Garrett

by Linda Lael Miller

  Twenty minutes later, they were in the sky.

  Tate’s voice came through Garrett’s headphones, sounding tinny and a lot farther away than one seat over. “Let’s make a pass over the oil field,” he said.

  Garrett nodded and banked the plane to the right, began a gradual decline, and swung in low over the rusty derricks and the two long Quonset huts where equipment had been stored in the old days.

  The shacks built to house the workers were gone now, just bits of foundation jutting out of the grass here and there. Once, though, there had been homes on this piece of land—nothing fancy, but clean and sturdy and warm in winter. Folks had laughed and fought and loved and raised kids, made a community for themselves—there had even been a church and a one-room schoolhouse, way back when.

  During the Great Depression, when so many men and women were desperate for work, the oil had just kept on coming, and the shantytown had been a haven for several dozen workers and their families; back at the main ranch house, there were boxes of old pictures of the place and the people.

  It gave Garrett a hollowed-out feeling, thinking how there could be so much life and energy in a place, and then—nothing.

  They made a wide loop and then passed over the area again.

  Not so much as a blade of grass moved down there; the broken foundations, the Quonset huts, the time-frozen derricks…the place was as still as any ghost town.

  Just the same, Garrett felt uneasy, and when he glanced at Tate, he saw that his brother was frowning, too.

  “Can you land this thing down there?” Tate asked.

  “I can land anywhere,” Garrett answered.

  The wheels bumped and jostled over the hard-packed dirt when they touched down a couple of minutes later, rolling to a stop a few dozen yards from one of the huts.

  “This,” Tate said, indicating the larger of the two Quonset huts with a nod of his head, “would be a damn good place to hide a semi between raids on the herd.”

  Garrett braked, shut down the engine, pulled off his earphones. He’d never run from trouble in his life, and there was no sign of any that he could see, but he knew something was off, just the same. Maybe it was because he hadn’t gotten much sleep, thanks to Julie Remington and all the fantasies she’d inspired.

  “It can’t hurt to look around,” he said, his voice gruff.

  The two brothers climbed out of the plane, walked toward the tail, in order to avoid the still-spinning blades on the wings.

  Here there were no tracks to indicate the comings and goings of any kind of rig, big or otherwise. The padlocks securing the roll-up doors on the Quonsets were not only fastened, but rusted shut, and the panes in the windows remained intact.

  So why were the little hairs on his nape standing straight up like a dog’s hackles? Garrett wondered. He glanced at Tate, saw his brother wipe off a corner of one of the windows to look inside.

  Garrett turned, scanning the immediate area.

  He saw old derricks, tumbleweeds and not much else.

  And it gave him the creeps.

  “See anything?” he asked, when Tate stepped back, dusting his hands together.

  Tate shook his head. “Just cobwebs and a lot of dust,” he answered.

  “Is it just me,” Garrett pressed, “or is there something about this place that doesn’t feel right?”

  Tate’s teeth flashed as he grinned. “You spooked?” he asked.

  “No,” Garrett said, too quickly. As kids, they’d explored this area on horseback, he and Tate and Austin. The dry bed of an ancient river cut through the land just beyond a nearby rise, and there were a number of caves around, too, though most of them had probably fallen in a long time ago. “Hell, no, I’m not spooked.”

  Tate chuckled, slapped Garrett on the back. “Remember when you and Austin and I used to camp out here sometimes, with Brent Brogan and Nico Ruiz?”

  Garrett nodded, relaxed a little. “We liked to scare the hell out of each other with yarns about ghosts and guys with hooks for hands,” he said. “That one time, when you were twelve and I was eleven and Austin was ten, we told our baby brother we were going to sneak back home as soon as he dropped off to sleep, and he was so worried about being left alone in camp that he didn’t shut his eyes for the rest of the night and kept us awake, too, saying one of our names every five minutes.”

  Tate grinned. “We had to do all the usual chores the next day. Damn, I was too tired to spit. Served us right, I guess.”

  Garrett laughed. “You and I and Brent and Nico did chores,” he corrected. “Austin got to go to the cattle auction with Dad, if I recall it correctly.”

  Tate seemed to enjoy the recollection as much as Garrett did, though neither of them had thought the experience was funny back then. Remembering, he chuckled and shook his head.

  “That little runt must have snitched on us,” Garrett said, referring to Austin. “How else could Dad have known we gave him a hard time?”

  Tate slapped him on the shoulder. “After all these years,” he jibed, though not unkindly, “you still haven’t realized that we just thought we were all by ourselves out here? Dad and Pablo Ruiz took turns bedding down within a hundred yards so they could keep an eye on us.”

  Garrett hadn’t known, and he figured Tate hadn’t, either, at least not until after the fact, because they’d talked about practically everything in the relative anonymity of country-dark nights, staring up at that endless expanse of stars. Neither their dad nor Pablo had ever let on that they’d overheard.

  He smiled, but at the same time his throat went so tight that his voice came out sounding raw, as if it had been scraped off his vocal chords. “I miss Dad,” he said. “Mom, too.”

  Tate nodded, tightened his fingers on Garrett’s shoulder for a few moments, then let go. “We were damn lucky to have them as long as we did,” he said hoarsely.

  Garrett, having left his hat in Austin’s pickup, shoved a hand through his sweaty hair and looked away, struggling to compose himself. “I thought Morgan Cox was like Dad,” he said, unable to meet Tate’s gaze. Contempt for the senator and for his own judgment roiled up inside Garrett. “It galls me that I believed it, even for a minute.”

  “Maybe you needed to believe it for a while,” Tate said quietly.

  By tacit agreement, they walked toward the riverbed and the caves they’d loved to explore as kids. They’d found arrowheads there, some of them ancient, along with colorful bits of crockery from the shantytown years. In those days, according to their mother, things like oatmeal and flour and tea and laundry soap had been sold with premiums inside—cups and saucers and sugar bowls and the like.

  Boys being boys, they would have discarded the shards of old dishes—the arrowheads were a lot more interesting—but Esperanza liked to glue the prettiest china pieces to plant pots and tabletops, so they’d lugged them home to her in plastic grocery sacks.

  The riverbed had been dry for a thousand years, if not longer, but if he closed his eyes and concentrated, Garrett could almost hear it flowing by, almost smell the water. He bent, picked up a stick and flung it hard, the way he would have done alongside any of the creeks crisscrossing the ranch.

  At some point, long, long ago, the river had changed course. It ran on the other side of the clustered oaks now, through the canyon it had carved into the land over centuries.

  Tate watched him, squinting a little against the sun.

  “I’d swear I remember when that river ran through here,” Garrett said.

  Tate, probably guessing that something else was on Garrett’s mind, simply waited. He’d always been the quiet type, Tate had, but since he and Libby had reconnected a few months before and gotten engaged to be married, his thoughts seemed to run deeper.

  Or he was just more willing to share them.

  “Maybe you can tell me,” Garrett said, “how I could have grown up around Blue River, gone through school with Julie Remington, from kindergarten to graduation from high school, and never noticed that s
he’s beautiful.”

  Tate chuckled. They walked one dusty bank of the river, though Garrett couldn’t have said what they were looking for, beyond some sign of trespassers.

  “So you’re taken with Julie, are you,” he said. It was a comment, not a question.

  “I didn’t say I was taken with her, Tate,” Garrett pointed out, instantly on the defensive. “I said she was beautiful.”

  “She’s that, all right,” Tate agreed. Again, without ever voicing the decision, they were headed somewhere in particular—back to the plane.

  Without intending to, Garrett asked, “Is Calvin’s father in the picture?”

  Tate sighed, rubbed his chin with one hand. Like Garrett, he had a stubble coming in, though Tate’s was dark, like his hair, while Garrett’s was golden. “According to Libby, the guy—Gordon Pruett is his name—hasn’t shown much interest in Calvin until recently. He paid child support and remembered birthdays, so I guess you could say he was trying, but he definitely kept his distance.”

  Picturing Calvin, squinting up at him through the smeared lenses of those very serious glasses of his, Garrett ached. How could a man father a child and then just ignore him, except for writing a check once a month and sending birthday gifts?

  “Until lately,” Garrett said.

  “Pruett wasn’t around,” Tate nodded. “Until lately. Now, I guess he’s decided he wants to be part of Calvin’s life, and Julie’s pretty concerned, according to Libby.”

  “Why the change?” Garrett asked. They’d reached the plane and the glare off the metal sides made him pull his sunglasses from the pocket of his work shirt and put them on.

  “I guess because he got married,” Tate said. “Pruett, I mean. Now, all of a sudden, he’s a family man.”

  Garrett felt a combination of things, none of which he wanted to examine too closely right at that moment. “How’s Calvin taking all this?”

  Tate raised and lowered one shoulder in a nearly imperceptible shrug. “He’s like any little kid,” he said. “He wants a dad.”

  “This Pruett—he’s all right?”

  Tate opened the door on his side of the plane, climbed in. “As far as I know,” he replied. “Libby stands up for him. And she’s a pretty good judge of character.”

  Garrett laughed. “Oh, yeah? She’s marrying you, isn’t she?” he joked, rounding the plane to hoist himself back into the pilot’s seat. “Just how good a judge of character can she be?”

  Tate grinned. “You’ve got a point,” he said.

  “You’re one lucky bastard,” Garrett told him. “You know that, don’t you?”

  Tate nodded. “Sure do,” he answered.

  CHAPTER EIGHT

  WHEN JULIE AND CALVIN ARRIVED at the McKettrick house that evening, Garrett was in the kitchen again, chatting up Esperanza while she put the finishing touches on one of her simple but wonderful suppers. Tonight it happened to be fried chicken, mashed potatoes with gravy and steamed corn.

  Harry scrambled up off a rug in front of the crackling fire on the hearth to greet Calvin with face licks and tail wagging and a low, eager whine that meant he wanted to go outside.

  Calvin gave Esperanza and Garrett a jaunty wave, then took Harry into the backyard. Julie, thrown by Garrett’s presence for no reason she could identify, nodded to him, smiled at Esperanza and sped off into the part of the house she and Calvin shared.

  Her heart was pounding, as if she’d had some sort of close call, and she felt the sting of a blush in her cheeks. Chiding herself for being silly, she dumped her purse and tote bag–briefcase, got out of her cloth coat and headed for “her” room.

  The master bedroom in the guest suite was twice the size of the one she slept in at the cottage. There were cushioned window seats under the bay windows, and an unimpeded view of rangeland and foothills unfurled from there.

  If she’d had the time to sit and dream, Julie silently lamented, she’d have chosen that spot for the purpose.

  Alas, she seemed to have less and less free time these days, and more and more responsibilities. With the high school musical to cast, rehearse and stage—a task she usually undertook when she had the momentum of spring fever working for her—with her rental house officially on the market and Gordon Pruett dead set on being part of Calvin’s life—

  Well, it would be easy to feel overwhelmed.

  Since that wasn’t an option, either, she sucked in a deep breath, blew it out, and murmured one of her favorite, if most irreverent, mantras.

  Shit happens.

  After kicking off her low-heeled pumps and shedding the tailored gray pantsuit she’d worn to work that day, Julie hastened into worn jeans and a blue-and-white striped T-shirt with long sleeves.

  She had never been shy, but that dreary autumn afternoon, the temptation to hide out in the guest quarters required some overcoming on her part.

  It didn’t help, knowing she was acting like an adolescent. But the moment she’d stepped into the house and locked gazes with Garrett McKettrick a couple of minutes before, every cell in her body had begun to buzz with awareness. Although the vibrations were beginning to slow—she splashed cold water on her face at the bathroom sink to help the process along a little—the second they were in the same room together again, she knew she’d feel as though she’d stuck a finger into some cosmic light socket.

  Julie had worn her hair up that day, pinned into a thick bun at the back of her head, and now, standing in front of the bathroom mirror, she let it tumble down around her shoulders.

  Instantly, she regretted the action.

  Wearing her hair down when she wasn’t working was normal for Julie, but that afternoon, it seemed to say, Come hither.

  She didn’t want Garrett to think she was a red-hot mama with almost as many erogenous zones as she had freckles. Of course she was, or at least had been, but—that was beside the point.

  Julie drew in another breath, gathered her hair back into a ponytail, grabbed a rubber band to secure it.

  There, she thought. You don’t look the least bit sexy.

  She didn’t look the least bit like herself, either. So she removed the rubber band, finger-fluffed her hair, and turned purposefully away from the mirror to march right back out into the main kitchen.

  Since when had she based her hairstyles on a man’s opinion—for or against? She’d left that kind of stuff behind at the end of junior high, hadn’t she?

  Upon reaching the kitchen, she saw that Calvin and Harry were back from the yard—Calvin’s cheeks were pink from the cold and the lenses of his glasses were fogged up. He’d apparently gotten his jacket zipper stuck, because Garrett was crouched in front of him, trying to work the tab.

  Both of them were laughing, and the sound snagged in Julie’s heart, a sweet pain, too quickly gone.

  Esperanza smiled at Julie, but Garrett and Calvin hadn’t noticed her.

  “Stick ’em up, Pilgrim,” Garrett told the child, when the zipper remained immovable.

  Calvin laughed again and flung both his hands up in the air, and Garrett lifted the partially zipped jacket off over the child’s head, jostling his glasses in the process.

  Calvin took off his specs, wiped them with the tail of his shirt and stuck them back on his face. Julie knew he’d seen her, but all his attention, it seemed, was reserved for Garrett.

  Garrett, giving Julie a sidelong look, handed her the jacket and then scooped Calvin up, tickling as he lifted him high.

  Calvin’s laughter rang like bells on a clear summer day.

  Harry barked in delight.

  Esperanza chuckled and shook her head, her eyes misted over.

  And Julie just stood there, watching, stricken with some combination of joy and sorrow, wonder and caution.

  Catching something in her expression, Garrett carefully set Calvin back on his feet, ruffled his hair.

  “He shouldn’t get overexcited,” Julie explained, as though Calvin weren’t there, or didn’t comprehend the English language. Even as s
he said the words, she regretted them, but they came out automatically. “He has asthma.”

  Calvin spared her a single glance, wounded and angry, and then turned away, ruffling Harry’s ears and asking loudly if the dog was ready to have some supper.

  Julie let out her breath, and her shoulders drooped, and the hem of Calvin’s jacket brushed the floor. “Too bad real life doesn’t have a Rewind button,” she told Garrett miserably.

  Garrett, cowboy-handsome in clean boots, newish jeans and a fresh-smelling, long-sleeved Western shirt, quirked up one corner of his mouth, underscoring the grin that was already twinkling in his impossibly blue eyes.

  “Supper’s ready,” he said, relieving her of Calvin’s jacket, setting it aside, and steering her toward the table, one hand resting lightly against the small of her back.

  The gesture was subtle—barely a touch of his fingers—and at the same time, utterly masculine. Julie loved the way it felt.

  Calvin, having filled Harry’s kibble bowl and given him fresh water as well, disappeared, without being told, to wash his hands.

  He returned holding them up as evidence that he’d followed the rules, well-scrubbed and a little damp.

  He’d even slicked a wet comb through his hair.

  “You look very handsome,” Julie told her son sincerely.

  Calvin favored her with a forgiving smile. “Thanks,” he said, straightening his glasses before climbing onto the chair beside his. Then, after making sure both Esperanza and Garrett were paying attention, he wriggled his right front tooth.

  “Sthee?” he lisped. “It’s going to come out.”

  “Calvin,” Julie corrected gently. “Not at the table.”

  After that, everyone bowed their heads and Esperanza offered a brief prayer of thanksgiving.

  “Esperanza,” Garrett said, having made sure the chicken platter went around the table before helping himself to two large pieces, “I haven’t even tasted this food yet, but I can already tell you’ve outdone yourself. Again.”

  The older woman beamed, enjoying the praise. “Shush,” she said, pleased.