Big Sky Country

CHAPTER FIVE

JOSLYN WASN’T A LICENSED real-estate agent; she’d been hired, she reminded herself sternly, as a receptionist—a job she hadn’t even started yet. For all that, here she was, having just tracked down the lockbox keys to a hook in Kendra’s office-supply closet, heading out to show Slade Barlow through a house he’d already seen a dozen times, by his own admission.

She could have simply handed him the keys and sent him off to the Kingman place on his own—he was, after all, the county sheriff and could certainly be trusted to enter an empty house unsupervised—but that didn’t seem like the right thing to do, either. Every business had its protocols. There were ways to do things, steps that had to be taken, procedures to follow.

“No sense in taking two rigs,” Slade said practically, opening the passenger-side door of his extended-cab truck and gently herding Jasper, who had been sitting in front, over the console and between the seats to the back. With a blush that might have arisen from self-consciousness, the cowboy-lawman brushed off the seat, raising a little red-gold cloud of dog hair in the process.

Amused—and strangely touched—Joslyn forgot her own concerns for the moment and indicated, with a gesture of one hand, that she was wearing old jeans and a T-shirt and therefore wasn’t worried about getting a little messy.

Slade stepped back, still holding his hat in one hand, and waited for her to climb inside the truck.

Joslyn did so. Felt a blush of her own rise along her neck to the backs of her ears as she made a major production of fastening her seat belt.

Jasper, evidently glad to see her even if he had forsaken her temporary care to appoint himself Slade’s dog, greeted her by nuzzling her cheek once with his cold, moist nose.

“Hello to you, too, you traitor,” Joslyn said fondly, smiling, while Slade rounded the front of the truck and got in on the driver’s side.

Even being in the same room with this man minutes before had all but jolted Joslyn back on her heels, as if she’d grabbed hold of a live wire or poked a finger into a light socket. Being in the same truck, sitting side by side, ratcheted the sense-riot to a level of intensity that nearly took her breath away.

What had she been thinking to suggest this particular outing in the first place, let alone agreeing to ride with Slade instead of taking her own car? The answer was all too obvious: she liked the risky, even dangerous, feeling of being so close to all that quietly uncompromising masculinity. She was electrified, her heart pounding, every nerve in her body thrumming with all sorts of unwise instincts, each more primitive than the last.

Slade was as handsome in profile as he was head-on, and while she couldn’t quite resist a glance in his direction, she made sure it was a short one and shifted her gaze to the windshield as soon she could tear it away.

Not usually a prattler, Joslyn prattled. “I’m afraid all I can really do is let you into the house, once we get out to the ranch,” she said unnecessarily. The silence was simply too volatile to endure, for her at least, though it didn’t seem to bother Slade at all. “I mean, I’m not a broker or an agent, so of course I couldn’t make any binding agreements—”

A corner of Slade’s mouth quirked. He was looking straight ahead, concentrating on his driving. Having a conversation with him would probably be like trying to herd cats into a culvert.

Having sex with him, on the other hand—

Well, never mind—better not to think about that. At all.

Except she couldn’t seem to help it. It was a thrilling prospect—one that brought another hot blush surging into her cheeks and made certain her insides felt as though they were melting.

Get a grip, she told herself silently.

“That’s all right,” Slade said, in that slow, easy drawl of his. By then, Joslyn had forgotten what they were talking about, and he seemed to realize that, because he added, “That you can’t actually sell me the ranch, I mean.”

Pause. Joslyn felt as though she’d suddenly wandered onto a field of ice; inwardly, she was flailing for balance.

“I understand you’ve looked at the place before,” she said presently, striving for a normal tone, and then wished she hadn’t spoken at all. He might think she was implying that he was indecisive, what people in the real-estate business called a looky-loo.

Again, she caught herself. So what if he did think that? Who really cared what Slade Barlow thought, anyhow? Besides you, you mean? she asked herself.

Joslyn huffed out a sigh of pure frustration. She was, it seemed, carrying on two parallel conversations, one with Slade and one with herself.

This was unlike her. She was a self-possessed, independent woman. Why should this one man’s opinion matter to her at all, let alone enough to rattle her so?

He chuckled—it was almost as though he’d guessed what was going on in her brain and body—and gave her another of those lethal blue-denim glances, the ones with all the impact of being sideswiped by a speeding car.

By then, they were on Main Street, nearly at the town limits. They passed Parable High School and the conveniently located hamburger franchise next door to it, and then they were in the country.

“I’d pretty much decided on buying the Kingman place,” Slade told her, “but then—well—another opportunity came up, one that complicates things. I’m thinking of renting the house short-term, since my stepdaughter is coming to spend the summer with me and I basically don’t have anywhere to put her.”

Joslyn was still digesting what, for Slade anyway, amounted to a lengthy discourse as they cruised on by Mulligan’s Grocery and the Curly-Burly Hair Salon on the opposite side of the highway. Both parking lots were semi-full.

Slade honked the horn once, probably saying “howdy” to his mom, Callie, who ran the salon, though he didn’t look in that direction.

“I see,” Joslyn said, though she didn’t see. That strange, charged silence was really getting to her now. It was like dancing barefoot on a hot tin roof, this feeling. She should have stayed put in Kendra’s kitchen, she decided peevishly, where she’d been whipping up a batch of her special garlic-rosemary focaccia bread to serve at Kendra’s upcoming barbecue. At least there she’d only had to deal with memory-ghosts, not a long, lean, red-blooded cowboy putting out vibes that might make her clothes fall off if she wasn’t darned careful.

Approaching a side road marked by a wooden For Sale sign and a rural mailbox that leaned distinctly to the right, Slade geared down, signaled and turned. The truck bumped over a cattle guard.

“What brings you back here, Joslyn?” Slade asked, easily navigating the narrow, winding, rutted road leading uphill. “To Parable, I mean?”

There it was again, she thought. The question she wouldn’t be able to avoid answering for much longer. It made her bristle slightly, that particular inquiry, even though it was perfectly reasonable. She supposed.

“I needed a change,” she said.

“From what?” Slade wanted to know.

“My old life,” she replied.

“Which was where?”

“Am I under investigation?” She was half-serious, though her tone was light.

Slade flashed her yet another devastating grin. “Nope,” he said. “If you were, it would have been a matter of a few strokes on a computer keyboard to find out all I needed to know.”

Joslyn sighed. It was true enough that her pertinent details were posted somewhere online, which gave rise to an interesting insight. Slade was curious about her past, that was obvious, and he could easily have run a search, but he was asking her face-to-face instead. What a concept.

Of course, he might already have run a background check on her and just wanted to see what she’d say.

Joslyn was still grappling with the possibilities when they crested one final hill, and the old house and barn sprang into view. Behind them, in the backseat, Jasper gave a happy little yip of anticipation. Clearly, the dog was already sold on the place, even if his master wasn’t.

“I’ve been living in Phoenix since I finished college,” Joslyn said quietly, because she knew there was no avoiding the topic of where she’d been all these years.

“And now you’re back in Parable.” Slade brought the truck to a halt between the two decrepit buildings that seemed to lean toward each other, as though silently sharing their secrets.

He didn’t move to get out of the truck, and neither did Joslyn.

Jasper began to pace back and forth across the backseat, his paws making an eager, scrabbling sound on the leather. He was anxious to explore the property on his own, evidently.

Joslyn still felt a little testy over Slade’s remark.

And now you’re back in Parable.

“Is there some law against my being here, Sheriff Barlow? A local ordinance, maybe? ‘No one remotely associated with Elliott Rossiter shall set foot in our fair community from now until the end of time’?”

He arched one of those dark eyebrows, and his lips twitched almost imperceptibly.

What, Joslyn wanted to know, did he think was so darned funny?

The dog, meanwhile, was getting more restless with every passing moment, so Slade finally got out of the truck, opened the rear door and stepped aside so Jasper could leap nimbly to the ground. He watched as the animal ran wildly around the overgrown yard, barking exuberantly.

“Are you coming inside or waiting here?” Slade asked Joslyn, his tone as calm and easy as a creek flowing over time-polished stones. This after practically giving her the third degree about her return to Parable.

Pride-wise, remaining in the truck was out of the question—not that the idea didn’t have a certain snit appeal—so Joslyn shoved open her door, grabbed her purse, and scrambled down out of the high seat. She marched around the front of the pickup, digging through the jumbled contents of her bag for the lockbox keys as she went.

She was so intent on the search—she’d often said her purse was like a portal to a parallel universe, and things disappeared into it, never to be seen again—that she arrived at her destination sooner than expected and nearly collided with Slade.

He laughed, low in his throat, and steadied her by taking a light hold on her shoulders. “Whoa,” he said, blue devilment lighting up his eyes. “I was just trying to make conversation before. If you don’t want to tell me what you’re up to, you don’t have to.”

Again, Joslyn took umbrage. She had Kendra’s keys clenched in one hand by then, and she practically brass-knuckled Slade with them, shoving them at him the way she did.

“What I’m ‘up to’?” she demanded, careful to keep her voice down. “What the heck is that supposed to mean?” She sucked in an angry breath and exhaled a rush of words with it. “Maybe you think I came back to Parable to steal whatever money my stepfather may have missed? Is that it, Sheriff?”

Slade let his hands fall from her shoulders, and, to her eternal chagrin, she actually missed his touch. That annoying little quirk appeared at the corner of his mouth again, and his eyes twinkled. Maybe she was all shook up, but he was clearly enjoying the situation—a lot.

“No,” he said matter-of-factly. He’d been holding his hat until that moment; now, he set it on the truck seat, crown side down, and shut the door. He rested his hands on his hips as he studied her, paying no heed to the wildly happy dog dashing hither and yon through the tall grass, chasing butterflies. “That’s old news, what Elliott did.”

“Then, what?” Joslyn pressed. “What could I possibly be ‘up to’?”

Slade sighed again, ran a hand through his hat-rumpled hair. “I don’t know,” he replied quietly. Reasonably. “That’s why I asked you.”

The man was maddening.

Joslyn struggled to regain her composure. Finally, measuring her words out carefully, she said, “I grew up here, Slade—just like you did. Parable is home.”

His jawline tightened, and his eyes darkened to a grayish shade of violet, reminding her of a once-clear sky roiling with sudden thunderclouds. “You couldn’t wait to get out of here, if I remember correctly,” he said.

Joslyn narrowed her eyes in consternation and tilted her head to one side as she studied him. So it was still there, that old boy-from-wrong-side-of-the-tracks hostility.

“Yes,” she said crisply, squaring her shoulders. “Having all four major TV networks converge on a person’s front lawn will do that.” Her stepfather’s very public fall from grace had been a feeding frenzy for the media; everyone wanted a comment from her, from her mother or even from poor Opal.

“You were making noises about getting out of Parable for good long before the authorities caught up with Rossiter,” Slade said, unwilling, it appeared, to give an inch. The laid-back way he’d behaved before must have been an act. “I remember how you were back then, Joslyn. You made it pretty damn clear that you thought you were too good for a hick town in Montana and most of the people in it. So I can’t help wondering—what’s the big attraction now?”

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