Big Sky Mountain

The Reverend Lloyd Atherton, like Martie, was a fixture in Parable. Long-winded though he was, everybody loved him.

Kendra made a donation, in lieu of a fee, listened to a brief and heartrending explanation of Daisy’s background—she’d literally been left on Martie’s doorstep in a cardboard box along with six of her brothers and sisters—and signed a simple document promising to return Daisy to Paws for Reflection if things didn’t work out.

“Is Daisy hungry?” Madison wanted to know. It was a subtle nudge. We’re in a hurry.

Martie smiled. “Puppies always seem to think they are, but Daisy had a bowl of kibble less than half an hour ago. She’ll be just fine until supper time.”

Madison nodded, apparently satisfied. She was staring raptly at the little dog, stroking its soft coat as she waited for the adoption to be finalized.

Soon enough, the details had been handled and Madison was in the back of the Volvo again, buckled into her booster seat, with Daisy sitting alertly beside her, panting in happy anticipation of whatever.

They made a quick stop at the big discount store out on the highway, leaving Daisy waiting patiently in the car with a window partly rolled down for air while they rushed inside to buy assorted gear—a collar and leash, a package of poop bags, a fleecy bed large enough for a golden retriever puppy to grow into, grooming supplies, a few toys and the brand of kibble Martie had recommended.

Daisy was thrilled at their return and when Kendra tossed the bed into the backseat, the animal frolicked back and forth across the expanse of it, unable to contain her delight, causing Madison to laugh in a way Kendra had never heard her laugh before—rambunctiously and without self-consciousness or restraint.

It was a beautiful thing to hear and Kendra was glad there were so many small tasks to be performed before she could put the car in motion, because her vision was a little blurred.

Back at the guesthouse, Kendra put away the dog’s belongings while Madison and Daisy ran frenetically around the backyard, both of them bursting with pent-up energy and pure celebration of each other.

“We need a poop bag, please,” Madison announced presently, appearing in the cottage doorway, a vision in her little blue Sunday-school dress.

Smiling, Kendra opened the pertinent package, followed Madison outside to the evidence and proceeded to demonstrate the proper collection and disposal of dog doo-doo.

Afterward, she insisted they both wash their hands at the bathroom sink.

Daisy looked on from the doorway, wagging her tail and looking pleased to be in the midst of so much interesting activity.

Lunch, long overdue by then, was next on the agenda. Madison and Kendra made peanut butter and jelly sandwiches in the impossibly small kitchen, and Kendra poured a glass of milk for both of them.

Daisy settled herself near Madison’s chair, ears perked forward, nose raised to sniff the air, probably hoping that manna, in the form of scraps of a PB and J, might fall from heaven.

Martie had been adamant on that point, though. No people food and very few treats. The treat a dog needed most, she’d said, was plenty of love and affection.

When the meal was over and the table had been cleared, Madison announced, yawning, that Daisy had had a big morning and therefore needed a nap.

Amused—Madison normally napped only under protest—Kendra suggested that they ought to change out of their church clothes first.

Madison put on pink cotton shorts and a blue short-sleeved shirt, and Kendra opted for jeans and a lightweight green pullover. When she came out of the bedroom, Madison and Daisy were already curled up together on the new fleece dog bed, and Kendra didn’t have the heart to raise an objection.

Lie down with dogs, get up with fleas, she heard her grandmother say.

Shut up, Gramma, was her silent response.

“Sleep tight,” she said aloud, taking a book from the shelf and stepping outside, planning to sit in the shade of the maple trees and read for a while.

The scene was idyllic—bees buzzing, flowers nodding their many-colored heads in the light breeze, the big Montana sky sweeping blue and cloudless and eternal overhead.

Kendra relaxed as she read, and at some point, she must have dozed off, because she opened her eyes suddenly and found Hutch Carmody standing a few feet away, big as life.

She blinked a couple of times, but he didn’t disappear.

Not a dream, then. Crap.

“Sorry,” he said without a smidgeon of regret. “Didn’t mean to wake you.”

Kendra straightened and glanced toward the open doorway of the cottage, looking for Madison. There was no sign of either the child or the dog, but Kendra went inside to check on them anyway. They were both sleeping, curled up together on Daisy’s cloud-soft bed.

Quietly, Kendra went back outside to face Hutch.

How could she not have heard him arrive? His truck was parked right there in the driveway, a stone’s throw from where she’d been sitting. At the very least, she should have heard the tires in the gravel or the closing of the driver’s door.

“What are you doing here?” she whispered, too rattled to be polite.

Hutch spread his hands wide, grinning. “I’m unarmed,” he said, sidestepping the question. He was, she recalled, a master at sidestepping any topic he didn’t want to discuss. “Don’t shoot.”

Kendra huffed out a sigh, picked up her book, which she’d dropped in the grass when she’d woken up to an eyeful of Hutch, and held it tightly against her side. “What. Are. You. Doing. Here?” she repeated.

He gestured for her to sit down, and since her knees were weak, she dropped back into her lawn chair. He drew another one up alongside hers and sat. They were both gazing straight ahead, like two strangers in the same row on an airplane, intent on the seat belt/oxygen mask lecture from an invisible flight attendant.

“Tell me about your little girl,” Hutch finally said.

“Why should I?” Kendra asked reasonably, proud of her calm tone.

“I guess because she could have been ours,” he replied.

For a moment, Kendra felt as if he’d elbowed her, hard, or even punched her in the stomach. Once the adrenaline rush subsided, though, she knew there was no point in withholding the information.

A person could practically throw a rock from one end of Parable to the other and juicy stories got around fast.

“You’ll hear about it soon enough,” she conceded, though ungraciously, keeping her voice down in case Madison woke up and somehow homed in on the conversation, “so I might as well tell you.”

Hutch gave a long-suffering sigh and she felt him looking in her direction now, though she was careful not to meet his gaze. “Might as well,” he agreed quietly.

“Not that it’s any of your business,” Kendra pointed out.

He simply waited.

Distractedly, Kendra wondered if the man thought she’d given birth to Madison herself and kept her existence hidden from everyone in Parable all this time.

“Madison is adopted,” she said. It was a simple statement, but it left her feeling as though she’d spilled her guts on some ludicrous tell-all TV show.

“Why do I think there’s more to the story?” Hutch asked after a pause. His very patience galled Kendra—what right did he have to be patient? This was a courtesy explanation—she didn’t owe it to him. She didn’t owe him anything except maybe a broken heart.

“Madison’s father was my ex-husband,” Kendra said. Suddenly, she wanted to cry and it had nothing to do with her previous hesitation to talk about something so bruising and private. Why couldn’t Madison have been born to her, as she should have been?

“And her mother?”

Once again, Kendra looked to make sure Madison hadn’t turned up in the cottage doorway, all ears. “She was one of Jeffrey’s girlfriends.”

Hutch swore under his breath. “That rat bastard,” he added a moment later.

Kendra stiffened her spine, squared her shoulders, jutted out her chin a little way. “I beg your pardon?” she said in a tone meant to point out the sheer irony, not to mention the audacity, of the pot calling the kettle black.

“Could we not argue, just this once?” Hutch asked hoarsely.

“Just this once,” Kendra said, and one corner of her mouth twitched with a strange urge to smile. Probably some form of hysteria, she decided.

“I’m sorry I called your ex-husband a rat bastard,” Hutch offered.

“You are not,” Kendra challenged, still without looking at him. Except out of the corner of one eye, that is.

“All right,” Hutch ground out, “fine.” He sighed and shoved a hand through his hair. “Let me rephrase that. I’m sorry I didn’t keep my opinion to myself.”

A brief, sputtering laugh escaped Kendra then. “Since when have you ever been known to keep your opinion to yourself?”

“You’re determined to turn this into a shouting match, aren’t you?”

“No,” Kendra said pointedly, bristling. “I am not planning on arguing with you, Hutch Carmody. Not ever again.”

“Kendra,” Hutch said, “you can hedge and stall all you want, but eventually we’re going to have this conversation, so we might as well just go ahead and get it done.”

She made a swatting motion in his general direction, as though trying to chase away a fly. Now she was digging in her heels again and she couldn’t seem to help it. “Madison is my daughter now, and that’s all that matters.”

“You’re an amazing woman, Kendra,” Hutch told her, and he sounded so serious that she swiveled on the seat of her lawn chair to look at him with narrowed, suspicious eyes.

“I mean it,” he said with a gruff chuckle, the sound gentle and yet innately masculine. “Some people couldn’t handle raising another woman’s child—under those circumstances, anyhow.”

“It isn’t Madison’s fault that Jeffrey Chamberlain was a—”

Hutch’s mouth crooked up at one corner and sad mischief danced in his eyes. “Rat bastard?” he finished for her.

“Yes,” she said. “That’s about the size of it.”

He grinned full-out, which put him at an unfair advantage because when he did that, her bones turned to jelly and her IQ plummeted at least twenty points. “Well now,” he said. “We finally agree on something.”

“Go figure,” Kendra remarked, going for a snippy tone but not quite getting there.

“We’re on a roll.”

“Or not.”

He laughed, shook his head. “I’m about to say something you’ll have to agree with, whether you want to or not,” he warned.

She felt a weird little thrill and could have shaken herself for it. “Is that so?”

Hutch nodded toward the cottage doorway, where Madison finally stood, rubbing her eyes and yawning, Daisy at her side. “You’re lucky to have that little girl in your life, however it came about, and the reverse is true, too. You were born to be a mother, Kendra—and a good one.”

“Damn it,” Kendra muttered, at a loss for a comeback.

Hutch grinned as Madison’s eyes widened—she was slowly waking up—and a glorious smile lit her face. She scrambled toward them.

“Hello, cowboy man!” she whooped, feet still bare, curls rumpled, cheeks flushed.

Hutch laughed again. “I guess you might as well call me that as anything else,” he said. He exuded the kind of quiet, wholesome approval little girls crave from daddy-types.

Not that Hutch was any such thing.

“Do you like dogs?” Madison asked earnestly.

As if she’d already made her own decision on that score, Daisy suddenly leaped into Hutch’s lap in a single bound, bracing her forepaws on his shoulders and licking his face.

“Yep,” he said from behind all that squirming dog. “And, as you can see, they’re inclined to like me, too.”

“Good,” Madison said.

Kendra felt unaccountably nervous, though she couldn’t have said why. “Madison—” she began, but her voice fell away.

“Do you like kids, too?” Madison pressed.

Kendra groaned inwardly.

Hutch set Daisy carefully on the ground, patting her still-bouncing head. “I like kids just fine,” he said.

“Do you have any?”

Hutch shook his head. “Nope.”

“Madison,” Kendra repeated, with no more effect than before.

“Do you like my Mommy, too?”

Kendra squeezed her eyes shut.

“As a matter of fact,” Hutch replied easily, “I do. Your mother and I are old friends.”

Kendra squirmed again and forced herself to open her eyes.

Even rummaged up a smile that wouldn’t quite stick.

Before she could think of anything to say, however, Hutch unfolded himself from his lawn chair with Madison standing nearby, still basking in his presence. “I guess I’d better head on home before I wear out my welcome,” he drawled, and there was a twinkle in his eyes when he snagged Kendra’s gaze. “See you around,” he added.

Madison caught hold of his hand. “Wait,” she said, in a near whisper.

He leaned down, resting his hands on his knees. “What?” he asked, with a smile in his voice.

“Will you be at the rodeo thing?” Madison continued.

“Sure enough,” Hutch said, his tone and manner so void of condescension that he might have been addressing another adult. Maybe that was his gift, that he treated children like people, not some lesser species. “Never miss it. After all, I’m a cowboy man.”

Madison beamed, evidently satisfied, and when Daisy bounded off in pursuit of a passing butterfly, her small mistress gamboled after her, arms wheeling as if she might take flight.

“Cowboy man,” Kendra reflected thoughtfully.

“I’ve been called worse,” Hutch joked.

“That’s a fact,” Kendra said brightly. She could have listed half a dozen names she’d called him over the years, to his face and in the privacy of her own head.

Whistling some ditty under his breath, and still grinning, Hutch turned and headed for his truck, lifting a hand in farewell as he went.

He got behind the wheel and drove away, and Kendra didn’t watch him go.

* * *

“YOU’RE WAY TOO pregnant to be at work,” Kendra told Joslyn the next day, stepping into the storefront office after dropping Madison off for the morning preschool session and leaving Daisy at Tara’s for a doggy playdate with Lucy, only to find her business partner already there, tapping away at the keyboard of her computer.

Joslyn flashed her a smile as she looked up from the monitor. “So I hear,” she said. She sighed good-naturedly. “From Slade. From Opal. From Callie.”

“And now, from me,” Kendra replied, setting her handbag on the edge of the desk since she’d be going out again as soon as she’d checked her messages. She was due at her lawyer’s office at ten-thirty, which was why she hadn’t brought Daisy to work with her.

Madison had been beside herself at the thought of Daisy being left at home alone because, as she’d explained it, “Daisy is a puppy and a puppy is the same as a baby and a baby needs somebody with it at all times.”

Kendra had given in, at least temporarily.

“You’re supposed to be on maternity leave, remember?” she prompted, happy to see her friend for whatever reason, all protests aside.

“Ouch,” Joslyn said out of nowhere, spreading a hand over her zeppelin of a belly and making a wincey face.

“Is the little guy practicing his rodeo moves again?” Kendra asked, smiling. If only every baby could be born into a union as loving and warm as Joslyn and Slade’s—it would be a different world.

“It would seem he’s switched to pole vaulting,” Joslyn said in a tone of cheerful acceptance. After a few slow, deep breaths, she focused on the computer monitor again. “Come over here and check out this listing, Kendra. It’s a rental, but I think it might be exactly what you’ve been looking for.”

Immediately interested, Kendra rounded her friend’s desk to stand behind her and peer at the small white house on the screen. She recognized it, of course; she had at least a passing knowledge of every piece of property in Parable County, be it residential or commercial.

This charming little one-story colonial, with its white clapboard walls and green shutters and wraparound porch, was situated across the street from the town park, just two blocks from the public library. Both Madison’s preschool and the new real estate office were within easy walking distance.

“Why didn’t I know about this?” Kendra mused, studying the enticing image on the monitor.

Joslyn raised and lowered one shoulder, very slightly. “You’ve been out of town,” she replied. “Plus we only sell real estate, we don’t manage rentals.”

Kendra’s brain sifted through the facts she already knew: the colonial had belonged to attorney Maggie Landers’s late aunt, Billie. Upon Billie’s death, at least a decade before, Maggie had inherited the property. She’d had some much-needed renovations done, Kendra recalled, but never actually lived in the house herself. She’d rented it out to a schoolteacher, long-term. Now, apparently, it was empty—or about to be.

She practically dived for the telephone. Sure she already had an appointment with Maggie about Madison’s trust fund, but she didn’t want someone else snapping up the house.

Maggie’s front office assistant put Kendra through to the boss right away.

“Tell me you’re not canceling our appointment,” Maggie said without preamble. “If you do, you’ll be the third one today.”

Kendra’s heart had begun to pound. “No,” she said quickly, smiling. Hoping. “No, it isn’t that—I’ll be there at ten-thirty, like we agreed—”

“Kendra,” Maggie broke in, sounding concerned now. “What on earth is the matter? You sound as though you’ve just completed a triathlon.”

“Your house—the rental—Joslyn just showed me the listing on the internet—”

Maggie gave a nervous little laugh and Kendra could see her in her mind’s eye, fiddling with that strand of priceless pearls she always wore. “Yes? What about it?”

“Is it still available?”

Maggie sounded relieved when she answered, “Of course. The ad just went up today.”

“I’ll take it,” Kendra burst out. Her own recklessness left her gasping for breath—she never did reckless things. Well, not reckless things that didn’t involve Hutch Carmody, anyway.

“Sight unseen?” Maggie echoed.

“It’s perfect for Madison and me,” Kendra said, relaxing a little.

“Don’t you even want to know how much the rent will be?”

Kendra strained to see Joslyn’s monitor again and scanned quickly for the price. “That won’t be a problem,” she nearly chimed.

Maggie was quiet for a few moments, taking it all in. “All right,” she said finally. “Come early and we’ll go over the details of the trust fund, then run over to the house so you can have a look inside before you commit yourself to a year’s lease—”

Kendra bit back a very un-Kendra-like response, which would have gone something like this: I’m committing right now. Do you hear me? Right now!

“Fine,” she said moderately. “But please don’t show it to anyone else in the meantime.”

“In the meantime?” Maggie echoed, with a friendly little laugh. “As in, say, the next half hour? Relax, Kendra—if you want the house, it’s yours.”

Joslyn was grinning throughout the whole conversation.

“Thank you,” Kendra said, near tears, she was so excited. She said goodbye, hung up and grabbed her purse from the corner of her desk.

“Kendra,” Joslyn said, “take a breath. It’s meant to be.”

“That,” Kendra retorted lightly, already on her way to the door, car keys in hand, “is what you said about Hutch and me. Remember?”

“Oh,” Joslyn answered breezily, “I haven’t changed my mind on that score. Sooner or later, I’m sure you’ll both come around.”

Kendra shook her head, gave a rueful chuckle. “Don’t work too hard,” she said, opening the office door. “If you’re still here when I get back, I’ll buy you lunch at the Butter Biscuit.”

“One more lunch at the Butter Biscuit,” Joslyn said, “and I’ll be a butterball. Anyway, I promised to meet Shea at the Curly Burly at one—we’re going shopping.”

Kendra nodded and rushed out.

Five minutes later, she was seated in Maggie’s office, on the very edge of her chair.

Maggie had already warned her that building a legal structure that would protect Madison’s considerable financial interests would require a series of meetings, if only because of the complexity of the task.

Kendra listened to Maggie’s explanations and suggestions as patiently as she could, but her mind was on the one-story colonial with the fenced backyard. This, too, was unlike her—she usually focused keenly on whatever she was doing at the time, but today, it was impossible.

Maggie, a pretty woman with short hair, gamine eyes and very nice clothes, finally chuckled and laid down her expensive fountain pen.

“You’re not getting a word of this, are you, Kendra?” she asked.

Kendra smiled and shook her head. “I’m sorry. From the moment I realized the house might be available, I’ve been fidgety.”

Maggie collected her handbag from a drawer of her desk. “Then let’s go and do the walk-through,” she said. “Then we’ll come back here and take another shot at running the numbers for Madison’s fund.”

“I’d like that,” Kendra said, feeling almost giddy.

“Follow me, then,” Maggie said, jangling her car keys.

The cottage had been freshly painted, Kendra noticed with a pang of sweet avarice, and so had the picket fence out front. The flower beds were in full bloom and the lawn, newly mown, smelled sweetly of cut grass.

It was so easy to imagine herself and Madison living here.

“I knew you were selling the mansion, of course,” Maggie said when they got out of their cars and met on the sidewalk in front of the colonial. “But I guess I thought you’d be in the market to buy a place, rather than rent.”

“I did plan on buying,” Kendra answered, letting her gaze wander over the sleeping-in-the-sunshine face of that perfect little house, “but I’m learning that it’s wise to be open to surprises.”

Maggie smiled and opened the creaky gate. “Isn’t that the truth?” she responded.

CHAPTER FOUR

WHEN HUTCH FINALLY caught up with Brylee, she was in her small but well-organized warehouse on the outskirts of Three Trees, helping to stack boxes as they were unloaded from the back of a delivery truck.

Clad in jeans, sneakers and a blue U of M pullover, she looked more like a teenager than a thirty-year-old woman with a successful business and a bad-luck wedding day to her credit. Her russet-brown hair hung down her back in a long, fairly tidy braid, and she hadn’t bothered with makeup.

She didn’t notice Hutch right away and he used those moments to gather his resolve, all the while wishing he felt something for Brylee—God knew, she was beautiful and she was sweet and she was smart. She was definitely wife and mother material—but she didn’t stir him down deep where it counted and that was a deal-breaker.

At last Brylee stilled, like a doe catching the scent of some threat on the wind, she turned her head his way and saw him standing just a few feet inside the roll-up doorway of the warehouse,

Her large eyes, bluish today because of the color of the shirt she was wearing, looked hollow as she took him in and he knew she was weighing her options—seriously considering walking away without deigning to speak, if not shooting him down where he stood or running him over with the first handy forklift.

Brylee had a temper and she could be as hardheaded as any statue, but she was no coward. She spoke sotto voce to the other workers, all female, all of whom were staring now, as though Hannibal Lector had just appeared in their midst, wearing the leather mask and holding a plate of fava beans, and then came slowly toward him.

Brylee ran a small but thriving party-planning company that sold home decor items and various gifts. She had a network of sales people that covered a five-state area, holding lucrative little gatherings in people’s homes, and operated a thriving online store, as well.