Big Sky Country

by Linda Lael Miller

  He supposed a semi-cold shower was just what he needed—and deserved. He’d been so hard it hurt while he was kissing Joslyn and for a while afterward, too.

  And now he’d agreed to go to supper at her place. He was a sucker for punishment, it seemed.

  Out of the shower, he dried off quickly, shaved and put on the fresh clothes he’d gathered and then stacked on the lid of the toilet a few minutes earlier—jeans, a blue cotton shirt, boots.

  When he reached the kitchen, Shea was there, pouring Jasper’s supper into a bowl and setting it down on the floor. She was wearing an actual skirt, a short, ruffled thing, white with black polka dots, and a black top.

  “There’s no bed in Opal’s room, you know,” Shea said. “We’re going to have to shop again, unless you expect her to sleep on the floor.”

  Slade groaned at the prospect of another mall crawl, but he was grinning the whole time. He was foolishly happy, despite the jittery sensation in the pit of his stomach. “Hook up that fancy new computer we bought and order something online,” he said. “Get the sheets and any other rigging you need while you’re at it.”

  Shea looked at him curiously and with a degree of suspicion. “You’re awfully free with your money for somebody who refuses to pay my cell phone bill,” she told him. “What’s the deal here?”

  He laughed. “I’m not broke, Shea. Just careful.”

  “Did you win the lottery or something?” Shea pressed. Like her mother, she never let a subject drop until she was through beating it to death.

  Slade found his keys, jingled them to indicate that it was time to leave. “It’s the magic of compound interest,” he teased. Since his inheritance still didn’t seem real to him, he was hesitant to talk about it. “The habit is out of fashion these days, but they call it saving.”

  Shea rolled her eyes, but a smile lurked at the corners of her mouth. “Don’t moralize,” she said. “And anyway, Mom and I are on the family plan, for the cell phones, I mean. She automatically pays for my service right along with hers.”

  “Then you can reimburse her,” Slade said, enjoying the exchange. He said goodbye to Jasper, who barely looked up from his kibble, and then he and Shea headed for the truck. “Speaking of that, how did things go at the Curly-Burly?”

  Shea had gone to his mother’s hair salon to apply for work, but they had yet to discuss the outcome.

  “I’m hired, as if you didn’t already know,” Shea replied breezily. In the middle of the yard, she made a dive for Slade’s keys. He held them out of her reach. “Why can’t I drive?” his stepdaughter fussed. “I take Mom’s car all over Los Angeles and I’ve never even had a warning, let alone a speeding ticket or an accident. And, besides, this is Parable. What can possibly happen?”

  “You’d be surprised,” Slade said, getting behind the wheel. Parable was a peaceful community—there were only three traffic lights in the whole county—but bad things happened everywhere.

  Shea flounced up into the passenger seat, pouting a little. “I don’t think a cow crossing the road would surprise me, Dad,” she said with such studied disdain that he laughed again. “Especially when it probably only happens every third blue moon.”

  “Tell me about the job,” Slade said, starting the truck and steering it down the long, rutted driveway toward the main road.

  “I’ll be sweeping up hair,” Shea said, with another roll of her eyes. “What’s to tell?”

  “There must be more to it than that,” Slade persisted. He figured it was important to talk with kids, however mundane the subject matter, and Layne’s accusation that he hadn’t listened to her during their marriage was on his mind, too. He didn’t want to make the same mistake with Shea, especially when they had such a short time together.

  “I’ll be washing out sinks, too,” Shea replied. “And setting up appointments. And if I can drag Grands into the twenty-first century—in other words, if she’ll spring for a computer—I can streamline the whole operation for her. Build her a website and everything.”

  “You can do that? Build a website?” Slade was impressed. He used computers at work, of course, but the new desktop he and Shea and Layne had picked up on the big shopping expedition was only the second one he’d ever owned personally. The first was a dinosaur that took forever to boot up.

  “Yes,” Shea said. “I’m not stupid, you know.”

  That seemed to be a theme with her. “Nobody said you were,” Slade answered. “I probably couldn’t build a website if my life depended on it, and I’m not stupid, either.”

  “There are all kinds of templates and stuff,” Shea said, but she looked guardedly eager now. “I could show you.”

  Templates?

  “Okay,” Slade answered. “I’d like that.”

  “You mean it? Or are you just humoring me?”

  “Why would I want to humor you?”

  “I don’t know,” Shea responded. “But I’ve never known you to talk this much, and that makes me think you’re up to something.”

  Slade didn’t comment. He just grinned.

  Shea continued to speculate. “And then there’s the money thing, and the way you and Joslyn looked all startled and messed up and stuff, when Opal and I came downstairs after I showed her around the house. You know what I think? I think the two of you were kissing.”

  The kid had gotten under his skin, no doubt about it, and he hoped she didn’t notice that his ears were hot or the way his fingers tightened on the wheel.

  “It’s a free country,” he managed after a beat or two. “Think what you like.”

  Shea laughed. “Don’t look so shocked, Dad,” she said. “The cat’s already out of the bag. Right after we got back to the Best Western hotel, that night when we ran into Joslyn at the Butter Biscuit, Mom told me she thought you had a thing for her.”

  Slade said nothing. Didn’t so much as glance away from the white line running down the middle of the county highway.

  “Have you asked Joslyn out yet, Dad?”

  Slade cleared his throat. He had to say something if he wanted to keep the lines of communication open between himself and Shea, and he wanted that very much. He just wished they could change the subject, that was all. “She’s going to the auction with us on Saturday morning,” he said.

  “You told me that already,” Shea said patiently. “Dad? Hello? That isn’t a date.”

  Slade swore under his breath. “Maybe it’s the best I could do on short notice,” he answered.

  “Now that’s just pitiful,” Shea decreed. “If the two of you went to dinner and a movie, or out dancing, that would be a date. Even if you took a horseback ride together, and maybe picnicked someplace where there was a view. But a horse sale? Dad, that is definitely not romantic.”

  “Does it have to be?” Slade asked, slowing for the outskirts of town. Off to his right, he spotted Lyle striding down the sidewalk, wearing his hair-growing helmet. The lights flashed in cheerful sequence, like on a Christmas tree.

  Lyle smiled and waved as they passed.

  Slade tooted the horn in response.

  Happily, Shea was distracted from her lecture about what does and does not constitute a date. Her mouth fell open, and she watched Lyle, with his head full of LED lights twinkling away, until he disappeared into the blind spot. Then she spun around on her seat to confront Slade.

  “Dad,” she said. “We just saw a guy with blue lights on his head. And you just drive on by? What kind of sheriff are you?”

  Slade smiled. “Far as I know, eccentricity isn’t illegal in this state. I wouldn’t have thought you’d be all that surprised by a man in a light-up helmet, given where you live.”

  “We have our share of grandmothers with battery-powered sweatshirts,” Shea explained solemnly, “especially around Christmas. But this guy—”

  “His name is Lyle,” Slade said easily. “And he’s harmless.”

  “He’s weird.”

  “As I said, that’s not a crime.”

  She
favored him with one of her dazzling smiles. “Not here in Mayberry, anyway?” she joked.

  “Not here in Mayberry,” Slade confirmed with a grin, downshifting to make the turn onto Rodeo Road.

  When they pulled into Kendra’s driveway beside her imposing house, Shea sucked in an audible breath. “Holy sh—crap,” she blurted, taking in the sights.

  “Nice save,” Slade said, stopping the truck, shutting off the engine.

  Opal immediately appeared in the doorway of the screened sunporch, beaming as though they’d just come home from some war unscathed, and she’d been waiting to welcome them for the duration.

  Slade wondered where Joslyn was—if she’d thought of some excuse to skip supper, annoyed because he’d put the moves on her back there in the ranch house kitchen—but Shea leaped out of the truck and hurried along the walk toward Opal.

  “We’re here!” she announced, quite unnecessarily.

  Slade smiled to himself. For all that she was sixteen and growing up in a pretty sophisticated environment in L.A., there was still a lot of the child in Shea. He hoped that would never change.

  “Come on in,” Opal called, beckoning with one hand. She wore a ruffled apron over her dress and sported an oven mitt on one hand. “Supper’s just about ready.”

  Slade’s stomach rumbled slightly. Although he’d never sampled Opal’s fare, having been the kid who mowed the lawn and weeded the flower beds when she worked for the Rossiters, he’d heard plenty about it over the years.

  Back then, when the weather was hot, she’d always brought him out a pitcher full of her tangy lemonade, though, the sides slippery with condensation and the ice making a festive sound as she walked across the grass. He’d thanked her quietly, waited until she’d gone back inside the big house, and foresworn the glass, drinking thirstily straight from the spout of the pitcher.

  The recollection made him chuckle.

  Shea slipped past Opal and went on into the house, but Opal lingered on the step, watching Slade approach.

  “Joslyn’s out in the guest cottage,” Opal said with a gesture in that direction. The older woman was doing her level best to look and sound stern, but her gentle eyes sparked with mischief and amusement. “Lord knows what she’s doing, since the place was already scrubbed to a high shine when I got here and I haven’t had time to dirty it up none. Would you mind telling Joslyn that supper is about to go on the table and we’d appreciate the honor of her company?”

  The sensation that swelled in Slade’s middle wasn’t hunger, not this time. It was pure nerves with a generous helping of anticipation. “Sure,” he said, turning to head toward the cottage.

  The cottage’s side door stood open, and he rapped lightly at the door frame, much as he had the last time, when he’d followed Jasper over from next door.

  “Come in,” Joslyn called from somewhere inside.

  He stepped over the threshold, waited for his eyes to adjust from the bright sunlight outside to the cool shadows of the interior. “Joslyn?”

  “Here,” she said.

  He followed the sound of her voice into the tiny living room and was mildly surprised to find Joslyn standing at the top of a shaky foot ladder, replacing a lightbulb in the old-fashioned fixture hanging from the ceiling. Instinctively, he went over and steadied the ladder.

  She was wearing a pale pink sundress, and her legs were bare to the knees, smooth and smelling faintly of lotion.

  He didn’t dare let his gaze travel any farther than the hem of that dress. Woman, he thought, averting his eyes and gripping the ladder as if he expected a high wind at any moment, are you trying to drive me crazy?

  “Got it,” she said happily, starting down the ladder.

  The mingled scents of soap and shower water and that lotion dazed him a little, and she brushed against him as she stepped to the floor.

  “Opal said to tell you supper’s on,” he said and then felt three kinds of stupid. First he’d invited the woman to a livestock auction as if it was some kind of black-tie affair, and then he’d all but groped her in his kitchen—

  And now this.

  At this rate, she’d write him off as a hick at any moment, if she hadn’t already done so.

  Joslyn’s smile made something flutter in his chest, and she stepped back, spreading her hands a little. “How do you like my dress?” she asked, her tone shy and a little reckless, both at once. “I borrowed it from Kendra’s closet.”

  Slade opened his mouth, closed it again.

  “I like it fine,” he said finally, tongue-tied fool that he was. What had happened to that other, bolder Slade?

  “Of course I’ll have to be careful not to get any of Opal’s spaghetti sauce on it,” Joslyn fretted, patches of pink blooming on her cheekbones as she looked down at the soft confection of a dress. “It’s probably expensive, knowing Kendra. Maybe I should change into something of my own?”

  Slade imagined that cotton-candy garment being pulled off over her head. What a revelation that would be.

  “Uh, I think it’s all right—” he stumbled. Oh, it’s better than “all right.” “I mean, you look nice and everything.”

  “Good,” she said and started toward the doorway, dusting her hands together. She stopped next to the switch and flipped the light on and off a couple of times, evidently admiring her handiwork. “There,” she added. “That’s better.”

  Slade automatically retrieved the stepladder, folding it and then leaving it against the wall because he didn’t know where it went, and he felt foolish enough already, all things considered.

  “Let’s go,” she said. “Opal is a terror if the food gets cold.”

  Slade followed her out of the cottage and into the yard where the first long shadows of twilight were just beginning to spill across the ground.

  A strange, sweet pain gripped him somewhere deep inside and held on. “Joslyn?” he said.

  A few feet ahead of him, she stopped, turned her head to look back at him over one perfect, almost bare shoulder. “Yes?”

  He’d been on the verge of apologizing for what had happened earlier out at his place, but seeing her standing there with the light shimmering through the borrowed dress and playing in the rich brown silk of her hair, he knew he couldn’t say he was sorry, because that would be a lie.

  He was sorry they weren’t spending the evening alone.

  He was sorry he didn’t have his half brother’s legendary way with women.

  But he was not sorry for stating his intention to seduce her, because that hadn’t changed.

  “You look beautiful,” he said instead.

  CHAPTER FIFTEEN

  FOR JOSLYN, THE MEAL in Kendra’s enormous kitchen passed in a haze. She barely tasted Opal’s famous spaghetti and meatball casserole—always one of her favorites—and she caught only a word or two of the conversation here and there.

  Her mind, her body and all her senses were focused on the man seated next to her at the table—Opal’s doing, of course—and if she hadn’t known it earlier when he kissed her, she knew for sure now.

  Slade Barlow was absolutely, definitely, inevitably going to make love to her.

  And she was not only going to let him, she was going to respond with everything she had.

  There was a strange, jangly kind of peace in this dazed clarity, along with a helpless sensation that frightened her a little. Joslyn felt like an asteroid straying too close to a massive black hole—once she was into this, whatever it was, she might never find her way back out again.

  No matter what came afterward—in her mind, she capitalized Afterward—whether she moved away from Parable or got married to somebody else and had ten children or joined a convent, a part of her would always belong to the current sheriff of Parable County.

  Lust, that’s all it was, she insisted to herself. Just lust, not love. It couldn’t be love. Not that she was an expert on the subject or anything.

  Still, seeing Slade’s dark hair damp from the shower and catching the clean
scent of his skin and his clothes, she was ravenous, but not for food. This was a whole new kind of hunger, one she’d never experienced before.

  And, she rationalized to herself, she was a mature woman, with healthy emotional and physical needs, and the birth control device she’d had implanted a year before, when she’d been briefly involved with a man she met at work, was still standing guard at the entrance to her womb.

  Furthermore, she’d been alone, and lonely, for far too long, working ridiculous hours and living for one objective: to repay the people her stepfather had cheated so she could get past the whole thing, put it behind her once and for all and move on.

  But move on to where? To do what, exactly? She hadn’t thought that far ahead, not in any depth at least. Nor had she counted on Slade complicating her life.

  She bit her lower lip and tried hard to tune in as Shea and Opal chatted about ordinary things, movies they’d both seen or wanted to see, a shared and generally secret penchant for bowling, and what to name the new horse. Slade, Joslyn noticed, wasn’t any more talkative than she was, but that was normal for him, wasn’t it?

  Eventually, the meal ended.

  Opal reciprocated for Shea’s tour of the ranch house by offering one of the mansion, a proposal Shea eagerly accepted.

  Which left Slade and Joslyn alone together. Again.

  Slade cleared his throat, as if he meant to say something, but then he looked away, stood up and started clearing the table.

  Joslyn posted herself at the sink, rinsing plates and silverware and glasses before putting them into the dishwasher.

  Given that the mansion was probably five times the size of the rented ranch house and taking Opal’s fondness for matchmaking into account, Joslyn reasoned, they’d be alone for a while.

  Silently, when the kitchen was tidy again, Slade took Joslyn’s hand and led her outside, into the cool fragrance of the yard.

  It still wasn’t dark, but the moon was out, full and fat and silvery, and the sky was speckled with stars. They sat side by side on the steps of the sunporch, and Joslyn drew in the smells of freshly cut grass and the wide variety of flowers gracing Kendra’s garden.