Austin

by Linda Lael Miller

  Like hell you haven’t, countered some inner voice.

  “I’d say it was more of a plague than a rash,” Austin remarked lightly. “Seems to be running rampant around here.”

  Paige pretended to be affronted, but she knew she wasn’t very convincing. “A plague?” she repeated. “Hardly what I’d call marriages between my sisters and your brothers.”

  “No,” Austin said, all droll now as he leaned back in his chair. “Your word was rash.”

  “So it was,” Paige admitted, trying not to notice the thin strand of sorrow woven through the genuine joy she felt for her sisters. Not only had they found the right men, now Libby was pregnant and, pretty soon Julie would be, too.

  Being only human, Paige couldn’t help wishing something wonderful would happen in her own life, as well as Libby’s and Julie’s. Trust Austin to notice what she didn’t want him to notice. If she’d been trying to get his attention, skywriting probably wouldn’t have been enough.

  “Why so sad?” he asked.

  Paige averted her gaze, let one shoulder rise and then fall again, in a semblance of a shrug. “I wouldn’t say I’m sad exactly,” she said.

  “Well,” Austin pointed out, still settled back in that chair like he had all the time in the world, “you’re not exactly kicking up your heels, either.”

  “Of course I’m happy. Libby is expecting. I’m going to be an aunt again.”

  An aunt. Again. But not a mother. Maybe never a mother.

  “Actually,” Austin observed, “I wouldn’t put it past Tate and Libby to come across with a set of twins. Exhibit A—Audrey and Ava.”

  Paige laughed, even though there were tears stinging her eyes. She grabbed a paper napkin and swabbed up the spills.

  “Hey,” Austin said gruffly when she didn’t speak.

  She sniffled, straightened her shoulders and looked right at him. “I was hoping to get out of wearing that damn pink dress,” she said, and then wondered at herself, because she hadn’t intended to say that at all.

  “It can’t be that bad,” Austin answered, smiling a little as he refilled Paige’s wineglass—for maybe the third time since the meal began. “The pink dress, I mean.”

  “Easy for you to say,” Paige retorted. “You don’t have to wear it.”

  He laughed. “Now, that’s a fact. Up until you said that, I figured the monkey suit I’ll have to get into to do my best-man number was pretty much a fate worse than death. Now I know the experience would pale by comparison to flitting around in a dress—pink or otherwise.”

  The image his words brought to mind—Austin McKettrick flitting in any way—brought a giggle bubbling up from Paige’s very core. She nearly choked on the sip of wine she’d just taken to steady her nerves.

  In fact, Austin got worried and stood up to slap her back a couple of times.

  A few hiccups came next, but Paige finally managed to breathe normally again, and Austin sank back into his chair, looking relieved.

  Paige’s thoughts shifted naturally to Calvin. Although his asthma flare-ups were fairly rare, this was his reality—that panicked, desperate sensation of gasping for air. Her eyes stung again.

  This time, Austin didn’t speak. He simply pushed his chair back from the table a little way, took Paige by the hand and pulled her easily onto his lap.

  She didn’t resist—which probably meant she’d had a smidge too much wine. She laid her head on Austin’s good shoulder and allowed herself to let go a little.

  His neck smelled so good. Things began to stir inside her, to expand and melt.

  Definitely too much wine.

  “I couldn’t stand it if anything happened to Calvin,” she heard herself say. Where had that come from? Lots of people lived with asthma, and Calvin was healthy in every other way.

  Austin’s lips were warm at her temple. “Calvin will be fine,” he said. He shifted beneath her, and she realized that he was dealing with the erection of the century.

  Fire shot through her. And so did common sense. If she let things go any further, it would be a repeat of last time.

  Or worse.

  Paige pulled free and got to her feet. Straightened her clothes and splayed her fingers to fluff out her hair. Sucked in a deep breath and let it out with a whoosh.

  Austin, breaking the McKettrick rule, did not stand up. He just sat there, watching her, looking amused. There was a sleepy ease in his blue eyes that said the game wasn’t over.

  “You’re right,” Paige said in businesslike tones, “Calvin will be fine.”

  Austin still didn’t speak. He did reach out and trace the length of Paige’s right forearm with the tip of one index finger.

  Goose bumps rose on every part of her body, and there was more heating and spilling and spreading out inside her.

  “Do you still want kids, Paige? Like you did when we were—” He paused, swallowed. “Like you did?”

  She retreated a step—a victory of sorts—but ducking into her bedroom and locking the door behind her would have been a better move, because this was dangerous emotional ground.

  Austin wouldn’t force her to do anything, she knew that. But then, she’d never been afraid of Austin. It was herself she feared, the desperate physical need he could so easily arouse in her.

  “We don’t have condoms,” she blurted out, without planning to, and she was appalled at herself for saying such a thing.

  “Yeah, we do,” Austin replied, standing up. His hands came to rest, ever so lightly, on the sides of her waist. “I bought a box after lunch today, when we stopped to fill my prescription.”

  “Oh,” Paige said.

  He hooked a finger under her chin, lifted. “Yeah,” he teased. “Oh.”

  “We can’t, Austin.”

  “Why not?”

  “We agreed not to, remember? Because we’re going to be running into each other a lot over the next—oh, say, fifty years?”

  “Seems to me we already crossed that particular line, Paige.”

  She looked up at him. “We didn’t—”

  But Austin laid a finger to her lips. “We did,” he said. “For all practical intents and purposes, we had sex.”

  “I’m not having this argument with you again, Austin McKettrick,” Paige said, substituting bravado for dignity and hoping to get away with it.

  “Because we didn’t ‘go all the way’?” Austin asked, his voice husky, his breath tingly warm and wine-scented against her mouth. “Come on, Paige. We’re not kids anymore, screwing in haylofts and fields and the backseats of cars. We’re consenting adults.”

  “Is that what it was to you?” Paige shot back, desperate for something—anything—to throw between them as a barrier. “Screwing?”

  The tactic didn’t work. Austin kept her close, and rested his chin on the top of her head. She felt his heart beating, strong and steady, under her right palm.

  “Let’s take a swim,” he surprised her by saying. “Like before.”

  “You shouldn’t get your bandage wet,” Paige said, and then wished the statement hadn’t had the tone of a lecture.

  “That’s easy to remedy,” he replied, tightening his embrace a little and kissing the place where his chin had been propped. “I’ll take it off.”

  “You can’t do that,” Paige argued. “I’m serious, Austin. Your wound could become infected, or any number of other things could happen—”

  He rocked her a little, ran his strong hands along the length of her back. Sort of settled her against him. “Shhh,” he said. “I’ll follow your orders, Nurse Remington. No swimming. No making love. But it’s early and I’ve already had a few hours of shut-eye and I need something to do.”

  She had to laugh at his reasoning. “That’s why you suggested having sex?” she asked, leaning back to look up at him. “Because you need something to do?”

  Austin McKettrick didn’t lack for audacity—or for much else. He ground his hips against hers, letting her know how much he wanted her.

  His
size, coupled with the hard heat of him, made Paige think of wild stallions out on the range, courting their mares. And her knees nearly buckled.

  “I didn’t suggest having sex,” he told her, about to take her mouth now, teasing her with a couple of nibbling, ricochet kisses, making contact and then bouncing off. “I said ‘making love,’ Paige, and there’s a big difference.”

  Paige felt as though she were drowning—and what a way to go.

  By enormous effort, she stepped back out of Austin’s arms. Emotionally, it was like bolting from a warm house to run naked through a snowstorm.

  “I’m going out to the barn to look in on Molly,” she announced in a shaky voice, dragging in deep breaths and letting them out as if she’d been running. “If you still ‘need something to do,’ you can come along.”

  “Gee, thanks,” Austin drawled. “My horse, my barn. Nice of you to invite me.”

  Nice? Not hardly.

  And not very smart, either.

  The barn was pretty private at this time of day.

  And they’d had sex—made love—whatever—in the hayloft of that barn, more times than Paige could count.

  “You go by yourself,” she said, waving him off.

  “Not a chance,” Austin answered. “It was your idea to pay Molly a visit, and a fine idea it is, too. We’ll both go.”

  Paige sighed. Looking in on Molly had been her idea, and she wanted, even needed, to follow through. “Okay,” she said. “But keep your hands to yourself, Austin. I mean it.”

  He grinned and held up both those hands, palms out, like some misguidedly jovial old-West bank teller facing an armed robber and expecting matters to turn out well for everybody. “Your low opinion of my character,” he drawled, “wounds me deeply.”

  Paige pretended to put a finger down her throat, and that only amused him more.

  They bickered all the way to the kitchen, where they both donned jackets—his denim, hers nylon and way too big because, of course, it wasn’t hers at all.

  Shep stumped along happily behind them, stopping once to lift his leg against one of the posts supporting Esperanza’s clothesline.

  It was dark out by then, of course, and Paige’s courage faltered a little as she remembered how Austin and the dog had both been hurt, not fifty feet from where they were walking right now.

  Austin must have sensed her trepidation, because he slipped an arm around her shoulder. “Don’t worry,” he told her cheerfully, “Shep and I will keep you safe. Besides, there’s nobody around anyhow.”

  “How can you be so sure?” Paige asked with a little shiver.

  Austin’s grin flashed like bright moonlight in the heavy twilight. “Because Shep would go ape-shit if there was,” he said.

  “Oh,” Paige said, looking down at the dog with his hind leg bandaged, and feeling a little dubious.

  They made it to the barn without being attacked by some snarling creature or shot at by a varmint of the two-legged variety.

  Austin flipped on the lights and moved from stall gate to stall gate, greeting all the sleepy horses, one by one. Stroking their long faces, sometimes giving one of their ears a gentle tug.

  Paige strode straight past him, headed for Molly. Reaching the little mare’s stall, she murmured a soft greeting and stepped inside.

  Molly was already filling out. Her coat seemed shinier, her eyes brighter. Best of all, the marks left by the halter were healing beautifully.

  Paige stroked the animal, found an old brush balanced on one of the boards framing the stall, and began, very gently, to groom her.

  Molly snuffled happily and shook her head once, causing Paige to smile.

  “How long since you’ve ridden a horse?” Austin’s question startled her a little; she had been too absorbed in brushing Molly down to notice his approach.

  “A while, I guess,” Paige said, as a lump formed in her throat.

  The last time she’d been on a horse had been on this ranch, a decade before, when she and Austin were still together. Back then, she’d believed with all the naive innocence of a young girl’s heart that he loved her, just as she loved him, and that one day, the Silver Spur would be her home, as well as his.

  His voice, like his manner, was very quiet. “Come morning,” he said, “I mean to saddle up and cover a little ground.”

  “Your back—” Paige began, but then she bit her lip.

  “I’ll be careful,” he said.

  “That will be the day,” she scoffed, well aware that she was acting like some kind of fidgety, overprotective grandmother. The fact was, Austin, like both his brothers, had been riding since he was a toddler, first with his dad and then on his own. The fresh air, the freedom and the exercise, provided it wasn’t too strenuous, would be good for him.

  “I like the way you look, doing that,” Austin said.

  “Grooming a horse?”

  He grinned. “It’s ranch work, and you look right at home doing it.”

  “Don’t get any bright ideas,” Paige responded with a grin of her own. “I’m doing this because it feels good to Molly, not to impress you.”

  “Since when have you ever tried to impress me?” Austin asked good-naturedly.

  Only every day that we were together, Paige thought. But what she actually said was, “You’ve got a point there. Now that you mention it, I was more interested in running you down with our neighbor’s new golf cart.”

  Austin chuckled at the memory. Ran a hand through his hair.

  He needed a shave and a change of clothes and despite all that, he was so damn sexy Paige almost couldn’t stand it.

  “This is nice, being out here with the horses,” he said. “Just you and me.”

  “The horses are good company,” Paige admitted, a little smile tilting up one side of her mouth as she finished grooming Molly and put the brush back where she’d found it.

  That made him laugh. Again.

  “Will you come with me?” he asked, blocking Paige’s way as she left Molly’s stall.

  She looked up at him, and her heart raced. “Where?”

  Austin raised both eyebrows and waggled them teasingly. “Horseback riding,” he said. “In the morning.”

  “Oh,” she said. Around this man, she was a regular conversational genius.

  “One way or the other, I’m going for a ride,” he told her. He’d bent his head toward hers, and she felt his breath whisper over her left ear. “Maybe you ought to come along, just to keep me out of trouble. That’s what Tate and Garrett pay you for, isn’t it?”

  Something in his tone raised her hackles, though she wasn’t sure what. “Keeping you out of trouble,” she said, slipping past him and striding toward the door at a good clip, “is not part of my job description.”

  He caught up, walking beside her. “How about getting me into trouble, then?” he joked. “That sounds like a lot more fun.”

  “You get yourself into plenty of trouble, Austin McKettrick. You certainly don’t need my help.”

  He moved in front of her, forcing her to stop or try to duck around him again.

  She stopped.

  “I’m leaving right after breakfast,” Austin said. “Around six-thirty or so. If you want to come along, you’re more than welcome. If you don’t, I’ll see you when I get back.”

  “Do you have anything else to say?” Paige asked coolly.

  “Yes, ma’am,” Austin replied. “I surely do. You and I are bound to bed down together for real, sooner rather than later. I figure it’s inevitable. But you need to know that I won’t press the matter—the when and the where of it all, that’s up to you. You have my word on it.”

  “How about never?” Paige retorted, her tone sugary sweet.

  Austin merely laughed. “You know it’s going to happen,” he said. “But you’ll probably still be denying it when you’re yelling my name, clawing at my back with all ten fingernails and rolling your eyes back in your head.”

  Seething inwardly, Paige managed to appear calm.
Or, at least, she hoped she appeared calm. She set her hands on her hips and glared at him.

  “You are one arrogant, pigheaded son-of-a—”

  Austin’s mouth quirked up in a grin that would have done the devil proud. “Watch it,” he said. “My mama was a good woman.”

  Paige gave a strangled cry of pure frustration and stormed toward the open doorway of the barn. This time, he let her pass.

  “THAT WENT WELL,” Austin told Shep when the back door of the house slammed behind Paige.

  Shep gave a sympathetic whimper.

  Inside the vast and echoing kitchen, Austin took a can of beer from the fridge and headed, out of habit, for the stairs leading up to his apartment.

  His back was okay, but he felt a head-spinning dizziness when he started the climb, and he had to turn around. This did not bode well, he figured, for the horseback ride he planned on taking in the morning, but it would take more than a little light-headedness to keep him from going. He’d been immobilized, cooped up, for too long. He needed, even craved, the feel of a horse under him, hooves flying, gobbling up ground.

  Austin put the beer back in the fridge and ran a glass of water instead. Reaching his room, he eased out of his jacket and dutifully swallowed the pills Paige had counted out neatly into a little plastic container with a box for each day of the week.

  He hadn’t seen one of those since before his granddad died, when Austin was seven.

  Shep sank gratefully onto his blanket pile and yawned big.

  Leaving the dog behind in the morning would be a wrench, but for Shep’s own good, Austin meant to do exactly that.

  He was thinking about all these things, and a few more, as he ambled into the bathroom, planning on taking a shower before bed.

  He was too far in to go back when he realized that the water was already running in the shower stall, and the flesh-colored shadow behind the frosted glass door was Paige.

  It wasn’t as if he’d never seen a woman in a shower before.

  Hell, if there was a woman in his shower, he was generally in there with her.