McKettricks of Texas: Tate. Linda Miller Lael
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“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