McKettricks of Texas: Austin

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AUSTIN COULDN’T REALLY blame the dog for trailing after Paige—watching that perfect blue-jeaned backside of hers as she walked away left him with little choice but to do likewise. Still, it stung his pride that Shep hadn’t waited for him.

Whose dog was he, anyhow?

Paige’s apparently. She led the way, like some piper in a fairy tale, with Shep padding right along in her wake, and that was how the three of them ended up in the laundry room, off the kitchen.

Paige knew her way around—she rustled up some old towels and the special mutt shampoo Julie kept around for Harry—and started the water running in one of the big sinks. She spooled out the hand-sprayer and pressed the squirter with a practiced thumb, testing the temperature against the underside of her left wrist.

The sight, ordinary as it was, did something peculiar to Austin.

“Well,” Paige said, dropping her gaze to the dog and then letting it fly back to Austin’s face, “don’t just stand there. Hoist Shep up into the sink so I can wash him.” She smiled at Shep. “You’re going to feel so much better, once you’ve had your bath,” she assured the critter.

Austin had his pride. He wasn’t about to tell this woman that he’d blown out his back and couldn’t risk lifting one skinny dog off the floor because he might wind up in traction or something.

He leaned down and carefully looped his arms under Shep’s belly. Set him gently in the laundry sink.

Paige introduced Shep to the sprayer with a few little blasts of warm water, and gave him time to sort out how he felt about the experience.

Austin, meanwhile, was just about to congratulate himself on getting away with lifting the dog when he felt a stabbing ache in the same part of his back as when he’d had to be half carried out of Pinky’s bar last month. He drew in a sharp breath and grasped the edge of the long counter, where the housekeeper, Esperanza, usually folded sheets and towels.

Steady, he thought. Wait it out.

Paige, preoccupied with sluicing down the dog and apparently oblivious to the way the water was soaking the front of her skimpy T-shirt, paid Austin no attention at all. And that was fine by him, mostly.

The spasm in Austin’s back intensified, a giant charley horse that he couldn’t walk off like one in his calf or the arch of his foot. He bit down hard on his lower lip and shut his eyes.

“Austin?” Paige’s voice had changed. It was soft, worried-sounding. “Is something wrong? You’re sort of pale and—”

Austin shook his head. The spasm was beginning to subside, though it still hurt like holy-be-Jesus, but talking was beyond him.

He wouldn’t risk meeting her gaze. Back when they were just kids and hot and heavy into dating, Paige had shown a disturbing ability to read his mind—not to mention his soul—through his eyes.

Not that she’d been infallible in that regard.

Or maybe, when it really counted, she’d been too mad to look long enough, hard enough.

“I’m—fine,” he finally said. The pain was letting up.

Paige reached for the dog shampoo, squeezed a glistening trail of it down Shep’s sodden back and began to suds him up.

“Excuse me,” she said matter-of-factly, “but you don’t look fine.”

Poor Shep looked up at him, all bedraggled and wet, but there was a patient expression in his eyes, a willingness to endure, that tightened Austin’s throat to the point where he couldn’t make a sound.

Paige, a head shorter than he was, bent her knees and turned to peer up into his face. “Are you sick?”

He shook his head again, helpless to do more than that.

“Austin,” she said firmly, “I am a nurse. I know a person in pain when I see one.”

When he opened his mouth to answer, his back spasmed again. He tightened his hold on the counter’s edge, riding it out.

Paige simply waited, not fussing, not pressing for an answer. In fact, she rinsed the dog, soaped him up again, sprayed him down a second time.

Shep, who withstood all this without complaint, turned out to be buff colored, with a saddlelike splotch of reddish brown running down the center of his back.

Paige congratulated the critter on his good looks and toweled him vigorously before lifting him out of the laundry sink and setting him on the floor.

Austin, by that time, could breathe again, but that was about all.

Paige turned to him, hands on her hips, T-shirt clinging in intriguing places from the inevitable splashing.

Austin dragged his gaze, by force, from her perfect breasts to her face, though not quickly enough. Paige’s brown eyes were snapping with temper.

Or was it concern?

“Some things never change,” she said.

Austin sighed. He let go of the counter, relieved that the kink in his lower back had smoothed out. “What the hell do you mean by that?” he asked. Then, without waiting for an answer, he rushed on, fool that he was. “Okay, so I checked out your chest. I’m sorry you saw that.”

Her mouth twitched. “You’re sorry I caught you at it, you mean?”

“Yeah,” he admitted, unwilling to elaborate until he knew which way the mood wind was blowing.

She laughed.

He’d forgotten what the sound of Paige Remington’s laughter did to him, how it made him feel dizzy inside, as though he’d been blindfolded, turned around half a dozen times and then had the floor yanked out from under him.

Paige’s expression sobered, though the ghost of a grin flicked at one corner of her mouth and danced like a faint flame in her eyes. “What I meant,” she informed him, “when I said some things never change, was that you’re still too cussed and proud to let on when you need help.”

“I don’t need help,” Austin reasoned, wondering why it was so important to him to make that absolutely clear.

Shep broke loose with a good shaking then, flinging moisture over both of them.

“I’m not going to argue with you, Austin McKettrick,” Paige said.

He snorted at the irony of that statement.

“Something is wrong,” she said, ignoring his reaction. She headed back into the kitchen, and Shep followed at a sprightly pace, toenails clicking on the plank floor. “If you won’t tell me what it is, I can find out from Garrett or Tate.”

Austin waited until he was sure he could walk without any obvious hitches before stepping away from the counter. Paige was standing at the kitchen sink, washing her hands.

She wouldn’t look at him.

“Paige.”

Still, she kept her eyes averted, and he knew from the stubborn angle of her chin that she wasn’t going to let this go. She meant to ask one or both of his brothers what was going on with him, and they’d tell her, putting their own spin on the story.