“Holy crap,” Nash whispered, moving a little closer to Zane’s side. “Is that her?”
Zane chuckled and let the buzzword pass, considering it to be relatively tame, all things considered. “That’s her,” he said.
Cleo stormed right over to them and stood practically toe-to-toe with Zane, her head tipped way back so she could glare up into his face. “Just as I thought,” she sputtered. “I didn’t get here any too soon—why just look at you. You need a haircut. There are dark circles under your eyes. And did you sleep in that shirt?”
“It’s good to see you again, too, Cleo,” Zane said, grinning. It really was good to see her, though he figured it would be a while before Nash came to the same conclusion. He looked scared stiff.
Cleo’s dark eyes darted to the boy, and he seemed to cower, just a little, under her hard scrutiny. “And I suppose you’re the little brother I finally heard about in an email? Dash, wasn’t it?”
“Yes, ma’am,” Nash managed, then swallowed audibly and tried again. “I mean, I’m Zane’s brother, all right. But I’m called Nash, not Dash.” He seemed about to duck behind Zane, in an attempt to take cover, but he deserved some credit for correcting this daunting woman on the name issue. “Wh-what am I supposed to call you?”
“‘Ma’am’ will do just fine, for the time being,” Cleo retorted crisply. “You behave yourself, and you can address me as ‘Cleo.’ You get on my bad side, though, and it’ll be another matter entirely. Your life won’t be worth a plug nickel.”
“How was your flight?” Zane asked, in an affable effort to change the subject.
“We were delayed for an hour, and I had to show my boarding pass twice,” Cleo blustered, spotting the baggage claim sign and trundling off toward it, leaving Zane and Nash to catch up. “Seems there are still some folks in this world numb-headed enough to wonder what an old black woman is doing in first class.”
Zane’s back teeth clamped together, and he was about to turn on one heel, head for the airline’s customer service desk and proceed to raise hell, when Cleo read his mind, grabbed hold of his arm and gave her great, booming laugh.
“Let it go,” she said. “I done told those people off already. But good.”
“It might have been the hat,” Nash suggested innocently.
Cleo’s laugh changed everything but the weather and the all-around incompetence of Congress. Her smile was wide and bright, with teeth practically as big as piano keys. Her eyes shone with warmth and glee, and Nash, having never met her before, was thunderstruck by the transformation.
“I’m just glad to be off that airplane,” she continued, in her rich, throaty voice. As a girl, she’d once told Zane, she’d been a torch singer, performing in smoky bars with jazz legends playing backup. Maybe that was why almost every word she said rolled off her tongue round-toned and mellow. “Can’t wait to plunk my broad bottom down somewhere wide enough to accommodate it and put my feet up for a while, yes, siree.”
Nash slanted a questioning glance at Zane, mouthed, Yes, siree?
Zane merely grinned. Nash didn’t know it yet, any more than he had in the beginning, but Cleo was one of the best things that could ever happen to a guy.
At the baggage claim, they collected her luggage—two huge, beat-up suitcases and a plastic cooler sealed with duct tape—and Nash loaded everything onto a cart, clearly glad to help.
Being short of stature, to put it kindly, Cleo had a heck of a time getting into the pickup when they reached the parking lot. In fact, Zane finally had to give her a subtle boost from behind.
Nash stowed the bags and the cooler and climbed into the backseat.
“I’m gonna need a stepladder,” Cleo observed, settling in and fastening her seat belt, “if I’m going to ride in this rig very often. Maybe even a forklift. You got any kind of regular car, Zane Sutton?”
Zane chuckled, started the truck, shifted it into gear. “No, ma’am,” he teased, “but we do own a horse.”
CHAPTER SIX
TWO AND A half hours later, Cleo got her first look at the inside of the ranch house at Hangman’s Bend, and it immediately became apparent that finding a place to park her “broad bottom” and put up her feet was no longer the number-one item on her agenda. After a sweeping glance of delighted horror that took in the whole kitchen, she commanded, “Fetch me a mop and a bucket, now!”
Zane tried to reason with her, get her to rest. After all, she’d traveled a long way and she was, to use her own unapologetically cliché-ridden terminology, no spring chicken, but she was having none of it.
“Hush yourself and show me where I can change my clothes,” Cleo barked. The smile was gone, but the sparkle remained in her eyes, which was probably why Nash, openmouthed and a little pale, didn’t bolt out the door and run for his life. The boy literally trembled when Cleo turned to him and thundered, “Let’s see some action around here! I believe I just asked for a mop and a bucket!”
Zane bit the inside of his lip so he wouldn’t laugh out loud at the beleaguered expression on Nash’s face. They didn’t own a mop, but there might be a few buckets knocking around out in the barn—rusty, mostly, and with holes in them.
He hoisted Cleo’s suitcases, one in each hand, and, catching his kid brother’s eye, inclined his head toward the duct-taped cooler. Nash scrambled to lift the thing in both arms, frowning at the effort. “Best get you settled in first, Miss Cleo,” Zane said moderately. “There’s plenty of time to whip this place into shape, remember.”
Cleo looked around again, the picture of pleased scorn, and waved off Zane’s remark. She definitely had her work cut out for her, and that suited her just fine. Cleo’s world ran on attitude and elbow grease, and well-paid as she was, she was known to squeeze a nickel till the buffalo farted. Hence the shabby travel gear and a number of other strange economies. “Lord, have mercy on my poor bedraggled soul,” she murmured, shaking her head from side to side, so the velvet rose on her hat bobbed comically. “Setting this place to rights ain’t gonna be no job, it’s gonna be a career.”
Zane smiled at that statement—it was true enough, he supposed—and led the way toward the room he and Nash had chosen for Cleo. There was a genuine bed in evidence, made up with sheets and blankets fresh from their plastic wrappers, along with two nightstands and a chest of drawers, but that was it. No curtains on the windows, wallpaper so old that the pattern had blurred, vintage carpet in a weird and faded shade of gold that must have gone out of style around the time of the Watergate scandal.
“Land sakes,” Cleo marveled, snatching off her hat with one-handed vigor. She swiped an index finger across the top of the bureau, in case of dust, before setting the headgear down.
Fortunately for the Sutton men, the woman loved a challenge. If she hadn’t, Zane knew he and Nash would already be driving her back to the airport in Missoula, where she could catch the next flight back to La La Land.
Mop or no mop, Cleo wasn’t going anywhere, and that was good news.
“Well, go on,” she told Zane and Nash, making a shooing motion with her plump, short-nailed hands. “No need to stand there gaping all day like a pair of idiots at a freak show.”
Somewhat feverishly, Nash looked around for a place to put the cooler, and finally chose the foot of the bed.
Cleo was clearly displeased by this decision, scowling as she did, but she didn’t comment.
Knowing when to leave well enough alone, a lesson he’d learned the hard way over the rocky course of his life, Zane left the room, with Nash trailing hurriedly behind him, and the bedroom door closed with a snap the instant they were both over the threshold.
Slim sat patiently in the short corridor that led to the kitchen, his tail swishing a visible path through the dust on the floor.
Zane sighed and kept walking.
“She’s the scariest person I’ve ever met!” Nash confided, in a hoarse whisper, once they were in the kitchen.
Zane chuckled. Given the kid’s history, that was say
ing something. “Cleo’s all right,” he said. “She’s got a mean bark, but she almost never bites.”
“Almost?” Nash echoed, after swallowing.
Grinning, Zane crossed the room, headed for the pantry, where they’d stashed what cleaning supplies they’d thought to buy on the last foray into Three Trees. There were various kinds of soap, sponges, paper towels, a broom and a dustpan—but, alas, no mop.
“Well, at least we managed to get the washer and dryer delivered before Cleo showed up,” Nash said, hovering in the doorway. “Maybe she’ll let us live.”
“That’s ‘ma’am,’ to you,” Zane reminded the boy. “As for whether or not she’ll let us live, I wouldn’t count on it.”
Taking an informal inventory of the stuff on the pantry shelves, he gave an inward sigh. Canned spaghetti and ravioli, chips of various kinds, coffee and a ten-pound bag of sugar, all adding up to nutritional disaster. It went without saying that Cleo would not approve.
A single low-wattage bulb dangled from a cord in the pantry ceiling, casting a gloomy light on the singularly inadequate array of goods.
“We’re going to have to shop again, aren’t we?” Nash asked, tone dismal, expression pained.
“Yep,” Zane agreed, wondering what time it was. No matter how much Cleo fussed over the state of that ranch house, he wasn’t missing the horseback ride with Brylee. The big discount store in town was open twenty-four hours, he reasoned, so they could go there after he got back from Timber Creek, get everything they needed. Maybe by then, Cleo would have toured the house, assessed the wreckage and drawn up an estimate.
Nash groaned. “We just did that,” he reminded Zane. “I hate shopping!”
“Cheer up,” Zane answered, and Nash stepped aside to let him pass through the pantry doorway and into the kitchen again. “We’ll get you a TV or something.” What did kids this age like to do, anyhow? Beyond watching TV and playing video games, he didn’t really know.
The kid immediately brightened. “Can I have a flat-screen with a DVD player and keep it in my room?”
Before Zane could reply—he’d been about to say yes, but with certain stipulations—Cleo rolled into the room like an army tank. She was wearing colorful scrubs, her preferred garb when she was on duty, and canary-yellow sneakers, high-tops, probably. Cleo, somewhere on the far side of sixty, was the stylin’ type—no doubt about it. She liked her colors in-your-face bright, and when she dressed up, she wore bling. Maybe that was where the money for new luggage went.
“I believe we ought to start with a bulldozer,” Cleo announced, folding her stubby arms and exuding cheerful disapproval. “Taking a mop and bucket to this place would be like trying to put out a grease fire by spitting on it. I’ve got to make me a plan.”
Oh, yes, Zane agreed silently, amused and, okay, relieved. A plan would be good. Why hadn’t he thought of that?
Zane raised one eyebrow, doing his best to keep a straight face. “Whatever you want to do, Miss Cleo, will be just fine with me.”
“Don’t you Miss Cleo me, Zane Sutton. You in it up to your knees as it is, and talkin’ pretty ain’t gonna get you noplace with me,” she scolded merrily.
Zane put up both hands, palms out, in a gesture of docile acquiescence.
“Your grammar needs work,” Nash informed Cleo helpfully, prompting Zane to wonder if the kid was tired of living. “Ain’t isn’t even a word.”
Cleo, always full of surprises, beamed like a lighthouse beacon shining a welcoming path of gold onto a dark and stormy sea. “Thank you for pointing that out, young man,” she said. “Fact is, I like to say ain’t sometimes, just for the effect. Same with droppin’ my g’s every so often. You might say it’s my trademark.” A pause. “Everybody ought to have a trademark.”
“Oh,” said Nash, baffled again.
Zane bumped his shoulder against Nash’s. “Don’t try to figure it out, professor,” he advised, in a whisper meant to carry. “The ways of Miss Cleo are mysterious.” In the next moment, he glanced at the grubby electric clock, which was shaped like a teapot, on the wall above the equally ancient stove. Its frayed cord dangled, ugly and dull with grime.
He concluded that he still had some time before he was due to meet Brylee at her place for the horseback ride, but he was already feeling jittery. The sensation reminded him of the old days, when he and Landry were kids, Christmas was coming up and his mom’s tip jar was full—meaning there would be presents, new ones chosen just for them, not castoffs, like when times were hard.
Nash, evidently having followed Zane’s gaze when he checked the time, smiled smugly and shifted emotional gears, going from Cleo-terror to smart-ass kid in the space of a heartbeat. “Thinking about your big date with the lovely Ms. Parrish?” he drawled, more obnoxious than your average twelve-year-old. Whatever that was.
Cleo leaped right on that one. “You’ve got a date?” she asked Zane, in a tone that said she couldn’t quite believe it, even though she’d raised the possibility of a girlfriend in that first phone call. He might as well have said he’d seen a double rainbow on a sunny day, or bigfoot hanging out down by the mailbox. “With a real woman?”
“As always,” Zane said mildly.
She laughed. “Is that so?” she countered, good-natured and obstinate, both at once. “Some of those females you went around with in L.A. had more plastic in them than ought to be legal.”
Zane’s mouth twitched at one corner. “Silicone,” he corrected, having no clue why he needed to clarify the matter. “Not plastic.”
Nash’s eyes rounded, and his grin got wider—and more annoying. “Tell me more about my big brother’s love life,” he said to Cleo. “Especially the babes with silicone implants.”
But Cleo just swatted at the boy and laughed again, a deep ho-ho-ho sound, like a shopping-mall Santa Claus. “You just never mind,” she scolded happily. “You’re too young to be thinkin’ ’bout such things.”
Zane grinned to himself as he headed for his room, planning on a shower and a change of clothes, and as he walked away, he heard Nash ask a question, too low-pitched for Zane to catch, and Cleo’s answer coming in her usual megadecibel volume, “No, I’m not telling you who your brother went out with and which ones were famous. It’s none of your business, or mine, neither.”
Zane’s grin widened. As if Cleo had ever regarded his private life as none of her business. In his experience, nothing that even remotely concerned him was off-limits—she was mother-bear protective and hard to please, when it came to his taste in women.
He could hardly wait to see how she reacted to Brylee Parrish.
No silicone filling out those curves.
* * *
BRYLEE LEFT DÉCOR Galore an hour early that day—something she never did—and drove straight home, Snidely riding shotgun in the front passenger seat. She parked her SUV behind the main ranch house, near her private entrance, and walked to the door at a deliberately casual pace, overriding the part of her that wanted to break into a skipping run like an excited five-year-old about to buy her first tutu.
She’d worn her usual jeans, long-sleeved T-shirt and sneakers to work and, since she hadn’t done anything that would make her sweat, she reflected, she could have swapped out the tennis shoes for boots and gone riding in the clothes she had on. She always rode Western, after all, so it wasn’t as if she needed to don jodhpurs and a fitted velvet jacket and one of those elegant little black hats with the strap under the chin, but she wanted to look, well, good. Okay, pretty. Maybe even a little fantastic.
Inside the apartment, she gave Snidely his afternoon ration of kibble and changed out the water in his bowl, then thumbed through what there was of the day’s mail. Catalogs mostly, a bill or two, reminders to get her teeth cleaned and rotate her tires—at separate establishments, of course.
Brylee sighed, missing the good old days, when people actually wrote letters once in a while. Now, it seemed, human communication was limited to texts and emails and only the occasion
al brief conversation, usually in passing, always hurried. As often as not, even greeting cards were electronic, for pity’s sake. Where would it end? With 3-D holograms replacing family and friends, the whole world gone virtual, like some gigantic video game?
God forbid, she thought, and shook off the whole idea.
While Snidely dined, Brylee put down the mail and proceeded to her bedroom, chose trim black jeans, a pink V-neck pullover and one of her more presentable pairs of boots, along with the requisite clean underwear.
After her shower, she toweled herself off, got dressed, then she blew her hair dry in front of the bathroom mirror, catching it up in a bulky twist at the back of her head, held in tenuous place by a faux-tortoiseshell clip. She applied minimal makeup—a swipe or two of mascara and some tinted lip gloss—and then stood back to examine her reflection. Was she too dressed up for a simple horseback ride? Overdoing it?
No, she decided, amused at her own girlie mood, sequins and a grand hat like the one Rose wore in Titanic would have been overdoing it. False lashes and glittery eye shadow would have been overdoing it. Jeans, an ordinary shirt and boots were just right.
Weren’t they? She leaned closer to the mirror, smiled a nonsmile to make sure she didn’t have lip gloss on her teeth.
Good to go. The bottle of costly perfume Casey had given her at Christmas caught her eye, but Brylee stepped away quickly, shaking her head. Perfume might send the wrong message, as in, Hey, cowboy. Looking for a good time?
A rap at the door leading to the main part of the house came as a welcome distraction.
“Come in!” Brylee called out, and when she reached the living room, she was pleased to see her sister-in-law standing there, looking more like a teenager in her stylish jeans and ruffled top than a wife and mother of three children.
Big Sky Wedding Page 9
