McKettricks of Texas: Tate. Linda Miller Lael

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”