Big Sky Wedding

by Linda Lael Miller

  “I’ll be there in half an hour,” Zane replied briskly. “Do yourself a favor and order up a cup of strong coffee, will you? In fact, why don’t you make it a double?”

  CHAPTER ELEVEN

  EVEN AFTER SEVERAL purposeful delays, Brylee arrived at the Boot Scoot Tavern before any of her friends did. She was chronically punctual, it seemed.

  When she drove into the gravel parking lot, with its patches of weeds, there were several vehicles taking up space. None of them were familiar and, though she’d been to the Boot Scoot about a million times before, she was strangely hesitant to go inside, at least by herself.

  Sighing in resignation, she reached over and lifted her shoulder bag from its place on the passenger seat, set it in her lap and then sat there for a few moments longer, biting her lower lip and wishing she’d stayed home.

  She was strongly tempted to give in to previous temptation, ditch Amy and the others, do her shopping for tomorrow night’s dinner, then head back to Three Trees, where she could hide out at the library or take in a movie.

  Except that it would be cowardly to skip out now, and anyway, to Brylee, a promise was a promise—and besides, she was vastly overdressed for a night of browsing through the stacks at the library or munching popcorn in a theater. Bad enough that she’d have to enter a supermarket in this outfit, later in the evening. She’d look flat-out ridiculous—or worse, as if she was out to find herself some action.

  Inviting as the prospect was, turning back wasn’t an option. After mulling all that over and feeling no less confused than before, Brylee paused before opening the door of her SUV, checking her hair and lipstick in the rearview mirror, and felt a jolt of chagrined alarm at her own reflection—hair pinned up in a saucy do, with tendrils curling at her nape and cheeks, sprayed into helmetlike submission. She was wearing not only eye shadow and mascara, but liner, too—along with foundation and powder and blush.

  She’d even plucked her brows and shaved her legs, for pity’s sake, and then there was the dress—the dress. It was a “heads up, handsome, I’m back on the market” kind of getup, for sure, flirty and red, with a clingy fit through the bodice and hips, where it flared out subtly into three tiers of flapperlike ruffles.

  Had she bought the darned thing for a costume party or what? She’d found it hanging at the back of her closet, tried it on to see if it would still fit and had decided the slip of silk would do as well as anything else she owned. She couldn’t remember buying it or wearing it, which was just as well, because the occasion had probably had something to do with Hutch Carmody.

  Some things—and some men—were better forgotten.

  “Who are you?” she asked the image looking back at her in irritated amazement. “Nobody I recognize, that’s for sure.”

  What, she wondered now, long past the point where she could have done anything differently, had she been thinking? She was having tacos and beer with the girls at the Boot Scoot, not going out for a glamorous night on the town in Manhattan or L.A. with Prince Charming.

  Exasperated, having just come to her senses with a hard slam, Brylee thought about fleeing yet again, just turning right around and heading back home to the ranch—forget the grocery list she’d keyed into her smartphone. Yes, it would be a yellow-bellied thing to do, but wasn’t discretion the better part of valor, at least some of the time? Would it be so very wrong to beat a retreat without even setting foot inside that seedy cowboy bar at all?

  She might have given in and split the scene in spite of earlier misgivings—if Amy hadn’t pulled in next to her, with a jaunty honk of her car horn and a wave of one hand. The woman was beaming when she got out from behind the wheel; she locked up, and came around to stand next to Brylee’s driver’s side door.

  Forcing a smile—after all, it was herself she was put out with, not Amy—Brylee rolled down her window.

  “Well, I’ll be,” Amy marveled, cheerleader-cute in her rhinestone-studded jeans and striped, off-one-shoulder shirt. Her blond hair, like Brylee’s, was pinned up and sprayed within an inch of its life. It was a good thing neither one of them smoked, Brylee decided fitfully, because they might have become human fireballs just by trying to light up. “I really thought you were going to come up with some lame but extremely inventive excuse and cancel on us again. But here you are.”

  “Thanks for the vote of confidence,” Brylee replied, shoving aside the fact that she’d been about to boogie for the hills, but now she had no choice but to serve out the two-hour sentence ahead of her. But she wasn’t going to stay a minute longer than that. So she drew a deep breath and asked, with a flimsy smile, “Are we going in, or shall we wait out here for the others?”

  Amy dismissed the idea of marking time in the parking lot with a wave of one manicured hand, shook her head and stepped back so Brylee could climb out of the SUV.

  The other woman’s eyes gleamed with appreciative mischief as she took Brylee in with a sweeping visual inspection, taking pointed notice of the red dress, the makeup and sexy hairdo, the F-me open-toed high heels. Her perusal was so thorough, in fact, that Brylee felt like squirming. Was Amy taking an inventory, or what?

  “You clean up real nice, Boss Lady,” she finally said, grinning. Then, in an impish whisper, she added, “It’ll probably just be the usual Friday-night-in-Parable crowd in there tonight, you know. Unless you’ve got a steamy date afterward and didn’t bother to share the information with your BFF.”

  Brylee quickly turned away and made a major project of rolling up her window and locking the SUV, hoping she’d moved fast enough to hide the blush warming her cheeks. “I guess I just got carried away,” she said offhandedly, when she was facing her friend again.

  How long had it been since she’d had any reason at all—even a flimsy one, like tacos and beer—to dress like this? Heck, she was even wearing perfume.

  Inwardly, Brylee continued to fret. Was she possessed? Did she have an alternate personality she hadn’t known about prior to tonight? None of this was like her—including the hesitation.

  As if divining her friend’s thoughts, Amy took a firm grip on Brylee’s arm and hustled her toward the entrance to the Boot Scoot, music and laughter and the heady aroma of fried food rolling out into the cool dusk to greet them.

  Unaccountably, in the instant it took for her eyes to adjust to the dim interior of the bar, Brylee’s heart began to pound, and she wanted once again, but more fiercely than ever this time, to spin around on one spiked heel and bolt.

  And then her vision acclimated itself to the scene before her. Zane Sutton was ambling in her direction, and he gave her a slow, approving once-over as he drew nearer.

  “Oh, hell,” Brylee muttered, stiffening. What was he doing in the Boot Scoot, a good thirty miles from home? If he wanted to party, well, Three Trees had a run-down tavern or two of its own.

  “Is that Zane Sutton?” Amy asked, in a stage whisper, after closing her gaping mouth. “The movie star?”

  “Yep,” Brylee answered wearily. “That’s him, all right.”

  She worked up a neighborly smile, despite her many misgivings, because it was a free country and if the man wanted to hang out at the Boot Scoot Tavern, of all places, tonight of all nights, then she’d just have to accept it.

  Zane, looking cowboy-good in perfectly ordinary clothes—clothes that were better suited to the location than her own, in fact—came to a stop within touching distance and grinned down into Brylee’s face. Amusement, along with something else, sparked in his eyes.

  “Hello, Brylee,” he said easily, letting his gaze slide over her again, leaving invisible fire in its wake, instantly followed by a rash of goose bumps.

  Amy elbowed Brylee hard and cleared her throat, which meant, in girlfriend vernacular, Introduce us, damn it.

  Brylee remembered her manners, smiled even more determinedly than before and told herself to suck it up and deal. Sometimes, when there was no way over, under or around a situation, a person simply had to go through it. “Am
y Dupree,” she chirped brightly, “this is Zane Sutton, my new neighbor. Zane, my good friend Amy.”

  “Amy,” Zane said, with a nod of acknowledgment.

  “H-hello,” Amy stammered out. She wasn’t usually shy, but then again, she didn’t meet movie stars every day, either. Those who graced Parable County with their presence generally kept to themselves, for the most part, anyway—except, of course, when they felt called upon to interfere in local politics or to boycott products that were the lifeblood of the year-round inhabitants, like beef.

  Zane’s grin rose to his eyes, lingered there, with whatever it was he thought was so damn funny. “Join us?” he asked smoothly.

  Us? Brylee thought, barely resisting an embarrassing urge to peer around his shoulder to see who made up the other component of “us.”

  “Sure!” Amy said quickly, her smile as blinding as a prison-yard searchlight. “That would be great!”

  “Good,” Zane said smoothly, watching Brylee’s face and acting as if he knew every last one of her deepest secrets and a few she herself had yet to discover in the bargain. With a sweep of one arm, he gestured toward the tables lining the far wall, but the Friday night crowd was thick, and Brylee still couldn’t see where he was directing her and Amy to go.

  Amy, on the other hand, seemed to come equipped with her own personal GPS. The rhinestones on her hip pockets caught colored lights from the jukebox as she sashayed confidently across the room and headed straight for the table with the ratty old moose head hanging on the wall just above it.

  A man stood, smiling, as they approached, weaving a path between line dancers and waitresses and people just trying to elbow their way to the restroom. He was breathtakingly handsome, whoever he was, and he obviously knew it, which didn’t endear him to Brylee.

  In fact, she bristled a little.

  “My brother,” Zane explained mildly, and with a touch of what might have been irony. “Landry Sutton.”

  Landry beamed, showing teeth as white and straight and perfect as Zane’s. Were they born that way, or was cosmetic dentistry a factor? The brother’s hair was the same toasty shade of dark blond, too, his eyes the same intense blue. And yet, Brylee thought, he was very different from his sibling. His clothes—jeans and a crisp white shirt, regulation dress-up garb for a cowboy—were too, well, tailored, fitting him like a layer of spray paint. They were not just expensive, those duds, they were out-and-out flashy, and his boots, with their pointed toes and elaborate embroidery, must have been custom-made.

  On an oil baron or a trick-rider in an Old West show, circa Buffalo Bill Cody’s heyday, they might have worked. In Parable County, Montana, they were the unmistakable marks of a wannabe, a greenhorn.

  Amy, apparently unconcerned by all this, or just failing to make the same observations Brylee had, gushed all over Landry Sutton, welcoming him to the community and all that, but Brylee could manage only a wooden smile and a stiff “How do you do?” as she put her hand out for Landry to shake. In a sidelong glance at Zane, she saw that his mouth had taken on a slightly smug curve at one side.

  Zane’s once-over had at least been subtle—sort of—but when Landry measured Brylee from the crown of her head to the soles of her scandalous shoes, she felt, well, not trashy, exactly, but on display, like a ripe peach at a roadside produce stand.

  She might have made excuses then, said she and Amy were expecting a few friends any minute now and promptly chosen a table as far away from Zane and Landry’s as possible, but her BFF was already batting her glue-on eyelashes at the new guy in town, and he suavely pulled back her chair.

  Once Amy sat down, Brylee was stuck. Zane, looking strangely sympathetic but still amused, offered her the chair beside his and waited until she took it before sitting down himself.

  “Things are looking up,” Landry said in a low drawl, his gaze fixed somewhere in the vicinity of Brylee’s cleavage.

  Damn that stupid push-up bra, anyway, she thought. She should never have ordered the thing, let alone put it on, but the woman on the shopping channel had promised the earth, plus lasting peace and global prosperity, all for $29.99 plus shipping.

  Sucker, Brylee castigated herself silently, remembering. Had she bought the red dress at the same time, on the same recklessly romantic impulse? Who knew?

  “Landry,” Zane said coolly, “quit while you’re ahead, okay?”

  It wasn’t a suggestion, Brylee realized, but an order, or even a warning, however politely delivered.

  An invisible charge flashed, white-hot, between the two men.

  “We really should get a table of our own,” Brylee interjected, with desperate goodwill. “Before the place gets too crowded.” She paused, blushed because she could feel Zane’s sidelong glance stinging tiny hair follicles on every inch of her skin—and not just the visible parts, either. “W-we’re meeting friends.”

  “They’re late, anyhow,” Amy said quickly. “Who knows? They might not show up at all. You know how they can be.”

  Brylee glared at her friend, contentedly seated beside Landry on the opposite side of the scratched tabletop.

  Amy, undaunted, made a face at her.

  An unfamiliar waitress came over, harried but, at first, friendly. Whip-thin in her narrow jeans and boob-hugging tube top, she sported big hair, pink boots and a plastic name tag that read “Sharlene.” The finishing touch was a tattoo of a small, grinning skull, its bony head crowned with pink flowers, nestled on the upper curve of her right breast.

  If that top shrunk a mere fraction of an inch in the dryer next time Sharlene did her laundry, Brylee thought uncharitably, it would be Nipple-o-rama at the Boot Scoot—forget taco night.

  “What’ll it be, Mr. Movie Star?” the waitress asked in a near-croon, eyes twinkling. Evidently, she’d noticed Zane and no one else—even Landry, an unusually attractive man in his own right, might have been part of the wall, for all the attention she gave him.

  Amy and Brylee, well, they were just plain transparent, it seemed.

  Ms. Tattooed Boob, Brylee reflected, seemed to be the predatory type, one of those felinelike females who not only discounted other women as people but wrote off much of the male gender, too. Only the man caught directly in her crosshairs mattered to Sharlene and her ilk.

  Harsh, Brylee scolded herself silently. You don’t even know this woman. Reasoning didn’t help, though. The dislike remained, a thing of instinct rather than logic.

  Brylee would have chosen to ignore the bimbo altogether, thus returning the favor, but, unfortunately, her stomach gave a long, rumbling growl, audible even over the throb of the jukebox and the shuffling of feet out on the minuscule dance floor.

  Mercifully, Amy, Landry and the waitress-in-a-tube didn’t seem to hear, but Zane immediately turned to Brylee, grinned conspiratorially and said, addressing Sharlene, “I think my lady friend here is hungry.”

  His lady friend? Now there was a term straight out of yesteryear.

  Catching the way Landry’s brows knitted together in an instant frown, though, Brylee had to wonder if the remark had actually been directed at him, and not at her at all.

  The prospect, though insufferably territorial, was unnervingly pleasant, too.

  “Okay,” the waitress said, annoyed, her glance slicing to Brylee’s face. “What can I get you, honey?” A side order of cyanide? A one-way ticket to Taliban headquarters?

  Brylee decided she was definitely being bitchy and forced herself to smile as she requested a diet cola—normally, she would have had a beer, but she intended to split at the first opportunity and that might not give the alcohol enough time to wear off—along with two tacos.

  “Shredded beef or chicken?” Sharlene snapped. Clearly, doing her job was an imposition now that it appeared Zane wasn’t fixing to ask for her phone number anytime soon.

  “Chicken, please,” Brylee said sweetly. Oh, and you might want to watch it, “honey.” Two can play your game, and cowgirls fight to win.

  Zane chuckled under his
breath, but Landry was still watching him, and by then the frown had turned to a glare.

  Tattoo Girl, aka Sharlene, switched her scowl to Amy and raised one eyebrow in impatient query. Amy, nobody’s pushover, scowled right back. “Same thing,” she said tartly. “Chicken tacos and a diet cola.” A pause, during which Amy’s mouth tightened to a straight line and then softened into a saucy smirk. “And make it snappy, will you—darlin’? My friend and I have a big night ahead, and we’re starving.”

  Zane smiled again, pretended to peruse the limited menu, a laminated photocopy stained with last week’s chili sauce and something that might have been cheese at one time, and asked for a deluxe burger, a double order of fries and a chocolate milk shake.

  The waitress beamed on him like sunshine, as if she’d never in her livelong life taken such a brilliantly unique order as that one.

  Landry, obviously not happy to be persona non grata, as Brylee and Amy were, said he’d have a draft beer and it would be a marvelous thing if Sharlene refilled the peanut bowl, because they were down to shells and salt grains.

  Marvelous? Brylee was struck by the term. There probably wasn’t another man in the entire county—not a straight one, anyhow—who would have used that word, especially in a place like the Boot Scoot.

  Sharlene flounced away, taking her tattoo and her snippy attitude with her, ostensibly to put in their orders at the fry cook’s window, and another look passed between Zane and Landry, cryptic and not all that brotherly, when you thought about it.

  Brylee stole a surreptitious glance at her watch, under the table, and suppressed a sigh. Where on earth were her friends, Margie and Francesca and Susie and the others? If only they’d make an appearance, she’d have ample reason to take her tacos and her diet cola, once they were served, that is, and make her escape.

  She tried to reason with herself, silently, of course. What was the big deal? She’d already been horseback riding with Zane, and he’d be coming to the ranch for supper the very next night. It wasn’t as though their paths hadn’t crossed, and would continue to cross, in the foreseeable future.