McKettricks of Texas: Tate Page 8

  Audrey and Ava curtseyed grandly, spreading the sides of their cotton shorts like skirts.

  “Yes, my lord,” Ava said.

  Tate laughed. “Go,” he said.

  Both girls hurried out of the castle, the canine trio chasing after them, barking like dog-maniacs.

  “‘Yes, my lord’?” Libby teased, grinning, when the din subsided a little. “Now where would a pair of six-year-olds pick up an antiquated term like that?”

  “Garrett probably taught them,” Tate answered. “He likes to get under my skin any way he can.”

  Esperanza stood beside the patio table, laughing as she shooed the dogs out from underfoot and ordered the twins inside to wash their hands and faces.

  Ambrose and Buford followed them, but Hildie paused, turned and scanned the yard, then trotted toward Libby with something like relief when she spotted her.

  Touched, Libby bent to pat the dog’s head.

  Esperanza had outdone herself, preparing supper. There were tacos and enchiladas, seasoned rice and salad.

  Libby enjoyed the food almost as much as the company, and she was sorry when the meal ended and Esperanza herded the twins into the house for their baths.

  Overhead, the first stars popped out like diamonds studding a length of dark blue velvet, and the moon, a mere sliver of transparent light, looked as though it had come to rest on the roof of the barn.

  Libby was totally content in those moments, with Tate at her side and Hildie lying at her feet, probably enjoying the warmth of the paving stones.

  When Tate squeezed her hand, Libby squeezed back.

  And then they drew apart.

  Libby stood and began to gather and stack the dishes.

  Tate got to his feet and helped.

  Libby had forgotten how big the kitchen was, and as they stepped inside, she did her best not to stare as she and Tate loaded one of several dishwashers and cleaned up. The pool was visible on the other side of a thick glass wall, a brilliant turquoise, and looking at it, Libby couldn’t help remembering the skinny-dipping episode.

  She smiled. They’d been so innocent then, she and Tate.

  So young.

  And such passionate lovers.

  Tate took her gently by the elbows and turned her to face him. Kissed her lightly on the forehead. “Thanks for saying ‘yes’ to tonight, Lib,” he said. “It’s good to have you back here.”

  Libby’s throat tightened with sudden, searing emotion.

  Tate cupped her chin his hand and tilted her face upward, looked into her eyes. “What?” he asked, very gently.

  She shook her head.

  He drew her close, held her tightly, his chin propped on the top of her head.

  They were still standing there, minutes later, not a word having passed between them, when Esperanza returned, the front of her dress soaked, her lustrous, gray-streaked hair coming down from its pins. Barking and the laughter of little girls sounded in the distance.

  “The dogs,” Esperanza told Tate breathlessly, “they are in the bathtub, with the children.”

  Tate sighed in benign exasperation, then stepped away from Libby. “I’ll be back in a few minutes,” he said. As he passed Esperanza, he laid a hand on her shoulder, squeezed.

  “These children,” Esperanza fretted. “I am too old—”

  Libby hurried over to help the other woman into a chair at the table. Brought her a glass of water.

  “Are you all right?”

  Esperanza hid her face in her hands, and her shoulders began to shake.

  It took Libby a moment to realize the woman was laughing, not crying.

  Relieved, Libby laughed, too.

  Tears of mirth gleamed on Esperanza’s smooth brown cheeks, and she used the hem of her apron to wipe them away.

  Then, crossing herself, she said, “It is just like the old days, when the boys were young. Always in trouble, the three of them.”

  Tate returned, pausing in the doorway to take in the scene. Like most men, he was probably wary of female emotion unleashed.

  Libby took in every inch of him.

  Tate McKettrick, all grown up, was still trouble.

  The kind it was impossible to resist.

  CHAPTER FIVE

  LIBBY WAS UP EARLY the next morning, feeling rested even though she’d only had a few hours’ sleep. After driving her home and walking her to her front door the night before, like the gentleman he could be but sometimes wasn’t, Tate had kissed her again, and the effects of that tender, tentative touch of their mouths still tingled on her lips.

  The sun was just peeking over the eastern horizon when she took Hildie for the first walk the poor dog had enjoyed since Ambrose and Buford had come to stay with them weeks before. It was good to get back into their old routine.

  All up and down Libby’s quiet, tree-lined street, lawn sprinklers turned, making that reassuring chucka-chuck sound, spraying diamonds over emerald-green grass. Hildie stopped for the occasional sniff at a fence post or a light pole or a patch of weeds—Julie, joint owner, along with Calvin, of a surprisingly active three-legged beagle named Harry, would have said the dog was reading her p-mail.

  As Libby and Hildie passed Brent Brogan’s house, a small split-level rancher with a flower-filled yard and a picket fence, Gerbera stepped out of the front door, bundled in a summery blue-print bathrobe, and hiked along the walk to get the newspaper.

  Seeing Libby, Gerbera paused and grinned broadly. “Land sakes,” she said, “I thought you’d given up on walking that old dog. Never see you go by here anymore.”

  Libby paused, holding Hildie’s leash loosely. “I was fostering two puppies,” she explained, “and walking the three of them at once was too much. I did manage to get the little buggers housebroken, though.”

  Gerbera cocked a thumb toward the white-shingled house behind her. “I’ve been after that nephew of mine to go on down to the shelter and get his kids a pet. Give them some responsibility and get them to unplug those earphones and wires from their heads once in a while. But Brent always says it would be him or me that wound up looking after any cat or dog we took in, once the kids lost interest.”

  “Well, if you manage to change his mind,” Libby said, always ready to promote adoption when she knew a good home was a sure thing, “the kennels are usually full.”

  Gerbera got the rolled-up newspaper out of its box and tucked it under her arm. “You want to come in and have coffee? Nobody around but me. Kenda and V.J. are still sleeping, like kids do in the summertime, and Brent’s been gone most of the night—that’s why I stayed over.”

  Ironically, since she owned the Perk Up and java was her stockin-trade, Libby drank very little coffee. It made her way too hyper. “We’ve got a ways to go to finish our walk,” she said, with a nod toward the Lab. “Hildie and I both need all the exercise we can get. Another time?”

  Gerbera smiled. “Sure enough,” she agreed, before launching into a good-natured report. “Your mama called me last night and fussed at me something fierce for getting you all worked up, but I could tell she was pleased to get a visit from you and a good-lookin’ McKettrick man.”

  Libby might have been annoyed with someone else, but Gerbera’s intentions were always good. Hildie began to tug determinedly at the leash then, ready to go on, follow the route they always took, through several side streets, around the city park with its pretty gazebo-style bandstand, back home by way of the old movie house and the community center. “I think it was the good-lookin’ McKettrick man that cheered her up, not me.”

  Something changed in Gerbera’s face, something that went beyond the sparkle fading from her eyes and the way her mouth suddenly turned down a little at the corners. “Lordy,” she said. “I swear, I get more forgetful every day!” She paused, drew in a breath. Her eyes were worried. “You don’t know, do you? And how would you know?”

  “Know what?” Libby asked, suddenly jittery, tightening her grip on Hildie’s leash when the dog rounded the corner of the
Brogans’ fence ahead of her, pulling even harder now.

  “Brent’s been out there on the Silver Spur most of the night,” Gerbera said slowly, “doing whatever he can to help. Libby, Pablo Ruiz is dead.”

  Libby gasped. Pablo was a friend, an institution in Blue River. He couldn’t be dead. “What happened?” she managed to ask.

  “There was an accident of some kind,” Gerbera said, touching Libby’s upper arm. “That’s all I know.”

  An accident. Libby nodded, numbed by the news, thinking of Isabel, Pablo’s wife, of Nico and Mercedes, their son and daughter, and the two nephews they’d brought to the United States, several years before, after Isabel’s younger sister, Maria, had died of what turned out to be peritonitis.

  Ricardo and Juan were teenagers now; honor students, well-mannered youths who stayed out of trouble; the kind of kids a community like Blue River was proud to call its own.

  Nico, a close friend of Tate’s, had once confided that when word of his aunt’s death had reached them, he and Pablo had immediately set out for Mexico, expecting to find the boys living with neighbors in Maria’s small village, or perhaps with their late father’s family.

  Instead, they’d been told that Ricardo and Juan had vanished, soon after Maria’s death, and no one had seen them since.

  There had been several more trips, Nico had said, each one a failure, before he and his father had finally tracked the children down to a nearby landfill. Both boys were filthy and half-starved, foraging for scraps of food, stealing and sleeping wherever they could find a safe place to lie down.

  With a lot of help from Tate’s cousin, Meg, a top executive with McKettrickCo at the time, Pablo had finally arranged for the boys to enter the country legally.

  They had been almost feral in the beginning, those children, constantly afraid, stealing food, snarling and nipping when Pablo wrestled them into a tub and scrubbed them down on their first night in the United States. Eventually, Pablo and Isabel had won their trust, as well as their love.

  What would happen to them now? What would happen to Isabel?

  Libby’s stomach did a slow, backward roll. “Oh, Gerbera,” she whispered. “This is awful.”

  Gerbera nodded sadly. “I guess they look out for their own, though,” she said. “Those McKettricks, I mean. And all the folks who work for them.”

  The reminder comforted Libby a little. It was true. Tate and his brothers would make sure Isabel and the boys lacked for nothing—that was the McKettrick way. And the long-term employees were like kin to each other.

  Libby knew most of the dozen or so men who worked on the Spur year-round—everyone did. The married men lived with their wives and children in well-maintained trailers alongside one of the creeks, while the bachelors occupied a comfortable bunkhouse nearby. All of them got their mail and their groceries in Blue River, had their hair cut at the barber’s or Valdeen’s House of Beauty, came into the Perk Up on windy winter days for hot, strong coffee.

  Gerbera shook her head, looking somber now. “I don’t know what Isabel will do without that man. The kids, either. And now I wish I hadn’t been the one to tell you, Libby. Brent specifically asked me not to ‘broadcast’ this until he was sure all the family had been informed.”

  Wanting to reassure her friend, Libby tried to smile. “Just about everybody in town owns a police scanner, so if Brent used his radio even once, the word’s out.” She spoke distractedly; half her mind had strayed to the Silver Spur; she couldn’t help wondering how Tate and the children and Esperanza had taken the news. The other half was on Hildie, who was hunkered down and putting her full weight into the effort to drag her mistress back into motion.

  “You’d better go on and I’d better get my old self ready for work,” Gerbera said, noting the dog’s antics with a sad smile.

  Libby nodded, and she and Hildie were off again.

  By the time they’d finished their walk almost an hour later, three different people had come to their front gates in bathrobes to ask if Libby had heard about Pablo Ruiz. They’d all gleaned the information from their police scanners, just as Libby had expected.

  Nobody knew the exact cause; Chief Brogan had been closedmouthed about it, when he’d called in the coroner. All they’d been able to gather was that there had been an accident on the ranch, a fatal one.

  Most likely, the chief had made calls he didn’t want half the county listening in on, over his cell phone.

  Back home, Libby took a hasty shower—her breakfast was half a banana, since she didn’t have much of an appetite—dressed in jeans and a sleeveless cotton top, bound her hair back in the usual no-fuss ponytail, and skipped the mascara and lip gloss.

  While Hildie napped in a patch of sunlight in the kitchen, Libby let herself out the back door, crossed the yard and the alley, unlocked the rear entrance to the Perk Up and nearly jumped out of her skin when Calvin leaped out at her from behind a box of pop-on cup lids and yelled, “Boo!”

  The fight-or-flight response stopped Libby in her tracks, one hand pressed to her pounding heart.

  Julie peeked out of the kitchen, wearing an apron and holding a mixing bowl in the curve of one arm and a batter-coated spoon in the other. “For Pete’s sake, Calvin,” she scolded merrily, “how many times have I told you that you shouldn’t scare the elderly?”

  “You are just too funny,” Libby said, directing the terse remark to her sister and a warm smile to her nephew.

  Calvin had left his swim trunks and frog-floater at home that day, and he looked very handsome in his miniature chinos and short-sleeved plaid shirt. He was even wearing his good glasses, the ones with no adhesive tape spanning the bridge.

  “Something big going on at playschool today?” Libby asked, setting her purse on a high shelf and reaching for an apron.

  Calvin nodded eagerly. “We’re getting a castle!” he crowed. “With turrets and everything!”

  So, Libby thought, Tate’s girls had decided to donate their birthday present to the community center. That was quick.

  “You’re getting a castle today?” she asked Calvin, wondering if Tate had intended to give away the massive toy all along; perhaps called to make the arrangements almost as soon as it arrived on the Silver Spur.

  Calvin swelled out his chest. “No,” he said. “Justin’s mom is best friends with my teacher, Mrs. Oakland, and she told Justin’s mom that it would take time and sweat and a lot of heavy equipment to move the thing.”

  Having seen the castle, Libby agreed. “Then why are you so dressed up?” she asked.

  Calvin gave a long-suffering sigh. In his oft-expressed opinion, adults could be remarkably obtuse at times. “Because we’re going to have a meeting at recess and elect a king,” he said, very slowly, so his elderly aunt could follow. “I’m on the committee.”

  Libby and Julie exchanged looks. Julie smiled and shrugged as if to say, “That’s what you get for asking a dumb question,” but her eyes—pale violet that day because her T-shirt was purple—were solemn. She raised her eyebrows.

  “Yes,” Libby told Julie, an expert at sister-telepathy, “I heard.”

  “Heard what?” Calvin wanted to know, following as Libby headed for the front of the shop to fire up the various gadgets and switch the “Closed” sign to “Open.”

  “That you’re campaigning to be king,” Libby hedged. “Do you have your speech ready? Buttons and bumper stickers to pass out to the voters?”

  “If nobody else is going to point out that kings are not elected officials,” Julie said, still stirring the batter, “I will.”

  Calvin looked worried. “Buttons and bumper stickers?” he repeated.

  Libby’s heart melted. She bent to kiss the top of her nephew’s blond head. “I was just teasing, big guy,” she said. “And your mom is right. To my knowledge, there is not now and never has been one single king of Texas.”

  Calvin beamed. “Then I could be the first one!” he cried, delighted. Since he wasn’t even in kindergarten yet and
was already serving on committees, Libby figured he might just pull it off.

  She smiled again, went to unlock the cash register and see if she had enough change on hand for the day.

  “Calvin,” Julie said, pointing, “sit down at that table in the corner, please, and watch for customers. If you see one approaching, let us know.”

  Calvin obeyed readily, and he sat up so straight and looked so vigilant that a whole new wave of tenderness washed over Libby.

  Julie immediately maneuvered her toward the kitchen, where they could talk with some semblance of privacy.

  “Gordon followed up his e-mail with a phone call,” she said, in a desperate whisper. “He’s willing to take things slowly, but he definitely wants to get to know Calvin.”

  “Okay,” Libby said. “What are you going to do?”

  “Hide,” Julie responded. “Calvin and Harry and I are going to hit the road. We’ll be gone for as long as we have to—”

  Libby held up both hands. “Julie! Are you listening to yourself? This is not something you can run away from. Besides, you have a house and a job and friends and—” she paused to clear her throat “—family in Blue River. Shouldn’t you at least hear Gordon out?”

  “Did Gordon hear me out when I told him I was expecting his baby?” Julie demanded, though she was careful to keep her voice down so Calvin wouldn’t hear.

  Libby knew there was no way to win this argument. Julie was just venting, anyway. “Did you hear about Pablo Ruiz?” Libby asked.

  Julie’s eyes widened. “No. What—?”

  “He’s dead, Jules. There was some kind of accident, yesterday or last night, on the Silver Spur—”

  Julie gasped. “Not Pablo,” she said, splaying the fingers of her right hand and pressing the palm to her heart.

  Libby nodded sadly. “He was so proud of Mercedes,” she whispered. Pablo and Isabel’s only daughter would graduate from medical school in Boston in just a few weeks. She’d already been accepted into the internship program at Johns Hopkins: eventually, Mercedes wanted to become a surgeon.

  Julie nodded, dashed at her wet eyes with the back of one floury hand, leaving white, sticky smudges on her cheek. “Do you remember how Pablo came and mowed our lawn every week, after Dad got too sick to leave the house?”