Big Sky Secrets

by Linda Lael Miller

  “Hi,” Quinn greeted the other girl, relaxing a little. “I’m Quinn Whittingford.”

  Clare’s smile was warm and a little mischievous. She smiled a hello at Ria, then turned her attention back to Quinn. “I’m throwing a slumber party at our ranch tonight,” she said. “Whisper Creek? Anyhow, we’re going to have a ginormous tent, plenty of music and a barbecue to remember. Want to come?”

  Quinn actually blushed a little, she was so pleased—and probably surprised—by the invitation. Ria knew Meredith normally kept the girl on a short rein, back in Portland, and, since she could be sure Casey and Walker would be keeping a close eye on the evening’s proceedings, she certainly wouldn’t forbid her niece from going.

  “Could I bring my dog?” Quinn asked, after a few moments of awkward silence.

  Ria, still busy making sales, followed the conversation between the two girls without missing a beat, pleased that Quinn was already making friends in a new place.

  “Sure,” Clare said readily, with another dazzling smile. “We have all kinds of critters running around at our place. One more won’t do any harm.”

  “Would it be okay with you?” Quinn asked Ria. “If I went to the slumber party, I mean?” Again, the girl seemed to expect a flat refusal.

  Ria’s smile took in both Clare and Quinn. “I don’t see why not,” she said. “It sounds like lots of fun.”

  Quinn glowed like a pair of headlights on high beam.

  Clare, meanwhile, returned Ria’s smile and said she’d pick Quinn up at the farm around six-thirty, if that wasn’t too early.

  After another careful glance at Ria, who nodded to indicate that six-thirty would be just fine, Quinn told Clare, still a bit shy, that she’d be ready to go.

  The next several hours flew by and, since they ran out of flowers around four in the afternoon, Ria decided to close up early. She and Quinn loaded the now-empty buckets, having dumped the remaining water into the dirt outside the exhibition hall, gave the booth a swift cleaning and left, stopping at various points on the way to the exit so Ria could introduce her niece to some of the other sellers and a few of the shoppers.

  After giving Bones a short spin around the parking lot, just in case, they all climbed into the truck, ready to head for home.

  At least, Quinn was ready. Ria, on the other hand, was getting more and more nervous, because tonight was the night. A simple date would have been unsettling in itself, but this was more than a date. Landry had basically challenged Ria to go out with him, to resist him. The egomaniac.

  Backing out wasn’t an option, however well-advised it might seem. That would be the same as admitting that Landry was right, that she was afraid to get too close, afraid to be vulnerable, afraid of just about everything.

  The irony? She was afraid.

  But she was going to the Boot Scoot Tavern with Landry Sutton anyhow, mainly because her pride overruled her common sense.

  There was an ominous grinding sound when Ria turned the key in the truck’s ignition, then—nothing. Not even a faint purr or a tiny buzz.

  She tried again. Same result.

  Much in need of a shower and a few minutes to put up her feet and do nothing at all, Ria sighed in frustration and swore under her breath.

  Quinn rolled her eyes, Bones standing on his hind legs in her lap, smudging up the passenger-side window, but she didn’t say anything.

  Before Ria could offer her niece any reassurance that she wasn’t going to miss Clare’s party, she spotted two familiar male figures approaching from different directions.

  Her close neighbor Walker Parrish, she noted with relief, and Slade Barlow, the former sheriff of Parable County, who lived on a ranch just outside Parable, with his wife, Joslyn, and a flock of kids, as well as a sizable herd of cattle and numerous horses.

  The men met in front of Ria’s truck’s hood; both of them offered her a slanted smile, through the windshield, and tugged at the brims of their hats.

  “Knights in shining armor?” Quinn asked, with a note of hope. Of course she was still fretting about not getting home in time to get ready for the shindig, not to mention a good chance to get to know some kids her own age.

  Ria was already rolling down her window. “Something like that,” she replied with a little smile.

  Slade pushed back his hat, scratched his head thoughtfully and popped the rusty hood. As it rose with a whine of rusted hinges, Walker approached Ria’s side of the rig.

  “What’s the trouble?” he asked, unperturbed. Just another cowboy, taking another problem in stride. No sweat.

  “I don’t know,” Ria said. “It just won’t start.”

  Walker nodded, acknowledging Quinn, but he was the proverbial man of few words, pretty much incapable of small talk, and so was Slade, so neither of them spared the girl a verbal “hello.”

  “We’ll see what we can do,” Walker told Ria, before heading around to the front of the truck.

  With the hood in the way, both men were blocked from sight.

  “Are all the guys in this town hot?” Quinn asked, in a loud whisper.

  Ria chuckled and shushed her.

  After a few minutes spent examining the engine with Slade, Walker sprinted off toward his truck, returned in moments to park the rig close to Ria’s pickup. Jumper cables were strung between the two vehicles.

  At a wave from Walker, Ria turned over the ignition again.

  A low growl, but no start-up.

  For her part, Ria thought being stranded had its advantages, because it meant she’d have a viable excuse to call off an evening with Landry without chickening out, but she knew Quinn couldn’t get home soon enough. She was biting her lower lip, stroking Bones with one hand and staring wistfully off into space.

  On the next try, after a second signal from Walker, the truck’s ancient engine came to life with a lusty roar. The hood came down with a thump, latching itself in place.

  So much for fate giving her an easy out, Ria thought, surprised to find that she wasn’t all that disappointed. In fact, there was a disturbing little tingle of anticipation quivering in the pit of her stomach, another at the back of her throat, still another suspended midway between her hipbones.

  Blushing because of the images tumbling into her brain in response to that damn tingle, she thanked Walker and Slade for their help. They simply nodded, spoke briefly to each other and went their separate ways.

  “What are you going to wear?” Quinn asked as they cruised through Parable, headed for the highway that led to Three Trees. “On your date, I mean?”

  Ria swallowed the throat tingle, though the others wouldn’t be quelled, and countered, “Let’s talk about your evening instead. You’ll need a sleeping bag—I think I have one in the storeroom in the basement—not that you’ll do all that much sleeping probably.”

  Quinn grinned, but the twinkle in her eyes conveyed the message that she wasn’t fooled, even if she had allowed herself to be sidetracked. “I can’t believe I get to do this,” she marveled quietly.

  “Surely you’ve been to slumber parties before—”

  But Quinn shook her head. “Nope,” she said. “Meredith thinks overnighters are a threat to civilization as we know it.”

  Pleasantly tired from a day’s work, mentally flipping through the unremarkable contents of her closet for the right outfit to wear to a cowboy bar, Ria laughed out loud.

  And it was a sound of pure joy.

  CHAPTER EIGHT

  LANDRY, HAVING SPENT most of the day over at Zane and Brylee’s place, helping to herd cattle from one patch of grazing land to another, then riding a few fence lines for good measure, got home in time to do his own chores and grab a long, hot shower.

  He stepped into the kitchen, wearing clean clothes and a pair of boots he reserved for things that didn’t involve mud or manure, like funerals or supper at somebody else’s house. While he wasn’t the sort to play hard-to-get, he didn’t want to seem too eager, either, when he knocked at Ria’s door half an ho
ur from now.

  He’d been a little overgenerous with the aftershave, he supposed, and he’d about brushed the enamel right off his teeth before rinsing with a healthy slug of mouthwash—god-awful stuff that tasted like kerosene—but the effects would probably be subtle.

  Highbridge, seated at the kitchen table in front of his personal laptop, raised both his bushy eyebrows at the sight of Landry. His nose twitched slightly as he caught the scent of aftershave.

  “Ah,” the venerable butler said, without inflection, his long face bland, “Saturday night. Time to cut a rug, so to speak, on what passes for a dance floor at some cowboy dive with smoke in the air and sawdust on the floor.”

  Landry grinned. “That was a colorful description,” he replied, crossing to the cupboards, taking out a tall glass and filling it with cold tap water. “In fact, I can’t recall the last time I heard the phrase ‘cut a rug.’ Shall I assume you still don’t approve—as usual?”

  With that, he raised the glass to his mouth, swilled down half the water inside. The stuff took away some of the taste of mouthwash, and anyway, a day on horseback, rounding up stray cattle and checking for breaks in the fences, left a man feeling thirsty.

  “I have nothing against cowboy bars,” Highbridge replied, his tone lofty, his diction deliberate. “It is not the kind of place men of my generation took a lady. A lightskirt, perhaps, but not a lady.”

  A “lightskirt”? Quaint terminology that, but then, that was Highbridge all over—quaint.

  Taking special care not to laugh, lest he choke to death or spew water in all directions, Landry concentrated on swallowing, emptied the glass, set it down next to the sink with a mild thump. “Well,” he said, “since we missed out on last night’s bingo game and there don’t seem to be any ice cream socials or formal cotillions on the horizon, I guess the Boot Scoot will have to do, just this once.”

  Highbridge huffed out a small, exasperated sigh. “Ria Manning is a fine woman,” he said.

  Landry nodded. “That she is,” he agreed.

  Highbridge pushed back his chair and turned away from his laptop screen, though he didn’t stand up. “Don’t forget it,” he replied evenly.

  Landry let the warning roll off his back, then gave a snappy salute, but the thought of the box of condoms he’d tucked away in the glove compartment of his truck earlier did cross his mind. He’d had them for a while, and he hoped they were still good—not that he figured he had a chance in hell of using any, not this early in the game, anyhow.

  The game?

  Good thing Highbridge couldn’t hear his thoughts.

  Landry intended, absolutely, to get Ria into bed, the sooner the better, but he wasn’t playing around, the way Highbridge seemed to think he was. Whatever else she represented, Ria Manning was serious business.

  Highbridge, his formerly expressionless face a mask of disapproval now, got to his feet, snapped the laptop shut and tucked it under one arm, a signal that he was done suffering fools for the duration. Sure enough, he started for his quarters, in back of the kitchen, but midway, he stopped, turned his head and favored Landry with a long, warning glare.

  The way the man was acting, Landry thought, with a slight touch of annoyance, a person would have thought he was Ria’s father, or maybe an overprotective big brother or uncle, instead of a much-older friend. “I shall bid you good-night, sir,” the butler said, every word starched fit to stand up on its own.

  Landry couldn’t resist a mild gibe. “Don’t wait up,” he replied.

  * * *

  ARRIVING HOME FROM the farmers’ market, Ria parked the truck in the equipment shed, unloaded the buckets and stacked them in a corner. Quinn gave Bones some time to run around the yard, pee against the rose arbor and generally unwind after a full day of being a very, very good dog.

  Inside the house, Ria washed her hands at the kitchen sink, glanced at the clock and felt her nerve endings jump, all at once.

  The big date.

  It’s really going to happen.

  She’d been an idiot to accept Landry’s dare, Ria knew that only too well, but there was no going back now without coming off as a coward, so she might as well prepare as best she could, steel herself to resist some serious temptation.

  Trying to stay in the present moment, she searched for and found the sleeping bag she’d promised Quinn, unrolled and unzipped it and hung it over the clothesline in the backyard to air out a little.

  When Ria came inside again, she could hear the shower running. Don’t use up all the hot water, she thought ruefully. As usual, her workday had left her feeling grungy. Her practical self would have chosen a hot bath, a light supper and a book over a date with the hottest cowboy in Parable County, if not the whole of Montana, but another part of her had the upper hand, and that part wanted to play with fire, dance on the edge of a high precipice, spread her wings and soar.

  Landry Sutton, up close and personal. Resisting him would be a real challenge, and she would resist him, just to prove that she could. They’d made a sort of informal wager, she and Landry, and Ria intended to win.

  Since she couldn’t go back in time and refuse the initial invitation, which would have been her first choice, there was nothing else to do but feed Bones his supper and brave the wilds of her closet in search of something to wear.

  Ria didn’t own anything that would be called sexy—just cotton sundresses, an outfit she reserved for church—when she went to church, that was—a few lightweight cardigan sweaters, half a dozen T-shirts, two summer tops and a whole lot of denim.

  As for footwear, she had sneakers, house slippers, work shoes, some high heels, remnants of her previous incarnation as an accountant at Meredith’s company, and one pair of black Western boots she didn’t remember buying.

  Talk about uninspiring.

  Okay, so she wasn’t out to stun Sutton with glamour, but she didn’t want to look drab, either.

  She finally selected her newest pair of blue jeans and a faded yellow print top, sleeveless, with a modest neckline and a few ruffles, laid the garments out on her bed, along with fresh underwear and a pair of thin socks.

  When Quinn finally came out of the bathroom, trailed by billows of steam and one small and very attentive dog, Ria grabbed her sensible blue chenille bathrobe, hoping the water in the shower wasn’t running cold, because she wanted to wash her hair as well as scrub herself spotless.

  As it turned out, the water wasn’t actually cold—just lukewarm—and Ria made quick work of sudsing up, shaving her legs and finally shampooing and rinsing. Stepping out of the shower stall, she wrapped her shivering self in a towel and moved to stand in front of the mirror above the sink.

  By the time she was finished, the water had taken on a distinct chill. At least there hadn’t been any steam to cloud up the glass, she thought, amused, even as goose bumps broke out all over her body. She hadn’t had to share a bathroom in a very long time, and it would take some getting used to, living with a teenager.

  After deciding on just a skim of makeup—tinted moisturizer, a swipe of mascara, some blusher and lip gloss—Ria brushed her teeth, blow-dried her dark hair and went back to her room to get dressed.

  The jeans were still right where she’d put them fifteen minutes before, and so were the boots, underwear and socks. The yellow cotton top, however, had mysteriously disappeared, to be replaced with something clingy and pink, with a V-shaped neckline.

  “Quinn?” she called.

  Her niece opened the door, stood on the threshold, grinning. “That shirt looked like an upcycled flour sack,” she said. “So I swapped it out for one of mine.”

  Ria frowned. “What do you know about flour sacks?” she asked, apropos of nothing much. It was a handy way to stall, though, to hold off the moment when she and Quinn would have to mention The Date. “I’ll bet nobody’s even seen one since the 1960s.”

  “Au contraire,” Quinn replied pertly. “There was a whole big pile of them at the farmers’ market today—in the quilt
ing club’s booth. They’re billed as ‘vintage fabrics’ and they sold like crazy.”

  Ria sighed, eyeing the pink top again. She must have bought it for Quinn the night before, along with piles of other clothes, though she didn’t recall it specifically. It was a mere snippet of shimmery softness, and it would look sweetly innocent on Quinn. On her, however, it would be about as subtle as a billboard reading “Take me now, cowboy—I’m all yours.”

  “I can’t wear this,” she protested, albeit weakly. The color of the top reminded her of cotton candy, or the delicate petals of spring tulips, and it felt silky between her fingers...

  She let go of the garment, drew back her hand as though she’d been burned.

  Quinn giggled. “Why not?” she asked lightly. “It’ll look great on you.”

  “Maybe I don’t want to look ‘great,’” Ria suggested, with a sour glance at her niece. She was already wavering, though, and Quinn probably knew it.

  It might be kind of nice, wearing something wispy and ultrafeminine for once.

  “Just try it on,” Quinn urged sweetly. And then she stepped back and closed the bedroom door without waiting for a reply.

  Ria hesitated for what seemed like a long time, though it was probably a matter of seconds, and finally, fretfully, gave in to temptation and pulled the top over her head, marched over to the mirror above her dresser.

  She looked—well—not like her usual T-shirted self. Her skin glowed, and even though she hadn’t put on any makeup yet, her cheeks were a pretty shade of very pale apricot. Her eyes shone, strikingly blue, and her freshly washed hair gleamed ebony, softly framing her face. And there was something sultry lurking there in her reflected self, too, hidden for now but waiting for just the right moment to jump out at her—or, more likely, at Landry.

  “Yikes,” she whispered.

  Bones began to bark excitedly just then, and Ria heard the sound of a car or truck out front, coming to a stop. One door slammed, then another.