Big Sky Country

by Linda Lael Miller

  Joslyn grinned as she settled in and fastened her seat belt. “Sounds pretty drastic,” she said.

  Shea put on an expression of dramatic melancholy, but she couldn’t sustain it, so it was gone in a flicker. “Dad takes this whole parenting thing way seriously,” she confided.

  “It would seem so,” Joslyn agreed, still grinning.

  Slade climbed behind the wheel, and moments later they were off, headed for Whisper Creek Ranch. It seemed so blissfully ordinary to Joslyn, riding in the truck with Slade and Shea and Jasper, as if this was something she did all the time.

  They drove through town without saying much. It was early, after all, and Joslyn suspected she wasn’t the only one who was still in the process of waking up.

  Oh, for a cup of hot, strong coffee.

  “What do you hear from Kendra?” Slade asked, when they left Parable behind for the open countryside. “Is she doing all right?”

  Joslyn turned to look at him, and, for a moment, their gazes locked, and everything that had gone on the day before, in the cool sanctuary of Kendra’s guest cottage, was silently acknowledged, but then he watched the road again.

  “She calls to check in every other day, or so,” Joslyn replied quietly. “We talk about what’s going on at the office for a minute or two, but when I ask her how she is, she sort of pulls back inside herself.”

  In the back, Shea was laughing, oblivious to the conversation between Joslyn and Slade. She’d just discovered some cell phone app that barked, making a goofy, cartoonish racket, and that in turn made Jasper tune up, howling for good measure.

  “This has to be tough for her,” Slade said over the din.

  Joslyn didn’t remember how much she’d told him about Kendra’s reason for visiting England and didn’t want to say more than she should and further betray her friend’s trust. In the end, though, she decided to answer, because she knew Slade’s concern for Kendra was genuine, but she’d stick to the bare facts.

  So she told Slade that Kendra’s ex-husband, Jeffrey, was almost certainly dying, and he’d summoned Kendra to his deathbed, having sent word, by way of his mother, that he had something important to say, something that could only be addressed in person. No one except Jeffrey himself seemed to know precisely what that something was, though, and he’d been too ill to talk ever since Kendra’s arrival in London.

  “It surprised me when Kendra married that guy,” Slade said. “Surprised a lot of people around here.”

  Joslyn nodded. “I expected her to wind up with Hutch Carmody,” she told him.

  Bare facts be damned.

  “That’s funny,” Slade answered. “Because I thought you would. You and Hutch were pretty tight in high school.”

  “That was high school,” she reminded him, perhaps a bit tersely. Did he think she had a thing for his half brother? That she was the sort to be sexually involved with more than one man at a time?

  Had he been paying any attention at all yesterday, when she’d come undone in his arms, again and again?

  Slade glanced her way, then shifted his attention right back to the road. Always so sure of himself, he seemed a touch bewildered all of a sudden—and stuck for an answer, too.

  In the backseat, Shea’s cell phone continued to emit sharp barks, and Jasper, purely delighted, yowled loudly in response.

  Everybody laughed, and Slade said that would be enough of the noise, thanks, and one more difficult moment was behind them—for the time being, at least.

  When they arrived at Whisper Creek, the pinkish gold light of the new day was spilling over the rims of the mountains to the east, pouring itself like shimmering liquid into the sprawling green valley below—most of which was part of the Carmody ranch.

  Hutch was just coming out of the barn—he hadn’t shaved and his shirt was misbuttoned, Joslyn immediately noticed—but when he saw her getting out of Slade’s truck, along with Jasper and Shea, he grinned a friendly welcome.

  When his gaze moved on to Slade, though, Hutch looked a shade less hospitable. She could almost see him dig his heels into the hard ground.

  Shea, who must have met Hutch at some point when she was younger, nodded to him and headed straight for the barn. She was interested in Chessie and not much else.

  Jasper, usually her shadow, wandered around the yard instead of following her, catching familiar scents. Perhaps trying to track down his former master. The thought, unlikely as it was, pinched at Joslyn’s heart. Jasper was adapting well to life with Slade and Shea, but he surely remembered John Carmody and wondered where he’d gone.

  “There’s coffee,” Hutch said, his voice quiet. He rubbed the golden stubble on his chin with one hand, then gestured toward the house. “Help yourselves.”

  It was an offer Joslyn wasn’t about to refuse. She looked forward to that first cup of coffee every morning, and there hadn’t been time to have any since Slade had rousted her out of bed with his phone call, and she’d had to rush just to make herself presentable, forget attractive.

  Furthermore, she hadn’t been about to ask him to stop for some along the way. He was a man on a mission—tending horses.

  “Thanks,” she said, taking a step in the direction of the house. “Slade?”

  “I’ll be fine without,” he replied without looking at her. He was still watching Hutch. “Thanks just the same, though.”

  The brothers stood a few feet apart, facing each other. Horses nickered and whinnied, birds chirped in the tree branches, ranch hands went about doing morning chores. Everything seemed normal, but a strained and very private silence stretched between Slade and Hutch.

  Joslyn reminded herself that they were grown men, and she was neither their keeper nor a freelance referee, and hurried into the house for coffee.

  Hutch’s kitchen was old-fashioned in style, with dark cupboards and floors, though the appliances, faced with shining steel, were probably custom-order.

  There was a big fireplace on one wall—a nice touch on a wicked-cold Montana winter morning especially, Joslyn thought—but the place felt oddly unoccupied, like the ranch-house version of a model home in some anonymous development, well kept and finely furnished—but not actually lived in.

  You really need that coffee, Joslyn thought, shaking off the lonely sensation that had arisen inside her as soon as she stepped into Hutch Carmody’s kitchen.

  She spotted the coffeemaker right away, scouted out a plastic mug, wanting something unbreakable, and poured herself a dose of caffeine. There wasn’t any artificial sweetener, at least not in plain view, so she indulged in a single teaspoon of regular sugar from the bowl on the counter, stirred briefly and headed back outside, sipping as she went.

  Slade must have gone inside the barn, for there was no sign of him, but Hutch was still standing in approximately the same place as before, talking quietly to one of the ranch hands.

  By the time Joslyn reached them, the ranch hand was walking away, climbing into one of several work trucks.

  Hutch grinned at her and rested his hands on his hips. Like Slade, he was leanly built, but powerfully, too, especially through the shoulders, and much to Joslyn’s relief, he seemed at ease in his skin again.

  This was the Hutch she knew. She nodded to him and started for the barn, which was a fair distance from the house, and he fell into step beside her.

  “That palomino,” he said, “is one good-looking horse.”

  “Yes,” Joslyn said, pausing as she stepped into the barn to let her eyes adjust to the dimmer light. “She is.”

  “And, as I understand it, she belongs to you?”

  What was he getting at?

  Joslyn turned her head to look up at him. “Not really,” she said. “I told you yesterday, Hutch. Slade bought Sundance—I’m just sort of borrowing her.”

  As she spoke, she was aware of Slade and Shea, saddling Chessie in the breezeway. Another of Hutch’s ranch hands stood nearby—he must have fetched the tack.

  “She’s my horse,” Shea was insisting
anxiously. “I want to ride her, Dad.”

  Slade’s expression was implacable, his jawline like granite. “Sorry,” he said, clipping off the word. “Not gonna happen.”

  Hutch and Joslyn parted just inside the entrance, so he could lead the mare between them out into the sunshine and the sweet, soft breeze.

  “Dad,” Shea protested, double-stepping to keep up, “Chessie is my horse.”

  “Your dad’s right,” Hutch interjected, surprising everybody a little. “There’s no telling how green that mare might be. You wouldn’t want to get hurt, would you?”

  Shea sighed, shook her head.

  Slade’s expression was storm-cloud dark as he gave an abrupt nod of agreement. It seemed to pain him to give Hutch even that much.

  Outside, Slade stood beside the mare for a few moments, stroking her neck, talking to the animal in low words Joslyn couldn’t make out, though his tone was reassuring.

  The reins gathered loosely in one hand, Slade put a foot into the stirrup and swung easily up onto Chessie’s back.

  She snorted, and muscles quivered along the mare’s gleaming barrel, as though she might be bunching her haunches to buck, but in the next moment, she settled down.

  Watching Slade ride, Joslyn felt a whole new emotion, something akin to admiration and yet unique in and of itself. Together, the man and horse were like one glorious being, literally poetry in motion.

  Even Shea, who had been peevish before, looked on with her eyes rounded and her mouth slightly open.

  “It’s in the blood,” Hutch commented beside Joslyn again, and there was a rueful note in his voice as he, too, watched his father’s illegitimate son manage that mare with a light-handed grace that was beautiful to see.

  “Having second thoughts about that ridiculous horse race the two of you are planning?” Joslyn asked. Now she was the one who sounded peevish, instead of Shea.

  Hutch chuckled, a raspy, humorless sound. Shook his head, his gaze still fixed on Slade and the chestnut mare. “Nope,” he replied. “But it might be a whole lot more interesting than I expected.”

  Joslyn folded her arms. Barely moved her mouth as she replied, “It’s a stupid idea, Hutch. And it’s dangerous.”

  “Maybe so,” Hutch conceded, “but I can tell you right now that the sheriff won’t back down from it, and neither will I.”

  * * *

  AFTER THAT FIRST MORNING, things fell into a pattern.

  Joslyn, nervous at first, began to look forward to these early outings spent feeding and grooming Sundance, and especially to riding along the grassy banks of the Big Sky River, which bordered the Carmody property on one side, like a great curved arm, and fed the creek that gave the ranch its name.

  Slade taught both Shea and Joslyn to saddle their own horses and, though he still checked to make sure Chessie’s and Sundance’s cinches were pulled tight before they mounted up, he said they were a pair of natural-born riders and gave them the room they needed to learn.

  Because Slade Barlow never said anything he didn’t mean, Shea and Joslyn knew it must be true and rode with confidence.

  Thinking back on the brief and long-ago days of her reign as queen of the Parable County Rodeo, Joslyn often wished she could go back and relive them, honestly this time. Back then, she’d been a spoiled, empty-headed child, more than passably pretty but with all the personal authenticity of a spray-on suntan.

  Now, riding the Whisper Creek range every morning with Slade and Shea, she felt like a new person, capable of conquering new worlds. Her love life being the one glaring exception.

  Since that fierce and blissful interlude in the guesthouse, she and Slade hadn’t really been alone together, much less made love again. An awkward politeness had developed between them, strictly platonic, like her friendship with Hutch.

  That troubled Joslyn and not just because she missed the sex—though she did, and sorely—but because she missed something harder to define, the closeness of it, maybe, the way she and Slade had connected, not just on the physical level, but somewhere deeper.

  Somewhere sacred and eternal, where the body and the soul met.

  The sensible thing to do, of course, would have been to talk openly with Slade, but on the rare occasions that the opportunity arose, Joslyn couldn’t find the courage. She was afraid of upsetting the balance.

  If it ain’t broke, the saying went, don’t fix it.

  So June unfurled into July, and July rolled on into August, and nothing much changed, at least between Joslyn and Slade.

  She and Slade and Shea went to Whisper Creek every morning.

  And every morning, they tended their horses and rode and talked about nothing in particular and finally went their separate ways, Joslyn to Kendra’s real-estate office, Slade to fill his role as sheriff, and Shea to the Curly-Burly Hair Salon, where she seemed to thrive. When she wasn’t there, she was with her flock of new friends over at the community swimming pool.

  For all the time Joslyn spent in Slade’s company, though, she wouldn’t have known about anything that was going on in his life or Shea’s if it hadn’t been for Opal’s regular reports.

  He didn’t want to run for reelection, for instance, and he was trying to persuade Boone Taylor, his favorite deputy, to throw his hat in the ring.

  Practically every night, when he wasn’t on duty, Slade went back out to Whisper Creek alone, saddled the big bay gelding and rode for hours by himself—getting ready for the race, most likely.

  Lastly, he seemed okay with the fact that Layne and her new love were making marriage plans, Opal allowed. And she adored the girl. “That Shea,” Opal would say, with a fond chuckle and a shake of her head. “She keeps life interesting, that’s for sure.”

  For her part, Joslyn wondered, worried and crammed for her real-estate license exam, which was coming up at the end of the month. If she passed—and she intended to, with the proverbial flying colors—she could list and show properties instead of just fielding phone calls and emails and making excuses for Kendra’s continued absence. And she was running out of superficial explanations.

  The business had practically ground to a halt without Kendra there, but her friend didn’t seem to register the implications of that. Her calls were frequent but invariably brief—Jeffrey was hanging on, she’d say, though he still hadn’t spoken, she’d moved from her hotel to his flat in Knightsbridge, to save on expenses and, except for a visit to Charing Cross Road now and then to buy books to read while she kept her vigil at the hospital, she didn’t go out much.

  The whole situation sounded, well, bleak, to Joslyn, and, on top of that, it was vaguely mysterious. There was more going on here than Kendra was willing to admit, and even when Joslyn went ahead and confided that she’d not only gone to bed with Slade Barlow but enjoyed every minute of it, a fact she’d shared with no one else on the planet, Kendra still didn’t open up. If she’d found out why Jeffrey and his family had asked her to come to England on such short notice, leaving her own life and business in suspended animation, she wasn’t saying.

  It wasn’t until a few days before that blasted horse race, scheduled for the Saturday before Labor Day—Slade and Hutch had charted out the course together, apparently, and were in grim agreement that it would span a mile-long straight stretch on one of the ranch’s back roads—that Joslyn found a chink in her friend’s armor.

  All she had to do to get a rise out of Kendra, she discovered, quite by accident, was casually mention that if Slade and Hutch didn’t break one or both their necks settling this crazy bet they had by racing each other on horseback over what amounted to a rutted cattle trail, she, Joslyn, might break them herself.

  Kendra’s indrawn breath traveled the thousands of miles between them. “What bet?” she demanded. “What horse race?”

  Joslyn explained what she knew about the agreement between John Carmody’s pigheaded sons, which was little enough, as it happened, because even Opal hadn’t been able to pry more than a few grudging details out of Slade.r />
  “Oh, my God,” Kendra gasped. “Are they crazy?”

  “I think that much is obvious,” Joslyn said mildly, though the pit of her stomach ached with dread, and she had an idea it was the same for Kendra.

  “They can’t have forgotten,” Kendra ranted, in a breathless whisper. “Not Hutch, anyway.”

  “Forgotten what?” Joslyn asked, growing steadily more unnerved. By then, she was wishing she hadn’t mentioned the horse race at all, even if it had gotten a bit of a rise out of the other woman, because Kendra clearly had enough on her mind without worrying about this, too.

  “Two of Hutch’s uncles got into a race just like this one to settle a score,” Kendra said. “His father’s brothers. It was years ago—but you must have heard the story, growing up in Parable. There was a terrible accident, and both of them were killed, Joslyn. Some people even said there was a curse on the Carmodys—”

  “A curse?” Joslyn echoed, though she still felt as though she’d been punched in the stomach. “Surely you don’t actually believe—”

  “No,” Kendra said, on a sigh. “Of course I don’t believe in curses. But something bad is going to happen if Hutch and Slade go through with this—I can feel it.”

  A shiver trickled down Joslyn’s spine. She’d never known her down-to-earth, superstition-free friend to make a statement like that.

  She swallowed hard. “Kendra—”

  But Kendra’s tone was brisk, matter-of-fact, decisive. If it hadn’t been for the circumstances, Joslyn would have been heartened by the change in her friend. “When is this race supposed to take place again?”

  “Next Saturday,” Joslyn said. Practically everybody in town planned to attend, she knew, and there were bets being placed at all the local taverns.

  “I’m coming home,” Kendra announced.

  Joslyn blinked, both delighted and confused. “That’s great, but—”

  What about Jeffrey?

  The question hung between them, unfinished.

  “I’ll be there as soon as I can,” Kendra said, sounding more and more like her old self. “In the meantime, Joslyn, you need to do everything you can to talk some sense into Slade Barlow’s hard head.”