Austin

by Linda Lael Miller

  “She did see me go into the barn and she did come out there, Austin,” Paige pointed out.

  “You could have been hurt,” Austin insisted, straightening so he could look into her eyes.

  “Anybody can be hurt,” Paige retorted. “It’s a chance we all take, every day of our lives.”

  “Give me your word, Paige,” Austin said darkly.

  “Give me yours first,” she countered.

  They were sitting there, staring each other down, neither one of them willing to give an inch, when the door leading into the garage swung open and Calvin, Audrey and Ava burst into the kitchen, followed by Garrett.

  Paige smiled and turned on the bench to greet them, holding her arms open wide.

  All three kids rushed her, and she laughed with delight and widened her embrace to make room for everybody.

  Watching her, Austin felt a lump form in his throat, then sink down into his heart.

  He’d loved her as a boy. Now that he was a man, he loved her even more. He’d loved her all the years in between.

  He could tell Paige all of that, and it would be the truth, and she wouldn’t believe it in a million years.

  CHAPTER SEVENTEEN

  GRADUALLY, THE REST OF THE FAMILY gathered in the big kitchen—Libby and Tate came down their stairway, both of them looking a lot more relaxed than when they’d gone up it an hour before. Julie, no doubt having heard Garrett’s account of the Reese incident that had taken place out in the barn that afternoon, decided to stay home and let the assistant director take charge of the musical rehearsals for that evening. The first performance was coming up the following weekend, and the student performers were now engaged in tech rehearsals. She arrived with several buckets of take-out chicken and all the trimmings.

  The kids giggled and chased each other. The dogs chased the kids. The noise and the happy confusion were wonderful.

  Paige, having gotten exactly nowhere in the standoff with Austin, crutched off to the guest apartment. There, she got out a long sleep shirt and moved on to the bathroom, where she undressed and then sat down on the lid of the toilet seat, methodically wrapped her cast with a plastic trash bag from the box she found in the cabinet under the sink, cinched the thing shut using red twist ties and finally rose, teetering a little, to start the shower running.

  The bag was hardly leakproof, but if she kept it out of the direct line of the spray, it ought to do well enough.

  The flow of hot water felt better than perfect, soothing the tension out of Paige’s muscles and warming her to the marrow. She lathered up her skin and shampooed and conditioned her hair and shaved her legs and underarms, all while standing on one foot, like a crane, and holding on to the handle of the shower door for balance.

  And when she’d finished, she felt human again.

  The garbage bag had served its purpose, and she removed it and hung it on the hook on the back of the bathroom door so it would be ready for next time. Maybe she’d secure it with duct tape before she indulged in another shower, just to make sure the cast didn’t get wet.

  Rather pleased with herself, Paige hummed as she checked her cast and found it dry—well, dry enough, anyway—then pulled the clean nightshirt over her head. She got caught inside it, just as she had become entangled in the pullover shirt earlier, and when she finally poked her head through the neckhole and opened the door to let some of the steam roll out, she gave a small, startled gasp.

  Austin was standing in the hallway.

  She glared at him. “What do you think you’re doing?”

  “Libby sent me,” Austin answered with a cocky little grin tugging at his mouth. “With your supper.”

  Through the slowly clearing fog, Paige saw that he was holding a plate in one hand, piled high with chicken, potato salad, biscuits and an ear of corn.

  “And you thought I’d want to eat in the bathroom?” she asked.

  He chuckled. “I heard the shower running and waited,” he said. “Just in case you yelled for help or something.”

  Paige would have sent him packing, but for the sudden realization that she was hungry. Very hungry.

  The chicken smelled so fattening and so good.

  The corn dripped with butter, and so did the biscuits.

  “You’re lying,” Paige accused, reaching for her crutches and wedging them under her armpits, where they bit into her flesh like teeth. “Libby would have brought the food herself, thinking I might have been—”

  “Naked?” he asked, almost purring the word.

  “I’m not naked,” Paige pointed out, feeling testy. It had been a long and trying day, after all, and she just wanted some supper, an hour or two of brainless TV, a pain pill and a decent night’s sleep.

  Austin ran his gaze slowly over the sleep shirt, as if he could see right through the fabric, and stepped back out of her way.

  “Thanks for bringing the food,” she said, reaching the bedroom. “You can go now.”

  Again, that grin. “I’m not going anywhere,” he said. “I’m injured, remember? I’m not supposed to climb the stairs.”

  Paige huffed out a breath. He didn’t look to her as if he’d have any trouble with a set of stairs, but he had been shot very recently. “You can sleep in Calvin’s old room, then,” she said.

  He didn’t answer until she’d gone through the awkward process of setting the crutches aside, climbing into bed, arranging the blankets and all the rest.

  By the time she’d finished, she was breathless from the effort.

  Austin watched, amused. When she was settled, he handed her the plate and some plastic silverware wrapped in a napkin and sat down in the rocking chair to watch her eat.

  Shep wandered in, circled the hooked rug three times and collapsed in comfort.

  “I’ll be fine now,” Paige told Austin. “Really. You can leave.” A pause. “Any time now.”

  He chuckled, rocked idly in the sturdy antique chair, obviously intending to go nowhere. “I’m fine right here,” he said.

  “That,” she replied, “is a matter of opinion.”

  “I’m spending the night,” Austin informed her. “In that bed. With you.”

  Paige hoped he couldn’t tell by looking at her that she found the idea almost as intriguing as it was annoying. “Look, I appreciate your concern, but I’ll be fine. There’s no need—”

  “Oh,” Austin said, in a throaty drawl, when her voice fell away, “I wouldn’t say there was no need. I wouldn’t say that at all.”

  Paige’s heart skittered over a couple of beats. “We agreed—” Again, she couldn’t finish the sentence.

  “I know what we agreed,” Austin replied, low and easy. “And all I’m planning on doing for sure is holding you in my arms. Anything happens beyond that, it will be your choice.”

  Her face burned, not just with indignation, but with desire, too. And no matter how much she might deny the fact, even to herself, she felt scared and shaken and very much in need of holding.

  “We’re not having sex,” she said. “I mean it, Austin. We are not having sex.”

  “All right,” Austin replied affably, raising both hands a little way, palms out. “No sex.” He paused. “Unless, of course, you decide that’s what you want.”

  “I won’t,” she told him too quickly.

  He grinned. “We’ll see,” he answered.

  “You think you’re irresistible, don’t you?” Paige challenged, after gnawing a few bites off a drumstick, chewing and then swallowing. Swabbing the grease from her mouth with a wadded paper napkin. “Well, I’ve got news for you, Austin McKettrick. You are highly resistible. I can resist you with one hand tied behind my back.”

  “I wasn’t planning on tying you up,” he said, deadpan. “But if that’s your thing, we could probably work something out.”

  Paige blushed crimson. “I meant,” she said, after unclamping her back molars, “that not every woman is going to fall into bed with you just because you’re—sort of attractive.”

 
; “Sort of?”

  “Not so much, right now. Here’s a flash for you, McKettrick. I’m immune to your famous charms.”

  “Here’s your chance to prove it,” he said easily.

  Paige glared at him. Waited until she was breathing normally before she answered. “You’re on, buddy,” she told him. Then she finished eating in silence, set her plate aside on the bedside table with a thump, squirmed down onto her back and pulled the covers up to her chin.

  Austin laughed and shook his head, but he didn’t comment. He just got out of the chair, picked up the plate and left the room with it, Shep following hopefully in his wake.

  As soon as they were gone, Paige sat up, grabbed her crutches and sprang out of bed again.

  In the bathroom, she squeezed paste onto her brush and scrubbed her teeth, and finally swished mouthwash back and forth between her cheeks, holding her own gaze in the mirror above the sink.

  She would not give in to Austin McKettrick. She would not let the man make love to her—no way.

  No matter how much she might want him to do exactly that.

  She’d hoped to get back to bed before Austin returned, and she made it, but just barely.

  Determined to ignore him for as long as she could, she groped for the remote and turned on the TV. The sound was muted, which was fine with Paige, because the characters in the “reality” show playing out on the screen were obnoxious enough without being audible. A bunch of women with silicone-enhanced breasts, big hair and too much makeup, were sipping wine in a private dining room at some fancy restaurant in New York or Los Angeles or Palm Beach or wherever, and Paige didn’t need to read their chemically plumped lips to know they were arguing.

  With any luck at all, Paige thought, oddly detached and yet keeping her eyes fixed on the unfolding drama, there would be a brawl. It would be a chance to vent her own anger, vicariously.

  No harm done.

  Austin, meanwhile, opened one of the bureau drawers and took out a pair of gray sweatpants. Paige saw all this out of the corner of her eye.

  Not that she cared what Austin McKettrick wore to bed.

  He vanished into the bathroom and the water in the shower came on.

  Paige unmuted the TV.

  “You’re sleeping with my husband, you bitch,” one of the big-haired women said to another.

  The two women squared off, though they didn’t get out of their chairs.

  Paige rolled her eyes. “He’s not worth it,” she told the misguided females.

  “He loves me,” the other one said.

  There was no question that the scene had been staged. The bad acting ruined any illusion of spontaneity, and yet Paige sat there, watching.

  The onscreen bickering escalated.

  A commercial came on, and another rollicking segment of Real Life followed. The drama dial was definitely being cranked into the red zone.

  Presently, Austin ambled out of the bathroom, wearing the sweatpants and nothing else, unless you counted the damp sheen of moisture on his chest.

  Another commercial began and ended, and then the catfight began in earnest. The two women lunged at each other and rolled the length of the table, knocking over glasses and wine bottles and breadbaskets as they went. Far from breaking up the donnybrook, the other three women dove in. The screaming, kicking, clawing, hair pulling and name-calling commenced.

  Austin stood in the center of the room, watching with casual interest. “I saw something like that happen in a bar in Phoenix once,” he said. “It was awesome.”

  Paige glanced at him. Thumbed the mute button again.

  “I’ll just bet you did,” she said after a beat or two.

  “There must have been ten females involved in that brawl,” Austin recalled, as though Paige hadn’t said a word.

  She wouldn’t eyeball him. She just wouldn’t.

  No matter how good he looked with his hair curling from the shower steam and his chest bare and his face freshly shaved.

  “I suppose that happens a lot around you,” she said, and then could have kicked herself, theoretically, anyway. Under current circumstances, kicking of any kind was way beyond her capabilities.

  “What happens a lot around me?” Austin asked, still watching the now-silent battle as it unfolded on the screen. That was probably why he sounded distracted; his attention was engaged by all those skirts riding up, all those flailing limbs.

  A high-heeled shoe flew through the air, and then a wig.

  “Do they really think those boobs are fooling anybody?” Paige grumbled, feeling positively flat-chested in comparison. She certainly hadn’t meant to say that out loud, but what the hell? She was on a roll; might as well keep going.

  Austin winced as one of the women made the most of her fifteen minutes of fame by emptying the contents of a vase over a waiter’s head when the poor man tried to intervene. “I don’t think they care one way or the other,” he said, grinning. Then he shook his head and looked at Paige. “If this is your idea of entertainment,” he drawled, “I’m pretty sure I have a better idea.”

  “Television sucks,” Paige said, frantically thumbing the channel button now. Infomercials flashed by, along with reruns of stupid comedies, people cooking things, a smarmy-looking man selling gold-plated jewelry and police shows featuring actors who had long since died or left the cast.

  Austin approached. Gently removed the remote from her hand and turned off the TV.

  What a concept.

  “Now what?” she asked weakly, looking up at Austin and wondering how in the world she was going to resist the man for an entire night, with him in the same bed, for heaven’s sake.

  On the other hand, he might stay on top of the covers, as he had before. Not bother her at all.

  Shep, snug on the rug, yawned noisily.

  Austin reached out and shut off the lamp on the bedside table, stood there, gilded in moonlight, looking magnificent, like some half-naked god fresh from Olympus. “Now,” he replied, “I hold you.”

  Oh, hell. He was going to hold her. How was she supposed to ignore that?

  Tears burned in Paige’s eyes, and she was glad he’d turned out the light, because that meant there was a chance he wouldn’t see that she was crying and want to know why. She couldn’t have answered, because she didn’t know. Even making up a lie would have been too much to ask of her, at this point.

  Austin walked to the other side of the bed, and Paige felt the covers move and then the mattress shift under his weight. When he stretched out beside her, she was nearly overwhelmed by the heat and the strength of him, by the delicious scent of his hair and skin.

  All that, and they weren’t even touching.

  Yet.

  Paige sighed.

  Austin chuckled. “Relax,” he said, his voice a quiet rumble in the silver-tinged darkness. He slid his good arm under her, bent the elbow so that she folded into him, wound up with her cheek resting on the hollow of his throat.

  She felt his pulse, strong and steady.

  “That show sort of reminded me of high school,” she said. Although she’d never been in a fight like that herself, she’d helped break them up in the girls’ locker room a couple of times.

  Austin chuckled, but she felt him tense up, too. “Seems to me,” he said slowly, “that a lot of things remind you of high school.”

  Paige sat up awkwardly. “Was that a dig?” she demanded.

  She saw his shoulders move slightly, as if he’d meant to shrug but didn’t want to expend the effort.

  “I’m just wondering when you plan on graduating, Paige.”

  Her temper sizzled. “Are you calling me immature?”

  Austin raised himself onto an elbow. He looked damnably casual for a man who’d just started an argument that might end in nuclear warfare. “I’m saying all that happened a long time ago. I’ve been as honest as I could be, telling you why I did what I did, and I haven’t just said I was sorry, I’ve proved that I still care about you. And that I’m not that b
oy who hurt you anymore, but a man who can care for more than just himself.”

  Paige blinked, picturing him with Calvin and Audrey and Ava. With the little mare, Molly, so terrified of human beings, and with such good reason. And with Shep—he’d taken that bedraggled stray straight to his heart, made a real commitment to the animal. And Paige knew he would keep that commitment, come hell or high water.

  She began to cry. “You’re right,” she admitted, between sniffles.

  He massaged the back of her neck. Grinned, his teeth flashing white, and cupped a hand to his ear. “Hold it,” he said. “I thought you just said—”

  Paige turned to him. “You were right,” she repeated brokenly.

  “Would you mind repeating that statement in front of a witness?” he asked.

  She pushed at his chest. “Stop teasing,” she said. “It’s over. You’ve changed and so have I. It’s time to move on.”

  Austin drew her down, so her head rested on his good shoulder, and he kissed her temple. “I’m not sure I like the sound of that,” he said. “The part about moving on, I mean.”

  “Who are you kidding?” Paige countered. “As soon as you’ve had time to heal up, you’ll hit the road again.”

  “What makes you so sure of that?” He spoke easily, his voice husky in the darkness, and he wound a finger loosely in a strand of her hair as he waited for her answer.

  “It’s your pattern,” she said.

  “It might have been, once,” Austin allowed. “Like you said, Paige, I’ve changed. Tate and Garrett wanted to keep me out of the game for a while—you don’t have to defend them, I know their intentions were good—and that brought me to recognize a home truth. I love this ranch. It’s as much a part of me as my blood and bones. As much a part of me as—” He paused, swallowed, changed course, leaving Paige to wonder what he’d stopped himself from saying.

  As much a part of me as you are? It was too much to hope for.

  A girl could dream, though.

  Presently, Austin went on. “Anyhow, I want to do my share to protect the Silver Spur, Paige. See that it thrives, so it will be here for all the McKettricks who come after my brothers and me.”