Big Sky Wedding

by Linda Lael Miller

  Brylee chuckled, holding up both hands in humorous surrender. “Fair enough,” she said. Then, archly, she added, “What if Shane got into some kind of trouble, somewhere along the line? What would happen then?”

  “Shane’s a boy,” Walker pointed out. He was turning a little grumpy now, forgetting his coffee, shoving an irritated hand through his hair, leaving furrows behind each finger.

  “Precisely,” Brylee said. “Does that mean the rules are different for him?”

  “Damn it, Brylee, you’re not being fair here,” Walker complained. “Boys do get themselves in Dutch once in a while—of course they do—it’s part of growing up. But whether you like it or not, there are some important differences here—boys don’t get pregnant, for one thing.”

  “That’s about the only thing,” Brylee reasoned. “They do their share of mischief and then some, and you know it, Walker. And how do you think these theoretical females you’ve been yammering about get pregnant, anyhow? By osmosis? A boy is required.”

  Walker grinned wryly, shook his head again. “Cut me a little slack here, will you, sis? Clare can go along on one trip and she’d better mind her p’s and q’s, if she wants to go again. Right now, that’s all the concession this nervous daddy is willing to make.”

  Brylee laughed and stuck out her hand in tacit agreement, and they shook on it, as though sealing a bargain.

  Walker finished his coffee, said goodbye and left the apartment.

  Five minutes later, Clare burst in, face glowing, eyes bright, without bothering to knock. She hurled herself into Brylee’s arms, saying, “Thank you, thank you, thank you!”

  Brylee hugged her niece back, then assumed an expression of solemn warning. “Don’t blow this, Clare,” she said quietly, but with a smile. “If you act up—as, let’s be perfectly honest here, you’ve been known to do before—your dad will send you home in a heartbeat, and that will be it. You’ll probably never get another chance to go on one of these road trips before you’re a grown woman—if then.”

  Clare nodded eagerly. “I will be so good,” she vowed.

  Brylee chuckled and hugged the girl again, as pleased by Walker’s decision as Clare was. “On behalf of girls and women everywhere,” she reminded the child, with mock sternness, “behave yourself, Clare Parrish. Prove to your dad that he’s right to trust you.”

  Clare, smiling now, wiped at her cheeks with the back of one hand. “You’re the absolute best,” she bubbled. A pause, another sniffle. “How did you manage to get Dad to give me a shot at this? He’s been stonewalling me and Mom, right along.”

  Brylee smoothed a lock of coppery hair back from Clare’s slightly flushed cheek. “I just told him how I felt, when my dad stopped letting me go out on the circuit with him and Walker and the others. Your father isn’t trying to spoil your fun, Clare—he loves you, and he’s trying to look out for you, keep you from getting hurt.”

  Even as she said those words, Brylee felt old wounds healing over, at long last, in the deepest regions of her own heart. Her dad had loved her, just as Walker loved Clare, and he’d honestly believed he was doing the right thing by sheltering her from a dangerous world.

  Now might be a good time to pick some flowers in the yard, she thought, and pay a visit to Barclay Parrish’s grave, in the small, shady cemetery just outside Three Trees.

  It couldn’t hurt to say, Thank you, I understand, even so long after the fact.

  * * *

  FOR WHATEVER REASONS, Landry didn’t show up on Hangman’s Bend Ranch all day on Saturday—at least, if he did, he didn’t stop by the house—and Zane was both glad about and troubled by the fact. Cleo and Nash were disappointed and peevish that he’d canceled the visit to Timber Creek as it was, and Landry’s prickly presence wouldn’t have improved the emotional climate any.

  There might have been a full-scale insurrection, in fact, if Zane hadn’t reminded the disgruntled natives that they’d all be attending a barbecue over at Hutch and Kendra Carmody’s place the next afternoon, thus ending their social isolation. He’d even volunteered to drive into town and fetch pizza for supper, though he was getting sick of the stuff, and would have preferred a home-cooked meal. Still, dining on takeout for the ten millionth time was a small price to pay, he supposed, for keeping the peace.

  After supper, Zane retreated to the barn, saddled Blackjack and led the animal out into the cool of the gathering twilight.

  Nash, evidently burned out on reruns of vintage TV dramas, was standing almost directly in his path when he emerged, and Slim was right there beside him, sizing up the proceedings. In the little time he’d had that dog, Zane thought, with distracted satisfaction, the critter had filled out a bit through the middle, and gained a little confidence, too. His coat gleamed, even in the rapidly fading daylight, and his eyes were bright with eager interest.

  Nash, on the other hand, was clearly in poor humor again, now that he’d finished off the last of the pizzas. He stood still, with his hands in his pockets and his head slanted slightly to one side, watching as Zane swung up into the saddle.

  “You said I could get a horse of my own,” the boy said, with just a touch of accusation underlying the reminder.

  “Give me a break, buddy,” Zane replied, hoping to jolly the kid out of his prepubescent mood. Were there going to be a lot of these? “You’ve only been here a few days, and a lot’s been going on.”

  Nash shifted from one foot to the other, but his hands remained in his pockets and his shoulders were still rigid under his T-shirt. “There’s always going to be a lot going on,” he said, and Zane couldn’t rightly deny that, ranch life being what it was. “But that’s okay. Just promise the kid stuff and then ignore him—I’m used to that.”

  Not for the first time, the boy’s words pierced something in Zane, something tender and already bruised. Nash was admitting, if in a roundabout way, that Jess Sutton wasn’t the paragon he’d made him out to be.

  Big surprise there.

  “I don’t plan on ignoring you, Nash,” Zane said, leaning one arm against the saddle horn and holding the reins loosely in the opposite hand while Blackjack fidgeted, prancing sideways, eager to cover some ground. “And when I make a promise, I keep it.”

  Nash’s expression remained skeptical, but there was a chink in his armor, Zane could see that—a glint of hope in the kid’s eyes.

  “Landry’s in town,” Nash went on, his voice still dull. “I heard you telling Cleo all about how he’s a train wreck—Landry, I mean—and you wish he’d just go back to Chicago and stay put.”

  Guilt flashed through Zane, but he knew there was more the boy meant to say, so he braced himself for it and waited while Blackjack became increasingly impatient, tossing his head now, dancing backward a few steps.

  “Is that what you say about me?” Nash asked. “When I’m not around—or you think I’m not? That you wish I’d get out of your hair?”

  Damn, Zane thought. “No,” he said, after a beat or two, “it isn’t. It’s just that things are a little complicated between Landry and me, that’s all.”

  “Why?” Nash persisted.

  “They just are,” Zane said, not really having an explanation.

  “I would have liked to have a brother, somebody to grow up with. Even a sister would have been okay, I guess. Just somebody to hang with when Dad went away all those times.”

  The backs of Zane’s eyes throbbed, and he had to clear his throat before he answered. “Look,” he ground out, hoarse despite those efforts, “if you want to, climb up on the fence over there and get on behind me. We’ll ride double.”

  Nash’s whole face brightened. “Really?”

  “I don’t say things I don’t mean, boy,” Zane told him. Unlike some people I could name.

  Quick as mercury escaping from an old-fashioned thermometer snapped in half, Nash was up on the fence. Zane rode over and made the horse stand still until the kid was on behind him.

  Cleo, meanwhile, materialized on the porch, glo
wering with disapproval. “Nash Sutton,” she called, “you get down offa that big ole beast of a thing this minute!”

  Zane grinned and ignored the woman. “Put your arms around my middle,” he told Nash, “and hold on to Blackjack with your knees.”

  “Have you both lost your minds?” Cleo ranted on, for all the world like a hellfire-and-brimstone preacher warning of certain doom, pacing and gesturing and finally flapping her apron at them as if to shoo them right out of her sight if they couldn’t behave like decent human beings.

  “Yes, ma’am, I guess we are a little crazy,” Nash replied cheerfully. Then, to Zane, in an eager whisper, he said, “Make him run.”

  Zane chuckled. “No possible way,” he answered. “You probably wouldn’t get hurt, but Cleo might just have a heart attack right before our eyes.” He headed Blackjack down the rutted driveway, toward the road.

  Nash bounced behind him. “This is great!” he yelled, loudly enough to split Zane’s eardrum. “I knew it! I’m a natural!”

  Zane laughed and eased Blackjack into a trot, once they reached the dirt road below the house. The gate, in sore need of repair like just about everything else on the place, stood open, the hinges long since rusted solid.

  The ride had to be short, since it was getting dark, but it lasted long enough to let Blackjack burn off some energy and satisfy Nash’s thirst for adventure, for the time being at least.

  Back at the barn, Zane dismounted by swinging one leg over Blackjack’s neck and jumping to the ground, and Nash immediately scooted forward into the saddle, grabbing the reins. “I told you I could do this,” the boy crowed, face beaming as bright as the moon overhead.

  “Be careful getting down,” Zane counseled, gripping Blackjack’s bridle strap just in case Nash got any ideas. He was pleased that his kid brother was happy for once, though, and that he’d had a part in it.

  By then, Cleo had retreated into the house in head-shaking disgust, and Slim, for whatever reason, had gone along with her.

  Heedless of his older brother’s advice to dismount slowly, Nash leaped to the ground, limber as an Apache warrior, and winced comically when the balls of his feet made contact. The inevitable jolt of pain made him howl.

  Zane shook his head slowly from side to side. “I tried to warn you,” he said.

  Nash had straightened, but he was still making faces. “Oww,” he repeated.

  “Next time, when I tell you something, listen.”

  With that, he led the horse back into the barn, made sure he had food and water and showed Nash how to undo the cinch and slide the saddle and blanket off Blackjack’s back, how to remove the bridle, positioning his hand to catch hold of the bit so it wouldn’t knock against the animal’s teeth. After that, they checked the gelding’s hooves for stones and other debris and gave him a thorough brushing down. Nash had a lot to learn, naturally, since he’d never been around horses before now, but he did seem to have a knack handling them, and that was a very good sign—wasn’t it?

  * * *

  RATHER THAN CARRY plates and platters across the house to the other kitchen, Brylee served supper at her table, instead of Casey and Walker’s. It was a squeeze, the space being considerably smaller, but that just made the occasion cozier.

  Shane and Walker ate like wolves at the tail end of a starvation winter, while Clare was so ebullient at the prospect of traveling to Colorado with her dad and brother that she hardly touched her food. Instead, she chattered, her pretty face flushed, her eyes bright with excitement.

  Only Casey seemed to see through Brylee’s cheery facade, and she alternated between stabbing at a brussels sprout or a baby potato or a bite of game hen with her fork and shifting the blanket-bundle that was Preston from one shoulder to the other.

  She was careful not to watch Brylee too closely, of course, but there was no mistaking her concern.

  Brylee simply smiled a lot, listened and consumed just enough supper to avoid attracting attention, profoundly grateful that there was no real point in trying to make conversation. Clare prattled blissfully on about what clothes she wanted to take along on the trip to Colorado, and Shane, a typical kid brother, interjected a scoffing grunt once in a while. Mostly, though, he shoveled in food, stoking the fire of growth raging inside him, multiplying cells, stretching bones and filling out muscles.

  Walker complimented Brylee on the meal, to which he had done a respectable amount of justice, and took baby Preston from Casey so his wife could finish her supper.

  In the midst of all this, Brylee watched, and silently counted herself lucky to be part of this lively gathering of kinfolk and, at the same time, wondering if she’d ever have a family of her own.

  CHAPTER FOURTEEN

  THE NEXT DAY, cars and pickups filled the driveway and much of the barnyard at Whisper Creek Ranch, Hutch and Kendra Carmody’s place outside Parable, and still more rigs lined the road below. There were a few motorcycles in evidence, too, Zane noticed, and probably an extra horse or two in the barn and corrals.

  Cleo, all dolled up in a bright green polyester pantsuit, her best outfit, she claimed, and brand-spanking new in the bargain, sat stalwartly in the passenger seat of Zane’s truck, one hand gripping the extra handle just above her window as though she expected the vehicle to go pitching over a steep cliff any second now. And never mind that there wasn’t one within miles.

  Nash, riding in the backseat, wasn’t saying much—probably because he was too busy gawking at the Carmodys’ fine ranch house, first-rate barn, miles of painted fences and the many horses and cattle grazing in the surrounding pastures. Once he’d looked his fill, Zane suspected, amused, the boy would most likely busy himself trying not to look overly impressed by it all.

  They’d left Slim at home, where he’d be safe and no bother to anyone, but as Zane pulled up in front of a makeshift valet station near the mouth of the driveway, manned by a pair of grinning teenage boys, he reflected that there were probably almost as many canine guests at the party as there were people.

  One of the young men hired to park cars opened Cleo’s door for her and suavely helped her down after she’d swung her legs around and taken a teetering perch on the running board. Zane couldn’t tell for sure, since her back was turned to him, but he’d have bet she was blushing that plum color she turned when she felt flattered. Nash scrambled out right away and headed for the action without a moment’s hesitation.

  Apparently, the kid wasn’t shy, Zane thought, pleased. He would have pulled away then, found a place to park, but the other boy already had his door open and was holding out one hand for the keys.

  Zane placed the jingling tangle of metal in the kid’s palm, and the next thing he knew, his truck was pulling away at a good clip, leaving him to breathe dust.

  With a chuckle, he followed Cleo and Nash toward the noise and the good-cooking smells, but they were well ahead of him by then and soon disappeared, swallowed up in the busy, noisy merriment of a good old-fashioned, down-on-the-ranch, eat-till-your-belly-busts barbecue. Smoke rising from somewhere in back of the large, rambling house flavored the air with the tempting aromas of beef and chicken and pork crisping on the grill.

  Stepping through a wide, trellised gate in the back fence, Zane estimated the happy crowd at somewhere around a hundred head or so, not counting kids and dogs, and noticed the large brick barbecue, with its concrete base and shingled roof, obviously a permanent fixture designed to feed a cast of thousands with no problem. The structure was surrounded by men drinking beer, swapping yarns and offering unsolicited advice on when to turn the meat over, so it wouldn’t burn.

  A stranger and an outsider, Zane nonetheless felt immediately at home in this bunch; he’d grown up mostly in the country, after all, and rural ways had always made more sense to him than cloverleaf freeways and folks who’d never met even a single one of their neighbors, no matter how long they’d lived at the same address.

  Carmody, sporting a cobbler’s apron over the usual jeans and cotton shirt
and wielding a long-handled cooking fork, looked up, spotted him and waved him over with a grin. Boone, the sheriff, was there, too, in civilian clothes like before, at the Butter Biscuit Café, and Zane recognized Slade Barlow, as well.

  Somebody handed him a beer, still slippery from the ice-filled cooler nearby, and Hutch made casual introductions, at the same time keeping an eye on all that beef, chicken and pork. There were hot dogs and hamburgers, too, and a nearby table fairly groaned under the load of homemade potato salad and pies and all kinds of other such delicacies, along with the usual buns, pickles and condiments.

  Folks laughed and yammered all around, the women clustered at picnic tables under shade trees, the kids and dogs weaving in and out, chasing one another, dogs barking and kids shrieking with glee.

  Sipping his beer, Zane privately wished he’d brought Landry along, greenhorn clothes, sorry attitude and all, but he hadn’t been able to raise his brother, either by calling his cell or his room at the Somerset Inn. He’d done his sibling duty by trying, he figured, and he’d expected to be glad he hadn’t made contact but, instead, he felt a lonely ache taking shape in the pit of his stomach.

  Landry loved a good party and, whatever was gnawing at him, joining in the celebration might have cheered him up a little.

  Overhead, thunder grumbled, but nobody seemed to care, or even notice. And why should they? Things like bad weather wouldn’t spoil the day for these hardy folks, used to hard winters and sizzling summer heat and about a million other shifts of climate—they’d just laugh about a little rain, and maybe take refuge inside if the stuff started coming down hard.

  To Zane, Whisper Creek’s main ranch house looked spacious enough to accommodate this crowd and another one just like it, and he felt a mild pinch of something like envy at the thought. Would his place ever be bursting at the seams with friends and relations, like this one?

  He finally looked up, when he felt a single drop of rain land on his shoulder, and he saw the formerly blue sky filling with gunmetal-gray clouds, but like the other guests, he was soon drawn into the conversation around him, and forgot all about the weather.