Read McKettricks of Texas: Garrett for Free Online Page A

into the room. “Later?” the girl said. “Please?”
    Julie nodded, still thinking about Rachel as she prepared to teach another English class. Probably because she’d had to move around a lot with her dad, rambling from town to town and school to school, Rachel’s grades had been a little on the sketchy side when she’d started at Blue River High. The one-act play she’d written—tellingly titled Trailer Park —was brilliant.
    Rachel was brilliant.
    But she was also the kind of kid who tended to fall through the cracks unless someone actively championed her and stood up for her.
    And Julie was determined to be that someone.
    Somehow.
    Â 
    A PHONE WAS RINGING . Insistent, jarring him awake.
    With a groan, Garrett dragged the comforter up over his head, but the sound continued.
    Cell phone?
    Landline?
    He couldn’t tell. Didn’t give a damn.
    â€œShut up,” he pleaded, burrowing down deeper in bed, his voice muffled by the covers.
    The phone stopped after twelve rings, then immediately started up again.
    Real Life coalesced in Garrett’s sleep-fuddled brain. Memories of the night before began to surface.
    He recalled the senator’s announcement.
    Saw Nan Cox in his mind’s eye, slipping out by way of the hotel kitchen.
    He recollected Brent Brogan providing him with a police escort as far as the ranch gate.
    And after all that, Julie Remington, a little boy and a three-legged beagle appearing in the kitchen.
    Knowing he wouldn’t be able to sleep after Julie had taken her young son and their dog back to bed in the first-floor guest suite—the spacious accommodations next to the maid’s rooms, where the housekeeper, Esperanza, stayed—Garrett had gone to the barn, saddled a horse, and spent what remained of the night and the first part of the morning riding.
    Finally, when smoke curled from the bunkhouse chimney and lights came on in the trailers along the creek-side, Garrett had returned home, put up his horse,retired to his private quarters to strip, shower and fall facedown into bed.
    The ringing reminded him that he still had a job.
    â€œShit,” he murmured, sitting up and scrambling for the bedside phone. “Hello?”
    A dial tone buzzed in his ear, and the ringing went on.
    His cell phone, then.
    He grabbed for his jeans, abandoned earlier on the floor next to the bed, and rummaged through a couple of pockets before he found the cell.
    â€œGarrett McKettrick,” he mumbled, after snapping it open.
    â€œIt’s about time you picked up the phone,” Nan Cox answered. She sounded pretty chipper, considering that her husband had stood up at the previous evening’s fundraiser and essentially told the world that he and Mandy Chante were meant to be together. “I’m at the office, and you’re not. You’re not at your condo, either, because I sent Troy over to check. Where are you, Garrett?”
    He sat up in bed, self-conscious because he was talking to his employer’s wife, one of his late mother’s closest friends, naked. Of course, Nan couldn’t see him, but still.
    â€œI’m on the Silver Spur,” he said, grabbing his watch off the bedside table and squinting at it.
    Seeing the time—past noon—he swore again.
    â€œThe senator needs you. The press has him and the little pole dancer cornered in their hotel suite.”
    Garrett tossed the comforter aside, sat up, retrieved his jeans from the floor and pulled them on, standing up to work the zipper and the snap. “I can understand why you think this might be my problem,” he replied, imagining Morgan and Mandy hiding out from reporters in the spacious room he’d rented for them the night before, “butI’m not sure I get why it would be yours. Some women would be angry. They’d be talking to divorce lawyers.”
    â€œMorgan,” Nan said quietly, and with conviction, “is not himself.