Big Sky Wedding

by Linda Lael Miller

  “Because Nash is your brother,” Landry said, with extreme patience.

  “He’s also yours,” Zane pointed out. He was already wondering what a person said to a twelve-year-old kid who’d probably been shuffled between the homes of strangers, their dad’s distant relations, the girlfriend du jour and then back through the whole cycle again. Repeatedly.

  “If I don’t make this meeting in Berlin,” Landry replied, “I could lose one of my most important accounts.”

  “Sucks to be you,” Zane responded mildly. “Who’s been raising this child all this time, anyway?”

  “My understanding,” Landry supplied stiffly, “is that he’s been knocking around the country with Dad. Recently, that is.” His voice softened a little. “He’s not a bad kid, Zane. And he didn’t have the kind of mom who would go to bat for him, like ours did for us.”

  In that moment, Zane could see his late mother—an inveterate optimist, their Maddie Rose—in such vivid detail that she might as well have been standing right there in his kitchen. She’d waited tables for a living, and the three of them had lived out of her beat-up old station wagon more than once, when she was between waitressing gigs, but life had been good with her, despite all the Salvation Army Christmases and secondhand school clothes and food-bank vittles. She’d had a way of “reframing” a situation—her word—so that moving on, when a job ended or a romance went sour, always seemed like an exciting adventure instead of the grinding hardship it usually was. Even when it involved considerable sacrifice on her part, Maddie Rose always made sure they stayed put when school was in session, come hell or high water, and she’d checked their homework and encouraged them to read library books and made them say grace, too.

  As always, he wished Maddie Rose had lived to see her elder son become something more than a rodeo bum, wished he could have set her up in a good house and made sure she never lacked for anything again, but, too often, life didn’t work that way.

  She’d died in a hospital somewhere in rural South Dakota, a charity case, suffering from an advanced case of leukemia, before Zane could so much as cash his first Hollywood paycheck, let alone provide for her the way he would have done, given the chance.

  Although he and Landry usually avoided the whole topic of Maddie Rose’s death, it lay raw between them, all right, like a wound deep enough to rub the skin away, and, even now, it hurt.

  “Send Nash to Missoula,” Zane heard himself say. “Let me know when he’s getting in, and I’ll be there to pick him up.”

  “Good.” Landry almost murmured the word. “Good.”

  It wasn’t a thank-you, but it would have to do.

  Zane didn’t ring off with a goodbye. He simply hit the end call button and sent his phone skittering across the tabletop, causing Slim to perk up his mismatched ears and straighten his knobby spine.

  Zane grinned, then ruffled the hide on the dog’s back to reassure him. “You’re not in any kind of trouble, boy,” he told Slim. Then, with a philosophical sigh, he added, “And that makes one of us.”

  * * *

  THE NEXT AFTERNOON, Zane was late getting to the airport in Missoula, and it was easy to spot Nash, since the kid was standing all by himself, next to the luggage carousel, a battered green duffel bag at his feet. Earbuds piped music into his head, and his blondish-brown hair stood up in spikes, as though he’d been accidentally electrified. Seeing Zane, he scowled in recognition and dispensed with whatever tunes he’d been listening to while he waited.

  “Montana sucks,” Nash said sullenly, and without preamble. “I thought I was going to Hollywood, and now I find out I’m stuck here.”

  “Life is hard,” Zane replied, smoothly casual, “and then you die.”

  Nash rolled cornflower-blue eyes. His clothes were a sorry collection of too-big jeans, cut off at the knees and showing a good bit of his boxers, sneakers with no laces, a ragged T-shirt of indeterminate color and a pilled hoodie enlivened by a skull-and-crossbones pattern in neon green. “Thanks for the 411,” he drawled, making it plain he’d already mastered contempt, even before hitting his teens. “I probably couldn’t have figured that out on my own.”

  Zane sighed inwardly and reminded himself to be patient. Maddie Rose had seen that he and Landry had it good, in comparison with most poor kids, but Nash had been through the proverbial wringer.

  “You hungry?” he asked the boy, stooping to pick up the duffel bag by its frayed and grubby handle.

  “I’m always hungry,” Nash replied, without a shred of humor. “Just ask Dad. I’m a royal pain in the ass, wanting to eat at least once a day, no matter what. Too bad the kind of motels he could afford didn’t have room service.” A beat passed. “I was lucky to get a bed.”

  Zane felt a clenching sensation—sympathy—but he didn’t let it show. He remembered all too well how poverty ground away at a person’s pride, how he’d hated it when people felt sorry for him and Landry. “Let’s get out of here,” he said. “We’ll find you some food once we’ve left the airport.”

  Nash said nothing. He simply put his earbuds back in and rocked to some private serenade, ambling alongside Zane as they left the terminal and made their way to the outdoor parking area, where the truck waited.

  Slim was there, pressing his nose against a partially lowered window as they approached. He gave a happy yelp of welcome and scrabbled to and fro across the backseat, unable to contain his excitement.

  “You have a dog?” Nash asked, opening up his ears again and almost, but not quite, smiling.

  “His name is Slim.” Zane confirmed the obvious with a nod, as he opened the truck’s tailgate and tossed the duffel bag inside. “Knows a thing or two about hard luck, I guess.”

  “Then we ought to get along,” Nash replied, sounding far too world-weary for a twelve-year-old. “The dog and me, that is.”

  CHAPTER THREE

  NASH LOOKED AROUND the ranch house kitchen with a discerning eye—surprisingly discerning, in fact, for somebody in a skull-and-crossbones hoodie, with six inches of underwear showing above his belt line.

  “Man,” he said, quickly evaluating the long-neglected space surrounding them. “This place is seriously underwhelming.”

  “Kind of like your manners,” Zane retorted lightly, but without rancor. In the few hours he’d spent with this young half brother of his, he’d begun to understand the kid a little better. Nash probably thought he was doing a good job of hiding what he felt, but he was scared all right, jumpy as a cat in a room full of cleated boots. Ready to be shunted off at a moment’s notice to the next place where he wouldn’t fit in, and determined not to let anybody know he gave a damn when it happened. He’d consumed three cheeseburgers, a double order of curly fries and a milk shake when they stopped for lunch on the outskirts of Missoula, prompting Zane to wonder if Landry had fed him a meal or two before hustling him on board the first westbound plane with an available seat.

  And then there were those god-awful clothes. Going by appearances, his duds being rumpled, worn-out and not recently washed, the kid might have made the whole trip in the cargo hold instead of the main cabin. Landry, the multimillionaire investment whiz, couldn’t have sprung for a few pairs of jeans and some T-shirts?

  Most likely, Zane thought, with a stifled sigh, his brother hadn’t wanted to be bothered with anything so mundane as taking the boy to the nearest mall and outfitting him with the basics. After all, he had to get to Berlin, where he had an Important Meeting.

  The message in that was obvious: the meeting was important, but Nash wasn’t. Susan, the soon-to-be ex-wife—again—had probably come to the same conclusion about her own place in Landry’s high-octane life.

  Zane seethed a little, feeling self-righteous—until he recalled that, up until Landry’s phone call, he couldn’t have said where Nash was, what he was doing, who he was with. He hadn’t kept any better track of his kid brother than Landry had.

  The boy was blood. How had he been able to ignore that fact for so long?
>
  “Where do I put my stuff?” Nash asked, breaking into Zane’s rueful thoughts, having reclaimed the duffel bag when they got out of the truck a few minutes before. “By the back door, maybe?”

  “You plan on making a quick getaway?” Zane countered evenly, as he refilled Slim’s water bowl and set it on the floor so the thirsty dog could drink.

  Nash responded with a mocking grin. “You never know,” he said. He made a hitchhiking motion with one thumb. “I’m a travelin’ man.”

  “You’re a kid,” Zane pointed out, after taking a few seconds to rule out the snarky answers that came to mind ahead of that one. Leaning back against the sink, he folded his arms while Slim lapped loudly from the bowl of water. “And you ought to know, better than most, how mean the big world out there can really be.”

  Nash didn’t bat an eyelash; he was already a hard case—at twelve, for God’s sake. “But I’m safe now, right?” he drawled, dripping sarcasm. “No worries. You’re going to give me a home, right here on the range.”

  A familiar desire to find Jess Sutton and throttle the man with his bare hands washed over Zane, but it was quickly displaced by a flash of admiration for Nash. The kid might be a smart-ass, but he had a quicksilver brain.

  “Where, as it happens,” Zane responded, playing along, “the buffalo don’t roam.”

  Nash rolled his eyes, then his shoulders. He was on the small side, and skinny and raw-boned, but he’d match Zane’s six-foot height one day in the not-too-distant future, maybe even exceed it.

  “Can I take a look around?” the boy asked, sounding glum. Obviously, he wasn’t expecting much.

  “Be my guest,” Zane answered. “Pick out a bedroom while you’re at it. There are plenty to choose from.”

  Offering no comment, Nash wandered off to explore the premises. He was gone for a while, Slim trailing faithfully after him, which gave Zane a chance to assess the grub situation, peering into the fridge, opening and closing cupboard doors. Despite yesterday’s shopping trip in Three Trees, it wasn’t a pretty picture.

  “Don’t you have any furniture?” Nash asked, upon his return.

  Zane shook his head. His household goods were still in L.A., in his condo, and he already knew there was no point in having all that expensive junk trucked to Montana. None of it would look right here—especially his bed. It was a gigantic, mirrored thing, a monument to unbridled hedonism, lacking only notches on one of the pillar-size posts to tally his conquests.

  He would miss the water-filled mattress, though.

  All the other pieces—chairs and couches, a dining room set, a TV so big it took up a whole wall—were decorator-approved and half again too fancy for a run-down stone ranch house. Like the bed, they’d be so ostentatious as to be an embarrassment.

  Not that he’d be showing off his sleeping quarters anytime soon, of course.

  When an image of Brylee Parrish seeped into his mind like smoke, he nearly laughed out loud. As if, he thought. She’d probably already written him off as a hedonistic, interfering movie star, but even if she hadn’t, she would once she checked all the online gossip sites and found his name on practically every one of them.

  “Just moved here myself,” he finally replied, feeling a distinct lack of nostalgia for the old place back in L.A., and the fast-paced life that went with it. “I haven’t had time to make a plan, let alone shop for a houseful of stuff.” By then, he was sitting at the card table in the center of the kitchen, with his laptop open. It was time to do a little research on child-rearing. “Anyway, there’s a lot to be done around the place, as you’ve probably noticed.”

  Nash dragged back the second folding chair, which completed the dining ensemble, and fell to the seat with a sigh. “It’s not so bad,” he said, taking Zane by surprise. Had the kid actually said something civil? “Anyway, beggars can’t be choosers. That’s what my mom always tells me. When I can find her, that is.”

  “You’re not a beggar, Nash,” Zane said, looking up from the computer screen, which indicated that he had a shitload of emails waiting for him. A daunting prospect, since at least eight of them were from his ex-wife, Tiffany. Tiffany. What had he been thinking, marrying that woman-child? Maybe he’d give her the monumental water bed; God knew, she’d get plenty of use out of it, and maybe even sleep once in a while. “You’ve had a run of hard luck, that’s all. It happens to the best of us.”

  “With me, it’s a lifestyle,” Nash said, leaning back indolently, though his eyes were alert for any sign that trouble might be about to land on him like a cougar dropping out of a tree.

  “You could look at it that way,” Zane replied, “if you were inclined to feel sorry for yourself. You’ve had it tough, but so have lots of other people. What matters is where you go from here, what you do next. When you get right down to it, it seems to me, almost everything hinges on what attitude you decide to take.”

  Nash widened his eyes, and his mouth had a scornful set to it. “What are you—some kind of rah-rah motivational speaker now?”

  “I’m your brother. You can keep up the act for as long as you want, but it’s basically a waste of energy, because, trust me, I can outlast you.” Zane paused, letting his words sink in. “Also, I know a thing or two about having a no-account for a father myself, as it happens. And that means I understand you better than you think I do.”

  Nash’s face, so like his own and, for that matter, like Landry’s, too, hardened in all its planes and angles. Once the boy grew into himself, he’d be a man to be reckoned with.

  “Dad’s not a no-account,” he retorted coldly.

  “You have a right to your opinion,” Zane answered. “And I have a right to mine.”

  Nash slammed one palm down hard on top of the rickety table, causing the dog to jump in alarm. “What’s that supposed to mean?” he demanded.

  “Exactly what it sounded like it meant—you have a right to your opinion. Mine happens to differ a little, it would seem. And don’t scare the dog again—he’s been through enough as it is.”

  “Dad’s made a few mistakes, but he’s not a bum,” Nash said, but he lacked conviction. The sidelong look he gave Slim was genuinely remorseful. “Sorry, boy,” he muttered, under his breath.

  “He is what he is.” Zane spoke in a moderate tone, but no power on earth could have gotten him to make Jess Sutton out to be more than he was. The man was good-looking, charming to the max and absolutely useless in the real world, an overage Peter Pan.

  “You sound just like Landry,” Nash accused, flaring up again. “Both of you are full of yourselves, the high and mighty movie star and Mr. Moneybags. I couldn’t believe the things Landry said, right to Dad’s face!”

  “Guess that’s better than saying them behind his back,” Zane observed diplomatically. “Maybe you had a different experience with the old man than Landry and I did, growing up. We saw him every few years, when he needed a couch to sleep on between wives and girlfriends. When he did have a few bucks in his pocket, it was only because one of his scams had finally panned out, and he sure as hell never shared it with Mom.”

  Nash sat stony-faced and still. They were at a standoff, obviously, neither one of them willing to take back anything they’d said, though Zane, for his part, was beginning to wish that he’d kept his opinions to himself. If it comforted the kid to make-believe the old man had his best interests at heart, well, where was the harm in that?

  Nash scowled on, two bright patches burning on his otherwise pale cheeks. Zane didn’t look away, nor did he speak.

  “He could have changed,” Nash finally said. “Dad, I mean.”

  “Yeah,” Zane agreed, after unlocking his jawbones so he could open his mouth at all. “Or not.”

  Nash leaned forward, both hands flat on the tabletop now, fingers splayed. At least he didn’t make a loud noise or a fast move and scare the dog again.

  “Look,” the kid ground out, eyes narrowed, breath quick and shallow, “I didn’t ask to come here, to Butthole Creek or
whatever this place is called, all right? I didn’t ask to be dumped off on Landry’s doorstep, either. So don’t go thinking I’m some poor orphan who needs to be preached at, okay?”

  “Far be it from me to preach,” Zane said calmly.

  Nash glared even harder. “In the movies, you always play an easygoing cowboy with a slow grin and a fast draw. Now, all of a sudden, you’re talking like some college professor or something.”

  “That first part,” Zane responded, “is called ‘acting.’ It was my job.”

  “Did you go to college?” From Nash’s tone, he might have been asking, Did you rob a bank—mug an old lady—kick a helpless animal?

  “Now and then,” Zane replied. “Mostly, though, I just read a lot.”

  There was another pause. Then, “You think you’re better than Dad—better than me.” Nash Sutton was obstinate to the core—just like both his older brothers.

  “There’s only one man I try to be better than, and that’s the one I was last week, last month or last year. It’s a simple creed, but it serves me well, most of the time.” Privately, Zane wondered where those lofty words had come from and, at the same time, realized they were true. He wanted to be himself, not the movie cowboy with the smooth lines, too much money and the steady supply of silicone-enhanced women, Tiffany included.

  It was time to get real, damn it.

  Another long silence stretched between them, broken when Nash finally asked, “Am I going to have to sleep on the floor?”

  Zane grinned, aware that the tension had eased up a little and thus felt relieved. Although he could be pretty hardheaded—bull-stubborn, his mom would have said—he wasn’t unreasonable. He liked people and preferred to get along with them when he could. Especially when they were kin—like Nash.

  “No,” he said. “You won’t have to sleep on the floor. We’ll head into town and buy a couple of decent beds in a little while—with luck, we’ll be able to haul them home in the back of the truck and set them up right away. If that plan doesn’t work out for some reason, you can use the air mattress in the meantime.”