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And just looking at him made Paige wish she were lying flat on her back in his bed, instead of standing in a kitchen awash in morning light.
“Thanks,” she said out loud, taking the mug he offered.
“Guess I’d better throw on some clothes,” he said without the least trace of self-consciousness in either his tone or his manner. “As Dad always said, we’re burnin’ daylight.”
Paige didn’t respond. She couldn’t have responded, because her throat had closed.
With a nod, Austin left, heading up his set of stairs, the dog trotting behind him.
Garrett stood up again, gestured for Paige to take a seat.
She slumped onto the bench, curled both hands around the mug.
Garrett sank back into his chair. “Are you all right?” he asked.
Paige, realizing that she’d clenched her eyes shut, opened them and drummed up a smile. “Yes,” she said. “But Julie was counting on me to look after Calvin and I overslept and—”
“Calvin is fine,” Garrett said, covering her hand with his very briefly.
Paige sighed, and with the outward thrust of her breath, her shoulders relaxed. She felt the familiar rush of love for her only nephew; she could not have loved Calvin more if he’d been her own child.
Garrett cleared his throat subtly, and glanced toward the stairs Austin and Shep had mounted only moments before.
“Tate and I were wondering...” he began. But then his voice fell away, and he looked strangely shy for a man whose self-confidence seemed to rise from the cellular level.
“What?” she asked. God knew it had complicated her life when Libby and Tate had fallen in love and, soon after that, Garrett and Julie. Austin was their brother; it would, of course, be almost impossible to avoid coming into contact with him on a fairly regular basis.
Still, Paige liked her future brothers-in-law, and she was certainly glad they were making her sisters so happy.
Garrett scooted his chair in a little closer to the table. Lowered his voice, even though Austin was nowhere in sight and couldn’t possibly have overheard.
“Julie says you’re between jobs right now,” he ventured carefully.
Paige felt a brief sting of embarrassment; she’d worked since high school and being unemployed was new to her. Fortunately, the feeling passed quickly.
“I guess you could say that,” she said with a little smile. If Julie had confided that her sister was “between jobs,” she’d explained the circumstances, too, but Paige saw no reason to point that out. “I was supposed to replace one of the nurses at Blue River Clinic—Alice was planning on enlisting in the Navy. There was some kind of hitch, though, and it will be another few months before she starts her training.”
The expression in Garrett’s McKettrick-blue eyes was kind.
He and Tate, Paige realized with a start, would be the brothers she’d never had. They had already accepted her as part of the family, and they would look out for her, if only because they loved her sisters.
Her throat ached with an emotion she was glad she didn’t have to define, because there were no words for it.
Garrett gave her a few moments to recover before he tried to continue. He said his younger brother’s name, hoarsely, and then faltered.
“Go on,” Paige said very quietly.
“Austin—needs help. He’s never going to admit that, though.”
Paige nodded, waited. She knew Austin better than most people did, and nothing Garrett had said so far surprised her.
Garrett sighed again, thrust a hand through his dark-blond hair. “We—Tate and I, that is—think there ought to be somebody around to sort of keep an eye on Austin when none of us are around, just in case—”
She didn’t speak, hoping the conclusion she’d just jumped to was wrong.
“Austin needs a nurse,” Garrett finally said, and his tone was decisive.
“A nurse,” Paige repeated dully. “Garrett, tell me you’re not suggesting that I—”
Garrett merely smiled and raised one eyebrow ever so slightly.
Paige swallowed. “Don’t you think that would be a little—well—awkward?”
“Awkward?” Garrett, the skilled political spin doctor, was probably playing her, but he sure sounded confused. “It’s not as if you would have to bathe him or anything intimate like that.”
She met his gaze and held it. “What is Austin’s diagnosis, exactly?”
“He has a herniated disc,” Garrett answered, his tone genuinely grave now.
“Will he need surgery?” The question was rhetorical; Paige was thinking out loud. Processing the implications of an injury all too common to athletes, no matter what their sport.
Garrett rubbed his attractively stubbled chin with one hand as he considered his answer. “That depends,” he finally replied. “If he stays away from the rodeo, gives himself a chance to heal, there’s a good chance he can avoid having an operation.”
Paige felt faintly sick to her stomach. “You don’t think Austin will actually go along with the idea, do you? I mean, he and I are making an effort to get along—for obvious reasons—but things are still pretty rocky—”
“Tate and I aren’t planning on giving Austin a choice in the matter,” Garrett said firmly.
“And you want me to...babysit.”
A slow grin settled over Garrett’s sensual mouth. “That’s about the size of it,” he said with a little nod.
“There are a lot of private nurses in the world,” Paige said. “Why me?”
Austin could be heard at the top of the stairs, talking to the dog.
Paige lowered her voice and added, “You know I infuriate him.”
Garrett folded his arms, and if they’d been playing poker, Paige would have thrown in any hand short of a royal flush when she saw the flicker of triumph in his eyes. He leaned in and said in a stage whisper, “That’s the idea. We’d make it worth your while.”
Paige widened her eyes, but before she could say anything in response to Garrett’s remark, Austin was back.
He’d pulled on jeans and a raggedy T-shirt and his damp hair showed comb ridges, though he hadn’t shaved. That practiced smile flashed across both Paige and Garrett like the sweep of a searchlight, dazzlingly bright, but somehow distant, and distinctly cool.
Garrett looked at his watch, pushed back his chair and stood. “Time to play cowboy,” he said. “I was supposed to meet Tate on the east range fifteen minutes ago—better get out there before his lid starts rattling.”
Austin rolled his eyes. “Can’t have that,” he said.
“Later,” Garrett responded. Grabbing the keys to his truck from the hook beside the door, he disappeared into the garage.
Austin rounded slowly, studying Paige. “What were you two talking about, before I came downstairs?” he asked mildly.
Paige bit her lower lip. “Garrett offered me a job,” she said.
He frowned. “Doing what?”
She hadn’t actually accepted the position, but it wouldn’t hurt to bait Austin a little. Paige took pleasure in her reply. “Babysitting.”
Austin looked relieved. “You’re already doing that, aren’t you?” Not expecting an answer, he took up the mug he’d left on the counter earlier and refilled it at the coffeemaker. Turned to look at Paige again as he took a sip of the brew. “Calvin’s a great kid,” he observed.
“I wasn’t hired to look after Calvin,” Paige said.
Austin lowered the cup from his mouth, set it aside with a faint thump. His marvelous eyes narrowed a little. “What?”
“Garrett asked me to be your nurse, Austin.” No need to add that she hadn’t said yes.
She was enjoying this way too much, but it was harmless fun, all things considered.
“In that case,” Austin said evenly, “you’re fired.”
“You can’t fire me,” Paige told him, delighted by the swift blue flash of his temper and the sudden buzz in the air. “I don’t work for you.”
Austin shoved a hand through his hair, sucked in a breath and released it, summoned up a casual smile. Paige recognized the tactic from days of old; he was still annoyed, but she wasn’t supposed to notice.
“Do I look as though I need medical supervision?” he asked reasonably, spreading his hands.
He looked like sugar-coated sin, not that Paige would have said so. “All I know,” she said, trying to look and sound innocent, “is that I’ve been hired to take care of you.”
She should have put on the brakes right then and there, admitted she was only teasing, that she thought the idea of signing on as his nurse was as ludicrous as he did.
For whatever reason, she didn’t straighten him out.
Austin crossed to one of the row of fancy refrigerators, wrenched open a door and promptly slammed it shut again, without taking anything out.
Turning back to face Paige, he snapped, “Fine.”
“Fine,” she repeated with a nod, tucking her hands behind her back and hooking her index fingers together. Rocking back on her heels.
“Don’t do that,” Austin growled, storming over to another cupboard, taking out a loaf of bread, extracting two slices and dropping them into the toaster.
“Don’t do what?” Paige asked.
“Don’t repeat what I say.”
“I was only agreeing with you.”
“You’re enjoying this,” he accused.
“Enjoying what?”
“You know damn well what.”
Paige smiled blandly. Watched as he ranged all over the kitchen, getting a plate down from a shelf, then a knife from a drawer, then butter and jam from another one of the refrigerators.
Such an enormous amount of fuss just to make toast.
The bread popped up.
Austin grabbed both slices at once, plunked them down on the plate, spread butter and jam.
Finally walked over to the table and stood stiffly at one end of the bench. “Sit down,” he said. When Paige didn’t move, he added, “I can’t until you do.”
Ah, yes. His manners.
The irony made her want to chuckle, but she didn’t give in to the impulse.
He sat. Ate some of his toast, tore off a piece of buttery crust and gave it to Shep, who wolfed it down.
“You shouldn’t give a dog people food,” Paige said.
“Gosh,” Austin answered, “thanks for straightening me out on that point, Nurse Remington.”
“You don’t have to be such an asshole,” she told him.
He smiled as though weighing the accuracy of the accusation, then dismissed it with a shake of his head. “I don’t know what it is,” he said in his own good time, after chewing and swallowing, “but something about you just totally pisses me off.”
She smiled back. “I feel exactly the same way about you,” she said with a note of saucy surprise.
That was when he laughed. It was a ragged sound, and there was some bitterness in it, though she suspected that had less to do with her than Garrett. Austin had always been prickly about being the youngest of the three McKettrick brothers.
Paige, being the youngest of three sisters, thought she understood. She loved Libby and Julie with all her heart, but she did tend to compare herself to them, and in her own mind, she didn’t always measure up.
“Austin,” she said very gently.
He had finished his toast, pushed away his plate. When he raised his eyes to hers, she was, once again, struck by their very blueness, and by the way that color pierced her in so many tender and nameless places.
“Your brothers are worried about you,” she said, thick-throated. “They just want you to be okay.”
Austin was quiet, absorbing that. He’d lowered his head a little, and his eyes didn’t meet Paige’s, not right away, at least. “My brothers,” he said slowly, “ought to stop treating me like I’m Calvin’s age and let me work things out on my own.”
“What things?” Paige ventured. She was on thin emotional ice here, couldn’t have said why she’d voiced such an intimate question in the first place.
He thrust a hand through his hair. For the briefest of moments, she thought he might answer honestly, but in the end, he simply sighed again and shook his head. The effect was so chilly and distant that he might as well have pushed her away physically.
“I don’t want a nurse,” he said after a long time.
Paige didn’t answer.
Austin left her then, heading upstairs, Shep scrambling at his heels.
