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      McKettricks of Texas:

      Garrett

      Linda Lael Miller

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      McKettricks of Texas: Tate (in the Untameable collection with Diana Palmer)

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      THE McKETTRICKS OF TEXAS

      McKettricks of Texas: Austin August 2012

      For Jeremy Hargis, with love.

      CHAPTER ONE

      GARRETT MCKETTRICK WANTED A HORSE under him—a fleet cow-pony like the ones bred to work the herds on the Silver Spur Ranch. But for now, anyway, the Porsche would have to do.

      Because of the hour—it was a little after 3:00 a.m.—Garrett had that particular stretch of Texas highway all to himself. The moon and stars cast silvery shadows through the open sunroof and shimmered on the rolled-up sleeves of his white dress shirt, while a country oldie, with lots of twang, pounded from the sound system. Everything in him—from the nuclei of his cells outward—vibrated to the beat.

      He’d left the tuxedo jacket, the cummerbund, the tie, the fancy cuff links, back in Austin—right along with one or two of his most cherished illusions.

      The party was definitely over—for him, anyhow.

      He should have seen it coming—or at least listened to people who did see it coming, specifically his brothers, Tate and Austin. They’d done their best to warn him.

      Senator Morgan Cox, they’d said, in so many words and in their different ways, wasn’t what he seemed.

      Against his will, Garrett’s mind looped back a few hours, and even as he sped along that straight, dark ribbon of road, another part of him relived the shock in excruciating detail.

      Cox had always presented himself as a family man, in public and private. A corner of each of his hand-carved antique desks in both the Austin and Washington offices supported a small forest of framed photos—himself and Nan on their wedding day, himself and Nan and the first crop of kids, himself and Nan and more kids, some of whom were adopted and had special needs. Altogether, there were nine Cox offspring.

      The dogs—several generations of golden retrievers, all rescued, of course—were pictured as well.

      That night, with no warning at all, Garrett’s longtime boss and mentor had arrived at an important fundraiser, held in a glittering hotel ballroom, but not with Nan on his arm—elegant, articulate, wholesome Nan, with her own pedigree as a former Texas governor’s daughter. Oh, no. This powerful U.S. senator, a war hero, a man with what many people considered a straight shot at the White House, had instead escorted a classic bimbo, later identified as a twenty-two-year-old pole dancer who went by the unlikely name of Mandy Chante.

      Before God, his amazed supporters, the press and, worst of all, Nan, the senator proceeded to announce that he and Mandy were soul mates. Kindred spirits. They’d been lovers in a dozen other lifetimes, he rhapsodized. In short, Cox explained from the microphone on the dais—his lover hovering earnestly beside him in a long, form-fitting dress rippling with ice-blue sequins, which gave her the look of a mermaid with feet—he hoped everyone would understand.

      He had to follow his heart.

      If only the senator’s heart were the organ he was following, Garrett lamented silently.

      One of those freeze-frame silences followed, vast and uncomfortable, turning the whole assembly into a garden of stone statues while several hundred people tried to process what they’d just heard Cox say.

      Who was this guy, they were probably asking themselves, and what had he done with the Morgan Cox they all knew? Where, Garrett himself

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