Big Sky Secrets

“Some of us,” she tossed off in passing, waddling down the porch steps and marching toward an old station wagon parked near Zane’s truck, “have better things to do with our time than sit around in the shade. I’m going to town for some groceries, and I’ll be gone awhile.”

Brylee shook her head again, amused.

Zane laughed.

Landry, feeling downright superfluous—in this case, three was definitely a crowd—immediately pushed back his chair and got to his feet, ready to hit the trail.

Startled, both dogs lifted their muzzles from their forelegs to look at him.

“What’s your hurry, little brother?” Zane asked, frowning slightly. “You haven’t even finished your beer.”

Did the man have a clue? This was his chance to be alone with his breathtakingly beautiful wife and he was worried about leftover beer?

Landry sighed and bent to kiss Brylee’s cheek in brotherly farewell. “I’ve got things to do at home,” he said. Then he reconsidered his beer, decided he’d rather have Scotch from his own bar and, leaving the bottle where it was, headed for his truck, left behind earlier in the day when he’d ridden over to Timber Creek with Zane.

Though Cleo’s vehicle was long out of sight when Landry drove away from his brother’s house, the dust her tanklike station wagon had churned up was still billowing in the air as he took a left onto the county road.

Briefly, he wished that he had somewhere else to go besides home, where no one was waiting for him but Highbridge and a two-animal herd of buffalo.

* * *

TWILIGHT TURNED THE famous big Montana sky lavender at the edges, spilling the first thin shadows over the rim of the valley, softly draping fields of colorful zinnias and gerbera daisies in the cool, gentle promise of a summer evening. Ria Manning felt mildly unsettled as she gazed out over her small patch of land. Something vaguely like homesickness stirred within her, which was ridiculous since she was home, wasn’t she? She bit her lower lip, deftly winding the garden hose into a thick coil of green rubber and hanging it from the sturdy hook on the wall of the toolshed.

She’d mowed her lawn earlier, and the sprinkler system was just coming on. The sweet scent of cut grass soothed Ria as she skirted little geysers of water, making her way toward the back porch. The structure sagged slightly, weathered and rickety, and Ria added yet another chore to the daunting to-do list she carried in her head—replace porches.

Behind the cottage—it was actually just a small house, so calling the place a “cottage” was on the creative side, to Ria’s mind—the weeds were thick and tall enough to hide a variety of outmoded farm equipment and other relics of previous productivity. The fields on that side were empty, plowed under and left to recover from repeated overplanting.

In another year or so, with proper fertilization and maybe a burn-off, carefully controlled, of course, the soil would be fertile again—or so the county extension agent maintained anyway. Some people might have been impatient, but Ria understood the basic concept of long-term investment, that good things really did come to those who waited.

Once a bean counter, she thought, with a slight, rueful smile, always a bean counter. As Frank, her late husband, used to say, she was so left-brained it was a wonder she didn’t tip over every time she tried to stand up.

Sighing, because memories of Frank always made her sigh, Ria kicked off her muddy sneakers just inside the back door, leaving them on the newspaper she’d laid out for the purpose. The kitchen floor gleamed with cleanliness, and she took a moment’s satisfaction in that before flipping on the overhead lights.

Ria had discovered long ago, possibly even in childhood, that if she stood still too long, the loneliness would overtake her, so she got busy right away, washing her hands at the sink, filling the old-fashioned copper teakettle, setting it on a burner, turning the appropriate stove knob to “high.”

She took a pretty cup and saucer from one of the cupboard shelves, dropped in a tea bag and then crossed to her desktop computer, wriggling the mouse to wake the machine from its slumber. While the thing booted up, she took her cell phone from its charger to check her voice mail.

Heat surged rhythmically through the kettle on the stove.

There was a single message awaiting her—that was one more than she usually received—and it was from her half sister, Meredith. Ten years Ria’s senior, Meredith didn’t contact her often, since they had little in common besides a father, now long dead. When she did initiate a phone call or an email, Ria usually wound up wishing she hadn’t. Meredith wasn’t actively hostile—not all the time anyway—but she was one of those people who didn’t suffer fools gladly, and, though she never said so outright, it was understood that she thought Ria slotted right into that category.

Against her better judgment, Ria pressed the speaker button on her cell and plunked the device down on a counter before zipping over to the refrigerator, in search of supper prospects.

Meredith’s recorded voice filled the small kitchen, educated and shrill, and Ria’s back molars automatically locked together.

“Are you there, darling?” Meredith chirped. “I was hoping you’d pick up.” For once.

Ria sighed again, decided on a grilled cheese sandwich and canned soup for her evening meal, set the makings out on the counter in an orderly row.

“Listen, sweetie, this is important,” Meredith went on brightly. “I’ve had to fire another manager—at our Seattle branch, this time—and the result is complete and utter chaos. I’m talking possible embezzlement here. The feds might even be a factor. If you don’t get over there and straighten out the situation—well, we’ll have to close that office, and there will be government audits and all sorts of bad publicity, and you know how Daddy would feel about that.” Meredith paused to drag in an audible breath, then launched into the big finale. “Call me when you get this message, pretty please. No matter what time it is. You have my numbers.” A beat passed. “Love you!”

And Meredith hung up.

Love you!

Right, Ria thought, wishing she could ignore her sister’s request to call her back and already fully aware that she couldn’t. She was just too damn responsible, that was her problem.

Still, she intended to eat first. She’d been working hard all day, weeding and watering, making preparations for Saturday’s farmers’ market over in Parable, and she was hungry. Not to mention tired.

Ria grilled her sandwich, heated her soup. Her tea was brewed by then, and cool enough to drink. She served her food up in pretty dishes, using the good silverware she and Frank had received as a wedding present, trying to invoke some semblance of a family meal.

Frank. He’d been her mainstay, the only man she’d ever truly loved—or could even imagine loving. Now, when he’d been gone for just two and a half years, she occasionally forgot what he’d looked like and had to study their wedding pictures to reacquaint herself with his features. She’d memorize his angular jaw, his strong mouth, his thick, dark hair, his brown eyes and his quick smile.

And then forget again.

Although Ria knew the phenomenon of not being able to recall a departed loved one’s face wasn’t unusual among the bereaved, she always panicked a little when it happened, and the guilt could last for hours, if not longer.

Why was she so bereft now, though?

It was the time of day, Ria reminded herself silently, sitting down to her lonely supper, spreading a napkin over her blue-jeaned lap and taking a deep breath in an effort to restore her equanimity.

She’d been hungry before, but now, suddenly, her appetite was iffy. She nibbled at one half of the sandwich and spooned up some of the soup, then gave up and cleared the table. Methodically—because Ria Manning was nothing if not methodical—she tossed the leftovers into the trash and rinsed off her plate and bowl in the sink before wandering into the front room, taking her cup of lukewarm tea with her.

The face, dark brown, hairy and horned, and roughly the size of an armchair, loomed suddenly in the center of the picture window. And even though Ria knew, on one level, exactly what she was looking at, she was startled enough that she gave a little squeal of alarm, leaped backward and nearly dropped her china cup and saucer.

The creature at the window made an awful, plaintive sound, a sort of forlorn bellow. The drapes, still open, of course, gave the impression of stage curtains, as though Ria made up the entire audience at a horror show.

Recovering slightly, Ria set her tea aside on an end table, her hand shaking all the while, and pressed splayed fingers to her pounding heart.

Bessie. As the shock subsided, Ria’s temper kicked in.

“Not again,” she said, coming to a simmer. “Damn it, not again!”

By contrast, the cow buffalo standing in Ria’s flower bed seemed to have calmed down considerably. After that one harrowing cry, Bessie ducked her massive head out of sight, and when she raised it again, she was chewing on a big clump of freshly planted petunias. In the near distance, Ria spotted Bessie’s yearling calf, now nearly as big as its mama, making a meal of the bright orange poppies growing in an old wheelbarrow.

For a moment or so longer, Ria was frozen where she stood. Bessie looked quite content now, but that didn’t mean she wouldn’t get riled again. Since she probably weighed as much as a farm truck, the prospect was terrifying. With one swing of that gigantic head, she could shatter the picture window to smithereens. Why, she might even scramble through the opening and run amok in the living room.

Get a grip, Ria admonished herself. This is not an emergency.

It didn’t help much.

Walking backward, she fled to the kitchen, dived for the landline receiver on the wall above her computer desk and speed-dialed.

“Sutton residence,” Highbridge intoned formally. “May I help you?”

“They’re out again,” Ria announced. “Those—creatures—”

“Oh, dear,” Highbridge commiserated. “I do apologize. Have they done any damage?”

“Besides scaring me half to death and eating my flowers, you mean?” Ria knew the situation wasn’t Highbridge’s fault—he was a butler, not a ranch hand—but since he was directly in the line of fire, he got the worst of it. “Do you realize, Mr. Highbridge, that Oriental poppies don’t bloom until the second year after they’re planted?”

“Just Highbridge, if you don’t mind,” he interjected mildly. British to the core, he managed to convey both concern and carefully controlled amusement.

“And one of these animals just pulled them all up?” Ria went on.

“Mr. Sutton will be right over to collect the beasts,” Highbridge replied. “And I’m sure he’ll be happy to compensate you for any damage, as usual.”

Mr. Sutton will be right over.

Well, that was something, Ria thought, simmering down slightly. When Landry arrived, she’d simply pretend she wasn’t home.

CHAPTER TWO

RIA DID NOT like Landry Sutton, did not like him one bit—never had, never would—which was why she intended to make herself scarce when he came to round up his smelly, flea-bitten, poppy-scarfing buffalo.

Landry had arrived in Parable County at about the same time as Ria, a little over a year before, and, from the very beginning, he’d struck her as bullheaded, full of himself and, for the most part, insufferably stubborn. Only his impossibly good looks—the classic square jaw, those perfectly sculpted features and blue eyes that changed, according to his mood, from periwinkle to cornflower, that shock of shaggy, wheat-blond hair, a lean but powerful build, not to mention innate masculinity—kept him from being entirely unendurable.

Physical qualities were genetic, after all, accidents of birth; it wasn’t as if the man could take credit for having good DNA, for Pete’s sake.

But, being Landry, he probably did anyway. He had the air of a man who had never failed at anything he attempted, and since that was humanly impossible, Ria had long since dubbed him a poser.

Now, stepping up to the darkened picture window—an act that set her barely calmed heart to pounding all over again, because she knew she’d jump right out of her skin if she found herself face-to-face with Buffalo Bessie for a second time in one night—she squinted through the glass.

The lumbering creatures were nowhere in sight—not surprising considering the density of the gloom—but Ria had no illusions that the animals had wandered conveniently homeward, never to trouble her again. That would have been too easy, and while her life hadn’t been any more difficult than anyone else’s, she was accustomed to dealing with obstacles.

She checked her watch, frowned. The great Landry Sutton was certainly taking his sweet time getting over here and tending to business, that was for sure. At least an hour had passed since she’d called his place to demand action.

Following a surge of renewed frustration, Ria stretched out her arms, grabbed hold of the drapes and yanked them shut. She might have been in a more forgiving state of mind if this same disaster hadn’t befallen her, and her struggling crops of zinnias and gerbera daisies, half a dozen times in the past few months.

Then she heard the noise. It was an alarmingly loud and wholly horrific combination of furious thumping and repeated scraping, and it was coming from the front, right-hand corner of the cottage, just a few feet from where she stood, in the questionable safety of her own living room. Holding her breath, Ria crooked an index finger to pull one of the drapes aside by a couple of inches and then looked out again, but she still couldn’t see what was going on.

Which was not to say she hadn’t guessed.

Incredibly, the nerve-shattering racket intensified. Once or twice, she would have sworn that the whole house trembled on its ancient and probably cracked foundation.

Her sense of caution exceeded only by a need to confirm her suspicions, Ria tiptoed over to the door, flipped on the porch light, turned the dead bolt from its locked position with a decisive twist of one wrist and stepped outside, poised to run back over the threshold in a heartbeat if the situation warranted.

Inside its bug-speckled cover, the single bulb glowed a sickly yellow, throwing a small spill of light onto the welcome mat, no threat to the thick darkness of a near-moonless night in the Montana countryside.

All around her, crickets croaked in the balmy gloom, and although the sky was spangled with stars, they certainly didn’t illuminate the landscape.

A sudden, roaring bellow froze her blood in an instant.

But this was her house, her property. And, damn it, enough was enough.

Steeling herself, Ria ventured a few steps closer to the corner of the porch, where shadows loomed, knowing, on some level, what she’d find there, but, at the same time, not quite believing it.

Sure enough, there was Bessie, scratching her mangy hide against the corner of the house.

“Shoo!” Ria whispered hoarsely, making a flapping motion with both hands but otherwise standing still. “Go away!”

The response was another earsplitting, window-rattling bellow. Was the animal warning her? Issuing some kind of primitive protest?

Ria neither knew nor cared. She wasn’t fool enough to move any closer, but she wasn’t about to retreat, either. Damn it, she had rights.

Being a buffalo, Bessie couldn’t be expected to know that, but her owner sure as hell should have. Especially since this certainly wasn’t the first time her farm had been invaded by his livestock.

And what was keeping him anyhow? He lived on the next place over, and he’d had plenty of time to saddle up a horse or whatever.

After pushing up her mental sleeves in preparation to do battle, Ria drew a deep breath and tried once more to scare the creature away, this time raising her voice to a near shout. “Shoo!”

Again, nothing happened, except that the floor of the ancient porch seemed to ripple slightly under her feet as Bessie heaved her gritty brown bulk against the corner of the house.

As if in answer to her exasperated wonderment of moments before, headlights swung in at the top of Ria’s long dirt driveway, and she heard wheels bumping over hard, rocky ruts as a large vehicle barreled toward the house.

Mercifully distracted, Bessie stopped the awful bawling and the assault on the cottage, and Ria put her fingers to both temples and gave a sigh of angry relief as the tension-tight muscles between her shoulder blades relaxed slightly.

As the rig drew nearer, she could make out the outlines of the trailer being hauled behind it.

Bessie’s calf, invisible before, trotted out of the darkness and stood still in the cone-shaped gleam of the truck’s headlights. The animal didn’t seem frightened, as a deer or other wild creature would have been; instead, the calf remained where it was, giving a single, low grunt. A moment later, Bessie ambled over to stand beside her baby boy.

Ria was astounded by this behavior, and annoyed, too. She’d been sure both animals would charge her if she dared step off the porch, but now they were acting like well-trained pets.

Were they tame? Hard to believe, after the way they’d carried on like banshees with bellyaches, trampling her flower beds, trying to knock down her house.

As casually as if the incident were no big deal, though admittedly an inconvenience on his part, Landry opened the truck door, activating the interior lights and thus becoming deliciously visible. He raised one hand to Ria in a desultory wave, got out of the vehicle and started toward the back of the trailer. He whistled once, low and through his teeth, and, miraculously, both buffalo obeyed the summons as readily as a pair of faithful farm dogs.

Despite her earlier intention to avoid direct contact with her neighbor at all costs, Ria didn’t disappear into the house, shut the door and wait for Landry to retrieve his stray critters and leave, as she probably should have. Instead, she remained where she was, stubborn and indignant and, though this was completely unlike her, spoiling for a fight.

She listened through the thrumming of her blood in her ears as Landry opened the rear door of the trailer, soon heard the metallic rasp of a ramp being lowered, the steely, resounding thump as one end struck the ground.

Landry muttered some gruff command, and hooves clattered like thunder as two beasts the size of mastodons clattered up the ramp and into the trailer, which seemed too flimsy to contain them.

An instant later, the ramp clanked back into place, and then the doors were closed with a bang and bolted shut.

Go inside, Ria told herself. Let Landry Sutton take his stupid bison and get out of here.

It was prudent advice, since no good could come of a confrontation, but Ria still couldn’t bring herself to back down. Anyway, it was too late to pretend she wasn’t at home, as she’d planned to do, since Landry had obviously seen her.

Finally, the rancher rounded the truck and trailer, idly dusting his hands together as he moved, probably congratulating himself on a job well done. With just the wimpy porch bulb and the truck’s headlights to see by, Ria couldn’t make out his expression, but she didn’t need to, because she caught the brief flash of his grin.

Cocky bastard.

“It took you long enough to get here,” she blurted, folding her arms tightly across her chest, as if she were cold. She had a legitimate gripe, and she was still furious, but she regretted giving voice to the complaint, because instead of getting back into his truck, turning it around and heading out of there, he approached her.

His walk was slow and easy, loose-hipped and damnably sexy.

He came to a stop at the base of the porch steps, features awash in the light from the bulb beside the front door, and his grin was affable, generously tolerant and amused.

“If they did any damage,” he said mildly, “just send me a bill.”

No remorse at all. He thought the incident was funny.

People like Landry—rich people—always seemed to think money was the solution to every problem. Ria’s belly twisted.

She glared at Sutton—they were almost at eye level, since he was standing on the ground and she on the porch—and held her folded arms even more tightly against her chest. “Maybe you’ve heard the old saying?” she bit out. “‘Good fences make for good neighbors’?”

Landry sobered a little, but a glint of mischief lingered in his eyes. “Do they?” he countered, charitably amenable.

Condescending SOB. He was nettling her on purpose and, worse, he was enjoying it.

Ria glowered back at him. She was a sensible person, so what was stopping her from just turning around, without another word, and marching straight into her house and slamming the door in his handsome face for good measure?

No answer came to her.

Landry sighed heavily, as though sorely put-upon, his broad shoulders rising and falling slightly as he inhaled and then thrust out a breath. “Look,” he said, sounding resigned now. “I’m sorry about what happened, but all I can do is apologize and make restitution—”

“You could also build better fences,” Ria suggested tersely. Who was this snippy woman inhabiting her body? Her normal self was pleasant and friendly, at least most of the time, but there were things about Landry Sutton—some of them impossible to put into words—that just plain got on her last nerve and stayed there.

Now he folded his arms. Was he doing that rapport thing, reflecting her stance? Trying to win her over with body language?

Fat chance.

“My fences,” he replied tautly, “are just fine. Most likely, somebody left a gate open somewhere, that’s all.”

“That’s all?” Ria sputtered, still wondering why she was prolonging this conversation when all she wanted was to go back inside, take a hot bath, read for an hour and then fall into the warm oblivion of a good night’s sleep. Once she drifted off, she wouldn’t have to think about her too-sexy neighbor, her demanding half sister, Meredith, or the fact that she’d bought a flower farm in the heart of Podunk County, Montana, and was barely making a go of the enterprise, even without the perils of free-range buffalo. “These flowers aren’t just for decorating my yard, Mr. Sutton,” she added primly. “I earn a good part of my living selling them. I won’t know for certain until morning, when I can see clearly enough to assess the damage, but there’s a reasonable chance that some or all of my crop has been wiped out.” She sucked in a breath, huffed it out. “Surely, you can see why I’d be concerned?”

Her tone implied that he couldn’t, being oblivious and all.

At this, Landry looked both exasperated and apologetic. He sighed again, shoved a hand through his hair. “Yes,” he answered, in a measured tone. “If I didn’t say it before, I’m sorry.”

“You didn’t,” Ria said briskly. She hadn’t intended to say what came out of her mouth next; it just happened, and she didn’t have the luxury of unsaying the words. “Why can’t you raise cattle or chickens or hogs or sheep, like everyone else around here? Why does it have to be buffalo?”

A muscle tightened in Landry’s fine jaw, relaxed again, as if by force of will. “Well, for one thing, I’m not like ‘everyone else around here,’” he retorted. Then he narrowed his eyes, studied her for a long, scrumptiously uncomfortable moment and added, “And unless I miss my guess, Ms. Manning, you’re not, either.”

Heat suffused Ria’s entire body, and a rush of—well, something—quivered in her belly and hardened her nipples and set her heart to pounding. All her life, she’d wanted to fit in, to belong, though something inside her always rebelled, in the end, causing her to go her own way instead of following the herd.

She’d thought, until this night, until this instant, that no one else knew her secret, that she was different. Even her late husband, Frank, had never seen through the act, as intimate as they’d been, and now here was Landry Sutton, of all people, calling her out, subtly questioning the facade she’d worked so hard to maintain.