Big Sky Mountain

by Linda Lael Miller

  She chuckled. “I made mashed potatoes and gravy, too, and boiled up some green beans with bacon and onion to boot. Sit yourself down, Hutch Carmody, and eat the first balanced meal you’ve probably had in a month of Sundays.”

  He waited until all the food was on the table and Opal was seated before taking a chair, wryly amused to recall that this was just the scenario he’d imagined for himself earlier.

  Only the woman was different.

  CHAPTER SEVEN

  THE MANSION ON Rodeo Road seemed strangely hollow the next morning when Kendra stepped through the front door, even though most of the original furniture remained and there were painters and other workers in various rooms throughout.

  Standing in the enormous entryway, she tipped her head back and looked up at the exquisite ceiling, waited for a pang of regret—some kind of sadness was to be expected, she supposed, given that she’d spent part of her life here. She’d wanted so much to live in this house, long before she’d met and married Jeffrey Chamberlain, and after her marriage a number of dreams had lived—and died—right here in these rooms.

  Somewhat surprisingly, what Kendra actually felt was a swell of relief, a healthy sense of letting go, of moving on, even of becoming some more complete and authentic version of herself.

  There was comfort in that, even exhilaration.

  When she’d first set foot in the place, as an awestruck little girl recently dumped on the porch of a rundown double-wide on the wrong side of the railroad tracks, Joslyn had been the one who lived here, along with her mom, Dana, and stepfather, Elliott, and, of course, Opal.

  To Kendra the place had seemed like a castle, especially at Christmas, with Joslyn as resident princess.

  During her childhood and her teens, the mere scope of that house had amazed Kendra—there were rooms not just for sleeping or eating or bathing, like in most homes, but ones set aside just for plants to grow in, or for playing cards and watching TV, or for reading books and doing homework or simply for sitting. Her grandmother’s trailer had closets, of course, but here there were dressing rooms, too, with glass cubicles for shoes and handbags, and what seemed like a million bathrooms. There had even been a nook—several times larger than the living room in the double-wide—set aside for wrapping gifts, tying them up with elaborate bows, decorating them with small ornaments or glittery artificial flowers.

  To a child who was handed money and told to buy her own birthday and Christmas presents, the mere concept of such finery had been magical.

  Alas Kendra had been quick enough to realize, once she became the mistress of this monstrosity of a place, that it was never the structure itself, or any of its fancy trappings, that she’d wanted.

  Instead it was the family, the sense of fitting in and belonging somewhere, of being a valued part of something larger.

  Seen from the outside, Joslyn’s life had certainly seemed happy in those early days, even enchanted, although a shattering scandal would eventually erupt, leaving everything in ruins.

  Before her stepfather’s financial fall from grace, when he’d ripped off friends and strangers alike, Joslyn had had it all—and while some people had been jealous of her and thought of her as spoiled and self-centered, Kendra had seen a different side of Joslyn. She’d shown empathy for Kendra’s very different situation, but never pity, and she’d been willing to share her toys and her skates and, later on, her beautiful clothes.

  More importantly, Joslyn had shared her mom and Opal and the little cocker spaniel, Spunky. Elliott Rossiter, the stepfather, had come and gone, funny and affable and generous, but always busy doing something important.

  Stealing, as it turned out.

  As an adult, Kendra had hoped to fulfill at least a part of her own dream with Jeffrey—the formation of a family—and in a roundabout way, she’d succeeded, because she had Madison now.

  “Hello?” The voice startled Kendra out of her musings, even though she’d known she wasn’t alone, having seen the painters’ and cleaning service’s vans in the driveway.

  Charlie Duke, who ran Duke’s Painting and Construction, stepped into view, clad in splotched overalls and wiping his hands on a shop rag. He grinned, showing the wide gap between his front teeth.

  “Mornin’, Ms. Shepherd,” he said. “Here to see how the place is comin’ along, are you?”

  Kendra smiled. “Something like that,” she replied. She’d known Charlie and his wife, Tina, for years and in the post office or the grocery store or over at the Butter Biscuit Café, either one of them would have addressed her simply as “Kendra,” but the Dukes were old-fashioned people. When Charlie was on the job, all exchanges were formal, and Kendra was “Ms. Shepherd.”

  “We’ve about finished up in the main parlor,” Charlie told her, with quiet pride, leading the way along the corridor. He wore paper booties over his work boots, and his T-shirt had a hole in the right shoulder, only partially covered by one of his overall straps.

  Kendra followed, like someone taking a tour of some grand residence in an unfamiliar country.

  It was almost as though she’d never been inside the place before, which was crazy of course, but such was her mood—reflective, calmly detached.

  The parlor had been her office, as well as the main reception area for Shepherd Real Estate, and what furniture she hadn’t moved over to the storefront was still in place, though covered by huge canvas tarps. The walls, formerly a soft shade of dusty rose, were now eggshell, neutral colors allegedly being the way to go when a house was on the market, in the hope of appealing to a broader spectrum of potential buyers.

  Kendra did a quick walk-through—no small undertaking in a house the size of the average high school gymnasium—greeted Charlie’s two sons, who were busy painting the kitchen a very pale yellow, and various members of the cleaning team, perched stoutly on high ladders, polishing window glass, and then went back to her car, where Daisy waited patiently in the passenger seat. They’d dropped Madison off at preschool first thing, the two of them, and the next stop was Kendra’s office.

  Upon arriving there, she took Daisy for a quick turn around the parking lot and then they both entered through the back way.

  While Daisy explored the space—she’d been there before but, in her canine brain, there was always the exciting possibility that something had changed since the last visit—sniffing at silk plants and file cabinets and windowsills, Kendra booted up her computer, unlocked the front door and turned the Closed sign around to read Open.

  She was in the tiny, closed-off kitchenette/storage room, starting a pot of coffee brewing, when she heard someone come in from the street. Daisy’s low, almost inquisitive growl made her hurry back to the main part of the office.

  The man standing just inside the door was strikingly handsome, wearing the regulation jeans, boots, Western-cut shirt and hat, as most men in Parable did.

  He removed the hat, acknowledging Kendra with a cordial nod, and grinned down at Daisy, who by then must have decided he didn’t represent a threat after all. Far from growling at him, she was nuzzling the hand he lowered for her to inspect.

  It was a moment or two before Kendra placed the man—not a stranger, but not a resident of Parable proper, either. Of course, some new people could have moved into town while she was traveling, somehow managing to escape her notice, but that didn’t seem very likely. After all, it was her business to know what was going on in the community, who was moving in and who was moving out, and she’d kept pretty close tabs on such local doings, through Joslyn, even while she was away.

  The visitor smiled and recognition finally clicked. His name was Walker Parrish, and he was a wealthy rancher with a place over near Three Trees. Besides raising prize beef, he bred bulls and broncos for rodeos, as well.

  And he was brother of the almost-bride, Brylee Parrish, Hutch’s latest casualty-of-the-heart.

  Surely, Kendra thought, a little desperately, he didn’t think she’d been a factor in the wedding-day breakup? Everyone kne
w she’d been involved with Hutch at one time, but that had been over for years.

  Still, what other business could Parrish have with her? He already owned a major chunk of the county, so he probably wasn’t looking to acquire property, and since his place had been in his family for several generations, she couldn’t imagine him selling out, either.

  She finally gathered enough presence of mind to smile back at him and ask, “What can I help you with today, Mr. Parrish?”

  “Well,” he said with a grin that cocked up at one side, “you could start by calling me by my given name, Walker.”

  Daisy, by that time, had dropped to her belly in what looked like a dog-swoon, her long nose resting atop Walker’s right boot, as though to pin him in place so she could stare up at him forever in uninterrupted adoration.

  “All right,” Kendra said. “Walker it is, then.” As a somewhat flustered afterthought, she added, “I’m Kendra.”

  Again, the grin flashed. “Yes,” he said. “I know who you are.” He cleared his throat. “I came by to ask you about the house on Rodeo Road. I understand you’re getting ready to sell it.”

  Kendra nodded, surprised and hoping it didn’t show. Maybe she’d been wrong earlier, deciding that Walker hadn’t come to buy or sell real estate. “Yes,” she said, at last summoning up her manners and offering him one of the chairs reserved for customers while she moved behind her desk and sat down. “What would you like to know?”

  Daisy sighed and lifted her head when Walker moved away, then wandered off to curl up in a corner of the office for a snooze.

  Once Kendra was seated, Walker took a seat, too, letting his hat rest, crown to the cushion, on the chair nearest his. There was an attractive crease in his brown hair where the hatband had been, and it struck her, once again, how handsome he was—and how, oddly, his good looks didn’t move her at all.

  She reviewed what she knew about him—which was almost nothing. She didn’t think he had a wife or even a girlfriend, but since the impression was mainly intuitive, she couldn’t be sure.

  Wishful thinking? Perhaps. If he was single, the question was, why? Why was a man like Walker Parrish still running around loose? Evidently the good ones weren’t already taken.

  “I guess I’d be interested in the price, to start,” Walker replied with a slight twinkle in his eyes. Had he guessed what she was thinking in regard to his marital status? The idea mortified her instantly.

  Her tone was normal when she recited the astronomical numbers.

  Walker didn’t flinch. “Reasonable,” he said.

  The curiosity was just too much for Kendra. “You’re thinking of moving to Parable?” she asked.

  He chuckled at that, shook his head. “No,” he said. “I’m here on behalf of a friend of mine. She’s—in show business, divorced, and she has a couple of kids she’d like to raise in a small town. Wants a big place because she plans to set up her own recording studio, and between the band and the road crew and her household and office staff, she needs a lot of elbow room.”

  Kendra couldn’t help being intrigued—and a little wary. It wasn’t uncommon for famous people to buy land around Parable, build houses even bigger than her own and landing strips for their private jets, and proceed to set up “sanctuaries” for exotic animals that didn’t mix all that well with the cattle, horses, sheep and chickens ordinary mortals tended to raise, among other visibly noble and charitable efforts. Generally these out-of-towners were friendly enough, and the locals were willing to give them the benefit of the doubt, but in time the newcomers always seemed to stir up trouble over water rights or bounties on wolves and coyotes or some such, alienate all their neighbors, and then simply move on to the next place, the next adventure.

  It was as though their lives were movies and Parable was just another set, instead of a real place populated by real people.

  “Anybody I might have heard of?” Kendra asked carefully.

  Something in Walker’s heretofore open face closed up just slightly. “You’d know her name,” he replied. “She’s asked me not to mention it right away, that’s all. In case the whole thing comes to nothing.”

  Kendra nodded; she’d had plenty of practice with this sort of thing. Most celebrities were private nearly to the point of paranoia, and not without reason. Besides the paparazzi, they had to worry about stalkers and kidnappers and worse. Safety—or the illusion of it—lay in secrecy, and safety was usually what made places like Parable and Three Trees attractive to them.

  “Fair enough,” she said easily. “There are always a few upscale properties available in the county....” She could think of two that had been standing empty for a while; one had an Olympic-size indoor pool, and the other boasted a home theater with a rotating screen and plush seats for almost a hundred. The asking prices were in the mid-to-high seven-figure range, not surprisingly, but it didn’t sound as though that would strain Walker’s mysterious friend’s budget.

  But Walker was already shaking his head. Being a local, he knew as well as anybody which properties were for sale, what kind of shape they were in, and approximately what they’d cost to buy, restore and maintain—and he’d asked specifically about the house on Rodeo Road. “She wants to be in town,” he said. Then a frown creased his tanned forehead. “Is there some reason why you don’t want to show your house just yet?”

  “No, no,” Kendra said, “it’s nothing like that. We can head over there right now if you want. It’s just that—” She stopped in the middle of the sentence because she couldn’t think of a diplomatic way to go on.

  “Show business people are sometimes unreliable,” Walker finished for her. The frown had smoothed away and he was grinning again. “I remember that rock band a few years back—the ones who built a pseudo haunted house, trashed the Grange Hall in Three Trees one night when they were partying and then nearly burned down a state forest, conducting some kind of crazy ritual. But it wouldn’t be fair to hold that against everybody who sings and plays a guitar to earn a paycheck, would it?”

  Kendra let out a long breath, shook her head no. Walker was right—that wouldn’t be fair—and besides, hadn’t he said this woman wanted to raise her children in a small town? That gave her at least one thing in common with Kendra herself, and with most of her friends, too.

  Parable had its problems, like any community, but the crime rate was low, people knew each other and down-to-earth values were still important there. In a very real sense, Parable was a family. And it was cousin to Three Trees.

  The two towns were rivals in many ways, but when trouble came to one or the other, they stood up to it shoulder to shoulder.

  “If you have time,” she reiterated, “I can show you through the house right now.”

  “That would be great,” Walker said, rising from his chair. “I was there a few times when I was a kid, for parties and the like, but I don’t remember too many of the details.”

  Kendra stood, too, simultaneously reaching for her purse and Daisy’s leash. She blushed a little, imagining the state of the Volvo’s interior. Pre-Madison and pre-dog, she’d kept her vehicles immaculate, as a courtesy to her clients, but now...

  “I’m afraid my car needs vacuuming. The dog...”

  Walker laughed. “Given my line of work,” he said, “I’m not squeamish about a little dog hair. Matter of fact, I have three of the motley critters myself. But I’ll take my own rig because I’ve got some other places to go to this morning, after we’re through at your place.”

  Kendra nodded, clipped on Daisy’s leash and indicated that she’d be leaving by the back way, so she’d need to lock up behind Walker after he stepped outside.

  “Meet you over there,” he said, and went out.

  She nodded and locked the door between them.

  Daisy paused for a pee break in the parking lot, and then Kendra and the retriever climbed into the Volvo and headed for Rodeo Road for the second time that morning.

  * * *

  “AT THIS RATE,” Hut
ch grumbled good-naturedly, surveying the meal Opal had just set before him—a late lunch or an early supper, depending on your perspective, “I’ll be too fat to ride in the rodeo, even though it’s only a few days away.”

  Opal laughed. “Oh, stop your fussing and sit down and eat,” she ordered.

  She’d been busy—had the ironing board set up in the middle of the kitchen, and she must have washed and pressed every shirt he owned because she’d evidently been hard at it all day. Except, of course, for when she took time out to build the meat loaf she’d just set down in front of him. The main dish was accompanied by creamed peas and mashed potatoes drowning in gravy; and just looking at all that food, woman-cooked and from scratch, too, made his mouth water and his stomach growl.

  But he didn’t sit, because Opal was still standing.

  With a little sigh and a sparkle of flattered comprehension in her eyes, she took the chair indicated and nodded for him to follow suit.

  He did, but he was still uncomfortable. “Aren’t you going to join me?” he asked, troubled to notice that she hadn’t set a place for herself.

  Opal’s chuckle was warm and vibrant, vaguely reminiscent of the gospel music she loved to belt out when she thought she was alone. “I can’t eat like a cowboy,” she answered. “Be the size of a house in no time if I do.”

  Hutch was fresh out of self-restraint. He was simply too hungry, and the food looked and smelled too good. He took up his knife and fork and dug in. After complimenting Opal on her cooking—by comparison to years of eating his own burnt sacrifices or his dad’s similar efforts, it seemed miraculous they survived—he asked about Joslyn and the baby.

  “They’re doing just fine,” Opal said with satisfaction. Her gaze followed his fork from his plate to his mouth and she smiled like she might be enjoying the meal vicariously. “Dana—that’s Joslyn’s mother, you remember—is a born grandma, and so is Callie Barlow. Between the two of them, Slade, Shea and of course the little mama herself, I was purely in the way.”