Big Sky Mountain

by Linda Lael Miller

  But then, this wasn’t a perfect world, now was it? It was the real deal, and that meant things would go wrong, and people could get sidetracked, screw up their whole lives because of things they should or shouldn’t have said or done.

  “Ready to ride?” he asked, to get the conversation rolling again.

  “I haven’t been on horseback in years,” Kendra confessed. “Not since—”

  Her words fell away into an awkward silence, and she blushed.

  She was obviously remembering what he was remembering—all those wild rides they’d taken, back in the day, in and out of the saddle.

  “It’s like riding a bike,” he said mildly, throwing her a lifeline. “Once you learn how to sit a horse, you never forget.”

  She turned her gaze back to Madison, who was riding in their direction now, beaming. The pup had fallen into step with Ruffles—Leviticus watched from the shade of the barn—and they sure made a picture, all of them, an image straight off the front of a Western greeting card.

  When Kendra spoke, she jarred him a little. “How do we get past this, Hutch?” she asked very softly.

  “This what?” Hutch asked just as quietly.

  Her shoulders moved in a semblance of a shrug. “The awkwardness, I guess,” she said, and there was the smallest quaver in her voice. She paused, shook her head slightly, as if to clear her brain. “I can’t pretend that nothing happened between us,” she went on as Madison and Ruffles and the dogs drew nearer. “But I keep trying to do just that and it makes me crazy.”

  Hutch chuckled. “Well, then,” he reasoned, “why don’t you stop trying and just let things be what they are? It’s not as if any of us have much of a choice in the matter, anyhow.”

  She sighed and kept her eyes on Madison, but she seemed a little less edgy than before. “You’re right,” she said. “Much as we might want to change the past, we can’t.”

  He wanted to ask what she would change, if she could, but Opal’s station wagon pulled through the gate just then and came barreling up the driveway.

  “Look!” Madison called, as Opal got out of her car. “I’m riding a horse!”

  “You sure enough are,” Opal agreed, her smile wide. Her gaze swept over Hutch and Kendra, and the two other horses waiting to be ridden. “You about done with riding now?” she asked the child. “Because I’ve got supper to start and I could sure use a hand with the job.”

  Madison, Hutch suspected, could have stayed right there on Ruffles’ back for days on end, given the opportunity, but she turned out to be the helpful sort.

  “I guess I’m done,” she said. “For right now, anyway.”

  Hutch approached and lifted her down off Ruffles’s back. “You go on ahead with Opal,” he told the little girl when she looked up at him in concern. He could guess what she was thinking. “I’ll tend to Ruffles, and show you how to do that another time.”

  Madison nodded solemnly and patted the pony’s nose. “I wish you were my very own,” she told Ruffles. Then she smiled up at Kendra, waiting for a nod.

  Kendra did nod, a little reluctantly, Hutch thought.

  Opal put out a hand to Madison, Madison took it without hesitation, and they headed toward the house, chatting amicably, the dogs ambling along behind them.

  “That was slick,” Kendra observed with wry amusement, watching as the four disappeared through the kitchen doorway.

  Hutch took Ruffles’s reins and led the pony toward the barn door. “I didn’t put Opal up to anything, if that’s what you mean,” he said, grinning back at her. “Make sure those horses don’t take off. I’ll be right back.”

  I’ll be right back.

  Kendra sighed. Now she’d have to go riding—alone with Hutch Carmody, no less—and she had nobody to blame but herself. She’d put herself in this position, sealed her own fate.

  She was crazy.

  Gingerly, she gathered the reins of the two horses and waited for Hutch to unsaddle Ruffles and tuck her away in a stall. And she waited.

  She recognized the big gelding as Remington, Hutch’s favorite mount, but the long-legged mare was a stranger.

  “I have a child to raise and a business to run,” she told the mare in a hurried undertone. “I cannot afford to break any bones, so don’t try anything fancy.”

  The mare nickered companionably, as if promising to behave herself.

  Hutch came back before Kendra was ready for him to, taking Remington’s reins from her hands. “That’s Coco,” he said, nodding at the mare. “She’s a roper, so she’s lively and fast, but she’s fairly kindhearted, too.”

  “Fairly?” Kendra echoed, waiting for muscle memory to kick in so she could mount up without making an even bigger fool of herself than she already had.

  Hutch laughed, steadied the mare for her by taking a light hold on the bridle strap. “This isn’t a dude ranch,” he pointed out, clearly enjoying her trepidation. “Except for Ruffles, all these horses earn their keep, one way or another.”

  Having nothing to say to that—nothing civil, that is—Kendra reached up, gripped the saddle horn with damp palms, shoved her left foot in the stirrup and hoisted.

  Hutch gave her a startling boost by splaying one hand across her backside and pushing.

  She gasped, surged skyward and landed in the saddle with a thump.

  He laughed again, mounted Remington and reined in alongside Kendra. “Ready?” he asked.

  Her face was on fire, and she refused to look at him on the ridiculous premise that if she couldn’t see him, he couldn’t see her, either. “Ready,” she confirmed, stubborn to the end.

  “Good,” he said, and he and Remington were off, leading the way, heading for the open range at a slow trot.

  Kendra’s horse followed immediately, her rider bouncing hard in the saddle with every step. Kendra concentrated on syncing herself with Coco and, when they’d traveled a hundred yards or so, she found her stride.

  Hutch’s gelding clearly wanted to run—please, God, no—but he held the horse in check with an ease that was both admirable and galling. Everything seemed to come easily to this man, and it wasn’t fair.

  “Where to?” he asked, grinning over at her as Coco matched her pace to Remington’s.

  “Anywhere but the high meadow,” Kendra answered and was immediately embarrassed all over again. Talk about your Freudian slip—Hutch hadn’t suggested riding to their secret, special place, now had he? She’d been the one to bring it up.

  He chuckled at her miserable expression. “Tell me, Kendra,” he began easily, “who are you more afraid of—me or yourself?”

  “Don’t be ridiculous,” she sputtered. “It’s just that I haven’t ridden in a long time and the meadow is halfway up the mountain and—”

  “Easy,” Hutch admonished good-naturedly. Was he addressing her or his horse?

  It had damned well better be the horse.

  Alas it turned out to be her, instead. “Kendra,” he went on, “I’m not fixing to jump your bones the second we’re alone. We’re two old friends out for a horseback ride, and that’s all there is to it.”

  Maybe for you, Kendra thought peevishly. The answer to his earlier question was thrumming in her head by now, all too obvious. She was afraid of herself, not him. Afraid of her own desires and the way her intelligence seemed to take a dive whenever he turned on the charm.

  Not that he’d been obvious about it.

  Still the damage was done.

  Whether he knew it or not—and it would be naive to think he didn’t—Hutch had been in the process of seducing her almost from the moment she and Madison had arrived at the ranch. All he’d had to do to melt her resolve was to act like what Madison wanted most right now—a daddy.

  They rode in silence for a while, the horses choosing their direction, or so it seemed to Kendra, the animals pausing alongside a stream to lower their huge heads and drink.

  Hutch’s expression had turned solemn; he seemed far away, somehow, even though he was right beside her
. Sunlight danced on the surface of the creek as the water whispered by.

  “Why did you come here, Kendra?” he finally asked, narrowing his eyes against the brightness of the late-afternoon sun as he studied her face.

  “To the ranch?”

  “To Parable,” Hutch said.

  She bristled. “Because it’s home,” she said tightly. “Because I want to raise Madison in a place where people know and care about each other.”

  Hutch dismounted, stood beside Remington, looking up at her. “And you were so happy here as a child that you figured Madison would be, too?” he asked. It wasn’t a gibe, exactly, but he knew all about Kendra’s life with her grandmother, so the remark hadn’t been entirely innocent, either.

  “Not always,” she admitted, her tone a little distant. She was tempted to get down off the horse and stand facing him, but that would mean getting back on again and her legs felt too unsteady to manage it. “Nobody’s happy all the time, are they?”

  He gave a raspy chuckle, gazing out over the rippling water that gave his ranch its name—Whisper Creek. “That’s for sure,” he said.

  She shifted uncomfortably in the saddle. No way around it, she was going to be sore after this ride, unaccustomed as she was.

  Oh, well. Better achy body parts she could soak in a hot bathtub with Epsom salts, she figured, than an achy heart.

  “I lied about the pony,” Hutch said out of the blue. He bent as he spoke, picked up a pebble and skipped it across the busy water with an expert motion of one hand.

  Kendra frowned, confused. Everything about this man confused her, in fact. “What?” she asked.

  “I didn’t borrow Ruffles,” he replied, meeting her gaze again. “I bought her. The kids she used to belong to grew up and went away, and she’s been lonely.”

  Something softened inside Kendra. Finally she began to relax a little. “Well, then,” she said. “Why didn’t you just say so in the first place?”

  He cleared his throat. “Because I figured you’d think I was trying to get to you through Madison,” he told her.

  Some reckless Kendra took over, pushed the day-to-day Kendra aside. “Were you?” she asked. “Trying to get to me through my daughter, that is?”

  She saw his jaw tighten, release again.

  “That would be wrong on so many levels,” he said. He was clearly angry, which was rich, considering he’d been the one to raise the topic in the first place. “Madison’s not a pawn. She’s a person in her own right.”

  “I quite agree,” Kendra said, sounding prim even in her own ears.

  That was when Hutch reached up, looped an arm around Kendra’s waist and lifted her down off Coco’s back. She came up against him, hard.

  “If I want to ‘get to’ you, Kendra,” he informed her, “I can—and without using an innocent little kid or anybody else.”

  She stared up at him, startled, breathless and without a thought in her head.

  And that was when he kissed her, not gently, not tentatively, but with all the hunger a man can feel for a woman, all the need and the strength and the hardness and the heat.

  Instantly she turned to a pillar of fire. Her arms slipped around Hutch’s neck and tightened there, and she stood on tiptoe, pouring herself into that kiss without reservation.

  This was what she had feared, some vague part of her knew that.

  This was what she had longed for.

  It was Hutch who broke away first. His breath was ragged, and he thrust the fingers of his right hand through his hair in a gesture that might have been frustration. “Damn it,” he cursed.

  Kendra, all molten passion just moments before, went ice-cold. “Don’t you dare blame me for that, Hutch,” she warned, in a furious whisper. “You started it.”

  He didn’t answer, didn’t even look at her.

  No, he turned away, gave her his back.

  “I’m sorry,” he said, after a long time, his voice rough as dry gravel.

  He was sorry? He’d rocked her to the core, thrown the planet off its axis, changed the direction of the tides with that kiss. And he was sorry?

  “So much for two old friends just out for a simple horseback ride,” she heard herself say. Humiliation and anger combined gave her the impetus to get back on Coco with no help from Hutch Carmody, thank you very much.

  Hutch turned then, glowering up at her. “Don’t,” he warned. “Don’t be flippant about this, Kendra. Something just happened here, something important.”

  “Yes,” Kendra said lightly. He was standing and she was mounted and that gave her a completely false sense of power, which she permitted herself to enjoy for the briefest of moments. “You kissed me, remember?”

  “I’m not talking about that,” Hutch told her.

  “Then what are you talking about?”

  “We’re not finished, you and I,” Hutch said. “That’s what I’m talking about.”

  “That’s where you’re wrong,” Kendra retorted, coming to a slow simmer. “We are so finished. So over. So done. So through. We have been for years, in case you haven’t noticed.”

  “The way you just kissed me says different,” he replied, mounting up at last, reining the gelding around so that he and Kendra were facing each other.

  “You kissed me,” she reiterated, almost frantic.

  “You’re damn right, I did,” Hutch answered. “And you kissed me right back. If we’d been up at the meadow where it’s private, instead of down here on the open range, we’d be making love right now, hot and heavy. Just like in the old days.”

  “Your ego,” she snapped, “is exceeded only by your ego. I’m not one of—one of those women, the kind you can have whenever you want!”

  He laughed, but it was a tight sound, a challenge, a promise. “Prove it,” he said.

  Kendra was practically beside herself by then. She wanted to get back to the barn, get off this damnable horse, collect her daughter and her dog, and race for home, where she could reasonably pretend none of this had ever happened. “What do you mean, ‘prove it’?” she practically spat.

  “Opal is looking after Madison,” he said. “Let’s ride up the mountain, Kendra—just you and me. Right now.”

  “Absolutely not,” Kendra shot back loftily, amazed at how badly she wanted to take him up on what would surely be, for her, a losing bet.

  “Scared?” he asked, leaning in, almost breathing the word. His mouth rested lightly, briefly, against hers, setting her ablaze all over again.

  “Yes,” she said in a burst of honesty.

  “Of me?”

  Kendra swallowed hard, shook her head from side to side. He’d been right before—she was afraid of herself, not him—but she wasn’t going to admit that out loud.

  “It’s probably inevitable,” Hutch said, sounding gleefully resigned. “Our making love, I mean.”

  “Think what you like,” Kendra bluffed, her tone deliberately tart. “But I’ve been down that road before, Hutch, and I’m not going back. I’m not a gullible young girl anymore. I’m a responsible woman with a daughter.”

  “And that means you can’t have a sex life?”

  “I will not discuss this with you,” she bit out, turning Coco around and heading back toward the house and the barn and Madison. Back toward sanity and good sense.

  Of course Hutch had no difficulty catching up. He looked cocky, riding beside her, all cowboy, all man.

  She was in big trouble here.

  Big, big trouble.

  * * *

  SHE AND MADISON had to stay for supper—Opal wouldn’t hear of anything else, and besides, Kendra knew that leaving in a huff would reveal too much.

  So she stayed.

  She left Hutch to put the horses away by himself, except for his devoted shadow, Leviticus, then went into the house and washed her hands at the kitchen sink while Madison, swaddled in an oversize apron and elbow-deep in floury dough, regaled her with her new knowledge of cooking.

  “She’s ready for her own show
on the Food Channel,” Opal put in proudly, standing next to Madison at the center island and supervising every move.

  “I don’t doubt that for a moment,” Kendra agreed, hoping her coloring had returned to normal by now.

  “I’m making biscuits,” Madison said.

  “Impressive,” Kendra replied. “Will you teach me how to make them, too?”

  Madison giggled at that. “Silly Mommy,” she said. “You just need to look in a cookbook and you’ll know how.”

  Kendra kissed her daughter’s flour-smudged cheek. “You’ve got me there,” she said, with a little sigh.

  “Coffee’s fresh,” Opal said with a nod in the direction of the machine. “Mugs are in the cupboard above it.”

  “Thanks.” Kendra needed something to do with her hands, so she got out a cup, poured herself some coffee and took a slow sip, hoping it wouldn’t keep her awake half the night, thinking about the most recent go-round with Hutch. She was jangly enough as it was.

  “How was the ride?” Opal asked, and her attempt to put the question casually was a total flop.

  “Fine,” Kendra replied noncommittally.

  “Where’s Mr. Hutch?” Madison wanted to know.

  So, Kendra thought. He’d graduated from cowboy man to Mr. Hutch. What was next—Daddy?

  “He’s looking after the horses,” Kendra answered, leaning against the counter and taking another sip of coffee. Oddly the caffeine seemed to be settling her down rather than riling her already frayed nerves, and she was grateful for this small, counterintuitive blessing.

  “When can we get my boots?” Madison chimed in.

  Kendra laughed. “Does that mean you want to go riding again?” she hedged.

  Madison nodded eagerly, still working away at the dough she’d been kneading in the big crockery bowl in front of her. “I want to ride far,” she said. “Not just around and around in the yard, like a little kid.”

  “You are a little kid,” Kendra teased.

  “I reckon that biscuit dough is about ready to be rolled out and cut,” Opal put in. Without missing a beat, she gently removed Madison’s hands from the bowl, wiped them clean with a damp dish towel and lifted the child down off the chair she’d been standing on.