Blame It On Texas (17 page)

For the thousandth time, Kate thought about kissing Dustin last night. Her mother was missing a lot of fun.

T
HERE WERE SOME
things a man wanted to dwell upon and some things that didn’t bear thinking about twice, Dustin decided. He’d spent the morning riding fence, checking water supplies and listening to Danny chatter on and on about Grandma Gert and Aunt Martha. Since when had the boy made Kate’s cranky mother an honorary relative? No, he didn’t want to think about the disapproving glances Kate’s mother gave him whenever he walked into a room. And that he wished he could stop thinking about the way Kate felt in his arms last night, all trembling and warm and very, very willing.

Like the past nine years had never happened. Put the two of them together and it was just so damn hard to remember that they hadn’t seen each other since they were teenagers.

Kate wasn’t at the ranch now. He’d seen her take Gert in her car, most likely heading to the hospital to see that baby, and he’d seen Martha leave with Jackson, who was sure to tell about last night.

This would be a good day to lie low, Dustin figured. He’d work on remembering that he was a father now, with a ranch to run and money to make. He shouldn’t be lusting after an ex-girlfriend as if he had no more sense than a longhorn bull.

“Daddy?” Danny’s voice broke into his thoughts, and Dustin glanced toward the boy who was hanging on to the door of the pickup as if he was afraid of being tossed out the window.

“What?”

“Where’s my mom?”

“I don’t know,” which was the honest truth, but Dustin didn’t add “and I don’t give a damn,” which also was the truth.

“Am I gonna live here with you all the time?”

“Yeah,” Dustin promised. “Remember how I told you we have to talk to the judge and make everything legal? Well, we’re set to do that in a few weeks.”

“Lee-gal,” the boy repeated, liking the sound of the word. “Everything legal.”

“Yeah. That’s right.” And Lisa would never be able to get her hands on the boy again. Lisa Gallagher
Jones sure as hell didn’t deserve any rights to her son.

“Are you gonna get a wife?”

Dustin chuckled and stopped the truck at a metal gate. He hopped out and pushed the gate open before returning to the truck. The boy was too small to open and close gates, but one of these days he’d be big enough to help out.

“Why do you think I need a wife?” he couldn’t help asking as he drove through the gate and parked again.

The boy shrugged. “To make dinner and cake and stuff like that.”

“We have Grandma Gert for that.” God, it was hot today. He wiped his forehead and thought once again about Kate and last night. He’d have given a lot to take her home to bed, to have spent the night making love to a warm and willing woman who had the sweetest way of parting her lips—

“Daddy,” Danny said. “What about the gate?”

“Yeah,” he said, realizing he almost forgot to close the damn thing. He climbed out of the truck and pushed the heavy metal gate shut, making sure it was latched securely, before striding back to the Ford. If she was any other woman he’d take her out for dinner or into Marysville to see a movie, then for drinks and some snuggle-up dancing at the Last Chance. But she wasn’t just any woman. Now
she was Kate, big city lady, with fancy clothes and an even fancier attitude.

Dustin stopped short of the truck and looked at what he had to offer a woman like that: a dusty three-year-old truck, some shares in a struggling cattle venture, a bed in the bunkhouse and a little boy recovering from a broken heart. It wasn’t much, he knew. And no amount of great sex would convince Kate McIntosh even to consider staying in Beauville past next week.

“W
ELL, THAT’S A REAL
nice picture,” Gert said, admiring herself on the front page of the “What’s Happening” section of the
Beauville Times.
“That Danny’s such a cute little fella.”

Martha muttered something Gert couldn’t hear, then raised her voice. “He looks as if he’s one of the family, for heaven’s sakes. And look, there’s Kate standing there like she’s his mother.”

“I told you they were perfect for each other.” Gert didn’t mind needling her daughter now and then, just to hear her squawk.

“He’s a nice enough child,” Martha admitted, having spent Monday evening teaching him card games and feeding him cake. Gert had seen her make sure the boy was comfortably settled on the couch, with a light on so he wouldn’t wake up in a strange place and be afraid.

“You need grandchildren,” Gert declared.

“Shh,” Martha warned, settling herself onto the couch. “She’s coming down the stairs now.”

“Kate?” Gert peered over her pile of scrap-books to see if Kate had found the photo albums. Sure enough, her granddaughter had an armload of them. “I’m glad I thought of putting pictures in my book,” she said.

“Yeah, I think the pictures will really—”

“Are we going over to see Jake’s baby again tomorrow?” Gert interrupted. She liked babies, and she figured Kate’s exposure to the little sweethearts might just keep her in Texas.

“Sure. They’ll be home from the hospital.” Kate set the photo albums on the floor at Gert’s feet. “We’ll bring them some casseroles.”

“About this book,” Martha began, frowning before she sneezed. “Who have you told about this, Mother?”

“Just the family. And that man friend of yours.” Gert reached for the top album. What she wanted was a picture of herself with her horse. For the cover.

“Did you by any chance tell Doris Hansen?”

“The librarian? Why yes, when I did my research a few weeks ago. She seemed interested.”

“Well, it’s all over town that you’re writing a book and several people came up to me at bridge this afternoon and asked me about it.”

“What’d they want to know?” She was up to
the 1940s now and still going strong. Kate had only been home a few days and already she’d taught her grandmother how to run that mysterious computer. It wasn’t so hard after all, Gert decided, as long as you didn’t hit too many keys at once and didn’t spill anything on it. Once you got the thing turned on it pretty much told you what to do, though she forgot how to turn it off and had to follow Kate’s written directions each time.

“I’m not sure,” Martha answered. “I think folks are a little suspicious of the whole thing.”

Kate looked amused. “Do people in Beauville have that many secrets?”

“Well,” Gran said, “Doris Hansen’s great-grandfather was said to have escaped a murder charge in California by jumping on a train. When he woke up, he was in Beauville.”

“Mother,” Martha said, pushing the photo albums aside as if they were dead cats. “I don’t know why you think you have to resurrect the past.”

“We’ve had our share of problems, too,” Gert declared. “Your brother—wherever he is—caused his share of heartache.”

“Amen to that,” Martha breathed.

“And his father wasn’t much better,” Gert added. “I’ve written that part already. Now I’m at the time when the boys were going off to war.”

“It’s very good so far,” her writer granddaughter said. “Gran has a terrific memory for details.”

“All I’m saying is that no one wants their dirty laundry aired in public, Kate. What’s private should stay that way.”

“Mom, I’m beginning to think you have a deep dark secret you don’t want anyone to find out.”

Gert raised her eyebrows at that. The guilty expression on Martha’s face proved Katie right. “Is that so, Martha? And can I use it in the book?”

Her daughter stood up and picked up her purse. “I’m not going to listen to this kind of talk,” she said. “Besides, I thought we were going out to dinner tonight.”

“It’s only three o’clock, Martha,” Gert felt obliged to point out. “You want to eat at three o’clock?”

“I’m going to get my hair done,” her daughter said. “I’m thinking of a blond rinse. And I’m tired of talking about secrets.” With that, she swept out of the room. A few seconds later the back door slammed and, sure enough, when Gert leaned back in her chair and peered out the front window, she saw Martha’s car making dust as she headed out to the highway.

“My goodness,” Gert declared, chuckling at her granddaughter. “Your mother’s a little edgy lately, don’t you think?”

“Maybe she’s spending too much time with Mr. Jackson.”

“Or not enough,” Gert pointed out. Seemed like Martha might need some male companionship. The woman had to get lonely; after all, Ian had been gone for nine years. “Your father was a fine man, but it just might be time for your mother to marry again.”

“Marry? She’s talking about moving into those retirement villas, not getting married.” Kate didn’t look too pleased.

“I’m sure you both miss your father,” Gert said. “That heart attack took him so fast, I’ve never seen anything like it.”

“I couldn’t wait to leave and go to college,” Kate admitted. “The house was so empty without him.”

“Maybe Martha’s feeling the same way now.” She managed to lift herself out of the chair and wandered over to the kitchen window. “Dustin’s back. His truck is parked by the horse barn. You haven’t been riding yet, have you?”

“No.”

“I still keep a few horses,” Gert said. “They could use some exercise, if someone wanted to go out there and saddle them up.”

“I’ll ride tomorrow morning,” she said, “when it’s not too hot. I’m going to get the rest of my
things from town and spend the rest of my vacation here. That way I can get some work done.”

“What kind of work?” She watched for signs of the man or the boy. Sometimes Dustin stopped in to tell her what was going on. She liked that, when he’d come over and talk to her about cattle and feed and how the water was holding up. The boy would drink lemonade or milky, sugared coffee and it would be like the old days, when she ran this place and the foreman—Sandy, that was his name—would check in and see what she thought needed doing.

She liked a man who knew how to communicate. Gert turned toward her granddaughter, a young woman who didn’t have the sense to know she had a place in the world and a good man to claim. Kate was pretty and smart, independent, too—a good thing in a woman, Gert knew, because it kept you from depending on other people to make you happy—but she should be running the Lazy K. She should be having babies and making love to a hardworking man who would work along with her and make something of their lives together.

“Kate,” Gert said, and her granddaughter looked up from the photo albums, “the barn needs painting real bad.”

“Dustin said he was working on it.”

“The man doesn’t have time,” Gert said, sighing to show how worked up she was about it.
“And I just get so depressed looking at that barn now and seeing how run-down it looks.”

Kate untangled her legs and walked over to look out the window, too. “Well,” she said, “I have ten more days. You must have a ladder around here somewhere.”

“Dustin can do the high spots. If you could work on the barn and then maybe the outbuildings it would sure be a big help.” And it would put Kate outside with the cowboy, who sure as shootin’ wouldn’t be able to stay away from her.

“Sure.”

“We’ll stop and get more paint and brushes tonight in town,” she said. Painting could lead to other things, of course. Gert hid her smile of satisfaction and then decided to try one more thing. “Why don’t you make a fresh pot of coffee? I could use a cup myself, and Dustin might stop by.”

“Dustin? Why?”

“Well, to tell me how things are going,” Gert explained. “He usually comes by around three-thirty.” And he would come if she hung a red rag in the window. That was their private signal, one that meant Gert wanted to talk. She rummaged through her linen drawer—Kate must have rearranged it—while Kate fussed with the coffee grinding machine she liked so much. It only took a second to tuck the edge of the red bandanna into the window latch.

CHAPTER FIFTEEN

“Y
OU’RE GOING TO
finish painting the barn,” Dustin repeated, as if he’d never heard anything so crazy in his life. Kate set a mug of coffee in front of him and ignored that she was only inches away from him. If they were alone she’d sit on his lap and start kissing him again, so it was a good thing Gran and Danny were in the room. In fact, she noticed, the chaperones were destroying a perfectly good cup of coffee by adding large amounts of cream and sugar.

“Yes.” Kate brought her own cup of coffee to the table and sat down across from Dustin. “It was Gran’s idea. She’s doing most of her own typing now.” And she’d cleaned out the refrigerator, scrubbed the cupboards and washed the kitchen floor until the old linoleum turned a shade lighter. “And she’d like some of the outbuildings painted.”

He frowned and turned to her grandmother, who was busy dishing out cookies to Danny.

“They’re only store-bought,” Gran explained,
plopping several chocolate chip cookies onto Danny’s napkin. “But I like ’em anyway.”

“Yeah,” the boy said. “Me, too.”

“Gert,” Dustin said, trying to get her attention. “I’ll get the barn done myself, but Kate—”

“Is perfectly capable of holding a paintbrush,” Kate finished for him. “I’ve done it before.”

“Not in this kind of heat you haven’t.”

“I’ll wear a hat.” She would show him. Maybe she wasn’t baking cinnamon rolls or having babies or training horses, but she could dip a brush into a bucket of paint and slap it on the side of a barn.

“You’ll start at dawn then,” the man said. “You can’t work much past nine, not in these temperatures.”

“What time is dawn?” she asked, though she thought she should know, having been out with him until three-thirty or so the other morning.

“Five.” Dustin took another sip of coffee. “I’ll meet you on the west side of the horse barn tomorrow morning.”

“You’re going to paint, too?”

“No. I’ll just get you started, get a ladder, things like that.” That’s when he looked at her and smiled. “I’ll bet ten bucks you’re not an early riser, are you?”

“I can manage,” she promised. “Don’t worry about me.”

“Kate’s a good worker,” Gert declared, passing
Dustin a plate full of cookies. “’Course she doesn’t belong in New York, but that’s her business. She’d be better off comin’ home and takin’ over the Lazy K.”