Big Sky Secrets

by Linda Lael Miller

  * * *

  LANDRY DROVE, letting his own coffee cool in the cup holder, right alongside Ria’s. He’d added two bottles of water to the order, as an afterthought, and tossed them onto the backseat.

  The road between Parable and Three Trees was dark and the fabled big sky was popping with stars. He wished Ria were awake, so she could see them, too. Once or twice, he said even her name, but softly.

  She stirred when she heard his voice, so he knew she was alive, but she didn’t wake up.

  If Highbridge ever found out about this, Landry thought, with grim humor and a persistent ache in the neighborhood of his heart, his name wouldn’t be Landry Sutton anymore. It would be just plain “Mud.”

  Being nobody’s fool, Landry wasn’t about to go into any details concerning his “date” with Ria, not to the butler or anyone else, and ten would get you twenty she wouldn’t say a word about it, either. That part was more than okay with him, but what was he going to do if Ria woke up in the morning, head throbbing and stomach churning, just one big hangover-wearing skin, and decided it was his fault she’d guzzled all that beer?

  Couples with a lot going for them had gone their separate ways over lesser things, and that was for sure.

  Moreover, while he hadn’t forced Ria to drink like somebody trying to put out a fire in their belly, he was at least partly responsible, no getting around that. He’d been the one to come up with the bright idea to take her to the Boot Scoot Tavern, after all. He’d looked at it as a sort of cultural immersion, he supposed. Thought it would be a place where Ria could loosen up.

  She’d sure as hell done that, all right. But Landry doubted she’d cherish the memory, once she was sober again.

  Irritated with himself, he thrust a hand through his hair and jammed on the brakes when he spotted a doe and two fawns about to run out in front of the rig, their eyes eerily aglow in the glare of his headlights as they sprung across the road.

  A belated glance at Ria assured Landry that she hadn’t been startled out of a sound sleep by the sudden stop.

  A smile crooked up the corner of his mouth. If Ria had done much drinking up till tonight, he’d eat his hat. Still, she’d done things up right, so to speak. And by the time morning rolled around, she’d be hungover and thoroughly pissed off, just on general principle.

  Landry’s smile faded, like the highway receding into the gloom behind them.

  Yep, Ria was bound to hate herself, once the sun came up, if not before then.

  Then she’d start remembering things, piecing them together, and hate him, too.

  They were less than a mile from the bright lights of Three Trees when Ria suddenly sat up very straight, opened her eyes wide and whimpered a single word: “Stop.”

  Landry complied, jumped out of the truck and sprinted around to Ria’s side, opening the door for her.

  She groaned and tried to get her footing on the running board, which was, of course, between her and the ground, but she slipped.

  Landry caught her by the waist, set her on her feet a yard or so from the truck and barely managed to shift himself out of the line of fire before she bent double, groaned plaintively and retched, once, twice, three times, into the rocky dirt alongside the asphalt.

  Agonized because there was nothing he could do, Landry kept a firm hold on the waistband of Ria’s jeans with his right hand, the bare skin of her spine warm against his fingers, not wanting her to take a header into the ditch, on top of everything else. With his free hand, he smoothed her hair back from her forehead and her cheeks.

  When she was done heaving up her socks, Ria looked up at him, her face as pale as a full moon in a black, starless sky, and her lower lip quivered.

  “Oh, my God,” she said, as though surprised to find herself where she was.

  Landry had nothing to add, so he waited until he figured Ria was steady enough to stand on her own, then reached into the backseat of the truck for the bottled water he’d bought earlier. It wasn’t exactly cold, but it was wet.

  He unscrewed the cap and handed Ria the bottle.

  Her hand trembled as she took it, raised it almost to her mouth and then lowered it again.

  “Turn around,” she said, with a shaky but stubborn kind of dignity. “I don’t want you looking at me.”

  Landry refrained from pointing out that she was a little late with that request, turned his back and waited.

  He heard her gargle and spit, gargle and spit again.

  He couldn’t help smiling, so he was damn glad she couldn’t see his face.

  “Okay,” she said, after a brief interval of silence. “I’m through.”

  Landry turned to face her again. She looked small and miserable and more like a girl than the woman he was all too aware she was.

  His heart turned over in his chest, and something tender shinnied up his throat. He’d blown this one big-time, he thought, with genuine sorrow. Why hadn’t he listened to Highbridge, taken Ria to a nice restaurant or a movie or someplace like that? Any place but the Boot Scoot Tavern?

  Ria moved to climb into the truck, saying not a word and avoiding Landry’s eyes, but she let him help her onto the seat again. That was something, wasn’t it?

  Neither of them spoke again as they passed through Three Trees and then onto the narrower, more winding road that led home.

  At some point—Landry wasn’t exactly sure when—Ria started to cry, very softly, as if she didn’t want him to know.

  “I can’t believe I did that,” she said, in a husky whisper.

  Landry didn’t have a clue what to say, besides “Did what?” which would have been a stupid question, given that she’d been stating the obvious, so he just kept driving, his grip on the wheel so tight that his knuckles went numb.

  Ria recovered her composure gradually, but with admirable effort, and kept her gaze fixed on the road ahead, far ahead, beyond the long reach of the headlights.

  When Landry turned onto her driveway, he hit every rut and pothole, it seemed, even though he’d made up his mind to avoid them, keep the ride as smooth as possible, since Ria had been through enough for one night, thanks, in no small part, to him.

  He stopped the truck at the foot of her front walk, came around to open her door and help her down, bracing himself for what he knew was coming. Damn it, he wouldn’t even be in her good graces until morning—she’d already started hating him.

  Now she’d tell him to stay the hell away from her, from now until the crack of doom, and who could blame her?

  She didn’t move, evidently wasn’t inclined to chat, either.

  So they stared at each other, Landry standing on the ground, Ria sitting sideways on the passenger seat. In the harsh glow of the truck’s interior light, Landry saw that her face was still pale, and she’d cried the mascara right off her lashes and onto her cheeks, where it left smudges. Her lower lip wobbled.

  Time stopped, started again. Landry was starting to get used to the phenomenon.

  Finally, he offered his hand to help her down, and when she didn’t take it right away, he figured he’d already touched her for the last time, back there on the side of the highway, and something vast and bleak opened inside him at the thought. Not touching Ria, ever again, would be like living on the dark side of the moon, all by himself.

  “Come in for a while?” she asked, very solemnly, at last taking his hand, which, Landry realized, had been suspended in midair for some seconds, forgotten.

  When Ria was standing on the ground, Landry cocked his head to one side, sure he must have heard wrong. “Did you just say—?” He finally managed to get out most of a sentence, which seemed like an accomplishment, since he hadn’t been sure if his vocal cords had rusted over or not.

  She smiled, a sad, soft smile, nodded once. “I could use some company,” she said. Then the pallor in her mascara-stained cheeks gave way to a fragile shade of pink. “Don’t worry—I won’t keep you long.”

  She swayed slightly, just then, and her eyelashes fluttered.
Acting on pure instinct, thinking she might be about to faint, Landry lifted her into his arms, just as he had that other time, when he’d come upon her on still another roadside, and he carried her up the walk and the porch steps, right to the door.

  By the time they were standing on the welcome mat, Ria’s face was pink all over. “You can put me down now, please,” she said primly. “The keys are in my shoulder bag, and that’s behind me, which means I can’t get to it from here.”

  Awkwardly, bearing the imprint of said shoulder bag where it had been caught between them, Landry set Ria on her feet, hoping she hadn’t felt a whole other kind of imprint.

  Her purse was small, basically a leather envelope with a strap, and she fumbled with the flap for a few seconds, rummaged inside and produced a key ring.

  Without a word, she handed the works to Landry.

  He recalled that the long brass one fit the front door. He inserted the key and turned the lock, noticing, as he hadn’t when he’d picked her up for the date from hell earlier that evening, that the place was quiet.

  No barking dog. No teenage girl, glued to the modest TV in the living room.

  “Quinn’s over at Clare’s—at a slumber party,” Ria said, evidently reading the curious expression on Landry’s face. “Bones went with her.”

  “Oh,” Landry said, silently declaring himself a total dumb-ass.

  “There’s a coffeepot in the kitchen,” Ria said, with another shadow of a smile. “Why don’t you help yourself, while I grab a quick shower?”

  First, she’d told him straight out that they were alone, at least until morning. Then she’d mentioned a shower. Was it wishful thinking, Landry wondered, or was she suggesting something more than a cup of coffee? Landry didn’t know, and he wasn’t about to ask.

  So he just nodded, deciding to take things as they came, and went on to the kitchen, once Ria had vanished through an arched doorway.

  Landry’s heart was beating double time as he flipped on the light switch, scanned the scrubbed countertops for the coffeemaker, found it and extracted a couple of pods from the metal basket nearby.

  He heard the plumbing clatter, like a distant train rattling along the tracks, and then the sound of water running, full blast. An image of Ria, stripping off her clothes and stepping under the spray, was just starting to take shape in his mind’s eye when he purposely derailed the thought and concentrated on his assignment, which was making coffee.

  The machine was the one-cup kind, similar enough to the one he had at home that he had the java brewing within seconds. He scouted for cups, found them on a cupboard shelf and took out two.

  With that done, Landry was suddenly in need of distraction, since the water in the shower was still running, and it would be oh so easy to imagine—

  He fairly thrust himself into motion, walking over to the small desk in the corner, where Ria’s computer stood, clad in plastic covers. The equipment was old-fashioned, if not completely obsolete, a fossil of a thing, with a big monitor and a tower to boot.

  Just as he would have turned away, in search of something less personal to occupy his mind, Landry noticed the framed five-by-seven photograph, almost out of sight, there in the shadow of the mammoth monitor.

  He picked up the picture, looking at the frame first. It was cutesy and probably cheap, made of cast resin and edged with Dalmatians, each one sporting a bright red fireman’s hat and a toothy grin.

  There was a heart at the top, red like the dogs’ hats but dusted with glitter.

  Landry felt his throat thicken as he finally let his eyes take in the picture inside, a black-and-white shot of a smiling man, probably around thirty years old, decked out in full firefighting gear.

  Looking into that open, honest face, Landry recalled the wedding band he’d seen on Ria’s ring finger, not just on the morning after the buffalo debacle, but before that, too. He hadn’t been looking for the ring tonight—he’d been too wrapped up in its wearer—but that didn’t mean it wasn’t there.

  He’d wanted distraction, and he’d gotten it. He hadn’t heard the water in the shower stop running, and he flinched, imperceptibly he hoped, when Ria spoke from just behind him.

  “He was my husband,” she said matter-of-factly. “His name was Frank.”

  Landry had known she’d been married, known she was a widow, too. So why did Ria’s statement strike him in the solar plexus with the force of a ramrod?

  Carefully, he set the picture down, turned around. His gaze went straight to the ring finger of her left hand. The band glowed, wide and golden, as if marking a claim, reminding him that she belonged to a dead man.

  Landry cleared his throat. Forced himself to meet Ria’s eyes.

  She’d scrubbed away the blotches of mascara and put on a pair of flannel pajama bottoms and an oversized gray sweatshirt long enough to reach her knuckles.

  “I’m sorry,” Landry said, because he was, and not just because he’d taken her to the Boot Scoot Tavern and let her drink too much beer.

  He was sorry for everything bad that had ever happened to her, in her whole life, and would have given anything, in that moment, if he could go back, year by year, heartbreak by heartbreak, and mend all the broken places.

  Ria glanced at the picture, then looked at Landry again. “Don’t be,” she said. “Pictures are meant to be looked at.” A smile quirked at both corners of her mouth, a little twitch. “No coffee?” she added.

  Landry recalled his original mission and pointed to indicate the cup he’d brewed and forgotten, while he was trying not to think about Ria naked in the shower, with beads of water clinging to her eyelashes and her skin....

  While he was looking at Frank Manning’s face and flat-out envying the guy, even if he was six feet under, because Ria had loved him. Loved him so much, in fact, that she was still wearing his wedding ring.

  Landry cleared his throat. “I think I’ll skip the coffee,” he said. “Get out of here so you can rest.”

  But when he took one step, Ria planted herself directly in front of him.

  “You said you’d hold me, if I wanted you to,” she said, in a murmur. “Does the offer still stand?”

  CHAPTER TEN

  RIA WAS SURE she could guess at least some of what Landry was thinking in those strained moments after she’d blocked the speedy exit he’d been about to make—from her kitchen, from her house, from her presence.

  She suppressed a sigh and stood her ground. Okay, she had basically asked the man to spend the night with her, but they were both adults, weren’t they, she widowed, he divorced? Not to mention that Landry had been the one to make the initial suggestion, the one who’d told Ria boldly that she needed holding and he was ready and willing to fulfill that need.

  So what was the big deal? It wasn’t as if she’d specifically offered sex, after all, though she certainly wasn’t ruling it out, either. She’d said, “Hold me,” that was all.

  Under other circumstances, Ria might have been insulted by Landry’s reaction. Because he was always so damn sure of himself, so used to being right, she could only conclude that he’d decided a few things: that she, Ria, didn’t know that she wasn’t quite herself, that she might think she was sober, when she was actually still very much under the influence, that she was missing her husband and wanted a temporary stand-in for Frank, not Landry himself.

  All of which, in his lofty opinion, would make her vulnerable, defenseless and, therefore, off-limits. Well, Ria thought, if she’d read Landry correctly, his reasoning was faulty.

  First of all, she’d never been herself in quite the way she was right now, standing barefoot in her shabby but clean kitchen, heels dug in, because Ria wasn’t playing around. Her mind was razor sharp, her attention focused enough to ignite anything or anyone in her path. For once in Ria’s up-and-down life, she wasn’t self-conscious, a miracle in and of itself. She knew she looked about as unglamorous as possible, without a ratty bathrobe, a head full of curlers and a thick layer of goopy face cream to c
omplete the look, and she didn’t give a damn.

  Second, although Ria knew she’d suffer for overindulging, that was a simple matter of cause and effect, of science, not sin. Alcohol didn’t agree with her; she’d known that and gone ahead and chugged down about a gallon of the stuff anyway, and in very short order.

  But damn it, she was inside this body, thinking with this brain, feeling with this heart, looking out through these eyes, and she knew she wasn’t merely sober, but stone-cold sober, as surely as if she’d suddenly been snatched out of a hundred-year nap by a giant hand—just call her Sleeping Beauty—summarily immersed in a star-splattered northern sea, between icebergs, and then just as quickly plucked out again, jolted awake by the chill, keenly aware of everything around her and wanting to live, really live. For so long she’d been in a trance, surviving, though just barely, putting one foot in front of the other with no permanent destination in mind, marking time while she waited for—what? A celestial wake-up call?

  And now she’d heard that call, that hey-you from heaven, somewhere between a neon-lit honky-tonk in a small Montana town and all that throwing up alongside the highway, and she wasn’t going to ignore it.

  That wasn’t all, though. There was a third thing.

  Yes, it was true that she missed Frank, sometimes with a vengeance, and maybe she always would. But she wasn’t in the market for a substitute, as Landry seemed to have surmised after seeing the photograph she kept on her desk.

  There had been only one Frank.

  And there was only one Landry Sutton.

  What did she want? Right now, in this moment?

  That one was easy. Ria wanted a solid, flesh-and-blood man to hold her close through what remained of the night, make her feel safe and cherished in his arms while she sorted out all these new insights. And, okay, she wouldn’t mind some hot, feverish sex, if it seemed right at the time.

  Not just any man would do, of course—Ria needed more than a warm body beside her in bed. She needed Landry Sutton, hardheaded, stubborn, arrogant Landry Sutton.

  And darned if she knew why.

  She smiled, seeing the consternation in Landry’s face as he stood there, waiting her out, too cussed to initiate the next stage of conversation, determined not to budge until she spoke again. No matter how long it took.