Page 2 of Austin (The K9 Files #29)

A ustin McFarland hopped out of his truck and slammed the door, and, yes, with a little more force than necessary.

He had been arguing with himself the entire drive over here, across both states, calling himself stupid—and a host of other names—wondering what crazy magic Kat had that made this seem to be a good idea just hours ago.

She’d convinced him so easily. Too easily.

Something to do with closure and moving on, finding out what was really there, and all the rest of that crap.

It made a lot more sense when he was talking to her, but, the minute he left, he was confused as hell.

He hitched up his jeans and took a careful step forward.

After any long drive, the prosthetic was often okay, and yet occasionally it seemed as if a dozen little devils danced on the inside of his joints, causing all kinds of hell.

Enough to make him hesitate for a moment before taking that first step every time.

At the moment though, it felt pretty decent.

Austin took a few more steps toward the front door of the main ranch house that he knew so well. Just as he got there, the door opened, and a petite older woman stepped out, the surprise on her face quickly turning to delight as she opened her arms and raced toward him.

“Oh my gosh,” Amie cried out, almost in a squeal.

He grinned as the tiny woman threw herself into his arms and gave him a big hug.

She pulled back almost instantly, giving him a grin, her gaze dancing. “I didn’t think we would ever see you again, son.”

“I’m here,” he stated. “It’s nice to know I’m welcome.”

“Of course you’re welcome,” Amie declared, giving him another big hug. “Just wait until Jake knows you’re here.” When Austin winced at that, she shook her head. “No, you’ve got no reason to be upset.”

“Really?” he asked. “We were family… briefly.”

She frowned, bringing her eyebrows together. “What do you mean, briefly ? Are you guys divorced?” There was just enough fear in her tone that he had to wonder.

He shook his head. “Not yet.”

“Then you’re still family,” she stated, with a firm nod.

He laughed. “Pretty slim ground for it though.”

“It doesn’t matter to me,” she muttered. “You’re still family.” And, with that, she nudged Austin forward. “Come on now. Come on inside.”

He let himself be moved along, as Amie pushed and dragged him into the old familiar farmhouse. He’d spent an awful lot of his days here—and a lot of his nights too, to be honest. As he walked inside, he looked around self-consciously, and Amie smiled at him. “She’s not here.”

He rolled his eyes. “That’s the problem with coming back here, where everybody knows you and knows what happened.”

“We don’t know what happened,” she exclaimed. “And believe me that a lot of us would love to know, but Rox isn’t talking.”

“No, of course not,” he muttered to himself.

“And it doesn’t look as if you’ll be talking either.” She frowned at him.

“Nope,” he confirmed, with a smile.

Amie snorted. “If you guys would just talk to each other,… you could probably get it all sorted.”

She was probably correct, but that didn’t mean Austin was willing to go in that direction, at least not right now.

“Come on into the kitchen,” she urged him. “I’ve got coffee on.”

He chuckled. “You always have coffee on.”

She nodded. “I drink it pretty steadily myself, and you know Jake.” She rolled her eyes. “He’s a heavy coffee drinker, if you still remember.”

“I figured he would be out with the team, checking out the land, all on horseback.”

“Rox is doing a lot of that now.”

“Good,” he noted. “That’s what she always wanted to do.”

“It is,” Amie agreed, “and she also really loves her family.”

He nodded. “Yeah, I know that too. I wasn’t trying to take her away from you.”

Amie sighed, then nodded. “I know that, but I don’t think she saw it that way.”

He laughed. “No, she sure didn’t,” he stated, but he didn’t add anything to it. Just some things wouldn’t go the way Austin wanted. So it was best to not even get involved in that conversation, at least if he were smart.

She poured him a cup of coffee, and he took it with gratitude. “You’re looking well,” she shared.

“Maybe, at least on the outside.”

She frowned as she studied him. “Are you okay?” Her facial expression turned more serious.

He smiled and nodded. “I’m fine.”

Her frown deepened. Giving him a searching look, she asked, “Why do I feel as if you’re not telling me everything?”

“Because I’m not telling you everything,” he admitted, refusing to get into it.

She sighed. “There you go again,… keeping secrets.”

“Hardly secrets,” he said. “I’m just not about to spill everything in my world, especially when I haven’t seen you in so long.”

She walked over and gave him a tiny slap on the shoulder. “Now whose fault is that? We were family long before you became family, and you really hurt Jake when you walked.”

Austin just nodded. Knowing there wouldn’t be a happy ending to any part of this conversation, he wasn’t sure what he was supposed to do or to say about it.

Amie walked back to the fridge and rummaged through it, bringing the cream over.

He smiled when he saw it.

She asked him, “You still take cream, don’t you?”

“Yes, I do,” he confirmed, “but this is fine. No need to make a fuss.”

“You look good,” she noted, studying his features closely, “tired though.”

“Long drive.”

“Where did you come from?”

“New Mexico.”

Her eyebrows shot up. “Well,… that’s some distance. You could have flown.”

“I could have, but I wanted to bring my vehicle.”

“Have you been to see your mom?”

He glanced down at the coffee cup in his hand and shook his head.

He heard the sad, gentle sigh coming from this tiny woman whose heart was so big that everybody else’s problems were just too hard for her to handle sometimes.

“She has remarried and living overseas and my father… well, who knows where he is.”

“They do love you. You know that, right? They’re your parents.”

He looked over at her, a cocky smile on his face. Then, shaking his head, he muttered, “So you keep telling me.”

“ Uh-oh , what have they done now?”

“Nothing.… They would have to know something about me in order to be doing anything.”

“And you haven’t talked to them either, have you?”

“Nope, I sure haven’t,” he declared, with a smile. “I won’t either.”

Amie frowned at that, but just then came stomping footsteps through the front door, and Jake’s bellowing voice called out, “Who’s the company?

I don’t recognize the truck out front.” He walked into the kitchen a few seconds later, took one look, and an immediate frown filled his face as he glared at Austin.

“What the hell are you doing here?” he snapped.

Immediately Amie raced to his side in excitement. “Isn’t it wonderful to see him?” she cried out.

He looked at her, then down at Austin, shaking his head. “Wait until Rox finds out.”

“It’s about time,” Amie stated firmly. She might be tiny, but she was definitely the main force in this household.

Jake groaned. “You know damn well she won’t like any of this.”

“Oh, I agree that she won’t like it, but they both need to face it. It is about time to sort things out.”

“It’s definitely time,” Jake grumbled, giving Austin a hard look, “but it doesn’t look as if he came on his hands and knees.”

She snorted. “As if you would either.”

“I have no intention of being on my hands and knees,” Austin stated coolly as he stood up, “and I’m not here for Rox at all.” The two of them stared at him in surprise. He shrugged. “Apparently you guys lost a War Dog.”

At that, Jake snorted. “What’s that got to do with you?”

“I’m here on behalf of the War Department,” he shared, knowing that would be like spitting fire in everybody’s face.

“Holy Hannah,” Jake spat, staring at Austin. “You didn’t come here for Rox, but you came for a dog?” He looked at him with fire and fury in his expression. His tone on the other hand was as cool as an iceberg. “Boy, you need a talking to.”

“No, I don’t,” Austin countered. “I didn’t come here for her because she made it very clear how she feels about me,… about being with me. Her answer was pretty clear. She kicked me out, so nothing is left there.”

Even Jake winced at that. The fire was gone from his expression, just sorrow and resignation left behind. “She regretted it immediately,” he told Austin, “but you were already gone.”

“Sure, I was. I was leaving on a mission, something she knew very well,” he snapped.

“She didn’t give me much choice, and, while you may feel differently—and blame me all you want—but you know the truth as well as I do.

Rox annihilated everything that was between us.

So, believe me when I tell you that I’m not here for her. ”

Rox stopped on the front steps and froze, as she heard Austin’s voice—both her dreams and her nightmares were hitting so close to home that it brought tears to her eyes.

She couldn’t believe Austin was here. She heard her father bellowing about something, but she didn’t really understand until she heard the mention of a War Dog.

Of course.… Austin was here about the dog, not her.

A damn good dog, but it still hurt like hell.

She stared down at her dirty fingers and her torn nails, filled with dirt from an honest day’s work in the fields.

Her boots muddy, her jeans dirty, her body wearing a very unflattering shirt, she shook her head.

Of course he wasn’t here for her, and that’s when she heard his words about her kicking him out. It was a knife to her heart.

Yeah, she had kicked him out, but she hadn’t expected him to leave.

Not to leave , leave, as in to never come back, to never contact her again, to never speak to her, with no forgiveness ever for her careless words.

She hadn’t expected this blankness, this void, this emptiness that she couldn’t ever comprehend as so utterly final.

She had been young. Well, if twenty could be considered young.

Regardless she had been apparently way too young to comprehend the enormity of what she’d done in the heat of that moment.

She knew what the fighting had been about.

It was about his going back out on a mission, and his telling her that she’d married a navy man first and foremost and that she had no business telling him that he would now be forced to change careers because she didn’t like that he was gone all the time.

Her father had warned her ahead of the marriage that she wouldn’t change that part of Austin and how it was a major part of who he was, but she, in her heart of hearts, hadn’t believed it.

She thought for sure that she would be enough to keep him home.

It had been a shock to realize that she wasn’t enough and that she would never ever be enough.

She had married him knowing he was in the navy, but she just hadn’t really understood what it meant to him.

Somehow his obligations to the navy hadn’t been something she’d considered before she married him.

Nor afterward either. Not until the fight that had ended them .

Now she still lived here and worked here on the ranch, but she missed him constantly, every minute of every day.

Yeah, she’d been young, and the fight had been intense, and, when Austin had walked, he’d walked for good.

It had broken her heart, and she’d been forever wounded after that point.

She’d refused to even date anybody because, in her mind, she was still married and was still connected by her wedding vows.

She’d never contacted him for a divorce in the last five years, but she’d grown up a hell of a lot.

She didn’t know if he’d suffered at all because the one thing he had said when she kicked him out was that, if he left, if she was kicking him out for good, that was it, and he wasn’t coming back.

The fact that he was here now, and for a dog rather than her was doubly insulting, yet also very true to form.

He’d broken her heart once, and, while she might have been at fault, she’d taken a long time to heal, a long time to get back on her feet, and she wasn’t that same delicate, na?ve girl anymore.

She didn’t dare let anybody else take away that sense of control that she had taken so long to learn, that sense of independence and ability to stand on her own.

Only now as she looked back did she realize just how young she had been.

It amazed her because, at the time, no way she could have seen it, and yet now, looking back?

… It was an eye-opener. She’d also been the one who had insisted on marriage, and it had been a good marriage for a very short while—until she got tired of everything, and that was on her, not him.

He’d given her a choice, and she’d taken it, and that was on her too.

But now here he was, and somehow she had to walk inside that farmhouse and talk to him, even though everything in her wanted to turn and run.

The irony was that she was also the one who had called the War Department about the dog, and who did they send?

They sent the very same junkyard dog that she had lost her heart to so very long ago.

With a smile plastered on her face and steel in her spine, she walked in, slamming the door shut, thinking this would be one hell of a day.

She walked into the kitchen, then stopped and eyed him carefully.

Damn, he looked good. Tired and maybe a little bit rougher around the edges, but he was still the same man who made her heart melt.

He’d always been the one for her, but somehow she just hadn’t realized that she wasn’t the one for him.

He looked over at her, tilted his head, and then turned the conversation back to her father, not so much cutting her out but ignoring her.

She sucked in her breath, her gaze turning to her mother, who stared at her with a hopeful expression on her face. Her mom was desperately hoping that something could be worked out, that this would blow over, and that everyone would be back together again.

Rox bit her bottom lip, strode over to where the coffee was, and said, “I hear you’re looking for a dog.”

“Yep. Apparently you lost him,” he said, his tone calm, not even an ounce of emotion shown.

That fact gave Rox her first bit of hope.