“Beds,” Nash ruminated. He seemed wistful now, but that might be an act. “With sheets and blankets and pillows and everything?”
Where in hell had this kid been sleeping? Zane wondered that and many other things. “With sheets and blankets and everything,” he confirmed, hoping the boy didn’t notice the slight catch in his voice.
Nash’s grin flashed, Landry-like. Zane-like.
There was certainly no question of his paternity. He was Jess Sutton’s kid, all right, full of bravado and brains and smart-ass attitudes. Were there other siblings out there? Zane wondered, as he often did. Did he and Landry and Nash have sisters and brothers they knew nothing about?
It seemed more than possible.
“Let’s go, then,” Nash said. He actually seemed eager now.
Zane, not at all sure he wasn’t being shined on, was unaccustomed to power-shopping—or any shopping at all, really, since Cleo or some assistant had done most of that for him.
Until now.
The furniture store in Three Trees agreed to deliver the beds, mattresses and box springs, dressers and bureaus later that same day, which was a good thing, because by the time he and Nash were done filling several carts at the big discount store out on the highway, there wasn’t an inch of space left in the back of Zane’s truck.
Even with the two of them working, it took twenty minutes just to carry all the bags and boxes inside and pile them in the far corner of the kitchen to be dispersed to other parts of the house later on.
Nash, evidently benefiting from the heavy dose of retail therapy, rustled through the loot until he found a towel, a bottle of liquid soap, new jeans, a long-sleeved gray sweatshirt, socks and underwear that actually fit him and, finally, boots.
He disappeared into a nearby bathroom—there were several in the house, but the others were in various states of rust and wreckage—and, soon after, Zane heard the shower running.
Nash was in there so long that Zane had time to log back on to his laptop and wade through his emails. He skipped over the ones from Tiffany, replied with regrets to half a dozen party invitations and deleted the obvious sales pitches. There were three missives from his agent, Sam Blake, each one more exasperated than the last. “Damn it,” Sam had written, with a lot of caps and punctuation marks, he had “the role of a lifetime” lined up for Zane. All he had to do was get off this stupid hick-kick he was on, whatever it was, hustle back to L.A. and sign on the bottom line.
Zane sighed, decided to reply later and opened the last of the lineup, a virtual ear-boxing from Cleopatra Livingston, his former housekeeper. Where the dickens did he think she was going to find another job, she demanded, at her age, and in a tanked economy, no less. And what in blazes gave him the idea that he could get by without her? Who was going to cook his meals and wash and iron his shirts? When she wasn’t around, she further declared, he tended to be careless about things like that.
Grinning slightly, Zane picked up his phone again. Keyed in Cleo’s number. She didn’t carry a cell, so he’d have to reach her at home. If she didn’t answer—a possibility that had its merits, given the mood she’d been in when she wrote that email—he’d leave a message.
And say what? That he was sorry? That he’d send more money? That she could go on living in his condo until he got around to selling it? Only if he wanted to piss her off all over again by making her feel like a charity project.
“It’s about damn time you called me!” Cleo boomed into her receiver, probably one of those bulky, old-fashioned ones, broad-jumping right over “howdy” and straight into giving him seven kinds of hell.
“I left a note,” Zane said. Now there was a half-assed explanation.
“Big fat deal,” Cleo scoffed furiously. “I work my fingers to the bone for you for almost four years, Zane Sutton, years I could have spent looking after somebody who appreciated me, mind you, and one fine day, you just go off on your merry way without a word of farewell?”
Reminding her about the note would be a mistake, so he didn’t. While the gears clicked away in his head, he focused on Slim, visible through the arched doorway opening onto the hall, waiting for Nash to come out of the bathroom. The dog’s patience was rewarded when the kid suddenly emerged, preceded by billows of steam.
Zane smiled. “Cleo,” he said, “I have missed your sweet and gentle ways.”
“I’ll sweet-and-gentle you,” Cleo shot back. “With a horsewhip!”
He laughed. “You know,” he teased, “you sound a little like a woman scorned.”
She made a disgruntled sound. “As if I’d ever throw in with the likes of you, cowboy, even if I wasn’t a good thirty years older than you are.” A pause. “Darn it, I’m not ready to retire. I’m unlucky at bingo and I don’t knit or crochet. And, anyways, I can’t sleep nights, for worrying that you’re living on fast food and wearing wrinkled shirts in public.”
Nash came through the archway and headed for the fridge, looking like a different kid in his jeans, boots and sweatshirt. Except for the hair, of course—it looked as though he’d been cutting it himself lately, with nail scissors. Or maybe hedge clippers.
“Are you listening to me, Zane Sutton?” Cleo demanded, when he failed to reply to her previous diatribe.
“I’m listening,” Zane said.
“Where are you?” Cleo wanted to know. Would know, by God, if she had to crawl through the telephone system and drag the answer out of him.
“I’m on my ranch,” he said. “Outside Three Trees, Montana.”
“Well, you get me a plane ticket for day after tomorrow,” Cleo commanded. “I need some time to pack and say goodbye to folks. Make it one way, this ticket, and I had better be sitting in first class, too, after all you put me through. And don’t you stick me in row one, neither. I need to be able to get to my purse when I want it, and in a bulkhead seat, they make you put it in the overhead.” She made another huffy sound. “My blood pressure is through the roof,” she added.
Importing Cleo wasn’t a bad idea, Zane thought. The lady might be prickly sometimes, but she could cook and clean, and she’d be the ideal person to oversee the forthcoming renovations, too.
Plus, he’d been telling the truth when he said he missed her.
“You’d do that?” he asked, moved. “Leave L.A. for Montana? It’s real rural out here, Cleo. And we’re roughing it—not much furniture to speak of and plenty of things in need of repair.” Or replacement.
“Sure I would,” Cleo answered briskly. “You might be used to living luxuriously, Mr. Movie Star, but I’m no stranger to doing without, let me tell you. Didn’t I raise four kids by the sweat of my brow, with no man to help out? And didn’t I do that in a part of the city a lot of folks would be afraid to set foot in, even in broad daylight?”
She was laying it on thick, Zane knew. The four kids she’d raised were all well-educated and prosperous professionals now, scattered all over the country and contributing generously to their mother’s bank account. And Cleo had been living in staff quarters in his condo since she came to work for him, so it wasn’t as though she took buses to and from the ghetto every day, dodging bullets as a matter of course.
“All right,” Zane heard himself say. “I’ll book your flight for the day after tomorrow and email you the itinerary.”
“Good.” Cleo huffed out the word. “Get me out of LAX bright and early. And there’s one other thing, too.”
“What’s that?” Zane asked, a grin quirking at one corner of his mouth. Nash, meanwhile, peeled a banana and stuck half of it into his mouth, so both cheeks bulged.
“Who’s ‘we’?” Cleo asked bluntly.
“Huh?”
“You said ‘we’re roughing it.’ Plural. Have you taken up with some pretty cowgirl? Is that what this is all about, you suddenly wanting your housekeeper back and all? Because there’s somebody you want to impress?”
Zane laughed. He hadn’t “taken up” with anybody, though he did want to get to know Brylee Parrish a
little better. Okay, a lot better. “It’s just me, my kid brother and my dog, Slim,” he replied. “And I’m warning you, Cleo—we’re a motley crew.”
“You mean Landry’s there with you? Did he split up with that crazy wife of his again?”
“No,” Zane said, feeling no particular need to comment on Landry’s marital situation. “I mean Nash.”
“Who’s that?”
“You’re going to have to wait and find out for yourself,” Zane answered. “The situation defies description—over the phone at least.”
“You get me that ticket,” Cleo blustered, letting the Nash question go, for the time being, anyhow. “I’ve got my computer turned on, and I’ll be watching for new messages.”
Again, Zane chuckled. “I’m on it, Cleo,” he promised.
Nash gave the remaining half of his banana to Slim, who gobbled it up eagerly.
“First class,” Cleo reminded him.
“It’s as good as done,” Zane said, glaring at Nash and shaking his head. As in, don’t do that again. Human food wasn’t good for a dog, and that meant Slim wasn’t going to have it.
Fifteen minutes later, he’d gone online, purchased Cleo’s one-way, first-class ticket, in seat 3B, and zapped a copy to her in L.A.
“Who was that?” Nash asked conversationally. By then, he and Slim had been outside and then returned.
“That,” Zane answered, logging off and shutting the lid on his laptop, “was Super-Cleo. She can bend steel with her bare hands, leap over a tall building in a single bound—and she’s faster than a speeding bullet, too.”
No sense adding that she was as wide as she was tall, with ebony skin and gray hair that stood out around her head like a fright wig. A person had to meet Cleo to comprehend her, and even then, it took some time.
She yelled and flapped her apron when she wanted the kitchen to herself, and she had a tongue sharp enough to slice overripe tomatoes clean as the oft-mentioned whistle, but she also had a heart as expansive as the big Montana sky.
Nash’s brow furrowed. Now that he’d showered and put on clothes that wouldn’t get him beat up on the school grounds, he looked his age, which was an improvement over his former parody of a fortysomething homeless person in need of psychotropic drugs.
“This Cleo—is she your girlfriend?” he asked suspiciously, an indication that his previous experiences with girlfriends, probably his father’s, had been memorable for all the wrong reasons.
Zane laughed again, partly because he was amused at the idea of Cleo as his main squeeze, and partly to hide the stab of sympathy he felt for Nash in that moment. “Nope,” he said, with a shake of his head. “Cleo and I are definitely not romantically involved.”
Nash looked relieved, and a bit sullen. “I guess we’ll have to buy another bed, then,” he said. “Because from what I gathered, she doesn’t seem like somebody who’d want to sleep on an air mattress.”
“You’re right about that,” Zane confirmed, with a chuckle. “If we know what’s good for us, we’ll have all new appliances, including a washer and dryer, before she gets here.”
Something changed in Nash’s face, an indefinable shift that might have meant he was beginning to trust this hairpin turn in his life and luck—or simply that he was mentally reviewing some felonious plan B, like burning down the house in the dead of night or committing murder with an ax.
Or both.
“Do I really get to stay here?” the boy asked, very quietly.
Zane had to swallow before he answered. “Yep,” he said. “You really get to stay here.”
“Zane?”
“What?”
“Thanks for not calling me ‘Studebaker,’” Nash said. “Or Edsel.”
“No problem,” Zane replied, hiding a grin. “Do you run into a lot of that?”
* * *
“SOMEBODY TOLD MRS. BEAUMONT,” Clare accused, on Monday morning, standing in Brylee’s office at Décor Galore, hands on hips. “And she told my mom and dad, so now I not only don’t get to go on the bus trip, but Luke’s in trouble, too.”
Brylee, sitting behind her computer, straightened her spine. “Really?” she asked, pretending innocence.
Fat lot of good that would do.
“I thought the top of my dad’s head would blow off when he found out Luke was nineteen. He’s already tracked him down and told him to stay away from me if he doesn’t want to go to jail or become a candidate for reconstructive surgery. Or both.” She paused, but only to suck in a furious breath. “If that wasn’t humiliating enough, Luke told Walker he’d written a song that would be a sure hit if Mom recorded it. He wasn’t interested in me, he’s just starstruck, that’s all. He said straight out that he was just trying to meet Casey Elder and pitch his stupid ballad to her. All of which means, he was using me, the whole time!”
“I’m sorry, honey,” Brylee commiserated. “But isn’t it better to know the truth, painful though it may be?”
Tears sprang to Clare’s eyes. She bit her lip and nodded in reluctant agreement. “But what if nobody ever likes me because I’m me? What if all that ever matters to anyone is that I’m Casey Elder’s daughter?”
Brylee pushed back her desk chair, stood and went to put her arms around her niece’s shoulders. “Oh, baby,” she said, choked up. “Lots of guys will like you—even love you, I promise—and it will be because you’re you, Clare Elder Parrish, not because your mom is a superstar.”
Clare clung to her aunt, and a shuddering motion of her shoulders indicated that she was crying, even though she didn’t make a single sound.
And that broke Brylee’s heart, because Clare was so trusting. How long would that last, though?
“This hurts,” Clare said, face buried in Brylee’s shoulder. “I thought Luke liked me for myself,” she despaired. “I should have known this was really all about Mom, and what a legend she is, and not about me at all.”
“Of course it hurts,” Brylee responded, remembering how she’d felt after Hutch Carmody called off their wedding. She’d hurt plenty then, even knowing, on some level, that Hutch was right—they were all wrong for each other. She’d left that little church in Parable, a spurned bride in the wedding dress of her dreams, with her heart in pieces, her pride in tatters. “But things will get better, sweetheart. I promise.”
Clare sniffled. “That’s what Mom said,” she admitted.
“Your mom is one smart lady,” Brylee assured her niece. “When the right guy comes along, he won’t care who your mother is, or your dad, either. He’ll be interested in you, period. But don’t try to hurry things along, Clare—take time to grow up, to become the woman you want to be, to pursue your own goals. That way, when the time to fall in love for real comes, you’ll be ready.”
Clare drew back, gazed earnestly into Brylee’s eyes. “Do you really believe that?” she asked. Of course Clare knew about the Hutch disaster—everyone did.
Brylee was wounded, though she was fairly sure Clare hadn’t intended that. With one broken engagement behind her, though, was she any kind of authority on love and marriage? Hardly. Still, she was intelligent, and not entirely dysfunctional. “Yes,” she said honestly. “I believe there is someone for everybody—but we need to be open to the fact that this person might not be the one we’ve been expecting.”
It was impossible not to think of Zane in that moment, although Brylee would have preferred not to, for sure. She’d believed that Hutch Carmody was the man for her and, since he’d fallen head over heels in love with Kendra Shepherd, she, Brylee, was just plain out of luck. She’d missed the last bus, so to speak.
Now, she’d begun to wonder if the whole heartbreaking experience of being dumped at the altar hadn’t been a good thing. Hutch was happy with Kendra, and vice versa, and they were building a family together.
But was there a man out there for her—one she was meant to love with her whole heart, and share her life with?
Zane Sutton, perhaps?
Ridiculous. Of cours
e not. She had nothing in common with the man. Nothing at all.
Except, of course, for an undeniable inclination to rip the man’s clothes off his perfect and very masculine body and have her way with him on the spot.
“Am I going to feel better anytime soon?” Clare asked plaintively.
Brylee smiled and kissed her niece smartly on the forehead. “Trust me,” she said. “You will definitely feel better, and sooner than you think.”
“Did you tell Mrs. Beaumont about Luke and me?”
Brylee sighed. She played a mean game of dodgeball, but she never lied. “Yes,” she admitted.
Clare smiled a shaky, watery smile. “Thanks,” she said.
Brylee laughed and hugged her niece again, hard. “You’re welcome,” she replied.
After Clare left the office, Brylee couldn’t seem to get back on board her former train of thought. So she logged off the computer and woke a slumbering Snidely with a soft whistle.
“How about a walk, big guy?” she asked.
Snidely stretched and got to his feet, panting eagerly. Like ride and car, he knew the word walk, and he was all for the idea.
They moved through the busy warehouse, woman and dog, and out into the woodsy area behind the building.
Brylee gazed at the tree line. The adjoining property had been vacant for so long that she and Snidely had developed a habit of wandering there.
To trespass or not to trespass, that was the question.
Brylee came down on the side of bending the law just a little.
She headed straight for Zane Sutton’s property line, her dog at her side, and made her way toward the creek.
CHAPTER FOUR
BRYLEE SAT ON the creek bank, with her bare feet dangling in the water, and soaked up the afternoon sunlight and the outrageously blue sky. Snidely was off in the woods somewhere, playing the great hunter, though in truth, that silly dog didn’t have an aggressive bone in his body. He was most definitely the diplomatic type—a lover, not a fighter.
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