McKettricks of Texas: Tate

by Linda Lael Miller

  She made up the bed, which was barely mussed, a stall tactic for sure.

  Tate returned just as she was fluffing the pillows. Sipping from one cup, he carried a second. “The coast is clear,” he said. “Audrey and Ava are out in the barn, with all three dogs and the ponies. Esperanza is with them, supervising.”

  Libby accepted the fragrant tea with a nod of thanks, took a sip, and felt better instantly. “Have they come up with names yet?” she asked. “For the horses, I mean.”

  “I don’t think so.” Tate grinned, touching Libby’s hair lightly. His voice was low and throaty and he smelled so…clean. “It’s a big decision.”

  “Maybe you could drive Hildie and me home, while they’re busy?”

  Not that she wanted to go.

  Tate sighed. “Lib, they already know you’re here.”

  She lowered her head, breathing in the steam rising off her tea.

  Tate curved a finger under her chin and looked into her eyes. “Relax,” he said. “We talked about this. Audrey and Ava need to get used to seeing you around.”

  “You talked about it,” Libby said. “I didn’t venture an opinion. Tate, they’re children. And I’m not their mother. Letting them ‘get used’ to changes and their finding me in their father’s bed first thing in the morning are not the same thing.”

  “You don’t believe in total immersion?” Tate teased.

  “Don’t be a smart-ass,” Libby countered.

  “Sorry,” he responded, after a long sip from his coffee. “I probably can’t deliver on that one—not long term, anyhow.”

  “Be serious,” she whispered angrily. “We’re talking about your children, here.”

  Tate leaned in, touched his forehead to hers. “I’m aware of that,” he whispered back, with exaggeration. “Lighten up a little, Libby. It’s not as if Ava came in here and found us swinging naked from the curtain rods and yelling, ‘Yahoo.’ Yes, you were in my bed, but I was on top of the covers, wearing all my clothes.” He backed up a little. Waggled his eyebrows. “Which, by the way, was a noble sacrifice on my part, and if ever there was a fine opportunity for a quickie, it’s right now.”

  Libby laughed, in spite of herself. Gave him an affectionate push with her free hand, carefully balancing her tea in the other. “You really are impossible,” she said.

  “You’d forgotten that? That I’m impossible?” Tate asked. “I’m hurt.”

  “I should go home now.”

  “Why?”

  “You know why.”

  “No, Libby. I don’t know why. It’s not as if you have to open the shop.”

  Her shoulders dropped a little. Of course she hadn’t forgotten what Marva had done to the Perk Up, but she had managed to keep the full reality at a bearable distance.

  Until now.

  “Thanks,” she said, terse now. It was a defense, not against Tate, but against a part of herself—the hoochy-mama part, born to boogie. She turned away, cup in hand, headed for the door.

  Tate caught hold of her arm. “Let’s take a breath here, Lib,” he said. “Stay and have some breakfast. I’ll saddle up some horses and we’ll ride. I’ve already called the clinic, and your mother is doing fine. She wants to stay another day, in fact. Sounds to me like she’s enjoying the attention.”

  “You talked to my mother?”

  “No,” Tate said. “To one of the nurses. I called her when I was downstairs.”

  Libby let out her breath, and Tate set his coffee aside, and her tea, and took a light hold on her shoulders.

  “How long has it been since you’ve been on the back of a horse?” Tate asked, his chin resting on top of her head. “You used to love it, remember?”

  A tremor went through Libby. I used to love so many things. And suddenly, they weren’t part of my life anymore. You weren’t part of my life anymore.

  “Scared?” Tate asked, without moving.

  She saw no point in denying it; he obviously knew. She nodded, swallowed.

  “Of me?”

  “No,” Libby said, letting herself be held, just as she had during the night. It felt so good. She’d never feared Tate, but she was afraid of what he could make her feel, and what she might be willing to risk because of that. “Of course not.”

  “Then, what?”

  She shook her head, unable to answer.

  Tate kissed the crown of her head. Sighed.

  “You can call Julie and Paige,” he said, after a long time. “Give them my cell number. If they need to reach you for any reason, they’ll be able to do that.”

  “I don’t know….”

  Once again, he lifted her chin. “Just for once, never mind what you think you should do. Concentrate what you want to do. Do you even know what that is anymore, Libby?”

  She swallowed, her throat suddenly full of tears, shoved back her bangs with one hand. “Of course I know what I want—”

  “Okay. What?”

  You and me, together for good. Kids and dogs and horses and a garden…

  But there was another part of her, with other dreams.

  She’d never seen the Eiffel Tower, or the Great Wall of China, that other Libby. And she wanted to.

  Libby looked away from his face, looked back. Some of the anxiety she’d felt drained away, but another kind of charge sizzled in its place. “I want to go riding with you and your little girls,” she admitted. “But what I should want—”

  Tate interrupted, grinning and shaking his head. “Let’s go downstairs and have breakfast,” he said. “After that, we’ll ride.”

  Libby considered that. “But my mother—my sisters—”

  “Are all grown women,” Tate said, taking her hand. “They don’t need you with them to survive the day, Lib.” He gave her a little pull. “Let’s go.”

  She let him lead her downstairs.

  To her relief, the big kitchen was empty.

  Breakfast awaited in various chafing dishes, the kind Libby normally saw in buffet restaurants. There were blueberry pancakes, scrambled eggs, bacon and sausage to choose from, along with yogurt cups arranged in a bowl of ice.

  Libby surveyed it in amazement.

  “All this is for us and two six-year-olds?” she asked.

  “And some of the guys from the bunkhouse,” Tate said, handing her a plate before taking one of his own.

  Libby felt her eyes go round. “You mean, a whole bunch of cowboys might come walking in here at any moment?” she asked, horrified. If that happened, the news that Libby Remington had spent the night in the main house on the Silver Spur—again—would circulate from the feed store to the post office to the Amble On Inn, where the old-timers hung out because “A man could still get a good beer for cheap.”

  “Maybe,” Tate said. “Why does it matter?”

  “You know damn well why it matters!”

  Grinning, Tate took a step back and raised both his hands, palms out. “Okay, I know why it matters,” he admitted. “You don’t want the whole town of Blue River to hear that you showed up at breakfast.”

  Libby raised her chin a notch. “That’s right.”

  “You can’t possibly be that naive.” He leaned in, whispered close to her ear, and even the warmth of his breath turned her on, for pity’s sake. “We’re old news, Libby. Everybody knows we’re getting it on.”

  “‘Getting it on’?” Libby jabbed two sausage links and plopped them onto her plate, moved on to the scrambled eggs. “Is that what you call it?”

  Tate grinned down at her, speared four pancakes along with bacon and sausage. “What would you call it?” he countered, so obviously enjoying her heated discomfort that she wanted to spear him with a fork.

  Libby decided to ignore the question, since she didn’t want to say making love—that might sound sappy—and the f-word was out, too, because it was ugly. She turned her back on him, marched to the table with her plate and sat down.

  Tate swung a leg over the back of a chair and sat across from her, setting his full plate d
own with a plunk. A mischievous—make that evil—grin danced at the corners of his mouth and sparked in his too-blue eyes.

  “For somebody who could probably set the record for multiple orgasms,” he observed, “you are pretty old-fashioned.”

  Libby blushed. “I consider that your fault,” she said, poking at her eggs.

  “Your orgasms are my fault?” He speared a sausage link and bit off the end, took his time chewing and swallowing.

  “Well,” Libby said, “I don’t have them by myself.”

  He laughed. “It’s okay, Libby,” he told her. “I don’t mind taking the credit.”

  “You mean the blame.”

  “No. I mean the credit.”

  Color flared in Libby’s cheeks. “Could we just eat?”

  “See how testy you are? If you’d just let me have you against a wall before we came downstairs this morning, you’d be mellow right now, instead of wound up tight like an old pocket watch with the stem turned one too many times.”

  “Tate,” Libby said, leaning toward him a little. “Shut up.”

  He sighed. “I’m just saying.”

  Fortunately, the back door opened just then, and Audrey and Ava bounded in, faces alight, with three dogs and a housekeeper in their wake.

  “Can we go fishing in the creek?” Audrey asked.

  “Not on your own,” Tate answered.

  “That spotted horse is trying to kick his way out of the pen,” Ava added, looking worried. “He can’t get out, can he?”

  “He can’t get out, honey,” Tate assured his daughter.

  Ava turned to Libby, her blue eyes serious behind smudged lenses. “That’s the horse,” she whispered, “that stepped on Mr. Ruiz and made him die.”

  Libby felt a maternal urge to gather the child in her arms and hug her. She glanced at Tate, wondering why a dangerous animal like the stallion was still on the place.

  She quickly dismissed the concern. Tate was a rancher, descended from generations of ranchers; he certainly knew horses. He would do what needed to be done, when it needed to be done.

  Tate calmly finished eating, stood, his gaze connecting with Libby’s as he rose. “So how about that horseback ride?” he asked, and though his tone was easy, she knew by the expression in his eyes that her answer was important to him.

  Audrey and Ava immediately began to jump up and down, eager to go along.

  Ambrose, Buford and Hildie all barked, caught up in the excitement.

  And Esperanza smiled serenely to herself.

  The children—and the dogs—would have been too disappointed if she’d said “No.” Or, at least, that was what Libby told herself.

  In fact, Tate had been right earlier, reminding her how she’d once loved riding horses.

  “Okay,” she said. “But I need to call Julie and Paige first.”

  Mayhem broke out—dogs barking, little girls cheering and clapping.

  Shaking her head benevolently, Esperanza picked up a laundry basket and started up one of the three sets of stairs that intersected on the far side of the McKettricks’ kitchen.

  “We can saddle our own ponies!” Ava cried jubilantly.

  “Go and do it, then,” Tate told the kids. “And take the dogs with you.”

  The big house seemed to let out its breath when it was just Tate and Libby again, alone in the room. He stood behind her, handed his cell phone past her right shoulder before moving away.

  Libby dialed Julie’s home number first, since it was still fairly early.

  “Hello?” Julie answered sleepily, as Tate went out the back door.

  “It’s me, Libby,” Libby whispered. It was silly to whisper, she decided, since she had the kitchen to herself, but whisper she did.

  Julie sounded a lot more awake when she answered. “Are you with Tate?”

  “Yes,” Libby replied, since the only alternative was to lie. “We’re—we’re going horseback riding today, so Tate suggested that I give you his cell number, just in case you or Paige need to reach me for any reason—”

  Julie giggled. “Wonderful,” she said.

  Libby bristled. “What do you mean, ‘Wonderful’?” she snapped. “You do realize, don’t you, that little elves didn’t stop by and rebuild the Perk Up while we were sleeping, or bring the Pink Bomb back to its former glory?”

  There was a pause.

  Libby used it to rinse off her plate and stick it into the nearest dishwasher.

  “This probably isn’t a good time to tell you,” Julie finally said, “that the tow-truck guy says the Cadillac can be repaired. It’s going to take some major bodywork and a paint job, but the car is still structurally sound.”

  “Now why,” Libby nearly snarled, “would this be a bad time to tell me anything?”

  Hearing herself, she sucked in a hissy breath and squeezed her eyes shut for a moment. Exhaled.

  “Let me try that again,” she said, measuring out the words.

  Julie gave a nervous laugh. “Libby, every—”

  “Don’t you dare say everything will be all right!”

  At just that moment, Tate stuck his head inside the back door, assumed an expression of mock terror, ducked out as though he expected some missile to come hurtling his way and then stepped over the threshold.

  “Horses are ready to ride,” he said, just as Julie was speaking.

  “Okay,” Libby’s sister said, very gently, “I won’t say that. But it will be. You wait and see.”

  “Call me when the next disaster hits,” Libby said, and she wasn’t kidding. She held Tate’s phone away with both hands and squinted at it, trying to find his phone number.

  Standing close to her now, he fed it into her ear, digit by digit, while Libby repeated each new number to Julie. She felt silly, the whole time.

  Everyone had a cell phone these days.

  Except for her.

  Why was that?

  It wasn’t just the money, although that was a factor in everything she did. Except for Paige and Julie, who were always either dropping by or calling her on either the shop phone or the one at home, she’d had no one to call or be called by.

  Now she felt ridiculously behind-the-times.

  Tate’s hand rested on her shoulder, sending bolts of soft fire through her.

  “Libby?” Julie prompted. “Are you still there?”

  Libby nodded, swallowed, said, “Yes,” in a frog-voice.

  Tate’s fingers began to work the taut muscles where her shoulders and neck met. She rolled her head, barely bit back a groan of pure pleasure.

  For her, those particular muscles and the soles of her feet were erogenous zones. Thank God he wasn’t massaging her feet—she might have reached a climax.

  “I’m here,” she said, croaking again and several beats late. “D-did you get the number?”

  “Yes,” Julie answered, and Libby could just see her smiling. “Are you all right?”

  “Of course I’m all right!”

  “Now, don’t get your panties in a wad,” Julie counseled. Then, wickedly, she added, “If you’re wearing any, that is.”

  “Julie Remington, you have a dirty mind!”

  “No,” Julie said, “I’m just trying to think positively.”

  “Funny. Ha-ha, Julie, you are so funny.”

  “I’ll call, or Paige will, if anything important happens,” Julie went on, sounding so pleased with herself that Libby’s back molars clamped together.

  “Thanks,” Libby said once she’d released her jaw, and shut the phone with a bang. Turned and fairly shoved it at Tate.

  “You really need that quickie,” he whispered.

  She punched him.

  But her heart wasn’t in it.

  TATE RODE STRANGER, the roan gelding, while Libby was mounted on a gentle—and equally aged—mare named Buttons. The twins followed on their golden, nameless ponies, with Ambrose and Buford frolicking alongside. Hildie brought up the rear, moving slowly, and Tate was keeping an eye on the old dog, same as
Libby was.

  The sun was hot and high, the sky a brassy blue that ached in the heart, as well as the eyes. Grass rippled and flowed around them like light on water, and clusters of cattle grazed here and there, while horses, some of them almost as wild as the stallion penned up back at the barn, lowered their heads for creek water.

  Tate stood in the stirrups, stretching his legs, keeping an eye on his daughters bouncing happily along on their birthday ponies, a few dozen yards ahead of him and Libby, the dogs keeping up easily.

  When Libby reined in, it was a moment before he noticed. Buttons wanted to keep up with the other horses, and kept turning around and around in a tight circle, tossing her head, resisting Libby’s efforts to bring her to a full stop.

  Half in the saddle and half out, Libby had one foot in a stirrup and no place to put the other one. Back a ways, Hildie sat in the high grass, panting hard, tongue lolling.

  Tate rode back, got Libby’s horse by the bridle strap, spoke firmly to the animal. It settled down right away.

  The Ruiz place was close—less than a mile from the main house, traveling overland, as they were—and before setting out, Libby and Tate had agreed that Hildie could surely make it that far, since she and Libby took a long walk almost every day.

  For whatever reason, Hildie obviously didn’t plan on going another step.

  Libby had shifted back into the saddle with an ease that did Tate proud, though he could not have said why.

  When he was sure Buttons would behave, he got down off Stranger and walked back to Hildie, crouching when he reached her.

  “Is she all right?” Libby called, anxious.

  Up ahead, the girls had stopped to wait, turned their ponies around.

  Tate and the dog were eye to eye. “Hey, girl,” he said gently. “You get tired of walking?”

  Hildie licked his right cheek and favored him with a dog smile. Her tongue, long and pink, hung out of the side of her mouth.

  “You better ride with me for a ways,” Tate said, easing the animal to her feet, making sure she could stand. Her flanks quivered, but then she steadied, and he checked her paws for thorns or stones, the way he would have done with a horse.

  Libby had ridden back to him by then, Stranger following, reins dragging along the ground.