Garrett

by Linda Lael Miller

“Someday?” Calvin protested.

  “Someday,” Julie repeated.

  Tate lifted the lid off the Crock-Pot and drew in an appreciative breath, while the kids, including Calvin, scrambled into chairs at the big table in the center of the kitchen. Libby bent to take a baking sheet from the oven—biscuits?—and Tate gave his future wife a subtle pat on her blue-jeaned bottom.

  Julie smiled at that, aware of Garrett still standing near enough to touch, near enough that she could feel the heat and the hard strength of that cowboy body of his.

  “Hey,” Libby said, making a face at Tate. “Cut it out, bucko.”

  Tate laughed.

  “You made biscuits?” Julie marveled.

  “There is no end to my talents,” Libby replied.

  “You can say that again,” Tate told her, in a low growl, grinning the whole time.

  “Little pitchers,” Libby reminded him, singsong, indicating the kids with an eloquent nod of her head.

  But the kids were oblivious, Audrey and Ava scrapping over who got to sit by Garrett, Calvin wistful behind the lenses of his glasses, which were steamed up after Libby passed the basket full of biscuits under his nose.

  Julie sat down, and so did Libby, but Garrett and Tate remained on their feet until after they were settled. Garrett winked at the twins, and they each moved one seat over, as if by tacit agreement, leaving a space open next to Calvin.

  Garrett dropped into the seat.

  Grace was offered, and then everyone dove in, ravenous.

  Julie prided herself on her cooking—it had always been her area of expertise—but Libby’s stew and biscuits were wonderful, and she seemed so proud of the accomplishment that Julie was touched.

  Overall, confusion reigned—there was a lot of laughter—and Calvin drank his milk without the usual complaints. He hated the stuff, rarely missed an opportunity to remind Julie that no other species on the planet drank milk after they were weaned except humans.

  Five going on fifty-two, that was Calvin. Just as Garrett had recently remarked.

  But tonight the little boy sported a milk-mustache and listened wide-eyed as Garrett and Tate talked about flying high over the Silver Spur, and how it was a handy way of knowing which part of the herd was where.

  They’d seen part of a remote fence down, too, which explained some missing cattle, though there had been no sign of the cattle themselves. At first light, they meant to head out there in Tate’s truck, a crew following, and have a closer look.

  “Rustlers?” Libby asked. She’d been about to take a bite of stew, but she lowered the spoon back to her bowl then, looking worried.

  “Maybe,” Tate said, clearly unconcerned.

  Garrett flung a look across the table at his brother, then turned to favor Libby and all three kids with an easy sweep of a smile, heavy on the McKettrick charm. “Fences,” he said, “have been known to fall down on their own, with no help at all from rustlers. Sometimes cattle trample them, too.”

  Libby didn’t look reassured, and Julie was with her on that one. Rustlers were still a problem on far-flung ranches like the Silver Spur. They herded other people’s cattle into the backs of waiting semis now, under cover of darkness, instead of driving the creatures overland on horseback, as in the movies, but they were still criminals, and at least some of them still carried guns, too.

  Julie and Libby exchanged glances.

  The conversation turned to airplanes again. Back in college, Garrett had worked summers for a crop-dusting outfit. That was how he’d learned to fly. Calvin listened, spellbound, as Garrett and Tate swapped memories of some pretty wild adventures—including taking their dad’s plane up once, when he’d gone to Houston on business, and nearly plowing that restored World War II bomber into the side of a mountain when the throttle got stuck.

  Garrett had managed to pull out of the dive in time and make a safe landing, but word of the exploit must have gotten back to Jim McKettrick, though he never mentioned it, because a week later, he’d sold the plane.

  “You think he missed it?” Tate asked Garrett thoughtfully, settling back in his chair. He’d made a respectable dent in the stew, and consumed a few biscuits, too. “The bomber, I mean?”

  Garrett chuckled. “Maybe,” he answered, “but you know how Mom hated it when he went up in that thing. I like to think things were a little more peaceful here on the home front, when it was gone.”

  For a few moments after that, both men were quiet, probably remembering their parents, missing them. Jim and Sally McKettrick, Julie recalled sadly, had been killed in a car crash a decade before.

  After the meal was over, Garrett and Tate cleared the table and loaded the dishwasher, while the kids got underfoot trying to help.

  Libby smiled and shook her head at the sight, her face so full of love that, yet again, Julie’s throat tightened.

  Not for the first time, it struck Julie how reckless, how truly dangerous it was, to love with one’s whole heart.

  But what else could a person do?

  Seeing that Calvin was finally starting to run down, Julie told him to gather up his things, they both said their thank-yous and Garrett grabbed his coat and hat from the pegs and came outside with them, into the deepening chill of an autumn twilight.

  “Catch a ride back to the ranch house with you?” Garrett asked. Seeing him standing there in his cowboy getup, Julie could almost forget that he was really a politician, more at home in an expensive suit, making deals behind closed doors.

  Sharing hot tubs with any number of half-naked women who were most definitely not his cousins.

  Julie shook off the image; she was being downright silly.

  And, anyway, Garrett wasn’t married. He could cavort with all the women he wanted to, half-naked or otherwise.

  “Sure,” she answered finally, holding Calvin’s backpack while he scrambled into his seat in the back. “We’d be glad to give you a lift.”

  Calvin was being so good. He normally made a fuss whenever they left Libby and Tate’s place—it was as if he wanted to live there, instead of with her.

  Grateful for small favors, Julie made sure he was properly fastened in before sliding behind the wheel.

  “This is quite a car,” Garrett said, settled in on the passenger side of the pink Cadillac.

  “It’s a classic,” Julie said fondly. She’d always loved the pink bomb, but lately she’d been thinking of trading it in for something smaller and more fuel-efficient. “It burns a lot of gas, though.”

  “It’s a dinosaur,” Calvin contributed, from the peanut gallery. “Some woman won it, about a hundred years ago, for selling a lot of face cream and stuff.”

  Garrett chuckled at that.

  Julie caught Calvin’s eye in the rearview mirror and made a face at him.

  Calvin was revved up again. “My grandma drove this car right through the front of Aunt Libby’s coffee shop, and all that happened was it got a few dents and scratches.”

  “I heard about that,” Garrett said. His voice was a low rumble of amusement, and Julie realized she was aware of him in a holographic sort of way—every cell in her body seemed to contain the whole.

  Julie concentrated on driving. Back up. Turn around. Point the headlights down the driveway, toward the main road. Don’t go too fast. Don’t go too slow.

  “This car is built like a tank,” Calvin went on. “That’s what Aunt Libby says.”

  Garrett smiled, adjusted his hat. “Is that right?” he asked conversationally, and Julie felt his gaze touch her in the relative darkness as they bumped over an old cattle guard.

  The moon was out, as it had been the night before, when she and Garrett had gone riding. When they reached the mansion, Julie used the remote control Esperanza had given her to open the garage door.

  Julie couldn’t help flashing back on the previous evening, when she and Calvin had come back here after having supper in town with Gordon and Dixie, and Calvin had pretended to be asleep so Garrett would carry him inside.
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  The way fathers had always carried sleeping children into houses, generation upon generation.

  That night, however, Calvin was mobile, clearly still trying to make a good impression on Garrett. Harry greeted them at the garage door, wagging hard and whimpering a little, and Garrett took the dog outside.

  Calvin submitted to his nightly bath without significant fuss.

  He brushed his teeth, took off his glasses and crawled into bed, hands clasped together, lips moving and eyes closed in silent prayer.

  Julie bent and kissed his forehead. “I love you a lot, big guy,” she told him.

  “I love you, too, Mom,” Calvin whispered, his eyes open wide now. “But I really think you should give me permission to go up in Garrett’s airplane with him.”

  Harry came in and leaped up onto the foot of Calvin’s bed to settle in for the night.

  “You really think that, do you?” Julie grinned.

  “Yes,” Calvin said, blinking. Looking into the pale, innocent blue of her son’s eyes, she caught a momentary glimpse of forever—her heart embraced his children and their children’s children.

  Because she was so moved, Julie’s response came out sounding a little croaky. “Why?” she asked, genuinely curious. Calvin had always talked a lot about horses—he loved race cars and roller coasters, too, though he’d never had a direct experience with either—but he’d never shown any particular interest in airplanes.

  Of course, he was young.

  He still had a lot to discover.

  Calvin’s small shoulders moved beneath the cotton top of his pajamas as he executed a nonchalant shrug. “It sounds pretty exciting. Being able to wave at people from the sky and stuff.”

  Julie nodded in agreement. “A lot of things are exciting,” she said, “but that doesn’t mean we need to rush out and do them.”

  “Is that like when I used to say I crossed the road without permission because my friend Justin did, and you asked me if Justin jumped off a bridge, would I do it, too?”

  She smiled. “Sort of,” she said. “My point is, you’ve got lots of time. You can do all the things you really want to do—eventually.”

  “But not now?” he sounded monumentally disappointed.

  “Some now,” Julie conceded, smoothing back his hair. “Some, later.”

  “Like that?” Calvin pressed. “Like what?”

  “Riding horses,” Julie heard herself say. “As long as Tate or Libby—” she paused, swallowed, because this was hard for her, as much as she trusted her sister and future brother-in-law “—or Garrett is around. No trying to ride by yourself or with just the twins around. I need your word on that, Calvin.”

  Calvin looked thrilled. “Will you tell them it’s okay for me to ride even if you’re not there?” he wanted to know. “Because Aunt Libby thought it was okay, because it’s always been okay before, and then you saw me on the big black horse with Garrett and you got upset—”

  Julie pressed a finger to Calvin’s mouth. “Shhh,” she said. “I’ll tell them.”

  “Good!” Calvin said, burrowing down into his covers and his pillow and squinching his eyes shut tight, the way he did on Christmas Eve, because Julie had told him Santa wouldn’t come until he was asleep.

  Julie doubted that he still believed, but he was willing to pretend for a little while longer, and so was she.

  She kissed him again, patted Harry good-night and stood.

  Tired as she was, Julie knew she wouldn’t be able to sleep yet; her mind was racing. After peeking into the kitchen to make sure Garrett wasn’t there, reading the newspaper or something, she went back to her room, changed into her swimsuit, a black one-piece, clipped her hair up on top of her head, grabbed a towel and headed for the indoor swimming pool.

  What she needed, she decided, was a little exercise.

  Her body wasn’t particularly sore from the horseback ride the night before, but her mind could use some unkinking, that was for sure.

  After crossing the kitchen, Julie stood on the tiled edge of the magnificent pool and looked up.

  The retractable roof was shut, but the light of the stars and moon shimmered through the glass panels arching two stories overhead, and danced on the dark water at her feet. She and Calvin had used the pool several times during their short stay, and it was usually lit from beneath, from a dozen different angles, but she didn’t know where the switches were and saw no point in searching for them.

  Julie dropped her towel onto a chaise longue and stepped into the pool at the shallow end. The water was perfect, not too cool, and not too warm, either, and she felt pure joy as she plunged forward and swam vertical laps back and forth, back and forth.

  The flood of multicolored light rose up around her suddenly; it was as though she were inside a giant prism. She stopped, blinking, in the grip of the strange magic she’d begun to sense earlier, when she’d said goodnight to Calvin.

  “Oops,” Garrett said. “Sorry.”

  Julie turned, saw that he was standing on the side nearest the kitchen, barefoot, tousle-haired, and wearing a terry-cloth robe.

  “You scared me,” she said, without recrimination. And then she laughed, treading water in the middle of that gigantic pool, with all those shafts of colored light rising up around her.

  He grinned. “Sorry,” he said again.

  Julie’s gaze dropped. Was he wearing swimming trunks under that bathrobe?

  Surely he was.

  Wasn’t he?

  Before Julie could decide one way or the other, Garrett shed the robe, revealing a pair of trunks. He dove into the water and surfaced about a foot in front of her, droplets flying as he gave his head a shake. His eyelashes were spiky with moisture, and his mouth curved into a mischievous smile.

  Julie’s heart, still pounding from the start he’d given her by switching on the underwater light show, began to slow down a little, find its normal beat.

  And then she laughed again, because Garrett did a couple of slow somersaults in the water, as deft as a seal, before surfacing again, this time closer. Close enough to make her breath catch, in fact.

  Was he showing off?

  No, she decided. Garrett was reveling, celebrating his own agility and the water itself.

  And there was something so elemental, so sexy about that, that Julie felt a fierce grab of desire, unlike anything any other man had ever aroused in her, in a place so deep inside her that it went beyond the physical.

  That was when she knew she was in big, big trouble.

  CHAPTER SEVEN

  AS FAR AS GARRETT WAS CONCERNED, kissing Julie Remington was as inevitable as drawing in his next breath. There, in the middle of the pool, he cupped his hands on either side of her face, bent his head and touched his lips to hers—lightly at first, in case she wanted to pull back—and then more deeply when she gave a soft moan and slipped her arms around his neck.

  Garrett had kissed a lot of women in his time—he’d enjoyed all those kisses, even thrilled to some of them, but this one, this one, seemed to clutch at something deep inside him and hold on, squeezing the breath out of him.

  When he finally came up for air, it was out of pure desperation, because his lungs demanded oxygen. He had an odd sense of settling back into himself after being catapulted to somewhere else, and when he opened his eyes and saw Julie staring back at him, looking as baffled as he felt, he laughed.

  Julie eased back a little way, although she wasn’t out of reach. Pink splotches glowed on her cheeks, and her wonderful chameleon eyes shifted between blue and violet as they drew color from the water.

  Garrett longed to pull her close again, kiss her again, hell, do a lot more than kiss her. But he didn’t move. She was as rattled as he was—all five of his known senses told him that, and a few besides. If he came on too strong, he’d scare her away, maybe for good.

  “What just happened here?” Julie asked, her toned arms moving gracefully as she went on treading water.

  Garrett couldn’t hold ba
ck a grin. He was too damn happy. “I think you kissed me,” he said, though he knew her question had been rhetorical.

  He was rewarded by a widening of her eyes and an indrawn breath. “I beg your pardon, Garrett McKettrick,” she said. “You kissed me.”

  “So I did,” he replied easily. “Now that we agree on what ‘just happened’ here, let’s figure out what comes next.”

  “Nothing comes next,” Julie said, turning and gliding toward the side of the pool. Gripping the tiled edge with one hand, she looked back at him.

  Her spirally copper hair was coming down from the clip on the top of her head, but she didn’t seem to notice, and that was fine with Garrett. In the shifting, watery light, she looked like the goddess of ice and fire. There was only one thing he wanted to do more than look at her, and that was touch her, all over, inside and out.

  Whoa, he thought. Go easy, cowboy.

  Julie moved toward the ladder, probably intending to climb out of the pool and flee.

  “Wait,” Garrett heard himself say. The voice, though his own, was strange to him, hoarse.

  She’d reached the ladder, gripped one of the rungs. Looking back at him over one delectable and faintly freckled shoulder, she bit her lower lip, as though pondering some inner dilemma.

  “If you say nothing happens next, Julie,” Garrett told her, keeping his distance, “then that’s the way it will be. You don’t have to run away.”

  She gave a little burst of laughter, part indignation and part relief, and let go of the ladder, moved away from the side of the pool, though she remained well out of Garrett’s reach. Her hair escaped the clip and she raised both arms to attend to the problem, causing her perfect breasts to jut forward.

  “Who says I was running away?” she asked.

  The kiss had made Garrett hard; the lift of Julie’s breasts sent scorching heat pounding through him, rendering him speechless. In a vain effort to cool off, he ducked under the water, considered staying down there long enough to drown himself, and then surfaced again.

  When he did, Julie had secured her hair in the squeeze clip, though tendrils spiraled down around her cheeks, her shoulders, the side of her neck.