Dear Reader,

Welcome to the first of three books starring a brand-new group of modern-day McKettrick men. Readers who have embraced the irrepressible, larger-than-life McKettrick clan as their own won’t want to miss the stories of Tate, Garrett and Austin—three Texas-bred brothers who meet their matches in the Remington sisters. When eldest brother Tate McKettrick sets his sights on his old high school sweetheart Libby Remington, the town of Blue River, Texas, will never be the same!

I also wanted to write today to tell you about a special group of people with whom I’ve become involved in the past couple years—the Humane Society of the United States (HSUS), specifically their Pets for Life program.

The Pets for Life program is one of the best ways to help your local shelter—it helps keep animals out of shelters in the first place. Something as basic as keeping a collar and tag on your pet all the time makes a big difference. If he gets out and gets lost, he can be returned home. Be a responsible pet owner, spay or neuter your pet and don’t give up when things don’t go perfectly. If your dog digs in the yard or your cat scratches the furniture, know that these are problems that can be addressed. You can find all the information about these—and many other common problems—at www.petsforlife.org. This campaign is focused on keeping pets and their people together for a lifetime.

As many of you know, my own household includes two dogs, two cats and six horses, so this is a cause that is near and dear to my heart. I hope you’ll get involved along with me.

With love,

Praise for the novels of
LINDA LAEL MILLER

“As hot as the noontime desert.”

—Publishers Weekly on The Rustler

“This story creates lasting memories of soul-searing redemption and the belief in goodness and hope.”

—RT Book Reviews on The Rustler

“Loaded with hot lead, steamy sex and surprising plot twists.”

—Publishers Weekly on A Wanted Man

“Miller’s prose is smart, and her tough Eastwoodian cowboy cuts a sharp, unexpectedly funny figure in a classroom full of rambunctious frontier kids.”

—Publishers Weekly on The Man from Stone Creek

“[Miller] paints a brilliant portrait of the good, the bad and the ugly, the lost and the lonely, and the power of love to bring light into the darkest of souls. This is western romance at its finest.”

—RT Book Reviews on The Man from Stone Creek

“Sweet, homespun and touched with angelic Christmas magic, this holiday romance reprises characters from Miller’s popular McKettrick series and is a perfect stocking stuffer for her fans.”

—Library Journal on A McKettrick Christmas

“An engrossing, contemporary western romance.”

—Publishers Weekly on McKettrick’s Pride

“Linda Lael Miller creates vibrant characters and stories I defy you to forget.”

—New York Times bestselling author Debbie Macomber

McKettricks of Texas: Tate
Linda Lael Miller

www.millsandboon.co.uk

MILLS & BOON

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For Leslee Borger, my fellow cowgirl,

with love and appreciation.

CONTENTS

PROLOGUE

CHAPTER ONE

CHAPTER TWO

CHAPTER THREE

CHAPTER FOUR

CHAPTER FIVE

CHAPTER SIX

CHAPTER SEVEN

CHAPTER EIGHT

CHAPTER NINE

CHAPTER TEN

CHAPTER ELEVEN

CHAPTER TWELVE

CHAPTER THIRTEEN

CHAPTER FOURTEEN

CHAPTER FIFTEEN

CHAPTER SIXTEEN

CHAPTER SEVENTEEN

CHAPTER EIGHTEEN

PROLOGUE

Silver Spur Ranch

Blue River, Texas

SPRING THUNDER EXPLODED overhead, fit to cleave the roof right down the middle and blow out every window on all three floors.

Tate McKettrick swore under his breath, while rain pelted the venerable walls like machine-gun fire.

Like as not, the creek would be over the road by now, and he’d have to travel overland to get to town. He was running late—again. And Cheryl, his ex-wife, would blister his ears with the usual accusations, for sure.

He didn’t give a damn, she’d say, about their delicate twin daughters, because he’d wanted boys, as rough-and-tumble as he and his brothers had been. That was her favorite dig. She’d never know—because he wasn’t about to let on—how that particular remark never failed to sear a few layers off his heart. He would literally have died for Audrey and Ava—the twins were the only redeeming features of a marriage that should never have taken place in the first place.

Since one good jab was never enough for Cheryl, she’d most likely go on to say that being late for their daughters’ dance recital was his way of spiting her, their mother. He’d used his own children, she’d insist—he knew she hated it when he was late—yada, yada, yada.

Blah, blah, blah.

Tate didn’t have to “use” the twins to get under Cheryl’s hide—he’d done that in spades after the divorce by forcing her to live in Blue River, so they could share custody. Audrey and Ava alternated between their mother’s place in town and the ranch, a week there, a week here, with the occasional scheduling variation. As soon as he picked them up on the prescribed days, Cheryl was off to some hot spot to hobnob with her fancy friends and all but melt her credit cards.

Tight-jawed with resignation, Tate plunked down on the edge of his bed and reached for the boots he’d polished before shedding his rain-soaked range clothes to take a hasty shower. Clad in stiff new jeans and the requisite long-sleeved white Western shirt, the cowboy version of a tux, he listened with half an ear to the rodeo announcer’s voice, a laconic drone spilling from the speakers of the big flat-screen TV mounted on the wall above the fireplace.

He was reaching for the remote to shut it off when he caught his brother’s name.

The hairs on Tate’s nape bristled, and something coiled in the pit of his stomach, snakelike, fixing to spring.

“…Austin McKettrick up next, riding a bull named Buzzsaw…”

Tate’s gaze—indeed, the whole of his consciousness—swung to the TV screen. Sure enough, there was his kid brother, in high-definition, living color, standing on the catwalk behind the chute, pacing a little, then shifting from one foot to the other, eager for his turn to ride.

The shot couldn’t have lasted more than a second or two—another cowboy had just finished a ride and his score was about to be posted on the mega-screen high overhead—but it was long enough to send a chill down Tate’s spine.

The other cowboy’s score was good, the crowd cheered, and the camera swung back to Austin. He’d always loved cameras, the damn fool, and they’d always loved him right back.

The same went for women, kids, dogs and horses.

He crouched on the catwalk, Austin did, while down in the chute, the bull was ominously still, staring out between the rails, biding his time. The calm ones were always the worst, Tate reflected—Buzzsaw was a volcano, waiting to blow, saving all his whup-ass for the arena, where he’d have room to do what he’d been bred to do: wreak havoc.

Break bones, crush vital organs.

A former rodeo competitor himself, though his event had been bareback bronc riding, Tate knew this bull wasn’t just mean; it was two-thousand pounds of cowboy misery, ready to bust loose.

Austin had to have picked up on all that and more. He’d begun his career as a mutton-buster when he was three, riding sheep for gold-stamped ribbons at the county fair, progressed to Little Britches Rodeo and stayed with it from then on. He’d taken several championships at the National High School Rodeo Finals and been a star during his college years, too.

It wasn’t as if he didn’t know bulls.

Austin looked more cocky than tense; in any dangerous situation, his mantra was “Bring it on.”

Tate watched as his brother adjusted his hat again, lowered himself onto the bull’s back, looped his hand under the leather rigging and secured it in a “suicide wrap,” essentially tying himself to the animal. A moment later, he nodded to the gate men.

Tate stared, unable to look away. He felt an uncanny sensation like the one he’d experienced the night their mom and dad had been killed; he’d awakened, still thrashing to tear free of the last clammy tendrils of a nightmare, his flesh drenched in an icy sweat, the echo of the crash as real as if he’d witnessed the distant accident in person.

He’d known Jim and Sally McKettrick were both gone long before the call came—and he felt the same soul-numbing combination of shock and dread now.

A single, raspy word scraped past his throat. “No.”

Of course, Austin couldn’t hear him, wouldn’t have paid any heed if he had.

The bull went eerily still, primal forces gathering within it like a storm, but as the chute gate swung open, the animal erupted from confinement like a rocket from a launchpad, headed skyward.

Buzzsaw dove and then spun, elemental violence unleashed.

Austin stayed with him, spurring with the heels of his boots, right hand high in the air, looking as cool as if he were idling in the old tire-swing that dangled over the deepest part of the swimming hole. Four long seconds passed before he even lost his hat.

Tate wanted to close his eyes, but the message still wasn’t making it from his brain to the tiny muscles created for that purpose. He’d had differences with his youngest brother—and some of them were serious—but none of that mattered now.

The clock on the screen seemed to move in slow motion; eight seconds, as all cowboys know, can be an eternity. For Tate, the scene unfolded frame by frame, in a hollow, echoing void, as though taking place one dimension removed.

Finally, the bull made his move and arched above the ground like a trout springing from a lake and then rolling as if determined to turn his belly to the ceiling of that arena, and sent Austin hurtling to one side, but not clear.

The pickup men moved in, ready to cut Austin free, but that bull was a hurricane with hooves, spinning and kicking in all directions.

The bullfighters—referred to as clowns in the old days—were normally called on to distract a bull or a horse, lead it away from the cowboy so he’d have time to get to the fence and scramble over it, to safety.

Under these circumstances, there wasn’t much anybody could do.

Austin bounced off one side of that bull and then the other, still bound to it, his body limp. Possibly lifeless.

Fear slashed at Tate’s insides.

Finally, one of the pickup men got close enough to cut Austin free of the rigging, curve an arm around him before he fell, and wrench him off the bull. Austin didn’t move as the pickup man rode away from Buzzsaw, while the bullfighters and several riders drove the animal out of the arena.

Tate’s cell phone, tucked into the pocket of the sodden denim jacket he’d worn to work cattle on the range that day, jangled. He ignored its shrill insistence.

Paramedics were waiting to lower Austin onto a stretcher. The announcer murmured something, but Tate didn’t hear what it was because of the blood pounding in his ears.

The TV cameras covered the place in dizzying sweeps. In the stands, the fans were on their feet, pale and worried, and most of the men took their hats off, held them to their chests, the way they did for the Stars and Stripes.

Or when a hearse rolled by.

Behind the chutes, other cowboys watched intently, a few lowering their heads, their lips moving in private prayer.

Tate stood stock-still in the middle of his bedroom floor, bile scalding the back of his throat. His heart had surged up into his windpipe and swollen there, beating hard, fit to choke him.

Both phones were ringing now—the cell and the extension on the table beside his bed.

He endured the tangle of sound, the way it scraped at his nerves, but made no move to answer.

Onscreen, the rodeo faded away, almost instantly replaced by a commercial for aftershave.

That broke Tate’s paralysis; he turned, picked up his discarded jacket off the floor, ferreted through its several pockets for his briefly silent cell phone. It rang in his hand, and he flipped it open.

“Tate McKettrick,” he said automatically.

“Holy Christ,” his brother Garrett shot back, “I thought you’d never answer! Listen, Austin just tangled with a bull, and it looks to me like he’s hurt bad—”

“I know,” Tate ground out, trying in vain to recall what city Austin had been competing in that week. “I was watching.”

“Meet me at the airstrip,” Garrett ordered. “I have to make some calls. I’ll be there as soon as I can.”

“Garrett, the weather—”

“Screw the weather,” Garrett snapped. Nothing scared him—except commitment to one woman. “If you’re too chicken-shit to go up in a piss-ant rainstorm like this one, just say so right now and save me a trip to the Spur, okay? I’m going to find out where they’re taking our kid brother and get there any way I have to, because, goddamn it, this might be goodbye. Do you get that, cowboy?”

“I get it,” Tate said, after unlocking his jawbones. “I’ll be waiting when you hit the tarmac, Top Gun.”

Garrett, calling on a landline, had the advantage of hanging up with a crash. Tate retrieved his wallet from the dresser top and his battered leather bomber jacket from the walk-in closet, shrugging into it as he headed for the double doors separating the suite from the broad corridor beyond.

With generations of McKettricks adding wings to the house as the family fortune doubled and redoubled, the place was ridiculously large, over eighteen thousand square feet.

Tate descended one of the three main staircases trisecting the house, the heels of his dress boots making no sound on the hand-loomed runner, probably fashioned for some sultan before the first McKettrick ever set foot in the New World.

Hitting the marble-floored entryway, he cast a glance at the antique grandfather’s clock—he hadn’t worn a watch since his job with McKettrickCo had evaporated in the wake of the IPO of the century—and shook his head when he saw the time.

Four-thirty.

Audrey and Ava’s dance recital had started half an hour ago.

Striding along a glassed-in gallery edging the Olympic-size pool, with its retractable roof and floating bar, he opened his cell phone again and speed-dialed Cheryl.

She didn’t say “Hello.” She said, “Where the hell are you, Tate? Audrey and Ava’s big number is next, and they keep peeking around the curtain, hoping to see you in the audience and—”

“Austin’s been hurt,” Tate broke in, aching as he imagined his daughters in their sequins and tutus, watching for his arrival. “I can’t make it tonight.”

“But it’s your week and I have plans…”

“Cheryl,” Tate bit out, “did you hear what I said? Austin’s hurt.”

He could just see her, curling her lip, arching one perfectly plucked raven eyebrow.

“So help me God, Tate, if this is an excuse—”

“It’s no excuse. Tell the kids there’s been an emergency, and I’ll call them as soon as I can. Don’t mention Austin, though. I don’t want them worrying.”

“Austin is hurt?” For a lawyer, Cheryl could be pretty slow on the uptake at times. “What happened?”

Tate reached the kitchen, with its miles of glistening granite counters and multiple glass-fronted refrigerators. Cheryl’s question speared him in a vital place, and not just because he wasn’t sure he’d ever see Austin alive again.

Suppose it was too late to straighten things out?

What if, when he and Garrett flew back from wherever their crazy brother was, Austin was riding in the cargo hold, in a box?

Tate’s eyes burned like acid as he jerked open the door leading to the ten-car garage.

“He drew a bad bull,” he finally said, forcing the words out, as spiky-sharp as a rusty coil of barbed wire.

Cheryl drew in a breath. “Oh, my God,” she whispered. “He isn’t going to—to die?”

“I don’t know,” Tate said.

Austin’s beat-up red truck, one of several vehicles with his name on the title, was parked in its usual place, next to the black Porsche Garrett drove when he was home. The sight gave Tate a pang as he jerked open the door of his mud-splattered extended-cab Silverado and climbed behind the wheel, then pushed the button to roll up the garage door behind him.

“Call when you know anything,” Cheryl urged. “Anything at all.”

Tate ground the keys in the ignition, and backed out into the rain with such speed that he nearly collided with one of the ranch work-trucks parked broadside behind him.

The elderly cowpuncher at the wheel got out of the way, pronto.

Tate didn’t stop to explain.

“I’ll call,” he told Cheryl, cranking the steering wheel. He begrudged her that promise, but he couldn’t reach his daughters except through his ex-wife.

Cheryl was crying. “Okay,” she said. “Don’t forget.”

Tate shut the phone without saying goodbye.

At the airstrip, he waited forty-five agonizing minutes in his truck, watching torrents of rain wash down the windshield, remembering his kid brother at every stage of his life—the new baby he and Garrett had soon wanted to put up for adoption, the mutton-buster, the high school and college heartthrob.

The man Cheryl swore had seduced her one night in Vegas, when she was legally still Tate’s wife.

When the jet, a former member of the McKettrickCo fleet, landed, he waited for it to come to a stop before shoving open the truck’s door and making a run for the airplane.

Garrett stood in the open doorway, having lowered the steps with a hydraulic whir.

“He’s in Houston,” he said. “They’re going to operate as soon as he’s stable.”

Tate pushed past him, dripping rainwater. “What’s his condition?”

Garrett raised the steps again, shouldered the door shut and set the latch. “Critical,” he said. “According to the surgeon I spoke to, his chances aren’t too good.”

Tate moved toward the cockpit, using the time his back was turned to Garrett to rub his burning eyes with a thumb and forefinger. “Let’s go.”

Minutes later, they were in the air, the plane bucking stormy air currents as it fought for every foot of altitude. Lightning flashed, seeming to pass within inches of the wings, the nose, the tail.

Eventually, though, the skies cleared.

When they landed at a private field outside of Houston, an SUV Garrett had rented before leaving the capital waited on the hot, dry asphalt. The key was in the ignition; Garrett took the wheel, and they raced into the city.

They were all too familiar with the route to the best private hospital in Texas. Their parents had died there, a decade before, after an eighteen-wheeler jumped the median and crashed head-on into their car.

A nurse and two administrators met Tate and Garrett in the lobby, all unwilling to meet their eyes, let alone answer their questions.

When they reached the surgical unit, they found Austin lying on a gurney outside a state-of-the-art operating suite, surrounded by a sea of people clad in green scrubs.

Tate and Garrett pushed their way through, then stood on either side of their brother.

Austin’s face was so swollen and discolored they wouldn’t have recognized him if he hadn’t crooked up one side of his mouth in a grin that could only have belonged to him.

“That was one bad-ass bull,” he said.

“You’re going to be all right,” Garrett told Austin, his face grim.

“Hell, yes, I’m going to be all right,” Austin croaked out. His eyes, sunken behind folds of purple flesh, arched to Tate. “Just in case, though, there’s one thing I need you to know for sure, big brother,” he added laboriously, his voice so low that Tate had to bend down to hear him. “I never slept with your wife.”

CHAPTER ONE

Three months later

CHERYL’S RELATIVELY SMALL backyard was festooned with streamers and balloons and crowded with yelling kids. Portable tables sagged under custom-made cakes and piles of brightly wrapped presents, while two clowns and a slightly ratty Cinderella mingled with miniature guests, all of them sugar-jazzed. Austin’s childhood pony, Bamboozle, trucked in from the Silver Spur especially for the birthday party, provided rides with saintlike equanimity.

Keeping one eye on the horse and the other on his daughters, six years old as of 7:52 that sunny June morning, Tate counted himself a lucky man, for all the rocky roads he’d traveled. Born almost two months before full term, the babies had weighed less than six pounds put together, and their survival had been by no means a sure thing. Although the twins were fraternal, they looked so much alike that strangers usually thought they were identical. Both had the striking blue eyes that ran in the McKettrick bloodline, and their long glossy hair was nearly black, like Cheryl’s and his own. His girls were healthy now, thank God, but Tate still worried plenty about them, on general principle. They seemed so fragile to him, too thin, with their long, skinny legs, and Ava wore glasses and a hearing aid that was all but invisible.

Cheryl startled Tate out of his reflections by jabbing him in the ribs with a clipboard. Today, her waist-length hair was wound into a braided knot at the back of her neck. “Sign this,” she ordered, sotto voce.

Tate had promised himself he’d be civil to his ex-wife, for the twins’ sake. Looking down into Cheryl’s green eyes—she’d been a beauty queen in her day—he wondered what he’d been drinking the night they met.

Gorgeous as Cheryl was, she flat-out wasn’t his type, and she never had been.

He glanced at the paper affixed to the clipboard and frowned, then gave all the legalese a second look. It was basically a permission slip, allowing Audrey and Ava to participate in something called the Pixie Pageant, to be held around the time school started, out at the Blue River Country Club. Under the terms of their custody agreement, Cheryl needed his approval for any extracurricular activity the children took part in. It had cost him plenty to get her to sign off on that one.

“No,” he said succinctly, tucking the clipboard under one arm, since Cheryl didn’t look like she intended to take it back.

The former Mrs. McKettrick, once again using her maiden name, Darbrey, rolled her eyes, patted her sleek and elegant hair. “Oh, for God’s sake,” she complained, though he had to give her points for keeping her voice down. “It’s just a harmless little pageant, to raise money for the new tennis court at the community center—”

Tate’s mind flashed on the disturbing film clips he’d seen of kids dolled up in false eyelashes, blusher and lipstick, like Las Vegas showgirls, prancing around some stage. He leaned in, matching his tone to hers. “They’re six, Cheryl,” he reminded her. “Let them be little girls while they can.”

His former wife folded her tanned, gym-toned arms. She looked good in her expensive daffodil-yellow sundress, but the mean glint in her eyes spoiled the effect. “I was in pageants from the time I was five,” she pointed out tersely, “and I turned out okay.” Realizing too late that she’d opened an emotional pothole and then stepped right into it, she made a slight huffing sound.

“Debatable,” Tate drawled, plastering a smile onto his mouth because some of the moms and nannies were looking in their direction, and they’d stirred up enough gossip as it was.

Cheryl flushed, toyed with one tasteful gold earring. “Bastard,” she whispered, peevish. “Why do you have to be so damn pigheaded about things like this?”

He laughed. Hooked his thumbs through the belt loops of his jeans. Dug in his heels a little—both literally and figuratively. “If other people want to let their kids play Miss This-That-and-the-Other-Thing, that’s their business. It’s probably harmless fun, but mine aren’t going to—not before they’re old enough to make the choice on their own, anyhow. By that time, I hope Audrey and Ava will have more in their heads than makeup tips and the cosmetic uses of duct tape.”

Eyes flashing, Cheryl looked as though she wanted to put out both hands and shove him backward into the koi pond—or jerk the clipboard from under his arm and bash him over the head with it. She did neither of those things—she didn’t want a scene any more than he did, though her reasons were different. Tate cared about one thing and one thing only: that his daughters had a good time at their birthday party. Cheryl, on the other hand, knew a public dustup would make the rounds of the country club and the Junior League before sundown.

She had her image to consider.

Tate, by contrast, didn’t give a rat’s ass what anybody thought—except for his daughters, that is, and a few close friends.

So they glared at each other, he and this woman he’d married years ago, squaring off like two gunfighters on a dusty street. And then Ava slipped between them.

“Don’t fight, okay?” she pleaded anxiously, the hot Texas sunlight glinting on the smudged lenses of her glasses. “It’s our birthday, remember?”

Tate felt his neck pulse with the singular heat of shame. So much for keeping the ongoing hostilities between Mommy and Daddy under wraps.

Cheryl smiled wickedly and rested a manicured hand on Ava’s shoulder, left all but bare by the spaghetti strap holding up her dress—a miniature version of her mother’s outfit. Audrey’s getup was the same, except blue.

“Your daddy,” Cheryl told the child sweetly, “doesn’t want you and Audrey to compete in the Pixie Pageant. I was trying to change his mind.”

Good luck with that, Tate thought, forcibly relaxing the muscles in his jaws. He tried for a smile, for Ava’s sake, but the effort was a bust.

“That stuff is dumb anyway,” Ava said.

Audrey appeared on the scene, as though magnetized by an opinion at variance with her own. “No, it isn’t,” she protested, with her customary spirit. “Pageants are good for building self-confidence and making friends, and if you win, you get a banner and a trophy and a tiara.”

“I see you’ve been coaching them to take the party line,” Tate told Cheryl.

Cheryl’s smile was dazzling. He’d spent a fortune on those pearly whites of hers. Through them, she said, “Shut up, Tate.”

Ava, always sensitive to the changing moods of the parental units, started to cry, making a soft, sniffly sound that tore at Tate’s heart. “We’re only going to be six once,” she said. “And everybody’s looking!”

“Thank heaven we’re only going to be six once,” Audrey interjected sagely, folding her arms Cheryl-style. “I’d rather be forty.”

Tate bent his knees, scooped up Ava in the crook of one arm and tugged lightly at Audrey’s long braid with his free hand. Ava buried her face in his shoulder, bumping her glasses askew. He felt tears and mucus moisten the fabric of his pale blue shirt.

“Forty?” she said, voice muffled. “Even Daddy isn’t that old!”

“You’re such a baby,” Audrey replied.

“Enough,” Tate told both children, but he was looking at Cheryl as he spoke. “When is this shindig supposed to be over?”

They’d opened presents, devoured everything but the cakes and competed for prizes a person would expect to see on a TV game show. What else was there to do?

“Why can’t you just stop fighting?” Ava blurted.

“We’re not fighting, darling,” Cheryl pointed out quietly, before turning to sweep her watchful friends and the nannies up in a benign smile. “And stop carrying on, Ava. It isn’t becoming—or ladylike.”

“Can we go out to the ranch, Daddy?” Ava asked him plaintively, ignoring her mother’s comment. “I like it better there, because nobody fights.”

“Me, too,” Tate agreed. It was his turn to take the kids, and he’d been looking forward to it since their last visit. Giving them back was always a wrench.

“Nobody fights at the ranch?” Audrey argued, sounding way too bored and way too sophisticated for a six-year-old. Yeah, she was a prime candidate for the Pixie Pageant, all right, Tate thought bitterly—bring on the mascara and enough hairspray to rip a new hole in the ozone layer, and don’t forget the feather boas and the fishnet stockings.

Audrey drew a breath and went right on talking. “I guess you don’t remember the day Uncle Austin came home from the hospital after that bull hurt him so bad, before he started rehab in Dallas, and how he told Daddy and Uncle Garrett to stay out of his part of the house unless they wanted a belly full of buckshot.”

Cheryl arched one eyebrow, triumphant. For all their land, cattle, oil shares and cold, hard cash, the McKettricks were just a bunch of Texas rednecks, as far as she was concerned. She’d grown up in a Park Avenue high-rise, a cherished only child, after all, her mother an heiress to a legendary but rapidly dwindling fortune, her father a famous novelist, of the literary variety.

But, please, nobody mention that dear old Mom snorted coke and would sleep with anything in pants, and Dad ran through the last of his wife’s money and then his surprisingly modest earnings as the new Ernest Hemingway.

Cheryl had never gotten over the humiliation of having to wait tables and take out student loans to put herself through college and law school.

“I wonder what my attorney would say,” Cheryl intoned, “if I told him the children are exposed to guns, out there on the wild and wooly Silver Spur.”

While Tate couldn’t argue that there weren’t firearms on the ranch—between the snakes and all the other dangers inherent to the land, firepower might well prove to be a necessity at any time—it was a stretch to say the girls were “exposed” to them. Every weapon was locked up in one of several safes, and the combinations changed regularly.

“I wonder what mine would say,” Tate retorted evenly, the fake smile aching on his face, “if he knew about your plans for this week.”

“Stop,” Ava begged.

Tate sighed, kissed his daughter smartly on the forehead, and set her on her feet again. “Sorry, sweetheart,” he said. “Say goodbye and thanks to your friends. The party’s over.”

“They haven’t even sung the song I taught them,” Cheryl said.

Ava leaned against Tate’s hip. “We’re not good singers at all,” she confided.

Somewhat to Tate’s surprise, it was Audrey, the performer in the family, who turned on one sandaled heel, faced the assemblage and announced cheerfully, “You can all go home now—my dad says the party’s over.”

Cheryl winced.

The kids—and the pony—seemed relieved. So did the nannies, though the proper term, according to Cheryl, was au pairs. The mothers, many of whom Tate had known since kindergarten and dated in high school between all-too-frequent breakups with Libby Remington, the great love of his youth, if not his entire life, hid bitchy little smiles with varying degrees of success.

“The girls are a little tired,” Cheryl explained, with convincing sincerity. “All this excitement—”

“Can we ride horses when we get to the ranch?” Audrey called, from halfway across the yard. “Can we swim in the pool?”

Tate made damn sure he didn’t smile at this indication of how “tired” his daughters were, but it was hard.

Ava remained at his side, both arms clenched around his waist now.

“Their suitcases,” Cheryl said tightly, “are in the hall.”

“Let’s load Bamboozle in the trailer,” Tate told Ava, gently easing out of her embrace. “Then we’ll get your stuff and head for the ranch.”

Ava peeled herself away from Tate, walked over and took Bamboozle by the bridle strap, patiently waiting to lead the elderly animal to the trailer hitched to the back of Tate’s truck. Audrey had disappeared into the house, on some mission all her own.

“Don’t help,” Cheryl snapped, out of one side of her mouth. “You’ve already done enough, Tate McKettrick.”

“I live to delight you in every possible way, Cheryl.”

Audrey poked her head out between the French doors standing a little ajar between the living room and the patio. “Can we stop at the Perk Up on the way out of town, Dad?” she wanted to know, as calmly as if the backyard weren’t full of dismissed guests. “Get some of those orange smoothie things, like before?”

Tate grinned. “Sure,” he told his daughter, even though the thought of stopping at Libby’s coffee shop made the pit of his stomach tighten. He’d only gone in there the last time because he’d known Libby was out of town, and her sister, Julie, was running the show.

Which was ridiculous. They’d managed to avoid each other for years now, no mean trick in such a small town, but it was getting to be too damn much work.

“Just what they need—more sugar,” Cheryl muttered, shaking her head as she walked away, her arms still crossed in front of her chest, only more tightly now.

Tate held his tongue. He hadn’t been the one to serve cake and ice cream and fruit punch by the wheelbarrow load all afternoon.

Cheryl kept walking.

Tate and Ava led the pony into the horse trailer, which, along with his truck, took up at least three parking spaces on the shady street in front of Cheryl’s house. He’d bought the place for her as a part—a small part—of their divorce settlement.

“Boozle might get lonely riding in this big trailer all by himself,” Ava fretted, standing beside the pony while he slurped up water from a bucket. “Maybe I should ride back here with him, so he’d have some company.”

“Not a chance,” Tate said affably, dumping a flake of hay into the feeder for the pony to munch on, going home. “Too dangerous.”

Ava adjusted her glasses. “Audrey really wants to be in that Pixie Pageant,” she said, her voice small. “She’s going to nag you three ways from Sunday about it, too.”

Tate bit back a grin. “I think I can handle a little nagging,” he said lightly. “Let’s go get your stuff and hit the road, Shortstop.”

“I probably wouldn’t win anyway,” Ava mused wistfully, stopping her father cold.

“Win what?” Tate asked.

Ava giggled, but it was a strained sound, like she was forcing it. “The Pixie Pageant, Dad. Keep up, will you?”

Tate’s throat went tight, but he managed a chuckle. “Sure, you’d win,” he said. “And that’s another reason I won’t let you enter in the first place. Just think how bad all those other little girls would feel.”

“Audrey could be Miss Pixie,” Ava speculated thoughtfully, a small, light-rimmed shadow standing there in the horse trailer. “She can twirl a baton and everything. I keep on dropping mine.”

“Audrey isn’t entering,” Tate said. Bamboozle was between them; he removed the pony’s saddle and blanket, ran a hand along his sweaty back. “She’ll just have to content herself with being Miss McKettrick, at least for the foreseeable future.”

Ava mulled that over for a few moments, chewing her lower lip. “Do you think I’ll be pretty when I grow up, Dad?”

Tate moved to the back of the trailer, jumped down, turned and held out his arms for Ava, even though she could have walked down the ramp. “No,” he said, as she came within reach. “I think you’ll be beautiful, like you are right now.”

Ava felt featherlight as he swung her to the ground, and it gave him a pang. Was it his fault that the girls had been born too soon? Was there something he could have done to prevent all the struggles they’d faced just getting through infancy?

“You’re only saying that because you’re my dad.”

“I’m saying it because it’s true,” Tate said.

Ava stepped back while he slid the ramp into place under the trailer, then shut and latched the doors. “Mommy says it’s never too soon to think about becoming a woman,” she ventured. “Things we do now could affect our whole, entire lives, you know.”

Tate kept his back to the child, so she wouldn’t see the fury in his face. He spoke in the most normal tone he could summon. “You’ll only be a little girl for a few years,” he answered carefully. “Just concentrate on that for now, okay? Because ‘becoming a woman’ will take care of itself.”

Wasn’t it only yesterday that the twins were newborns, making a peeping sound instead of squalling, like most babies, hooked up to tubes and wires, dwarfed by their incubators at the hospital in Houston? Now, suddenly, they were six. He’d be walking them down the aisle at their weddings before he knew what hit him, he thought bleakly.

He shoved one hand through his hair, longing to get back to the ranch and pull on battered jeans that had never known the heat of an iron. Shed the spiffy shirt, so fresh from the box that the starch in the fabric chafed his skin.

On the ranch, he could breathe, although he’d seriously considered moving out of the mansion, taking up residence in the old bunkhouse or a simple single-wide down by one of the bends in the creek.

Mothers and nannies streamed past, herding grouchy children toward various cars and minivans. A few of the women spoke to Tate, most of them cordial, while a few others wished Ava a happy birthday in subdued tones and ignored him completely.

Tate wasn’t much for chatting, but he was friendly enough. When somebody spoke to him, he spoke back.

A scraping sound alerted him to Audrey, dragging her suitcase down the front walk on its wheels. He went to take the bag from her, stowed it in the front seat, on the passenger side, where his dog, Crockett, used to ride. Crockett had died of old age more than a year before, but Tate still forgot he wasn’t around sometimes and stood with the truck door open, waiting to hoist his sidekick aboard.

“You got your bag packed?” he asked Ava, when she scrambled into the back seat, with Audrey. They both had those special safety rigs, booster chairs with straps and hooks.

“I’ve got plenty of clothes at the ranch,” Ava responded, with a shake of her head. One of the pink barrettes holding her bangs out of her face had sprung loose, and her braid was coming undone. “Let’s go before Mom makes us come back and sing.”

Tate laughed, rounded the front of the truck and got behind the wheel.

“Beauty-Shop Betsey,” Audrey scoffed. “What possessed Jeffrey’s mom to buy us doll heads with curlers?” She’d been talking like a grown-up since she was two.

“Hey,” Tate said, starting up the engine, waiting for the flock of departing vans and Volvos to thin out a little. God only knew when Blue River, official population 8,472, had last seen a traffic snarl like this. “If somebody goes to all the trouble of buying you a birthday present, you ought to appreciate it.”

“Mom said we could exchange the stuff we don’t want,” Audrey informed him, with a touch of so-there in her tone. “Everybody included gift receipts.”

Tate figured it was high time to change the subject. “How about those orange smoothies?” he asked.

TATE MCKETTRICK, LIBBY REMINGTON thought, watching as he drew his truck and horse trailer to a stop in front of her shop, got out and strode purposefully toward the door.

It bothered her that after all this time the sight of him still made her heart flutter and her stomach jump. Damn the man, with his dark, longish hair, ink-blue eyes, and that confident, rolling way he moved, as though he’d greased his hip sockets.

Although it was growing, with a population now of almost 9,000, Blue River wasn’t exactly a metropolis, and that meant she and Tate ran into each other from time to time. Whenever they did, they’d nod and quickly head in separate directions, but they’d never sought each other out.

Poised to turn the “Open” sign to “Closed,” Libby closed her eyes for a moment, hoping he was a mirage. A figment of her fevered imagination.

He wasn’t, of course.

When she looked again, he was standing just on the other side of the glass door, peering through the loop in the P in Perk Up, grinning.

A McKettrick—a pedigree in that part of the country—Tate was used to getting what he wanted, including service on a Sunday afternoon, when the store closed early.

Libby sighed, turned the dead bolt, and opened the door.

“Two orange smoothies,” he said, without preamble. “To go.”

Libby looked past him, saw his twin daughters in the back seat of his fancy truck. An old grief rose up within her, one she’d worked hard to lay to rest. From the time she’d fallen for Tate, back in second grade, she’d planned on marrying him when they both grew up, been bone-certain she’d be the one to have his babies.

“Where’s Crockett?” she asked, without intending to.

Sadness moved in Tate’s impossibly blue eyes. “Had to have him put down a while back,” he said. “He was pretty old, and then he got sick.”

“I’m sorry,” Libby said, because she was. For the dog.

“Thanks,” he answered.

She stepped back to let Tate in, against her better judgment. “I’m fostering a couple of mixed breeds, because the shelter is full again. Want one—or, better yet, both?”

Tate shook his head. Light caught in his ebony hair, where the comb ridges still showed. “Just a couple of those smoothie things. Orange. Light on the sugar, if that’s an option.”

Libby stepped behind the counter, more because she wanted to put some kind of solid barrier between herself and Tate than to mix the drinks he’d requested. Her gaze strayed to the kids waiting in the truck again. They both looked like their father. “Will there be anything else?”

“No,” Tate said, taking out his beat-up wallet. “How much?”

Libby told him the price of two orange smoothies, with tax, and he laid the money on the countertop. There were at least three drive-through restaurants on the outskirts of town; he’d pass them coming and going from the Silver Spur. So why had he stopped at her store, on Blue River’s narrow main street, with a horse trailer hitched to his huge phallic symbol of a truck?

“You’re sure you don’t want something for yourself?” she asked lightly, and then wished she’d kept her mouth shut.

Tate’s grin tilted to one side. He smelled of sun-dried laundry and aftershave and pure man. A look of mischief danced in his eyes.

When he spoke, though, he said, “It’s their birthday,” accompanied by a rise and fall of his powerful shoulders. His blue shirt was open at the throat, and she could see too much—and not quite enough—of his chest.

Libby whipped up the drinks, filling two biodegradable cups from a pitcher, attached the lids and set them next to the cash register. “Then maybe you’d like to give them a dog or two,” she replied, with an ease she didn’t feel. Being in such close proximity to Tate rattled her, but it probably didn’t show. “Since it’s their birthday.”

“Their mother would have a fit,” he said, reaching for the cups. His hands were strong, calloused from range work. Despite all that McKettrick money, he wasn’t afraid to wade into a mudhole to free a stuck cow, set fence posts in the ground, buck bales or shovel out stalls.

It was one of the reasons the locals liked him so much, made them willing to overlook the oil wells, now capped, and the ridiculously big house and nearly a hundred thousand acres of prime grassland, complete with springs and creeks and even a small river.

He was one of them.

Of course, the locals hadn’t been dumped because he’d gotten some other woman pregnant just a few months after he’d started law school.

No, that had happened to her.

She realized he was waiting for her to respond to his comment about his ex-wife. Their mother would have a fit.

Can’t have that, Libby thought, tightening her lips.

“The ice is melting in those smoothies,” she finally said. Translation: Get out. It hurts to look at you. It hurts to remember how things were between us before you hooked up with somebody you didn’t even love.

Tate grinned again, though his eyes looked sad, and then he turned sideways, ready to leave. “Maybe we’ll stop by your place and have a look at those dogs after all,” he said. “Would tomorrow be good?”

He’d stayed with Cheryl-the-lawyer for less than a year after the twins were born. As soon as the babies began to thrive, he’d moved Cheryl and his infant daughters into the two-story colonial on Oak Street.

The gossip had burned like a brush fire for months.

“That would be fine,” Libby said, back from her mental wanderings. Tate McKettrick might have broken her heart, but he’d loved his ancient, arthritic dog, Davy Crockett. And she needed to find homes for the pair of pups.

Hildie, her adopted black Lab, normally the soul of charity, was starting to resent the canine roommates, growling at them when they got too near her food dish, baring her teeth when they tried to join her on the special fluffy rug at the foot of Libby’s bed at night. The newcomers, neither more than a year old, seemed baffled by this reception, wagging their tails uncertainly whenever they ran afoul of Hildie, then launching right back into trouble.

They would be very happy out there on the Silver Spur, with all that room to run, Libby thought.

A rush of hope made the backs of her eyes burn as she watched Tate move toward the door.

“Six?” she said.

Tate, shifting the cups around so he could open the door, looked back at her curiously, as though he’d already forgotten the conversation about the dogs, if not Libby herself.

“I close at six,” Libby said, fanning herself with a plastic-coated price list even though the secondhand swamp cooler in the back was working fine, for once. She didn’t want him thinking the heat in her face had anything to do with him, even though it did. “The shop,” she clarified. “I close the shop at six tomorrow. You could stop by the house and see the dogs then.”

Tate looked regretful for a moment, as though he’d already changed his mind about meeting the potential adoptees. But then he smiled in that way that made her blink. “Okay,” he said. “See you a little after six tomorrow night, then.”

Libby swallowed hard and then nodded.

He left.

She hurried to lock the door again, turned the “Closed” sign to the street, and stood there, watching Tate stride toward his truck, so broad-shouldered and strong and confident.

What was it like, Libby wondered, to live as though you owned the whole world?

On the off chance that Tate might glance in her direction again, once he’d finished handing the cups through the window of his truck to the girls, Libby quickly turned away.

She took the day’s profits from the till—such as they were—and tucked the bills and checks into a bank deposit bag. She’d hide them in the usual place at home, and stop by First Cattleman’s in the morning, during one of the increasingly long lulls in business.

The house she’d lived in all her life was just across the alley, and Hildie and the pups were in the backyard when she approached the gate, Hildie lying in the shade of the only tree on the property, the foster dogs playing tug-of-war with Libby’s favorite blouse, which had either fallen or been pulled from the clothesline.

Seeing her, the pups dropped the blouse in the grass—the lawn was in need of mowing, as usual—and yipped in gleefully innocent greeting. Libby didn’t have the heart to scold them, and they wouldn’t have understood anyway.

With a sigh, she retrieved the blouse from the ground and stayed bent long enough to acknowledge each of the happy-eyed renegades with a pat on the head. “You,” she said sweetly, “are very, very bad dogs.”

They were ecstatic at the news. A matched set, they both had golden coats and floppy ears and big feet. While Hildie looked on, nonplussed, they barked with joy and took a frenzied run around the yard, knocking over the recycling bin in the process.

Hildie finally rose from her nest under the oak, stretched and ambled slowly toward her mistress.

Libby leaned to ruffle Hildie’s ears and whisper, “Hang in there, sweet girl. With any luck at all, those two will be living the high life out on the Silver Spur by tomorrow night.”

Hildie’s gaze was liquid with adoration as she looked up at Libby, panting and swinging her plume of a tail.

“Suppertime,” Libby announced, to all and sundry, straightening again. She led the way to the back door, the three dogs trailing along behind her, single file, Hildie in the lead.

The blouse proved unsalvageable. Libby flinched a little, tossing it into the rag bag. The blue fabric had flattered her, accentuating the color of her eyes and giving her golden brown hair some sparkle.

Easy come, easy go, she thought philosophically, although, in truth, nothing in her life had ever been easy.

The litany unrolled in her head.

She’d paid $50 for that blouse, on sale.

The economy had taken a downturn and her business reflected that.

Marva was back, and she was more demanding every day.

And as if all that weren’t enough, Libby had two dogs in dire need of good homes—she simply couldn’t afford to keep them—and she’d already pitched the pair to practically every other suitable candidate in Blue River with no luck. Jimmy-Roy Holter was eager to take them, but he wanted to name them Killer and Ripper, plus he lived in a camper behind his mother’s house, surrounded by junked cars, and had bred pit bulls to sell out of the back of his truck, along a busy stretch of highway, until an animal protection group in Austin had forced him to close down the operation.

Libby washed her hands at the sink, rubbed her work-chafed hands down the thighs of her blue jeans since she was out of paper towels and all the cloth ones were in the wash.

No, as far as placing the pups in a good home was concerned, Tate McKettrick was her only hope. She’d have to deal with him.

Damn her lousy-assed luck.

CHAPTER TWO

BY THE TIME they got to the ranch, Audrey and Ava were streaked pale orange from the smoothie spills and had developed dispositions too reminiscent of their mother’s for Tate’s comfort. The minute he brought the truck to a stop alongside the barn, they were out of their buckles and car seats and hitting the ground like storm troopers on a mission, pretty much set on pitching a catfight, right there in the dirt.

Tate stepped between them before the small fists started flying and loudly cleared his throat. The eldest of three brothers, he’d had some practice at keeping the peace—though he’d been an instigator now and again himself. “One punch,” he warned, “just one, and nobody rides horseback or uses the pool for the whole time you’re here.”

“What about kicks?” Audrey demanded, knuckles resting on her nonexistent hips. “Is kicking allowed?”

Tate bit back a grin. “Kicks are as bad as punches,” he said. “Equal punishment.”

Both girls looked deflated—he guessed they had that McKettrick penchant for a good brawl. If their features and coloring hadn’t told the story, he’d have known they were his just by their tempers.

“Let’s put Bamboozle back in his stall and make sure the other horses are taken care of,” Tate said, when neither of his daughters spoke. “Then you can shower—in separate parts of the house—and we’ll hit the pool.”

“I’d rather hit Ava,” Audrey said.

Ava started for her sister, mad all over again, and once more, Tate interceded deftly. How many times had he hauled Garrett and Austin apart, in the same way, when they were kids?

“You couldn’t take me anyhow,” Audrey taunted Ava, and then she stuck out her tongue and the battle was on again. The girls skirted him and went for each other like a pair of starving cats after the same fat canary.

Tate felt as if he were trying to herd a swarm of bees back into a hive, and he might not have untangled the girls before they did each other some harm if Garrett hadn’t sprinted out of the barn and come to his aid.

He got Audrey around the waist from behind and hoisted her off her feet, and Tate did the same with Ava. And both brothers got the hell kicked out of their knees, shins and thighs before the twin-fit finally subsided.

There was a grin in Garrett’s eyes, which were the same shade of blue as Tate’s and Audrey’s and Ava’s, as he looked at his elder brother over the top of his niece’s head. “Well,” he drawled, as the twins gasped in delight at his mere presence, “this is a fine how-do-you-do. And after I drove all the way from Austin to be here, too. Why, I have half a mind to send your birthday present right back to Neiman Marcus and pretend this is just any old day of the week, nothing special.”

Simultaneously, Tate and Garrett set their separate charges back on their sandaled feet.

Audrey smoothed her crumpled sundress and her hair—females of all ages tended to preen when Garrett was around—and asked, with hard-won dignity, “What did you get us, Uncle Garrett?”

Last year, Tate remembered with a tightening along his jawline, it had been life-size porcelain dolls, custom-made by some artist in Austria, perfect replicas of the twins themselves. He was glad the things were at Cheryl’s—they gave him the creeps, staring blankly into space. He’d have sworn he’d seen them breathe.

“Why don’t you go around to the kitchen patio and find out?” Garrett suggested mysteriously. “Then you’ll know whether it’s worth behaving yourselves for or not.”

Hostilities forgotten—for the time being anyway—the girls ran squealing for the wide sidewalk that encircled the gigantic house.

Whatever Garrett had bought for Audrey and Ava, it was sure to make Tate’s offering—a croquet set from Wal-Mart—look puny and ill-thought-out by comparison.

Not that he put a lot of stock in comparison.

“I thought you were in the capital, fetching and carrying for the senator,” Tate said, taking his brother’s measure in a sidelong glance.

Garrett chuckled and slapped him—a little too hard—on one shoulder. “Sorry I missed the shindig in town,” he said, ignoring the remark about his employer. “But I managed to get here, in spite of meetings, a press conference and at least one budding scandal neatly avoided. That’s pretty good.”

Tate sucked in a breath, let it out. Jabbed at the dirt with the heel of one boot. Garrett was a generous uncle and a good brother, for the most part, but he was living the wrong kind of life for a Texas McKettrick, and he didn’t seem to know it. “I don’t know what gets into those two,” Tate said, shoving a hand through his hair. As far as he knew, he hadn’t been in smoothie-range on the ride home, but he felt sticky all over just the same.

Whoops of delight echoed from the distant patio and Esperanza, the middle-aged housekeeper who had worked in that house since their parents’ wedding day, could be heard chattering in happy Spanish.

“They’ll be fine,” Garrett said lightly. Easy for an uncle to say, not so simple for a father.

“What the hell did you get them this time?” Tate asked, starting in the direction of the hoopla. His mood was shifting again, souring a little. He kept thinking about that damn croquet set. “Thoroughbred racehorses?”

Garrett kept pace, grinning. He usually enjoyed Tate’s discomfort—unless someone else was causing it. He was no fan of Cheryl’s, that was for sure. “Now, why didn’t I think of that?”

“Garrett,” Tate warned, “I’m serious. Audrey and Ava are six years old. They have more toys than they could use in ten lifetimes, and I’m trying not to raise them like heiresses—”

“They are heiresses,” Garrett pointed out, just as, a beat late, Tate had realized he would. “Over and above their trust funds.”

“That doesn’t mean they ought to be spoiled, Garrett.”

“You’re just too damn serious about everything,” Garrett replied.

Just then, Ava ran to meet them, glasses sticky-lensed and askew, her grubby face flushed with excitement. “It’s our very own castle!” she whooped. “Esperanza says some men brought it on a flatbed truck and it took them all day to put the pieces together!”

“Christ,” Tate muttered.

“A crew will be here next week sometime, to dig the moat,” Garrett told Ava. He might have been promising her a dress for one of her dolls, the way he made it sound.

“The moat?” Tate growled. “You’re kidding, right?”

Garrett laughed. Would have given Tate another whack on the back if Tate hadn’t sidestepped him in time. “What’s a castle without a moat?”

Ava danced with excitement, as spindly legged as a spring deer. “There are turrets, Dad, and each one has a banner flying from the top. One says ‘Audrey’ and one says ‘Ava’! There are stairs and rooms and there’s even a plastic fireplace that lights up when you flip a hidden switch—”

Man, Tate thought grimly, that croquet set was going to be the clinker gift of the century. Damned if he was about to shop again, though, and he hadn’t set foot in Neiman Marcus since he was sixteen, when his mother dragged him there to pick out a suit for the junior prom.

He’d endured that only because Libby Remington was his date, and he’d wanted to impress her.

Tate rustled up a grin for his daughter, but his swift glance at Garrett was about as friendly as a splash of battery acid. “A castle with turrets and flags and a prospective moat,” he drawled. “Every kid in America ought to have one.”

“You think I overdid it?” Garrett teased. “Austin had a line on a retired circus elephant—rehab is boring him out of his ever-lovin’ mind, so he cruises the Internet on his laptop a lot—until I talked him out of it. Trust me, you could have done a lot worse than a castle, big brother.”

Right up until he rounded the last corner of the house before the kitchen patio and the acre of lawn abutting it, Tate hoped the thing would turn out to be no bigger than your average dollhouse.

No such luck. It dwarfed the equipment shed where he kept the field tractor, a couple of horse trailers, several riding lawn mowers and four spare pickup trucks. Set on rock slabs, the castle itself was made of some resin-type material, resembling chiseled stone, and stood so tall that it blotted out part of the sky.

Audrey, wearing a pointed princess hat with glittered-on stars and moons and a tinsel tassel trailing from it, waved happily from an upper window.

Tate turned to Garrett, one eyebrow raised. “What? No drawbridge?”

“That would have been a little over the top,” Garrett said modestly.

“Ya think?” Tate mocked.

Esperanza, beaming, flapped her apron, resembling a portly bird with only one wing as she inspected the monstrosity from all sides.

Tate waited until Princess Audrey had descended from the tower to fling herself at Garrett in a fit of gratitude—soon to be joined by Ava—before giving one wall a hard shove with the flat of his right hand.

The structure seemed sound, though he’d want to inspect every inch of it, inside and out, to make sure.

“Am I the only one who thinks this is ridiculous?” he asked. “An obscene display of conspicuous consumption?”

“The plastic is all recycled,” Garrett avowed, all but reaching around to pat himself on the back.

Tate rolled his eyes and walked away, leaving Garrett and Esperanza and the girls to admire McKettrick Court and returning to the trailer to unload poor old Bamboozle. He settled the pony in his stall, gave him hay and a little grain, and moved to the corral fence to look out over the land, where the horses and cattle grazed in their separate pastures.

At least there was one consolation, he thought; Austin hadn’t sent the elephant.

The sound of an arriving rig made him turn around, look toward the driveway. It was a truck, pulling a gleaming trailer behind it.

A headache thrummed between Tate’s temples. Maybe he’d been too quick to dismiss the pachyderm possibility.

Audrey and Ava, having heard the arrival, came bounding around the house, their shiny tassels trailing in the blue beginnings of twilight. Both of them were glitter-dappled from the pointed hats.

Tate and his daughters collided just as the driver was getting down out of the truck cab. A stocky older man, balding, the fella grinned and consulted his clipboard with a ceremonious flourish bordering on the theatrical.

“I’m looking for Miss Audrey and Miss Ava McKettrick,” he announced. Tate almost expected him to unfurl a scroll or blow a long brass horn with a velvet flag hanging from it.

Tate was already heading for the back of the trailer, his headache getting steadily worse.

Somehow, despite his bulk, the driver beat him there, blocked him bodily from opening the door and taking a look inside.

By God, Tate thought, if Austin had sent his kids an elephant…

“If you wouldn’t mind, Mr.—?” the driver said. His name, stitched on his khaki workshirt, was “George.”

“McKettrick,” Tate replied, through his teeth.

“The order specifically says I’m to deliver the contents of this trailer to the recipients and no one else.”

Tate swore under his breath, stepped back and, with a sweeping motion of one arm, invited George to do the honors.

“Who placed this order,” Tate asked, with exaggerated politeness, “if that information isn’t privileged or anything?”

George lowered a ramp, then climbed it to fling up the trailer’s rolling door.

No elephant appeared in the gap.

The suspense heightened—Audrey and Ava were huddled close to Tate on either side by then, fascinated—as George duly checked his clipboard.

“Says here, it was an A. McKettrick. Internet order. We don’t get many of those, given the nature of the—er—items.”

The twins were practically jumping up and down now, and Esperanza and Garrett had come up behind, hovering, to watch the latest drama unfold.

George disappeared into the shadowy depths, and a familiar clomping sound solved the mystery before two matching Palomino ponies materialized out of the darkness, shining like a pair of golden flames. Their manes and tails were cream-colored, brushed to a blinding shimmer, and each sported a bridle, a saddle and a bright pink bow the size of a basketball.

“Damn,” Garrett muttered, “the bastard one-upped me.”

“Yeah?” Tate replied, after pulling the girls back out of the way so George could unload the wonder horses. “Wait till you see what I got them.”

LIBBY HAD EATEN SUPPER—salad and soup—watched the evening news, checked her e-mail, brought the newspaper in from its plastic box by the front gate and done two loads of laundry when the telephone rang.

Damn, she hoped it wasn’t the manager at Poplar Bend, the town’s one and only condominium complex, calling to complain that Marva was playing her CDs at top volume again, and refused to turn down the music.

In the six months since their mother had suddenly turned up in Blue River in a chauffeur-driven limo and taken up residence in a prime unit at Poplar Bend, Libby and her two younger sisters, Julie and Paige, had gotten all sorts of negative feedback about Marva’s behavior.

None of them knew precisely what to do about Marva.

Picking up the receiver, she almost blurted out what she was thinking—“It’s not my week to watch her. Call Julie or Paige”—and by the time she had a proper “Hello” ready, Tate had already spoken.

No one else’s voice affected her in the visceral way his did.

“I need those dogs,” he said, almost furtively. “Tonight.”

Libby blinked. “I beg your pardon.”

“I need the dogs,” Tate repeated. Then, after a long pause that probably cost him, he added, “Please?”

“Tate, what on earth—? Do you realize what time it is?” She squinted at the kitchen clock, but the room was dark and since she’d just been passing through with a basket of towels from the dryer, she hadn’t bothered to flip on a light switch.

“Eight?” Tate said.

“Oh,” Libby said, mildly embarrassed. The hours since she’d left the Perk Up had dragged so that she thought surely it must be at least eleven.

“You know I’ll give them a good home,” Tate went on. “The dogs, I mean.”

Libby suppressed a sigh. The pups were curled up together on the hooked rug in the living room, sound asleep. Faced with the prospect of actually giving them up, she knew she was going to miss them—a lot.

“Yes,” she agreed. “I know. You can pick them up anytime tomorrow. Just stop by the shop and I’ll—”

“It has to be tonight, and—well—if you could deliver them—”

“Deliver them?”

“Look, it’s a lot to ask, I know that,” Tate said, “and I can’t explain right now, and I can’t leave, either, even though Garrett and Esperanza are both here, because it’s the girls’ birthday and everything.”

“And you want to give them the dogs for a present after all?”

“Something like that. Lib, I know it’s an imposition, but I’d really appreciate it if you could bring them out here right about now.”

“But you haven’t even seen them—”

“Dogs are dogs,” Tate said. “They’re all great. And I figure you wouldn’t have suggested I adopt them if they weren’t good around kids.”

“It’s normally not the best idea to give pets as gifts, Tate. Too much fuss and excitement isn’t good for the animal or the child.” What was she saying?

She’d been the one to suggest the adoption in the first place, and with good reason—the poor creatures needed the kind of home Tate could give them. With him, they would have the best of everything, and, more important, Tate was a dog person. He’d proved that with Crockett and a lot of other animals, too.

“We’re not talking about dyed chicks and rabbits at Easter here, Lib,” Tate replied. He was nearly whispering.

“What about kibble—and, well—things they’ll need?”

“They can survive on ground sirloin until I can get to the store and pick up dog chow tomorrow,” Tate reasoned. “I’m in a fix, Libby. I need your help.”

The pups had risen from the hooked rug and stood shoulder to shoulder in the doorway now, ears perked, tails wagging. Her heart sank a little at the sight.

“Okay,” Libby heard herself say. “We’ll be there as soon as I can load them into my car and make the drive.”

Tate let out a long breath. “Great,” he said. “I owe you, big-time.”

You can say that again, buster, Libby thought. How about fixing me up with a new heart, since you broke the one I’ve got?

The call ended.

“You’re going to be McKettrick dogs now,” Libby told the guys, with a sniffle in her voice. “Best of the best. You’ll probably have your own bedrooms and separate nannies.”

They wagged harder. It was impossible, of course, but Libby would have sworn they knew they were headed for a place where they could settle in and belong, for good.

“Heck,” she added, on a roll, “you’ll even get names.”

More wagging.

Libby found her purse and, after considerably more effort, her car keys. Since she lived across the alley from her café and walked everywhere but to the supermarket, she tended to misplace them.

If her aging, primer-splotched Impala would start, they were on their way.

“Want to come along for the ride?” she asked Hildie, resting on a rug of her own, in front of the couch.

Hildie yawned, stretched and went back to sleep.

“Guess that’s a ‘no,’” Libby said.

The pups were always ready to go when they heard the car keys jingle, and she almost tripped over them twice crossing the kitchen to the back door.

After loading the adoptees into the back seat of the rust-mobile, parked in her tilting one-car garage on the alley, she slid behind the wheel, closed her eyes to offer a silent prayer that the engine would start, stuck the key into the ignition and turned it.

The Impala’s motor caught with a huffy roar, the exhaust belching smoke.

Libby backed up slowly and drove with her headlights off until she’d passed Chief of Police Brent Brogan’s house at the end of the block. The chief had already warned her once about emissions standards—she was clearly in violation of said standards—and she’d made an appointment at the auto shop to get the problem fixed, twice. The trouble was, she’d had to cancel both times, once because Marva was acting up and neither Julie nor Paige was anywhere to be found, and once because a water pipe at the shop had burst and she’d been forced to call in a plumber, thereby blowing the budget.

All she needed now was a ticket.

She caught a glimpse of the chief through his living-room window as she pulled onto the street. His back was to her, and it looked as though he were playing cards or a board game with his children.

Still, Libby didn’t flip on her headlights until she reached the main street. Only when she’d passed the city limits did she give the Impala a shot of gas, and she kept glancing at the rearview mirror. Brent took his job seriously.

He was also one of Tate McKettrick’s best friends. If by some chance he’d seen her sneaking out of the alley in a cloud of illegal exhaust fumes, she would simply explain that she was delivering these two dogs to the Silver Spur because Tate wanted them tonight.

She bit her lower lip. Tate had said he owed her big-time. Well, then, he could just get her out of trouble with Brent, if she got into any.

But Libby made it all the way out to the Silver Spur without incident, and Tate must have been watching for her, because he was standing in the big circular driveway, with its hotel-size fountain, when she pulled in.

The dogs went wild in the back seat, scrabbling at the doors and rear windows, yipping to be set free.

Tate’s grin lit up the night.

He came to the car, opened the back door on the driver’s side and greeted the pair with ear-rufflings and the promise of sirloin for breakfast.

The dogs leaped to the paving stones and carried on like a pair of groupies finding themselves backstage at a rock concert.

Frankly, Libby had expected a little more pathos when it came time to part, since she’d been caring for these rascals for over two months, but evidently, the reluctance was all on her side.

“Hey, Lib,” Tate said, just when she’d figured he was planning to ignore her completely. “You saved my life. Want to come inside for some birthday cake?”

Lib. It wasn’t the first time he’d called her by the old nickname, even recently. He’d used it over the phone earlier, conning her into bringing the dogs out to his ranch that very night. Hearing it now, though, in person instead of over a wire, caused a deep emotional ache in her, a sort of yearning, as though she’d missed the last train or bus or airplane of a lifetime, and would now live out her days wandering forsaken in some wilderness.

“I shouldn’t,” Libby said.

Tate crouched to give the dogs the attention they continued to clamor for, but his face was turned upward, toward Libby, who was still sitting in her wreck of a car. Lights from the enormous portico over the front doors played in his hair. “Why not?” he asked.

“It’s late and Hildie’s home alone.”

“Hildie?”

“My dog,” she said.

“Is she sick?”

Libby shook her head.

“Old?”

Again, a shake.

That deadly grin of his—it should have been registered somewhere, like an assault weapon—crooked up the corner of his mouth. “Will she eat the curtains in your absence? Order pizza and smoke cigars? Log onto the Internet and cruise X-rated Web sites?”

Libby laughed. “No,” she said. Once, they’d been so close, she and Tate. She’d known his dog, Crockett, well enough to grieve almost as much over not seeing him anymore as she had over losing his master. It seemed odd, and somehow wrong, that Tate had never made Hildie’s acquaintance. “She’s a good dog. She’ll behave.”

“Then come in and have some birthday cake.”

Libby looked up at the front of that great house, and she remembered stolen afternoons in Tate’s bed, the summer after high school especially. Traveling further back in time, she recalled the night his parents came home early from a weekend trip and caught them swimming naked in the pool.

Mrs. McKettrick had calmly produced a bath sheet for Libby, bundled her into a pink terrycloth bathrobe, and driven her home with Libby, shivering, though the weather was hot and humid at the time.

Mr. McKettrick had ordered Tate to the study as she was leaving with Tate’s mom. “We’re going to have ourselves a talk, boy,” the rancher had said.

So much had changed since then.

Tate’s mom and dad were gone.

Her own father had long since died of cancer, after a lingering and painful decline.

Tate had married Cheryl, and they’d had twins together.

On the one hand, Libby really wanted to go inside and join the party.

On the other, she knew there would be too many other memories waiting to ambush her—mostly simple, ordinary ones, as it happened, like her and Tate doing their homework together, playing pool in the family room, watching movies and sharing bowls of popcorn. But it was the ordinary memories, she’d learned after losing her dad, that had the most power, the most poignancy.

With all her other problems, Libby figured she couldn’t handle so much poignancy just then.

“Not this time,” she said quietly, and shifted the Impala into Reverse.

“You need to get that exhaust fixed,” Tate told her. The smile was gone; his expression was serious. Moments before, she’d been convinced he’d only invited her inside to be polite, wanted to repay her in some small way for bringing the dogs to him on such short notice. Now she wondered if it actually mattered to him, that she accept his invitation. Was it possible that he was disappointed by her refusal?

She nodded. “It’s on the agenda. Good night, Tate.”

He looked down at the dogs, still frolicking around him as eagerly as if he’d stuffed raw T-bone steaks into each of his jeans pockets. “What are their names?”

“They don’t have any,” Libby said. “I call them ‘the dogs.’”

Tate chuckled. “That’s creative,” he replied. His body was half turned, as though the house and the people inside it were drawing him back, and she supposed they were. Garrett and Austin were both wild, in their different ways, but Tate had been born to be a family man, like his father. “You’re sure you won’t come in?”

“I’m sure.”

One of the big main doors opened, and the twins bounded out, dressed in identical pink cotton pajamas.

Libby’s heart lurched at the sight of them, and she put the Impala back in Park.

“Puppies!” they cried in unison, rushing forward.

Libby sat watching as the pups and the little girls immediately bonded, knowing all the while that she had to go.

“Happy birthday,” Tate told his daughters, with a tenderness Libby had never heard in his voice before. He glanced back at her, mouthed the word, “Thanks.”

Libby’s vision was blurred. She blinked rapidly and was about to suck it up, back out of that spectacular driveway and head on home, where she belonged, when suddenly one of the children, the one with glasses, ran to the side of her car and peered inside.

“Hi,” she said. “We have a castle. Would you like to see it?”

Libby looked up at the front of the house. “Not tonight, sweetheart, but thank you.”

“My name is Ava. You’re Libby Remington, aren’t you? You own the Perk Up Coffee Shop.”

Although Libby couldn’t recall actually meeting the girls, Blue River wasn’t a big place, and practically everybody knew everybody else. “Yes, I’m Libby. I hope you’re having a happy birthday.”

“We are,” the child said. “Uncle Garrett bought us our very own castle from Neiman-Marcus, and Uncle Austin sent us ponies. But Dad gave us what we really wanted—puppies!”

“Take these rascals inside and give them some water,” Tate told his daughters. He lingered, while the “rascals” followed the twins into the house without so much as a backward glance at Libby.

Libby’s throat tightened, partly because this was goodbye for her and the dogs, partly because of the little girls’ obvious joy and partly for reasons she could not have identified to save her life.

“I actually bought them a croquet set,” Tate confessed.

Libby frowned. In the old days, she and Julie and Paige had played a lot of backyard croquet with their dad, and she cherished the recollection. She’d been proud that when other daddies were on the golf course with their friends and business associates, hers had chosen to spend the time with her and her sisters. “What’s wrong with that?”

He sighed, stood with his arms folded, his head tilted back. He’d always loved looking at the stars, said that was why he’d never be happy in a big city. “Nothing,” he admitted. “But I kind of lost my head after the castle and the ponies were delivered. Call it male ego.”

“You’re not going to change your mind about the dogs, are you?” Libby asked, worried all over again.

Tate gripped the edge of her open window and bent to look in at her. His face was mere inches from hers, and for one terrible, wonderful, wildly confusing moment, she thought he was going to kiss her.

He didn’t, though.

“I’m not going to change my mind, Lib,” he said. “The mutts will have a home as long as I do.”

“You wouldn’t send them to town to live with your wife?”

“Ex-wife,” Tate said. “No, Cheryl’s not a dog person. Like the ponies, they’ll live right here on the Silver Spur for the duration.”

“Okay,” Libby said, now almost desperate to be gone.

And oddly, equally desperate to stay.

Tate straightened, smiled down at her. Half turned again, toward the house. Toward his daughters and the dogs that were already loved and would soon be named, toward his brother Garrett and Esperanza, the housekeeper.

But then he turned back.

“I don’t suppose you’d like to have dinner with me some night?” he asked, sounding as shy as he had that long-ago day when he’d asked her to the junior prom. “Soon?”

CHAPTER THREE

“I CAN’T PAY YOU,” Libby warned, the next morning, when her sister Julie showed up at the shop, all set to bake scones and chocolate-chip cookies, her four-year-old son Calvin in tow. Clad in swim trunks and flip-flops, with a plastic ring around his waist, Libby’s favorite—and only—nephew had clearly made up his mind to take advantage of the first body of water to present itself.

He adjusted his horn-rimmed glasses, with the chunk of none-too-clean tape holding the bridge together, and climbed onto one of three stools lining the short counter.

Libby ruffled his hair. “Hey, buddy,” she said. “Want an orange smoothie?”

“No, thanks,” Calvin replied glumly.

Julie, twenty-nine, with long, naturally auburn hair that fell to the middle of her back in spiral curls—also natural—and a figure that would do any exercise maven proud, wore jeans and a royal blue long-sleeved T-shirt. Thus her hazel eyes, which tended to reflect whatever color she was wearing that day, were the pure azure of a clear spring sky. She grinned at Libby and headed for the tiny kitchen in the back of the shop.

“You could take my week troubleshooting with Marva,” she sang. “Instead of paying me wages, I mean.”

“Not a chance,” Libby said, but the refusal was rhetorical, and Julie knew that as well as she did. The three sisters rotated, week by week, taking responsibility for their mother, which meant visiting regularly, settling the problems Marva invariably caused with neighbors and hunting her down when she decided to take off on one of her hikes into the countryside and got lost. Marva was always up to something.

“Mom doesn’t have anything better to do anyway,” Calvin confided solemnly. He was precocious for his age, and he’d already been reading for a year. Julie, a high school English and drama teacher, was off for the summer, and her usual fill-in job at the insurance agency had fallen through for some unspecified reason. “You might as well let her make scones.”

Libby chuckled and couldn’t resist planting a smacking kiss on Calvin’s cheek. “The community pool is closed for maintenance this week,” she reminded him. “So what’s with the trunks and the plastic inner tube?”

Calvin’s eyes were a pale, crystalline blue, like those of his long-gone father, a man Julie had met while she was student teaching in Galveston, after college. As close as she and Julie were, Libby knew very little about Gordon Pruett, except that he’d owned a fishing boat and was a lot better at going away than coming back. He’d stayed around long enough to pass his unique eye color on to his son and name him Calvin, for his favorite uncle, but soon enough he’d felt compelled to move on.

Gordon didn’t visit, but he wasn’t completely worthless. He remembered birthdays, mailed his son a box of awkwardly wrapped presents every Christmas, and sent Julie a few hundred dollars in child support each month.

Most of the time, the checks even cleared the bank.

Calvin pushed his everyday glasses up his nose—he had better ones for important occasions. “I know the pool is closed for maintenance, Aunt Libby,” he said, “but the kid next door to us—Justin?—well, his mom and dad bought him a swimming pool, the kind you blow up with a bicycle pump. His dad filled it with a garden hose this morning, but Justin’s mom said we can’t swim until the sun heats the water up. I just want to be ready.”

Julie chuckled as she came out of the kitchen. She’d already managed to get flour all over the front of her fresh apron. “Hey, Mark Spitz,” she said to her son, “how about going next door for a five-pound bag of sugar? Give you a nickel for your trouble.”

Almsted’s, probably one of the last surviving mom-and-pop grocery stores in that part of Texas, was something of a local institution, as much a museum as a place of business.

“You can’t buy anything for a nickel,” Calvin scoffed, but he climbed down from the stool and held out one palm, reporting for duty.

Libby gave him a few dollars from the till to pay for the sugar, and Calvin marched himself out onto the sidewalk, headed next door.

Julie immediately stationed herself at a side window, in order to keep an eye on him. No child had ever gone missing from Blue River, but a person couldn’t be too careful.

“We’ve already got plenty of sugar,” Libby said.

“I know,” Julie answered, watching as her son went into Almsted’s, with its peeling, green-painted wooden screen door. “I have something to tell you, and I don’t want Calvin to hear.”

Libby, busy getting ready for the Monday-morning latte rush, went still. “Is something wrong?”

“Gordon e-mailed me,” Julie said, still keeping her careful vigil. “He’s married and he and his wife pass through town often, on the way to visit his parents in Tulsa, and now Gordon and the little woman want to stop by sometime soon, and get acquainted with Calvin.”

“That sounds harmless,” Libby observed, though she felt a prickle of uneasiness at the news.

“I don’t like it,” Julie replied firmly. She smiled, which meant Calvin had reappeared, lugging the bag of sugar, and stepped back so he wouldn’t see her. “What if Gordon decides to be an actual, step-up father, now that he’s married?”

“Julie, he is Calvin’s father—”

Julie made a throat-slashing motion with one hand, and Calvin struggled through the front door, might have been squashed by it if he hadn’t been wearing the miniature inner tube with the goggle-eyed frog-head on the front.

“Here,” he said, holding the bag out to his mother. “Where’s my nickel?”

Julie paid up, casting a warning glance in Libby’s direction as she did so. There was to be no more talk of Gordon Pruett’s impending visit while Calvin was around.

“I’m bored,” Calvin soon announced. “I want to go to playschool over at the community center.”

“You should have thought of that when you insisted on wearing swimming trunks and the floaty thing with the frog-head,” Julie responded lightly, heading back toward the kitchen with the unnecessary bag of sugar. “You’re not dressed for playschool, kiddo.”

“There’s a dress code?” Libby asked. She generally took Calvin’s side when there was a difference of opinion.

“No,” Julie conceded brightly, “but I’d be willing to bet nobody else is wearing a bathing suit.”

Two secretaries came in then, for their double nonfat lattes, following by Jubal Tabor, a lineman for the power company. In his midforties, with a receding hairline and a needy personality, Jubal always ordered the Rocket, a high-caffeine concoction with ginseng and a lot of sugar. Said it got him through the morning.

“Expectin’ a flood, kid?” he asked Calvin, who was back on his stool, shoulders hunched, frog-head slightly askew.

Calvin rolled his eyes.

Hiding a smile, Libby served the secretaries’ drinks, took their money and thanked them.

Meanwhile, Julie made sure she stayed in the kitchen. Jubal asked her to the movies nearly every time their paths crossed, and even now he was standing on tiptoe trying to catch a glimpse of her while the espresso for his Rocket steamed out of the steel spigot.

“He’s not so bad,” Libby had said once, when Julie had sent Jubal away with another carefully worded rejection.

“Julie and Jubal?” her sister had said, her eyes green that day because she was wearing a mint-colored blouse. “Our names alone are reason enough to steer clear—we’d sound like second cousins to the Bobbsey twins. Besides, he’s too old for me, he wears white socks and he always calls Calvin ‘kid.’”

The admittedly comical ring of their names, Jubal’s age and the white socks might have been overlooked, in Libby’s opinion, but the gruff way he said “kid” whenever he spoke to Calvin bugged her, too. So she’d stopped reminding her sister that there was a shortage of marriageable men in Blue River.

“Scones aren’t ready yet?” Jubal asked, casting a disapproving eye toward the virtually empty plastic bakery display case beside the cash register. “Out at Starbucks, they’ve always got scones.”

Libby refrained from pointing out to Jubal that he never bought scones anyway, no matter how good the selection was, and set his drink on the counter. “You been cheating on me, Jubal?” she teased. “Buying your jet fuel from the competition?”

Jubal looked at her and blinked once, hard, as though he’d never seen her before. “You want to go to the movies with me tonight?” he asked.

Calvin made a rude sound, which Jubal either missed or pretended not to hear.

“I’m sorry,” Libby said, with a note of kind regret in her voice. “I promised Tate McKettrick I’d have dinner with him.”

Julie dropped something in the kitchen, causing a great clatter, and out of the corner of her eye, Libby saw Calvin watching her with renewed interest. Since he’d been born long after the breakup, he couldn’t have registered the implications of his aunt’s statement, but that well-known surname had a cachet all its own.

Even among four-year-olds, it seemed.

“Well,” Jubal groused, “far be it from me to compete with a McKettrick.”

Libby merely smiled. “Thanks for the business, Jubal,” she told him. “You have yourself a good day, now.”

Jubal paid up, took his Rocket and left.

The instant his utility van pulled away from the curb, Julie peeked out of the kitchen. “Did I hear you say you’re going to dinner with Tate?” she asked.

Libby tried to act casual. “He asked me last night. I said maybe.”

“That isn’t what you told Mr. Tabor,” Calvin piped up. “You lied.”

“I didn’t lie,” Libby lied. First, she’d driven her car without the emissions repair, single-handedly destroying the environment, to hear her conscience tell it, and now this. She was setting a really bad example for her nephew.

“Yes, you did,” Calvin insisted.

“Sometimes,” Julie said carefully, resting a hand on Calvin’s small, bare shoulder, “we say things that aren’t precisely true so we don’t hurt other people’s feelings.”

Calvin held his ground. “If it’s not the truth, then it’s a lie. That’s what you always tell me, Mom.”

Libby sighed. “If Tate asks me out again,” she told Calvin, “I’ll say yes. That way, I won’t have fibbed to anybody.”

“I can’t believe you didn’t say ‘yes’ in the first place,” Julie marveled. “Elisabeth Remington, are you crazy?”

Libby cleared her throat, slanted a glance in Calvin’s direction to remind her sister that the conversation would have to wait.

“Can I go to playschool if I put on clothes?” Calvin asked, looking so woeful that Julie mussed his hair and ducked out of her floury apron.

“Sure,” she said. “Let’s run home so you can change.” She turned to Libby. “I put the first batch of scones in the oven a couple of minutes ago,” she added. “When you hear the timer ding, take them out.”

“Are you coming back?” Libby asked, as equally invested in a “no” as she was in a “yes.” Once she and her sister were alone again, between customers, Julie would grill her about Tate. If Julie didn’t return, the first batch of scones would sell out in a heartbeat, as always, and there wouldn’t be any more for the rest of the day, because Libby always burned everything she baked, no matter how careful she was.

“Only if you promise to take my turn babysitting Marva so I can—” Julie paused, cleared her throat “—leave town for a few days.”

“We’re going somewhere?” Calvin asked, immediately excited. On a teacher’s salary, with the child support going into a college account, he and Julie didn’t take vacations.

“Yes,” Julie answered, passing Libby an arch look. “If your aunt Libby will agree to look after Gramma while we’re gone, that is.”

Calvin sagged with disappointment. “Nobody,” he said, “wants to spend any more time with Gramma than they have to.”

“Calvin Remington,” Julie replied, without much sternness to her tone, “that was a terrible thing to say.”

“You say it all the time.”

“It’s still terrible, all right?” Julie turned to Libby. “Deal or no deal?”

Agreeing would mean two weeks in a row on Marva-watch. But Libby needed those scones, if she didn’t want all her customers heading for Starbucks. “Deal,” she said, in dismal resignation.

Julie grinned. “Great. See you in twenty minutes.”

“Crap,” Libby muttered, when her sister and nephew had reached the sidewalk and she knew Calvin wouldn’t hear.

Julie took half an hour to get back, not twenty minutes, and in the meantime there was a run on iced coffee, so Libby nearly missed the “ding” of the timer on the oven. She rescued the scones in the nick of time and sold the last one just as Julie waltzed in, all pleased with herself.

“You’re going, aren’t you?” she asked, as soon as the customer and the scone were gone. “If Tate asks you out to dinner again, you’ll say ‘yes,’ not ‘maybe’?”

“Maybe,” Libby said, annoyed. “And thanks a heap for sticking me with Marva for an extra week. I covered for you last month, remember, when you wanted to take your twelfth-grade drama class on that field trip to Dallas.”

“They learned so much about Shakespeare,” Julie said.

“And I came to understand the mysteries of matricide,” Libby said, cleaning the spigots on the espresso machine with a paper towel. “Are you seriously planning to leave town so you can avoid Gordon and the new bride?”

“Yes,” Julie answered. “According to his e-mail, he sold his boat, or it sank or both and it went for salvage—I forget. That means good old Gordon is thinking of settling down, and I don’t want him asking for joint custody or something, just because he’s got a wife now.”

“I understand where you’re coming from, Julie,” Libby said, after taking a few moments to prepare, “but you won’t be able to hide from Gordon forever—if he really wants to be part of Calvin’s life, he’ll find a way. And he has a right to at least see the little guy once in a while.”

“Gordon Pruett is the most irresponsible man on the planet,” Julie reminded Libby, her eyes suspiciously bright and her voice shaking a little. “I can’t turn Calvin over to him every other weekend, or for whole summers or for holidays. For one thing, there’s the asthma.”

A silence fell between them.

Libby hadn’t witnessed one of Calvin’s asthma attacks recently, but when they happened, they were terrifying. Once, when he was still in diapers, he’d all but stopped breathing. Libby’s youngest sister, Paige, an RN, had jumped up and made sure he wasn’t choking, then grabbed him from his high chair at the Thanksgiving dinner table at a neighbor’s house, yelled for someone to call 911 and rushed to the shower, where she’d thrust the by-then-blue baby under an icy spray, drenching herself in the process, holding him there until his lungs were shocked into action.

Libby could still hear his affronted, frightened shrieks, see him soaked and struggling to get to Julie, who bundled him in a towel and held him close, once he’d gotten his breath again, whispering to him, singing softly, desperate to calm him down.

Paige had calmly turned on the hot water spigot in the shower then, and filled the bathroom with steam, and Julie had sat on the lid of the toilet, rocking a whimpering Calvin in her arms until the paramedics arrived.

The toddler had spent nearly a week in the pediatric ward of a San Antonio hospital, Julie at his bedside around the clock, and it had taken Paige months to win back his trust. He was simply too little to understand that she’d saved his life.

Now, he used an inhaler and Julie kept oxygen on hand, in their small cottage two blocks from the high school. Paige, living across the street from them in an old mansion converted to apartments, was on call 24/7 in case Calvin needed emergency intubation. Given that she usually worked four ten-hour shifts at a private clinic fifty miles from Blue River and the fire department EMTs were all volunteers, with little formal training, Paige had tried to show both Julie and Libby how to insert an oxygen tube, using a borrowed dummy.

While Libby supposed she could do it if Calvin’s life were hanging in the balance, she was far from confident. It was the same with Julie.

In frustration, Paige had finally recruited one of Blue River’s EMTs, a former Marine medic named Dennis Evans, and instructed her sisters to call him if Calvin had a serious asthma attack while she was too far away to help.

Julie kept Dennis’s number on the front of her refrigerator, seven bright red, six-inch plastic digits with magnets on the back.

So far, Calvin’s medications kept his condition under control, but Libby could certainly understand Julie’s vigilance. Whenever he went through a bad spell, Julie didn’t sleep, and dark circles formed under her eyes.

“So,” Julie said now, returning to the main part of the shop after another batch of scones had been baked, and another rush of business had whisked the goodies out the door before they’d even cooled, “let’s talk about Tate.”

“Let’s not,” Libby replied. She’d been a codependent fool to even think about accepting a date with him, considering that he’d probably begun the process of forgetting all about her as soon as she’d been forced to leave the university and come home to help look after her ailing father. She’d taken what courses she could at Blue River Junior College, which was really just a satellite of another school in San Antonio and had since closed due to lack of funding, but she’d only been marking time, and she knew it.

“You really loved him, Lib,” Julie said gently, taking Calvin’s stool at the counter and studying Libby with thoughtful eyes.

“That’s the whole point. I loved Tate McKettrick. He, on the other hand, loved a good time.” Libby sighed. She hated self-pity, and she was teetering on the precipice of it just then. She tried to smile and partly succeeded. “I guess it made sense that he’d be attracted to someone like Cheryl. She’s an attorney, and she was raised the way Tate and his brothers were—with every possible advantage. I didn’t even finish college. Tate and I don’t have a whole lot in common, when you think about it.”

Julie frowned, bracing her elbows on the countertop, resting her chin in her palms. Her eyes took on a stormy, steel-blue color, edged in gray. “I really hope you’re not saying you aren’t good enough for Tate or anybody else, because I’m going to have to raise a fuss about it if you are.”

Libby chuckled. “Julie Remington, making a scene,” she joked. “Why, I can’t even imagine such a thing.”

Julie grinned, raised her beautiful hair off her neck with both hands to cool her neck, then let it fall again. “OK, so I might have been a bit of a drama queen in high school and college,” she confessed. “You’re just trying to distract me from the fact that I’m right. You think—you actually think—Tate threw you over for Cheryl because she fit into his world better than you would have.”

Libby raised one eyebrow. “Isn’t that what happened?”

“What happened,” Julie argued, “is this—Cheryl seduced Tate. Oil wells and big Texas ranches can be aphrodisiacs, you know. Maybe she intended all along to get pregnant and live like a Ewing out there on the Silver Spur.”

“Oh, come on,” Libby retorted. “I might not admire the woman all that much, but it isn’t fair to put all the blame on her, and you damn well know it, Jules. It isn’t as if she used a date drug and had her way with Tate while he was unconscious. He could have stopped the whole thing if he’d wanted to—which he obviously didn’t.”

“That was a while ago, Lib,” Julie said mildly, examining her manicure.

“All right, so he was young,” Libby responded. “He was old enough to know better.”

The front door of the shop swung open then, and Chief Brogan strolled in, sweating in his usually crisp tan uniform. He nodded to Julie, then swung his dark brown gaze to Libby.

“Do I smell scones?” he asked.

“Blueberry,” Julie confirmed, smiling.

Brent Brogan, a fairly recent widower, was six feet tall with broad, powerful shoulders and a narrow waist. Tate had long ago dubbed him “Denzel,” since he bore such a strong resemblance to the actor, back in Denzel Washington’s younger years.

His gaze swung in Julie’s direction, then back to Libby. “The usual,” he said. “Please.”

“Sure, Chief,” Libby said, with nervous good cheer, and started the mocha with a triple shot of espresso he ordered every day at about the same time.

Brent approached the counter, braced his big hands against it, and watched Libby with unnerving thoroughness as she worked. “I would have sworn I saw that Impala of yours rolling down the alley last night,” he said affably, “with the headlights out. Did you get the exhaust fixed yet?”

“That was my car you saw,” Julie hastened to say.

It was a good thing Calvin wasn’t around, because that was a whopper and he’d have been sure to point that out right away. Julie’s car was a pink Cadillac that had been somebody’s Mary Kay prize back in the mid-’80s. Even in a dark alley, it wouldn’t be mistaken for an Impala, especially not by a trained observer like Brent Brogan.

Libby gave her sister a look. Sighed and rubbed her suddenly sweaty palms down her jean-covered thighs. “I had an appointment at the auto-repair shop,” she told Brent, “but then a pipe blew in the kitchen and I had to call a plumber and, well, you know what plumbers cost.”

Brent slanted a glance at Julie, who blushed that freckles-on-pink way only true redheads can, and once again turned his attention back to Libby. “So it was you?”

“Yes,” Libby said, straightening her shoulders. “And if you give me a ticket, I won’t be able to afford to have the repairs done for another month.”

The timer bell chimed.

Julie rushed to take the latest batch of scones out of the oven.

“I’m going to give you one more warning, Libby,” Brent said quietly, raising an index finger. “Count it. One. If I catch you driving that environmental disaster again, without a sticker proving it meets the legal standards, I am so going to throw the book at you. Is—that—understood?”

Libby set his drink on the counter with a thump. “Yes, sir,” she said tightly. “That is understood.” She raised her chin a notch. “How am I supposed to get the car to the shop if I can’t drive it?”

Brent smiled. “I’d make an exception in that case, I guess.”

Libby made up her mind to put the repair charges on the credit card she’d just paid off, though it would set her back.

Julie looked toward the street, smiled and consulted an imaginary watch. “Well, will you look at that,” she said. “It’s time to pick Calvin up at playschool.”

The pit of Libby’s stomach jittered. She followed her sister’s gaze and saw Tate walking toward the door, looking beyond good in worn jeans, scuffed boots and a white T-shirt that showed off his biceps and tanned forearms.

Scanning the street, she saw no sign of his truck, the sleek luxury car he sometimes drove or his twin daughters.

Libby felt as though she’d been forced, scrambling for balance, onto a drooping piano wire stretched across Niagara Falls. It was barely noon—Tate had suggested dinner, hadn’t he, not lunch?

Either way, she reflected, trying to calm her nerves with common sense, she’d said “Maybe,” not “Yes.”

Tate reached the door, opened it and walked in. His grin was as white as his shirt, and even from behind the register, Libby could see the comb ridges in his hair.

He greeted Brent with a half salute. “Denzel,” he said.

Brent smiled. “Throw those blueberry scones into a bag for me,” he said, though whether he was addressing Julia or Libby was unclear, because he was watching Tate. “I’d better buy them up before McKettrick beats me to the draw.”

Tate was looking at Libby. His blue gaze smoldered that day, but she knew from experience that fire could turn to ice in a heartbeat.

“You had any more trouble with those rustlers?” Brent asked.

Libby ducked into the kitchen, nearly causing a sister-jam in the doorway because Julie had the same idea at the same time.

“Rustlers?” Libby asked, troubled.

“Not recently,” Tate told his friend. Looking down into Libby’s face, he added, “Rustling’s a now-and-again kind of thing. Not as dangerous as it looks in the old movies.”

Julie squirmed to get past Libby and leave to pick Calvin up at the community center.

“If you don’t come straight back here,” Libby warned her sister, momentarily distracted and keeping her voice low, “I’m only taking over with Marva for half of next week.”

“Relax,” Julie answered, turning back and grabbing a paper bag and tongs to fill the chief’s scone order. “I’ll bake all afternoon, and bring you a big batch of scones and doughnuts in the morning. My oven is better than this one, and I really do have to fetch Calvin.”

Libby blocked Julie’s way out of the kitchen and leaned in close. “What am I supposed to do if Brent leaves and Tate is still here?” she demanded.

Julie raised both eyebrows. “Talk to the man? Maybe offer him coffee—or a quickie in the storeroom?” She grinned, full of mischief. “That’s about the only thing I miss about Gordon Pruett. Stand-up sex with a thirty-three percent chance of getting caught.”

Libby blushed, but then she had to laugh. “I am not offering Tate McKettrick stand-up sex in the storeroom!” she said.

“Now, that’s a damn pity,” Tate said.

Libby whirled around, saw him standing in the doorway leading into the main part of the shop, arms folded, grin wicked, one muscular shoulder braced against the framework. Color suffused Libby’s face, so hot it hurt.

Julie fled, giggling, with the bag of scones in one hand, forcing Tate to step aside, though he resumed his damnably sexy stance as soon as she’d passed.

“Well,” he remarked, after giving a philosophical sigh, “I stopped by to repeat my offer to buy you dinner, since the girls are over at the vet’s with Ambrose and Buford and therefore temporarily occupied, but if you want to have sex in a storeroom or anyplace else, Lib, I’m game.”

“Ambrose and Buford?” Libby asked numbly.

“The dogs,” Tate explained, his eyes twinkling. “They’re getting checkups—‘wellness exams,’ they call them now—and shots.”

“Oh,” Libby said, at a loss.

“Could we get back to the subject of sex?” Tate teased.

“No,” she said, half laughing. “We most certainly can’t.”

He straightened, walked toward her, in that ambling, easy way he had, cupped her face in his hands. She loved the warmth of his touch, the restrained strength, the roughness of work-calloused flesh.

His were the hands of a rancher.

“Dinner?” he asked.

“Are you going to kiss me?” she countered.

He smiled. “Depends on your answer.”

“If I say ‘no,’ what happens?”

“You wouldn’t do a darn fool thing like that, now would you?” he asked, in a honeyed drawl. Although his body shifted, his hands remained where they were. “Turn down a free meal, and a tour of a plastic castle? Miss out on a perfectly good chance to see how Ambrose and Buford are adjusting to ranch life?”

He meant to “buy” dinner at his place, then. The knowledge was both a relief and a whole new reason to panic.

“Will Audrey and Ava be there?”

“Yes.”

“Garrett?”

“No. Sorry. He had to get back to Austin.”

“Pressing political business?”

Tate chuckled. “Probably a hot date,” he said. “Plus, he’s afraid I’m going to kill him in his sleep for giving my kids a goddamn castle for their sixth birthday.”

“Hmm,” Libby mused.

“Well?” Tate prompted.

“I have a question,” Libby said.

“What’s that?”

“Why now? Why ask me out now, Tate—after all this time?”

He looked thoughtful, and a few moments passed before he answered, his voice quiet. “I guess it took me this long to work up my courage.” He swallowed hard, met her gaze in a deliberate way. “Nobody would blame you if you told me to go straight to hell, Libby. Not after what I did.”

She took that in. Finally, she said, “Okay.”

“Is that an okay-yes, or an okay-go-take-a-flying-leap?”

Libby had to smile. “I guess it’s an okay-one-dinner-is-no-big-deal,” she answered. “We are still talking about dinner, right?”

Tate chuckled. God, he smelled good, like fresh air and newly cut grass distilled to their essences. And she’d missed bantering with him like this. “Yes, we’re still talking about dinner.”

“Then, yes,” Libby said, feeling dizzy. After all, she’d promised Calvin she’d undo her lie if she got the chance, and here it was.

“Right answer,” Tate murmured, and then he kissed her.

The world, perhaps even the whole universe, rocked wildly and dissolved, leaving Libby drifting in the aftermath, not standing in her shabby little coffee-shop kitchen.

Tate deepened the kiss, used his tongue. Oh, he was an expert tongue man, all right. Another thing she’d forgotten—or tried to forget.

Libby moaned a little, swayed on her feet.

Tate drew back. His hands dropped from her cheeks to her shoulders, steadying her.

“Pick you up at six?” It was more a statement than a question, but Libby didn’t care. She was taking a terrible risk, and she didn’t care about that, either.

“Six,” she confirmed. “What shall I wear?”

He grinned. “The twins are dining in shorts, tank tops and pointed princess hats with glitter and tassels,” he said. “Feel free to skip the hat.”

“Guess that leaves shorts and a tank top,” she said. “Which means you should pick me up at six-thirty, because I’m going to need to shave my legs.”

Mentally, Libby slapped a hand over her mouth. She’d just given this hot man a mental picture of her running a razor along hairy legs?

“Here or at your place?” Tate asked, apparently unfazed by the visual.

“My place,” Libby said. “I’d drive out on my own, but your friend the chief of police will arrest me if I so much as turn a wheel.”

“Therein lies a tale,” Tate said. “One I’d love to hear. Later.”

“Later,” Libby echoed, and then he was gone.

And she just stood there, long after he’d left her, the kiss still pulsing on her lips and rumbling through her like the seismic echoes of an earthquake.

CHAPTER FOUR

LIBBY CLOSED THE SHOP at five that day—no big sacrifice, since she’d only had one customer after lunch, a loan officer from First Cattleman’s who’d left, disgruntled, without buying anything once he learned there were no more of Julie’s scones to be had.

After cleaning up the various machines, stowing the day’s modest take in her zippered deposit bag and finally locking up, she crossed the alley—trying not to hurry—and let a grateful Hildie out into the backyard.

The place seemed a little lonely without the formerly nameless dogs, but she’d see them that night, at Tate’s. Given the way they’d thrown her under the proverbial bus when she’d dropped them off at the Silver Spur the night before, there was a good chance they’d ignore her completely.

“Now, you’re being silly,” she told herself, refreshing Hildie’s water bowl at the sink, then rinsing out and refilling the food dish with kibble.

While Hildie gobbled down her meal, Libby showered, taking care to shave her legs, but instead of the prescribed shorts and tank top, she chose a pink sundress with spaghetti straps and smocking at the bodice. She painted her toenails to match, spritzed herself with cologne and dried her freshly shampooed, shoulder-length hair until it fluffed out around her face.

Libby owned exactly two cosmetic products—a tube of mascara and some lip gloss—and she applied both with a little more care than usual.

The phone rang at five minutes to six, and she was instantly certain that Tate had changed his mind and meant to rescind the invitation to have supper at the Silver Spur. The wave of disappointment that washed over her was out of all proportion to the situation.

But it wasn’t Tate, as things turned out, calling with some lame excuse.

It was Gerbera Jackson, who cleaned for Marva three days a week, over at Poplar Bend.

“Libby? That you?”

“Hello, Gerbera,” Libby responded.

“I know it isn’t your week,” Gerbera went on apologetically, “but I couldn’t reach Miss Paige, or Miss Julia, either.”

Gerbera, an old-fashioned black woman, well into her sixties, still adhered to the mercifully outdated convention of addressing her white counterparts as “Miss.”

“That’s okay,” Libby said, hiding her disappointment. A problem with Marva meant the evening at the Silver Spur was history, the great event that never happened. “What’s up?”

“Well, it’s your mama, of course,” Gerbera said sadly.

Who else? Libby thought uncharitably.

“I’m worried about her,” the softhearted woman continued. “I recorded her stories for her, just like always, since her favorites are on while she’s out taking those longs walks of hers, but Miss Marva, she doesn’t want to look at them tonight. Told me not to bother putting a chicken potpie into the oven for her before I left, too. That’s one of her favorites, you know.”

Libby closed her eyes briefly, breathed deeply and slowly. Marva’s “stories” were soap operas, and she hadn’t missed an episode of As the World Turns, or so she claimed, since 1972, when, recovering from a twisted ankle, she’d gotten hooked.

“Not good,” Libby admitted. When Marva didn’t want to watch her soaps or eat chicken potpie, she was depressed. And when Marva was depressed, bad things happened.

“She hasn’t been herself since they eighty-sixed her from the bingo hall for lighting up a cigarette,” Gerbera added.

Just then, a rap sounded at the front door. Tate had arrived, probably looking cowboy-sexy, and now Libby was going to have to tell him she couldn’t go to the Silver Spur for supper.

“I hate to bother you,” Gerbera said, and she sounded like she meant it, but she also sounded relieved. If she had a fault, it was caring too much about the various ladies she cleaned and cooked for, whether they were crotchety or sweet-tempered. Until her nephew, Brent Brogan, had moved back to Blue River, with his children, after his wife’s death, Gerbera had managed Poplar Bend full-time, living in an apartment there.

She spent more time with her family now, cooking and mending and helping out wherever she could. Brent claimed her chicken-and-dumplings alone had put ten pounds on him.

“No bother,” Libby said, brightening her voice and stretching the kitchen phone cord far enough to see Tate standing on the other side of the front door. She gestured for him to come in. “She’s my mother.”

Some mother Marva had been, though. She’d left her husband and small, bewildered children years before, with a lot of noise and drama, and suddenly returned more than two decades later, after what she described as a personal epiphany, to install herself at Poplar Bend and demand regular visits from her daughters.

She had, for some reason, decided it was time to bond.

Better late than never—that seemed to be the theory.

Marva had money, that much was clear, and she was used to giving orders, but any attempt to discuss her long and largely silent absence brought some offhanded response like, “That was then and this is now.”

For all Libby and her sisters knew, Marva could have been living on another planet or in a parallel dimension all those years.

Libby wanted to love Marva; she truly did. But it was hard, remembering how heartbroken their dad had been at his wife’s defection—she’d run away with a man who rode a motorcycle and earned a sketchy living as a tattoo artist.

Clearly, the tattoo man had been out of the picture for a long time.

For their father’s sake, Libby, Julie and Paige took turns visiting and handling problems Marva herself had created. They fetched and carried and ran errands, but Marva wasn’t grateful for anything. I am your mother, she’d told Libby, in one of her cranky moments, and I am entitled to your respect.

Respect, Libby had retorted hotly, unable to hold her tongue, is not a right. It’s something you have to earn.

Tate let himself in, at Libby’s signal, and Hildie started playing up to him as though he were some kind of cowboy messiah.

“Thanks, Gerbera,” Libby said, realizing she’d missed a chunk of the conversation. “I’ll head over there right away and make sure she’s okay.”

Gerbera apologized again, said goodbye and hung up.

Libby replaced the receiver on the hook in the kitchen and went back to greet her breathtakingly handsome guest.

“Problem?” Tate asked mildly. He filled Libby’s small living room, made it feel crowded and, at the same time, utterly safe.

“My mother,” Libby said. “I need to check on her.”

“Okay,” Tate replied. “Let’s go check on her, then.”

“You don’t understand. It could take hours, if she’s in one of her—moods.”

Tate’s shoulders moved in an easy shrug. “Only one way to find out,” he said.

Libby couldn’t let him throw away his evening just because her own was ruined. “You should just go home. Forget about supper.” She swallowed. “About my joining you, I mean.”

He was crouching by then, fussing over the adoring Hildie. She probably wanted to go home with him and be his dog. Libby? That name seems vaguely familiar.

“Nope,” he said, straightening. “You and I and—what’s this dog’s name again?”

“Hildie,” Libby answered, her throat tight.

“You and Hildie and I are having supper on the Silver Spur, just like we planned. I’ll just call Esperanza and ask her to feed the girls early.”

“But—”

Tate took in Libby’s sundress, her strappy sandals, her semi-big hair. “You look better than fantastic,” he said. Then he took Libby by the arm and squired her toward the front door, Hildie happily trotting alongside.

His truck was parked at the curb, and he hoisted Hildie into the back seat, then opened the passenger-side door for Libby. Helped her onto the running board, from which point she was able to come in for a landing on the leather seat with something at least resembling dignity.

“You don’t have to do this,” she said.

Tate didn’t answer until he’d rounded the front of the truck and climbed behind the wheel. “I don’t have to do anything but die and pay taxes,” he replied, with a grin. “I’m here because I want to be here, Lib. No other reason.”

Within five minutes, they were pulling into one of the parking lots at Poplar Bend, behind Building B. Marva lived off the central courtyard, and as they approached, she stepped out onto her small patio, smiling cheerfully. A glass of white wine in one hand, she wore white linen slacks and a matching shirt, tasteful sandals and earrings.

Libby stared at her.

“Well, this is a nice surprise,” Marva said, her eyes gliding over Tate McKettrick briefly before shifting back to her daughter. “To what do I owe the pleasure?”

“Gerbera Jackson called me,” Libby said, struggling to keep her tone even. “She was very concerned because you didn’t want to watch your soap operas or eat supper.”

Marva sighed charitably and shook her head. “I was just having a little blue spell, that’s all,” she said. She raised the wineglass, its contents shimmering in the late-afternoon light. “Care for a drink?”

Inwardly, Libby seethed. Gerbera was a sensible woman, and if she’d been concerned about Marva’s behavior, then Marva had given her good reason for it.

Bottom line, Marva had decided she wanted a little attention. Instead of just saying so, she’d manipulated Gerbera into raising an unnecessary alarm.

“No, thanks,” Tate said, nodding affably at Marva. “Is there anything you need, ma’am?”

Libby wanted to jab him with her elbow, but she couldn’t, because Marva would see.

“Well,” Marva said, almost purring, “there is that light in the kitchen. It’s been burned out for weeks and I’m afraid I’ll break my neck if I get up on a ladder and try to replace the bulb.”

Tate rolled up his sleeves. “Glad to help,” he said.

Libby’s smile felt fixed; she could only hope it looked more genuine than it felt, quivering on her mouth.

Tate replaced the bulb in Marva’s kitchen.

“It’s good to have a man around the house,” Marva said.

Libby all but rolled her eyes. You had one, she thought. You had Dad. And he wasn’t exciting enough for you.

“I guess Libby and I ought to get going,” Tate told Marva. “Esperanza will be holding supper for us.”

Marva patted his arm, giving Libby a sly wink, probably in reference to Tate’s well-developed biceps. “You young people run along and have a nice evening,” she said, setting aside her now-empty wineglass to wave them out of the condo. “It’s nice to know you’re dating, Libby,” she added, her tone sunny. “You and your sisters need to have more fun.”

Libby’s cheeks burned.

Tate took her by the elbow, nodded a good evening to Marva, and they were out of the condo, headed down the walk.

When they reached the truck, Tate lifted Libby bodily into the cab, paused to reach back and pet Hildie reassuringly before sprinting around to the driver’s-side door, climbing in and taking the wheel again.

As soon as he turned the key in the ignition, the air-conditioning kicked in, cooling Libby’s flesh, if not her temper.

She leaned back in the seat, then closed her eyes. Stopping by Marva’s place had been no big deal, as it turned out, and Tate certainly hadn’t minded changing the lightbulb.

But of course, those things weren’t at the heart of the problem, anyway, were they?

All this emotional churning was about Marva’s leaving, so many years ago.

It was about her and Julie and Paige, not to mention their dad, missing her so much.

Marva had departed with a lot of fanfare. Now that she was back, she expected to be treated like any normal mother.

Not.

“I guess your mom still gets under your hide,” Tate commented quietly, once they were moving again.

Libby turned her head, looked at him. “Yes,” she admitted. He knew the story—everyone around Blue River did. Several times, when they were younger, he’d held her while she cried over Marva.

Tate was thoughtful, and silent for a long time. “She’s probably doing the best she can,” he said, when they were past the town limits and rolling down the open road. “Like the rest of us.”

Libby nodded. Marva’s “best” wasn’t all that good, as it happened, but she didn’t want the subject of her mother to ruin the evening. She raised and lowered her shoulders, releasing tension, and focused on the scenery. “I guess so,” she said.

The conversational lull that followed was peaceful, easy.

Hildie got things going again by suddenly popping her big head forward from the back seat and giving Tate an impromptu lick on the ear.

He laughed, and so did Libby.

“Do you ever think about getting another dog?” she asked, thinking of Crockett. That old hound had been Tate’s constant companion. He’d even taken him to college with him.

“Got two,” Tate reminded Libby, grinning.

“I mean, one of your own,” Libby said.

Tate swallowed, shook his head. “I keep thinking I’ll be ready,” he replied, keeping his gaze fixed on the winding road ahead. “But it hasn’t happened yet. Crockett and I, we were pretty tight.”

Libby watched him, took in his strong profile and the proud way he held his head up high. It was a McKettrick thing, that quiet dignity.

“Your folks were such nice people,” she told Tate.

He smiled. “Yeah,” he agreed. “They were.”

They’d passed mile after mile of grassy rangeland by then, dotted with cattle and horses, all of it part of the Silver Spur. Once, there had been oil wells, too, pumping night and day for fifty years or better, though Tate’s father had shut them down years before.

A few rusty relics remained, hulking and rounded at the top; in the fading, purplish light of early evening, they reminded Libby of the dinosaurs that must have shaken the ground with their footsteps and dwarfed the primordial trees with their bulk.

“You’re pretty far away,” Tate said, as they turned in at the towering wrought-iron gates with the name McKettrick scrolled across them. Those gates had been standing open the night before; Libby, relieved not to have to stop, push the button on the intercom and identify herself to someone inside, had breezed right in. “What are you thinking about, Lib?”

She smiled. “Oil derricks and dinosaurs,” she replied.

Tate pushed a button on his visor, and the gates swung wide, then whispered closed again as soon as they passed through. Hildie, quiet for most of the ride, began to get restless, pacing from one end of the back seat to the other.

Once again, Libby dared hope her dog wasn’t planning to move in with Tate and forget all about her, the way Ambrose and Buford apparently had.

“Derricks and dinosaurs,” Tate reflected.

“You might say there’s a crude connection,” Libby said.

Tate groaned at the bad pun, but then he laughed.

When they reached the ranch house, he drove around back instead of parking under the portico or in the garage, and Libby gasped with pleasure when she caught sight of the castle.

It was enchanting. Even magical.

“Wow,” she said.

Tate shut off the truck, cast a rueful glance over the ornate structure and got out to help Hildie out of the back seat.

Set free, Hildie ran in circles, as excited as a pup, and when Ambrose and Buford dashed out of the castle and raced toward her, all former grudges were forgotten. She wag-tailed it over to meet them like they were long-lost friends.

The twins waved from separate windows in the castle, one at ground level and one in a turret.

“I’ve never seen anything like this,” Libby said, shading her eyes from the presunset glare as she admired the oversized playhouse.

“Me, either,” Tate said.

“Cometh thou in!” one of the little girls called from the tower.

Libby laughed. Tate shook his head and grinned.

Took Libby’s hand just before he stooped to enter the castle, then pulled her in after him. The three dogs crowded in behind them, thick as thieves now that they weren’t roommates anymore.

The inside was even more remarkable than the outside, with its fireplace and overhead beams and a stairway leading to the upper floor.

Libby wondered what Calvin would think of the place.

“It’s so—big,” she said slowly.

Ava nodded eagerly. “Dad says Audrey and I need to think about giving it to the community center, so other kids can play with it, too.”

Libby glanced at Tate, saw that he was looking away.

“That’s a very generous idea,” she said, impressed.

“We haven’t decided yet, though,” Audrey put in, descending the stairs. “All Dad said was to think about it. He didn’t say we actually had to do it.”

Tate gestured toward the door. “I’m pretty sure supper is ready by now, ladies,” he said. “Shall we?”

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.

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