Big Sky Country

by Linda Lael Miller

  She was a modern-day Don Quixote, tilting at windmills.

  “What about the good times, Cookie Jean?” she persisted. “Remember the parties at the lake? The bonfires after the big game, whether our team won or lost? The proms and the school carnival? You and I worked the ring-toss booth together, remember? And we had a lot of fun.”

  Cookie Jean’s eyes glistened, but she quickly blinked away the shine. “Look, Joslyn,” she said finally, sounding and looking bone weary now, “maybe other people in this town are willing to act like nothing happened and go on from there, but I’m not. Uncle George lost his farm because of your thieving stepfather—and all the fancy things he bought for you and your mother—and because my little brothers and I lived with him and Aunt Sarah, we lost the only home we ever knew. Six months after the bank auctioned off the farm, Uncle George had a heart attack and died, and Aunt Sarah moved to Boise to live with her sister. I tried to keep things together for my brothers by getting married right after high school—to the wrong man. Toby, my younger brother, is in and out of trouble all the time, and Bill’s gone into the service, where God knows what will happen to him. Do you know what his dream was, Joslyn? Bill wanted to help run the dairy farm, take over for Uncle George one day, when it got to be too much—”

  She looked away, shook her head.

  Joslyn stood, as Kendra had advised earlier, with her shoulders back and her head high, but inside, she felt fractured. For all her efforts to pay back what had been stolen all those years ago, in so many cases, the damage was irreversible.

  The Tulversons’ dairy farm was gone. Cookie Jean had paid a heavy price, as had her brothers, Toby and Bill. The check that had probably gone to their aunt Sarah couldn’t begin to compensate for all she and the family had lost.

  “Just leave me alone from now on, all right?” Cookie Jean said in parting, and then she stormed across the front yard and out through the gate and Joslyn saw her get into an old car and start the engine with a hard, grinding sound.

  Smoke belched out of the tailpipe as she drove away.

  “Did you save me that first dance, like you promised?” asked a voice behind Joslyn, gently gruff.

  She turned, and there was Hutch, looking at her with a pride-saving lack of pity and an understanding grin. Like Kendra, he’d never blamed her for Elliott’s actions, and she loved him for that.

  “Yes,” Joslyn said. A runaway tear got loose and trickled down her cheek.

  Hutch stepped forward, wrapped an arm around her and used one thumb to wipe away the tear. “I reckon Cookie Jean has a right to be bitter,” he said, “but she’s got no business treating you like that.”

  Joslyn pressed her lips together for a long moment. Being held by Hutch Carmody was like being held by the brother she’d never been blessed with, and it felt good. “Elliott’s dead,” she said miserably. “My mother isn’t here. Who else is there to take the rap for what happened?”

  “The people who suckered for the scam in the first place, maybe?” Hutch suggested. He released her, took her hand. “Elliott came to my dad with that scheme of his. Dad said it sounded like a crooked deal to him, and a fool’s game in the bargain, and Elliott got mad and called him a few choice names. I thought they were going to get into it, right there in our yard, but Elliott finally got back in his car and left, and Dad never said another word about it.”

  Joslyn took that in, hearing the echo of Slade’s voice in her head. Nobody held a gun to their heads and forced them to invest.

  “I wish this damn party was over,” she said.

  Hutch chuckled. Pulled her back along the pathway leading to the smoky barbecue and the country music and the mixture of friendly and hostile people.

  “Well,” he said, “it isn’t over. The dancing’s about to start, and the best thing you could possibly do is have yourself a bang-up good time and make sure everybody knows it.”

  “You’re a good friend, Hutch Carmody,” Joslyn said with a little sniffle.

  “I’m a pretty fair dancer, too,” he replied with a twinkle.

  Soon they were on the improvised dance floor, and the band was playing an old Johnny Cash ballad. Joslyn was beginning to think she might make it through the evening after all.

  * * *

  SLADE’S GAZE WENT STRAIGHT to Joslyn the minute he returned to the party, his shift over for the day. On his way over, he’d stopped by the Curly-Burly to pick up his mom, and she was dressed to celebrate in one of her fringed cowgirl outfits.

  His jaw tightened as he followed Joslyn with his eyes; she was dancing with Hutch, and the two of them were laughing about something.

  Callie gave Slade a subtle jab in the ribs with her ever-ready elbow. “Pull your eyeballs back into your head, cowboy,” she whispered, in a teasing undertone. “They’re just dancing, that’s all.”

  Slade felt a rush of irritation. There were times, like now, for instance, when he sorely wished his mother couldn’t read him as easily as one of her tattered romance magazines. “You seem to have mistaken me,” he drawled, “for someone who gives a damn what Joslyn and Hutch do on the dance floor or anyplace else.”

  Callie chuckled at that. “You could cut in, you know,” she said, and then she zipped off into the crowd to find Kendra and meet Tara Kendall, the woman she’d heard so much about, and left him standing there like a fool.

  Slade wished he’d stayed home with Jasper instead of showering after work, putting on fresh clothes and heading back here.

  If it wouldn’t have meant leaving Callie stranded—not that she couldn’t have gotten a ride home from a dozen different people—Slade would have turned on one heel and hightailed it out of there. The very cowardice of the thought made him determined to stay.

  By the time he made his way through the throng, Callie had greeted her hostess, introduced herself to the most unlikely chicken farmer Slade had ever seen and scrambled up onto the bandstand with the fiddlers. In two shakes, she had a microphone in her hand, and the guests were cheering and shouting for a song.

  Grinning, Callie launched into a Dolly Parton number, slow and sweet. She could sing them all—from Patsy to Reba to Faith and Carrie and Jewel. And she didn’t have a shy bone in her body, obviously. Callie Barlow was one of the most self-possessed people he knew.

  Slade shook his head in wry admiration, grinning to himself, and walked right up to Kendra.

  “May I have this dance?” he asked with exaggerated formality.

  She looked a little blurry around the edges, he noticed, but she brightened as she smiled up at him. “Like I’d ever say no to a handsome hunk of cowboy like you,” she responded.

  And they stepped onto the dance floor together.

  In Slade’s opinion, Kendra Shepherd was darned near the perfect woman, beautiful, smart, personable—and certainly sexy. But there was no spark between them—she would have agreed if he’d asked her—and they were destined to be friends but nothing more.

  Looking down into Kendra’s upturned face, he thought of her loser ex-husband and hoped the bastard would stay clear of Parable—and Kendra—for good. She’d been crushed by the breakup, though she’d made a brave effort not to let on, and Slade suspected the damage was long-term, if not permanent.

  “You sure do know how to throw a party, ma’am,” he drawled in an old-time movie-cowboy voice. She seemed to be sagging a little in his arms, and her gaze strayed once to Hutch and Joslyn, then snapped back to Slade’s face.

  “They look good together,” she said. She sounded sad and a little embarrassed that she’d revealed so much.

  “Hutch doesn’t do a whole lot for me,” Slade responded in order to lighten the mood, “but I can agree that Joslyn looks mighty fine.”

  Kendra managed a slight grin. “If you think Joslyn looks good,” she teased quietly, tiredly, while Callie’s voice soared above the song of the two fiddles, “why are you dancing with me?”

  He chuckled, but there was a tightness in his throat all of the sudden. He cared
about Kendra, wanted her to be happy. And, for all her success, she wasn’t.

  “I figured you were the most likely to say yes,” he responded a beat or two later.

  Her smile broadened. “So,” she said, “are you ever going to make up your mind about buying the Kingman place?”

  He raised an eyebrow. “Talking business at a barbecue? Kendra, that just ain’t country.”

  Kendra rolled her pale green, luminous eyes. “I’ll talk business anywhere,” she replied, “and you know it. Are you going to buy that ranch or not, Slade Barlow?”

  He sighed. “I don’t know,” he admitted as the song came to an end and Callie climbed down from the bandstand amid loud applause and requests for another song. They stood in the middle of the dance floor, he and Kendra, looking very much like what they weren’t: a couple in the process of falling in love with each other. “It’s complicated, Kendra. And this isn’t the time or the place to talk about it.”

  She nodded. The music started up again, and suddenly Hutch was beside them, looking as cocky and arrogant as ever, putting out a hand to Kendra in an unspoken request for a dance.

  For all that cool Hutch was projecting, Slade noticed the slight twitch in his half brother’s cheek, and, deep down where no one could see, he smiled to himself.

  CHAPTER EIGHT

  JOSLYN WATCHED, A GLASS of punch in one hand, as Kendra moved somewhat reluctantly into Hutch’s arms, and they began to dance to a slow and dreamy tune, under the first stars of a summer evening and the colored light of the Chinese lanterns dangling from the branches of the maple trees. The effect was almost surreal—in a magical, romantic sort of way.

  With a sigh, Joslyn set her glass aside—it was immediately whisked away by one of the waiters—and wondered if she could safely retreat to the guesthouse now. She’d put in an appearance at the party, smiled until her face hurt and initiated as many conversations as she could, meeting with both cautiously pleasant responses and outright rebuffs in about equal measure. She’d danced and eaten too much and had had too much wine, necessitating the switch to fruit punch an hour before. Her feet hurt, and she was tired, and her heart felt strangely heavy in her chest as she watched Hutch and Kendra moving slowly around the dance floor, looking so right in each other’s arms.

  “Looks like there’s a lot going on in there,” Slade said, appearing suddenly, touching Joslyn’s right temple lightly with an index finger as he spoke.

  She smiled, feeling skittish and, somehow, revived. “I was just thinking,” she said with a nod toward the couple she’d been watching before, “how good Hutch and Kendra look together.”

  A smile crooked at one corner of Slade’s mouth. What would it be like to be kissed by that sensual, well-shaped mouth? Joslyn hugged herself to repress a weird little shiver of anticipation.

  “Kendra said the same thing about you and Hutch,” Slade remarked. Without asking—without needing to ask—he took Joslyn into his arms, and they began to move to the soft, sweet music.

  Things quickened inside Joslyn; that was what close proximity to Sheriff Slade Barlow seemed to do to her. She looked up into his face, mildly bewildered.

  “We’re just good friends, Hutch and I,” she said, a mite too quickly for her own comfort.

  A light sparked in Slade’s eyes—or had she merely imagined that? “Well,” he drawled, with the slightest of grins, “I guess somebody has to be Hutch’s friend.”

  Joslyn had the oddest feeling that all the seams in her sundress had suddenly given way, that the garment might simply fall apart, dissolve around her. It was disconcerting to imagine herself standing there naked.

  Aggravation swept through her, followed, strangely enough, by relief. “Hutch has plenty of friends,” she said quite stiffly.

  But they went on dancing.

  “It was a joke,” Slade replied with exaggerated patience and no little amusement, though there was something watchful about his expression, too. A sort of alertness that looked like concern but probably wasn’t.

  “You just don’t happen to count yourself among those friends?” Joslyn asked, chagrined to realize that, with this man, she was more comfortable opposing than agreeing. Crazy as it was, she felt safer this way.

  “No,” Slade said, straightforward as always. “I can’t say that I do.”

  “Why not?” Joslyn was compelled to challenge him.

  “Because I think he’s a jerk,” Slade answered. “And I’d bet the ranch—if I had one—that his opinion of me is the same.”

  “Hutch is not a jerk,” she said. Let him draw whatever conclusions he wished from her statement, which had pointedly not removed him from the jerk column.

  Slade’s eyes twinkled. Damn him, he was enjoying this. Again. He seemed to love throwing her off balance, tossing a wrench into the proverbial works. He was—he was contrary, that’s what he was. Stubborn and pigheaded and maybe even smug.

  Joslyn hated smugness.

  “Whatever you say, ma’am,” he gibed.

  The song the fiddlers were playing—and therefore the dance, as well—seemed interminable to Joslyn just then. “Can we just be done with this conversation, please?” she whispered angrily.

  “Sure we can,” Slade agreed affably, just as the music stopped.

  They stood still, just looking at each other, for a few seconds. Then Slade went one way, and Joslyn went the other.

  She fled to the cool quiet of the guesthouse and locked the door behind her, as though pursued. As far as she was concerned, the evening was over.

  Lucy-Maude greeted her with an affable “Meow.” The cat sat primly in the middle of the kitchen floor, bathed in a shaft of multicolored party light, her furry tail fluffed out and her ears perked.

  Joslyn bent and patted the animal’s silky head. “Maybe it was a mistake, coming back to Parable,” she confided softly, sadly. “No matter what I do, I’ll still be Elliott Rossiter’s spoiled stepdaughter, at least to some people. What made me think I could ever fit in here, even for a few months?”

  “Reow,” Lucy-Maude replied sympathetically.

  Joslyn went to the cupboard, took out a box containing a selection of herbal teas, chose ginger-mint and filled a cup with water. While the microwave whirred, heating up the concoction, she parted the curtains over the sink and looked out into Kendra’s backyard.

  The two-man band was packing up to leave, and guests were saying their farewells and heading out. The helpers from the Buttered Biscuit had begun the clearing-away process, and the Chinese lanterns were snuffed out, too.

  She looked for Slade, against her better judgment, but he had disappeared, along with his singing mother. Hutch was nowhere in sight, either.

  Cars and trucks started up in the driveway and out on the street.

  “Well, that’s finally over,” she told the cat, just as the timer bell on the microwave dinged. Turning away from the window to take her cup of soothing tea from the microwave, Joslyn added, “And I’m glad, too.”

  It was almost true that she was glad. Almost, but not completely. She’d enjoyed the evening, felt pretty in her sundress, loved the music and the food and, in spite of a few snubs, chatting with other guests. She was pretty sure she’d made a new friend in Tara Kendall, too.

  Most of all, though—and no one ever had to know this because it was nobody’s business but her own—she had enjoyed being held in Slade Barlow’s arms as they’d danced.

  * * *

  MAGGIE LANDERS DROVE UP just as Slade was about to pull away from the curb, his mom ensconced in the passenger seat, tooting the horn on her expensive little blue roadster. It was a classic, that car, imported from England, and he would have recognized it anywhere.

  With a sigh, Slade waited, rolling down the driver’s-side window.

  Maggie minced up alongside the vehicle, teetering atop her shoes and holding a sheaf of documents in one hand. “I got held up at the office and missed the whole barbecue,” she said, quite unnecessarily, tossing a warm smile to his
mother. “Hi, Callie.”

  “Hi,” Callie answered back. She’d had a good time at the party, Callie had, and she was still glowing from all those compliments concerning her singing voice.

  “More papers?” Slade asked, with a marked lack of enthusiasm. He was tired, and his head was full of Joslyn Kirk, and he just wanted to get to some quiet place so he could think. Mull things over till they made some kind of sense.

  Maggie beamed up at him. She looked so fresh and perky in her expensive summer pantsuit that it might as well have been morning, instead of nearly eleven at night. “You know the ones,” she replied. “How about signing them so I can cross another item off my to-do list?”

  “Has anybody ever told you you’re a workaholic?” Slade asked. These, he figured, were the documents that would transfer a shitload of John Carmody’s money into his bank account. He should have felt like a lottery winner—but he didn’t. Seemed more like getting a license to beg, to him. “Hell, Maggie, it’s the weekend. The banks aren’t even open.”

  “True,” Maggie agreed blithely, standing her ground. “But getting your signature now will save one or both of us a trip on Monday.” She paused, drew in a breath, hiked up her chin a notch. “Besides, this isn’t just about the money Mr. Carmody left you. There’s another document there, in case you haven’t noticed. It’s a formal offer from Hutch to buy out your share of Whisper Creek, and it’s a whopper. Frankly, I advised him against paying so much, especially in this market, but he’s determined to have that ranch all to himself, I guess.”

  Slade’s jawline tightened, and, though Maggie might not have noticed, his mom did. Callie laid a hand on his forearm, very briefly, the way she’d always done when she reckoned he was about to say something he might come to regret later.