No one writes Western romance better than #1 New York Times bestselling author Linda Lael Miller!

Let her take you to the town of Parable, Montana…

The illegitimate son of a wealthy rancher, Sheriff Slade Barlow grew up in a trailer hitched to the Curly-Burly hair salon his mother runs. He was never acknowledged by his father…until now. Suddenly, Slade has inherited half of Whisper Creek Ranch, one of the most prosperous in Parable County. That doesn’t sit well with his half brother, Hutch, who grew up with all the rights of a Carmody, including the affections of Joslyn Kirk, homecoming queen, rodeo queen, beauty queen—and the girl Slade’s never forgotten.

But Joslyn has come home to Parable under difficult circumstances. Resented by many of the townspeople cheated by her crooked stepfather, she’s trying to rebuild her life and repay everyone who lost money because of his schemes. With a town to protect, plus a rebellious teenage stepdaughter, Slade already has his hands full. But someone has to convince Joslyn that she’s responsible only for her own actions—and that someone is Sheriff Barlow!

Praise for #1 New York Times bestselling author

LINDA LAEL MILLER

“Miller tugs at the heartstrings as few authors can.”

—Publishers Weekly

“Fans of Linda Lael Miller will fall in love with The Marriage Pact and without a doubt be waiting for the next installments, which will feature Hadleigh’s friends.… [Miller’s] ranch-based westerns have always entertained and stay with me long after reading them.”

—Idaho Statesman

“All three titles should appeal to readers who like their contemporary romances Western, slightly dangerous and graced with enlightened (more or less) bad-boy heroes.”

—Library Journal on the Montana Creeds series

“Miller enthralls, once again, in the second entry of her new McKettrick Men series (following McKettrick’s Luck), an engrossing, contemporary western romance… Miller’s masterful ability to create living, breathing characters never flags, even in the case of Echo’s dog, Avalon; combined with a taut story line and vivid prose, Miller’s romance won’t disappoint.”

—Publishers Weekly on McKettrick’s Pride (starred review)

“Miller has found a perfect niche with charming western romances and cowboys who will set readers hearts aflutter. Funny and heartwarming, The Marriage Pact will intrigue readers by the first few pages. Unforgettable characters with endless spunk and desire make this a must-read.”

—RT Book Reviews

“Miller treads familiar ground with her detailing of close-knit small town life, developed characters, sweet romance, and a hint of cowboy excitement.”

—Publishers Weekly on The Marriage Pact

“[Miller] is one of the finest American writers in the genre.”

—RT Book Reviews

Big Sky Country

Linda Lael

Miller

www.millsandboon.co.uk

Dear Reader,

I can’t think of a more spectacular backdrop for a romance—or a wedding—than the Big Sky country, with its snow-laced mountains, jewel-clear lakes, its shimmering cottonwoods and ancient pines, its vast, grass-rippled prairies, and, of course, that legendary sky. To me, Montana is one of the most beautiful places on earth, part of the landscape of my soul, and writing about the place is always a pleasure.

For all its stunning scenery, though, the best thing about this loveliest of states is its people. They are straightforward—kind and cordial to friends and strangers alike, capable of hard work under the most difficult circumstances. In short, most of them still exhibit the pioneer spirit.

Several years ago, I went on a cattle drive in Montana, the kind of trip where you sleep in tents (okay, to real cowboys and cowgirls, tents represent luxury), ride after cattle all day and enjoy a cook wagon supper by a blazing campfire come evening. The stories told around that fire were funny, poignant and downright fascinating. My favorite involved a recent dude who’d brought his pillow out with him one morning and asked if somebody would mind strapping it to his saddle. Naturally, the wranglers got a major kick out of that, and so did the rest of us.

One day, we watched in sheer admiration while several cowboys and their horses rescued a cow who’d managed to get herself good and stuck in a cattle guard. She’d fallen between the wooden slats and she was bawling something fierce. I was horrified, figuring she’d have to be shot, since she must surely have broken at least one leg, but I’ll never forget watching real cowboys and very skilled horses in action. Using ropes and a strategically placed slab of wood, in a cooperative effort of man and horse that resembled a graceful dance, they managed to get that critter out of the hole and onto flat ground—unhurt, thank heaven. She ran to rejoin the herd, bellowing like crazy and wheeling her tail, and the rest of us greenhorns cheered. The cowboys calmly rewound their ropes, gave their horses an appreciative pat on the neck, then tipped their hats to us and rode off. After all, they had work to do.

Those are the kinds of experiences and memories that I brought to my Parable series. I hope that this story will leave you wanting to visit Montana (if you don’t live there, of course!) or revisit in the near future. You won’t be sorry.

If you’re from Montana, or if you do go there, check out my website, lindalaelmiller.com, to tell me about your time in the Big Sky state!

With love,

In loving memory of my beloved beagle, Sadie.

I’m grateful for every moment of the 11 years we shared.

Contents

Cover

Back Cover Text

Praise

Title Page

Dear Reader

Dedication

CHAPTER ONE

CHAPTER TWO

CHAPTER THREE

CHAPTER FOUR

CHAPTER FIVE

CHAPTER SIX

CHAPTER SEVEN

CHAPTER EIGHT

CHAPTER NINE

CHAPTER TEN

CHAPTER ELEVEN

CHAPTER TWELVE

CHAPTER THIRTEEN

CHAPTER FOURTEEN

CHAPTER FIFTEEN

CHAPTER SIXTEEN

CHAPTER SEVENTEEN

CHAPTER EIGHTEEN

CHAPTER NINETEEN

An Interview with Linda Lael Miller

Extract

Copyright

CHAPTER ONE

Parable, Montana

“YOU WEREN’T AT THE funeral,” Slade Barlow’s half brother, Hutch Carmody, accused, the words rasping against the underside of a long, slow exhale.

Slade didn’t look at Hutch, though he could still see him out of the corner of one eye. The both of them were sitting side by side in a pair of uncomfortable chairs, facing what seemed like an acre of desk. Maggie Landers, their father’s lawyer, who had summoned them there, had yet to put in an appearance.

“I went to the graveside service,” Slade replied evenly, and after a considerable length. It was the truth, though he’d stood at some distance from the crowd, not wanting to be numbered among the admitted mourners but unable to stay away entirely.

“Why bother at all?” Hutch challenged. “Unless you just wanted to make sure the old man was really in the box?”

Slade was not a quick-tempered man—by nature, he tended to think before he spoke and offer whatever response he might make with quiet deliberation, traits that had served him well over the several years since he’d been elected sheriff—but the edge in his half brother’s tone brought heat surging up his neck to pound behind his ears.

“Maybe that was it,” he drawled with quiet contempt as the office door whispered open behind them.

Hutch, who had just shoved back his chair as if to leap to his feet, ready to fight, thrust a hand hard through his shock of brownish-blond hair instead, probably to discharge that rush of adrenaline, and stayed put. He all but buzzed, like an electric fence line short-circuiting in a thunderstorm.

Slade, though still confounded by his own invitation to this particular shindig, took a certain grim satisfaction in Hutch’s reaction. There was, as the old saying went, no love lost between the two of them.

“Good to see you haven’t killed each other,” Maggie observed brightly, rounding the shining expanse of the desk to take the leather chair behind it. Still gorgeous at fifty-plus, with short, expertly dyed brown hair and round green eyes, usually alight with mischievous intelligence, the lawyer turned slightly to boot up her computer.

“Not just yet, anyhow,” Hutch replied finally.

Maggie’s profile was all he could see of her, but Slade registered the slight smile that tilted up one corner of her mouth. Her fingers, perfectly manicured every Saturday morning at his mother’s beauty shop for the last quarter of a century, flicked busily over the keyboard, and the monitor threw a wash of pale blue light onto her face and the lightweight jacket of her custom-made off-white pantsuit.

“How’s your mother, Slade?” she asked mildly without glancing his way.

Maggie and his mom, Callie, were around the same age, and they’d been friends for as long as Slade could remember. Given that he’d run into Maggie at his mom’s Curly-Burly Hair Salon just the day before, where she’d been having a trim and a touch-up, he figured the question was a rhetorical one, a sort of conversational filler.

“She’s fine,” Slade said. By then, he’d gotten over the urge to commit fratricide and gone back to mulling the thing that had been bothering him ever since the formidable Ms. Landers had called him at home that morning and asked him to stop by her office on his way to work.

The meeting had to be about the old man’s last will and testament, though Maggie hadn’t said so over the phone. All she’d been willing to give up was, “This won’t take long, Slade, and believe me, it’s in your best interests to be there.”

Hutch’s presence made sense, since he was the legitimate son, the golden boy, groomed since birth to become the master of all he surveyed even as, motherless from the age of twelve, he ran wild. Slade himself, on the other hand, was the outsider—born on the proverbial wrong side of the blanket.

John Carmody had never once acknowledged him, in all Slade’s thirty-five years of life, and it wasn’t likely that he’d had a deathbed change of heart and altered his will to include the product of his long-ago affair with Callie.

No, Slade thought, Carmody hadn’t had a heart, not where he and his mother were concerned, anyway. He’d never so much as spoken to Slade in all those years; looked right through him, when they did come into contact, as if he was invisible. If that stiff-necked son of a bitch had instructed Maggie to make sure Slade was there for the reading of the will, it was probably so he’d know what he was missing out on, when all that land and money went to Hutch.

You can stick it all where the sun never shines, old man, Slade thought angrily. He’d never expected—or wanted—to inherit a damn thing from John Carmody—bad enough that he’d gotten the bastard’s looks, his dark hair, lean and muscular build, and blue eyes—and it galled him that Maggie, his mother’s friend, would be a party to wasting his time like this.

Maggie clicked the mouse, and her printer began spewing sheets of paper as she turned to face Hutch and Slade head-on.

“I’ll spare you all the legal jargon,” she said, gathering the papers from the printer tray, separating them into two piles and shoving these across the top of her desk, one set for each of them. “All the facts are there—you can read the wills over at your leisure.”

Slade barely glanced at the documents and made no move to pick them up.

“And what facts are those?” Hutch snapped, peevish.

Pecker-head, Slade thought.

Maggie interlaced her fingers and smiled benignly. It took more than a smart-ass cowboy to get under her hide. “The estate is to be divided equally between the two of you,” she announced.

Stunned, Slade simply sat there, as breathless as if he’d just taken a sucker punch to the gut. A single thought hummed in his head, like a trapped moth trying to find a way out.

What the hell?

Hutch, no doubt just as shocked as Slade was, if not more so, leaned forward and growled, “What did you say?”

“You heard me the first time, Hutch,” Maggie said, unruffled. She might have looked like a gracefully aging pixie, but she regularly chewed up the best prosecutors in the state and spit them out like husks of sunflower seeds.

Slade said nothing. He was still trying to process the news.

“Bullshit,” Hutch muttered. “This is bullshit.”

Maggie sighed. “Nevertheless,” she said, “it’s what Mr. Carmody wanted. He was my client, and it’s my job to see that his final wishes are honored to the letter. After all, Whisper Creek belonged to him, and he had every right to dispose of his estate however he saw fit.”

Slade finally recovered enough equanimity to speak, though his voice came out sounding hoarse. “What if I told you I didn’t want anything?” he demanded.

“If you told me that,” Maggie responded smoothly, “I’d say you were out of your mind, Slade Barlow. We’re talking about a great deal of money here, in addition to a very profitable ranching operation and all that goes with it, including buildings and livestock and mineral rights.”

Another silence descended, short and dangerous, pulsing with heat.

Hutch was the one to break it. “When did Dad change his will?” he asked.

“He didn’t change it,” Maggie said without hesitation. “Mr. Carmody had the papers drawn up years ago, when my father and grandfather were still with the firm, and he personally reviewed them six months ago, after he got the diagnosis. This is what he wanted, Hutch.”

Hutch snapped up his copy of the document and got to his feet. Slade rose, too, but he left the papers where they were. None of this seemed real to him—he was probably dreaming. Any moment now, he’d wake up in a cold sweat and a tangle of sheets, in his lonely, rumpled bed over at the duplex where he’d been living since he came back to Parable ten years ago, after college, a stint in the military and a brief marriage followed by a mostly amicable divorce.

“I’ll be damned,” Hutch muttered, his voice like sandpaper. He was dressed for ranch work, in old jeans, a blue cotton shirt and a pair of well-worn boots, which probably meant he’d had no more notice about this meeting than Slade had.

“Thanks, Maggie,” Slade heard himself say as he turned to leave.

He wasn’t grateful; he’d spoken out of habit.

She got up from her chair, rounded the desk and pursued him, forcing the printout of his father’s will into his hands. “At least read it,” she said. “I’ll set up another meeting in a few days, when you’ve both had time to absorb everything.”

Slade didn’t answer, but he accepted the paperwork, felt it crumple in his grasp as his fingers tightened reflexively around it.

Moments later, as Slade opened the door of his truck, Hutch was beside him again.

“I’ll buy your half of the ranch,” he said, grinding out the offer. “I don’t give a rat’s ass about the money—I’ve got plenty of that anyway—but Whisper Creek has been in my family for almost a hundred years, and my great-great-grandfather built the original house and barn with his own hands. The place ought to belong to me outright.”

The emphasis on the phrase my family was subtle, but it was an unmistakable line in the sand.

Slade met his half brother’s fierce gaze. Reached in to take his hat off the passenger seat where he’d left it earlier, resting on its crown, before heading into Maggie’s office. “I’ll need to give that some thought,” he said.

With a visible effort, Hutch unclamped the hinges of his jaws. “What’s there to think about?” he asked, after another crackling pause. “I’ll pay cash, Barlow. Name your price.”

Name your price. Slade knew he ought to accept the deal, and just be glad John Carmody had seen fit to claim him, albeit posthumously. All he had to do was say yes, and he could buy that little spread he’d had his eye on for the past couple of years, pay cash for it, instead of depleting his savings for the down payment. But something prevented him from agreeing, something that ran deeper than his utter inability to act on impulse.

Indirectly, John Carmody had, at long last, acknowledged his existence. He needed to be with that knowledge for a while, work out what it meant, if anything.

“I’ll get back to you,” Slade finally reiterated, climbing up behind the wheel of his truck and putting on his hat. “In the meantime, I’ve got a county to look after.”

With that, he shut the truck door.

Hutch thumped the metal hard with the heel of one palm, then turned and stormed away, rounded the hood of the Whisper Creek pickup, yanked open the door and jumped into the driver’s seat.

Slade watched as the other man ground the engine to life, shoved it into Reverse and threw some gravel in the process. He was all sound and fury, though. Half again too smart to actually break the speed limit with the sheriff looking on.

With a wry twist to his mouth, Slade waited a few moments, started his own rig and pulled onto the narrow side street. He was supposed to be in his office over at the courthouse, assigning his day shift deputies to patrol various parts of the county, but he headed for the highway instead. Five minutes later, he pulled up in front of his mother’s place, an old trailer with rust-speckled aluminum skirting and a plywood addition that served as living quarters.

As a kid, Slade had been about half-ashamed of that jumble of metal and wood, jerry-rigged together the way it was, lacking only waist-high weeds, a few rattletrap cars up on blocks and household appliances on the porch to qualify as out-and-out redneck. Callie nagged him into power-washing the two-toned walls of the trailer—the part that housed the shop—at least twice a year, and he painted the rest of it regularly, too.

This week, all the words on the dusty reader-board at the edge of the gravel parking lot were even spelled correctly. Acrylic nails, half price. Highlights/perms, ten percent off.

Slade smiled as he shut off the truck and got out.

The shop didn’t open for business until ten o’clock, but Callie already had the lights on, and, most likely, the big coffeepot was chugging away, too. As Slade approached, the door opened, and Callie, broom in hand, beamed a greeting.

“Hey,” she called.

“Hey,” Slade replied gruffly.

Callie Barlow was a small woman, big-busted, with an abundance of auburn hair held to the top of her head by a plastic clasp roughly the size of the jaws-of-life, and she wore turquoise jeans, pink Western boots and a bright yellow T-shirt studded with little sparkly things.

“Well, this is a surprise,” she said, setting aside the broom and dusting her hands together. Her expression was warm, as always, but her gray eyes showed puzzlement bordering on concern. She knew Slade took his job seriously, and it wasn’t like him to drop in during working hours. “Is the county running itself these days?”

“My deputies are holding down the fort,” Slade answered. “Is the coffee on?”

He knew it was; he could smell the rich aroma wafting through the open doorway, along with tinges of industrial-strength shampoo and a variety of mysterious hair-bending chemicals.

“Sure,” Callie responded, stepping back so he could come inside the shop. “That’s about the first thing I do every morning—plug in the coffeepot.” The faintest ghost of a frown lingered in her eyes, and then her natural bluntness broke through. “What’s wrong?” she asked.

Slade sighed, took off his hat and set it aside on the counter next to Callie’s cash register. “I don’t know if wrong is the word for it,” he said. “I just came from Maggie Landers’s office. It seems John Carmody remembered me in his will.”

Callie’s eyes widened at that, then narrowed in swift suspicion. “What?” she asked and had to clear her throat afterward.

He hooked his thumbs through the belt loops of his jeans and tilted his head to one side, watching her. If Callie had known about the bequest ahead of time, she was doing a damn good job of hiding the fact.

“Half,” he said. “He left me half of everything he had.”

Callie sank into one of the dryer chairs, nearly bumping her head on the plastic dome. She blinked a couple of times, and one of her false lashes popped loose at the outside corner of her eye. She pressed it back down with a fingertip.

“I don’t believe it,” she murmured.

Slade raised the dome above the chair next to his mother’s and sat down beside her. Took her hand just long enough to give it a slight squeeze.

“Believe it,” he said, not knowing where to go from there. He loved Callie and they were close, but she hadn’t raised him to come running home to her with this or any other kind of news.

“What happens now?” she asked in a small voice. Her lower lip wobbled a little, and her eyes, usually bright and mischievous, looked dull, almost haunted.

“I have no idea,” Slade answered quietly. “Not surprisingly, Hutch didn’t take it real well. He’s already offered to buy out my share of the ranch.”

Callie closed her eyes for a moment, and when she opened them again, the shine was back. She was tough—she’d had to be, orphaned young and later giving birth to a child out of wedlock in a town where such things mattered, and mattered a lot—but her problems hadn’t hardened her the way they would’ve some women. She’d taken things as they’d come, made the best of them and raised Slade to respect her—and himself. She was one of the most emotionally balanced people he’d ever known, but he wondered sometimes how much of that was an act.

“Once or twice, when you were growing up,” she recalled now, her tone musing and a little distant, “John slipped me a few dollars for groceries or light bills or something you needed for school—things like that—but I never thought he’d do this. Not for one moment.”

“He was full of surprises, I guess,” Slade said with a touch of irony.

“He was full of himself,” Callie said. “He was so afraid I’d up and name you after him and make the scandal worse than it already was, but when I called you ‘Slade,’ he said I’d been watching too many TV Westerns. I never bothered to tell him that I got your name from a story I read in Ranch Romances.”

Slade smiled. She’d told him about the magazines she’d loved to lose herself in back in the day, and how she’d named him after one of her favorite heroes.

She hadn’t gone to Carmody’s funeral, hadn’t even mentioned the man’s name in recent memory, and only then did it occur to Slade that she might be grieving his loss just the same. She must have loved John Carmody once.

“You all right?” he asked.

She nodded. Swallowed. “Are you going to take Hutch up on his offer?” she finally inquired.

He sighed again. “Damned if I know,” he said. “On the one hand, I could see myself accepting, buying that land I’ve had my eye on all this time—building a house and putting up a barn. But on the other...well, there’s a part of me that wants to claim my birthright and have the whole world know it.”

Callie patted his hand, rose from the dryer chair and crossed to the coffeepot, a gleaming metal monstrosity that sounded like an old-fashioned steam boiler when it was plugged in.

“I guess that’s understandable,” she said, keeping her back to him as she filled a good-sized foam cup and popped a lid onto the top. “Wanting folks to know the truth, I mean.”

Slade was on his feet, retrieving his hat from the counter, turning the brim slowly in his hands. “I don’t reckon it will surprise anybody,” he reminded her, recalling the gossip that had started so many schoolyard brawls while he was growing up.

Callie had been barely twenty years old when she’d taken up with Carmody; naive and alone in the world, and fresh out of some fly-by-night beauty school in Missoula with nothing but her license to cut hair, the old trailer she’d grown up in and the two hardscrabble acres sloping down to Buffalo Creek behind it. Her beloved “granddad” had been dead two years by then.

“I’m sorry, Slade,” she said now. “For all you had to go through on my account, I mean. Practically everybody I knew said I ought to put you up for adoption, once I knew John had intended to marry someone else all along, but I just couldn’t do it. I guess it was selfish of me, but you were my boy and I wanted to see you grow up.”

“I know,” Slade said, as he stooped to kiss her forehead. He’d heard all of it before, after all, and while he understood Callie’s personal regrets, the fact of the matter was, he was glad she’d kept him. She’d sacrificed a lot, working long hours to build the business that had supported them both, though just barely sometimes, passing up more than one chance to get married, move away from Parable and finally enjoy a degree of respectability.

Instead, she’d stuck it out, right there in the old hometown, where she believed she had every right to be, as did her son, whether John Carmody, his high-society bride or the snootier locals had liked it or not.

Slade had tried to put it into words how grateful he was for the rock-solid courage she’d always shown, for the example she’d set by working hard, standing her ground and just plain showing up for life and doing what she could with what she had. Because of her, he’d grown up strong, sound-minded and at home in his body, with a quiet confidence in himself and in his own judgment that had never failed him, even during a tour of duty in Iraq and the rough patch when his marriage ended.

He paused in the doorway, hat in hand, looking back at her. “You can retire now,” he said. “Maybe go on a trip or something.”

Callie laughed, the sound almost musical. “That’ll be the day, Slade Barlow,” she replied. “If you think I’m going to accept a big check from you and spend the rest of my life eating bonbons and taking tours of other people’s gardens, you’d better think again. Why, I wouldn’t know what to do with myself if I didn’t have this place—and what would all my clients do without me?”

Slade shook his head, a grin quirking up one corner of his mouth. “Just give it some thought,” he said, full of a strange, sweet sadness. “There’s a whole world beyond the borders of this town, Mom.”

Callie waved a dismissive hand and reached for the broom again. “Maybe so,” she said, “but I’m staying right here.”

“You’re stubborn as hell, you know that?”

“Where do you think you got it?” she countered.

Like his looks and the framework of his bones, he’d always figured most of his pigheadedness had come down from John Carmody, but now he recognized the quality as the downside of his mother’s fierce persistence.

He waved once, crossed to his truck, got in and drove away.

He should have been at work half an hour ago.

By this time, he reckoned, all his deputies and Becky, the longtime receptionist, were probably fixing to send out a search party, complete with cadaver dogs and a plan drawn out on a grid.

The idea made him smile as he headed back toward the courthouse.

* * *

JOSLYN KIRK OVERSLEPT that morning, and when she opened her eyes, it took her a few seconds to recognize her surroundings and realize she was right back in the one place she’d sworn never to set foot in again—Parable, Montana.

Joslyn sat up in her sleeping bag—she’d arrived late the night before and hadn’t bothered to put sheets on the antique brass bed—and looked around, taking in the cabbage-rose wallpaper, the worn planks in the floor and ornate woodwork, the heavy wardrobe that served as a closet.

She was in the guesthouse behind the mansion that had been her home for most of her childhood. Memories swamped her—on the other side of the broad green lawn, her mother would have been sitting on the screened-in sunporch on a bright morning like this one, sipping coffee and reading the newspaper. The housekeeper, Opal, would have been busy in the huge kitchen, preparing breakfast.

Now, her mom was in Santa Fe, living with husband number three, a successful artist. Husband number two, Elliott Rossiter, had died in prison of an embolism, and heaven only knew where Opal was by now. She and Joslyn had parted tearfully, with promises to stay in touch, but they’d lost each other’s trails years ago.

Joslyn sighed, pushed back her long brown hair and wriggled out of the sleeping bag. There was no sense in moping about the past—she’d come back to Parable for a reason, and she needed to get on with the plan.

So she could leave again.

After a brief stop in the bathroom and a quick splash at the sink, she padded barefoot into the tiny kitchen and groped through various plastic shopping bags until she unearthed the cheap coffeepot she’d purchased the day before, along with a few other essentials, at the big discount store out on the highway.

She fumbled with the pot, then the small can of ground coffee beans, then the old-fashioned water spigot.

A rap at the door interrupted the process, but only briefly. She’d be useless without coffee, and, besides, she knew who the visitor was.

“Come in!” she called.

There was a metallic jiggle at the front door, and a moment or two later, Kendra Shepherd, Joslyn’s best friend since forever, stepped into the kitchen.

Blonde and elegant like a ballet dancer, Kendra looked ready to take on a new day in her crisp green suit and high heels. She ran Shepherd Real Estate, and she was clearly making a success of the enterprise.

“You really should lock the door at night,” Kendra said, right off. “Parable has its share of petty crime, you know.”

“As long as it’s petty, why worry?” Joslyn said offhandedly with a little shrug, leaning to peer at the buttons on the coffeepot, looking for one labeled On. Finding it, she jabbed at it with the tip of one index finger. She straightened, smiled at her friend, feeling not the least bit self-conscious in her flannel pajama bottoms and oversize T-shirt.

“I’m serious,” Kendra fretted. “Coming from Phoenix like you do, I’d think you would be more careful about your personal safety.”

Joslyn plundered the shopping bags again, this time looking for cups and artificial sweetener. “Okay,” she said, distracted by the desperate need for a caffeine fix. “Point taken. I’ll lock every door and window from now on, and maybe adopt a rottweiler with overt killer instincts.”

Kendra smiled and drew back a chair at the compact kitchen table, which seated two. “Still a smart-ass after all these years,” she remarked, sounding almost wistful.

“It’s a coping mechanism,” Joslyn said, only half kidding. She pushed her hair back again and regarded her friend with affection. “Thanks for doing this, Kendra—giving me a job and letting me rent the guesthouse, I mean.”

Kendra straightened her elegant spine. She’d pinned her pale, silky hair up in a loose knot at her nape, and her simple jewelry—gold posts in her earlobes and one bangle bracelet gracing her right wrist—looked quietly classy. Her eyes were a pale, luminous green.

“I’ve missed you, Joss,” Kendra said, as Joslyn pulled back the other chair and sank into it. “It’s great to have you back in town...” She paused then, lowered her eyes.

“But?” Joslyn prompted gently.

“I can’t quite figure out why you’d want to be here, after what happened.” Color rose in Kendra’s cheeks, but she met Joslyn’s gaze again. “Not that any of it was your fault, of course, but—”

The coffeepot began to make sizzling noises, and a tantalizing aroma filled the air. “I have my reasons,” Joslyn said. “I’m counting on you to trust me, Kendra—at least for the next few months. When I can explain, I will.”

“People have been getting mysterious checks in the mail lately,” Kendra said speculatively, “from some big law firm in Denver. And I know you sold your software company....”

Joslyn bolted to her feet, hurried over to the square foot of counter space where the coffee machine stood, turned on the water in the sink and hurriedly rinsed the two plain mugs she’d purchased the day before. “I sold the company,” she admitted, feeling a wrench of loss as she said the words, even though it had been a done deal for weeks now. “But I don’t see what that has to do with people getting unexpected checks.”

“The recipients of the checks have one thing in common,” Kendra persisted. She hadn’t gotten where she was by being slow on the uptake. “They’d all invested in your stepfather’s—business.”

A knot clenched Joslyn’s stomach and moved up her windpipe and into her throat. “Coincidence,” she murmured, when she could manage to speak.

Her hands trembled a little as she pulled the carafe out from under the trickling stream of coffee and sloshed some into each of the mugs.

“If you say so,” Kendra said mildly.

As Joslyn turned, a cup in each hand, Kendra pushed back her chair and stood. “I’d better run,” she added. “I have a closing this morning, and then I’m showing a chicken farm for the seventeenth time to the same potential buyer.” She looked down at her shoes. “Do you think I should wear boots instead of these heels?”

Joslyn was so relieved by the change of subject that she didn’t protest. “Probably,” she agreed, imagining Kendra high-heeling it around a chicken farm.

“Would you mind stopping by the office once or twice, just in case someone drops in wanting to look at a property? Slade Barlow has a habit of coming over to ask if the Kingman place has sold.”

The name registered in an instant, like a sharp dart to the esophagus, and Joslyn had to swallow before she could nod. As kids, she and Slade had lived in different worlds, hers rich, his poor. Back then, she’d been his brother Hutch’s girl, which hadn’t helped, either. Although Slade had never actually come out and said as much—he’d barely spoken to her at all, in fact—she’d known what he thought of her: that she was spoiled, self-centered and shallow.

Worse, he’d been right.

When the financial roof had caved in and all those honest, hardworking people realized they’d been cheated out of their savings by the town’s onetime favorite son—Joslyn’s stepfather, Elliott—her charmed life was over. Once popular, Joslyn had found out who her real friends were, and fast. Only Kendra and Hutch had stuck by her. Soon after Rossiter’s arrest, she and her mother had packed what they could into Opal’s old station wagon and left town in the dark of night.

The recollection still shamed Joslyn. Running away went against everything she believed in.

“It wasn’t your fault,” Kendra reminded her. She’d always been perceptive—so perceptive, in fact, that sometimes she seemed to be a mind reader. Like now, for instance. “Nobody blames you for what happened, Joss.”

That lump was back in her throat, aching and bitter, and it was another moment before she could say anything. Joslyn put the mugs down on the table, nearly spilling their contents, and forced herself to meet Kendra’s eyes.

“But you still think I shouldn’t have come here,” she said, her voice small and uncommonly shaky.

Kendra reached out and touched Joslyn’s arm. “Most folks around here understand that you didn’t have anything to do with the scam,” she said. “For pity’s sake, you were just a kid. But some are still carrying a grudge. They might say things, do things—”

Joslyn closed her eyes tightly for a moment, then resolutely opened them again. Nodded her understanding.

She was doing what she knew she had to do, even if she couldn’t precisely explain the reasons, but one thing was definite: it wasn’t going to be easy.

CHAPTER TWO

ONCE KENDRA HAD GONE, Joslyn showered, pulled on jeans and a short-sleeved cotton top, white with tiny green flowers, slid her feet into her favorite pair of sandals and got to work.

She unpacked the two large suitcases she’d brought from Phoenix and put away her limited clothing supply, then rolled up the sleeping bag and looked around for a place to store it. This was a challenge, since space was at a real premium in the guesthouse, but, with some effort, she managed to stuff the unwieldy bundle under the bathroom cabinet. Next, she helped herself to a set of time-softened sheets that still smelled faintly of fresh air and sunshine and hastily made up the bed.

Riding a swell of ambition, Joslyn set her high-powered laptop on the small desk in front of the living-room window, but she couldn’t quite bring herself to fire it up and log on. She’d worked too many eighteen-hour days designing and redesigning software, marketing the innovative game she’d developed and patented and finally selling the whole enterprise to a multinational corporation for big bucks.

She’d been a very rich woman—for about five minutes. Now she had a secondhand car, enough money in the bank to cover a year’s living expenses—if she was frugal—and, for the first time since she was seventeen, some peace of mind.

Arriving in Parable by night had been one thing, though, and venturing out in broad daylight, where she was bound to run into the locals, was another. Still, she needed groceries, since she’d only bought nonperishables the day before, and she had promised Kendra she’d stop by at the office and keep an eye out for drop-ins.

Plus, she reminded herself stalwartly, she hadn’t come back to Parable to hide.

The reasons for her return were far from concrete, as many times as she’d rolled the whole situation through the cogs and gears of her brain. Obviously, she wanted to make things right with the people her stepfather had cheated. At the same time, she knew she wasn’t responsible for another person’s actions.

So why had she come back? Why had she sacrificed so much, giving up a good job, selling the company she’d built by working nights and weekends, forsaking her luxury condo and her dream car?

The only answer Joslyn could have given, at that moment or any other, was that something—her overdeveloped conscience?—had driven her back. The compulsion to return had been cosmic in scope, as impossible to ignore as a tsunami or an earthquake.

The mandate, it seemed to her, had arisen from some secret part of her soul, pushing her to take the next step and then the next, operating almost entirely on faith.

It was like walking a tightrope blindfolded. There was no turning back, and if she didn’t keep moving, she was sure to lose her balance and fall.

Joslyn sighed and headed for the door, moving resolutely.

Visiting Kendra’s office meant going inside the main house, of course—and she knew she’d be beset by all sorts of memories as soon as she set foot over the threshold—but there was something to be said for just getting things like this over with. Kendra lived on the second floor and ran her real-estate firm out of the huge living room, where, as of Monday morning, Joslyn would be working full-time.

Might as well bite the bullet and brave the first and inevitably emotional reentry while she had some privacy. After sucking in a deep breath and squaring her shoulders, Joslyn crossed the wide lawn where flowers of all sorts and shades and fragrances rioted all around her, climbed the wooden steps to the enclosed sunporch and reached for the handle of the screen door. Locked.

Joslyn sighed, recalling Kendra’s remarks about Parable having its share of petty crime these days. Evidently, her friend practiced what she preached, but, since she hadn’t offered a key, the front door was probably open.

Joslyn descended the steps and followed the familiar flagstone path around to the side of the house, running parallel to the glittering white driveway with its layers of limestone gravel.

The front yard, like the back, nearly overflowed with flowers, and Joslyn heard the somnambulant buzz of bees and the busy chirping of birds as she paused to look around. For a moment, she felt like Dorothy in the movie version of The Wizard of Oz, thrust with tornado force from a black-and-white world into a breathtakingly colorful one.

Except for a tasteful wooden sign suspended from a wrought-iron post by brass chain—Shepherd Real Estate, Locally Owned—everything looked the same as it had when she lived there.

Four Georgian pillars supported an extension of the roof, and the windows, mullioned glass salvaged from some country house in England in the aftermath of World War II, shone in the sunlight like so many diamond-shaped mirrors. The front doors were mahogany, hand-carved with leaves and birds and unicorns and all manner of ornate curlicues. A heavy brass knocker in the shape of a lion’s head added to the grandeur of it all.

After steeling herself for another emotional jolt, Joslyn tried the knob. It turned.

Joslyn pushed open the door and moved into the shadowy coolness of the massive foyer. Soaring two stories high, the entryway echoed with the ponderous ticking of the oversized grandfather clock dominating the inside wall.

Multicolored light spilled through stained-glass skylights, and two grand staircases stood on either side, sweeping upwards to the second floor. The one on the left opened on to the side of the house where her room—more of a suite, really—had been, along with spacious quarters for guests and a private sitting room with its own fireplace. The master suite, with its decadent bath, an honest-to-goodness ballroom, and a sizable library occupied the opposite side of the structure.

Joslyn took a step toward the stairs, like someone hypnotized, but stopped herself before she could go any farther.

This wasn’t her home anymore. It was Kendra’s, she reminded herself silently.

Yes, Kendra was her friend—probably her best friend—but that didn’t mean Joslyn could go poking around in the old house, looking behind doors to see what had—and hadn’t—changed in the years since her departure.

She peeked into the living room—Elliott had always referred to it as “the parlor”—and saw that Kendra had made good use of the space. There were two desks, both antiques, both equipped with computers and modern phones. The bookshelves on either side of the gray-white marble fireplace were stuffed with manuals but otherwise tidy.

The elegant round table in the center of it all sported a sparkling cut-glass bowl with an exquisite pink orchid floating inside.

Joslyn blinked, and, for the merest fraction of a second, the room was the way she remembered it—cheerfully cluttered, with the bookshelves spilling paperbacks and hardcovers and DVDs, and two huge sofas, upholstered in beige corduroy, flanking the hearth. The TV was blaring, newspapers and magazines littered the floor, and Spunky, the cocker spaniel, barked joyfully, as if to welcome her back after a long absence.

Another blink, and, of course, it was all gone.

They’d taken Spunky with them the night they fled, she and her mom and Opal, and he’d lived to a ripe old age.

Joslyn shook off the twinge of longing she felt and moved farther inside the room. A comfortable seating area filled one corner, but there were no customers waiting, so it was an all-clear. She’d done her duty as far as her friend was concerned, she decided, at least for the time being.

Turning on one heel, Joslyn practically ran out of that house, haunted, as it was, by the ghosts of her pampered youth, and zipped around back to the cottage to fetch her purse and car keys. She needed to cook—like reading, making her favorite dishes and trying new recipes were forms of personal therapy for her—and that meant a trip to the market.

The limestone gravel crunched under the wheels of her car as she drove onto Rodeo Road and turned right.

Parable, population 10,421 according to the sign at the outskirts of town, boasted at least two supermarkets and the discount store she’d visited the day before to buy necessities, but Joslyn liked Mulligan’s Grocery, the mom-and-pop establishment across the street from the Curly-Burly Hair Salon, because the meat and produce were organic.

It had been a lot of years, though. Was Mulligan’s even there anymore? Or had the small family business gone under, done in by competition from the bigger stores and the rocky economy?

Her heart lurched a little when she rounded the corner and saw cars in the store’s grassy parking lot and an open sign in the front window. The soda machine, probably a valuable collector’s item by now, still stood next to the screen-door entrance, along with an ice holder and rows of propane tanks for barbecuing.

Cheered, Joslyn parked her car, got out and headed for the door, looping her purse strap over one shoulder as she went.

The same sense of déjà vu she’d experienced in the living room of Kendra’s house swept over her as she stepped inside.

She might as well have entered a time warp, things had changed so little. The bread and candy racks were right where she remembered them being, and the floors were still uneven planks, worn smooth by several generations of foot traffic and stained from a thousand spills. The brass cash register, another relic of days gone by, like the soda machine, occupied the same counter in the same part of the store. Only the people were different.

Mr. and Mrs. Mulligan, already old when she’d known them, were probably long dead. Joslyn didn’t recognize the gangly man behind the counter or any of the other customers.

The tension that had drawn up her shoulders, without her really noticing, eased so suddenly that it left her a little dizzy. Her mind occupied with memories and ingredient lists, she’d forgotten to dread encountering one or more of her stepfather’s numerous victims.

That was bound to happen, sooner rather than later, most likely, but for now, Joslyn dared to hope she’d wandered into a confrontation-free zone.

Please, God.

Except for a nod of greeting, the clerk at the counter didn’t pay her any particular attention, and neither did the few shoppers gathering food from shelves and coolers.

Joslyn took a cart, one of the half dozen available—it had a rattle and one hinky wheel—and started down the first aisle. She hadn’t bothered to make an actual list, since she needed practically everything.

She was standing in front of the spices, picking out the must-haves, like paprika and poultry seasoning, when she suddenly realized someone was watching her.

Joslyn looked up into a pair of eyes so blue that they might have trapped fragments of a sky darkening its way toward evening. Her heart fluttered up into the back of her throat and flailed there as she registered the man’s identity.

Slade Barlow.

A badge glinted on his belt, reminding her that he was the sheriff of Parable County now, and he carried his hat in one hand and a bottle of water in the other.

Be out of town by sunset, Joslyn imagined him saying, in a slow, thoughtful drawl, befitting his jeans, Western shirt and polished boots.

“Hello,” she said, sounding stupid in her own ears and feeling as stuck as a deer caught in the dazzle of oncoming headlights.

A slight frown creased Slade’s tanned forehead. His hair was dark and short, though not too short, and those new-denim eyes were slightly narrowed.

“Joslyn?” he asked.

She bit her lower lip, nodded, wishing she’d worn a pair of shades and a baseball cap, so she could have pulled the brim down over her face.

Or, better yet, one of those dime-store disguises with the big plastic nose and mustache attached to a pair of horn-rimmed glasses.

Slade’s white, even teeth flashed as he grinned. “Well, now,” he said, still watching her.

Well, now? Just what did that mean?

Joslyn racked her brain, trying to recall if Sheriff Barlow had been caught up in Elliott’s scam, but it didn’t seem likely. He’d grown up in the trailer across the road from Mulligan’s, the shy son of a single mom, holding down a paper route until junior high and washing cars and helping out with hay and wheat harvests after that. He’d driven an old car with rust spots on the chassis and the muffler duct-taped to the undercarriage.

A far cry from the flashy red car she’d been given the day she’d gotten her driver’s license.

Nope, Slade wouldn’t have had the means to sign up for pie-in-the-sky with Elliott Rossiter. Lucky him.

“I was sorry to hear about Elliott,” he said.

Here it comes, Joslyn thought, inwardly bracing herself. “Sorry?” she echoed, stalling.

“That he died?” Slade prompted with just the hint of a grin dancing in his eyes and flirting with the corners of his mouth. For the most part, though, his expression was solemn. Thoughtful. Like she was the last person on earth he’d expected to run into in Parable, Montana, or anywhere else.

“Thanks for not adding ‘in prison,’” Joslyn said, without intending to say any such thing.

“I reckon that part goes without saying,” Slade replied easily. She knew he wanted to ask what she was doing back in Parable, and of course she couldn’t have told him, even if she’d been inclined to do so, because she still didn’t know herself. He nodded, started around her and her cart. “Anyhow, good to see you again,” he said.

It was a lie, of course, though cordially told.

“Same here,” Joslyn fibbed.

She’d have avoided Slade if she could have, but she had to admit, if only to herself, that Callie Barlow’s baby boy had grown up to be one good-looking hunk of cowboy.

Once he’d rounded the display of boxed doughnuts at the end of the aisle, Joslyn tried to concentrate on spices again, but all she added to the seasonings already in her cart were salt and pepper.

The shopping cart wheel creaked and grabbed at the floor with every revolution as she pressed on toward the meat, fish and poultry, showcased in a refrigerated cooler, sure that everyone in the store must be staring at her by now, suddenly recalling her former association with Elliott Rossiter.

She selected a package of tilapia, an organic game hen and some lean hamburger, trying to distract herself by ogling the prices—which were outrageous. She’d go broke if she did all her shopping at Mulligan’s, that was for sure, nostalgia or no nostalgia.

But she didn’t stay distracted for long.

Slade Barlow not only filled her thoughts, he seemed to permeate her body, too, as though there had been some quantum-level exchange of energy.

He was taller than she remembered, broader through the shoulders. It wasn’t even noon, and he had a five o’clock shadow, and, furthermore, that quiet confidence of his both drew her and made her want to sprint in the opposite direction.

What was that about?

She heard him exchange pleasantries with the clerk as he paid for the water, heard the little bell over the front door chime as he went out.

She stood frozen in front of the meat counter, strangely shaken, half expecting the sky to cave in, shattering the not-so-sturdy roof of Mulligan’s Grocery and landing all around her in big, blue chunks snagged with wispy strands of cloud.

“Aren’t you Elliott’s girl?” a quavery female voice asked.

Startled out of her daze, Joslyn turned and saw Daisy Mulligan herself standing at her side, shrunken and white-haired, with pink patches of scalp showing between her pin curls, but very much alive. Her blue eyes were watery behind the old-fashioned frames of her glasses.

Joslyn caught herself just before she would have blurted, “I thought you were dead,” and rummaged up a warm smile, putting out her hand. “Joslyn Kirk,” she said pleasantly. “Elliott was my stepfather.”

Daisy nodded slowly, her rheumy gaze watchful, as she shook Joslyn’s hand. “Nobody around here thought the Rossiter boy would grow up to be a crook,” she remarked. “His father and grandfather were both doctors. Solid citizens. We should have known there was something wrong with Elliott when he didn’t go to medical school.”

Joslyn tried to read the old woman, but it was impossible. Either Mrs. Mulligan was about to shout down the ceiling, calling Joslyn the spawn of Satan and ordering her out of the store, or she was just making conversation.

There was no way to tell.

“And when he didn’t marry a hometown girl,” Daisy added ruefully, following up with a sigh. She looked fragile as a bird in her cardigan sweater and simple cotton dress, though she walked without a cane and her shoes weren’t orthopedic.

Uh-oh, Joslyn thought.

“Not that your mama wasn’t a nice-looking woman,” Daisy allowed.

“Is,” Joslyn corrected awkwardly. “My mother is still—around.”

Daisy reached out and patted Joslyn’s left hand, where it rested on the handle of the rickety shopping cart. “That’s good to know, dear,” she said. Behind the smudged lenses of her glasses, her eyes grew a size. “Some of us thought you’d come back and marry up with Hutch Carmody, since the two of you seemed so crazy about each other, but the majority expected you to steer clear of Parable for good.”

Joslyn gripped the shopping cart handle with both hands now, her knuckles turning white. Daisy went on before she could think of anything to say.

“Fred’s brother-in-law lost a bundle in that mess of Elliott’s,” the old woman reminisced. “Died before that outfit in Denver started sending out checks.”

“Checks?” Joslyn managed, almost croaking the word.

“A settlement,” Daisy Mulligan said. “That’s what the letters from the lawyers said it was. Most everybody Elliott bamboozled got their money back, with interest, but it was too late for some.”

Joslyn’s throat tightened. She swallowed again. She’d known some of the people Elliott had fleeced were gone, known she’d have to face the living ones who remembered. But knowing hadn’t prepared her for the actuality, and neither had all the sensible answers she’d rehearsed on the drive up from Phoenix.

Daisy didn’t break her conversational stride. “Folks figure the tax people or the accountants or somebody must have tracked that money down to some foreign bank where Elliott stashed it before he went to jail, then gone in there and seized every nickel. It was like a miracle when those checks started showing up in people’s mailboxes.”

Joslyn nodded, and her smile felt plastered onto her face, about to crumble and fall away. “That must have been what happened,” she said, though she knew full well that none of the stolen money had been recovered. Elliott had certainly squandered most of it, if not all.

Daisy smiled benignly. “I can’t imagine what you’re doing back here in Parable,” she mused aloud, her tone sweetly confidential, as though she were sharing a secret. In the next instant, her wrinkled face brightened with speculation. “Unless you’re going to marry Hutch Carmody after all,” she said, almost breathless with excitement. “He could sure do with a wife. Might settle him down a little—he’s got that wild streak in him, you know, like his old daddy had. And his mama’s people, why, they might have acted fancy, but they made all their money bootlegging back in the 1920s. Before then, they were nothing but a bunch of hillbillies.”

Joslyn felt like someone trying to board a moving freight train. “Umm—no,” she finally said, stumbling lamely into an answer. “There isn’t going to be a wedding. I mean, Hutch and I are friends, but there’s nothing romantic going on between us.”

Daisy’s eyes twinkled. “Not so far, anyhow,” she said.

With that, having said her piece, Mrs. Mulligan nodded once, turned and walked away.

Joslyn finished her shopping, paid up at the register and headed for her car, pushing that stupid cart through the gravel.

A dog, a thin, dirty yellow Lab with burrs in its coat, sat near the front bumper, like some disconsolate hitchhiker hoping to cadge a ride.

Joslyn hadn’t had a pet since Spunky—she’d been too busy to give a dog or a cat the attention it would need—but she was a soft touch when it came to any animal, especially when it was so obviously down on its luck.

“Hey, buddy,” she said, after putting her groceries in the backseat of the car and pushing the cart aside. She could see that the dog was wearing a collar, and there were tags dangling from it. She could also see his ribs. “Who do you belong to?”

He shivered visibly, but he didn’t run away. Maybe he didn’t have the strength, the poor thing. From the looks of him, he’d been on his own for a while.

The best thing to do, Joslyn instructed herself silently, was get into her car and drive off. Just go home, put away the groceries, check Kendra’s office again and cook something. The dog had tags, after all. Someone would see that he found his way back to wherever he belonged.

Or not.

It was just as likely, she supposed, that he’d been dumped by some heartless jackass who hadn’t bothered to take off the collar. Joslyn took a cautious step toward the creature, one hand extended so he could get her scent. He sniffed her fingers warily, shivered again, but remained where he was.

“You wouldn’t bite me now, would you?” she prattled, moving closer, her hand still in front of the dog’s muzzle. “Because I’m not going to hurt you, fella—I just want a look at those tags, that’s all.”

She crouched in front of him, looked into soulful brown eyes, full of baffled sorrow and the faint hope that some small kindness might befall him. Carefully, Joslyn lifted the first of two tags. The numbers on the pet license had been partially worn away, but the second tag was more informative. The dog’s name was Jasper, and there was a local phone number.

Joslyn rummaged for her cell phone and dialed. One ring. Two. And then a recorded voice, deep and more formal than friendly, sounded in her ear. “This is John Carmody,” the voice said. “I can’t come to the phone right now. Leave your name and all that and I’ll get back to you, if I think it’s a good idea.”

Despite the warmth of that June day, a chill prickled down both Joslyn’s arms, raising the fine hairs as it passed.

She’d been away from Parable for a long time, but she’d known about Hutch’s dad’s death. Kendra had emailed her the news, and she’d sent a condolence card immediately. Obviously, no one had gotten around to erasing Mr. Carmody’s voice mail, with the peculiar result that, even though she knew better, Joslyn felt as if she’d just had a conversation with a dead man.

And here was that dead man’s dog. Not seeing the point of leaving a message, she simply closed the phone and dropped it back into her purse.

“I’m so sorry, boy,” she said, stroking the dog’s head gently.

He shivered again.

She straightened, moved to open the back door of the car and began transferring her grocery bags to the trunk.

Jasper watched her the whole time, still hopeful.

“Come on,” she said, when the backseat was clear. “Let’s get you home to Whisper Creek Ranch.”

Jasper hesitated, as though debating the matter, then limped obediently over and jumped into the backseat, landing with a little whimper.

Was the dog hurt? Should she take him straight to the nearest veterinarian? Her head was beginning to ache.

Joslyn slipped behind the wheel of the car and glanced into the rearview mirror. Jasper’s big mug filled the glass.

“Everything’s going to be all right,” she promised him.

He sighed and settled in to wait for further developments.

Joslyn got her cell phone out again. She didn’t have Hutch’s number, but Kendra was on speed dial.

Her voice mail came on, and Joslyn figured her friend was either at the real-estate closing she’d mentioned earlier or busy showing somebody around the chicken farm.

“Give me a ring, ASAP,” she said. “I need Hutch’s number.”

She hadn’t even gotten out of the lot before Kendra called her back.

“Why?” Kendra asked, not bothering with a hello.

Joslyn stopped the car, making sure she wasn’t blocking incoming or outgoing traffic, and sighed. “Why, what?”

“Why do you need Hutch Carmody’s phone number?” Kendra was probably trying to sound nonchalant, but it wasn’t working.

A slow smile spread across Joslyn’s mouth. Kendra Shepherd and Hutch Carmody? They were polar opposites, those two—she was prim and proper, some would say a control freak, and Hutch was a hell-raiser who liked to take life as it came.

And those things were just the beginning of their differences.

Still, stranger things had happened, especially in the realm of romance.

“I need the number,” Joslyn replied smoothly, “because I’m looking for a night of wild, irresponsible sex, and I figure Hutch will make as good a partner as anybody.”

Kendra sucked in a breath—and then laughed. “Well, if you’re looking for ‘irresponsible,’” she quipped, “Hutch is definitely your man.”

Zing, Joslyn thought, still smiling.

“Actually, I found his father’s dog just now, and the poor thing looks pretty bedraggled and very much in need of some tender loving care.”

“Jasper?” Kendra asked. “You found Jasper?”

“Yes,” Joslyn replied patiently. “That’s what his name tag says. And when I called the number, I got John Carmody’s voice mail.”

“That must have been strange.” There was a pause. “Hold on. I’m scrolling for Hutch’s contact information.”

“Holding,” Joslyn confirmed, thrumming her fingers on the top of the steering wheel.

“555-6298,” Kendra finally said.

Joslyn wrote the number in the dust on the dashboard of her car, using her fingertip for a pen. “Thanks,” she said. “By the way, I checked the office before I left home. Nobody there.”

“That figures,” Kendra said, sounding tired all of a sudden.

Since Kendra was usually annoyingly optimistic, Joslyn picked up on the contrast right away, subtle though it was. “Are you okay?” she asked.

“My feet hurt,” Kendra said, “and still no offer on the chicken farm.”

Joslyn chuckled. “You didn’t change out of those high heels?” she chided. “It’s the law of cause and effect, my friend. And maybe the eighteenth showing will be the charm, and the next great chicken farmer will sign on the dotted line.”

The smile was back in Kendra’s voice. “Right,” she said, with wistful good humor. “Do you happen to have any wine on hand?”

“I beg your pardon? I just moved in, Kendra. I barely have staples.”

“Wine is a staple,” Kendra retorted. “The last client dinner party wiped out what was left of my supply, so I’ll stop for some later, on my way home. We can raise a glass to old times. Red or white?”

Jasper leaned over the back of Joslyn’s seat and ran his tongue along the length of her right cheek. It was a companionable gesture.

She laughed, making a face. “Red, I guess, since it doesn’t have to be chilled. I’m about to cook up a storm, so plan on arriving hungry.”

They set a time—six o’clock—said their goodbyes and hung up.

Joslyn immediately dialed the number etched into her dashboard dust.

Another recording. If the words hadn’t been different, the effect would have been downright eerie.

Hutch sounded almost exactly like his father.

“Leave a message,” he said tersely. “I might call you back and, then again, I might not. It all depends on what you want.”

“I have your father’s dog,” Joslyn said after the beep and then realized the statement sounded like the preamble to a ransom demand. “I mean, it’s Joslyn Kirk calling. You remember, from high school? I’m living in Kendra Shepherd’s guesthouse now, and—well—I found Jasper and I’m sure you’ve been looking for him so—” She paused, blurted out her cell number and snapped the phone shut.

“What a charmer,” she told Jasper wryly.

The lab gave a little whine of commiseration.

“Guess you’ll just have to come home with me for the time being,” she told him with a surge of gladness that surprised her. If there was one thing she didn’t need with her life in suspended animation, it was a dog.

Still, it wouldn’t hurt to enjoy Jasper’s company for a few hours. Would it?

After looking carefully in both directions, Joslyn pulled out onto the highway and pointed herself, Jasper and the groceries in the direction of Rodeo Road. It was time to push up her sleeves and get cooking.

* * *

THE REST OF THAT DAY was slow, which was good, Slade supposed, considering the business he was in. He clocked out at five o’clock sharp, something he rarely did, and headed for home.

Letting himself into the one-bedroom duplex he’d rented after his marriage went to hell two weeks after he’d been elected sheriff, he looked around at the minimal furnishings, the bare walls and the scruffy carpet in a color his mother had dubbed “baby poop green.”

The place had never been a home, just a place to wait out a transition—a campsite with walls and windows and a roof.

He hung up his hat, unhooked his badge from his belt and set it aside. He carried a service revolver, but that was locked up in a gun safe under the driver’s seat of his truck.

From the front door, it was a straight shot to the open, one-counter kitchen, a hike of about a dozen feet, give or take.

Slade zeroed in on the refrigerator, which was the same uninspired color as the carpet, opened the door and assessed the contents. Two cans of beer, half a stick of butter and a shriveled slice of pizza from a couple of days back. He should have bought more than a bottle of water back there at Mulligan’s Grocery, he reflected, taking a beer and shutting the fridge door on the dismal selection.

The truth was, he’d been too distracted to think straight ever since the meeting at Maggie Landers’s office that morning, and running into Joslyn Kirk at the grocery store hadn’t helped matters.

He popped the top on the beer, opened the sliding glass door next to the card table that served as a dining area and stepped out onto his miniscule brick patio. The grass needed mowing, and weeds were springing up everywhere.

On the other side of the low concrete-block wall loomed the old Rossiter mansion.

Slade sighed and sank into a beat-up lawn chair to sip his beer. A chuckle rumbled up into his throat as he sat there, watching the dandelions take over what passed for a lawn, and he shook his head.

Damned if he hadn’t gone from solvent to out-and-out rich in the space of a single day. And then there was Joslyn.

A spoiled teenager with a bristly attitude when he’d last seen her, she’d rounded out into a warm-curved woman.

He’d barely squared that thought away in his mind when the familiar yellow dog sprang over the back wall and trotted right up to him.

CHAPTER THREE

JOSLYN WATCHED, TAKEN ABACK, as Jasper, docile since she’d made his acquaintance at Mulligan’s Grocery, suddenly transformed into a bionic robo-dog, streaking through the rose garden and the beds of nodding zinnias to take the rear wall in a single bound and launch himself into the neighboring yard like a missile.

Hutch, having just pulled up in an old pickup truck with mud drying on its sides, stepped down from behind the wheel, took off his hat, tossed it into the vehicle before shutting the door of the rig and grinned, resting his hands on lean hips.

“You reckon this means old Jasper isn’t glad to see me?” he joked.

Joslyn smiled and started toward her old friend. “I don’t know what’s gotten into that dog,” she said. “He’s been on his best behavior since we met up in the parking lot—at first, I even thought he might be a little lame. So much for that theory.”

She started off in pursuit of Jasper then, and Hutch fell into step beside her.

“It’s good to see you again, old buddy,” she told him.

“And you,” Hutch responded gruffly.

Taking a sidelong glance at Hutch’s ruggedly handsome face as they walked, Joslyn was surprised to see that he looked solemn. He was gazing in the direction Jasper had gone, and his mouth had hardened a little.

The grin was definitely a thing of the past.

He shoved a hand through his dishwater-blond hair and came back to himself, as if from some vast distance, just as they reached the gate between Kendra’s property and the rental beyond.

Hutch opened the tall wooden gate with a jerk that made the partially rusted hinges squeal in protest and shouldered his way through.

Joslyn was right behind him. She felt responsible for Jasper—after all, he’d made his great escape on her watch.

Plus, she was curious.

In the old days, the gate had opened onto a vacant lot where she and the other kids in the neighborhood used to play softball. It hadn’t occurred to her to wonder who lived there now that there was a house of sorts.

The sight of Slade Barlow standing on the little patio brought her up short.

So did the silent static immediately arcing between him and Hutch.

Jasper sat next to Slade, a little behind him, panting from the heat and recent exertion, calmly watchful.

“I thought this dog looked familiar,” Slade said quietly, his arms folded as he regarded his father’s son. Everyone knew that Slade and Hutch were half brothers, but it was a subject people whispered about—no one discussed it openly, as far as Joslyn knew.

“I’m here to take Jasper home,” Hutch replied. Every muscle in his back and shoulders seemed tight, from Joslyn’s perspective. He dropped his gaze to the dog, gave a low whistle. “Come on, fella.” He beckoned. “Let’s get going.”

Jasper thumped his tail against the ground a couple of times, but he didn’t move from Slade’s side.

“I’m not sure he’s ready to leave quite yet,” Slade observed. His gaze moved to Joslyn, and he gave a slight nod to acknowledge her presence, his mouth quirking up ever so slightly at one corner, as though something about her amused him.

That got under her skin.

“He belonged to Hutch’s father,” she said helpfully, and immediately wished she’d kept her mouth shut. There was a lot going on here, and it wasn’t entirely about the wall-leaping stray.

“I remember seeing him riding shotgun in Carmody’s truck,” Slade allowed.

Jasper still didn’t move. Neither did Hutch.

Slade made a clicking sound and started in Hutch’s direction, clearly hoping the dog would follow. Jasper stayed put.

Short of picking the animal up bodily and lugging him back through the gate to his pickup, Hutch seemed to be out of options.

“I’ll be damned,” he muttered.

Slade shrugged one powerful shoulder, and Joslyn found herself wondering, incomprehensibly, what he’d look like without a shirt.

To break the spell, she leaned down and patted her palms against her blue-jeaned thighs, summoning Jasper.

“Time to go home,” she cajoled cheerfully.

Jasper merely gazed at her, switched his tail again, just once, and held his ground.

“Suppose I bring Jasper out to the ranch later on,” Slade suggested easily. It was obvious that he was enjoying this little standoff, and that annoyed Joslyn—not that he would have cared whether she was annoyed or not. He was looking directly at Hutch, not at her; she might have been transparent. “I’d like to take a look around anyhow.”

Beside Joslyn, Hutch stiffened slightly. “That figures,” he said, and though he spoke mildly, the remark had a sharp point to it.

Slade didn’t flinch. If anything, he seemed intrigued by the situation, charged though it was.

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.”

Slade rubbed the back of his neck, pondering Hutch’s words. He didn’t need a mutt any more than he needed the responsibility of looking after a sixteen-year-old girl, but he figured Hutch was right. For whatever reason, Jasper had appointed himself sidekick. For the duration, evidently.

Slade knew he’d welcome the company, though—he’d kept his life and his heart closed up tight since the divorce, doing his job, showing up, putting one foot in front of the other. Maybe it was time to open up a little, let somebody in.

Even if that somebody happened to have four feet and a tail.

It was a beginning, he supposed, though he wasn’t sure of what.

“All right,” he agreed slowly and shut the truck door with Jasper still inside.

“I’d swear that critter looks out-and-out relieved,” Hutch said drily. “And in case you’re wondering, I never mistreated him. Jasper was always a one-man dog, and Dad was that man. Now, I guess, the torch has been passed.”

Slade studied his half brother for a long moment. Hutch’s manner wasn’t exactly cordial, but he wasn’t waving a loaded shotgun and ordering him off the property, either. “Thanks,” he said.

“You given any more thought to selling me your share of Whisper Creek?” Hutch asked after waiting a moment or two.

“I’ve given it plenty of thought,” Slade answered, squinting a little against the last dazzling light of another summer day, “but I haven’t come to any decision.”

Hutch absorbed that response with a slight but oddly affable frown creasing the skin between his eyebrows. Then he gestured toward the house. “At the moment, the place is as much yours as it is mine,” he said, and there was no reading either his tone or his expression. Carmody would be able to hold his own in a high-stakes poker game, that was for sure, Slade reflected—and he wouldn’t need a hooded sweatshirt, a baseball cap or wraparound shades to manage it. “You might as well come inside and take a look around.”

Slade looked past Hutch, taking in the rambling lines of that house. He’d never set foot in the place, and now fifty percent of it was legally his. It was a hard thing to take in.

“All right,” he said after a long hesitation. He looked back at Jasper, who sat like a sentry in the truck seat, watching him through the partially rolled down window. The dog would be fine by himself, Slade decided, at least for a few minutes. He followed Hutch through that white picket gate, along the flagstone walk, up the porch steps.

He’d wondered about the inside of that house for as long as he could remember, though he’d never aspired to live there, or even step over the threshold. Now that he had a dog, and Shea was coming to spend what remained of the summer with him, however, he was a lot more interested in real estate.

Tomorrow was his day off—he’d check in with Kendra, maybe take another look at the Kingman spread. The house was nothing fancy, being nowhere near the size of this one, and it had sat empty for a long time. Still, with a little elbow grease and a lot of hot, soapy water, it would be livable.

They’d still be short one bathroom, though.

Inside Hutch’s domain, Slade was immediately impressed with the high-beamed ceilings and the open floor plan. Despite all those flowers in the yard, the interior was singularly masculine, with sturdy leather furniture, plain, heavy tables and zero clutter. A few Navajo rugs and some high-quality Western art provided muted splotches of color here and there. The space had a quiet, meditative quality that surprised Slade a little, given Hutch’s wild-man reputation.

What had he expected? Mirrors on the ceilings? A functioning saloon straight out of an old John Wayne movie or maybe a mechanical bull in the middle of the living room?

Slade indulged in a small, rueful grin, gone in an instant.

“Look around all you want,” Hutch said, in the same casual tone as before. “I think you’ll agree that as big as the place is, it won’t accommodate both of us.”

Slade grinned again, not about to let on that he felt a little sheepish all of a sudden, like he’d barged in or something. “You’re right about that last part,” he said. “And I’ve seen all I need to. It’s getting late, and Jasper’ll need some gear if he’s going to move in with me.”

Hutch assessed him in silence for a long moment, then said, “There’s a bag of kibble in the pantry, and Jasper’s got a bed and a couple of bowls and a few toys. You’re welcome to the stuff if you want it.”

“Sure,” Slade said, mildly embarrassed. It only made sense to accept Jasper’s belongings—the things would be familiar to the dog and therefore comforting, and besides, it would save a shopping trip to the big discount store out past the city limits. “Thanks,” he said again.

“This way,” Hutch said, turning.

Slade followed him through a set of swinging doors and into a big kitchen with dark-stained wooden floors, like those in the front part of the house, tall windows and a lot of gleaming steel appliances. The island in the center of the room was bigger than Slade’s whole kitchen back at the duplex.

Hutch disappeared into what must have been the pantry and brought out a big sack of kibble, still three-quarters full. He set it down near one of the counters—there seemed to be miles of them, all smooth gray granite—and gathered up two ceramic dog dishes.

“Jasper’s bed and the toys are in Dad’s room,” Hutch said. “I’ll get them.”

Slade nodded. “That’ll be good,” he replied, intending to lug the kibble and the bowls out to the truck while Hutch was fetching the other things.

Instead, though, he just stood there, after Hutch was gone, in that big kitchen.

He imagined his father reading the newspaper at the long table while he drank his morning coffee with Jasper at his feet.

Something about the image made Slade’s throat tighten painfully.

He collected the dog food and the bowls—one of which had Jasper’s name painted on it in jaunty letters shaped like bones—and got out of there, quick.

Jasper poked his muzzle out of the truck window and gave a little yelp of glad welcome when he saw Slade approaching.

Slade hoisted the bag of kibble into the back of the truck and placed the bowls at a careful distance from each other so they wouldn’t bang around during the drive back to Parable.

Hutch reappeared, carrying the fanciest dog bed Slade had ever seen. It was a large canoe, made of brown fleece, and, like the bowl, it was marked with Jasper’s name. There was a bright red leash, too, and a paper bag brimming with chew toys and other canine paraphernalia.

“Dad was downright foolish over that dog,” Hutch explained, seeing the look on Slade’s face and reading it accurately—as amused disbelief. He tossed the canoe-bed into the back of the truck, along with the other things, and dusted his hands together afterward, though not in a good-riddance sort of way. “The old man bought him Christmas presents and remembered his birthday, even.”

That was more than Slade could have claimed. Still, he chuckled and gave his head a shake. “I’ll give Jasper a good home,” he said, because he knew that mattered to Hutch.

“If I didn’t think that,” Hutch countered matter-of-factly, “you wouldn’t be taking him anywhere.”

Slade nodded and rounded the truck. He’d been in more than one brawl with Hutch Carmody over the years, but he’d mostly been indifferent to the man. Or so he’d thought, until now. Given the exchange of the dog, Slade was seeing his father’s son in a new light.

What kind of man was Hutch, anyway? The question would definitely require further consideration. Not that they’d ever be buddies, he and Hutch, let alone relate to each other the way real brothers would, especially if Slade decided to hold on to his share of Whisper Creek Ranch instead of selling out to Hutch—which was a distinct possibility.

It was clear, though, that there was more to this half brother of his than a hot temper, a penchant for partying and a reputation for leaving a trail of brokenhearted women behind wherever he went.

Hutch turned and went back inside the house as Slade shifted the truck into gear and headed for the main road that would take them back to Parable.

Jasper’s lips were pulled back against his jawbones, as though he was smiling. He’d gotten his way, and now he seemed to be gloating a little.

“Don’t go expecting presents at Christmas,” Slade warned the dog, glad not to be returning to that crappy duplex alone, as he had so many other nights. “Or a cake on your birthday, either.”

* * *

ALTHOUGH JOSLYN WASN’T supposed to start her job until the following Monday, she stopped in at Kendra’s office bright and early Friday morning anyway, because she’d already done her yoga routine, spiffed up the guesthouse and scanned her email. Without Jasper around to fuss over, she was at loose ends.

Kendra was on the phone when she came in, looking cool and blonde and beautiful, as usual, in a crisp pair of linen slacks and a simple, airy white top. She smiled at Joslyn and held up an index finger to indicate that she’d be finished with the call in a moment.

“That’s wonderful, Tara,” Kendra said into the receiver, rolling her eyes comically at Joslyn. “You’ll make a wonderful chicken farmer.” A pause. “No, really,” she insisted graciously. “How hard can it be? Yes. I’ll bring the papers by this afternoon, and you can take the weekend to look them over.” She nodded, “Yes,” she repeated. “And Tara? It’s short notice, I know, but I’d love to throw a barbecue in your honor tomorrow afternoon, here at my place. Can you make it?” Another pause, then a genuine smile. “Great! Two o’clock. No, you don’t need to bring anything except yourself and any guests you’d like to include.”

Joslyn, who couldn’t help overhearing, concluded that, one, Kendra had finally sold the chicken farm she’d shown so many times, and, two, she, Joslyn, would be expected to show up at the barbecue. Along with half the town, most likely. In Parable, parties weren’t generally private—they tended to be community events, because in some ways, the inhabitants were like one giant family.

She fought down a mild swell of panic. Her encounter with Daisy Mulligan the day before hadn’t been bad, but who knew how the next person might respond? On the other hand, that person—and many others—had to be faced.

Kendra ended the call and stood up, smiling. “If you’re here to start work,” she teased, “you’re a couple of days early.”

Joslyn sighed, looked around. The surroundings were certainly pleasant and less emotionally charged than the last time she was there. “I just stopped in to see if you needed help with anything,” she said. She tilted her head to one side, smiled back at her friend. “Congratulations are in order, it would seem. You sold the chicken farm?”

“Finally,” Kendra said with delighted emphasis. “No one can accuse Tara Kendall of making a snap decision. She’s been looking at that place on and off for a couple of years.”

“Is she from around here? The name doesn’t sound familiar.”

Kendra shook her head. “Tara’s from New York,” she replied. “She heads up the marketing department of a big cosmetic company, I think.”

“It’s quite a jump from a marketing job in the Big Apple to running a chicken ranch outside of Parable, Montana,” Joslyn observed, already intrigued by this Tara person. At least, as an outsider, she wouldn’t turn out to be one of Elliott’s many victims.

“She’s reinventing herself following a bad divorce, as I understand it,” Kendra said, starting in the direction of the kitchen and leaving Joslyn with no real choice but to follow. “I sure hope there isn’t a ‘reality’ series in the offing.”

Joslyn laughed, though she felt a little nervous as she stepped into the room where Opal had presided for so many years. “That would be the biggest thing that’s happened in this town since—”

Remembering what the last big thing in Parable was—Elliott Rossiter’s investment scandal—Joslyn let the sentence go unfinished, and the laugh died, aching, in her throat.

Kendra looked back at her over one shoulder. Clearly, she knew what had brought Joslyn up short. “Let’s have some coffee,” she said kindly.

Joslyn looked around, relaxed a little as the instant shame over her stepfather’s actions subsided. Kendra had made the kitchen her own, just as she’d done with the front room, where the office was now. There were no ghosts here.

“Does it bother you?” Kendra asked, approaching the coffeemaker—one of those flashy single-cup things—and pushed a couple of buttons. “Being in the house again after all this time, I mean?”

“I thought it would,” Joslyn admitted. “And I guess it did at first, but I’m over that, it seems. After all, it’s the people who live in a house, not the former occupants, who give it character—you’re here now, and the place reflects you, as it should.”

Kendra looked thoughtful, maybe even a bit sad, as she busied herself brewing coffee. “If you say so,” she said in a musing tone.

Joslyn waited, standing behind one of the sleekly modern chairs at the sleekly modern kitchen table. In the old days, the furnishings and appliances had been antiques, right down to the wood-burning cookstove Opal had insisted on using to prepare family meals.

Kendra looked in Joslyn’s direction and managed a feeble little smile. Gave a slight shrug of one shoulder. “Wasn’t it John Lennon who said, ‘Life is what happens when you’re making other plans’?” She set a steaming mug of coffee on the table and indicated that Joslyn should sit down. Then she sighed and shook her head, as though to fling off some unwanted thought.

“What were your ‘other plans,’ Kendra?” Joslyn asked gently, pulling back one of the huge chrome-and-glass chairs and sinking into the seat.

“The usual,” Kendra said, with an unconvincing attempt at sounding breezy and unconcerned. She prepared a cup of coffee for herself. “A husband. Babies. A great career.” She paused. “I guess one out of three isn’t bad.”

Joslyn knew her friend had been married, very briefly, to a wealthy Englishman with a title, but that was the extent of the information Kendra had been willing to share. As close as they were, both of them had their secrets.

“You’re young, Kendra,” Joslyn pointed out, treading carefully. “You can still have the husband and/or the babies if you want. There are a lot of options these days.”

Kendra brought her cup to the table and sat down opposite Joslyn. She looked down into her coffee, but made no move to drink it. “Call me old-fashioned,” she said very softly, “but if I’m going to have children, I want to be married to their father. And I’d have to believe in love to get married.”

“You don’t believe in love?” Joslyn felt a pang of sorrow. Kendra had always been the romantic; even with her 4.0 grade average in high school, she’d been voted Most-Likely-to-Live-Happily-Ever-After by the rest of the senior class.

“Not anymore,” Kendra said.

“Does this have something to do with Hutch Carmody?” Joslyn ventured, thinking of the odd charge in the air the day before, when Hutch stopped by to pick up Jasper.

Kendra’s cheeks flamed. “No,” she said very quickly and very firmly.

Joslyn winced slightly. “I’m sorry,” she said. “I can’t seem to open my mouth without putting my foot in it.”

Kendra smiled, but her eyes remained sad. “I didn’t mean to snap at you,” she said. “But fair is fair, Joss. Why should I tell you my deepest secrets when it’s so obvious that you’re holding a lot of things back? We’re supposed to be best friends, aren’t we? And BFFs exchange confidences.”

“You’re right,” Joslyn said. “What do you want to know?”

“Why you came back to Parable, for a start. I know that someway, somehow, you’re behind all those big, fat checks that have been raining down on this town for the past couple of months, whether you’ll admit it or not. What I don’t get is why you’re so secretive about it—or why you would do something like that in the first place. Like I said before, you’re not responsible for what Elliott Rossiter did way back when.”

“Okay,” Joslyn replied, when the constriction in her throat loosened up enough to let a word pass. “Yes. I sold my software design company for megabucks, and I arranged for a law firm in Denver to track down everyone my stepfather stole from and see that they were repaid.”

“Why did I have to drag that out of you?” Kendra asked mildly, raising both her perfect eyebrows in an expression of perplexed good will.

Joslyn took her time answering; some soul-searching was required to translate a lot of confused feelings into words. “I don’t know,” she said after a few long moments. “Not exactly, anyway. Parable was always...well, it was home, and it’s been calling to me all this time to come back. I agree that what Elliott did wasn’t my fault, but it shouldn’t have happened—good people were all but ruined, after all—and since I had the means to make it right, I did.”

“Why keep it a secret, though?”

“Because I want to be accepted in Parable on my own merit, not because I bought my way back into the town’s good graces.”

“You have a very expensive conscience,” Kendra observed with a little smile that, though wobbly, was genuine enough. “But I do understand. And your secret is safe with me.”

“Good,” Joslyn said, relieved. “Now it’s your turn. Why don’t you believe in love anymore?”

Kendra’s eyes filled with such pain that Joslyn was immediately sorry for pressing the issue. Still, as Kendra herself had said, fair was fair.

“Because of Jeffrey,” she said. “My ex-husband.”

“What did he do?”

Kendra considered for a long time before replying, “He swept me off my feet, married me and promised me the moon. For a while, he even delivered. We traveled all over Europe after the wedding—it was a small, justice-of-the-peace ceremony—but oddly enough, we never got around to visiting his family in England. They didn’t approve of me, as it turned out, but Jeffrey said I shouldn’t let that bother me. Love conquers all, et cetera. We came back here, bought this house from the Rossiter estate and made plans to start a family of our own. He had plenty of money, and I was stupid enough to think I’d found someone to take care of me.”

“And?” Joslyn prompted, when Kendra fell silent.

“And a week after we closed on this monstrosity of a house, his father fell ill and Jeffrey flew straight home to London. Next thing I knew, he was calling to say so sorry for any inconvenience, but he wanted a divorce. It had all been a colossal mistake, our getting together. Several million dollars suddenly appeared in my personal bank account, and his ‘solicitors,’ as he called them, sent me the deed to this house. That was it. The fairy tale was over.”

“Ouch,” Joslyn said, reaching across to give her friend’s hand a light squeeze. “That’s brutal. Did Jeffrey ever give you a reason?”

Kendra swallowed visibly and shook her head. “He didn’t have to,” she replied presently. “I don’t know if his father was really sick, or it was just a ruse to get Jeffrey to come home, but once he got there, the home folks wasted no time convincing him that what we had together was just an unfortunate fling that must be curtailed at once, and damn the cost. Apparently, Jeffrey came around to their way of thinking. They raised the drawbridge and slammed the caste gate shut in my face and that was that.”

“The bastard,” Joslyn said with spirit.

“Amen,” Kendra said.

Joslyn bit her lip, hesitant to speak but in the end unable to resist putting in her two cents’ worth. “Still,” she said, “to give up on love seems a little rash, doesn’t it? I mean, how likely is it that that will happen again?”

“I loved him,” Kendra said simply.

“Yes, but—”

“I’d better get back to work,” Kendra interrupted. “I have to prepare the contracts for the chicken farm and get copies to both parties, and, of course, there’s the barbecue to plan.”

“Right,” Joslyn said, standing up and carrying her cup and Kendra’s to the sink.

“I could really use your help figuring out the food,” Kendra said.

Inwardly, Joslyn sighed. There was no way out—Kendra had given her a job and a place to stay, and, besides, they were friends. She’d have to join in the festivities, like it or not.

And she was more than willing to help.

“How many people are you inviting?” she asked in cheerful resignation.

“You’d better figure on at least a hundred,” Kendra said. “Probably more.”

By then, heading for the inside door, she had her back to Joslyn and probably thought her friend hadn’t seen her swipe at both cheeks with the heels of her palms as she dashed out of the kitchen.

* * *

SHOPPING WAS NOT Slade’s favorite way to spend his time off.

He and his newest deputy, Jasper, were on their way home from the big discount store that morning, in Slade’s pickup, when Layne called him on his cell phone.

“I think I’m insulted,” Layne said without preamble, as usual. “Shea wants to leave for your place by yesterday, at the latest. She’s all packed and every five minutes she wants to know if I’ve bought the tickets yet.”

Slade chuckled, though he had a sinking feeling in the pit of his stomach, too. He loved Shea, no question about it, but he wasn’t set up to give her a proper home, not yet, at least.

“You’re putting her on a plane, then?”

“Yes,” Layne replied. “If you’re still up for this, that is. Believe me, Slade, if you want to back out, I’ll understand.”

“We’ll make it work somehow,” he said.

“If you don’t mind, I’ll come along with Shea. Just to help her settle in and everything.”

Layne would probably take one look at his bachelor’s quarters and hustle her daughter straight back to the airport in Missoula and onto the first outward-bound plane, no matter where it was headed.

“Okay,” Slade said. He had to talk to Kendra, pronto, he decided. Even if he bought the Kingman place that day, which he didn’t intend to do, the deal wouldn’t close for at least a month. Maybe he could make arrangements to rent the house until he’d made up his mind about accepting Hutch’s offer to buy out his share of Whisper Creek, though.

“Try to contain your enthusiasm,” Layne teased. “I’ll only be in Parable for a couple of days, and your virtue is safe, cowboy. I’m madly in love with another man.”

Slade waited for the pang of regret Layne’s statement should have caused him—he’d loved her, once—but it didn’t come. He did wish he could have responded that he was “madly in love” with some hot woman, though.

One like Joslyn Kirk, say. He felt a stirring that did not bode well for getting out of the truck anytime soon, at least, not in the middle of town, where there were so many people around.

“I’ll reserve you a room at the Best Western hotel,” he said. “When are you planning on getting here?”

“Day after tomorrow?” Layne said, making it sound like a question.

Slade suppressed a sigh. “Shall I pick you up at the airport in Missoula?”

“Definitely not,” Layne answered happily. “We’ll rent a car.”

“Fine,” Slade replied. “I’ll make the room reservation. Text me your ETA when you can.”

“Will do,” Layne said.

Slade was about to say goodbye and hang up when she murmured his name.

“Yeah?” he asked.

“Thanks,” Layne answered. “I’ve been at my wits’ end over Shea.”

Slade wasn’t a glib man. He was intelligent, and he was educated, but folks said he was as stingy with words as a miser was with money, and he couldn’t refute that. “Everything will be all right,” he said.

The call ended, and he headed for Kendra’s place.

Once there, he parked alongside the mansion in the blindingly white driveway and spoke to Jasper.

“I won’t be long,” he said. “Mind your manners until I get back.”

Jasper merely sighed.

Inside the big house, Slade found Kendra’s office empty.

“Hello?” he called, just to be sure.

A woman’s voice answered, from a distance, though it wasn’t Kendra’s.

“In the kitchen!” someone sang out.

Joslyn Kirk?

Oh, hell, Slade thought. It hadn’t occurred to him that he might run into her, though he supposed it should have, since she lived on the property and she and Kendra were good friends. He cleared his throat, debating between sticking around and beating it.

Before he’d decided either way—he’d been leaning toward the first option because the second seemed pretty chickenshit—Joslyn appeared in the big arched doorway joining the office area to the formal dining room.

She had flour in her hair. Slade’s heart did a weird little jig and then seized up briefly.

“Oh,” Joslyn said, her eyes widening slightly and a blush climbing her cheeks. “It’s you.”

Slade gave a raspy chuckle. “It’s me, all right,” he agreed. “Is Kendra around?”

Joslyn shook her head, and her soft brown hair seemed to dance around her oval face. Her eyes were wide-set, her mouth full....

Why was he thinking about her mouth?

“She finally sold the chicken farm,” Joslyn said. “She’s off delivering contracts.” She hesitated, moistened her lips briefly before going on and thus ignited an achy flame in Slade. “Is there something I can help you with?”

Oh, yeah, Slade thought, grimly wry. But it probably isn’t the kind of help you have in mind.

“I wanted to talk to her about the Kingman place—see if she’d get in touch with the owners and ask them about renting the house to me. I’ll catch up with her later.”

Joslyn swallowed, nodded. He wanted to touch his lips to the pulse leaping at the base of her throat.

Glad he’d brought his hat with him instead of leaving it in the truck, Slade held it in both hands at belt-buckle level. He hoped the move seemed casual.

“I’ll tell her you stopped in,” Joslyn said.

He took some consolation in the fairly obvious fact that he wasn’t the only nervous person around.

“That would be great,” he said. It was the perfect time to leave, but, probably for the same reason he was holding his hat in a strategic position, he didn’t.

Joslyn dusted her hands together. “I don’t know how to contact the owners,” she said, “but if you want another look at the ranch house, I’m sure the lockbox keys are around here somewhere. I could get them and let you inside.”

In the next moment, she looked confounded, as though she hadn’t planned to say what she had.

Slade didn’t need yet another tour of the ranch house—he’d been there with Kendra a dozen times. He knew every inch of the place, which floorboards creaked and the state of the plumbing. He knew just how each room would look, once he’d completed the necessary renovations, which he’d planned in detail.

“I’d like that,” he said, careful not to let his gaze drift any lower than the base of her throat. He was already in over his head; no sense making things worse.

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?”

Конец ознакомительного фрагмента.

Текст предоставлен ООО «ЛитРес».

Прочитайте эту книгу целиком, купив полную легальную версию на ЛитРес.

Безопасно оплатить книгу можно банковской картой Visa, MasterCard, Maestro, со счета мобильного телефона, с платежного терминала, в салоне МТС или Связной, через PayPal, WebMoney, Яндекс.Деньги, QIWI Кошелек, бонусными картами или другим удобным Вам способом.