Big Sky Secrets

by Linda Lael Miller

He turned around then, saw that he’d been right, that Ria was on her knees on the mattress, but she wasn’t playing the supplicant. Her blue eyes were clear and serious. She might have been baiting him before, he thought, but she was on the level now. She wanted a straight answer, that was all.

  “You’re not ready,” he said flatly. The truth, he reflected, with disjointed reason, might set a person free, as the Good Book said, but it sure wasn’t easy to face sometimes.

  Ria tilted her head to one side, studying his face. “How can you possibly know whether I’m ready or not?” she asked.

  Landry took hold of her left hand, held it up between them, used the pad of his thumb to turn the wide wedding band gleaming on her finger.

  “This is how,” he said, with real sorrow.

  Ria closed her eyes. All the starch seemed to drain out of her, and she lay down again, turning away from him this time, curling up like a night flower closing itself against the break of day.

  Landry ached, everywhere. “Ria—”

  “Go away,” she murmured. “Please. Just go.”

  He stood, grabbed up one boot, then the other.

  Carried them out to the darkened kitchen, where he plunked down on a chair to pull them on.

  He’d started out with honorable intentions, he brooded, in glum silence, and he’d still managed to botch things up.

  It was a gift, he thought, with jaw-clenching irony. And then he did as he’d been told.

  He left.

  * * *

  THE SUNSHINE WOKE Ria the next morning, but not gently, the way it usually did. Oh, no. It glowed red as the fires of hell through her eyelids, and immediately kick-started the mother of all headaches, the thump-thump kind, a biological metronome. No, a jackhammer.

  She groaned. She’d expected this rush of misery, and she was down with the overwhelming likelihood that she deserved to suffer a little, but knowing something wasn’t the same as being at all prepared to cope.

  Ria sat up, blinking. Dizzy.

  Landry.

  She stiffened, squeezing her eyes shut again. No, don’t think about him. Not now.

  Even her hair hurt, and that wasn’t all. Her tongue was thick and nasty-tasting and dry as cornstalks left over from Halloween, and her stomach—well, it was out of control, off the rails, careening toward complete rebellion.

  Ria groaned again, arms crossed tightly as though her insides might tumble out if she wasn’t careful, and groped her way to the window. The light was a continuing torment, a gong sounding in her brain, right along with the steady rat-a-tat-tat of the jackhammer.

  After fumbling with the cord for a few agonizing seconds, she was able to close the blinds. It helped, but only a little.

  She stumbled to the bathroom, stood gracelessly in front of the commode, not sure what would happen first—would her head explode, or would she heave up the lining of her stomach? Could go either way.

  In the end, it went this way: Ria managed to rummage through the medicine cabinet and then every drawer in the bathroom vanity until she finally found a bottle of aspirin, wrestled off the cap, swallowed two tablets with a gulp of water—and then threw up. Repeatedly.

  She was on her knees, too weak to stand, when the convulsions finally stopped. When she was sure that part of the ordeal was really and truly over, and not just regrouping for a fresh attack, she crawled back to bed, hauled herself up onto the mattress and burrowed under the covers.

  Birds began to sing and, for the first time in her life, Ria wished they’d just shut the hell up so she could feel sorry for herself in peace.

  They didn’t, of course. Instead, they seemed to be rehearsing for a performance of Handel’s Messiah.

  She would just go back to sleep, then. Except her head hurt too badly and her poor stomach alternately cramped up, charley horse–style, and then became a rumbling void, demanding food.

  Food. God, no.

  Ria was glad Landry had gone home, that he wasn’t there to see her like this—until she wasn’t glad. The bastard. She wouldn’t be in this situation if it wasn’t for him.

  Presently, Ria thought she heard a door open and then quietly close. Quinn must be home, she decided.

  She’d pretend to be asleep if her niece looked in on her, wondering, as she surely would, why Ria was still in bed, since she usually rose ridiculously early.

  Ria heard the footsteps then—boot heels on bare wooden floors. Not Quinn. Of course not Quinn—she’d probably been up all night, with Clare and the others. By now, they’d both be dead to the world, slumber-party veterans sprawled among their fallen comrades.

  A burglar, then?

  She should be so lucky.

  Landry was back.

  Ria waited, eyes closed too tightly, ready to do her Sleeping Beauty number.

  Except that Landry didn’t come to the bedroom. He was in the kitchen, opening and closing cupboards, banging pans around—was he trying to kill her?—rummaging through the refrigerator.

  Dear God, was he going to cook?

  Hungry as she was, one look at food, one whiff of it, would have her racing for the bathroom again, retching the whole way.

  Silently, she willed him to go away, leave her to suffer in private.

  It didn’t work, of course. Even if she’d had that kind of mind power at her disposal, Landry would have been impervious to it.

  He’d won another round, and now he was going to rub it in.

  CHAPTER ELEVEN

  LANDRY SUTTON KNEW a thing or two about hangovers, so he stepped as lightly as he could, without taking off his boots anyway, when he let himself in through Ria’s unlocked front door the next morning. He was there on a mission of mercy—or so he liked to believe—and he took care to keep a lid on unnecessary noises, making just enough to her know she wasn’t alone.

  He searched the cupboards until he found a medium-sized saucepan, set it on the burner with a slight thump, meant to carry, though he had yet to decide what kind of grub he’d put into the thing yet.

  If somebody made a list of his strong points, Landry thought, with a grin quirking up one side of his mouth, “culinary genius” would be nowhere on it.

  Knowing Ria probably felt as though she’d been chopped up and run through a blender on high speed, he hoped she was perceptive enough to figure out that she wasn’t in danger, wasn’t about to be confronted by a prowler or a serial killer or some other lowlife. Landry had never heard of a crook who cooked, a sneak-chef, if you will—and he was fairly sure Ria hadn’t, either.

  In need of an eye-opener, he brewed himself a cup of coffee, his first of the day. He’d been in a hurry to get out of the house before he encountered Highbridge, knowing there would be a serious run-in if that happened.

  Taciturn as he was, the butler never hesitated to meddle in Landry’s business, or to preach an impromptu sermon with a lot of unwanted opinions woven through it, like threads in a sheet. Therefore, he’d paused just long enough to feed his horses, turn all but one out to pasture for the day and saddle up.

  First order of business: make sure Bessie and her so-called calf were where they were supposed to be—in the southern pasture.

  The buffalo were minding their own business, grazing placidly in the first purple-tinged light of a late June morning.

  After that, he’d just ridden for a long time, aimless, letting the big sky and the trees and all that space untangle the knots in his brain—and elsewhere. Then he’d stopped by Zane’s place, found his brother doing chores in the barn and asked to borrow a horse. Specifically, a tame one—his were all either too green to be trusted or too spirited for a rider with morning-after issues.

  Not that he went into all that much detail.

  Zane had looked him over in amused appraisal, making it damn good and clear that he knew more than Landry wanted him to, including why he wanted the second horse, but in the end, he’d been gracious enough to withhold his usual pithy comment, saying only, “Help yourself.”

  Landry had left
his own gelding loosely tied at the water trough, gone inside and chosen a fat little sorrel mare from the lineup in the long row of occupied stalls, assessing her as more likely to plod than run, considering her girth.

  After that, he’d picked out a likely-looking saddle and a blanket to put under it, thickly cushioned with sheep’s wool, along with a bridle, lugged the works out of the well-equipped tack room, saddled the mare in her stall and then led her out into the still-cool breeze of a summer morning.

  Zane was standing next to Landry’s gelding by then, stroking the animal’s neck and carrying on a one-sided chat. He had a way with critters, Zane did. Kids, too. And, of course, women, though these days he reserved all that rodeo-bad-boy charm for one specific female—his wife, Brylee.

  Love had sure settled him down, and that might have been discouraging if he and Brylee hadn’t been so happy.

  Landry stopped in his tracks for a moment, swallowed a rush of envy, and finally got going again when the mare bumped into him from behind.

  He’d wanted to say one thing to his brother—that he was in deep with Ria Manning and he wasn’t sure whether he ought to stick with his present course or run like all hell in the opposite direction—but he and Zane, though they’d made strides over the past year, still weren’t close enough for that kind of honesty.

  So Landry said something else instead. “What the heck are you feeding this horse? She practically waddles.”

  Zane looked back at him over one shoulder, chuckled. “We call her Butterball, for obvious reasons. As for what I’m feeding her—grass hay and just enough grain to make life worth living.” He patted the gelding once more, then turned around to face Landry full on. “I bought her two days ago, at a livestock sale in Missoula—you might say it was a mercy purchase.”

  Landry grinned at that observation. He’d barely slept the night before, of course, getting home late the way he had and everything, horny and pissed off and deeply worried about Ria on top of it, and he’d woken in a funk, without a trace of good humor in him.

  The long ride had revitalized him, though.

  And so had being in his brother’s company, awkward as it was.

  “I’ll take it easy on her,” he’d promised, and then felt the backs of his ears heat up a little, realizing the statement could have been taken two ways. He’d been referring to the mare, not Ria—Zane’s quick grin reconfirmed Landry’s suspicion that there were no secrets in either half of Hangman’s Bend Ranch—but clarifying the matter would have been worse than clumsy, so he didn’t make the attempt.

  “You do that,” Zane had responded, in an amiable drawl. He stepped up to hold Butterball’s reins while Landry swung up onto the gelding’s back, handing them over when the time came.

  Landry had frowned slightly. Then he’d tugged at the brim of his hat, reined the gelding toward the county road and ridden out at an easy trot, Butterball jogging along behind him.

  Reaching Ria’s place, he’d left both horses in the shade of a tree, well away from any flower beds, and left them to graze on dew-kissed grass green enough to make a man blink if he looked at it for too long. His own mount wasn’t likely to run off, and he figured the mare didn’t have that much initiative.

  Now here he was, standing in the woman’s kitchen as if he had every right to be there—obviously, she hadn’t unfurled herself from the fetal position after he’d left the night before and locked the front door—trying to figure out what to do next.

  Highbridge would have made tea, he supposed, the herbal kind most likely, in place of his favorite loose-leaf brand, and suitably weak, giving Ria a fighting chance to keep it down.

  Landry, on the other hand, reasoned that she probably needed something with a little nourishment value, if she was going to get her strength back.

  So he rummaged through her small pantry until he found a red-and-white can of chicken noodle soup. He removed the lid with an electric can opener—more noise—set the can on the stove next to the waiting pan and proceeded to hunt down a colander.

  He found one, after a lot more opening and closing of cupboard doors, placed it on top of the pan and dumped the soup into it, congratulating himself for sensitive forethought and watching the thick broth seep through the little holes, leaving noodles, some microscopic vegetable parts and a few minuscule chunks of chicken behind. That done, he set the colander aside in the sink without disposing of the contents, filled the soup can at the sink and sloshed water in on top of the broth to thin it down to a manageable consistency.

  Damn, he was good. A regular Fred Nightingale.

  Humming under his breath by now, he located the knob that corresponded with the right front burner and turned it to medium-high. Mission almost accomplished.

  “What do you think you’re doing?” a wan voice asked, startling him out of his mild hubris. Ria, of course.

  He smiled, turned away from the stove to greet his unwilling patient.

  Ria had swapped out the pajama pants and that dude’s sweatshirt for a long cotton nightgown. Over this, incongruously, she wore a snappy blue blazer—probably the first cover-up that came to hand before she came out here to raise hell.

  “Good morning to you, too,” Landry said cheerily, with the suggestion of a bow.

  “Go away,” she replied, standing there stiff as a fence post, with her arms folded. Then, as if she’d decided an explanation was called for—generous of her—she went on. “I hate you. I hate myself. Right now, in fact, I think I hate just about everybody.”

  “I’m not going anywhere,” Landry said, unruffled. “And you’ll probably get over hating yourself and ‘everybody’ sooner or later. As for hating me—” He paused, shrugged and gave her his cockiest grin. “Why change horses in the middle of the stream? Liking me all of a sudden would be rash.”

  Ria narrowed her eyes, a tender shade of blue, although red-rimmed to be sure and a mite on the puffy side, as well. Her skin, normally peaches-and-cream, had turned a pale shade of green, like split-pea soup with too much milk in it. “And far be it from me to be rash,” she replied pointedly.

  Sarcasm? Probably. She’d been impetuous—make that frisky—the night before. And she didn’t like remembering that.

  Too bad.

  Landry chuckled, pulled out a chair and, taking a light hold on her shoulders, pressed her into it.

  She sat, reluctantly, then peered past him, at the pan on the stove.

  “I’m not going to eat,” she announced.

  “That’s what you think,” Landry replied amiably.

  She scowled.

  He ignored her. The chicken broth was going from a simmer to a rolling boil, so he took the pan off the heat and ransacked the cupboards again, deliberately making a ruckus, until he found a good-sized mug. He squinted at the inside, as though he figured it might not be clean, and, to his abject satisfaction, he saw Ria bristle, there at the far edge of his vision.

  Good. He’d gotten another reaction. With this particular woman, that constituted progress—however questionable.

  Hiding a smile, Landry poured the contents of the pan into the mug, carried it to the table and set it down in front of Ria.

  She sat watching the steam roll up from the mug, as if she were hypnotized or something. Then, rather than recoiling, or maybe throwing the whole works in his face, as Landry had half expected her to do, she looked at the broth with a sort of hopeless yearning.

  Watching her, he felt something flip in the center of his heart.

  “I can’t,” she said miserably. “Anyway, it’s too hot.”

  “Sure, you can,” Landry answered, gently now. He took the mug over to the fridge, added a couple of ice cubes, set the soup in front of her again. At least if she decided to throw it at him after all, he wouldn’t have third-degree burns to show for his good intentions.

  He scraped back a chair of his own then and sat down across from Ria. “Start with a sip, and take your time.”

  “It won’t stay down,” Ria mourned. �
�Even water—”

  “Try,” Landry persisted, very quietly.

  She raised her eyes to his face then, and he caught a glimpse of the Ria he knew, the one who, though she seemed to enjoy giving him what-for at the slightest provocation, was in full control of her renegade emotions.

  That was definitely a relief.

  “Quinn will be back any time now,” she said, concentrating on the ice cubes floating in the mug, serious as a prosecutor laying out a strong case in court. “And if she finds you here, she’ll think I—you—we—”

  “Slept together last night?” Landry finished for her, delighting in the healthy color flooding her cheeks. “Well, that’s easy enough to remedy.” With those words, he stood up and headed for Ria’s room, with the deliberate certainty of a man who knew exactly where it was. There, he closed his mind to all the sense memories and the rapid-fire images of what might have been, appropriated one of the pillows from her bed, along with a knitted cover-up thing he found draped over the back of a chair, and made the return trip to the kitchen. He paused just long enough to hold them up and say, “I spent the night on the couch. That’s my story, and I’m sticking to it.”

  Ria’s jaw tightened visibly, but she said nothing.

  Moving on to the living room, Landry tossed the pillow and the cover-up onto the couch and jumbled them up a little, so they’d look properly messy, as if he’d tossed them aside when he woke and never given them a second thought.

  Brilliant, he thought.

  Okay, so the setup wouldn’t explain, even to the most casual observer, why there were two horses outside, he allowed, only slightly less pleased with himself, but maybe Quinn wouldn’t notice them.

  Yeah, right, Landry thought. Invisible horses.

  Still, the ruse was worth a try—heaven forbid they simply tell the kid the truth—so he left the tangle of bedding right where it was and went back to the kitchen.

  Ria was still sitting at the table, but he suspected she’d tasted the broth while he was out of the room. She couldn’t have been any more stubborn if her skull had been cast from molten bronze.

  “Bottoms up,” he said merrily, sitting down again and indicating the mug of watered-down soup in front of her.