Big Sky Summer

Kendra smiled, touched his arm. “Anyway, it’s good to see you,” she said.

After a few polite words, they parted, and Kendra went on to greet other guests. Once, the big house had been hers, but a lot had changed since then. She and Hutch lived on Whisper Creek Ranch, had two daughters and planned to add several more children to their family.

Once again, Walker put down a swell of pure envy. Okay, so maybe he didn’t have everything he wanted—kids, a wife, a home instead of just a house. Who did? He liked his life for the most part, liked breeding and raising rodeo stock and ranching in general, and besides, nothing good ever came of complaining. For him, it was all about keeping on.

* * *

CASEY ELDER WIGGLED HER TOES in the soft grass, glad to be barefoot after spending most of the day in high heels and pantyhose, both of which she hated. Her blue cotton sundress felt airy and light against her skin, too—a big improvement over that heavy choir robe she’d been talked into wearing when she sang at the wedding.

She smiled and nodded to passing guests, keeping to one side of the moving current of people, sipping champagne from a crystal flute and indulging in one of her favorite activities—watching Walker Parrish from a safe distance.

He was one fine hunk of a man, in her opinion; tall, with broad shoulders and a square jaw, movie-star handsome with his green-gray eyes and that head of glossy, deep brown hair, always a mite on the shaggy side. He was completely unaware of his effect on women, it seemed, which only made him more intriguing.

Casey’s feelings for Walker were complicated, like everything in her life. She knew she could fall in love with him without half trying—hadn’t she done precisely that numerous times over the years, only to talk herself out of it later? She was practical to the bone—too practical to open her heart to the one man on earth with the power to break it to bits.

As if he’d felt her gaze, Walker turned his head and their eyes met.

She nodded and lifted the champagne glass slightly. Here we go, she thought, wishing he’d walk away, hoping against hope that he’d weave his way through the crowd toward her instead.

Her breath snagged on a skittering heartbeat when Walker started in her direction. A sudden dizziness struck her, as though she’d stepped onto the rented merry-go-round only to have it start spinning fast enough to blur.

Once they were face-to-face, Casey tried hard to keep her cool, though part of her wanted to tumble right into those solemn, intelligent eyes of his and snuggle into a warm corner of his heart for the duration. “Hello, handsome,” she said softly.

He didn’t smile. “You did a real nice job with that song,” he told her. “The one you sang at the wedding, I mean.”

Casey raised one shoulder slightly, let it fall again. “I’ve had lots of practice,” she said. Just for a moment, she let her eyes stray toward the wedding party, still posing for pictures over by the gazebo, and felt a tiny pinch of sorrow at the base of her throat.

When she looked back at Walker, she saw that he’d been watching her face the whole time, and hoped he hadn’t guessed that, happy as she was for Boone and Tara, both of whom deserved the best of everything, she happened to be feeling just a tad sorry for herself at the moment.

“They’re lucky,” Walker observed quietly, inclining his head toward the bride and groom, who were clowning for the cameras now.

“Yes,” Casey agreed, barely suppressing a sigh. She knew her friends had traveled some twisting, rocky roads to find each other, and she was ashamed to admit to herself that she envied Tara all that was ahead—not just the wedding night and the honeymoon, but the solace and shelter of a committed marriage, the sex and the laughter, the babies and the plans. Fiercely independent though she was, Casey sometimes longed to be held and loved in the depths of the night, to share her joys and her worries and her children with a man who loved her, instead of always playing the brave single mother who could more than manage on her own. “Very lucky.”

To her surprise, Walker cupped a calloused yet gentle hand under her chin and lifted her face so he could look straight into her eyes. For one dreadful, wonderful moment, she actually thought he might kiss her.

He didn’t, though.

His expression was so serious that it bordered on grave. Whatever he was about to say was lost—probably for the best—when fourteen-year-old Clare bounded up, beautiful in her peach-colored dress chosen especially for the wedding. She was still coltish, horse crazy and ambivalent about boys, but the woman she would become was clearly visible in her poise and lively personality just the same.

Faintly, Casey heard a few of the local musicians tuning up, but the sight of her daughter, so beautiful, beaming up at Walker in pure delight, almost stopped her heart in midbeat. Don’t turn into an adult, Casey pleaded silently. Not yet.

“You have to dance with me,” Clare told Walker. The child didn’t have a shy bone in her body, and anyway, both Clare and Shane had always been close to this man, and to Brylee, as well.

Boone and Tara, with the photo session finally behind them, were standing in the middle of the dance floor, looking like the figures on top of some celestial wedding cake.

Walker smiled down at the daughter who thought of him as a beloved uncle, and in that moment Casey caught a glimpse of a place deep inside him, that part of his soul where he was this child’s father, not just a loyal and trusted friend of the family.

“Let’s wait a couple of minutes,” he said, taking Clare’s hand and squeezing it lightly.

Somehow, Casey found her voice. “The bride and groom always have the first dance, honey,” she told Clare. “It’s tradition.”

Clare’s emerald eyes sparkled with mischief and spirit. “Okay,” she agreed good-naturedly, still looking up at Walker with something like hero worship. She bit her lip, then blurted out eagerly, “When I get married, will you give me away? Please, Walker? I wouldn’t want anybody else to do it except you.”

Casey lifted her chin, swallowed. “That’s a ways off,” she said somewhat weakly. “Your getting married, I mean.”

“I’d be proud to walk you down the aisle,” Walker told his daughter, “when the time comes.” He paused, eyes twinkling, and one corner of his mouth crooked up in a grin, the way it did when he was teasing. “Of course, it all depends on whether or not I like the yahoo you choose for a husband.”

Clare laughed, clinging to his arm and clearly adoring him. “If I like him,” she reasoned with confidence, “you will, too.”

Walker chuckled and kissed the top of the girl’s head. “You’re probably right about that, princess,” he agreed.

Boone and Tara owned the dance floor, waltzing slowly, closer than close, lost in each other’s eyes.

Casey’s own eyes scalded, and she looked away quickly, afraid Walker or Clare would notice, but they, like everyone else, were watching the newlyweds.

As prearranged—Casey knew her showmanship—hundreds of snow-white rose petals drifted down on Boone and Tara like a velvety, fragrant first snow, spilling from a net strung up in the high branches of a venerable maple tree.

The guests were impressed, gasping in delight, and Boone and Tara looked up, smiling, Tara putting her hands out to catch some of the petals in her palms.

Casey started the applause, her throat thick with emotion, and the rest of the company joined in.

In the interim, the makeshift band launched into a twangy ballad that opened the dance floor to all comers, while Boone beckoned for others to join them. Clare practically dragged Walker onto the floor, and seeing how happy Clare was to have his full and laughing attention, Casey felt the starch go out of her knees. She made her way to the porch steps and sat down, willing herself not to blubber like a sentimental fool.

There, in the shade, amid all that celebration, she thought of the lies she’d told, right from the beginning. Sure, she’d been young and scared, wanting Walker a lot but wanting her then-blossoming career even more, back then at least. She’d told Walker the baby she was carrying belonged to another man, someone he didn’t know, and at first, he’d believed her. They’d broken up, as she’d planned, because Walker was a proud and decent man, but the grief she felt after losing him was something she hadn’t reckoned on, consuming and painful as a broken bone.

Casey had done what she always did: she’d carried on. Barely showing even when she was near full term, she’d been able to camouflage her pregnancy, from the fans and the media, anyway, by wearing flowing gowns and big shirts.

But a year later, she and Walker had met up again, and they’d both lost their heads and conceived Shane.

Knowing Walker wouldn’t buy the same story twice, Casey called him from the road when the second pregnancy was confirmed.

Nobody’s fool, Walker had soon figured out that the redheaded baby girl, just learning to toddle around on her own, was his, too.

All hell had broken loose, and the battle was on.

Walker wanted to get married immediately, but his cold rage was hardly conducive to romance. They’d wrangled back and forth over the children for a couple of years, though they never got quite as far as the courtroom, and finally, they’d forged a sort of armed truce.

Unwillingly, Walker had agreed to go along with Casey’s story—that both Clare and Shane were test-tube babies, fathered by an anonymous sperm donor—as long as he was allowed regular visits with both children.

For a long time, it worked, but now—well, Casey could feel the framework teetering around her, and she was scared.

Kendra sat down beside her on the porch step just then, touched her arm. Her friend was the only person on earth, besides Casey and Walker, of course, who knew the truth about Clare’s and Shane’s births. Oddly enough, it had been Walker who’d told her, possibly out of frustration, rather than Casey herself.

“It’s not too late to fix this, you know,” Kendra said gently, bumping her shoulder briefly against Casey’s. She was watching as Clare persuaded Walker to dance with her just once more, her gaze soft with understanding.

“Has anybody ever told you that you’re too damn perceptive sometimes, Kendra Carmody?”

Kendra smiled. “I might have heard it once or twice,” she replied. Then her smile faded and her expression turned serious. “Things like this have a way of coming out, Casey,” she said, nearly in a whisper. “In fact, given how famous you are, it’s a miracle the story hasn’t broken already.”

Casey wiped her cheeks with the back of one hand, sat up a little straighter. “What if they don’t understand?” she asked, barely breathing the words. “What if Clare and Shane never forgive me?”

Kendra sighed, then countered with a question of her own. “Do you want them to hear it from somebody else?” she asked.

CHAPTER TWO

THOUGH IT WASN’T QUITE DARK, lights glowed yellow-gold in the kitchen windows of the ranch house when Walker pulled in, and that raised his spirits a little, since he was grappling with a bad case of lonesome at the moment. Leaving Clare and Shane and, okay, Casey, too, had that effect on him, especially at that homesick time around sunset, when families were supposed to gather in a warm and well-lit room, laughing and telling each other all about their day.

Not that long ago, his ancient, arthritic black Labs, Willie and Nelson, would have been waiting in the yard to greet him, tails wagging, gray-muzzled faces upturned in grinning welcome and the hope of a pat on the head, but they’d both passed on last fall, within a few weeks of each other, dying peacefully in their sleep as good dogs deserve to do. Now they rested side by side in a special spot near the apple orchard, and Walker never got through a day without missing them.

He swallowed hard as he left the truck behind, heading for the house. He’d raised Willie and Nelson from pups, and Brylee had been urging him to replace them, but he wasn’t ready for that. For the time being, he’d rather share his sister’s dog, though Snidely went everywhere with his mistress, which meant he wasn’t around home much.

Walker let himself in through the side door, which opened into the spacious, old-fashioned kitchen, his suit jacket slung over one shoulder, and was heartened to find Brylee there. Blue-jeaned and wearing a T-shirt with the motto Men Suck on the front, her heavy brown hair pulled back in a ponytail, she was splotched with flour from head to foot.

Snidely kept watch nearby, curled up on a hooked rug.

“Hey,” Walker said, addressing both of them, draping his jacket over the back of a chair.

Snidely lifted his head, sighed and rested his muzzle on his forelegs again.

“Hey,” Brylee said, careful not to look at Walker. She’d been baking bread, probably for hours. The air was scented with that homey aroma, and pans full of rising, butter-glistened dough waited, assembly-line fashion, on the counter nearest the stove. “How was the wedding?”

Walker wanted a beer and a quiet chat with his sister, but he had to get out of his suit and head for the barn and stock pens, to make sure the chores had all been done. With six ranch hands working the place year-round, though, the task was more habit than necessity. “It was a wedding,” he said, pausing. He wasn’t being flippant; the church variety was always pretty much the same, that’s all—white dress and veil for the bride, nervous groom, preacher, organ music, crowded pews, tons of flowers.

Every line of Brylee’s slender body looked rigid as she absorbed his reply, and she kept her back to him. Whenever somebody got married, she folded in on herself like this, keeping frenetically busy and pretending it didn’t matter.

“So it went off without a hitch, then?” she asked, her tone so falsely airy that a crack zigzagged its way down the middle of Walker’s big-brother heart. Brylee wouldn’t have wished what had happened at her wedding on anybody, but she always asked that same question after every new ceremony and she always seemed to be braced for the worst.

“I’d say it was perfect,” Walker answered gently. He’d retrieved his jacket from the chair back, but beyond that, he hadn’t moved. His feet seemed to be stuck to the kitchen floor.

Brylee looked back over one flour-coated shoulder, offered a wobbly smile that didn’t quite stick to her wide mouth. “That’s good,” she said, blinking once and then turning to the dough she was kneading.

“What’s with all the bread?” Walker asked.

“Opal Dennison and some of the other ladies from her church are holding a bake sale tomorrow, after the second service,” she replied with brave good cheer, though her shoulders slumped slightly and she was careful to keep her face averted. “To raise more money for the McCulloughs.”

Young Dawson McCullough, seriously injured in a fall from the now-demolished water tower in town, had worked on the ranch since he was big enough to buck hay bales and muck out stalls, after school and during the summer, and he was practically a member of the family.

“And you’re the only woman in the whole county who signed up to bake bread?” Walker asked lightly.

Brylee stopped, stiff along her spine again and across her shoulders. She kept her head up, but it looked like an effort. “Don’t, Walker,” she said softly. “I know what you’re trying to do, and I appreciate the thought, but, please—don’t.”

Walker sighed, shoved a hand through his hair. He opened his mouth, thought better of saying more and closed it again, went on through the kitchen, along the corridor, past the dining and living rooms, and into his spacious first-floor bedroom, where he peeled off the suit and kicked off the dress shoes and put on worn jeans, a lightweight flannel shirt and boots.

The relief of being himself again was enormous.

Brylee was lining up what looked like the last of the doughy loaves on the oven racks when Walker came back through, on his way to the door. She didn’t acknowledge him, but Snidely got to his feet and lumbered along after him, outside, across that wing of the porch that wrapped around the house on three sides, down the steps.

“Women,” Walker told the dog in an exasperated undertone. “Brylee could have her pick of men and what does she do? She pines after the one that got away.”

Tongue lolling, Snidely wagged his tail as he ambled companionably alongside.

Walker was glad to have the company. “The worst part is,” he went on, relieved that nobody on two legs could hear him prattling away to a German shepherd, “she’s just being cussed, that’s all. Deep down—but not all that deep down—Brylee knows damn well that she and Hutch weren’t right for each other. By now, the honeymoon wouldn’t just be over, they’d have crashed and burned.”

Snidely offered no insight, but, in that way of faithful dogs, his mere presence was soothing. He paused to lift one hind leg against a pillar of the hitching post, then trotted to catch up with Walker at the barn door.

Walker flipped on the lights lining the long breezeway and stepped inside, pausing to check on each horse in each stall, making sure the electronic watering system was working and there was hay in every feeder.

Mack, his big buckskin gelding, occupied the largest stall, the one across from the tack room, and he nickered a greeting when Walker stopped to offer a quiet howdy. All the horses, Mack included, had been properly looked after, but Walker had had to see that with his own eyes if he expected to get any sleep. Same with the bulls and the broncos, some in the pastures and some in the holding pens behind the barn.

He sighed again, rubbed the back of his neck, still itchy from the starch in the collar of the dress shirt he’d worn earlier, and adjusted his hat, even though it didn’t need adjusting. With his head full of Casey Elder and the two children they should have been raising together, he’d probably toss and turn the whole night and wake up cranky as an old bear with a nettle between its toes.

Snidely, standing close, thumped the back of Walker’s right knee with his swinging tail, as if to remind him of the here and now.

Walker chuckled and leaned down to ruffle the dog’s ears, and then the two of them went on to check on the bulls snorting and pawing the ground in their steel-girded pens, the broncos grazing in the nearby pasture. Across the Big Sky River, the lights of the ranch hands’ cabins and trailers winked in the shadows of early evening, casting dancing reflections on the water. Voices drifted over—children playing outside, determined to wring the last moment of fun from a dying day, mothers calling them inside for baths and bedtime, men smoking in their yards while they swapped tall tales and laughed at each other’s jokes.

The sounds were ordinary, but they lodged in Walker’s chest like slivers that night. He tilted back his head, looked up at a sky popping with stars and wondered how a man could live square in the middle of a busy ranch like Timber Creek and still feel as though he’d been exiled to some faraway planet with a population of one.

Snidely lingered, but it was plain that he wanted to head back toward to the house and Brylee, and Walker figured the dog had it right. God knew, standing out here by the river, listening in on all those family sounds, wasn’t doing him any good.

“Let’s go,” he told Snidely, and started back.

By the time they reached the house, Brylee had the kitchen cleaned up, about two dozen loaves of bread wrapped up in foil and ready for tomorrow’s bake sale, and was actually sitting down at the table, sipping from a cup of tea while she waited for the stove timer to ring so she could take out the last batch.

She’d pulled herself together while Walker was out, and he was grateful, because he never knew how to comfort her when she got into one of these jilted-bride moods.

“I kept back a few loaves for you,” she told her brother, smiling a genuine Brylee smile when Snidely walked over and laid his chin on her lap so she could stroke his long, gleaming back. “One in the breadbox, two in the freezer.”

“Thanks,” Walker said, hanging his hat on its peg next to the door and proceeding to the sink to roll up his sleeves and wash his hands the way he always did when he’d been outside. He remembered their father doing the same thing in the same way, and their granddad, too. There was a certain reassurance in that kind of quiet continuity.

“I guess you must have seen Casey and the kids today,” Brylee said easily.

“I saw them,” Walker said.

“And?”

“And what?” Walker grabbed a dish towel and dried his hands, his motions brisk.

Brylee chuckled. “Whoa,” she exclaimed. “Touchy.”

“You’re a fine one to talk about being touchy,” Walker pointed out, frowning at her.

Brylee held up both hands, palms out. “Okay, fair enough,” she conceded. “It’s just that I’m allergic to white lace and promises.” Her hazel eyes, set wide above high cheekbones, twinkled, and she reached back to free her hair from the rubber band that had held it in place, shaking her head a couple of times so her curls flew around her face. Before the wedding-that-wasn’t, Brylee’s hair had tumbled past her waist, but she’d had it cut to shoulder-length afterward, which was better, Walker supposed, than getting a tattoo or having something pierced.

“You might want to get over that,” Walker remarked, walking over to the fridge, opening the door and taking out a can of cold beer.

“Are you going to make a speech?” The question was mildly put, but it had an edge to it nevertheless. Brylee narrowed her eyes, her cheeks flushed from an afternoon spent baking bread in a hot kitchen. “Because you’re the last person on earth, Walker Parrish, who has room to lecture anybody about their love life.”

He hooked one foot around the leg of a chair at the table, scraped it back and sat, plunking his can of beer down on the red-and-white-checked cloth and regarding her steadily. “Who said I was fixing to give a lecture?” he asked coolly.

Brylee flashed him one of her wide, toothy grins. The woman was a walking advertisement for orthodontia now, but as a kid, her pearly whites had gone every which way but straight down. “It isn’t as if we don’t have this conversation every time there’s a wedding anywhere in Parable County.”

“What conversation?” Walker took a long, thoughtful draft of his beer. “You said you were allergic to white lace and promises, and I said you might want to think about getting over that. Where I come from, that doesn’t qualify as a conversation.”

Brylee rolled her eyes. For somebody who’d probably been down in the mouth all day, she’d certainly perked up all of a sudden. “I come from the same place you do,” she reminded him. “Right here on this ranch.”

“Is this discussion going anywhere?” Walker asked, suddenly realizing he was hungry. The only food he’d had since lunch, after all, was a slice of white cake, a few pastel mints and a handful of those tiny sandwiches held together by frilly toothpicks.

She reached out then, rested her hand briefly on his forearm and then withdrew it. “I know you worry about me, Walker,” Brylee said softly. “But I’ll be all right. I really will.”

“When?” Walker wanted to know.

“Things take time,” she hedged, making her big brother wish he’d left well enough alone and talked about things like the price of beef or the weather or, better yet, nothing at all.

“How much time?” he asked, because they were already knee-deep in the subject and wishing he’d kept his mouth shut in the first place wouldn’t help now. “It’s been a couple of years since you and Hutch parted ways and, far as I know, you haven’t so much as looked at another guy since then, let alone dated.”

Brylee propped one elbow on the table and rested her chin in her palm, regarding him with a sort of tender amusement. “I’m running a business, Walker—a successful business, in case you haven’t noticed—and that keeps me pretty busy.”