McKettricks of Texas: Garrett (21 page)

A strong chemical smell struck her immediately, and she was glad she hadn't brought Calvin with her. He hadn't had a serious asthma attack in a long time, but she never knew what would set one off.

She left the front door standing open to air the place out a little. Harry was busy exploring the yard—the grass needed mowing—and stepped inside.

The small living room was dusty, and there were ashes on the hearth from the first fire of the season. She and Calvin had roasted marshmallows over the flames that night after supper, Julie recalled fondly, and made some preliminary plans for Calvin's Halloween costume.

He wanted to dress up as Albert Einstein.

Julie smiled sadly and ran one hand over the afghan draped over the back of her couch. Paige had crocheted the coverlet, choosing yarn in the lush autumn shades Julie loved, during what Paige called her Earth Mother phase.

The desk over by the windows was empty—Julie had taken her PC with her when she and Calvin went to stay on the Silver Spur—and the sight made her feel strangely forlorn.

Sure, it was an inconvenience, having to move, a big one. But it was hardly a tragedy, now was it?

So why was she so emotional?

It was no great leap to identify the reason: Garrett. The way he'd made love to her had touched her on so many levels.

She couldn't help taking the whole thing seriously, she thought, and wasn't now a fine time to think of that?

Garrett, of course, would suffer no pangs of guilt or regret over the night just past, and the things it might have set in motion. He was a man, and used to getting what he wanted, when he wanted it.

He would get bored soon, and go back to his life in the fast lane, and that would be the end of it.

For Julie, the parting wouldn't be so easy.

Sometime between that first kiss and breakfast this morning, she'd fallen in love with Garrett McKettrick.

And she was under no illusion whatsoever that she'd be falling
out
of love with him anytime soon.

T
ATE AND
G
ARRETT COVERED
most of the Silver Spur in Garrett's plane that morning, and they found more downed fences, the carcasses of half a dozen cattle near a remote watering hole and no sign whatsoever of the rustlers.

At least, nothing visible from the air.

“Son of a bitch,” Tate rasped, leaning in his seat as if straining for a closer look at the dead animals. “Put this thing on the ground.”

That section of the ranch, nestled against the foothills as it was, happened to be especially rugged, pocked with gullies and gorges, and honeycombed with waist-deep ruts.

Garrett eyed the area dubiously. Shook his head. “Now that would be one stupid thing to do,” he said. “We'd better go back to the barn and trailer a couple of horses. I wouldn't be averse to bringing along a rifle or two, either.”

“Now how many times have you told me you could land an airplane anywhere?”

“My aim in this instance,” Garrett said, “is to land the plane
and
live through it.”

Tate scowled at him, impatient with the delay, though he didn't argue the point any further.

They returned to the airstrip, landed and headed for the main place in Tate's dusty Silverado, leaving Austin's rat
tletrap truck where it was, parked alongside the hangar. A plume of good Texas dirt billowed out behind them as they raced over country roads, both of them silent, occupied with their own thoughts.

Garrett was thinking of Julie, and how he'd promised her he'd keep Tate safe, for Libby's and the twins' sakes, and it took him a while to realize he was grinding his back molars together fit to split his jawbones.

Except for a rotating skeleton crew of three or four men, none of the ranch hands worked on Sundays, but that day, it seemed that everybody on the payroll had gathered around the smallest of several corrals adjoining the barn. Cowboys crowded the fence rails and looked on from the haymow, high overhead.

“If I didn't know better,” Garrett remarked, as Tate slammed on the truck's brakes, “I'd swear there was a rodeo going on, right here on the Silver Spur.”

Tate frowned and climbed out of the Silverado, leaving the driver's-side door ajar in his haste to find out what was going on. For the moment, the dead cattle out there on the range must have slipped his mind.

As it turned out, there
was
a rodeo going on.

Of the one-man variety.

Garrett didn't figure Tate was really any more surprised than he was. He slipped his sunglasses down a little way and peered over the rims, watching as Austin leaped from the top rail of the inoculation chute on the far side of the corral and straight onto the bare back of a bronc Garrett didn't recognize.

The stallion was magnificent, for all that there were burrs tangled in his mane and tail and old battle scars marking his flanks and breast and front legs. Garrett
wondered if the wild horse had been caught on their own rangeland or purchased for breeding purposes.

Tate spat a curse, then started up the slats of the fence as if he meant to go right on over and haul Austin down off the back of that horse in front of God and everybody else.

Garrett caught Tate by the back of his denim jacket and pulled him back. “Let him ride,” he said quietly, relieved that most of the men were too busy watching Austin and the bronc to notice Tate's attempt to intervene. “Let him ride.”

The bronc stood quiver-flanked inside that chute, with his four legs straddled out as wide as the limited space allowed. His ears crooked forward and its head was down.

Austin sat that horse with the same idiotic confidence he'd shown riding Buzzsaw, the bull that had nearly killed him in front of a packed rodeo arena and a TV audience numbering in the hundreds of thousands.

“Turn him loose,” Austin said clearly, after calmly resettling his battered, sweat-stained hat.

One of the men swung the chute gate open, and Garrett held his breath as the animal stood there, evidently deciding on a course of action.

When he'd made up his mind, he sprang out into the corral, pitched forward to kick out both hind legs and splinter the gate behind him with that one powerful thrust.

Delighted, Austin let out a celebratory whoop and nudged the bronc with the heels of both boots.

Watching, Tate shook his head. “I'll be goddamned,” he muttered, measuring out the words. “Is he
trying
to kill himself?”

Garrett, standing next to Tate there by the corral fence, slapped him on the shoulder, but he never took his eyes off
Austin. One thing you had to say for the crazy little bastard—he could ride damn near anything.

That stallion went up and he went down. He went sideways, and then he spun like a tornado. When that didn't unseat his rider, he switched directions, the motion sharp as the hard crack of a whip.

Austin stayed on him, covered in dirt, waving his hat and grinning as if he had half the sense of a fence post.

The bronc finally bucked himself out and stood with his chest heaving in the middle of the corral.

Casual as could be, Austin swung a leg over that critter's neck and leaped to the ground, landing on his feet with the grace of a cat.

Wearing that infamous shit-eatin' grin of his, he approached the fence, the whites of his eyes in stark contrast to the dusty grime masking his face.

The crew kept its collective distance, probably because Tate was throwing pissed-off-boss-man vibes fit to singe the bristles from a hog. “Easy,” Garrett told Tate. “Take it easy. He's all right.”

Tate glared at Austin, ignoring Garrett altogether. His knuckles were white where he gripped the fence rail, as if he wanted to vault over it, grab their kid brother by the throat and throttle him right on the spot.

But it was Austin who came over the fence, standing there, cocky as a rooster, with his dust-caked hair stuck to his neck with sweat and that fuck-you look in his eyes.

“Where the hell is my truck?” he demanded.

Garrett suppressed a chuckle, but Tate looked mad enough to bite the ends off carpet tacks and spit them clear to the far side of the creek.

He moved to grip Austin by the front of his shirt, but
stopped just short of follow-through. His fingers flexed and unflexed, but he didn't make fists.

“Your truck?” The way those words tore themselves from Tate's throat, it was a wonder they didn't take the hide with them. “You just rode a horse you don't know anything about, and you're worried about your
Goddamn truck?
”

Austin's eyes shot blue fire. After that ride, the adrenaline was still surging through his system, and he was spoiling for a fight.

Obviously, Tate was inclined to oblige.

The stallion, meanwhile, trotted back and forth in the corral, nickering and tossing his head, raising up five acres of dust in the process. He wanted a piece of somebody, that bronc, that was for sure.

Garrett, not usually the peacemaker, stepped between his brothers.

“I took your truck,” he told Austin. “Screw your damn truck. We've got trouble, plenty to go around. We sure as hell don't need trouble with each other on top of it.”

Austin swallowed hard. His gaze darted past Garrett's face to sear into Tate's flesh like a hot branding iron, then swung back, reluctant. Resigned.

“What kind of trouble?” Austin asked slowly, grudgingly.

“Dead cattle trouble,” Tate said tersely. “More downed fences, too.”

“We spotted the carcasses from the plane a little while ago,” Garrett added.

“Shit,” Austin said, with conviction, shoving a hand through his hair. “Why are we just standing here, if we've lost livestock?”

Tate thrust out a sigh and tilted his head back for a moment.

Garrett gripped Austin's shoulder with one hand and
Tate's with the other, just in case they were to change their minds about the tacit truce and spring at each other all of a sudden. He'd sure as hell seen it happen before.

“I'll get the rifles while you two saddle the horses,” Garrett said.

Tate nodded grimly and spoke to the cowboys standing silently at the bulging periphery of his McKettrick temper. As Garrett turned to head into the house, he heard Tate give Austin a brief explanation of the carnage they'd seen on the range.

 

S
OMETHING IN THE WEIGHT
of the atmosphere inside the kitchen told him Julie wasn't anywhere around, though Esperanza was back from church, sporting an apron and fixing to shove a couple of chickens into the oven for Sunday dinner.

While Garrett was relieved not to be gathering guns and ammo while Julie was there to raise questions, let alone an objection, he felt oddly bereft at her absence, too. It was a cold thing, missing her, and it blew through him like a bitter wind.

Esperanza hadn't spoken, but as he passed through the kitchen on his way to the nearest of several gun-safes around the place, the housekeeper slammed the oven door shut with a force no prudent man would ignore.

Grinning to himself, Garrett walked into the study that had been his father's, his grandfather's, his great and great-great grandfather's. There, he uncovered the safe not-so-subtly hidden behind a bookcase on hinges and spun the dial to the first digit of the combination.

He opened the heavy steel door, colorfully emblazoned with the name McKettrick Cattle Company, and reached inside, bringing out one rifle, then another, then a third.

Garrett took out a box of shells, too, and then set the rifles aside long enough to close and lock the safe. When he turned around, he nearly jumped out of his hide, because Esperanza was standing so close behind him he might have trampled her, and he hadn't even heard her come into the room.

He bit back a swear word and took a firmer hold on the rifles.

Esperanza's dark eyes followed his every move. “What are you doing?” she asked, folding her arms.

“It's just a precaution, taking the rifles along,” Garrett said, starting around her. “Nothing to worry about.”

“Nothing to worry about?” Esperanza argued, staying right on his heels as he strode out of the room. “It was bad enough that Austin had to risk his fool neck out there in the corral, riding that wild horse. Now the three of you are up to something that calls for
guns?
”

Lying to Esperanza would do no good. She'd been with the family since before Tate was born, and she knew the McKettrick brothers too well to be deceived by bullshit denials.

“There are some cattle down,” Garrett explained, slowing his words but not his pace. “It could be bad water or some kind of poison weed that got them—we only saw the carcasses from the air—but since some more fence lines have been cut in that area, it's a safe bet that somebody shot them.”

For a hefty woman, Esperanza was quick on her feet. She got ahead of him somehow as he started across the kitchen, and blocked his way. “I don't see a badge pinned to your shirt, Garrett McKettrick,” she said. “Have any of you lunkheads troubled yourselves to call Brent Brogan and report this?”

“Brogan knows about the rustling,” Garrett said, shuffling the three rifles and then going around her, which took
some doing because she'd set her feet and dug in her heels. “It's not as if we're playing posse here, Esperanza. Most likely, whoever cut those fences and slaughtered a half dozen of our cattle for what seems like no reason but pure meanness is long gone. Just the same, if Tate and Austin and I have to defend ourselves, or each other, we'd prefer to be ready.”

“Wait, Garrett,” Esperanza said, very quietly. “Don't take the law into your own hands. Let Chief Brogan handle this. He can bring in the state police, if need be, but you've got no business heading out there with guns.”

He hesitated, opened the outside door. “I'm sorry,” he said, and he meant it. Esperanza was a lot more than an employee; she was a member of the family, and her intentions were good.

She wanted to protect Jim and Sally McKettrick's boys—that was all.

“Be careful,” she said. Her dark eyes were luminous with sorrow. “You just be careful, and make sure your brothers are, too.”

He nodded. Stepped out onto the side porch, started down the steps.

One of the trailers had been hitched to Tate's truck, and Austin and another man were loading saddled horses inside.

Tate came out of the barn, saw Garrett with the rifles and walked toward him, his expression grim.

“Esperanza,” Garrett said, “is not real happy with any of us right about now.”

Tate gave up a spare grin. “I don't suppose she is,” he agreed.

They stored the rifles and the ammunition in the backseat of the Silverado, since there were no gun racks.

Tate got behind the wheel when Austin called that the horses had all been loaded, and Garrett grabbed the shotgun seat. That left the back for Austin.

Moments later, they were rolling down the long driveway. Just before they reached the main gates, Tate took a left turn onto a narrow utility road that wound along the front of the property and then forked out onto the range in three directions.

“What the hell were you doing back there?” Tate bit out, after steaming in silence for a while.

Garrett gave his brother a sidelong glance but said nothing. Tate wasn't talking to him, after all, but to Austin.

“Back where?” Austin asked, baiting him. He knew damn well what Tate wanted to know, unless Garrett missed his guess, and that was why he'd ridden a bucking bronc, and a wild one fresh off the range in the bargain. It hadn't been that long since Austin had undergone extensive emergency surgery—his survival had by no means been a sure thing—and even after his release from the hospital, he'd spent several months in physical therapy.

Sure, he was Texas tough, and he was only twenty-eight, so he had youth going for him, but he was a long way from his old self, too.