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
