McKettricks of Texas: Tate (21 page)

“Well, first of all, you need to be sure you can trust me. For a lifetime.”

“What if I told you I trust you now?” Another pause. “Although you’re perfectly right—we’re not ready to get married. I hope I didn’t seem—well—
pushy.
”

He grinned. “Never that,” he said.

The steaks turned out perfectly.

They went on to the main ranch house and took a shower together in his en suite bathroom and made love again.

They slept, arms and legs entangled after hours of lovemaking, in his bed.

He should have known it had all been too easy.

A
PHONE SHRILLED
in the night, jarring Libby, in lurching stages, out of a rest so profound that no shred or tatter of a dream could have reached her. She opened her eyes, blinking, to utter darkness, and knew only that she wasn’t in her own bed—the mattress, the bedding, the angles were all wrong.

“Tate McKettrick,” Tate said, his voice gravelly with sleep and the beginnings of alarm.

Libby sat up, drawing her knees to her chest and wrapping her arms around her shins.

“Calm down, Cheryl,” Tate went on. “I can’t understand you—”

Libby closed her eyes a nanosecond before she heard the click of a lamp switch. Light flared against her lids, a fiery orange-red. She looked at Tate, blinking.

He sat up. “Take a breath,” he said, shifting the phone from his right ear to his left, so he could close his fingers around Libby’s hand and squeeze once. He threw back the covers, got out of bed, began pulling opening drawers, dressing—jeans, a T-shirt, socks and boots.

“Okay,” he said. “Okay.”

Libby’s heart thrummed. A call at that hour—3:17 a.m. by the digital clock on Tate’s night table—could not be good.

Tate was listening again; the glance he tossed in Libby’s direction bounced away without connecting.

For the briefest moment, she felt dismissed, invisible.

“Put her on, Cheryl,” Tate said. A long pause. “Cheryl? I said
put Ava on the phone.
”

Libby scrambled off the bed, nearly fell because she was so entangled in the top sheet. Her clothes were on the far side of the room, and she tripped twice, hurrying to get to them.

“Yes, Ava,” Tate said, “it’s Dad. What’s the problem, Shortstop? I thought you were excited about visiting New York.”

Libby could hear the timbre of the child’s voice, if not the words. Ava was practically hysterical.

She forgot about getting into her clothes and went back to the bed, carefully managing the train of bedsheet in the process, plunking down on the end of the mattress and watching Tate as he paced, listening, nodding.

“You’ll be home in a few days, honey,” he told his daughter gently, when there was a break in the conversation.

Tate sat down beside Libby, slipped his arm around her waist.

She felt a little less like an outsider.

“Ava?” Tate waited. “I love you. I’ll be right here when you get back. You can ride your ponies, and we’ll go fishing in the creek—”

More hysteria on the other end of the line.

Tate sighed, and his shoulders sagged a little. “Let me talk to your mother.”

Again, Libby wanted to flee. She didn’t know exactly what she was hearing, but she was sure she shouldn’t be hearing it.

Tate’s entire bearing seemed to change when his ex-wife came back on the phone. “Yes,” he said. “Yes—sometime
tomorrow. I’ll let you know. And, Cheryl? Don’t call in twenty minutes and say you’ve changed your mind. We’re not going to pretend this didn’t happen.”

Libby lowered her head, waited.

Finally, Tate snapped his phone shut.

For a long time, he just sat there beside Libby, looking down at the floor.

Libby shifted, ran a hand down his back. “Anything I can do to help, cowboy?” she asked quietly. She didn’t want to interfere, but she couldn’t just sit there, either.

“I have to head for New York,” he said. “First thing in the morning.”

Libby nodded. Waited. If Tate wanted to explain, he would. If he didn’t, that was okay, too.

Tate shoved a hand through his hair. His eyes were bluer than usual, and bleak, even as he tried to smile. “This is what my life is like, Lib,” he said, very quietly. “I have an ex-wife and two kids and executive control over a ranch the size of some counties. There’s always some kind of crisis, and a lot of them seem to happen in the middle of the night.”

Libby drew the sheet more closely around her. “Audrey and Ava—they’re okay?”

Tate held her against his side, rested his chin on top of her head. She felt his nod. “I didn’t get the whole story,” he said, “but the gist of it seems to be that getting her parents’ apartment ready to put on the market is more work than Cheryl expected it to be, and the girls aren’t making it any easier because they’re fussy and homesick. Apparently, Ava had a pretty bad dream tonight—Cheryl showed the twins around the school she went to and asked them how they’d like to go there when they start first grade in the fall, and that must have freaked Ava out.” He
paused, sighed. “According to our divorce agreement, neither Cheryl nor I can reside anywhere but Blue River, Texas, without forfeiting custody to the other—but knowing my ex-wife, I’d say she figures I might give ground if I thought the girls really wanted to grow up somewhere else.”

“Cheryl wants to live in New York?”

“Who knows?” Tate asked, letting go of Libby, standing. “I’ve never been able to figure out what Cheryl wants. I’m not sure
she
knows, actually.”

Libby watched as he took a leather carry-on bag from the enormous closet, threw in a change of clothes and some shaving gear. “So you’re going to bring the twins back home?”

He turned, looked at her. “Yeah,” he said. Sadness moved in his eyes. “Ava wants to be in Blue River, anyway. I’m not so sure about Audrey. She might choose to stay on and come back with Cheryl, after the apartment’s ready to be sold.”

Libby stood, still draped in the top sheet, and crossed the room to pick up her clothes. While she didn’t know Tate’s daughters very well, she
had
figured out that Audrey was the bolder of the two. Ava, with her glasses and hearing aid, while just as bright as her sister, was shy.

“Lib—would you like to come along? To New York, I mean?”

Libby hadn’t expected that question. She’d just assumed Tate would want to travel fast and light—get to the city, collect his children, bring them back to Texas.

Excuses rushed through her mind. She had the Perk Up to run, there was Hildie to consider—and what about mowing the lawn and cleaning out the flower beds?

What she actually
said
was, “It could be pretty confus
ing for the twins—my just showing up like that.” She dressed slowly, not looking at Tate. “They’re not used to seeing us together, after all.”

Tate sighed. “Point taken,” he said. “But if we’re going to keep seeing each other, they need to start getting used to our being together, Lib.”

She was wearing all her clothes by then, but she still felt naked, stripped to the soul. “Maybe it’s a little soon to spring that on them,” she ventured. “Our spending time together, I mean.”

He left off packing then, crossed the room, took her gently by the shoulders. “When I’ve finished the house,” he said, “I plan on asking you to come and live with me. You might as well know that.” Curving his fingers under her chin, he lifted her face so he could look directly into her eyes. “As for sex—I’ll be granting no quarter, Libby. Whether we’re sharing a house and a bed or not, I promise you, I’ll seduce you every chance I get, any way I can, any
place
I can.”

Libby blushed so hard it hurt. Tate knew what she liked, in and out of bed. He knew all the right words to say, all the secret, special places where she loved to be caressed, nibbled, teased.

But, then, Libby knew a few things herself.

Two could play that game.

“You’d better be real quick to make the first move, cowboy,” she said, unfastening his jeans, pushing her hand inside, loving the way he groaned, the way he swelled when she closed her fingers around him. “Or you might just find
yourself
being seduced.”

Tate swallowed hard. “Libby—”

“No quarter, Tate,” she said, working him, enjoying the
way he responded. “No prisoners. If I want you, I’ll have you. On the spot.”

A powerful shudder moved through him, even as he gave a strangled laugh, perhaps at her audacity.

“In fact,” Libby murmured, “I’m pretty sure I want you right now.”

“Libby—”

“Right—here—”

He moaned aloud as Libby proceeded to prove her point.

T
ATE CAUGHT AN EARLY
flight out of Austin, and the landing at LaGuardia went without a hitch. Since he’d only brought a carry-on—he didn’t plan on staying even overnight—he didn’t have to wait with the crowds around the luggage carousels.

The cab line was long, as usual, but it moved quickly.

The drive into the city passed almost unnoticed—Tate’s mind was back in Texas, for most of the ride, with Libby.

When the taxi stopped in front of Cheryl’s parents’ building, though, he made the necessary mental shift—time to think about the business at hand.

He paid the cabdriver and turned, bracing himself.

The doorman stood under a green-and-white awning, eyeing him warily.

“My name’s Tate McKettrick,” Tate said. “I’m here to see Ms. Darbrey.”

The older man smiled fondly at the mention of Cheryl. “I’ll buzz her,” he said, stepping inside and pressing one of a series of brass buttons gleaming on a panel behind his desk.

Tate waited outside, taking in the sounds and sights of a great city just gearing up for a new day. He was a rancher—body, mind and spirit—but he liked New York, liked the energy and buzz of the place.

The doorman returned, holding the door open. “Go right up, Mr. McKettrick,” he said. “Apartment 17B.”

Tate merely nodded and, gripping the handle of his carry-on, passed the doorman and headed for the elevator.

Outside 17B, minutes later, Tate stopped to prepare himself for whatever he might have to deal with. Since he’d been announced, there wasn’t much point in knocking or ringing the doorbell.

On the other side of the door, a sequence of sliding chains and turning bolts began. Then the door opened, and Ava, still wearing pajamas, launched herself into his arms.

Audrey was there, too, but she stood back a little way, and Tate felt dread pinch his heart as he studied her small face.

He kissed Ava’s cheek as he closed the door, gathered Audrey against his side.

Cheryl appeared in the arched doorway leading into the gracious living room, with its gas fireplace, built-in bookcases, and high, ornately molded ceilings. She looked coolly elegant in white slacks—the tails of her red silk shirt were tied at her midriff, revealing a flat, tanned stomach, and her hair was plaited into a single braid.

“Come in,” she said. “Breakfast is almost ready.”

“Are we going home today?” Ava wanted to know. “Are we going back to Texas?”

Cheryl’s face tightened a little, but her smile remained in place. Nobody would have guessed, to look at her, that she’d called Tate in the middle of the night complaining that the twins in general and Ava in particular were about to drive her out onto the nearest ledge.

“We’re going home today,” Tate confirmed quietly, setting Ava on her feet.

Then, to Cheryl, he said, “Is there coffee?”

She nodded. “You haven’t shaved,” she remarked, and her cat-green eyes narrowed a little. Wheels were turning behind that alabaster-smooth forehead. “Late night, maybe?”

“I was in a hurry,” he said, galled that he’d explained even that much.

They were in the living room now, and he looked around. No moving boxes, he noted. No clutter, either. Gone were her father’s teetering stacks of reference books, notes and file folders bulging with clippings.

Cheryl’s parents had fallen on hard times—mostly of their own making—long before she and Tate were married, but they
had
managed to hold on to the apartment, mainly by mortgaging it repeatedly.

By the time the twins were born, the place had gone into foreclosure and Cheryl was making noises about bringing Mom and Dad to live with her and Tate, in Blue River.

Tate, unable to get cell reception, had promptly called his lawyer from a hospital pay phone and instructed him to buy the Park Avenue place outright and put the deed in Cheryl’s name.

Her folks had gone on living there until just a few months ago, when she’d finally made the decision to move them into an assisted-living place. He was picking up the tab for that, too, since they couldn’t afford it on their own.

“I want to go home today,” Ava said firmly.

Audrey made a face. “You’re such a baby.”

“Hush,” Tate said.

In the kitchen, which was as spacious as the living room and also showed no evidence that anybody had been packing for a move, Cheryl set out four mismatched antique plates on the round table. The piece, Tate decided, was probably supposed to look antique and French—“distressed,” his
ex-wife termed it—meaning it had been falsely aged with things like sandpaper and rusty bicycle chain, swung hard.

He could identify.

In a classic
you-big-dumb-cowboy
moment, Tate realized that Cheryl had never had any intention of selling the apartment. She’d probably spent the girls’ weeks with him right here, getting settled. Making new friends, or reconnecting with old ones, circulating her résumé.

“Mommy got a job offer,” Audrey said, confirming his thoughts.

“Audrey Rose,” Cheryl said, “
hush.
I wanted to tell your daddy about that myself.”

Tate’s blood seemed to buzz in his veins; the feeling was a combination of pissed off and thank God. Calmly, he washed his hands at the kitchen sink, sat down in the chair his ex-wife indicated. Although his glance sliced to Cheryl, he held his tongue and kept his face expressionless.

Avoiding his gaze, Cheryl served him hot, strong coffee, while the girls had orange juice. Bagels and smoked salmon, cream cheese and capers followed, and fresh strawberries finished off the meal.

“Go and get dressed, both of you,” Cheryl told the kids when they’d obviously eaten all they intended to, for the time being at least.

They balked a little, especially Ava, who seemed reluctant to let Tate out of her sight for fear he’d vanish, but the pair finally hurried off to put on their clothes.

“It’s a long commute between here and Blue River,” Tate commented quietly.

Cheryl sighed, and her cup rattled in its saucer when she reached for it. “I could be there every other weekend,” she said, avoiding his gaze. When she finally looked at him,
though, he saw a different woman behind those green eyes, a woman he’d probably never known in the first place.