother of my children.”
“Her one redeeming virtue,” Austin said.
Tate studied his youngest sibling carefully. Previously, he would have dodged a conversation with his brothers, but suddenly he was in another mode entirely. “Were you telling the truth, outside the operating room the day you were hurt, when you said you never slept with Cheryl? Because she claims it happened.”
Austin raised his glass, already nearly empty again, in a mocking salute. “Nobody lies when they know they might be facing their Maker,” he said. He downed what remained of his Scotch. Sputtered a little. His McKettrick-blue eyes were both looking in the same direction, but not for long if he kept drinking like that. “Besides, Tate, you’re my brother. Much as I’d like to punch your lights out most of the time, I wouldn’t do that even if the opportunity came my way—which, regrettably, it did.”
An uncomfortable silence ensued.
More Scotch was poured.
“I’m not letting that one drop,” Tate said.
Austin sighed, glanced in Garrett’s direction.
Evidently, no help was forthcoming from the future president of the United States, who was already three sheets to the wind. If he ever made it to the White House, the tabloids would have no trouble at all digging up dirt on him.
Resigned and even a little regretful, Austin said, “I was in Vegas, for the finals. Cheryl showed up, told the desk clerk at the hotel that we were married. She must have shown him ID—her last name was McKettrick at the time, remember. Anyhow, when I got back to my room, after the ride and the buckle ceremony at South Point, Cheryl was waiting.”
Tate and Garrett were both watching him, Tate with tight-jawed annoyance, Garrett with pity.
“And?” Tate prompted.
“And she was naked,” Austin admitted.
“Good God,” Garrett told his younger brother, “you are stupid, admitting a thing like that. Are you trying to get those perfect white teeth knocked out of your head?”
Austin flushed. “She was naked,” he insisted.
“So you said,” Tate observed.
“And crying,” Austin added.
“Boo-hoo,” Garrett said.
“God help America,” Tate said, “if you ever get your name on the ballot.”
“The press would make hash out of him,” Austin remarked to Tate, cocking a thumb at Garrett, “before he ever got the nomination.”
Garrett scowled, but said nothing. He could have bullshitted a lot of p
eople, but his brothers weren’t among them. They knew him too well.
“Cheryl was naked and crying in your hotel room and—?” Tate prompted, glaring at Austin.
“And,” Austin said, with drunken dignity, “she said you didn’t even ask for a divorce, you just told her you were filing for one. Did I mention she was in my bed?”
There had been more to Tate’s decision to end the marriage, of course, but Cheryl, indignant that he’d refused to overlook her one-night stand with a prominent judge in Dallas and go on as if nothing had happened, wouldn’t have included that part of the story.
Nor did Austin and Garrett need to know it.
“No,” Tate said evenly. “You skipped that part, but you did say she was naked, so I guess it figures.”
“She was in his bed,” Garrett said, with portent. Where the hell had he been for the last minute or so?
“Thank you, Mr. President,” Tate said. “And shut the fuck up, will you?”
“Listen to him,” Garrett remarked to Austin. “I think I’ll establish a national committee on casual profanity. Too many people swear. We need to get to the bottom of this, nip it in the bud, cut it off at the pass—”
“One more word,” Tate told Garrett, “and I’m stuffing that whiskey bottle down your throat.”
Garrett belched again.
Tate turned back to Austin. “Cheryl was in your bed,” he reminded him.
“She was?” Austin said.
Tate reached across the table and got his kid brother by the shirt collar. “She was,” Tate agreed. “And the next thing you did was—?”
Austin grinned. “Well, first, I wished you weren’t my brother, and her husband, because mega-bitch that she is, Cheryl is one hot woman. I didn’t ask her what she was after, because that was pretty obvious. She wanted to pay you back for divorcing her, in spades. I told her she needed therapy, and then I picked up my gear, walked out and slept on the couch in my buddy Steve Miller’s suite.”
“The buckle guy?” Garrett asked, evidently determined to be part of the conversation, even though he’d long since lost track of it.
“Yeah,” Tate said tightly, “the buckle guy.”
Miller, a representative of the company responsible for designing and constructing the fancy silver belt buckles winning cowboys were awarded at various rodeos around the country, was familiar to all three of them.
McKettricks of Texas: Tate Page 12