Big Sky Summer

“Too busy, if you ask me,” Walker grumbled.

“I didn’t ask you,” Brylee reminded him sweetly. Her brow furrowed in a slight frown, quickly gone, and another twinkle sparked in her eyes. “Are you afraid I’ll wind up an old maid, and you’ll be stuck with me for good?”

An image of Brylee sitting on the front porch in a rocking chair, her hair gray and pinned back in a bun, wearing a church-lady dress and knitting socks, flashed into Walker’s mind and made his mouth twitch upward at one corner. “Heck, no,” he teased. “I’d just park you in some nursing home and get on with my life.”

Brylee didn’t laugh, or even smile. Her expression was sad, and she gazed off into some unseeable distance. “What if we do end up all alone when we’re old?” she murmured. “It happens.”

“I reckon I’ll wait a decade or two before I start worrying about that,” he said. There had to be things he could say that would encourage Brylee, get her off the sidelines and back into the rough-and-tumble of life, but he was damned if he knew what those things were.

Like quicksilver, Brylee’s mood changed again. The timer on the stove made a chiming sound, and she pushed her chair back to stand, dislodging Snidely’s big dog head from her thigh. All hustle and bustle, she picked up a couple of pot holders and started taking tinfoil loaf pans out of the oven and setting them on the waiting cooling racks. “You’re right,” she said, as though there had been no lag in their verbal exchange. “Let’s wait twenty years and figure it out then.”

Remembering that he was hungry, Walker stood, went to the breadbox on the counter, a retro thing coated in green enamel, took out a loaf and set it on the counter while he rummaged through a nearby drawer for a knife. “It’s a deal,” he agreed, proceeding to open and close cupboard doors until he found a jar of peanut butter and one of those little plastic bears with honey inside. The bottle was sticky and the cap was missing, and honey went everywhere when he squeezed too hard.

“Honestly,” Brylee scolded, elbowing him aside, constructing the sandwich and shoving it at him, then wiping up the mess with a damp sponge.

Walker grinned at her efficiency. “You were born to pack lunches for a bunch of little kids,” he observed.

“Gee,” Brylee said, “thanks.”

“I only meant—”

“I know what you meant, Walker,” she broke in crisply.

He bit into the sandwich, chewed, swallowed. “Well, excuse me,” he said, pretending to be wounded.

“Shut up and go to bed,” Brylee told him.

“I’ll do that,” Walker replied, thinking that they must have slipped into a time warp and been transported back to their teens, when they couldn’t be in the same room without needling each other.

She made a disgusted sound and thumped the tops of a few loaves with one knuckle. She’d be up for a while, waiting for the last batch of bread to cool off so she could wrap it.

Walker saluted her with a lift of his sandwich and headed for his room, shaking his head as he went. He wondered when he was going to learn. Ninety-five percent of the time, reasoning with a woman, especially when that woman happened to be his kid sister, was a waste of breath.

* * *

IT WAS ALMOST MIDNIGHT when the last guests took their leave and the carousel finally stopped turning.

Surveying her backyard, empty except for the caterer’s helpers and the guys taking down the big canopy and dismantling the dance floor, Casey was reminded of her childhood and the feeling she got when the carnival moved on after its yearly visit, leaving a bare and somewhat forlorn patch of ground behind.

“Mom?” Clare stood at her elbow, barefoot but still in her party dress. She was already taller than Casey, and so was her brother, and she had the elegant carriage of a young woman. “You okay?”

Casey turned her head, smiled at her daughter, thinking that if she loved her kids even a smidgeon more, she’d burst. “I’m fine, sweetheart,” she said. “Just a little tired.” She paused, enjoying the night air and the sky full of stars and the bittersweet remnants of a happy day. “Speaking of which—shouldn’t you be in bed by now?”

Named for Casey’s late grandmother, Clare resembled the woman more with every passing year. Now she made a face. “Mom,” she said, “I’m almost fifteen and, anyway, it’s Saturday, so I can sleep in tomorrow.”

“We’re going to church,” Casey reminded the woman-child. “There’s a bake sale after the eleven o’clock service, and I promised Opal I’d help out. And you won’t be fifteen for another eight months.”

With a dramatic sigh, Clare turned and started across the darkened sunporch, toward the kitchen, and Casey followed with some reluctance, turning her back on that big sky full of stars.

“Well,” the girl argued, since teenagers couldn’t go more than ten minutes, it seemed to Casey, without offering up some kind of back talk, “you didn’t promise Opal that I’d help, did you?”

Shane stood at one of the sleek granite-covered counters in that gleaming, cavernous kitchen, eating leftover wedding cake with his fingers. He gave Casey a look of good-natured guilt, shrugged once and reached for another slice.

“You’re disgusting,” Clare informed him.

Shane stuck out a crumb-covered tongue and made a rude noise.

“Yuck,” Clare wailed, drawing the term out to three times its normal length. “Mother, are you just going to stand there and let him act like a baboon?”

Casey pretended to consider the question. “Yeah,” she said finally, with a little grin. “I guess I am.”

Shane laughed in obnoxious triumph, snorting more crumbs. The three dogs, clustered around him, waited eagerly for scraps.

Clare made a strangled, screamlike sound of truly theatrical proportions and stomped off toward the rear stairway, bound for the sanctuary of her upstairs bedroom, a private preserve where Shane was not allowed.

“That’s enough cake,” Casey told her son. “Have the dogs been outside?”

Shane nodded, his mouth full, and dusted frosting-sticky hands together. Once he’d swallowed again—actually, it was more of a gulp—he answered, “Only about five times. Rockford ate a crepe paper streamer and part of a balloon.”

Rockford, the baby of the chocolate-Lab trio, gave a mournful little howl of protest, as though objecting to being snitched on.

Casey walked around, took a gentle hold on the dog’s ears and looked him over closely. “He seems all right,” she said.

“He’ll be okay,” Shane confirmed nonchalantly. “He already barfed. That’s how I knew what he ate.”

“Ewwww,” Casey said, taking her son by the shoulders and steering him toward the stairs. “Be sure to wash up before you turn in for the night,” she added as he followed the trail blazed by his older sister.

The dogs trooped after him, the way they did every night.

Doris, the cook and housekeeper, poked her head out of her apartment off to the side of the kitchen, wearing face cream and curlers and a pink chenille bathrobe. “Is the party over?” she asked pleasantly. It was, of course, a rhetorical question; Doris had to have heard all the goodbying and the slamming of car doors and the crunch of gravel in the driveway. She’d stayed until nearly ten, socializing, then retired to shampoo and set her hair so she’d look good at church the next morning.

“Yep,” Casey replied with a smile. She locked the back door, set the alarm and padded over to the counter to brew a cup of herbal tea. The stuff helped her sleep—usually.

Doris nodded a good-night and retreated back into her nest, shutting the door softly behind her.

Casey lingered in the kitchen for a few minutes, sipping tea and listening to the familiar sounds overhead—the dogs’ nails clicking on the hardwood floor of the upstairs corridor, Shane laughing like a villain in a melodrama, Clare calling him a choice name and slamming her bedroom door hard.

With a sigh, Casey crossed the kitchen—it seemed to cover two acres, that room—and, reaching the foot of the stairs, flipped off the lights.

Shane was still baiting Clare from the hallway when Casey reached the second floor, and Clare made the mistake of opening her bedroom door and calling him another name, which, of course, only egged him on.

Casey whistled shrilly through her teeth, the way Juan, her grandparents’ gardener and all-around handyman, had taught her to do when she was eight. The sirenlike sound was an attention-getter, all right, and it had served Casey well over the years, not only with the kids, but with the band, the road crew and every dog she’d ever owned.

“The fight is over, and I’m calling it a draw,” she announced with authority when both Clare and Shane stared at her, startled, along with all three of the dogs.

“Dickhead,” Clare said to Shane in an undertone.

“Pizza face,” Shane shot back.

Casey put her hands on her hips and puckered up to whistle again.

The mere threat made them both retreat into their rooms, the dogs ducking in ahead of Shane, probably keeping a low profile in case they were in some kind of trouble themselves.

“My sweet children,” Casey said wryly, and went on to her own room.

Actually, the word room fell a little short of accurate description—the place was the size of a small gymnasium, or one of those swanky penthouse hotel suites that take up a whole floor all by themselves.

Again, she had that sense that things had shifted. Everything looked the same—the fancy antique bed rescued from some crumbling Italian villa and sporting a museum-quality painting of nymphs frolicking with various Roman gods on the gilded headboard, the massive dresser, the couch and chairs and elegant marble fireplace, the expanse of floor-to-ceiling windows specially made to give her a sweeping view and, at the same time, ensure her complete privacy.

It was just plain too big a space for one lone woman, but at least it didn’t have wheels, like the tour bus, or a reception desk downstairs, like a hotel. This was the home she’d hungered for all her life.

Oh, yes, she’d wanted this house, she reminded herself, wanted to park herself and the children somewhere solid and real and finally put down some roots. So what if she and Clare and Shane sometimes seemed to rattle around in the place like dried beans in a bucket? She hadn’t bought the mansion because it was grand, so she could play lady of the manor or live in the style to which the public probably believed she was accustomed; she’d bought it because it was big, with room for the band and the backup singers and the roadies and a host of other staffers who came and went. Downstairs, there was a soundstage for filming videos and a recording studio, both of which she used constantly.

Try fitting all that into a three-bedroom, split-level ranch, she thought, glancing at her reflection in the big three-way mirror, encircled with lights, above her vanity table.

Vanity was certainly the operative word for that setup, Casey reflected with a shake of her head as she turned away and set her course for the bathroom. Like the rest of the house, the room was almost decadently luxurious—the shower stall could have accommodated a football team, and she’d seen backyard hot tubs smaller than the mosaic-lined pool she bathed in.

Shutting the door—it was a habit one developed after years of living in a bus—Casey washed her face at one of the three gleaming brass sinks, brushed her teeth and finally pulled her dress off over her head, tossing it dutifully into the laundry hamper, along with her underwear, before pulling on flannel boxer shorts and a T-shirt commemorating her most recent European tour. Once again, she faced her own reflection.

Wearing the shirt should have made her feel nostalgic, she supposed, since that tour had been a record breaker, every concert sold out months before she and the gang had flown over a dark ocean in a jet with her name emblazoned on its sides to visit the first of twelve cities. She’d loved singing in front of huge audiences—thrived on it, in fact—and instead of wearing her out, those performances had energized her, flooded her system with endorphins, provided a high no drug could have matched. Unlike some of her colleagues in the music business, she’d never burned out, had a breakdown, played the home-wrecker or floated into rehab on a wave of booze and cocaine.

So why didn’t she miss all that excitement and attention and applause? She supposed it was because, for her, life was and had always been all about singing and plucking out new tunes on her favorite guitar, the scarred and battered one her grandfather had given her for Christmas when she was around Shane’s age. She’d done what she’d set out to do, pursuing her goals with near-ruthless resolve, but somewhere along the line, she’d noticed that her children were growing up faster than she’d ever thought possible. All too soon, she’d realized with a road-to-Damascus flash of insight, they’d be heading off to college, starting careers of their own, getting married and having children.

Figuratively blinded by the light, Casey had finished the tour, called Walker and asked him if he knew of any houses for sale in his part of Montana. Suddenly, she wanted her children attending a regular school, saluting the flag every morning and making friends their own age. And she’d wanted Clare and Shane to see a lot more of Walker, too, though she hadn’t been sure why and still wasn’t, considering the effort she’d gone to to keep the truth under wraps.

If he’d been surprised by this turn of events, Walker hadn’t given any indication of it. He’d said he knew a real estate broker—who turned out to be Kendra, now a dear and trusted friend to Casey, like Joslyn and Tara—and before she could say Jack Daniels, she’d found herself smack-dab in the middle of Parable, Montana, taking one good look at this house and promptly signing on the dotted line.

Since then, Casey had had plenty of second thoughts, though she’d never actually regretted the decision to settle in a small town where it was still safe for kids to go trick-or-treating on Halloween, where everybody knew everybody else and people not only went to church on Sundays and then had breakfast over at the Butter Biscuit Café, but voted in every election.

It was living in close proximity to Walker Parrish that made her question this particular choice. By doing so, she’d put the secret she’d guarded for years in obvious jeopardy.

Frowning thoughtfully, Casey left the bathroom, crossed to her big, lonely bed and switched out the lamp on the nightstand.

Was it possible that, on some level, she’d wanted the truth to come out?

CHAPTER THREE

IRRITABLE AFTER A RESTLESS NIGHT, Walker spoke briefly with his longtime foreman, Al Pickens, leaving the orchestration of yet another fairly routine workday on the ranch to him. Climbing into his truck, the backseat jam-packed with boxes of Brylee’s homemade bread, each loaf carefully wrapped in shining foil and tied with a ribbon for the church bake sale, it occurred to Walker—and not for the first time—that he was more of a figurehead than a real rancher.

Sure, he ran things, made all the major decisions, personally hauled badass bulls and even badder broncos to rodeos all over the western United States and parts of Canada, led roundups and rode fence lines here at the homestead, signed the paychecks and paid the bills. But, in point of fact, his crew was so competent that they could manage without him, any day of the week.

He headed for Parable, a thirty-mile drive, with his windows rolled down and a worn Johnny Cash CD blaring out of the dashboard speakers, tapping out the familiar rhythms on the steering wheel with one hand as he drove. There were some days, he thought wryly, when nothing but songs like “Folsom Prison Blues” and “A Boy Named Sue” could keep a man’s mind off his problems.

When he reached the same small clapboard church he’d sat in the day before, watching Boone and Tara tie the proverbial knot, the Sunday services were still going on. He found a parking place in the crowded gravel lot, and not without difficulty, as the Reverend Walter Beaumont was a popular preacher.

Since the day was warm and the congregation wouldn’t spring for air-conditioning, the doors were propped open, and the voices of those gathered to make a joyful noise before the Lord spilled out into the sunshine, curiously comforting simply because the words of the old hymn were so familiar.

Spotting the booths set up in back of the church—members who had probably attended the early service were out there lining up goods for the bake sale—Walker briefly recalled the Sundays of his youth. His mother had branded the whole idea of religion as pure hypocrisy—and, in her case, that was certainly true—but their dad had carted him and Brylee off to a similar place of worship over in Three Trees every single week until they reached the “age of reason,” that being, by Barclay Parrish’s reckoning, twelve.

Life had its rough patches, the old man had quietly maintained, and, in his opinion, a person could take the dogma or leave it, but over the long run, they’d be better off believing than not believing. If nothing else, he’d figured, Walker and Brylee would lead better lives just for trying.

Brylee had continued to attend services, on and off, but Walker had gone his own way when he was given the option. He wasn’t a believer or a nonbeliever—it seemed obvious to him that nobody really knew what the celestial deal was—but he was grateful for the training and the Bible verses he’d had to memorize for Sunday school just the same. Those lines of Scripture had a way of popping into his mind when he needed them.

Opal Dennison, soon to be Opal Beaumont since she was engaged to the preacher, beamed at him from behind one of the booths. A tall, handsome black woman, Opal carried herself with an easygoing dignity and served as matchmaker and mother confessor to half the county. Rumor had it that she’d been directly involved in hooking up not only Boone and Tara, but Hutch and Kendra Carmody, and Slade and Joslyn Barlow, as well.

A part of Walker tended to turn nervous whenever he encountered Opal—he might suddenly find himself married if he wasn’t careful.

She approached as he was opening the back door of the truck and reaching in for the first box of Brylee’s homemade bread.

“Mercy,” Opal marveled, her eyes widening a little at the sheer bounty. “Talk about the miracle of the loaves and fishes. Without the fishes, of course.”

Walker grinned at her. “Brylee got a little carried away,” he said, recognizing this as an understatement of no small consequence. “Where do you want this?”

Opal pointed out a nearby booth, consisting of a portable table covered with a checkered vinyl cloth and shaded by an old patio umbrella with its pole held in place by a pyramid of cinder blocks. A charitable frown creased her forehead as she walked alongside Walker, subtly herding him from here to there in case he got lost between the truck and the backyard bake sale. “I didn’t see Brylee at the wedding yesterday,” she said before adding in a confidential whisper, “I worry about that girl.”

Walker set the first box down on the appointed table and started back for another. Opal stuck with him, marching along in her sensible shoes and her flowery dress, which she’d probably sewn herself.

“Me, too,” he admitted, thinking admissions like that one came all too easily with Opal. She did have a way about her.

Picking up the second of three boxes brimming with wrapped and beribboned loaves, Walker raised an eyebrow and grinned. “You keeping attendance records at weddings these days, Miss Opal?” he asked.

She laughed. “I’ve got what you might call a photographic memory,” she explained, sunlight glistening on the lenses of her old-fashioned eyeglasses. “It’s a God-given gift—if anybody’s missing from anywhere, I know it right away.” She paused, ruminating. “It’s time that sister of yours got her act together, as far as love and marriage are concerned. And past time she put what happened with Hutch Carmody behind her once and for all and moved on.”

“I couldn’t agree more,” Walker said on the return trip to the booth.

“Not that you’re doing all that great in the love department yourself,” Opal observed, benignly forthright. “You’re not getting any younger, you know. Living out there in that big house, all alone except for your sister and her dog—haven’t you noticed just how happy your good friends Slade, Hutch and Boone are these days?”

“It would be hard to miss that,” Walker allowed with another grin, this one slightly wicked, “what with Joslyn and Kendra coming a-crop with new babies and all.”

Opal smiled widely, and mischief danced in her eyes. “That’s just the way it should be,” she said with confidence.

Walker set down the box of bread and returned to his truck for the last one.

Again, Opal accompanied him every step of the way, there and back again.

“I wouldn’t dream of arguing with you, Miss Opal,” Walker said as they covered the final leg of the journey.

“Good,” she answered, “because you wouldn’t win.”

He laughed, tugged at the brim of his hat, intending to bid her farewell and get out of there, reasoning that if he headed straight for the Butter Biscuit Café, he might beat some of the after-church rush, especially since it was safe to assume a large portion of folks from the other local denominations would gravitate to the bake sale.

Opal caught hold of his shirtsleeve. “Don’t you go rushing off. These other ladies and me, we could use some help setting up extra tables.”

Walker suppressed a sigh. He couldn’t turn Opal down—that would go against his grain and she knew it—but he did narrow his eyes at her so she’d know he had his suspicions concerning what she might be up to.

She just laughed and pointed him toward a half-assembled booth with boxes of fresh strawberries stacked all around it. It was no big surprise when Casey Elder came out of the church kitchen carrying a tray loaded with shortcake to go with the strawberries. Seeing Walker, she stopped in midstep, rummaged up a smile and then marched straight toward him.

“Hello, Walker,” she said sweetly.

Walker had set his hat aside and crouched to wrestle with a table leg that refused to unfold. That put him at a physical disadvantage, the way he saw it. “Casey,” he replied with a brief nod and no smile. After all, this woman and her stubborn streak had cost him the better part of a night’s sleep—and not just this once, either.

Her mouth quirked up at one corner, and she cast a glance in Opal’s direction before meeting his gaze again. “This must be some kind of record,” she said. “Walker Parrish setting foot on church property twice in two days, I mean.”

He got the table leg unjammed with a hard jerk of one hand, straightened, hat in hand. Walker rarely made small talk—there wasn’t much call for it on a ranch, working with a bunch of seasoned cowboys—and he didn’t have a quip at the ready.

He felt heat climb his neck and throb behind his ears.

Opal whisked over and, with a billowy flourish, spread a cotton cloth over the rickety table before vanishing again. Casey set the tray of shortcakes down with a knowing and possibly annoyed little smile.

“I’m sorry,” she murmured without looking at Walker.

The interlude gave him time to recover some of his equilibrium, and he was secretly grateful, though he wasn’t sure to whom. “For what?” he asked calmly. Oh, yeah, Mr. Suave-and-Sophisticated, that was him.

“Giving you a hard time just now,” Casey answered, meeting his gaze but keeping her hands busy fussing with the cellophane covering all those little yellow rounds of shortcake. “It was nice of you to help with the table and everything.”

Walker felt his Adam’s apple travel the length of his throat and back down again, like mercury surging in a thermometer, and hoped his ears weren’t glowing bright red. He was a confident man, at home in his own hide and stone-sure of his own mind, but something about this ordinary exchange made him swear he’d reverted to puberty in the space of a few moments. “That’s all right,” he managed, apropos of whatever. The appropriate answer, of course, would have been something along the lines of You’re welcome.