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

even get names.”
    More wagging.
    Libby found her purse and, after considerably more effort, her car keys. Since she lived across the alley from her café and walked everywhere but to the supermarket, she tended to misplace them.
    If her aging, primer-splotched Impala would start, they were on their way.
    “Want to come along for the ride?” she asked Hildie, resting on a rug of her own, in front of the couch.
    Hildie yawned, stretched and went back to sleep.
    “Guess that’s a ‘no,’” Libby said.
    The pups were always ready to go when they heard the car keys jingle, and she almost tripped over them twice crossing the kitchen to the back door.
    After loading the adoptees into the back seat of the rust-mobile, parked in her tilting one-car garage on the alley, she slid behind the wheel, closed her eyes to offer a silent prayer that the engine would start, stuck the key into the ignition and turned it.
    The Impala’s motor caught with a huffy roar, the exhaust belching smoke.
    Libby backed up slowly and drove with her headlights off until she’d passed Chief of Police Brent Brogan’s house at the end of the block. The chief had already warned her once about emissions standards—she was clearly in violation of said standards—and she’d made an appointment at the auto shop to get the problem fixed, twice. The trouble was, she’d had to cancel both times, once because Marva was acting up and neither Julie nor Paige was anywhere to be found, and once because a water pipe at the shop had burst and she’d been forced to call in a plumber, thereby blowing the budget.
    All she needed now was a ticket.
    She caught a glimpse of the chief through his living-room window as she pulled onto the street. His back was to her, and it looked 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