And who will watch yours? Julie wanted to ask, but she didn’t, because she couldn’t get the words out and, anyway, she already knew what his answer would be. Garrett and his brothers would watch out for each other, the way brothers—and sisters—did.
Suppose it wasn’t enough?
Seeing that Julie was finished eating, Garrett collected their plates and silverware and carried them to the sink.
Harry, having scarfed up his morning kibble, nudged Julie’s ankle with his muzzle and whimpered to let her know he needed to go outside.
Mundane as the task was, Julie was glad to have something to occupy her. She slid off the high barstool and sighed. “Come on, dog,” she said. “Let’s go.”
“He might have some trouble with the stairs,” Garrett said, his voice unusually deep, as though he’d just had a testosterone rush. With that, he leaned down, whisked Harry up into his arms and headed for an outside door.
Before stepping through it, Garrett took an old jeans jacket from a peg on the wall and handed it to Julie.
“Put this on,” he said. “It’s probably chilly out there.”
Julie shrugged into the coat, at once comforted and unsettled because Garrett’s scent rose from the denim.
There was a small landing, then a set of stone steps leading down to a cozy, grassy yard, walled in with stucco. Julie followed Garrett down onto the private lawn, folded her arms against the cold while Harry sniffed around, looking for a place to do his business.
“I didn’t know this was here,” Julie remarked, because the silence made her antsy. “It’s almost like a secret garden.”
Garrett’s side-tilted grin reappeared. “Yeah,” he agreed, “except for the—er—garden.”
Harry was taking his sweet time finding just the right place to lift his leg.
Smiling, Julie stood in the center of the yard and turned in a slow circle, closing her eyes to dream of roses and peonies and all manner of other colorful plants and bushes.
A white wrought-iron bench would be lovely, too, and perhaps a small fountain, and a birdfeeder or two.
Suddenly dizzy, Julie stopped turning and opened her eyes and was startled to find Garrett standing so close to her that she could feel the hard man-heat emanating from his flesh.
Her breath caught.
Garrett chuckled hoarsely and set his hands on her hips, holding her in a way that brought back a flood of steamy memories from the night before.
“I won’t be gone long, Julie,” he said, his mouth very close to hers, his warm breath dancing on her skin, “just an hour or two.”
He kissed her then, so gently that some new and unnamed emotion surged up within her, rendering speech impossible.
“I have to make lesson plans,” she blurted out, the moment their mouths parted. “And call my landlady. Get Calvin ready for a new week—”
Garrett had not released his grasp on her. She could feel the press of his thumbs on her hipbones, the spread of his fingers over her buttocks, even through the relatively heavy fabric of her jeans. Her whole body remembered their lovemaking then, in a visceral rush of echoed sensation, and she gasped slightly and felt heat thrumming in her face again.
Garrett smiled, as though he’d read all of that and more in her expression, and maybe he had.
It was a disconcerting thought.
“Make your lesson plans and call your landlady while I’m gone,” he told her. “Because I’ve got a few plans of my own for when I get back.”
Garrett hadn’t exactly issued a command, Julie reasoned, but he wasn’t making a request, either.
“Like what?” she asked, because she couldn’t just let him get away with a thing like that. Whatever that thing was.
If there even was a thing.
Again, that slow and patently lethal cowboy grin. “You really want me to tell you? Right here and now?”
“No,” she said quickly.
Yes, protested everything besides her voice.
Just then, Harry made it known that his errand had been completed. He was ready to go back in the house and lose his dog-self in the depths of a nap, preferably near a warm, crackling fire.
All was well in Harryworld.
With a chuckle, Garrett bent to ruffle the dog’s ears. “This way, buddy,” he said. But instead of heading back up the stairs, he led Julie and the dog out of the hidden yard by a side gate.
There was the barn, the concrete driveway leading to the multicar garage, the acres of grass.
Garrett walked up to the back door, turned the knob and opened it.
Harry rushed into the otherwise empty kitchen, found his water dish in its usual place and started lapping like crazy.
Garrett waited patiently until Julie, oddly shaken, feeling as though she’d just traveled between two worlds instead of two parts of the same huge house, remembered she was wearing his jacket and took it off.
She handed it over.
“I’ll be back in a while,” Garrett said, shrugging into the garment.
Thinking of the rustlers again, Julie felt an almost overwhelming need to get him to stay, whether by coaxing or cajoling or even coercion. She bit down hard on her lower lip to keep from nagging.
“I might not be around,” Julie said casually, although she was feeling anything but casual.
She’d made a terrible mistake, sleeping with Garrett McKettrick.
She’d lowered her defenses, and he had breached them.
And now he was inside, possibly to stay.
If he hadn’t been standing right there, looking directly into her face, Julie might have covered said face with both hands and wailed in frustration and chagrin.
Garrett merely arched an eyebrow, waited for her to go on.
“I’ll probably go to town,” she said. “Stop by the cottage and see if the place is habitable, now that the exterminators are finished.”
He chuckled, gave her a light kiss. “It’s too late to run away now, Julie,” he said. “We’re in too deep for that.”
Julie opened her mouth to protest, realized she didn’t have a leg to stand on, so to speak, and closed it again. And again, heat pulsed in her cheeks.
At least he’d said we’re in too deep.
“It was only sex,” Julie felt compelled to argue. After all, that was the rationale she’d used to justify the indulgence to herself.
“‘Only’?” he teased in response. “Not a word I would use to describe what happened between us.”
Julie didn’t trust herself to reply—the likelihood that she’d put her foot in her mouth was entirely too high.
Garrett turned and headed for the door to the garage then, and Harry gave a little whine of sorrow at his going. Julie barely stifled a mournful whimper of her own.
“Hush,” she said to Harry, her voice husky. “You mustn’t get attached.”
Standing there in the vast McKettrick kitchen, Julie closed her eyes and swayed against a sudden rush of sadness.
Harry was attached to Garrett.
So was she.
And so, most worrisome of all, was Calvin.
She had to step back, move out of the ranch house, do whatever was necessary to put some distance between herself and Garrett.
Resolute, Julie found her address book, unplugged her cell phone from its charger and punched in her landlady’s number.
Julie and Calvin’s rental had been Louise Smithfield’s “honeymoon cottage,” until Mr. Smithfield’s death twenty years before.
Unable to stay where there were so many memories, Louise hadn’t been prepared to let the place go, either. She’d decided, she’d told Julie, to visit a cousin in Austin for a while, get some perspective before she made any big decisions.
One thing led to another, of course, and Louise made new friends in Austin, found a job she liked and eventually bought a condo there.
The honeymoon cottage became a rental, and Louise was content to let it pay off its own mortgage. Julie, the latest in a long line of tenants,
had loved the place, allowed her heart to feel at home there.
“Hello?” Louise croaked, in her rickety old-lady voice, startling Julie out of her reverie. “Who is this? If you’re a telemarketer, I’m on that list and you’d better not call me again.”
“Mrs. Smithfield?” Julie interrupted, with a timorous smile, “I’m not selling anything. It’s me, Julie Remington.”
Mrs. Smithfield was quiet.
“Your tenant?” Julie prompted.
“I know who you are,” Mrs. Smithfield said crisply, but not unkindly. “I’m sorry, Julie. You’ve been a marvel, taking such good care of the cottage, always paying your rent on time. I’m not getting any younger, though, and it’s time for me to liquidate some of my assets.”
Julie’s throat ached. She had been happy at the cottage. “When does the sale close?” she asked.
Louise sighed. “The buyers are paying cash,” she replied. “The transaction can be completed as soon as—as soon as you’ve moved your things out, dear.” A pause, slightly breathless, belied what she said next. “Not that there’s any hurry.”
Julie closed her eyes for a moment, dazed by the prospect of packing all her and Calvin’s belongings and leaving the cottage for good.
Where would they go?
She supposed she could put the furniture and the pots and pans and all of their other stuff into storage, wedge into Paige’s apartment on a temporary basis, start watching the classified ads for that rarest of Blue River phenomena, a house or apartment whose lease was coming up and whose tenants were leaving.
Or she could stay right there on the Silver Spur, continue to go to bed with Garrett McKettrick whenever Calvin wasn’t around, and risk breaking not just her own heart, but her little boy’s, too.
The dog whimpered and scratched at the door Garrett had passed through minutes before.
“Julie?” Mrs. Smithfield said, sounding concerned. “Are you still there?”
“Yes, Mrs. Smithfield,” Julie answered. “I’m still here. The cottage is definitely sold, then?”
“Yes,” the landlady replied, sounding both relieved and defensive. “Frankly, I was a little surprised that you didn’t make an offer, Julie.”
There was no point in saying that the asking price had been too high; after all, someone had met or even exceeded it. Someone who could pay cash, no less.
“If the sale falls through for any reason,” Julie responded gently, “I hope you or Suzanne will get in touch with me.”
Louise promised to do that, and Julie promised to be out of the cottage by the first of the month, a date barely two weeks in the future.
She did not need this, she thought, hanging up after a cordial goodbye. Not on top of the musical she had to stage at school, her disappointment over shoving the showcase of one-act plays to a back burner and Gordon Pruett suddenly deciding he wanted to play a role in Calvin’s life after all.
Among other things.
Julie’s gaze rose briefly to the ceiling.
What is it with you, Remington? she asked herself. Your life wasn’t complicated enough, without adding Garrett McKettrick to the mix?
Julie shook the thought off. She hadn’t been fibbing when she told Garrett she had things to fill her time that day besides going back to bed with him.
The thought of which made her nipples harden, her knees weaken and her insides melt.
“Enough,” she told herself and Harry, who sat at her feet now, head tilted to one side, ears perked up.
Resolutely, Julie marched into the quarters she and Calvin shared. She was a whirlwind, dusting and vacuuming, putting fresh sheets on the beds, clean towels on the rack in the bathroom.
All too soon, the rooms were spotless.
How long had Garrett been gone? she wondered, checking her watch. If he got back before she’d either picked Calvin up at Paige’s place in town, or Paige had brought him home, well, it didn’t take a rocket scientist to predict what would happen.
Her inner slut would come out, that was what would happen.
Before she knew what hit her, she’d be on her back in Garrett’s bed, bare-ass naked, boinking away.
She felt herself go moist with longing.
“Get a grip,” she said.
Harry, who had followed her from room to room during the brief cleaning frenzy, wagged his tail and watched her with interest. Clearly, he was expecting something to happen.
“Come on,” Julie told him, taking his leash from the top drawer of the small antique bureau in the hallway between her bedroom and Calvin’s and clipping it to his collar. “We’re going on a reconnaissance mission.”
As soon as he saw the leash, Harry was beside himself with joy.
It did not take much to please Harry.
Julie grabbed a casual jacket before leaving the house—her regular coat, along with yesterday’s clothes, was still upstairs in Garrett’s hideaway, she remembered with more burning of the face—and tracked down her purse.
By the time she had installed Harry in the backseat of her Cadillac and raised the garage door using the remote Tate had given her when she moved in, Julie almost felt like some sort of crook fleeing the scene of a crime.
Once out and pointed in the right direction, she ferreted through her purse for her cell phone headset, put it on and speed-dialed Paige’s number before heading down the driveway.
She got her sister’s voice mail.
“It’s Julie. I’m on the way over to the cottage to start getting ready to move, and I’ll probably be there for a while, so maybe you can drop Calvin off there and save yourself a trip out to the ranch. Call me when you get this. ’Bye.”
The phone rang just as she reached the main gates, which, fortunately, were standing open.
“Paige?” she said, instead of hello.
“Libby,” her other sister replied, with a smile in her voice. “Listen, I’m making a big potato salad, and Tate took a bunch of steaks out of the freezer before he went to meet Garrett at the airstrip, so it just makes sense to throw a big barbecue, don’t you think?”
Julie chuckled, carefully looking both ways before pulling onto the main road. “What else can you do,” she joked, “besides throw a big barbecue?”
“My thoughts exactly,” Libby said, with a laugh.
She sounded so happy, Libby did.
What would it be like to be that happy?
“You’ll be here, then?” Libby prodded, when Julie didn’t speak again right away.
“Sure,” she said. Most likely, Garrett would be invited, and that might be a little awkward, but Calvin would be around, too, and Paige, and the rest of the crowd. She would have buffers. “What time, and what should I bring?”
“Six-thirty,” Libby answered, “and just bring yourself.”
Julie smiled. “Have you spoken to Paige? She didn’t answer her cell phone.”
“She’s here,” Libby said, “with Calvin. Her phone is probably in the bottom of her bag, and the kids are playing a video game and making so much noise nobody heard it ring. Why don’t you swing by?”
Julie considered the offer. As short as her time apart from Calvin had been, she missed him. Still, with less than two weeks to go before she had to have everything out of the cottage, she needed to do some serious planning and maybe even pack some boxes.
“I have some things to do at my place,” she explained. “Even though the exterminator’s tent is down, I’m not sure what the air quality is like inside, and with Calvin’s asthma—”
“Enough said,” Libby interrupted gently. “Calvin is right here, and he’s fine. Join us when you can.”
“Thanks, Lib,” Julie said, genuinely grateful. “I’ll be there later on.”
“Jules?”
Julie, about to end the call, hesitated. “What?”
“Are you okay? You sound sort of—I don’t know—distracted.”
No worries, Julie imagined herself explaining. It’s just that I spent most of the night twisting the shee
ts with Garrett McKettrick, and now I’m wondering what the hell I was thinking.
“I’m fine,” she said instead. But she couldn’t resist adding, “This rustling thing. How serious is that, do you know?”
“To a rancher,” Libby replied, “rustling is always serious. According to Tate, they’ve lost as many as a hundred cattle, by the latest estimate, and since the critters are currently going for around a thousand dollars a head, that’s a lot of money.”
“You’re not worried?”
“About the cattle?” Libby countered.
“About Tate and Garrett going after the rustlers instead of sending the law,” Julie clarified, somewhat impatiently. Libby knew damn well what she meant.
Libby was quiet for a few moments, interpreting Julie’s words and her tone and drawing conclusions. “So I guess it’s safe to assume the big date went off okay?” she finally asked.
She wasn’t about to dish with her sister. Not while she was driving, anyway. And certainly not when there was even the remotest chance that Calvin might overhear. “It was—okay,” she said.
“Just ‘okay’?”
Julie sighed. “Not now, Lib,” she said.
“But later?” Libby persisted. “You’ll tell us—Paige and me—all about it later?”
“Not all about it,” Julie said.
Libby laughed. “My imagination is already filling in the blanks,” she said.
“Goodbye, Libby,” Julie said. The Cadillac was rolling along at a pretty good clip, and the town limits would be coming up pretty soon. She needed both hands and all her attention to drive.
“See you soon,” Libby practically sang, and the call ended.
When Julie reached the cottage, she saw that the tent had been taken away. The little house looked forlorn, standing there, with a Sold sign in the front yard and no sign of light or life at any of the windows.
Julie pulled into the gravel driveway—there was no garage—and shut off the car. She sat for a few moments, just staring at the tidy brick building she and Calvin had moved into while he was still a baby.
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