Big Sky Mountain

by Linda Lael Miller

  His body was hard and hot and unequivocally male, and she could still feel the weight of it, the power and the thrust, and her own sweet victory found in complete surrender.

  “Kendra,” he said. His tone was raspy.

  “What?” she all but snapped, flustered.

  “Your hair looks fine the way it is. In fact, it looks more than fine.”

  She was looking around for the lost rubber band by then, but in vain. “Opal will guess—”

  Hutch rested his hands on either side of her face, so she couldn’t turn her head away. “Opal has already guessed,” he said, amused. “Why do you think she offered to look after Madison so we could leave the house?”

  Kendra ached with embarrassment. Of course he was right—Opal was no fool and the ploy had been a pretty obvious one, too—but on the inside, she was still soaring. Besides, for all her jitters, that reckless part of her remained very much in charge. “Awkward,” she said, singsong.

  Hutch laughed. “What’s awkward? Nobody’s judging us, Kendra—we’re both grown-ups, remember?”

  “One of us is, anyway,” Kendra said, making a rueful face.

  He kissed her forehead, then the tip of her nose, before lowering his hands. “Let’s go,” he said, “before I throw caution to the winds and take you down again, condom or no condom.”

  “I might have something to say about that, you know,” Kendra pointed out, but she couldn’t muster up any real annoyance.

  “Is that a challenge?” he asked, low and easy. His right index finger traipsed lightly down her cheek, along her neck and once around her breast, in a slow, heated orbit.

  Electricity jolted through her, and she jumped back a step, every bit as hot and bothered as she’d been when they first tumbled into the grass. “No,” she said quickly. “It wasn’t a challenge.”

  He grinned. Then he made a sweeping gesture with one arm toward the placidly waiting horses.

  They each mounted up, Kendra moving quickly so he wouldn’t “help.”

  When they got back to the barn, Hutch took care of the horses and sent Kendra inside to see if Madison had awakened from her nap yet.

  She hadn’t.

  Opal remained in the kitchen and a delicious aroma filled the air.

  “All three of you need a real supper,” the older woman announced firmly. “Not more carnival food.” If she’d noticed that Kendra’s hair was no longer pulled back in its former tidy braid, she didn’t offer a comment or give any indication that she knew anything special had happened while they were out.

  Kendra was fiercely grateful for that; she wasn’t ready for anyone else to know, not even Joslyn and Tara, and she told them pretty much everything.

  She slipped away to the nearest powder room, washed her hands, splashed her face with cool water—her makeup was long gone but the glow made up for it—and inspected her clothes for grass stains in front of a full-length mirror.

  When she came out, Madison was in the kitchen, rubbing her eyes sleepily. “Is it tomorrow?” she asked Kendra. “Did I miss the fireworks?”

  Kendra swept her up, hugged her, and gave her a smacking kiss on one pudgy cheek. “It’s still today,” she said. “And we’re going back to town for the fireworks after supper.”

  Madison looked greatly relieved, and wriggled in Kendra’s arms, wanting to stand on her own. Even at four, she had a streak of independence running through her as wide as the Big Sky River. “Good,” she said looking around the kitchen, nodding a hello at a smiling Opal. “Where’s Hutch?”

  So it was “Hutch” now, and not “Mr. Carmody.”

  Kendra wasn’t sure how she felt about that—or anything else, really. Her emotions were still in a jumble, impossibly tangled. She knew the regrets would set in eventually—she could feel them circling around her, slowly closing in, like wolves waiting for a campfire to die down to embers—but for now, for tonight, she was going to let things be all right, just the way they were.

  “He’s in the barn,” Kendra answered.

  Madison, more and more awake as the moments passed, tilted her head to one side and studied Kendra quizzically. “What happened to your hair, Mommy?”

  Before Kendra could stumble out a reply, Opal came to the rescue. “I could use some help setting the table,” she told the little girl, “and I know you’re real good at that.”

  Madison lit up, allowing Opal to take her over to the sink and quickly wash her small hands with a moist paper towel.

  Meanwhile, Opal’s gaze met Kendra’s, full of kind understanding. The woman might as well have said, “Don’t worry, everything’s going to be all right,” her expression conveyed so much tenderness.

  Hutch stepped in from outside a moment later, rolled up his shirtsleeves and went through the hand-washing ritual at the kitchen sink. Except for a certain light in his eyes, he looked like innocence personified.

  After drying his hands, he took four plates down from the cupboard and set them between the knives, forks and spoons Madison had carefully arranged at each place. He might have been dealing cards, his motions were so deft.

  “You ought to come to town with us,” he told Opal fifteen minutes later when they were all seated at the table, enjoying her fried chicken, green beans, mashed potatoes and gravy. “Take in the fireworks.”

  “Thank you very much but no, sir,” Opal replied briskly. “I’ve got a big day tomorrow and I need my beauty sleep.”

  Kendra sneaked a glance at Hutch and saw that his eyes were twinkling with mischief, as well as recent satisfaction. Still feeling the occasional sweet aftershock herself, Kendra blushed again.

  “I knew it,” he told Opal. “You’ve got your cap set for the new preacher.”

  “I do not,” Opal said. “For all I know, he’s a rascal. You good-looking types usually are.”

  He chuckled. “What do we know about this guy?” he asked. “If he comes a-courting, I need to be sure he’s on the level.”

  “Stop it,” Opal said, though she was clearly enjoying the exchange. “He’s a looker and a widower and he has a divinity degree from one of the best universities in the country, and that’s the sum total of my knowledge.”

  Hutch chewed on that, and a mouthful of chicken, for a few moments, swallowed, and went right on teasing Opal. “A Harvard man,” he ruminated. “Makes me wonder why he’d want to live in a place like Parable, Montana. What’s this yahoo’s name?”

  Opal glowered at Hutch, but her eyes were dancing behind the lenses of her old-fashioned glasses. “If you want to know that,” she shot back, “just come to church tomorrow and you’ll find out.”

  Hutch huffed out a laugh. “The last time I was there,” he said, “all hell broke loose.”

  “We go to church sometimes,” Madison put in, eager to join the banter. “Don’t we, Mommy?”

  “Yes,” Kendra said.

  “Are we going tomorrow?” Madison asked. “To see the new preacher from Harvard?”

  She smiled. A little repentance might be in order, she thought, for me at least. “Unless you’re too tired,” she answered. “It will be very late when the fireworks get over tonight and you might need to sleep in tomorrow morning.”

  “Can I ride the merry-go-round again?” the child inquired, on to the next thing, like a firefly flitting from bush to branch. “I want to see if the tiger really bucks like a boy-cow.”

  Hutch grinned, reached out to tousle Madison’s hair. “We’ll have plenty of time for tiger rides,” he told her. “It’s still a couple more hours until it gets dark enough out to set off those fireworks.”

  “I might be awake at midnight!” Madison marveled. No doubt there were a few storybook pumpkin-coaches going through her mind, drawn by talking mice. To a small child, Kendra reflected, midnight was a magical hour.

  “You might be,” Kendra agreed, sure the little girl would be sound asleep on Hutch’s shoulder again before the grand finale.

  “Wow,” Madison breathed. “Midnight is really late.” />
  “Yep,” Hutch said affably with only the briefest glance in Kendra’s direction, lavishing attention on his dog, instead.

  Half an hour later, after Kendra had helped Opal clear the table and set the kitchen to rights—Hutch had taken Madison out to the barn to say hello to Ruffles while the cleanup was going on—the three of them were back in Hutch’s truck, headed for town.

  There was still plenty of light, though shadows were slowly creeping down the mountainsides to pool in the valley where Parable rested, all lit up in Christmas tree colors for the Fourth.

  The man at the entrance gate to the fairgrounds flashed a black light on the backs of their hands, and Madison was thrilled to see the stamp she’d gotten that morning reappear on her skin.

  “It’s magic,” she breathed.

  Kendra loved her little girl so much in that moment that she had to restrain herself from grabbing her up and hugging her tight.

  They returned to the merry-go-round—like the other rides, it was doing a brisk business because there was still at least an hour to kill before the fireworks began—though Hutch remarked that half the county was probably over at the Boot Scoot Tavern, whooping it up. After waiting in line, Madison rode the tiger, this time with Hutch standing beside her and Kendra taking pictures with her cell phone each time they went by.

  It all seemed so normal, though she still had that strange sense of being two people instead of just the usual one. And those two people were definitely at odds with each other.

  Are you crazy? one of them demanded from a hiding place somewhere in the back of her brain. This is the same man who broke your heart. And just a few weeks ago, he abandoned his bride on their wedding day.

  But this second Kendra was having none of it. She wanted to live in the moment, to enjoy the delicious fantasy of being loved and wanted for just a little while longer.

  By the time everybody gathered at the edge of the field next to the rodeo grounds to watch the long-awaited fireworks show, Madison could barely keep her eyes open.

  She’d had a big day, this very little girl, and despite a nap and a good supper, she was beginning to run down.

  Hutch held the child in his arms and they watched as colored light spattered the dark sky, bloomed into a swelling shape of blue or green, red or gold, and gracefully fell away. Even the sparks were beautiful, a rain of shimmering fire.

  Kendra realized, with a start, that she was perfectly happy, alternately watching the breathtaking spectacle in the sky and the bright reflections it cast onto the upturned faces of the people around her.

  She was, in that instant, so happy that it terrified her.

  It was dangerous to open her heart and her mind and her spirit to life, to a certain man, to the singular joys of being a young, healthy woman, with needs to be satisfied. Loving Madison so completely was all the risk she could bear to take—why was she pushing her luck this way? Was she greedy to want more than motherhood, more than her career?

  Long before the fireworks ended and the crowds dispersed and she and Hutch and a soundly sleeping Madison were in the truck on the way to her place, Kendra had begun the lonely and singularly painful process of drawing back into herself, like a sea creature retreating into its shell.

  Hutch probably sensed the change, but he didn’t say anything.

  When they got to her house, he lifted Madison from the car seat and carried her into the house. Subdued, Kendra led the way to the little girl’s room, where he laid her gently on the bed and stepped back.

  He left the room without a word and Kendra found herself listening hard for the sound of the front door opening and then closing behind him as she quickly undressed Madison, put her into a soft cotton nightgown and tucked her in with a kiss.

  That night, it was Kendra who prayed.

  “Thank You,” she whispered.

  Hutch was in the kitchen when she got there, leaning idly against one of the counters with his arms folded. He’d brought the big teddy bear inside while she was looking after Madison, and set it, like a jaunty diner, in one of the chairs at the table, a gesture that touched something deep inside Kendra and left a faint bruise in its wake. Her new boots, still in their box, were there, too, filling the room with the clean scent of leather.

  “Want to tell me about it?” Hutch asked quietly without preamble.

  Kendra wanted to avoid his gaze, but she couldn’t seem to pull hers away. “What’s to tell?” she asked with a flippancy she didn’t really feel. “It’s been a long haul and we’re both tired, and tomorrow is another day.”

  “If you think we’re going to pretend that nothing happened up there in the meadow this afternoon,” he informed her, quietly blunt, “you’re dead wrong.”

  “We got—carried away,” Kendra said, trying to smile and failing.

  “We made love,” Hutch said gravely. “That changes things, Kendra. At least, it does for me.”

  “You said it yourself,” she said, careful to keep her voice down, in case Madison woke up and overheard things she couldn’t be expected to understand. “We’re grown-ups, not kids. We lost our heads for a little while, but now that’s behind us and—”

  He crossed the room in two strides, took her gently but inescapably by her upper arms, and pressed her to the wall, held her there with the intoxicatingly hard length of his body. And then he kissed her.

  It was the kind of kiss that conquers a woman, lays claim to her, body and soul.

  Knowing she ought to break away, Kendra kissed him back, instead. She couldn’t help it, because the old hunger, the one she’d pushed down all this time, was rushing through her again, and it was stronger than ever.

  She was blushing when Hutch drew back, released her, stepped away.

  Moments later, he was gone, out the door.

  She heard his truck start up, drive away.

  Kendra crossed the room, turned the lock and sat down in a chair at the kitchen table across from the ludicrously large pink-and-white teddy bear Hutch had won for Madison at the carnival.

  It seemed to be watching her and a bit smugly at that.

  “Oh, shut up,” she told it. Then she sprang out of her chair again, marched into the bathroom and ran herself a hot bath.

  There were too many feelings welling up inside her and they were too complicated to sort out. She felt frantic.

  Kendra stripped, stepped into the tub, sank into the scented water.

  She closed her eyes and instantly she was back in that mountain meadow, lying in the grass, with Hutch Carmody riding her as confidently as he’d ridden the bull at the rodeo and the tiger on the merry-go-round.

  Kendra’s eyes popped open in alarm, and just like that, she was at home again, in her own bathtub, up to her chin in billowing bubbles.

  Realistic Kendra was back on the scene, with a vengeance, while the one that had gotten her into trouble was conspicuously absent. Wasn’t that a fine how-do-you-do?

  She soaked for a while, even tried to read the paperback she’d left within reach on the back of the toilet, but nothing worked.

  She was all a-jangle.

  Her grandmother’s voice echoed in her head.

  Now you’ve done it. You’re nothing but a tramp, just like your mother.

  Kendra got out of the tub, dried herself with a towel and pulled a nightgown on over her head. She padded into the kitchen, flipped on the light she’d turned off earlier and brewed herself a cup of raspberry tea.

  The drink soothed her a little, but total emotional and physical exhaustion were the only reasons she slept at all that night. Her dreams were full of garish carnival rides, scary clowns dressed like cowboys and her grandmother, following her around, shaking a finger at her and repeating the same words over and over again.

  You’re nothing but a tramp, just like your mother.

  The next morning, Kendra woke with a pounding headache and Madison, wearing her boots and her cowgirl hat with her nightie, jumping up and down on the bed beside her.

  �
��Get up, Mommy,” she chanted, beaming with fresh energy. “We have to go to church and look at the new preacher!”

  Kendra sighed, arranged her pillows and sat up, resting against them.

  “Of course we do,” she said. “And stop jumping on the bed, please.”

  She didn’t want to look at what the soles of those little boots might have left behind on her formerly pristine white eyelet bedspread.

  Madison leaped, agile as a gazelle, to the floor.

  Her hat was askew and her eyes were wide beneath the brim.

  “Get up!” she pleaded. “Please, Mommy!”

  Kendra sighed again, tossed back the covers and got up. She padded into the bathroom, opened the door of the medicine cabinet and shook a couple of aspirin into her palm, swallowing them with a gulp of tap water.

  Madison prattled nonstop the whole time, reliving the carnival, the rodeo, the purchase of her boots and hat and the bandannas for the dogs, and finally the fireworks.

  The aspirin didn’t kick in for a full fifteen minutes, during which Kendra listened patiently to her daughter’s continuous chatter, nodded at appropriate intervals and chopped fresh strawberries to sprinkle over cold cereal.

  “I’ll bet Daisy misses us,” Madison said, scrambling into her chair at the table and taking her spoon in hand. “Can we go get her right after church? And then can we go back to the ranch so I can ride Ruffles?”

  “Whoa,” Kendra pleaded, raising both hands, palms out. “Slow down. We’ll go to church, stay after for Pastor Lloyd’s retirement party, and then drive out to Tara’s and pick up Daisy. That’s pretty much a day-full, sweetheart.”

  “But what about Ruffles?” Madison pressed, on the verge of whining but not quite there. “She’ll be lonesome.”

  “She won’t be lonesome,” Kendra replied patiently, forcing herself to eat a few bites of cereal. If she didn’t, her stomach would start growling in church for sure, probably during prayers. “She has all those other horses to keep her company, not to mention Leviticus.”