Austin

by Linda Lael Miller

  “Will you just—go back in the house or something?” he said.

  She blinked, shook her head. “And leave you like this?”

  “I hate to say it,” Austin ground out, “but you’re not really helping all that much by sticking around.”

  “Don’t be such a big baby,” Paige said. Her mouth was twitching, and she still had that twinkle in her eyes. “You’re not the first person whose back ever went out, you know.”

  He managed to hitch up a little more, but he felt as though his spine were about to split like a piece of cord-wood under the blade of an ax. “I know that,” he said, catching his breath after another twinge of pure agony rocked his world.

  “Maybe I should get Garrett, though,” Paige speculated, looking genuinely concerned now. It was about time she showed some sympathy, by Austin’s reckoning, but he didn’t care for the direction her thoughts were headed.

  Austin spoke through his teeth. “Don’t you dare bring Garrett out here.”

  “Take it easy,” Paige told him. Her voice was gentler now, and she was rubbing his back again. “I just thought you might need his help, that’s all.”

  It was almost worth all that suffering, having her rub his back like that.

  Almost, but not quite.

  Slowly, by increments, Austin cranked himself upright.

  “Just so you know,” Paige informed him, linking her arm through his, “you’re not sleeping in this barn. Let’s get you into the house.”

  “I’m not going anywhere,” Austin told her. He flung a hand in Molly’s direction. “This horse—”

  She raised her eyebrows, spoke in a deliberate and moderate tone. “Yes, you are going somewhere, McKettrick. Molly will be fine without you playing mother hen. Besides, you can’t stay out here alone, not in the shape you’re in, and I’m not sharing that sleeping bag with you. It’s too damn cold for that.”

  “You’d do it otherwise?” he asked hoarsely, amazed. “Share the sleeping bag with me? If it wasn’t cold, I mean?”

  Paige blushed.

  All around them, sleepy horses looked over stall gates, probably wondering what all the fuss was about.

  “I was speaking—advisedly,” Paige said.

  “Advisedly?” Austin repeated, amused. Carefully, he folded his arms. “Here’s the thing, Paige,” he went on. “If we were both stuffed into the same sleeping bag, we’d be sharing each other’s body heat, so it’s unlikely we’d be cold.”

  Her face burned even brighter.

  He’d forgotten how sexy she was when she was mad as hell.

  “We’re going inside, bucko,” she told him, jabbing at his chest with the tip of one index finger. “You can either come along under your own power, behaving yourself in the process, or I can fetch Garrett. Maybe call Tate, too, just in case persuading you turns out to be a two-man job. The choice is yours.”

  “‘Bucko’?” he teased.

  “Just a figure of speech,” Paige said, folding her arms, jutting out her chin and looking up at him with challenge sparking in her eyes. “And don’t think I haven’t figured out that you’re stalling, Austin McKettrick. Either you come inside right now, or I’ll get Garrett.”

  “I can handle Garrett,” Austin said, starting to feel testy again. “Tate, too, come to that.”

  “Fine.” Paige huffed, and turned on one heel, about to march off. “We’ll just see, then, won’t we?”

  Austin blew out a sigh, caught her by the back of the waistband on her jeans.

  She spun around to face him, small fists clenched.

  Shep gave a halfhearted growl.

  Austin flashed back to the summer night Paige had caught him messing around with her archenemy, Kimberly Johnson, in a parked car.

  He hadn’t meant for Paige to actually catch them in the act, but he had wanted her to find out through the Blue River grapevine that he was fooling around with someone else. It was the only way he knew to derail Paige’s fantasies about marriage. She seemed to think she could study nursing and he could ride bulls and all the while they’d make babies and live happily ever after, and she just didn’t hear him when he tried to tell her he couldn’t commit to anything right then but following his rodeo dream.

  Tipped off by one of Kimberly’s malicious girlfriends, Paige had driven out to Lovers’ Lane to prove it was all a lie and seen the truth with her own eyes. Austin hadn’t meant to hurt her that bad—it wasn’t ’til he looked into her face, contorted by pain, that he realized just how lame his plan had been.

  The next day, he’d worked up the courage to knock on her door, meaning to explain, but Paige had come shooting out of her father’s house like a human cannonball. She’d grabbed up the garden hose, he recalled, and turned on the spigot, clearly intending to douse him good.

  Unfortunately, the scene had struck Austin as hilarious. He’d laughed and vaulted over the Remingtons’ picket fence to stand on the sidewalk.

  “Paige, listen to me,” he’d begun, hardly knowing what he was saying. “Kimberly and I are really—well—we’re just friends—”

  Paige had dropped the hose, but only because she couldn’t stretch it any farther and it was useless as a weapon. She jerked open the creaky-hinged gate and bolted through it.

  The next-door neighbor’s shiny new golf cart sat at the base of his driveway, and Austin, backing away from Paige, bumped into the back fender and then skirted the vehicle. Even then, he’d known he ought to quit laughing, because it sure as hell wasn’t helping matters, but they were both caught in a vicious cycle: the more he laughed, the madder Paige got. And the madder she got, the more he laughed.

  Paige, her eyes shooting fire, had jumped behind the wheel of the golf cart, turned the key left dangling from the ignition and shifted gears.

  She chased him down to the corner, then right out onto Main Street.

  Clem Chambers, the neighbor, ran behind Paige, yelling for her to stop, but she paid him no mind.

  Austin, now running backward, now running forward, right down the center line, was enjoying the spectacle way too much to put a stop to it.

  Given that the “incident of record,” as Bill Motts, then chief of police, termed it later, took place in Blue River, Texas, under a heavy canopy of blue-skied July heat, there was no traffic to speak of. Hell, even the dogs that usually roamed the community all day were curled up under porches, avoiding the glare of the sun.

  Folks came out of stores and shops on both sides of the road, though, to watch the show.

  So Austin ran.

  Paige chased him in the golf cart.

  Chief Mott jumped into his patrol car, heretofore parked in front of Willard’s Bakery, where he bought three bear claws and a cup of strong coffee every morning of his working life, and switched on the lights and the siren. Used his bullhorn to order Paige to “Pull over, dammit.”

  If she heard the chief at all, she gave no sign of it.

  Austin, a ranch kid in good shape, could have run all day. Might have kept the game going a lot longer if he hadn’t known Chief Mott so well. Alternately bored with his job and miffed because in his view nobody accorded him the proper respect, the man had no sense of humor. He’d probably throw the book at Paige just for something to do and, besides, what if she got hurt?

  Austin had led Paige on a merry chase through the middle of town, then sprinted up onto the courthouse steps and bent double, laughing.

  Paige tried to drive right up there after him, but the front wheels of the golf cart bumped against the bottom step and then the motor died.

  The cart’s puffing, red-faced owner got to her at the same time as Chief Mott leaped out of his squad car and waddled over to yank the keys from the ignition.

  “I want to press charges!” Clem had yelled, waving his arms around.

  “Now, Clem,” Chief Mott had said, “calm down before you have a heart attack.”

  Paige just sat there, on the seat of that golf cart, glaring up at him. Tears left zigzagging tracks in the d
ust covering her face.

  The memory found a soft spot in Austin’s middle and ached like a fresh bruise. Brought him back to the present with a jolt.

  Dark barn. Faithful dog. Pissed-off woman.

  By the time Austin had squared himself with these realities, Paige had pulled free of his grip on the back of her jeans, and she was studying him like she hoped to read his mind.

  “Is your disposition still as bad as it used to be?” he asked, looking around for his boots. He didn’t want to risk another spasm by pulling them on, so he decided to leave them behind and cross to the house in his stocking feet, but Paige followed his gaze and grabbed them up. Shoved the pair into his chest and looked up at him with narrowed eyes.

  “What is that supposed to mean?” She started toward the barn door, and Austin followed.

  “Just what you think it means,” he answered. “As I recollect, Nurse Remington, you once tried to do me serious bodily harm with a golf cart. If that isn’t an indication of antisocial tendencies, I don’t know what is—”

  Paige strode out into the yard, hugging herself against the chill. “You know damn well I wouldn’t have run you over,” she said, still on the move. Was that regret he heard in her voice? A little humility, maybe?

  Nah.

  Austin took off his battered denim jacket and draped it over her shoulders.

  Shep trotted along at his side, tail whipping back and forth.

  “I know,” Austin admitted.

  Paige stopped, pulling the jacket tighter around her shoulders. Moonlight caught in her eyes as she looked up at him. “You do?” she asked.

  “Yeah,” he confirmed. “I do.” Mindful that he was bootless, and he’d given Paige his coat, Austin took her hand and kept walking. The ground was hard and the cold bit right through the soles of his socks. “Still, it was a pretty dramatic way of making your point.”

  Paige didn’t answer. She walked fast, and wouldn’t look at Austin again.

  Once they were inside the kitchen, Shep included, he shut and locked the door.

  He wanted to kiss Paige again, but since she’d pushed him away the last time, he didn’t give in to the urge. No, siree, for once in his life, good judgment prevailed.

  “Good night, Paige,” he said. He started for his private set of stairs, and couldn’t even make the first step because his lower back locked up again.

  Gritting his teeth, Austin wrapped one arm around the newel post and steeled himself to wait it out.

  AUSTIN HAD ONE FOOT ON THE FIRST STAIR and one on the floor, and Paige actually saw the bunching of the muscles in his back, even through the fabric of his shirt.

  She hesitated, then climbed to the third step, so she could look directly into his anguished face. Although she felt a deep pang, seeing him like this—Austin was an intensely physical man, a cowboy, an athlete, practically a legend on the rodeo circuit, suddenly unable to lift a dog or a child or climb a set of stairs—Paige didn’t let her sympathy show.

  “How about a swim?” she said.

  Their noses were almost touching.

  And his eyes were so blue.

  He’d kissed her, out there in the barn, and dammit, she could still feel the buzz, all the way down to her toes. Thank God she’d come to her senses and put a stop to it before things went any further.

  She had a personal point of no return when it came to Austin, and when he’d kissed her—the way he’d kissed her—she’d come perilously close to—well—whatever.

  He blinked, clearly confused. Whatever Austin had expected her to say or do, it hadn’t been this. “Huh?”

  “A swim,” Paige repeated, grasping the rail for support because she suddenly felt as though she might tumble headfirst into those sky-blue eyes and never be seen or heard from again. “Some exercise might loosen you up a little. Make it easier to sleep.”

  A smile settled into his eyes and slowly made its way down to the corners of his mouth. He let go of the newel post and rested his hands on either side of Paige’s waist, and for one beautiful, horrible, heartbreaking moment, she thought he was about to kiss her again.

  This time, she wasn’t sure she had the strength to resist.

  He didn’t kiss her, though.

  He didn’t move, either, except to slide his palms up her sides; she felt the sides of his fingers under her breasts.

  “It would be great,” he drawled, in a husky rumble, “to loosen up.”

  Paige’s cheeks ached with sudden color.

  His gaze focused on her mouth—just her mouth—searing her flesh with ice-blue heat.

  Somehow, she scrounged up the presence of mind to sidestep Austin and retreat to the bottom of the stairs.

  Austin stayed where he was for a long moment, then sighed and turned around to face her. Stepped down.

  “What about you, Paige?” he asked. “Do you need to loosen up?”

  She swallowed. Brazened it out by plastering on a smile. “I wouldn’t mind swimming a few laps,” she said. “If that’s what you’re asking.”

  He looked her over. Took in her jeans, the clingy sweater, the borrowed jacket she was still wearing. “I’ll take what I can get,” he said. “You have a suit?”

  “I borrowed one of Julie’s a few days ago,” Paige replied, “and I haven’t returned it yet.”

  Again, that insufferable grin, the one that made her reel on the inside. “Damn,” Austin said in a purring growl. “I was hoping you’d have to go naked.”

  The words sent hot shivers rushing through her, but she could think of no good reason for letting him know that, if it could be avoided.

  “Well, you’re out of luck this time, cowboy,” Paige answered blithely.

  She walked away then, headed for the guest quarters. The one-piece Julie had loaned her was still dangling from the showerhead where she’d hung it up to dry a few days before.

  Once she was out of the kitchen, and thus out of Austin’s sight, Paige picked up speed, in such a hurry to change that she practically skipped along the corridor.

  Reaching the bathroom, she took the swimsuit off the showerhead, tossed it onto the counter. Then, telling herself to slow down—did she want Austin to think she was eager?—Paige turned on the spigots, stripped out of her clothes, took a hasty shower, dried off and wriggled into the suit. She combed her wet hair straight back from her face and studied her image in the full-length mirror bolted to the inside of the door.

  The one-piece was more revealing than she remembered.

  Plus it was a wild floral print, made up of screaming pinks, oranges and yellows.

  Paige tugged at the shoulder straps, sucked in her stomach, turned sideways. Her butt cheeks were sticking out, so she tugged some more.

  She squinted at her reflection.

  Too bad her own modest, sensible black suit was in storage, along with most of her other clothes.

  Resigned, Paige grabbed a towel, wrapped it around her waist like a skirt, jammed her bare feet into flip-flops from the drugstore and made her way back through the house.

  There were a few lights on in the kitchen, so she was in no danger of stubbing a toe or barking a shin, and Shep was there to meet her, tail in perpetual motion, as usual.

  She had to smile, and smiling relaxed her a little.

  She proceeded bravely into the room where the enormous swimming pool gleamed like a giant turquoise jewel. The area around it was dimly lit, though, creating a cozy ambience.

  Austin was treading water in the deep end. She had an overwhelming awareness of…skin. A lot of it. His upper body was tanned, muscular, glistening with moisture, full of controlled power. The rest of him was wrapped in shifting blue shadows.

  Paige froze there on the tiled edge of that magnificent pool, keeping her towel in place with a death grip. She’d been so worried about the fit of the swimsuit that she hadn’t considered what Austin might—or might not—wear.

  Dear God. Was he naked?

  Austin watched her in silence for a long moment.
Then he threw back his head and gave a low bark of laughter.

  Paige forced herself to walk—casually, she hoped—to the steps dipping into the shallow end of the pool, but she held fast to the towel. Her face felt hot, and she was very careful not to look in his direction again.

  It was a challenge for the man to put on his own boots.

  A few minutes ago, he hadn’t been able to climb the stairs to his bed.

  Obviously, though, he’d managed to divest himself of at least some of his clothes while she was showering and wiggling into Julie’s tropical nightmare of a suit. She sat on the top step, swished her feet around in the water.

  Austin drew a little closer; Paige felt the shift in the atmosphere even before she caught the subtle motion at the far periphery of her vision.

  “What’s the matter, Paige?” he drawled, and there was a teasing note in his voice. “You didn’t used to be so shy.”

  “I’m not shy.”

  “Then get into the water,” Austin suggested reasonably. He cleared his throat. “Might loosen you up,” he added.

  “I’m not the one in need of loosening up,” Paige pointed out, somewhat stiffly.

  Again, that gruff chuckle. “I reckon that’s a matter of opinion,” he said, exaggerating the words and the accent to the verbal equivalent of sweet molasses.

  Paige locked eyes with Austin then, just so he wouldn’t think she was rattled.

  Even if she was. A little.

  Austin was much nearer now. The water lapped almost imperceptibly at his navel.

  Instinctively, Paige’s gaze traveled over his muscular chest, caught briefly on the surgical scars on his right shoulder, doubled back to his washboard belly, and sent the message zipping back to her brain: he was wearing boxers.

  Of course he saw her looking, and it made him laugh again.

  “You were right,” he said very quietly, holding out a hand. “The water feels good.”

  Paige let him take her hand, loosening the towel and let it drop from her as he pulled her gently down the pool steps until she was facing him. “You should be moving around,” she said nervously. “That’s the whole point. Working the muscles in your lower back.”

  He rested his hands on her shoulders, dripping turquoise light onto her skin. “I can think of a few variations on that theme,” he murmured.