Big Sky Country

by Linda Lael Miller

  “Maybe,” Joslyn chimed, singsong. “Now, let’s have a look at that rocking-chair horse you told me about before I lose my courage completely and hike back to town.”

  Hutch chuckled, shoved open the truck door. “Come on,” he said. “You’re going to like Sandy. I promise.”

  “Liking something and wanting to take it for a ride are two very different things,” Joslyn said, climbing out of the truck to stand on the ground.

  Hutch’s eyes sparkled as he came around to face her. “I’m not touching that one with a ten-foot pole,” he told her.

  She laughed, but her cheeks felt warm, too.

  He led the way into the barn, which was lined with stalls on both sides, many of them containing horses, but just as many standing unused.

  I’ve been thinking about getting myself a couple of horses, Slade had said, back at Essie’s diner. Which half of the barn at Whisper Creek is mine?

  The mare, Sandy, was a tiny buckskin, barely larger than a pony. She looked harmless enough to Joslyn, standing there in her stall, munching placidly on grass-hay as she whiled away a summer afternoon.

  “See?” Hutch said, standing beside Joslyn and leaning on Sandy’s stall door. “Perfectly safe.”

  Joslyn sighed. “Which horse are you going to ride?” she asked. Partly, she was trying to buy time, and she knew Hutch sensed that. Was amused.

  Hutch pointed to a nearby stall. The gelding inside was big, a black-and-white paint with the long legs and stately head of a Thoroughbred. “I ride most all of these cayuses at one time or another, but Remington, here, is my favorite.”

  “Even Sandy?” Joslyn teased, smiling at the image of Hutch, the one-time rodeo champ and seasoned rancher, riding a near-pony.

  “I used to ride her,” he said, grinning. “When I was this high.” He held up a hand to elbow height. “She’s not much of a challenge now.”

  “Good,” Joslyn said. “Because a challenge is not what I’m looking for here.”

  Hutch smiled at that, then went about saddling Sandy. When he’d finished, he led the mare out of the stall and handed the reins to Joslyn.

  “Go ahead and lead her out into the sunshine,” he said. “I’ll get Remington rigged up and be right behind you.”

  Joslyn took Sandy’s reins with some trepidation and led the animal out of the barn. Since she and Sandy were practically at eye level with each other, she felt silly for being nervous.

  Silly and oddly happy, too.

  It had been a long time since she’d ridden a horse, and she hadn’t been good at it even back then. Parable being a Western kind of town, where lots of people rode regularly, both Elliott and her mom had tried to josh her out of her fear, promising her riding lessons and eventually a horse of her own if she’d just give it a try.

  It had been Elliott who had wanted her to compete in the rodeo queen pageant, though, and Joslyn had given just enough ground on the equestrian question to participate in that contest. She’d been amazed when she won, and the victory had quickly soured when she’d caught the tattered edges of the rumors that the whole thing had been fixed.

  Elliott, she strongly suspected, had bought the title for her.

  She’d been vaguely ashamed of the “win” ever since.

  Only a couple of minutes had passed when Hutch came out of the barn, leading Remington, who looked more like a spotted Clydesdale to Joslyn than a regular saddle horse with some racers in his background.

  Joslyn’s heart began to pound. Sure, Sandy was a plodder, and her back wasn’t very far from the ground, but Remington looked ready to gobble up ground with those long, powerful legs of his. His deep chest, probably containing a ticker the size of a riding lawn mower, heaved with anticipation.

  Suppose she and Hutch got out there on the range or on some hard country road, and Remington decided to break into a run? Even a tame horse like Sandy would probably feel obliged to keep up.

  “I don’t know,” Joslyn murmured dubiously, looking from one horse to the other.

  But Hutch wasn’t going to let her back out now. “Dare ya,” he taunted, grinning.

  “You and your dares,” Joslyn blustered, remembering how Hutch had gotten her to climb the water tower in town once, when they were in high school, while calling encouragement from the ground. And that was just one of several such occasions.

  “Look,” Hutch said, leaning in a little as though to impart some well-guarded secret, “I promise I won’t let anything happen to you.”

  “What if Remington runs?”

  “I won’t let him run, Joss.”

  “How do I know you can stop him? He’s bigger than you are.”

  “Trust me,” Hutch said with a patient grin. “Remington’s well trained. He won’t run unless I give him his head, and I don’t plan on doing that. At least not while you’re riding alongside me.”

  “Okay,” Joslyn huffed out. “Well, then.” With that, she turned, grasped Sandy’s saddle horn, which wasn’t that much of a reach, stuck one foot into the stirrup, and hauled herself up onto the mare’s back.

  Sandy’s haunches quivered, and her tail twitched back and forth.

  “She’s not fixing to buck or break into a dead run,” Hutch assured Joslyn, accurately reading the expression of abject terror on her face. “She’s just swatting away flies.”

  Sandy didn’t run, as it turned out, and neither did Remington.

  Hutch took it real slow, reining Remington toward the grassy pasture, which probably went on for miles, and Sandy followed sedately, a half length behind.

  After clutching the saddle horn until her palms were sweaty, Joslyn finally managed to relax a little, enjoying the slow, predictable pace.

  She and Hutch rode as far as the creek that gave the ranch its name—it took twenty minutes to cover the relatively short distance—and stopped there to let the horses drink. The water sparkled in the sun, pristinely clear.

  “Doing fine?” Hutch asked.

  “Doing fine,” Joslyn confirmed. She was still jittery, but she felt empowered, too. She could get to like riding, she thought.

  Someday.

  “You didn’t even need boots,” Hutch observed drily on the return trip. Poor Remington was fidgety, like a race car gunning its engine with the emergency brakes on.

  “I might get a pair,” Joslyn said, her confidence buoyed by the afternoon’s mild accomplishment. Surely, if she could face a town full of people her stepfather had ripped off, she could learn to ride for real. In rural Montana, it was practically a required skill.

  “Good.” Hutch grinned.

  They went back to the barn, but he left Remington outside at the hitching rail, while he and Joslyn put Sandy away in her cozy stall.

  The mare seemed relieved to see the end of dude duty and get back to her feeder and her supply of drinking water.

  Hutch put up the saddle, blanket and bridle, then he and Joslyn headed outside again.

  He gestured toward Remington. “That animal is never going to forgive me if I don’t let him get some exercise. Do you mind?”

  Joslyn smiled and shook her head. “Go for it,” she said.

  With that, Hutch untied the gelding and mounted up. Rode through the open gateway into the green, wind-rippled pasture. The big Montana sky arched over them like a blue bowl.

  Joslyn climbed onto a fence rail and settled in to watch.

  Hutch gave a sudden whoop of pure joy, and then he and Remington were off, a blended streak of man and horse, moving so fast and with so much grace that they almost looked ready to break free of gravity and fly.

  Within a minute, they were around a bend and out of sight, and it seemed to Joslyn, sitting there with one hand shielding her eyes from the sun, that they were gone a long time. She was just beginning to fret a little when they reappeared, Remington moving at a trot, Hutch’s pale caramel hair gleaming in the light. She could see his grin from a long way off, and a bittersweet feeling stirred in her heart.

  As much as she liked Hu
tch, she knew he wasn’t for her, and she wasn’t for him.

  What a pity. They would have made one heck of a pair.

  * * *

  SHEA WAS BUSY EXPLORING the house and grounds out on the rented ranch, with Jasper practically in lockstep, and Layne and Slade stood between their separate vehicles, awkwardly cordial.

  At sixteen, Shea was headed into her junior year of high school, come fall, but she was still Slade’s little girl, as far as he was concerned.

  Layne smiled, watching her daughter poke around the outside of that tumbledown old ruin of a barn. “Strange, isn’t it?” she mused aloud. “How Shea looks more like you than me, with that dark hair of hers?”

  He felt a pang, as he always did, no matter how subtle the reminder, because Shea wasn’t his biological child. He’d have given anything for that.

  He nodded once, cleared his throat. “Layne, about the house—the way it looks, I mean—”

  Layne was a generous soul, and she smiled. “We have a few days,” she said. “Shea and I will help you set up housekeeping before I go back to L.A.” She looked around. “Anyway, it’s not so bad.”

  Slade shifted his weight from one leg to the other and sighed quietly as he watched Shea out of the corner of one eye. She seemed fascinated with that old barn; the trouble being that it might collapse at any time. One good gust of wind and the whole thing would be nothing more than a big pile of kindling.

  He bit back the words he wanted to call out to Shea.

  Be careful.

  Teenagers tended to be rebellious, Shea more than most. He meant to keep her safe, but he didn’t want to start off on the wrong foot by being too protective, either.

  “How’ve you been, Slade?” Layne asked, breaking into his thoughts and bringing his gaze straight back to her face. Had he been mistaken, or had he caught a note of worried solicitude in her voice? “Since the divorce, I mean?”

  His throat constricted. In the early days—and nights—following the split with Layne, he’d been pretty much a train wreck, though he’d managed to hide it from everybody but Callie. He’d consumed more beer than he ought to, in the beginning, at least, and sat in the dark listening to a ten-CD collection of bluesy jazz, over and over again, for weeks.

  Even then, though, while he was figuratively a round-the-clock guest at the Heartbreak Hotel, he’d known the divorce was best for everybody concerned—Shea included. At least, in the long run.

  “It’s nothing I’d ever want to go through again,” he said, in all honesty, “but I’m all right.”

  Shea came toward them through the tall grass, her smile luminous. Jasper, keeping up, stared at her in frank adoration.

  “Can we get a horse, Dad?” Shea asked. Her pale purple eyes shone at the prospect. “I’d feed it and water it and everything.”

  To Slade, Shea seemed, in that brief moment, so much younger than sixteen. But she was verging on womanhood, this girl born of his heart if not his body.

  “That barn isn’t safe for field mice, let alone horses,” Slade responded, but the fact was, he’d already decided that he and Shea would attend the livestock auction outside of Missoula the following weekend. He’d see what was on offer and make a decision then, but in the interim he wasn’t making any promises.

  “We could buy some lumber and some nails and make that barn good as new,” Shea enthused, spreading her hands. She had one of those wash-off henna tattoos on her right forearm. At least, Slade hoped it was the wash-off kind.

  Layne rolled her eyes at Shea’s suggestion, but her expression was full of quiet love as she looked at the girl and shook her head. “Miss Fix-it,” she said. “I can’t even get you to change a lightbulb at home. Now you’re ready to rebuild a barn?”

  “Anything for a horse,” Shea said, leaning down to pat Jasper’s head. “Not that you’re not awesome, boy, because you so totally are.”

  Slade grinned. Here was the thing he’d always known about Shea, even during the troubled times, the thing that made him sure she’d turn out all right. She had a tender soul.

  He said, his voice a bit thick, “Let’s go back to Callie’s place. She’s expecting us for supper.”

  “Whoop-de-do,” Layne said, under her breath. A rueful little smile played on her lips, and she lowered her sunglasses from the top of her head to cover her eyes.

  “Mom,” Shea protested, as though horrified.

  Now for the drama, Slade thought. It was odd, the things a man missed about being married and having a daughter.

  Slade put one arm around Shea and gave her a brief squeeze to distract her. “It’s all good, shortstop,” he told the girl. “It’s just supper. And if hostilities escalate, you and I can sneak off to McDonald’s.”

  Layne gave him a look of mock desperation. “Oh, great. And leave me alone with a woman who thinks I keep a gang of flying monkeys in my attic.”

  Slade laughed. “Mom doesn’t think you have flying monkeys,” he teased. “Though she may be surprised to find out that a house hasn’t fallen on you.”

  “Hugely funny,” Layne said as Shea opened the back door of Slade’s truck so Jasper could jump in, shut it after him and climbed into the passenger seat.

  “I’m riding with Dad,” she called brightly, and somewhat after the fact.

  “You’ll be all right,” Slade told his ex-wife, his mouth twitching at the corners. “As long as you don’t let Mom talk you into a permanent or a dye job and—oh, yeah—you might want to let me taste your food before you eat it.”

  Layne looked at him in humorous misery. “Will you stop it, Slade? I’ve been traveling with a teenager all day and I’m jumpy enough already, thank you.”

  “Okay,” Slade said, “I’ll stop. You and Mom may not be each other’s greatest fans, Layne, but she’s wild to see Shea again, and she’ll behave.”

  Layne sighed, gave a waggle-fingered little wave and got into her rental car.

  By the time they reached the Curly-Burly, their two vehicles raising separate trails of dust on the unpaved roads, Callie had closed the shop for the day, put on a pink cotton T-shirt dress and jeweled sandals—sedate attire, for her—and even tied a ruffly apron around her waist.

  Slade didn’t recall seeing the apron before.

  Now that Slade was grown up and gone from home, Callie generally lived on deli salads and things she could heat up in the microwave.

  All of a sudden, it seemed, Callie was Martha Stewart, gone country.

  She ran right out into the parking lot, smiled politely at Layne and threw both arms around Shea as soon as the girl got out of Slade’s truck.

  “Look how grown up you are!” Callie chimed, her eyes glistening with tears.

  Shea hugged Callie back, laughing.

  Slade hoisted Jasper down from the backseat, and the dog rushed over to join in the reunion, tail wagging.

  “Come in, come in, all of you,” Callie sniffled, beaming, one arm still around Shea. She looked down at Jasper. “Even you,” she added. “Whoever you are.”

  “That’s Jasper,” Shea told her step-grandmother. “We were just out at Dad’s new place, and he said maybe we could fix up the barn and get some horses—”

  “Whoa,” Slade interrupted affably. “That’s not what I said.”

  Layne gave him an I-told-you-so kind of look, though he couldn’t remember what it was she’d told him.

  Something, probably. She’d always said that was one of their problems, that he didn’t listen to her half the time.

  They all trooped into the add-on beside the trailer that housed the Curly-Burly, Jasper included.

  It was hot inside, even with several fans going, because Callie had been cooking. Hence the retro apron, no doubt.

  Layne perched on the far end of the couch and fanned herself with a copy of TV Guide magazine. Callie was one of the last holdouts—she didn’t own a DVR or a computer and therefore didn’t depend on the internet for the latest entertainment info, like a lot of people did.

  J
asper was happily underfoot, and Shea prattled about the flight from L.A., and the drive from the airport to Parable, and the friends she’d left behind for the summer.

  “You’ll make some new ones right here,” Callie said with absolute certainty. “A lot of kids hang out at the park, since there’s a pool.”

  Shea didn’t seem overly interested in making the acquaintance of the local teenagers just then. “Can I check my email?” she wanted to know. She looked questioningly around the tidy room. “Where’s your desktop, Grands?”

  Callie smiled at the old nickname, probably relishing the sound of it. With Shea living so far away, she hadn’t seen her since the divorce, and Slade realized, with a wallop, how difficult that separation had been for his mom.

  “No computer,” she said. “I like to do most things the old-fashioned way.”

  Layne, unobserved by her daughter and former mother-in-law, made a face at Slade.

  He laughed. “Your email will keep for an hour or two,” he told Shea.

  The kid was already on to something new. “Is that lasagna?” she asked as Callie grabbed a pair of pot holders and hoisted a casserole dish out of the oven, plunking it down on the counter.

  “Sure is,” Callie said, pleased.

  “That’s my favorite!” Shea responded.

  “I remember,” Callie answered. Her gaze found Layne’s, caught for a moment, and veered away again, pronto.

  Inwardly, Slade sighed.

  Callie had never liked Layne.

  Layne had never liked Callie.

  But both of them adored Shea, which was most likely the only reason they hadn’t already gotten into it over something. While Slade and Layne were married, the two women had observed a bristly détente, with occasional bursts of gunfire.

  So far, though, Slade thought, so good.

  * * *

  AFTER HUTCH BROUGHT Joslyn back to the guesthouse from the ranch, kissed her on the forehead and left, she fed Lucy-Maude, refilled the cat’s water dish and took a long, cool shower to wash away the sweat and dust.

  Later, when her thighs began to ache from the brief ride on Sandy, she took two aspirin, made herself a single serving of Chinese noodles in the microwave, ate and went through her dwindling stack of reading material.