Big Sky Country

The scene reminded Joslyn of the famous gunfight at the OK Corral down in Tombstone. Except that nobody was armed.

Thank heaven.

“I’ll bring the dog out to Whisper Creek in a little while,” Slade reiterated.

Hutch didn’t reply. He just nodded once, abruptly, and turned and headed toward the gate in the ugly wall. Maybe he hoped Jasper would follow, but that didn’t happen.

Jasper had evidently made up his mind to stay.

Joslyn looked in Hutch’s direction, then back at Slade.

Hutch might have gone, but the strange charge lingered in the air, a silent rumble like the prelude to a summer thunderstorm.

Slade lifted his eyes to the mansion behind Joslyn, and something flickered in their too-blue depths. “Are we neighbors?” he asked, his tone idle.

Joslyn felt her cheeks turn warm. “It would seem so,” she said. “I’m renting Kendra’s guesthouse.”

“Ah,” Slade said, as though her response explained a lot. Global warming, say, and strife in North Africa.

She didn’t want to leave without the dog. It was the principle of the thing. So she tried one more time.

“Jasper?” she said, with just the faintest note of pleading in her voice.

Jasper cocked his head to one side, looking apologetic but remaining where he was. It was almost as though the dog had been searching high and low for none other than Slade Barlow and, now that he’d found him, it was trail’s end.

He was home free.

Wondering why she felt so rattled—there was a thrumming inside her that was both unnerving and singularly pleasant—Joslyn offered Slade a faltering smile. “Well, I have company, so I guess I’ll go....”

“See you,” Slade said.

She turned and hurried through the gate, leaving it open just in case Jasper changed his mind.

Fat chance of that happening.

Doubling back through the flower beds and the rose garden, Joslyn saw that Kendra was just pulling up in her sporty blue convertible, a shiny BMW. Hutch, probably exasperated over being rejected by his father’s dog, especially in favor of Slade Barlow, stood near his truck.

Kendra got out of the BMW, hauling her gigantic purse with her.

Wine bottles clinked together inside.

“Hello, Hutch,” she said, sounding shy.

Hutch’s tension eased visibly as he looked at Kendra. “Hey,” he said.

There it was again, Joslyn thought. That weird zip in the air.

She felt superfluous standing there, even intrusive.

“Hutch just stopped by to pick up Jasper,” she explained to Kendra, who hadn’t asked. Hadn’t even looked away from Hutch, as it happened.

“I thought dogs were supposed to be loyal,” he said musingly with a little shake of his head. “I’ve been trying to track Jasper down ever since he ran off, the day Dad died.”

Kendra was clearly puzzled, and a faint flush of apricot pulsed under her perfectly sculpted cheekbones. Her smile wobbled a little on her mouth and she cast a frantic say-something glance in Joslyn’s direction.

“Why don’t you join us for supper?” she asked Hutch.

Kendra’s color deepened to pink.

Uh-oh, Joslyn thought. Wrong “something.”

“Can’t,” Hutch said, almost too quickly. “I’ve got horses to feed.”

Curiouser and curiouser, Joslyn reflected. “Another time, then,” she said.

“Another time,” Hutch agreed. Then, with a nod of farewell and one more glance toward the still-open gate leading to Slade’s backyard, he sighed and got into his truck. He started the engine, rolled down his window and smiled at Joslyn, though his eyes were sad. “Thanks for looking after Jasper,” he said.

“No problem,” Joslyn answered.

With that, he was leaving, backing up, turning around, heading down the long, glistening driveway.

“What’s going on between you two?” Joslyn immediately asked, turning to her friend.

Kendra’s blush had subsided by then. She followed Hutch’s rapidly disappearing truck with her eyes, looking every bit as sad as he had moments before.

“Nothing,” she said unconvincingly.

“Let’s open the wine,” Joslyn said, resigned.

Kendra nodded, drummed up a smile, and the two of them walked toward the open front door of the guesthouse.

“If Hutch came by to pick up Jasper,” Kendra ventured when they were inside and Joslyn was rummaging through a kitchen drawer for a corkscrew, “why did he leave without him?” She pulled two bottles of wine from her handbag and set them on the counter.

Joslyn found the corkscrew and broke into an Australian Shiraz. There weren’t any wineglasses, but jelly jars would do. “It was the strangest thing,” she answered, after a few moments of struggling with the cork. “Jasper and I were out in the yard—I figured the dog would be really glad to see a familiar face, after all he’s probably been through—but all of a sudden, he just bolted for the back wall. Jasper, I mean, not Hutch.”

Kendra smiled weakly at the clarification, accepted a jelly glass brimming with wine and waited for Joslyn to go on.

“You didn’t tell me Slade Barlow lived next door,” Joslyn said.

“You didn’t ask,” Kendra pointed out. “What happened next?”

“Jasper did some kind of instant-bonding thing with Slade. I called the dog. Hutch called the dog. And the crazy critter wouldn’t move an inch. It was as if he’d belonged to Slade all along.” She paused, frowned. “He’s married, right?”

“Jasper?” Kendra said, with a sort of melancholy smile in her eyes.

Joslyn made a face at her.

“Oh,” Kendra chimed, as though having some sort of revelation. “You meant Slade.”

“Duh,” Joslyn said, filling a jelly glass for herself.

“Divorced,” Kendra said. “He was married to this gorgeous redhead with legs up to here and one of those smiles that knock men back on their heels. She was at his side while he campaigned for Sheriff, but once he got elected, she took the little girl and boogied for the big city and the bright lights.”

Joslyn felt strangely diminished. She was moderately attractive, she knew, but no way did she qualify as “gorgeous,” and she wasn’t going to be knocking anybody back on their heels anytime soon.

Not that it mattered. Much.

“They had a child?” she asked, forgetting all about the toast she’d planned to make to her and Kendra’s lasting friendship, and taking a big gulp of wine.

“She did. The smartest kid you’ve ever seen—Layne’s a few years older than Slade, which might be one of the reasons things didn’t work out.” Kendra sniffed appreciatively. “What smells so good?”

“Supper,” Joslyn said, immediately going on a hunt for pot holders. “And if I don’t take it out of the oven, it’s going to burn for sure.”

Minutes later, Joslyn and Kendra were settled at the table, sharing a meal and talking about everything but Slade Barlow and Hutch Carmody.

* * *

SLADE WAS ABOUT as still as the dog until several moments after Joslyn Kirk disappeared through the gate in the back wall; he had to fight down the damnedest urge to go after her.

And then what?

He sighed and looked down at the dog who looked back up at him, eyes luminous and full of peace.

Slade knew he resembled John Carmody—it was something he couldn’t help—but surely this wasn’t a case of mistaken identity. Dogs recognized their masters, no matter what.

“Want some water?” he asked the animal, moving toward the sliding glass door leading in from the patio.

Jasper trotted after him, tags jingling merrily.

Slade got out the bowl he used for cereal, filled it from the faucet in the kitchen sink and set it down on the floor.

Jasper drank thirstily.

“You’ll probably be happier out at Whisper Creek,” Slade said, wondering if he’d been alone too long. After all, here he was, talking to a dog, which was the next worst thing to talking to himself.

“There’s room to run out there,” Slade went on. “A ranch is a good place for a dog.” Or for a man who’d rather be a rancher than a sheriff, he thought.

Mercifully, the wall phone rang just then.

Slade grabbed for the receiver, which was mustard-yellow with a twisted chord.

“Slade Barlow,” he said.

“Dad?”

Slade closed his eyes for a moment, glad his stepdaughter couldn’t see him. The word Dad always lodged in the sorest part of his heart, sharp as a sliver. “Hello, Shea,” he replied, his voice a little hoarse.

“She’s driving me crazy!” Shea wailed. She believed in jumping right in.

Slade looked down at the dog, saw that he’d emptied the water bowl and was gazing up at him like Oliver Twist asking for more. “I guess by ‘she,’” he replied, with a note of irony as he bent to pick up the bowl, “you mean your mother?”

“Whatever,” Shea said. She’d been seven years old when Slade and Layne got married, and eleven when they divorced. Now she was sixteen with a driver’s license, and the thought made the backs of his eyes sting. She was changing, moment by moment, and he wasn’t there to see her grow up.

Or to protect her.

Slade didn’t miss his ex-wife, and he was sure the feeling was mutual, but a day didn’t go by that he didn’t think of Shea and wish he and Layne had been able to hold the marriage together for the kid’s sake, if not their own. Maybe even given her a sister or a brother, or both.

Slade refilled the water bowl and set it down for Jasper, who immediately started guzzling again. The Lab looked clean enough, but he was skinny as all get-out, and it was obvious that he was in the grip of a powerful thirst.

“I want to come and live with you,” Shea said. Then, plaintively, “Please?”

“We’ve talked about this before,” Slade answered, with an ease he didn’t feel. If he’d been Shea’s biological father, he’d have asked for joint custody, but he wasn’t. Where she was concerned, he had no legal rights at all. “Remember?”

He could just see Shea rolling those wide lavender eyes of hers, dark bangs catching in her lashes. “You’re not my real dad,” Shea recited, singsong, because they had indeed had this discussion before—numerous times. “I know that. Mom’s my mom and dear old Dad is some sperm donor who doesn’t even care that I exist. So what does that make you? Huh? My stepdad—or just some guy who used to be married to my mother?”

Slade’s heart cracked and quietly split right down the middle. In the few years they’d been a family, he’d come to love the girl as if she was his own. “I’ll always be your stepdad,” he said gently. Shea’s father hadn’t been a “sperm donor”—Layne had been married to the guy once upon a time—but there was no use in arguing the point. The kid wouldn’t hear him.

Shea sniffled, and her voice got shaky. “She’s impossible.”

Slade smiled. Whatever their differences, hers and his, Layne was a good mother and an all-around responsible person. She’d set herself up in business in L.A., staging houses for real-estate firms, and made a success of it. “And you’re a teenager.”

“What’s that supposed to mean?”

Slade ignored the question, since it had been rhetorical. “Shea,” he said. “You and I both know your mom loves you. What’s the real issue here?”

“She’s sending me to boarding school next fall,” Shea announced.

“What?” Slade thought for a moment that he hadn’t heard correctly.

“Mom’s in a relationship,” Shea said, interspersing the words with a few more sniffles. “They’re getting married.”

“All right,” Slade said, letting out his breath. Boarding school? What the hell was Layne thinking? “So what does your mom’s relationship have to do with going away to school?”

Shea gave a long, dramatic sigh. “I might have been a little difficult lately,” she confessed.

Slade leaned against the counter, pressing the receiver to his ear so hard that it started to hurt.

He eased up on the pressure, though his gut felt as tangled as the phone cord.

“This guy,” he said, after clearing his throat. “Do you like him?”

“Bentley’s all right,” Shea admitted, albeit reluctantly.

Bentley? What kind of name was that?

“So—?”

“So maybe I acted out a little—and stirred up some trouble. Which is probably what made Mom decide that if she was going to have a shot at true love, she’d better get the kid out of the way for a while.”

Slade moved to the fridge, opened the door, retrieved the arthritic slice of pizza and gave it to Jasper, who gobbled it up.

Had Joslyn given that critter water or food?

“Define ‘acting out,’” Slade said, thinking he’d ask Shea to put Layne on the phone in a minute or two, so he could get some straight answers.

“I got a tattoo.”

Slade swallowed a chuckle; he’d been expecting her to say she’d been doing drugs, or she was pregnant, or she’d been busted for shoplifting. The tattoo, while hardly good news, came as a relief.

“Doesn’t that require a parent’s permission?” he asked, watching Jasper lick his chops after scarfing up the pizza.

“There are ways around that whole permission thing,” Shea said airily. “Anyway, Mom went ballistic when she found out. She and Bentley had a long talk and decided to incarcerate me for my last two years of high school.”

Slade’s mouth quirked up at the word incarcerate. “Is your mom around? I’d like a word with her.”

“I’m not at home,” Shea said.

“Tell me you didn’t run away.”

“Of course I didn’t run away,” Shea answered. “It’s not like I don’t know that’s a bad idea, Dad. I’m at the mall, with a couple of my friends—I’m calling on my cell.” She paused, drew in an audible breath and went on in a rush. “Can I come and live with you? Instead of going to boarding school, I mean?”

Loaded questions, both of them.

It might have been different if there were a woman in his life, a wife or even a steady girlfriend. But Slade was single, living in a one-bedroom dive of a place with an inadequate bathroom. His job was demanding and sometimes dangerous. Furthermore, he couldn’t give Shea the kind of attention and guidance she needed—what did he know about teenagers, anyway? Especially those of the female persuasion?

Despite all those things, he wanted to say yes.

“Let’s not get ahead of ourselves,” he said finally, because he didn’t want to cut the poor kid off at the pockets with an immediate “no.” “I want to talk to your mother and hear her side of all this.”

“She hates the tattoo. It’s just a little, tiny bumblebee, on my right shoulder—it doesn’t even show unless I’m wearing a tank top.”

Slade smiled, picturing his ex-wife, a flawless auburn-haired beauty who wouldn’t think of inking so much as a pore of her perfect skin. “You’re sixteen,” he reminded Shea. “That means your mom still makes the rules. I’ll have a word with her and get back to you.”

“She’ll just convince you that she’s right and I’m wrong and boarding school will be the best thing that ever happened to me,” Shea argued.

“For now,” Slade replied, gently but firmly, “this conversation is over. I’ll call you back after I talk to your mother.”

Shea huffed out another sigh. “Okay,” she said, sounding as though she might start crying. He didn’t think he could handle that.

“Shea?” Slade said.

“What?”

“I love you.”

“Sure,” Shea replied with mild skepticism, and they both hung up.

Slade kept a scrawled list of pertinent phone numbers taped to the inside of one of the cupboard doors; he pulled it open and scanned for Layne’s information. Her office, home and cell were all listed, though most had been crossed out and replaced so many times that he had to squint to make out the most recent.

It occurred to him that everyone moved on with their lives—new homes, new numbers, new everything—except for him.

He was still stuck in the same dismal digs and the same job—one he’d wanted very much at the time he landed it. Over the past few years, though, he’d begun to get bored, yearned more and more for the life he really wanted to live: that of a rancher, with a wife and kids and a dog like Jasper.

Layne answered her cell phone on the second ring.

“Hello, there,” she said sweetly with a warm smile in her voice. “Still breathtakingly handsome, I presume?”

References to his looks always embarrassed Slade a little, even from a woman he’d been married to; he regarded physical appearance as the least important aspect of a person. His marked him as John Carmody’s son—the throwaway he hadn’t bothered to acknowledge until after he was dead and gone.

“I’m fine,” he said, watching as Jasper curled up in the middle of the floor and dropped into a deep snooze. “Listen, Layne, I just had a call from Shea and—”

“And she told you she’s being banished to boarding school,” Layne interrupted with a long-suffering sigh.

“Something like that,” Slade said, turning one of the two folding chairs at his card table around and sitting astraddle of the seat. “What’s going on, Layne?”

Again, Layne sighed. Slade pictured her shaking back her mane of thick russet hair, which, the last time he’d seen her, had just brushed her shoulders. “She’s—rebellious. I’m worried about her, Slade. Some of her friends have gotten themselves into real trouble.”

“And in every case it started with a tattoo?” Slade teased, keeping his tone light, though he was concerned about Shea, too, of course.

“Bentley and I have tried everything,” Layne said, quietly earnest and, unless Slade missed his guess, somewhat desperate, too. “Family counseling. Long heart-to-hearts at the kitchen table. Even a trip to Europe during her spring break. Shea closes herself off from me—I can’t seem to get through to her.”

“And you think boarding school is a solution?”

“I’m willing to try almost anything at this point,” Layne admitted sadly. “Short of putting her up for adoption or just plain wringing her stubborn little neck.”

“She wants to come here, to Parable.”

“I’m not surprised,” Layne answered. “You’re in Parable, after all. And I suspect that’s the crux of the problem—right now, you’re still her stepfather. She can pretend that you and I will reconcile at some point. Once Bentley and I get married...”

Slade closed his eyes for a moment. “Yeah,” he said, when her words fell away. “I see what you mean. But don’t you think sending her off to boarding school is a little drastic? Where is this place, anyway?”

“Havenwood is just south of Sacramento,” Layne replied quietly. “It has a wonderful reputation for getting troubled kids back on track, and the level of education is unequalled.”

“What makes you think Shea’s going to cooperate, Layne?”

“I’m not sure she will,” Layne said. “But I’m out of choices. I love my daughter, Slade, but I also love Bentley. I’m still relatively young and I want another shot at happiness. Is that wrong?”

“Of course it isn’t wrong,” Slade said.

“If you have a suggestion, cowboy,” Layne told him, “I’d love to hear it.”

That was when he said it, the thing he hadn’t planned to say. The impossible, crazy thing he had no right to say.

“You could send her here, to Parable, just for the summer.”

There was a brief and, Slade thought, hopeful silence.

“You mean it?” Layne asked, very tentatively, after a few moments.

“Yes,” Slade said, as surprised as anybody. “I mean it.”

All the while, his brain was reeling. Where was he going to put a sixteen-year-old kid? And what if, like Layne, he simply couldn’t get through to Shea? If she got into trouble, it would be his fault.

“Okay,” Layne said. “Let’s give this a try. If Shea calms down a little after a summer away from home, we can revisit the whole boarding school question in the fall.”

“Okay,” Slade echoed.

Layne laughed softly, but there was something broken in the sound. “I wish we could have made it,” she said. “You and me.”

“Me, too,” Slade said. “But we didn’t.”

“No,” Layne agreed. “You’re probably the only person on earth I’d trust with my daughter—you know that, don’t you?”

“Yeah,” he said, his voice gravelly. He was moved, because there was no doubt that Layne was telling the truth: she could count on him and she knew it. “I appreciate that, Layne. It means a lot.”

There was a brief pause, brimming with all that might have been.

“I’ll speak to Shea and get back to you so we can agree on the travel arrangements,” Layne said at length. “And, Slade?”

He waited.

“Thanks,” Layne finished.

They said their goodbyes, and Slade hung up.

“What the hell am I going to do now?” he asked Jasper, who had surfaced, yawning, from his nap just as Slade replaced the phone receiver in its cradle.

Jasper gazed quizzically up at him, probably wondering what kind of yahoo asked a dog a question right out loud and half expected to get an answer.

He shoved a hand through his hair, heaved a sigh. Headed for the dinky bathroom, with its dinky shower stall and dinky tub. He started water running in the shower and fetched a change of clothes from the bureau in his bedroom.

Jasper stayed right on his heels the whole time, sat right there in the bathroom doorway while Slade stripped, climbed into the shower and scrubbed until he felt refreshed.

After that, he dried off with a ratty-looking towel—he’d need to get new towels before Shea arrived, for sure. Hell, he’d need a new house.

Fifteen minutes later, he and Jasper were in the truck and headed for Whisper Creek Ranch.

There was still a lot of daylight left, but the sky was turning a pinkish orange where it rimmed the distant mountains, soon to be followed by a lavender twilight and then moon-laced darkness.

If he wanted a good look at the ranch that was legally half his, he’d have to wait for tomorrow, but at least he could get Jasper back home, where he belonged.

The Carmody house was a long, rambling structure, two stories high. The lawn looked one hell of a lot better than Slade’s own, and some kind of fluffy flower grew everywhere, in a profusion of pink and red, yellow and white.

He stopped his truck in front of the house, and before he shut off the engine, Hutch came out of the front door and stood on the broad porch, looking unfriendly.

Slade got out of the pickup. “I brought your dog back,” he said.

CHAPTER FOUR

JASPER HUNKERED DOWN in the passenger seat of Slade’s truck, suddenly as unwieldy as a feed sack stuffed with scrap iron.

Hutch, an incongruous sight in that yard full of flowers, looked mildly amused as he came through the gate in the picket fence to watch the struggle.

“I’ll tell you something about that dog,” Hutch offered after a few beats. “He can be real cussed.”

“Ya think?” Slade countered, exasperated. By now, Jasper wasn’t just a dead weight; he’d turned slippery as a brook trout in the bargain. And he was still in the truck seat, where he clearly intended to remain.

Hutch laughed. Stood nearby with his arms folded and his head cocked to one side. He must have resembled his late mother, Lottie Hutcheson, Slade thought distractedly, because he didn’t look a thing like the old man.

No, that was his cross to bear—never looking into a mirror without seeing a younger version of the man who had denied him since birth.

“You might just as well take him back home with you,” Hutch continued, surprising Slade. “Jasper’s like Dad was—once he’s made up his mind about something, he’s not likely to change it.”

Slade slanted an appraising look at the man who was, biologically at least, blood kin. They were nothing alike, the two of them. Or were they? Down deep, at the DNA level, there had to be some similarities.

“Got any suggestions?” Slade finally asked.

Hutch considered the question at his leisure before offering an offhanded reply. “Like the ranch, I reckon old Jasper is half yours and half mine. Since he’s taken a notion to be your dog from here on out, you might as well stop trying to wrestle him out of that truck and spare him the long walk back to town. You leave him here, he’ll follow you home for sure.”