Garrett

by Linda Lael Miller

  A distant grinding sound alerted them to the rising of one of the garage doors.

  Harry, just finishing his kibble, perked up his ears and gave an uncertain bark.

  As guard dogs went, Harry was a wuss, but he liked to go through the motions.

  A couple of beats passed, during which no one spoke, and then the door between the kitchen and the garage swung open and Austin stepped over the threshold.

  The youngest of the McKettrick brothers, Austin was just as good-looking as Tate or Garrett, and famous on the rodeo circuit. Even when he was being friendly, it seemed to Julie, who didn’t know him all that well, there was a go-to-hell look in his eyes.

  “Well,” Garrett said easily, settling back in his chair to survey his brother, “you look like five miles of bad road, but welcome home anyhow.”

  “Let me get you a plate!” Esperanza told Austin, already on her feet.

  Austin stopped her with a tired gesture of one hand. “I had a burger outside of San Antonio,” he said. He took off his hat, which looked as though it had fallen into a chute at the rodeo and been stomped on, and hung it on a peg.

  His light brown hair was shaggy, curling above the collar of his denim jacket, and his boots were nothing fancy. That night, he looked more like a drifter hoping for a berth in the bunkhouse than a McKettrick son and heir.

  Austin grinned at Calvin, then the dog. His McKettrick-blue eyes were weary when he looked at Julie, but he smiled. “Hello, Julie,” he said. “Good to see you.”

  She smiled back and nodded. “Hi, Austin.”

  Esperanza was all aflutter, even though she’d sunk back into her chair at Austin’s wave. “You’ll be hungry later,” she insisted.

  “When that happens, I’ll come down here looking for grub,” Austin teased.

  What was it about him that made Julie’s throat tighten, and tears burn behind her eyes? She stole a glance at Garrett and saw that he was frowning a little as he studied his brother.

  “In the meantime,” Austin said, opening one of the refrigerator doors and pulling out a long-necked bottle of beer, “I just want to take a hot shower and crash in my own bed.”

  Nobody responded to that.

  Austin nodded a farewell, taking them all in, and headed up one of the three sets of stairs rising from the kitchen to the second floor.

  Esperanza sat stiffly, staring down at her food.

  Garrett wasn’t eating, either, and Julie, hungry as she was, didn’t pick up her fork.

  Only Calvin, gnawing happily on a drumstick, seemed to have an appetite.

  Austin’s footsteps echoed overhead.

  Garrett pushed back his chair, exchanged glances with Esperanza and muttered, “Excuse me.”

  Rising, he left the table and then the room, taking the same stairs Austin had used moments earlier.

  “Do you think you can fix my zipper?” Calvin asked. “Because I’m going to need that jacket tomorrow to go to the horse sale with Tate and Audrey and Ava, while you and Aunt Libby and Aunt Paige are in Austin shopping for Aunt Libby’s wedding dress.”

  Julie blinked, refocused her attention on her son and even picked up her fork to resume her supper. “I can fix the zipper,” she assured him. “But it’s time you had a new coat, anyway. Maybe I’ll pick one up at the mall.”

  A protest took shape in Calvin’s earnest little face. “Not without me,” he said, and then swallowed. “You might get something geeky-looking.”

  Julie chuckled, and Esperanza smiled, too.

  “Gee, buddy,” Julie said, mussing up Calvin’s hair with one hand, “thanks for the vote of confidence. When was the last time I bought you something ‘geeky-looking’?”

  Calvin straightened his spine. “At Christmas,” he replied. “You gave me that sweater with that lame duck on the front.”

  Julie defended herself. “That was Santa.”

  Calvin blew through both lips and then said, “Puleeeeze, Mom.”

  So he had been humoring her—he didn’t believe in Santa anymore. And he was only five. She’d hoped for one more believing Christmas, just one more, but apparently it wasn’t to be.

  The backs of Julie’s eyes stung again, the way they had when she’d looked at Austin a few minutes earlier, but she managed a smile.

  “Finish your supper,” she said. “We’ll figure out the new-jacket thing later.”

  By the time Garrett returned, Julie and Esperanza had cleared the table, except for his plate and utensils, and Calvin was happily splashing away in the bathtub in the guest quarters, with Julie checking on him every few minutes.

  Returning from one of these runs, she paused to look at him for a moment, wondering what to say, if anything, before she gave up and began helping Esperanza load the dishwasher.

  With a sigh, Garrett sat down.

  “I could heat that food up for you,” Esperanza offered, watching him.

  He smiled, but he looked tired. “I could heat it up for myself,” he said. “But there’s no need.”

  “Is Austin all right?” Esperanza asked, in the tone of a woman who has held back a question as long as she was able.

  Garrett didn’t answer right away. When he did speak, his voice was low and slightly rough. “Probably not,” he said. “I tried to get him to talk, and he told me to leave him the hell alone, so that’s what I plan on doing. For tonight, anyhow.”

  Esperanza lifted worried eyes toward the ceiling. She murmured something, probably a prayer, and shook her head.

  “He’ll be fine in a few days, Esperanza,” Garrett said quietly.

  Esperanza opened her mouth, closed it again.

  “I’ll finish cleaning up,” Julie told her, very gently. “You’ve been working all day.”

  “So have you,” Esperanza pointed out, cheering up a little, reaching back to untie her apron. With a sigh, she added, “But I think I’ll take you up on your kind offer, Julie. Put up my feet and read for a while before bed. There’s nothing decent on TV.”

  Julie took the apron from Esperanza’s hand, nodded.

  After the housekeeper had gone, Garrett got up from the table and put his plate into the microwave, pushed a few buttons.

  Meanwhile, Julie wiped down counters, rinsed out the sponge, washed her hands and applied lotion. The air trembled with that now-familiar tension, and she stole several glances at Garrett, trying to figure out if he was feeling it, too.

  The microwave timer dinged, and he took out his plate, returned to the table, sat down to eat. Sighed before picking up his fork.

  From the looks of things, he’d forgotten Julie was even in the room.

  She suppressed a sigh and started for the doorway. It was time to get Calvin out of the tub, into his pajamas, oversee the tooth-brushing ritual.

  “Julie?”

  Garrett’s voice stopped her on the threshold of the corridor leading to the guest quarters and to Esperanza’s living area. She straightened her spine, waited for him to go on, but didn’t turn around or speak.

  “Would you mind coming back here after you tend to Calvin?” he asked quietly. “Just to keep me company for a little while?”

  There was nothing needy in his tone, and nothing demanding, either. Garrett was making a simple request.

  She turned her head, felt an actual impact when their two gazes met. If she hadn’t figured out instantly that something was happening when he kissed her the night before in the pool, she’d have known it then.

  “Okay,” she replied, in a smaller voice than she’d used in a long time.

  Since the next day was Saturday, and Calvin was looking forward to spending the time with Tate and the twins, he was unusually tractable about brushing and flossing, being tucked in and kissed and saying his prayers. Libby, Paige and Julie would be away for hours, visiting a whole series of bridal shops in search of Libby’s wedding dress.

  Harry jumped up onto the bed and curled up at Calvin’s blanketed feet, starting to snore practically the moment he’d settled in.

/>   Calvin squeezed his eyes tightly shut, determined to sleep. The sooner he fell asleep, he probably reasoned, the sooner it would be morning.

  Julie chuckled and kissed his forehead. “You’re trying too hard,” she whispered.

  Calvin’s eyes popped open, wide and faintly dazed because he wasn’t wearing his glasses. “It’s never going to be morning!” he fretted.

  Julie smoothed his hair lightly, remembering when she was little, looking forward to something, counting the days till it finally came—Christmas, or a birthday, or the last day of school, or the first day of school.

  Back then, she and her sisters had wanted to speed time up.

  Usually, their dad would smile wistfully and tell them not to wish their lives away.

  “It will be morning,” Julie reminded her eager son.

  “When?” he asked fitfully.

  She leaned down, kissed his forehead just once more. “When it’s morning,” she answered. “Happy trails and sweet dreams, cowboy.”

  Calvin huffed out a sigh, but he grinned at her before turning onto his side, snuggling down into his pillow and his covers and squeezing his eyes closed again. “’Night, Mom.”

  Julie lingered in the doorway, savoring this child, this fleeting place in time. It was all too easy, she reminded herself, to get caught up in causes and concerns and plans for the future and forget what truly mattered—loving and being loved, in the present moment.

  She closed the door softly, took her time returning to the kitchen.

  Garrett was putting his plate, glass and utensils in the dishwasher when she arrived, and she noticed that he’d set out a bottle of red wine and two glasses.

  Catching her looking at them, he chuckled, turned to face her, leaning back against the counter and folding his arms. His dark blond hair looked especially shaggy, and his beard was coming in, bristly and golden. His blue eyes twinkled with a certain benevolent mischief.

  “It’s okay, Julie,” he told her, in a tone he might have used to reassure a skittish mare, indicating the wine with a slight inclination of his head. “I’m not out to seduce you.”

  An unspoken yet hovered between them.

  “A glass of wine would be nice,” she said, struggling to find her equilibrium.

  “Good,” Garrett said. He picked up the wine in one hand and caught the stems of the glasses together in the other, then led the way onto the indoor patio on the near side of the pool.

  The lighting was soft, the water was a great sparkling rectangle of turquoise, and the retractable roof was open to the silvery dance of a zillion stars spread across the night sky.

  Garrett chose one of several tables, set down the things he was carrying, and drew back a chair for Julie to sit.

  She hesitated—it was here, after all, in this very swimming pool where she’d felt a degree of desire she’d never even imagined to be possible—and the equation was obvious. Sexy man plus starlight plus wine and privacy equaled extreme vulnerability on her part.

  Sex was one thing—it would be beyond good with Garrett, no doubt about that—but emotional entanglement was another. Easy manner, cowboy getup and horseback riding aside, he was a man with serious political aspirations—everybody in Blue River knew his association with Senator Cox was an apprenticeship of sorts, a way of learning the ropes.

  And the fact of Garrett’s association with a man Julie had always considered a scoundrel sent up all kinds of red flags in her mind. If Garrett had respected Cox enough to work for him from the time he finished law school and passed the bar, which he had, until their recent break in the midst of the pole-dancer scandal, what did that say about Garrett’s judgments and values?

  Once she took a chair, Julie just sat there, feeling like a lump.

  Garrett gave a small, rueful smile, wry at the edges, and poured wine into her glass, then his own.

  “We need to talk,” she blurted, and immediately felt like four kinds of fool.

  Garrett sat back comfortably in his chair—hell, he was damnably comfortable in his skin—and waited indulgently for her to go on.

  She reached for her wineglass, nearly spilled it and set it down again, without taking so much as a sip.

  Garrett smiled again, though his eyes were solemn. And still he waited. Wine by the pool under a universe full of shimmering stars had been his idea, but now that she’d opened her big mouth and clearly regretted it, he wasn’t going to let her off the hook.

  She cleared her throat, picked up her glass again, and sloshed back a gulp that nearly choked her.

  Garrett didn’t say one word, but a hint, a shadow, of amusement lingered on his mouth, and his eyes never left her steadily reddening face.

  Julie took a second sip of wine, this time slowly, stalling in the hopes that her composure would return.

  It did, sort of.

  “What happened last night,” she said, nodding toward the pool, “our kissing each other and everything…”

  She ran out of steam.

  Garrett chuckled, sipped his wine. Set his glass down and took his sweet time picking up the conversational ball. “At least you’re willing to admit it was mutual,” he said. “Last night, you seemed bound and determined to put all the blame on me.”

  Julie’s cheeks pulsed with heat. She knotted her fingers together in her lap. “I’m not denying there’s a certain attraction,” she ventured, and then had to stop and clear her throat, which was mortifying.

  Garrett gave an almost imperceptible nod of agreement. Or encouragement. Or something. But he went right on letting her dangle.

  “Feel free to jump in and contribute to this exchange at any time,” Julie said, annoyed.

  That made him laugh. It wasn’t just a chuckle—oh, no. Garrett McKettrick threw back his head and gave a husky shout of amusement.

  Turnabout, Julie decided, was fair play. She waited now.

  He watched her for a long time, and his regard felt, she thought, like a caress. Which was just ridiculous, in her opinion, because he wasn’t touching her.

  Thank God, he wasn’t touching her.

  “It seems reasonable to assume,” he said, after a long time, “that you and I might wind up in bed together one of these days—or nights—since there’s a certain attraction here. You’ve probably guessed that the whole idea works for me, on every possible level, but it has to work for you, too, Julie—because if it doesn’t, it can’t happen at all.”

  Julie hadn’t been involved with a lot of men, but she wasn’t naive, either. Garrett’s blunt honesty was new, in her admittedly limited experience, and she didn’t know quite what to make of it.

  Did he actually mean what he said?

  Would he really back off if she told him this wasn’t the right time in her life for a—well—a fling?

  Garrett picked up the bottle, leaned, topped off her glass. “What?” he prompted, watching her face, raising one eyebrow.

  “We’re very different,” Julie said.

  He grinned. “In all the right places,” he replied.

  “That isn’t what I mean and you know it.” She steadied herself with another sip of wine. It was a very nice wine, she thought. A shiraz, maybe, or a merlot. Even without peering at the label—which she refused to do—she knew the full-bodied red was way out of her price range.

  And Garrett McKettrick, her pragmatic side pointed up, was out of her league. Not because he was better—of course he wasn’t—but because he traveled in different circles, normally. Very sophisticated ones. Not that Julie couldn’t fit in, if she made the effort, but that was the problem. She didn’t want to change.

  She liked her life a lot—teaching English in a small high school, despite all the attendant problems, and running the drama club.

  She loved her sisters.

  Most of all, she loved Calvin, and she wanted to raise him in the little town of Blue River, where she’d grown up herself.

  Garrett smiled, evidently enjoying her frustration. “Talk to me,” he said.


  “You’re not working for Senator Cox anymore?” she asked, back in blurting mode.

  Dammit, she thought. She was intelligent. She was certainly competent. Why did her IQ make a swan dive whenever she spoke to or even looked at this man?

  “No, that’s over,” he replied.

  “What about your career?”

  “What about it?”

  Her temper flared in the way Libby and Paige swore made her hair crackle. “Surely your career isn’t over,” she said. “We didn’t run in the same crowd in school—you were a popular rodeo jock and I was artsy and a little weird—but—”

  Again, one of his eyebrows rose. “A little weird?” he teased. “You wore white lipstick all through junior year.”

  Taken by surprise, Julie spoke without thinking. “You noticed that? The white lipstick phase?”

  Garrett laughed. “It was hard to miss, especially since you dressed like Morticia Addams most of the time.”

  “I did not dress like Morticia Addams!” Julie protested, laughing too. “I just wore a lot of black, that’s all. I was making an existential statement.”

  He rolled his marvelous eyes. “Whatever.”

  The muscles linking Julie’s shoulders to her neck let go in a sudden burst of relaxation; the swiftness of it made her feel light-headed.

  This was some wine.

  She finally looped back to where she’d left off—Garrett’s career. “My point is, even in high school you were interested in politics. You wanted to serve in the U.S. Senate, if not be president. Has all that changed?”

  Garrett stopped smiling. Turned his wineglass slowly on the tabletop, by the stem. Then he looked straight into her eyes. “The truth is, I’m not really sure,” he said. “Why do you ask?”

  Why was she asking?

  Because she needed to know his long-term plans, if she was going to get involved with Garrett, even on a temporary basis.

  To a man, a fling was a fling, and when it was over, it was over. But Julie knew that if she shared her body with this particular man, there was a good chance her heart would jump ship, too.

  Julie was a risk taker by nature, or, at least, she had been, until Calvin was born. Now, she was more careful, because if her heart got broken, Calvin’s surely would, too. And she had to stay strong to be the kind of mother to him that her own had never been to her or to her sisters.