Big Sky Mountain

by Linda Lael Miller

  This would be a long day for Madison, Kendra thought not for the first time, when they were all in the Volvo, seat belts fastened. She bit her lower lip as she backed the car down the short driveway and eased carefully onto the street. It would be a long day for her, too, given that Hutch would be at her side for most of it.

  What did they really have to talk about, she and Hutch, once they got past hello? Not the old days, certainly—how about all that steamy sex we used to have?—and the present didn’t offer a lot of topics, either.

  And what if she just kept reliving that sizzling kiss by the creek the whole day and night? She’d be in a perpetual state of arousal, with nothing left of her but smoldering embers by the time it was all over.

  “Can we buy Daisy a present at the rodeo?” Madison asked from her safety seat when they were well on their way to Tara’s. “And for Leviticus and Lucy, too?”

  Kendra knew the little girl was fretting about the dogs being left alone, thinking they might be lonely or scared, even with each other for company. “I think that’s a fine idea,” she said, smiling. “Tell you what—while we’re looking for those boots of yours, we’ll keep an eye out for something they’d like.”

  Madison cheered at that, and Daisy started barking all over again, sharing in the headiness of the moment.

  Tara came out of the main chicken coop when they drove up, wearing work clothes and scattering indignant hens in all directions as she came toward the car.

  “You’re not going to the rodeo like that, are you?” Madison asked with great concern as soon as they’d come to a stop and Tara had opened the back door of the car to help her out of the seat. “You have chicken poop on your shoes.”

  Tara laughed and shook her head, but before she could reply, Lucy came bounding down the front steps from the shady porch, barking gleefully. This, of course, got Daisy all worked up again and the canine chorus began.

  “I’m not much for rodeos,” Tara explained when the din subsided a little and Madison was out of the car seat. “But I’ll be in town later for the fireworks.” A pause. “Without the poopy shoes, of course.”

  By then, Daisy and Lucy were playing a merry game of chase, and Madison ran right along with them, transcendence in motion, the sunlight catching in her coppery curls.

  Watching, Kendra felt literally swamped with love and gratitude. She was so blessed, she thought. She had everything a woman could want.

  Then the memory of Hutch’s kiss sneaked up on her, as it had a way of doing, and heat swept through her in a fiery flood.

  Okay, she clarified to herself. She had almost everything.

  Tara, meanwhile, took in Kendra’s French braid, small gold earrings and carefully applied makeup, and looked fondly sly. “Don’t you look nice today?” she drawled. Then, in a lower voice, though Madison couldn’t possibly have heard her over all that racket she and the dogs were making, “Why, if I didn’t know better, I’d think you were looking for a little Hutch-action.”

  “Oh, please,” Kendra said, averting her eyes for a moment.

  Hutch-action, she thought. Oh, Lord.

  Tara merely folded her arms and raised her perfect eyebrows. She might have been wearing dirty coveralls and manure-caked shoes, but she still managed to look like the class act she was, right down to the double helix of her DNA.

  “Madison will be with us the whole time,” Kendra pointed out when her friend didn’t say anything more, probably because she didn’t have to, having made her point. “What could happen?”

  “Nothing,” Tara admitted, pleased. “But that doesn’t mean all that time together isn’t going to crank up the dials. I don’t know why you and Hutch don’t just—” she leaned in now, and dropped her voice to a whisper “—do it. It’s going to happen, you know. It’s inevitable, fated, meant to be.”

  “No,” Kendra argued too fiercely, “it isn’t going to happen, because I won’t let it!” Deep down, though, she wasn’t so sure, because some part of her had been hankering to head for the meadow ever since Hutch had reminded her of the things they’d done there, back in the day. “This is just an outing, nothing more.” She counted off the events on her fingers. “Rodeo. Carnival. Fireworks. Over.”

  “Right,” Tara said. She wasn’t actually smirking, but she was close to it.

  That was when Kendra blurted it out, the thing she hadn’t meant to say at all, to anyone. Ever. “What are we going to talk about for a whole day?”

  Tara’s smile turned gentle and she touched Kendra’s arm. “You and Hutch don’t need a script, honey,” she said. “Just let things happen. Roll with it, so to speak.”

  “Easy for you to say,” Kendra pointed out. “You’ll be here, shoveling chicken poop all day!”

  “Some people have all the luck,” Tara confirmed wryly as Madison left the dogs and came toward them. Daisy and Lucy were settling down in the shade of a nearby tree for an impromptu nap.

  “Let’s go, Mommy,” Madison said eagerly, clasping Kendra’s hand. “It’s almost time for Mr. Carmody to come and get us, isn’t it?”

  “We have a little while yet, sweetheart,” Kendra assured her child after a glance at her watch.

  “Come inside and have some lemonade, then,” Tara said. “I just made it fresh this morning, before I went out to do the chores.”

  Madison looked doubtful. Like most children and all too many grown-ups, she probably thought she could make the minutes pass faster just by force of will, and she was a nervous wreck from the effort.

  “I also have cookies,” Tara bargained with an understanding smile.

  “What kind?” Madison wanted to know.

  “Madison.” Kendra sighed.

  Tara chuckled. “Chocolate chip,” she said.

  “Just one then,” Madison agreed.

  “Madison Shepherd,” Kendra said. “What do you say when someone very kindly offers you lemonade and cookies?”

  “If it’s somebody I know, you mean?” Madison asked. “Because I’m not supposed to talk to strangers, am I?”

  Kendra suppressed a sigh. “No,” she answered patiently. “You most certainly aren’t. But Tara isn’t a stranger.”

  Madison beamed, remembering her manners at last, or maybe just willing to use them. “Yes, please,” she told Tara triumphantly, like a quiz show contestant coming up with the right answer and thus taking home the prize.

  They all went inside, Tara leaving her dirty shoes behind on the step, followed by the sleepy dogs, who both curled up on Lucy’s fluffy dog bed in a corner of Tara’s kitchen, Daisy’s head resting companionably on the scruff of Lucy’s neck, both of them awash in the summer sunlight pouring in through a nearby window. They shimmered.

  Tara, as charmed by the scene as Kendra was, quietly got out her cell phone and snapped a picture of the pair.

  “I’ll send you a copy,” she said, setting the phone aside.

  Kendra nodded, and she and Madison went off to the powder room to wash their hands.

  When they got back to the kitchen a couple of minutes later, Tara was pouring lemonade into cut-crystal glasses, and chocolate chip cookies beckoned from an exquisite china plate.

  Kendra smiled at the contrast between the old farmhouse and Tara’s elegant possessions, vestiges of her other life back in New York. Close as they were, Tara had been fairly tight-lipped about her pre-Parable life—she’d admitted to a bitter divorce and a passion to reinvent herself completely, but that was about all.

  Both Joslyn and Kendra figured Tara would open up to them when she was ready and, in the meantime, they were content with things as they were.

  Tara, Kendra and Madison chatted amiably while they enjoyed the refreshments, and then it was finally time to go back to town, much to Madison’s delight.

  The little girl said goodbye to Daisy, who barely opened her eyes in response, and Kendra thanked Tara for everything, offered up a see-you-later.

  Madison and Kendra had been home for fifteen minutes or so when Kendra heard the
sound of a vehicle rolling into the driveway.

  “He’s here!” Madison shouted from the living room. She’d been keeping watch at the window from the moment they got back from Tara’s. “And he’s in a shiny truck!”

  Kendra had never known Hutch to drive anything but one of the battered old pickups used on the ranch—he seemed content to take whichever one wasn’t in use at the moment. She, like most people, tended to forget that he had money, and plenty of it, because he lived simply and never flaunted his wealth.

  She went out onto the back porch, her heart hammering under her sensible shirt, and watched as Hutch climbed out of a red, extended-cab pickup, the rig gleaming in the sunlight.

  “New truck?” she asked. Her heartbeat thundered in her ears, but she probably looked calm on the outside.

  Or so she hoped.

  “I’m taking it for a test drive,” Hutch said. His hair was a little too long and slightly tousled, and he wore a black hat, jeans, a colorful shirt and clean but serviceable boots. He was, Kendra was reminded, planning to ride in the rodeo later that day. “Like it?”

  “It’s...nice...” she said, rattled. If she asked him not to enter the bull-riding, would he agree?

  She’d never know, because asking was out of the question.

  Madison, meanwhile, dashed past Kendra, lingering on the porch, and fairly catapulted her small body into Hutch’s arms.

  He caught her deftly and plunked his hat on her head with a laugh. Her whole face disappeared under the crown. “Hey, short-stuff,” he said. “Ready for a big day?”

  Madison peeked out from under the hat, transfigured by the sheer magic of Hutch Carmody. “We’re buying boots!” she crowed.

  Hutch chuckled again, shifting her easily to his left hip. “So I hear,” he said. “You look mighty good in that hat, cowgirl. Maybe we ought to get you one of those, too.”

  Kendra opened her mouth to protest—she worked hard not to spoil Madison, and it wasn’t easy because her tendency was to grant every whim—but closed it again in the next instant.

  It’s no big deal, she told herself.

  Hutch’s gaze swung back to her then, and he let it roam over her briefly. Appreciation sparked in his eyes.

  “Pretty as a mountain meadow,” he commented smoothly.

  Kendra felt that now-familiar surge of heat go through her. Such an innocent-sounding reference and, at the same time, a bold invitation.

  Or was it more of a promise?

  “Thanks,” she said, hurrying back into the house in an effort to hide her pink face. Once there, she dragged in several deep breaths, struggling to regain her composure, and took her time getting her handbag, making sure all the stove burners were turned off and the doors were locked.

  When she came outside again, Hutch had installed Madison and her car seat in the spiffy truck.

  With a laugh, Madison plopped his hat back on his head, and it landed askew, pushing down the tops of his ears. He made a goofy face for the child’s benefit before straightening it, and Madison found that uproariously funny.

  “Ready?” he asked almost gruffly when he turned his attention on Kendra.

  It was a loaded question. He was asking about more than the rodeo and the carnival and a fireworks display, and she couldn’t pretend not to know it.

  She said nothing, because “no” would have been a lie and “yes” would lead to all sorts of problems.

  He grinned, reading her well, and held open the passenger door for her. He did give her a brief boost when she stepped up onto the high running board, the way he’d done when they went riding.

  She blushed hotly and refused to look at him, staring straight through the windshield when he chuckled again, shut the truck door and came around to the driver’s side.

  During the short ride to the fairgrounds, Madison made conversation between the adults unnecessary, if not impossible, chattering away about Ruffles—she couldn’t wait to ride again, would they be doing that soon?—and her new boots and whether she should get a pink cowgirl hat or a red one.

  The parking lot at the fairgrounds was already bursting with rigs of various kinds, but Hutch found a spot for the truck and had Madison out of her safety seat and standing in the gravel before Kendra had alighted and walked around to their side.

  Hutch gave her a sidelong look, grinned and set his hat down on her head. “Relax,” he said. “You’ve got a pint-size chaperone here, and that means I’ll have to behave myself, now doesn’t it?”

  The hat smelled pleasantly of Hutch—sun-dried cotton, fresh country air and the faintest tinge of new-mown grass—and, for just a moment, Kendra allowed herself to revel in the moment, as happy as Madison had been when she wore Hutch’s hat back at the house.

  Her hands shook a little as she lifted it off and handed it back, and the question she’d promised herself she wouldn’t ask tumbled out of her mouth with no prompting from her addled brain.

  “You’re dead-set on this bull-riding thing?”

  Hutch regarded her for a long moment, his expression unreadable. “Does it matter?” he asked.

  Madison, by that time, had taken his hand and was trying to drag him toward the ticket booth, some fifty yards away.

  Kendra sighed. “Yes,” she admitted as he took her hand and Madison pulled them across the lot like a little tugboat. “It matters.”

  “That’s interesting,” Hutch said. “Why?”

  “Why, what?” Kendra was stalling now. She was between a rock and a hard place, and there was no way to extricate herself. If she asked Hutch not to ride, she’d seem controlling, and he’d probably refuse to skip the event just because he was stubborn. If she didn’t ask, on the other hand, she’d have lost her one chance to make sure he didn’t break his damn fool neck in front of her, half the county and, worst of all, Madison.

  “Why does it matter?” Hutch pressed quietly.

  “I’d hate to see you get hurt, that’s all,” Kendra said in a light tone that didn’t match the urgency she felt. Madison, the human tugboat, was within earshot, after all.

  “I’d hate to see that, too,” Hutch said, one side of his mouth tilting up in a classic Hutch Carmody grin. “But I don’t believe in sitting on the sidelines, Kendra, just to be safe. I love the rodeo, especially the bull-riding.”

  She felt frustrated and something was doing the jitterbug in the pit of her stomach, on icy feet, even though it would be a couple of hours before he actually climbed down off the catwalk and into the chute where an angry bull would be waiting for him.

  “You’re not scared?” she asked against her will.

  They’d reached the winding line in front of the ticket booth by then, and Madison let go of Hutch’s hand and fidgeted.

  “What if all the boots are gone when we get there?” she fretted.

  Hutch touched the top of her head lightly and briefly and in a very daddylike way. “No worries, short-stuff,” he assured the child, though his gaze was still fastened to Kendra’s face. “There will be plenty to choose from when our turn comes.”

  If she’d said something like that, Madison probably would have ratcheted up the angst another notch, but the little dickens settled right down after Hutch spoke to her.

  Kendra rested her hands on her hips, waited for him to answer her last question.

  He grinned. “Walker Parrish has some famously nasty bulls in his string of rodeo stock, and flinging cowboys three ways from Sunday is what those critters do best, so, yeah, I might be a little nervous. I’d be an idiot if I wasn’t.”

  “Then why do it?”

  “Because I want to,” Hutch said easily, “and because fear isn’t a good enough reason to keep to the sidelines when there’s living to do.”

  They’d reached the booth by then, so Kendra didn’t reply. She just bit down hard on her lower lip while Hutch extracted his wallet from the hip pocket of his jeans and paid their admission.

  Their hands were stamped, so they could come and go throughout the day, and
Madison thought that was the coolest thing ever, especially when Hutch told her the mark would show up even in the dark.

  Once they were inside the fairgrounds, Hutch crouched in front of Madison, pushed his hat to the back of his head, and looked the little girl straight in the eye. “You stick close to your mama and me, now,” he said very seriously. “Will you do that, munchkin?”

  Madison nodded solemnly.

  Kendra’s heart pinched, watching them together. Some things were so beautiful, they hurt.

  Hutch straightened, shifted his hat. “Well, then, that’s settled,” he said. “Let’s take a look around.”

  They headed for the exhibition hall first, where all the vendors had set up booths to market everything from handcrafted silver and turquoise jewelry, always popular with the rodeo set, to custom-made saddles and other tack. There were hats and boots galore, of course, in every conceivable size, style and color.

  Madison zeroed in on a pair with a peacock-feather design sewn into the leather and rhinestone accents.

  “These are pretty, aren’t they?” she said, looking up at Hutch for his opinion.

  A little stung that she hadn’t been acknowledged, let alone consulted about the boots, Kendra began, “But they’re too—”

  Hutch silenced her by taking her hand and giving it a light, quick squeeze. “Mighty showy,” he agreed thoughtfully, focused on Madison. “But stalls and barnyards are messy places, and riding horses stirs up a lot of dust. Splashes up some creek water, too.”

  Madison tilted her head to one side, considering. Kendra might have been invisible, for all the notice the child paid her. Hutch’s opinion was apparently all that mattered, at least in this situation.

  “Boots aren’t supposed to be pretty?” Madison asked, looking mildly disappointed. She was a girly-girl, as well as a sporty type, and she loved tutus, flashy toy jewelry and plastic high heels.

  Hutch’s grin was like a flash of sunlight on clear water. “Yes,” he said. “They can be pretty. But a real cowgirl like you needs to think about how her boots are going to hold up over the long haul.”

  Madison was clearly puzzled.