Big Sky Secrets

by Linda Lael Miller

  Quinn’s ride to the party at Whisper Creek had arrived, and Ria had to go out there and say hello, at least. Also on her immediate agenda: remind Quinn to (1) have a great time and (2) behave herself.

  She kept the pink top on and wriggled into her jeans before hurrying toward the living room.

  Quinn was ready to go, the sleeping bag brought in from the clothesline, rolled up neatly and resting on the floor next to the front door, her backpack beside it, Bones stationed nearby, quiet now that his personal goddess had told him to hush.

  Footsteps sounded on the porch, the decisive tap of a man’s boot heels, the lighter step and rubbery squeak of a young girl’s sneakers. Quinn opened the door before anybody could knock.

  Walker Parrish stood in front of the screen door, with Clare at his side. A company pickup waited at the base of the flagstone walk, the engine still running.

  Walker smiled at Quinn as she fumbled to unlock the screen; then, looking past the girl, he smiled at Ria, too.

  “Long time no see,” he quipped, stepping inside.

  Ria laughed, but a part of her was wondering if Walker knew about her date with Landry. Quinn might have said something to Clare back at the farmers’ market, without Ria’s knowing, of course. Word could be all over the county by now, given the way news traveled in small communities—at the speed of light.

  “Your dad is one of the guys who got the truck started for us, over at the fairgrounds,” Quinn remarked to Clare. In her world, the big city, Ria supposed, most of the people you encountered were strangers, and offers of help were suspect. With good reason, unfortunately.

  “It’s a small world,” Clare replied, eyes sparkling with laughter and, probably, the prospect of all the fun ahead.

  “Around here anyway,” Quinn answered, looking just as excited as her new friend.

  Walker bent to pick up the sleeping bag and the backpack. “Guess we ought to get on with it,” he said, with a slight grin. “We have a few more stops to make.”

  Ria was focused on Quinn again. She wasn’t the girl’s mother, but she felt responsible for her just the same. “Enjoy the party,” she said, kissing her niece’s forehead. “And be good.”

  Quinn nodded, a little rushed, and gathered Bones in her arms. He was still wearing his collar, and the leash was looped over his mistress’s left wrist.

  “And you be good, too,” Ria said, shaking one index finger in front of the dog’s small black button of a nose.

  Clare and Quinn practically stampeded out of the house, across the porch and down the steps, feet barely touching the front walk, chattering to each other as they made a beeline for Walker’s flashy extended-cab truck.

  He paused on the tattered welcome mat, holding the sleeping bag and the backpack and looking benignly rueful, no doubt thinking, as Ria was, that children grew up too fast. “We’ll look after Quinn,” he said, quite unnecessarily. “And either Casey or I will bring her back home tomorrow, probably after lunch, since these shindigs generally last till dawn. Then everybody conks out, and it takes a cannon blast to wake them up.”

  Ria nodded, enjoying the image, but that odd thickness was in her throat again, making it hard to speak. “Thanks, Walker,” she said. “My best to Casey.”

  Walker replied with a nod of his own, tugged at his hat brim one more time and walked away. Ria watched until he was in the truck, with the girls and the dog, and then, very softly, as though reluctantly marking the end of something, she closed the door.

  Alone, she turned her back to that door, leaned against it, closed her eyes and let out a long, slow breath.

  Here goes nothing, she thought.

  * * *

  WALKING UP TO Ria’s front door, with a bouquet of red, yellow and white blossoms purloined from his sister-in-law’s garden in one hand—coals to Newcastle, as Highbridge would have said, since this was, after all, a flower farm—Landry felt his palms go damp and the pit of his stomach lurch a little, as though he stepped off something solid onto thin air.

  He was thirty-four years old, but right about now, he might as well have been fourteen, he was so nervous.

  What was that about? He’d been with plenty of women, before and after Susan, even if the pickings had been a little on the slim side since he lit in Montana and decided to stay awhile, see if he liked the place. There had been a few sexual skirmishes—he was no monk, after all—but he’d been careful to confine most of his adventures to Missoula or Great Falls, where he could expect some anonymity. In Parable County, sleeping around was bound to stir up gossip, given that practically everybody knew everybody else’s business, and while loose talk wouldn’t have bothered him all that much, those of the female persuasion tended to take a different view. They had reputations to consider, and they mainly wanted wedding bands—engagement rings at the very least.

  Ria was obviously independent, and not in the market for a husband, but she was still a woman. And what other people thought mattered to her.

  Unbidden, a vivid picture of Ria, deliciously naked, sweetly willing and therefore his for the taking, loomed in Landry’s mind—a phenomenon that had been happening a lot lately. Landry’s groin tightened painfully, like powerful machinery seizing up for lack of proper oiling, and he lowered the bouquet to waist level, just in case there was visible evidence of how much he wanted her.

  Telling himself he was being stupid, if not downright juvenile, he tightened his jaw, ratcheted up his resolve and paused for a long moment before raising one hand to knock briskly on the woodwork surrounding Ria’s door.

  “Just a second,” she called cheerfully, from somewhere inside.

  Landry waited.

  Ria opened the door, let her eyes drop to the bouquet, sent them zip-lining right back up to Landry’s face. “Hi,” she said, after a short delay.

  She was wearing a top, a pink thing with no more substance than a whisper in the dark, trim jeans and boots, too, and, unless he was seeing things, lipstick and eye makeup, too.

  Landry’s spirits rose a little. Unfortunately, so did something else.

  “Hello,” he said, several beats after he should have spoken.

  “Come in,” Ria replied, a bit too brightly, stepping back to admit him. “I’ll just put those flowers in water before we leave.”

  Landry ground out a gravel-paved “all right,” then nodded for good measure, kept the things below his belt buckle as he stepped into the house. Redundant or not, he was damn glad he’d brought the blossoms—what had Brylee called them?—because it felt as if he’d shoved a chunk of firewood down the front of his pants, and he definitely needed something to take cover behind.

  He followed Ria through the small house, noted that it was tidy and almost as sparsely furnished as his own place. When they wound up in the kitchen, Landry took care to stand behind one of the ladder-back chairs surrounding the table.

  “Peonies.” Ria smiled, accepting the bouquet from his outstretched hand and taking a moment to admire them. “Mine are already dropping their petals.”

  Peonies. That was what the things were called. Silly word. Landry swallowed hard, still feeling like a kid.

  He couldn’t just stand here; he had to say something. “Brylee tells me they’re a special variety,” he croaked out. Shit, he thought. What was next? Cracks in his voice? A spontaneous outbreak of teenage acne?

  Determined, Landry cleared his throat. “They bloom late,” he finished, still quoting Brylee, because he didn’t know a damn thing about plants. She’d been pleased, his sister-in-law had—a little too pleased, as a matter of fact—when he’d shown up at her and Zane’s place about twenty minutes ago and asked for a few flowers.

  Get a grip, he told himself silently, wondering where his usual generous allotment of self-confidence had gone.

  Ria had had her back to him during the first minute or so, taking a vase from high up in a cupboard, so she had to stand on tiptoe to reach, then adding water at the sink, trimming the stems of each peony before adding it to t
he vase, all of which gave him a little time to—well—deflate. He hadn’t quite completed the process when she finally turned around, but luck was with him, as it turned out, because Ria was focused on the flowers, setting them in the center of her table, fluffing them out, rearranging this one and that.

  When all that was done, she looked at Landry again, and a little frown puckered the perfect skin between her perfect eyebrows.

  “Is something wrong?” she asked, her gaze dropping to the whitened knobs of Landry’s knuckles, where he still gripped the back of the chair.

  Landry cleared his throat again, summoned up a flimsy grin, meant to come across as cocky. “Nope,” he lied. “I’m just fine and dandy.”

  “Then why are you holding on to that chair for dear life?” Ria persisted reasonably. “If you’re not feeling well, we could postpone—”

  What Landry was feeling just then was that he was a real dope, on a steep and slippery decline into something even worse.

  The insight pricked at his pride, caused him to buck up and start acting more like himself. He consciously released his clenched fingers. “I’m fine,” he said.

  Ria was still studying him, still looking concerned.

  “I’m fine,” Landry repeated grimly. He wasn’t as hard as before, but he still had a bulge where there shouldn’t have been one. Damn, but he wished he hadn’t left his hat in the truck. He could have used it as a kind of shield, like he had with the flowers.

  “You don’t have to be a grouch about it,” Ria pointed out, bordering on peevish now. “If you’d rather not go out, just say so. It would be fine with me.”

  That said, and without giving Landry a chance to answer, she sashayed past him, though where she was headed, he had no clue.

  All he knew was that he couldn’t let her go, not yet.

  So he caught Ria by the elbow, careful not to hurt her but not about to let her walk off and leave him standing in her kitchen like a damn fool, either.

  Touching her had been a tactical error—but he realized that a heartbeat too late.

  He might as well have closed his fingers around a live wire as taken hold of Ria Manning; the voltage was high and hot, jolting him, jolting her, too, arcing back and forth between them like invisible lightning.

  The next thing Landry knew, he’d pulled Ria against him, buried the fingers of one hand in her silky cap of dark hair and tilted her head back so he could look directly into her eyes.

  He expected her to stiffen in resistance, break free or even slap him across the face, hard. Instead, she gave a throaty little whimper, part sigh, and stared up at him with wide eyes.

  “What the hell is this?” Landry muttered, thinking aloud, not expecting a reply.

  But Ria gave one. She thought for a moment, then shook her head slightly. “I have no earthly idea,” she admitted in a breathy whisper.

  Against his own better judgment, Landry kissed her then. He kissed her gently at first, and then with growing heat and fervor.

  And she rose onto her toes, draped her arms around his neck and kissed him right back.

  There was some tongue action then, and Landry figured he was a goner for sure.

  Yet, perhaps because they were both starved for oxygen, their mouths parted suddenly, as if by unspoken agreement, and they were both gasping like divers surfacing with no air left in their tanks.

  Landry held Ria by her shoulders, which were trembling a little, and took half a step back to give her some space.

  “I guess we’d better go,” he said huskily, when he finally caught his breath.

  Ria nodded. “I think so,” she concurred, clearly flustered.

  Despite their mutual resolution to break it up before things went even further, neither of them moved for what seemed like a full minute.

  Landry was hard all over again, but there was nowhere to hide. Since the situation wasn’t likely to improve anytime soon—unless they went straight to bed, of course, and got this fixation, or whatever it was, out of their systems—he’d just have to tolerate the discomfort, ride it out.

  At just about any other time in his adult life, Landry would have steered things in the direction of the nearest soft, flat surface, without a second’s hesitation. But Ria was different from every woman he’d ever known, let alone bedded.

  When he made love to her—and he knew it would happen eventually, sure as death, taxes and the ongoing incompetency of Congress—he wanted it to be by conscious choice, something she knew she wanted, not because she was dazed and distracted, like now. He could have swept her away, he had no doubt of that, but when the sex was over and the haze had lifted, she might hate him. And herself, as well.

  Both possibilities were unacceptable, as far as he was concerned.

  Landry still needed to touch her, though, and he ran the backs of the knuckles in his right hand down the side of her face, very gently, sobered by the sure knowledge that he’d never wanted a woman as much as he wanted this one, and probably never would.

  Common sense and instinct did battle inside him; he felt his resolve slipping a little. Right here, right now, urged the dark side of his conscience, where the shadows were. Landry’s better angels won the battle, as it turned out, but it was close.

  He turned Ria around, placed a hand on the small of her back and steered her out of the kitchen, back through the living room, out onto the porch, into the lingering light of a summer evening.

  Her keys jingled as she tried to lock up.

  Landry suppressed an urge to lean down, just a little, and brush his lips along the narrow channel of the nape of her neck, visible because her head was tilted forward, causing her hair to part in back as she concentrated on a simple task that had inexplicably turned difficult.

  Instead, Landry took the keys from her hand, locked the front door and then ushered her toward the passenger side of his truck. He hadn’t thought to wash the rig, but it looked passably clean, so he decided not to worry about it—although even that distraction would have been welcome at the moment.

  There was an awkward pause when Ria stepped up onto the running board, tripped and nearly tumbled backward into his arms. From there, it would have been a short fall to the soft grass at their feet, Landry thought, with amused resignation, and that would have meant all bets were off, since there was nobody else around.

  Things didn’t come to that, though. Fortunately.

  Or unfortunately.

  Landry steadied Ria, and she climbed, blushing, gaze pointed straight ahead, into the seat. Time stopped, once again, it seemed to him, freezing them both in a moment he never wanted to end.

  During the drive to Parable, much to Landry’s relief, the atmosphere wasn’t quite as sexually charged as before, for whatever reason, and they both settled down a little.

  Ria rolled down her window and let the breeze dance in her hair, eyes closed, a smile of contentment on her lips.

  Landry would remember the way she looked just then, remember the scent of her skin and hair, the peaches-and-cream glow of her skin, for the rest of his long life, and pinpoint that exact instant, when he fell in love with Ria Manning, hard and deep and forever.

  CHAPTER NINE

  RIA DIDN’T KNOW whether to be worried or relieved when she and Landry pulled into the crowded parking lot adjoining the Boot Scoot Tavern, a battered and unpainted structure that had not only seen better days, but better decades, even better centuries, since the place dated back to the 1880s, according to local legend. The saloon probably hadn’t changed much since the old days, and it was as much an institution in the town of Parable as the courthouse or the Pioneer Cemetery, where generations of regular customers were buried, along with teetotalers, of course, and all those who fell somewhere in between the two.

  Now country music blared into the dwindling light of day, a river of sound rolling through a rustic entrance, the double doors propped open with beer kegs. Partiers came and went, women in skimpy summer tops and jeans, rhinestones flashing on their back pocket
s and fancy stitching on their many-colored boots, men spiffed up cowboy-style, in their best pair of jeans, crisply ironed cotton shirts, long-sleeved without exception, hats they wore to go out on the town, but never when they worked. The spit-shined boots were a given, plain in comparison to those the ladies sported, invariably brown or black, with square toes, as opposed to pointy ones. Those, Ria had learned about five minutes after she drove across the Montana state line for the first time, were for dudes and wannabes.

  No real cowboy would be caught dead in them.

  These observations had kept Ria’s jitters at arm’s length for a few minutes, but they’d arrived, and it wasn’t possible to ignore the fact for very long.

  Thinking their own thoughts, not looking at each other, she and Landry got out of the truck and headed for the entrance.

  Just before they would have stepped inside, however, the artificial calm Ria had so carefully cultivated suddenly deserted her. Instantly, she was wary, as out of her element as a goldfish expelled from its bowl, flopping around on dry carpet. She thought of the cowgirls, glittering with rhinestones, and suffered by comparison. She was definitely underblinged, she thought glumly, with not a single sparkling stone anywhere on her person. And did all the female patrons of the Boot Scoot Tavern wear size-minus-two jeans? It didn’t help, reminding herself that her own pants were eights that glided on easily, right out of the dryer.

  Finally, Ria thrust out an audible sigh, well aware that she was being silly, and made a brave effort to shake off her misgivings.

  With a slanted grin, Landry glanced down at her, as they stood there in the gravel just a few feet from the threshold, and took her hand, squeezed lightly once. She might as well have had a digital display embedded in her forehead, Ria thought, because if he hadn’t guessed exactly what she was thinking, he’d come pretty darned close.

  “I may have failed to mention it before,” he told her, in a low drawl, meant for her ears alone, “but the way you look tonight makes it hard to draw an even breath.”

  She narrowed her eyes, grateful for the surge of adrenaline the remark gave her and, at the same time, patently suspicious. Was that a line? she wondered. If it was, it just might work.