Read Online McKettricks of Texas: Tate by Linda Lael Miller - Free Book Online Page A

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,”