Two troublemakers finally meet their match in two unforgettable classic Western tales

Big Sky Mountain by Linda Lael Miller

With his rugged good looks, wealth and family name, hell-raiser Hutch Carmody is the golden boy of Parable, Montana. But he knows there are some things money can’t buy, like Kendra Shepherd’s heart. Can a rough-and-tumble cowboy and a ladylike divorcée find lasting love? Crazier dreams have come true under the vast Montana sky.

Bad News Cowboy by Maisey Yates

If Kate Garrett could choose her dream man, he wouldn’t be her older brother’s best friend, Jack Monaghan. Sexy and shameless, Jack is the kind of trouble you don’t tangle with unless you want your heart broken. But when Kate lassoes him into giving her some flirting tips, the two of them get caught up in the kind of trouble he’s spent his life avoiding. Can Kate convince Jack that love is the best risk of all?

Also By Linda Lael Miller

The Brides of Bliss County

The Marriage Season

The Marriage Charm

The Marriage Pact

Christmas in Mustang Creek

The Montana Creeds

A Creed Country Christmas

Montana Creeds: Tyler

Montana Creeds: Dylan

Montana Creeds: Logan

The McKettricks

A McKettrick Christmas

McKettrick’s Heart

McKettrick’s Pride

McKettrick’s Luck

McKettrick’s Choice

And don’t miss Once a Rancher and the rest of the Carsons of Mustang Creek series!

Also By Maisey Yates

Copper Ridge

Shoulda Been a Cowboy (ebook prequel novella)

Part Time Cowboy

Brokedown Cowboy

Bad News Cowboy

A Copper Ridge Christmas (ebook novella)

Look for more Copper Ridge:

Hometown Heartbreaker

Take Me, Cowboy

One Night Charmer

Tough Luck Hero

Last Chance Rebel

Hold Me, Cowboy

Discover more at millsandboon.co.uk

Cowboy Ever After

Big Sky Mountain

Linda Lael Miller

Bad News Cowboy

Maisey Yates

www.millsandboon.co.uk

ISBN: 978-1-474-08330-0

COWBOY EVER AFTER

Big Sky Mountain © 2018 Linda Lael Miller Bad News Cowboy © 2018 Maisey Yates

© 2018 Harlequin Books S.A.

Published in Great Britain 2018

by Mills & Boon, an imprint of HarperCollinsPublishers 1 London Bridge Street, London, SE1 9GF

All rights reserved including the right of reproduction in whole or in part in any form. This edition is published by arrangement with Harlequin Books S.A.

This is a work of fiction. Names, characters, places, locations and incidents are purely fictional and bear no relationship to any real life individuals, living or dead, or to any actual places, business establishments, locations, events or incidents. Any resemblance is entirely coincidental.

By payment of the required fees, you are granted the non-exclusive, non-transferable right and licence to download and install this e-book on your personal computer, tablet computer, smart phone or other electronic reading device only (each a “Licensed Device”) and to access, display and read the text of this e-book on-screen on your Licensed Device. Except to the extent any of these acts shall be permitted pursuant to any mandatory provision of applicable law but no further, no part of this e-book or its text or images may be reproduced, transmitted, distributed, translated, converted or adapted for use on another file format, communicated to the public, downloaded, decompiled, reverse engineered, or stored in or introduced into any information storage and retrieval system, in any form or by any means, whether electronic or mechanical, now known or hereinafter invented, without the express written permission of publisher.

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www.millsandboon.co.uk

Praise for #1 New York Times bestselling author Linda Lael Miller

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

—Publishers Weekly

“Miller’s name is synonymous with the finest in Western romance.”

—RT Book Reviews

“Linda Lael Miller creates vibrant characters and stories I defy you to forget.”

—#1 New York Times bestselling author Debbie Macomber

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

—RT Book Reviews

Praise for New York Times bestselling author Maisey Yates

“Fans of Robyn Carr and RaeAnne Thayne will enjoy [Yates’s] small-town romance.”

—Booklist on Part Time Cowboy

“Passionate, energetic and jam-packed with personality.”

—USA TODAY on Part Time Cowboy

“Wraps up nicely, leaving readers with a desire to read more about the feisty duo.”

—Publishers Weekly on Bad News Cowboy

Table of Contents

Cover

Booklist

Title Page

Copyright

Praise

Big Sky Mountain

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

Bad News Cowboy

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

CHAPTER TWENTY

EPILOGUE

About the Publisher

Big Sky Mountain

Linda Lael Miller

In loving memory of my cherished beagle-dog, Sadie.

I’m grateful for every second of our eleven years together.

CHAPTER ONE

A FINE SWEAT broke out between Hutch Carmody’s shoulders and his gut warned that he was fixing to stumble straight into the teeth of a screeching buzz saw. The rented tux itched against his hide and his collar seemed to be getting tighter with every flower-scented breath he drew.

The air was dense, weighted, cloying. The small church was overheated, especially for a sunny day in mid-June, and the pews were crammed with eager guests, a few weeping women and a fair number of skeptics.

Hutch’s best man, Boone Taylor, fidgeted beside him.

The organist sounded a jarring chord and then launched into a perky tune Hutch didn’t recognize. The first of three bridesmaids, all clad in silly-looking pink dresses more suited to little girls than grown women—in his opinion anyhow—drag-stepped her way up the aisle to stand beside the altar, across from him and Boone.

Hutch’s head reeled, but he quickly reminded himself, silently of course, that he had to live in this town—his ranch was just a few miles outside of it. If he passed out cold at his own wedding, he’d still be getting ribbed about it when he was ninety.

While the next bridesmaid started forward, he did his distracted best to avoid so much as glancing toward Brylee Parrish, his wife to be, who was standing at the back of the church beside her brother, Walker. He knew all too well how good she looked in that heirloom wedding gown of hers, with its billowing veil and dazzling sprinkle of rhinestones.

Brylee was beautiful, with cascades of red-brown hair that tumbled to her waist when she let it down. Her wide-set hazel eyes revealed passion, as well as formidable intelligence, humor and a country girl’s in-born practicality.

He was a lucky man.

Brylee, on the other hand, was not so fortunate, having hooked up with the likes of him. She deserved a husband who loved her.

Suddenly, Hutch’s gaze connected with that of his half brother, Slade Barlow. Seated near the front, next to his very pregnant wife, Joslyn, Slade slowly shook his head from side to side, his expression so solemn that a person would have thought somebody was about to be buried instead of hitched to one of the choicest women Parable County had ever produced.

Hutch’s insides churned, then coalesced into a quivering gob and did a slow, backward roll.

The last bridesmaid had arrived.

The minister was in place.

The smell of the flowers intensified, nearly overwhelming Hutch.

And then the first notes of “Here Comes the Bride” rang out.

Hutch felt the room—hell, the whole planet—sway again.

Brylee, beaming behind the thin fabric of her veil, nodded in response to something her brother whispered to her and they stepped forward.

“Hold it,” Hutch heard himself say loudly enough to be heard over the thundering joy of the organ. He held up both hands, like a referee about to call a foul in some fast-paced game. “Stop.”

Everything halted—with a sickening lurch.

The music died.

The bride and her brother seemed frozen in mid-stride.

Hutch would have sworn the universe itself had stopped expanding.

“This is all wrong,” he went on miserably, but with his back straight and his head up. It wasn’t as if he hadn’t broached the subject with Brylee before—he’d been trying to get out of this fix for weeks. Just the night before, in fact, he’d sat Brylee down in a vinyl upholstered booth at the Silver Lanes snack bar and told her straight out that he had serious misgivings about getting married and needed some breathing space.

Brylee had cried, her mascara smudging, her nose reddening at the tip.

“You don’t mean it,” she’d said, which was her standard response to any attempt he made to put on the brakes before they both plummeted over a matrimonial cliff. “You’re just nervous, that’s all. It’s entirely normal. But once the wedding is over and we’re on our honeymoon—”

Hutch couldn’t stand it when a woman cried, especially when he was the cause of her tears. Like every other time, he’d backed down, tried to convince himself that Brylee was right—he just had cold feet, that was all.

Now, though, “push” had run smack up against “shove.”

It was now or never.

He faced Brylee squarely.

The universe unfroze itself, like some big machine with rusted gears, and all hell broke loose.

Brylee threw down her bouquet, stomped on it once, whirled on one heel and rushed out of the church. Walker flung a beleaguered and not entirely friendly look in Hutch’s direction, then turned to go after his sister.

The guests, already on their feet in honor of the bride, all started talking at once, abuzz with shock and speculation.

Things like this might happen in books or movies, but they didn’t happen in Parable, Montana.

Until now, Hutch reflected dismally.

He started to follow Brylee out of the church, not an easy proposition with folks crowding the aisle. He didn’t have the first clue what he could say to her, but he figured he had to say something.

Before he’d taken two strides, though, Slade and Boone closed in on him from either side, each taking a firm grip on one of his arms.

“Let her go,” Boone said quietly.

“There’s nothing you can do,” Slade confirmed.

With that, they hustled him quickly out of the main chapel and into the small side room where the choir robes, hymnals and Communion gear were stored.

Hutch wondered if a lynch mob was forming back there in the sanctuary.

“You picked a fine time to change your mind about getting married,” Boone remarked, but his tone was light and his eyes twinkled with something that looked a lot like relief.

Hutch unfastened his fancy tie and shoved it into one coat pocket. Then he opened his collar halfway to his breastbone and sucked in a breath. “I tried to tell her,” he muttered. He knew it sounded lame, but the truth was the truth.

Although he and Slade shared a father, they had been at bloody-knuckled odds most of their lives. They’d made some progress toward getting along since the old man’s death and the upheaval that followed, but neither of them related to the other as a buddy, let alone a brother.

“Come on out to our place,” Slade said, surprising him. “You’d best lay low for a few hours. Give Brylee—and Walker—a little time to cool off.”

Hutch stiffened slightly, though he found the invitation oddly welcome. Home, being Whisper Creek Ranch, was a lonely outpost these days—which was probably why he’d talked himself into proposing to Brylee in the first place.

“I have to talk to Brylee,” he repeated.

“There’ll be time for that later on,” Slade reasoned.

“Slade’s right,” Boone agreed. Boone, being violently allergic to marriage himself, probably thought Hutch had just dodged a figurative bullet.

Or maybe he was remembering that Brylee was a crack shot with a pistol, a rifle, or a Civil War cannon.

Given what had just happened, she was probably leaning toward the cannon right about now.

Hutch sighed. “All right,” he said to Slade. “I’ll kick back at your place for a while—but I’ve got to stop off at home first, so I can change out of this monkey suit.”

“Fine,” Slade agreed. “I’ll round up the women and meet you at the Windfall in an hour or two.”

By “the women,” Slade meant his lovely wife, Joslyn, his teenage stepdaughter, Shea, and Opal Dennison, the force-of-nature who kept house for the Barlow outfit. Slade’s mother, Callie, had had the good grace to skip the ceremony—old scandals die hard in a town the size of Parable and recollections of her long-ago affair with Carmody Senior, from which Slade had famously resulted, were as sharp as ever.

Today’s escapade would put all that in the shade, of course. Tongues were wagging and jaws were flapping for sure—by now, various up-to-the-minute accounts were probably popping up on all the major social media sites. Before Slade and Boone had dragged Hutch out of the sanctuary, he’d seen several people whip out their cell phones and start texting. A few pictures had been taken, too, with those same ubiquitous devices.

The thought of all that amateur reporting made Hutch close his eyes for a moment. “Shit,” he murmured.

“Knee-deep and rising,” Slade confirmed, sounding resigned.

* * *

KENDRA SAT AT the antique table in her best friend Joslyn’s kitchen, with Callie Barlow in the chair directly across from hers. The ranch house was unusually quiet, with its usual occupants gone to town.

A glance over one shoulder assured Kendra that her recently adopted four-year-old daughter, Madison, was still napping on a padded window seat, her stuffed purple kangaroo, Rupert, clenched in her arms. The little girl’s gleaming hair, the color of a newly minted penny, lay in tousled curls around her cherubic face and Kendra felt the usual pang of hopeless devotion just looking at her.

This long-sought, hard-won, much-wanted child.

This miracle.

Not that every woman would have seen the situation from the same perspective as Kendra did—Madison was, after all, living proof that Jeffrey had been unfaithful, a constant reminder that it was dangerous to love, treacherous to trust, foolish to believe in another person too much. But none of that had mattered to Kendra in the end—she’d essentially been abandoned herself as a small child, left to grow up with a disinterested grandmother, and that gave her a special affinity for Madison. Besides, Jeffrey, having returned to his native England after summarily ending their marriage, had been dying.

Some men might have turned to family for help in such a situation—Jeffrey Chamberlain came from a very wealthy and influential one—but in this case, that wasn’t possible. Jeffrey’s aging parents were landed gentry with a string of titles, several sprawling estates and a fortune that dated back to the heyday of the East India Company, and were no more inclined toward child-rearing than they had been when their own two sons were small. They’d left Jeffrey and his brother in the care of nannies and housekeepers from infancy, and shipped them off to boarding school as soon as they turned six.

Understandably, Jeffrey hadn’t wanted that kind of cold and isolated childhood for his daughter.

So he’d sent word to Kendra that he had to see her, in person. He had something important to tell her.

She’d made that first of several trips to the U.K., keeping protracted vigils at her ex-husband’s hospital bedside while he drifted in and out of consciousness.

Eventually, he’d managed to get his message across: he told her about Madison, living somewhere in the U.S., and begged Kendra to find his daughter, adopt her and bring her up in love and safety. She was, he told her, the only person on earth he could or would trust with the child.

Kendra wanted nothing so much as a child and, during their brief marriage, Jeffrey had denied her repeated requests to start a family. It was a bitter pill to swallow, learning that he’d refused her a baby and then fathered one with someone else, someone he’d met on a business trip.

She’d done what Jeffrey asked, not so much for his sake—though she’d loved him once, or believed she did—as for Madison’s. And her own.

The search hadn’t been an easy one, even with the funds Jeffrey had set aside for the purpose, involving a great deal of web-surfing, phone calls and emails, travel and so many highs and lows that she nearly gave up several times.

Then it happened. She found Madison.

Kendra hadn’t known what she’d feel upon actually meeting her former husband’s child, but any doubts she might have had had been dispelled the moment—the moment—she’d met this cautious, winsome little girl.

The first encounter had taken place in a social worker’s dingy office, in a dusty desert town in California, and for Kendra, it was love at first sight.

The forever kind of love.

Months of legal hassles had followed, but now, at long last, Kendra and Madison were officially mother and daughter, in the eyes of God and government, and Kendra knew she couldn’t have loved her baby girl any more if she’d carried her in her own body for nine months.

Callie brought Kendra back to the present moment by reaching for the teapot in the center of the table and refilling Kendra’s cup, then her own.

“Do you think it’s over yet?” Kendra asked, instantly regretting the question but unable to hold back still another. “The wedding, I mean?”

Callie’s smile was gentle as she glanced at the clock on the stove top and met Kendra’s gaze again. “Probably,” she said quietly. Then, without another word, she reached out to give Kendra’s hand a light squeeze.

Madison, meanwhile, stirred on the window seat. “Mommy?”

Kendra turned again. “I’m here, honey,” she said.

Although Madison was adjusting rapidly, in the resilient way of young children, she still had bad dreams sometimes and she tended to panic if she lost sight of Kendra for more than a moment.

“Are you hungry, sweetie?” Callie asked the little girl. Slade’s mom would make a wonderful grandmother; she had a way with children, easy and forthright.

Madison shook her head as she moved toward Kendra and then scrambled up onto her lap.

“It’s been a while since lunch,” Kendra suggested, kissing the top of Madison’s head and holding her close. “Maybe you’d like a glass of milk and one of Opal’s oatmeal raisin cookies?”

Again, Madison shook her head, snuggling closer still. “No, thank you,” she said clearly, sounding, as she often did, more like a small adult than a four-year-old.

They’d arrived by car the night before and spent the night in the Barlows’ guest room, at Joslyn’s insistence.

The old house, the very heart of Windfall Ranch, was undergoing considerable renovation, which only added to the exuberant chaos of the place—and Madison was wary of everyone but Opal, the family housekeeper.

Just then, Slade and Joslyn’s dog, Jasper, heretofore snoozing on his bed in front of the newly installed kitchen fireplace, sat bolt upright and gave a questioning little whine. His floppy ears were pitched slightly forward, though he seemed to be listening with his entire body. Joslyn’s cat, Lucy-Maude, remained singularly unconcerned.

Madison looked at the animal with shy interest, still unsure whether to make friends with him or keep her distance.

“Well,” Callie remarked, getting to her feet and heading for the nearest window, the one over the steel sink, and peering out as the sound of a car’s engine reached them, “they’re back early. They must have decided to skip the reception.”

Jasper barked happily and hurried to the door. Joslyn had long since dubbed him the one-dog welcoming committee and at the moment he was spilling over with a wild desire to greet whoever happened to show up.

With a little chuckle, Callie opened the back door so Jasper could shoot through it like a fur-covered bullet, positively beside himself with joy. There was a little frown nestled between the older woman’s eyebrows, though, as she looked toward Kendra again. “This is odd,” she reiterated. “I hope Joslyn is feeling all right.”

Shea, Slade’s lovely dark-haired stepdaughter, just turned seventeen, burst into the house first, her violet eyes huge with excitement. “You’re not going to believe this, Grands,” she told Callie breathlessly. “The music was playing. The bridesmaids were all lined up and the preacher had his book open, ready to start. And what do you suppose happened?”

Kendra’s heart fluttered in her chest, but she didn’t speak.

A number of drastic scenarios flashed through her mind—a wedding guest toppling over from a heart attack, then a cattle truck crashing through a wall, followed by lightning boring its way right through the roof of the church and striking the bridegroom dead where he stood.

She shook the images off. Waited with her breath snagged painfully in the back of her throat.

“What?” Callie prodded good-naturedly, studying her step-granddaughter. She and Shea were close—the girl worked part-time at Callie’s Curly Burly Hair Salon in town, and during the school year, Shea went to Callie’s place after the last bell rang, spending hours tweaking the website she’d built for the shop.

“Hutch called the whole thing off,” Shea blurted. “He stopped the wedding!”

“Oh, my,” Callie said. The door was still open, and Kendra heard Joslyn’s voice, then Opal’s, as they came toward the house. Slade must have been with them, but he was keeping quiet, as usual.

Kendra realized she was squeezing Madison too tightly and relaxed her arms a little. Her mouth had dropped open at some point and she closed it, hoping no one had noticed. Just then, she couldn’t have uttered a word if the place caught fire.

Opal, tall and dressed to the nines in one of her home-sewn and brightly patterned jersey dresses, crossed the threshold next, shaking her head as she unpinned her old-fashioned hat, with its tiny stuffed bird and inch-wide veiling.

Slade and Joslyn came in behind her, Joslyn’s huge belly preceding her “by half an hour,” as her adoring husband liked to say.

By then, the bomb dropped, Shea had shifted her focus to Madison. She’d been trying to win the little girl over from the beginning, and her smile dazzled, like sunlight on still waters. “Hey, kiddo,” she said. “Since we missed out on the wedding cake, I’m up for a major cookie binge. Want to join me?”

Somewhat to Kendra’s surprise, Madison slid down off her lap, Rupert the kangaroo dangling from one small hand, and approached the older girl, albeit slowly. “Okay,” she said, her voice tentative.

Joslyn, meanwhile, lumbered over to the table, pulled back a chair and sank into it. She looked incandescent in her summery maternity dress, a blue confection with white polka dots, and she fanned her flushed face with her thin white clutch for a few moments before plunking it down on the tabletop.

“Do you need to lie down?” Callie asked her daughter-in-law worriedly, one hand resting on Joslyn’s shoulder.

Madison and Shea, meanwhile, were plundering the cookie jar.

“No,” Joslyn told her. “I’m fine. Really.”

Opal tied on an apron and instructed firmly, “Now don’t you girls stuff yourselves on those cookies with me fixing to put a meal on the table in a little while.”

A swift tenderness came over Kendra as she took it all in—including Opal’s bluster. As Kendra was growing up, the woman had been like a mother to her, if not a patron saint.

Slade, his blue gaze resting softly on Joslyn, hung up his hat and bent to ruffle the dog’s ears.

“Poor Brylee,” Opal said as she opened the refrigerator door and began rummaging about inside it for the makings of one of her legendary meals.

“Sounded to me like it was her own fault,” Slade observed, leaving the dog in order to wash his hands at the sink. He was clad in a suit, but Kendra knew he’d be back in his customary jeans, beat-up boots and lightweight shirt at the first opportunity. “Hutch said he told Brylee he didn’t want to get married, more than once, and she wouldn’t listen.”

For Slade, this was a virtual torrent of words. He was a quiet, deliberate man, and he normally liked to mull things over before he offered an opinion—in contrast to his half brother, Hutch, who tended to go barreling in where angels feared to tread and consider the wisdom of his words and actions later. Or not at all.

Joslyn, meanwhile, tuned in on Kendra’s face and read her expression, however guarded it was, with perfect accuracy. They’d been friends since they were barely older than Madison was now, and for the past year, they’d been business partners, too—Joslyn taking over the reins at Shepherd Real Estate, in nearby Parable, while Kendra scoured the countryside for Jeffrey’s daughter.

“Thank heaven he came to his senses,” Joslyn said, with her usual certainty. “Brylee is a wonderful person, but she’s all wrong for Hutch and he’s all wrong for her. They wouldn’t have lasted a year.”

The crowd in the kitchen began to thin out a little then—Shea, the dog and Madison headed into the family room with their cookies, and Callie followed, Shea regaling her “Grands” with an account of who did what and who wore what and who said what.

Slade ascended the back stairway, chuckling, no doubt on his way to the master bedroom to change clothes. Except for bankers and lawyers, few men in rural Montana wore suits on a regular basis—such get-ups were reserved for Sunday services, funerals and...weddings, ill-fated or otherwise.

Opal, for her part, kept murmuring to herself and shaking her head as she began measuring out flour and lard for a batch of her world-class biscuits. “Land sakes,” she muttered repeatedly, along with, “Well, I never, in all my live-long days—”

Joslyn laid her hands on her bulging stomach and sighed. “I swear this baby is practicing to be a rodeo star. It feels as though he’s riding a bull in there.”

Kendra laughed softly, partly at the image her friend had painted and partly as a way to relieve the dizzying tension brought on by Shea’s breathless announcement. Hutch called the whole thing off. He stopped the wedding.

“The least you could do,” she teased Joslyn, trying to get a grip on her crazy emotions, “is go into labor already and let the little guy get a start on his cowboy career.”

As serene as a Botticelli Madonna, Joslyn grinned. “He’s taking his time, all right,” she agreed. The briefest frown flickered in her shining eyes as she regarded Kendra more closely than before. “It’s only fair to warn you,” she went on, quietly resolute, “that Slade invited Hutch to come to supper with us tonight—”

Joslyn continued to talk, saying she expected both Slade and Hutch would saddle up and ride the range for a while, but Kendra barely heard her. She flat-out wasn’t ready to encounter Hutch Carmody, even at her closest friend’s table. Why, the last time she’d seen him, after that stupid, macho horse race of his and Slade’s, she’d kicked him, hard, in the shins.

Because he’d just kissed her.

Because he’d risked his life for no good reason.

Because hers was just one of the many hearts he’d broken along his merry way.

Plus she was a mess. She’d been on the road for three days, and even after a good night’s sleep in Joslyn’s guest room and two showers, she felt rumpled and grungy.

She stood up. She’d get Madison and head for town, she decided, hurry to her own place, where she should have gone in the beginning.

Not that she planned to live there very long.

The mega-mansion was too big for her and Madison, too full of memories.

“Kendra,” Joslyn ordered kindly, “sit down.”

Opal could be heard poking around in the pantry, still talking to herself.

Slade came down the back stairway, looking like himself in worn jeans, a faded flannel shirt and boots.

Passing Joslyn, he paused and leaned down to plant a kiss on top of her head. Kendra sank slowly back into her own chair.

“Don’t start without me,” Slade said, spreading one big hand on Joslyn’s baby-bulge and grinning down into her upturned face.

It was almost enough to make a person believe in love again, Kendra thought glumly, watching these two.

“Not a chance, cowboy,” Joslyn replied, almost purring the words. “We made this baby together and we’re having it together.”

Kendra was really starting to feel like some kind of voyeuristic intruder when Opal came out of the pantry, looked Slade over from behind the thick lenses of her glasses, and demanded, “Just where do you think you’re going, Slade Barlow? Didn’t I just say I’m starting supper?”

Slade straightened, smiled at Opal. “Now don’t get all riled up,” he cajoled. “I’m just going out to check on the horses, not driving a herd to Texas.”

“Do I look like I was born yesterday?” Opal challenged, with gruff good humor. “You mean to saddle up and ride. I can tell by looking at you.”

Slade laughed, shook his head, shoved a hand through his dark hair before crossing the room to take his everyday hat from a peg beside the back door and plop it on his head. “I promise you,” he told Opal, “that the minute that dinner bell rings, I’ll be here.”

Opal huffed, cheerfully unappeased, then waved Slade off with one hand and went back to making supper.

“You might as well stay here and face Hutch,” Joslyn told Kendra, as though there had been no interruption in their conversation. “After all, Parable is a small town, and you’re bound to run into him sooner rather than later. Why not get it over with?”

The twinkle in Joslyn’s eyes might have annoyed Kendra if she hadn’t been so fond of her. Like many happily married people, Joslyn wanted all her friends to see the light and get hitched, pronto.

An image of Brylee Parrish bloomed in Kendra’s mind and she felt a stab of sorrow for the woman. Loving Hutch Carmody was asking for trouble—she could have told Brylee that.

Not that Brylee would have listened, any more than she had long ago, when various friends had warned her that she was marrying Jeffrey on the rebound, had urged her to take time to think before leaping feetfirst into a whole different world.

“I need to get Madison settled,” Kendra fretted. “There are groceries to buy and I’ve been away from the business way too long as it is—”

“The business is just fine,” Joslyn said reasonably. “And so is Madison.”

As if on cue, the little girl gave a delighted laugh in the next room.

It was a sweet sound, all too rare, and it made the backs of Kendra’s eyes scald. “I don’t know if I can handle it,” she confessed, very softly. “Seeing Hutch again right away, I mean. I was counting on having some time to adjust to being back—”

Joslyn reached out, took her hand. Squeezed. “You can handle it,” she said with quiet certainty. “Trust yourself, Kendra. Nothing is going to happen between you and Hutch unless you want it to.”

“That’s just the trouble,” Kendra reflected miserably, careful to keep her voice down so Madison wouldn’t overhear. “Wanting a man—wanting Hutch—and knowing better the whole time—well, you know—”

“I do know,” Joslyn said, smiling.

“I have a daughter now,” Kendra reminded her friend. “I want Madison to grow up in Parable, go to the same schools from kindergarten through high school. I want to give her security, a real sense of community, the whole works. And getting sucked into Hutch’s orbit would be the stupidest thing I could possibly do.”

“Would it?” Joslyn asked, raising one delicate eyebrow as she waited for a reply.

“Of course it would,” Kendra whispered fiercely. “The man broke my heart into a gazillion pieces, remember? And now he’s dumped some poor woman virtually at the altar, which only goes to prove he hasn’t changed!”

“Did it ever occur to you,” Joslyn inquired, unruffled, “that Hutch might have ‘dumped’ Brylee for the simple reason that she’s not you?”

“No,” Kendra said firmly, shaken by the mere possibility, “that did not occur to me. He did it because he can’t commit to anything or anyone long-term, because Whisper Creek Ranch is all he really cares about in this world—because he’s a heartless, womanizing bastard.”

Before Joslyn could offer a response to that, Madison, Shea, Callie and the dog trailed back in the kitchen, making further discussion of Hutch Carmody impossible.

Kendra was still flustered, though. Her heart pounded and her throat and sinuses felt strangely thick—was she coming down with something? Every instinct urged her to get the heck out of there, now, but the idea seemed cowardly and, besides, Madison was just starting to let herself be part of the group.

If they rushed off to town, the little girl would be understandably confused.

So Kendra decided to stay, at least until after supper.

She was a grown woman, a mother. Joslyn had been right—it was time she started trusting herself. Hutch had always held an infuriating attraction for her, but she was older now, and wiser, and she had more self-control.

The next hour was taken up with getting ready, coming and going, table-setting and a lot of companionable, lighthearted chatter. Slade returned from the barn as he’d promised and, after washing up in a downstairs bathroom, made the whole crew promise not to pester Hutch with questions about the interrupted wedding.

As if, Kendra thought. She probably wouldn’t say more than a few polite words to the man. If she spoke to him at all.

She felt strong, confident, ready for anything.

Until he actually walked into the ranch house kitchen, that is.

Seeing her, he tightened his jaw and shot an accusatory glance in his half brother’s direction.

“Didn’t I mention that Kendra’s here?” Slade asked, breaking the brief, pulsing silence. There was a smile in his voice, though his blue eyes conveyed nothing but innocent concern.

Hutch, his dark blond hair sun-kissed with gold, recovered his normal affable manner within the space of a heartbeat.

He even smiled, flashing those perfect white teeth and setting Kendra back on her figurative heels.

“Hello, Kendra,” he said with a nod, after taking off his hat. Like Slade, he was dressed “cowboy” and the look suited him.

Kendra replied with a nod of her own. “Hutch,” she said, turning from the chopping board, where she’d been preparing a salad, and wished she’d cleared her throat first, because the name came out like a croak.

His gaze moved straight to Madison, and Kendra read the questions in his eyes even before he hid them behind a smile. Madison, meanwhile, raised Rupert, as if presenting him to this stranger for inspection.

“Howdy, there,” he said, all charm. “Do my eyes deceive me or is that critter a kangaroo?”

CHAPTER TWO

THE WAY HUTCH figured it, a solid week should have been plenty long enough for the fuss over the wedding-that-never-was to die down, but when Saturday afternoon rolled around again and he sat down at his computer to get a quick read on the gossip situation, tired from rounding up strays with the ranch hands since just after dawn, he was promptly disabused of the notion.

This jabber-fest was getting worse by the moment.

Apparently he’d made every “jerk” list in cyberspace, not just locally, but worldwide. Indignant females from as far away as the Philippines thought he ought to be tarred and feathered, and a couple of Brylee’s girlfriends, bless their vengeful little hearts, had set up a page on one of the major networking sites solely for the purpose of warning every woman with a pulse to steer clear of Hutch Carmody.

The reverse version, he supposed, grimly amused, of an old West “Wanted” poster.

Of course, this being the digital age, there were pictures up the wazoo—Bride-Doll Brylee, flushed and furious in her over-the-top dress, stomping on her bouquet in the church aisle. Brylee, outside in the bright June sunshine, probably only moments after the first shot was taken, wrenching the taped-on “Just Married” sign from the back of the limo that would have carried the two of them over to the Community Center for the reception, ripping the cardboard in two and flinging the pieces into the gutter. Brylee, later still, hair pulled back and caught up in a long, messy ponytail, face puffy and scrubbed clean of makeup, her gown swapped out for jeans and a T-shirt bearing the motto Men Suck. She was surrounded by a dozen or so of her friends, at a table in the center of the Boot Scoot Tavern, the jukebox lit up behind her. No doubt, it was playing a somebody-done-me-wrong song.

Hutch sighed. He hadn’t escaped the amateur paparazzi himself—these days, every yahoo and his Aunt Bessie had a smart phone, and they were mighty quick on the draw with them.

One memorable image showed him standing in the center of the sanctuary, clearly uncomfortable in the penguin get-up he’d rented from Wally’s Wedding World, over in Three Trees, the neighboring town, looking pale and bleakly determined not to get married no matter what he had to do to avoid it. And those were just the stills—there were videos, too. In one thirty-second wonder, he could be seen climbing into his rusted-out pickup truck, right there in the Presbyterians’ gravel parking lot, and in the next, he was heading for the horizon, a dust plume spiraling behind his rig.

Yep, that was him all right, beating a hasty retreat, like a yellow-bellied coward on the run.

That impression rested sour on the back of his tongue.

Someday, he suspected, when Brylee met up with her own personal Mr. Right, got hitched for real, and had herself a houseful of kids, she’d thank him for stopping the wedding and thereby preventing certain catastrophe.

At present, though, that particular “someday” seemed a long way off.

Weary to the aching marrow of his bones, Hutch logged off the internet, pushed back from the rolltop desk that had been in his family since the Lincoln administration, and stood up, stretching luxuriously before retrieving his coffee mug and ambling out of the little office behind the ranch house kitchen.

Taking Slade’s advice, he’d kept a low profile since the day that, like the bombing of Pearl Harbor and the 9/11 attacks, would forever live in infamy. Against his own better judgment, he hadn’t gone to see Brylee in person, called her on the phone, or even sent her an email.

He hadn’t done much guilt-wallowing, either, which might be proof that he really was a “selfish, heartless, narcissistic bastard,” as members of Team Brylee universally agreed, at least online. By now, the group probably had its own secret handshake.

Hutch regretted hurting Brylee, of course, and he certainly wished he could have spared her the humiliation of that very public breakup, but his overriding emotion was a sense of relief so profound that it still made his head reel even after a week.

Train wreck, averted.

Apocalypse, canceled.

Check and check.

Running into Kendra Shepherd at Slade and Joslyn’s place after the debacle had definitely thrown him, however—slammed the wind out of him as surely as if he’d been hurled off the back of a bad bull or a sun-fishing bronco and landed on hard ground.

He’d loved Kendra once and he’d believed she loved him.

He’d expected to spend the rest of his life with the woman, happy to make babies, run Whisper Creek Ranch with Kendra at his side, a full partner in every way.

Instead, enter Jeffrey Chamberlain, he of the nominal titles and English estates, practically a prince to a woman like Kendra, brought up in a small Montana town by a grandmother who resented the responsibility of raising her errant daughter’s child. Chamberlain had been visiting friends at the time—Hollywood types with delusions of living the ranching life in grand style—and damned if Sir Jeffrey hadn’t struck up a conversation with Kendra at the post office one fine day and parlayed that, over the coming weeks, into a romance so epic that it could only have ended badly.

Not that Kendra had fallen for Chamberlain right away—at the get-go, she’d insisted he was just a friend, interesting and funny. Hutch, though nettled, had reluctantly—okay, grudgingly—accepted the explanation.

Down deep, he’d been out-of-his-gourd jealous, though, and soon enough the bickering commenced.

Chamberlain, knowing full well what he’d set in motion, had found excuses to stay on in Parable and he just bided his time while things got worse and worse between Hutch and Kendra.

Inevitably, the bickering escalated to fiery yelling matches and, worse, single words, terse and biting, punctuated by long, achy silences.

Eventually, Kendra had given Hutch an ultimatum—trust her or leave her.

He’d chosen the latter option, being a stubborn, hard-headed cowboy from a long line of stubborn, hard-headed cowboys, never really thinking she’d go at all, let alone stay gone; everybody knew they belonged together, he and Kendra. After a semidecent interval, though, she’d hauled off and eloped with Jeffrey.

There were still days—moments, really—when Hutch couldn’t believe it had come to that, and this was one of them.

Now, standing in his kitchen, he closed his eyes, remembering.

Kendra had called him three days after tying the knot down in Vegas.

Even then he’d wanted to say, “This isn’t right. Come home.”

But he’d been too cussed proud to take the high road.

He’d wished “Lady Chamberlain” well and hung up in her ear. Hard. They’d seen each other numerous times afterward, the way things shook out, especially after Chamberlain bought his way out of the marriage and crossed the pond to resume his Lord-of-the-manor lifestyle while Kendra remained in Parable, rattling around in that hotel-sized mansion on Rodeo Road.

Small as Parable was, he and Kendra had come close to patching things up a few times, making another start, but something always went wrong, probably because neither one of them trusted the other any further than they could have thrown them.

They’d been civil last Saturday night at Slade and Joslyn’s noisy supper table, but Kendra had looked ready to jump out of her skin at any moment, and as soon as the meal was over and the dishes were in the machine, she’d grabbed up her little girl and boogied for town in her boxy mom-car.

What had happened to that little BMW convertible she used to drive?

“She wasn’t expecting to see you tonight,” Joslyn had explained, touching his hand once Kendra and the child were out of the house.

Hutch had slanted an evil look at his half brother. “I know the feeling,” he’d said.

Slade had merely looked smug.

Now with another long, dirty workday behind him and lunch a distant memory, Hutch stood there in his stupidly big kitchen and tried to shift his focus to rustling up some kind of a supper, but the few budding science experiments hunkered down in the fridge held no appeal. Neither did the resoundingly empty house—by rights, the place should have been bursting with noisy ranch kids and rescued dogs by now. Instead it was neat, cold and stone silent.

Hutch sighed, shoved a hand through his hair. Stepped back from the refrigerator and shut the door.

Upstairs he took a quick shower and donned fresh jeans, a white shirt and go-to-town boots.

He’d hidden out long enough, damn it.

By God, he was through keeping a low profile—he meant to fire up one of the ranch trucks, drive into Parable to the Butter Biscuit Café, claim one of the stools at the counter and order up his usual cheeseburger, shake and fries. As for the joshing and the questions and the speculative glances he was bound to run into?

Bring it, he thought.

KENDRA HAD HAD a week to put that off-the-wall encounter with Hutch the previous Saturday night behind her and she was mostly over it.

Mostly.

She’d been busy, after all, overseeing the move of her real estate company from the mansion on Rodeo Road to the little storefront, catty-corner from the Butter Biscuit Café, enrolling Madison at the year-round preschool/day-care center and scanning the multiple-listings for cozy two-bedroom houses within a reasonable radius of Parable.

In a town like that one, smaller properties were always hard to find—people didn’t necessarily sell their houses when they retired to Florida or Arizona or entered a nursing home. They often passed them down to the next generation.

At present, Kendra’s choices were a double-wide trailer in the very court where she’d grown up so unhappily with her grandmother—no possible way—what resembled a converted chicken coop on the far side of Three Trees, which was thirty miles away, or the cramped apartment over old Mrs. Lund’s garage on Cinch Buckle Street, which rented for a tidy sum and didn’t even have its own entrance.

With her fifteen-thousand-square-foot mega-mansion on the market, already swarming with cleaning people and painters these days in preparation for showing—she and Madison had taken up temporary residence in the estate’s small guesthouse.

Given that two different potential buyers, both highly qualified, had already expressed interest in the main residence, Kendra had no intention of getting too settled in the cottage, cheery and convenient though the place was. Upscale homes were much easier to sell than regular houses, at least in that part of Montana, because so many jet-setters liked to buy them up and visit them once in a blue moon.

For now, though, the guesthouse was sufficient for their needs. Madison loved the big yard, the thriving flower gardens and the swing on the mansion’s screened-in sun porch. The four-year-old was content to share the cottage’s one bedroom with Kendra, take meals in the tiny, sun-splashed kitchen, and ease, an hour or two at a time, into the preschool program, where there were plenty of playmates around her own age.

Already Madison’s fair skin was golden, having absorbed so much country sunshine, and she didn’t cry at the prospect of even the shortest separation from Kendra.

Tara Kendall stopped by the real estate office just as Kendra was about to close up for the day. She and Madison planned on picking up a takeout meal over at the Butter Biscuit, then eating at the small white wrought-iron table at the edge of the rose garden on Rodeo Road.

“Can we get a dog now?” Madison was asking for the umpteenth time, when Tara breezed in, pretty with her shoulder-length brown hair expertly layered and her perfect makeup that looked like no makeup at all.

“Do I have an offer for you,” Tara said, with a broad grin. She wore a sleek yellow sundress that flattered her slight but womanly figure, and her legs were so tanned she didn’t need panty hose. “My golden retriever, Lucy, just happens to have a sister who still needs a home.”

“Gee,” Kendra drawled, feeling self-conscious in her jeans and T-shirt. “Thanks so much for that suggestion, Tara.”

Madison was already jumping up and down in anticipation. “My very own dog!” she crowed.

Tara chuckled and reached out a manicured hand to ruffle Madison’s bright copper curls. “Oops,” she said, addressing Kendra in a singsong voice that sounded warmly insincere. “Did I just put my foot in my mouth?”

“More like your entire leg,” Kendra replied sweetly. Tara, a relative newcomer to Parable, had fit right in with her and Joslyn, turning a duet into a trio—the three of them had been fast friends from the beginning. “We’re not ready for a dog yet, since we don’t really have a place to—” She paused, looked down at Madison, who was glowing like a firefly on a moonless night, and reconsidered the word she’d intended to use, which was “live,” diverting to “permanently reside.”

“We have the cottage,” Madison pointed out. “There’s a yard and Lucy’s sister could sleep with us.”

“Says you,” Kendra said, but with affection. She remembered how badly she’d wanted a pet as a little girl, but her grandmother had always refused, saying she had enough on her hands looking after a kid. She wasn’t about to clean up after a dog or a cat, too.

“You promised,” Madison reminded her sagely. She was so like Jeffrey—she had his eyes, his red hair, his insouciant certainty that everything good would come to him as a matter of course—including golden retriever puppies with sisters named Lucy.

“I said we could get a pet when we were settled,” Kendra clarified patiently after shooting a see-what-you’ve-done glance at a singularly unrepentant Tara. “We’ll be moving soon.”

“So will the dog,” Tara put in lightly. “Martie Wren can only keep her at the shelter for so long, then it’s off to—well—wherever.”

“Thanks again, Tara,” Kendra said. She knew her friend meant well, but the woman wasn’t known for her good judgment. Hadn’t she given up a great job in New York, heading up a world-class cosmetics company, to buy, of all things, a dilapidated chicken ranch on the outskirts of Parable, Montana?

Huge tears welled in Madison’s eyes. “Nobody wants Lucy’s sister?”

At last, Tara looked shamefaced. “She’s a beautiful dog,” she told the little girl gently. “Somebody will adopt her for sure.”

“You, for instance?” Kendra said.

“I guess she could live with Lucy and me for a while,” Tara decided, shifting her expensive hobo bag from her right shoulder to her left.

Madison grabbed Kendra’s hand, squeezed. “We could just look at Emma, couldn’t we?”

“Emma?” Kendra echoed, dancing on ice now, Bambi with all four limbs scrabbling for traction.

“That’s what we’d call Lucy’s sister,” Madison said matter-of-factly, her little face shining more brightly than the sunset gathering in shades of pink and orange at the rims of the mountains to the east. “Emma.”

Emma. It was Madison’s birth mother’s name. Did she know that?

How could she? She’d been only a year old when Emma gave her up.

“Why ‘Emma’?” Kendra asked carefully, hoping to hide her dismayed surprise from the child.

Tara, she instantly noted, had already read her face, though she couldn’t have known the significance of the name, and she looked way beyond apologetic.

“It’s a pretty name,” Madison said. “Don’t you think so, Mommy?”

“It’s lovely,” Kendra conceded. “Now, shouldn’t we pick up our supper and head for home?” She glanced at Tara. “Join us? Nothing fancy—we’re getting takeout—but we’d love to share.”

Tara blinked, clearly uncertain what response she ought to give. “Well—”

“And it would be fun to meet Lucy,” Madison went on. “Is she with you?”

“As a matter of fact,” Tara said, “yes. She’s in the car. We just came from the vet’s office and—”

“You’re both welcome,” Kendra insisted. Firstly because Tara was a dear friend and secondly, because she was enjoying the other woman’s obvious discomfort. “You and Lucy.”

“Well,” Tara murmured, with a weak little smile, “okay.”

Kendra smiled. “Let’s go, then,” she said, jingling the ring of keys she’d just plucked from her purse.

She shut off the inside lights, stepped out onto the sidewalk and locked up behind them. Leaving Kendra’s Volvo in the parking lot out back, they crossed the street to the Butter Biscuit Café. Tara’s flashy red sports car was parked on the street in front of the restaurant, the yellow dandelion-fluff dog, Lucy, pressing her muzzle against the driver’s-side window, steaming up the glass.

Kendra’s heart softened at the very sight of that dog, while Madison rushed over to stand on tiptoe and press the palms of both hands against the window.

“Hello, Lucy!” Madison cried gleefully.

Lucy barked joyously, her brown eyes luminous with impromptu adoration. She tongued the window where Madison’s right palm rested.

Tara laughed. “See?” she said, giving Kendra a light elbow to the ribs. “It’s fate.”

“I’ll get you for this,” Kendra told her friend with an undertone.

“No, you’ll thank me.” Tara beamed, all confidence again. “I’m counting on Emma to win you over.” She whispered that last part.

They practically had to drag Madison away from the car, and the dog, each adult gripping one of her small hands as they approached the entrance to the Butter Biscuit Café.

The place was rocking, as always, with dishes clinking and waitresses rushing back and forth and the jukebox blaring an old Randy Travis song.

All the noise and busyness subsided though, at least for Kendra, when her gaze found and landed unerringly on Hutch Carmody.

He sat alone at the counter, ridiculously handsome in ordinary jeans, a white shirt and black boots. A plate sat in front of him, containing half a cheeseburger, a few French fries and some pickles.

It wouldn’t have been so awkward if he hadn’t noticed Kendra—or at least, if he’d pretended not to notice her—but he turned toward her immediately, as though equipped with Kendra-detecting radar.

A slow smile lifted his mouth at one corner and his greenish-blue eyes sparked with amused interest.

Madison rushed straight toward him, as if they were old friends. “We’re getting a dog!” she piped. “Well, maybe.”

Hutch grinned down at the child, his expression softening a little, full of a kindness Kendra had never seen in him before, not even in their most private and tender moments. The man definitely had a way with kids.

“Is that so?” he asked companionably. “Is this dog purple, like your kangaroo?”

Madison giggled at this question. “No, silly,” she said. “Dogs are never purple!”

Hutch chuckled. “Neither are kangaroos, in my experience. Not that we have a whole lot of them hopping around the great state of Montana.”

“They mostly live in Australia,” Madison told him solemnly. “Rupert is only purple because he’s a toy.”

“I guess that explains it,” Hutch replied, his gaze rising slowly to reconnect with Kendra’s. Electricity arced, potent, between them. “I’m glad to have the purple kangaroo question settled. It’s been troubling me a lot.”

And that wasn’t the only thing he’d been wondering about, Kendra suddenly realized. He wanted to know how she’d managed to produce a child without ever being pregnant.

As if that were any of his business.

“Hello, Hutch,” Kendra said, her voice strangely wooden.

He merely nodded.

Tara spoke up. “How have you been?” she asked him nervously.

Something flickered in Hutch’s eyes; it was obvious that he’d figured out what Tara really wanted to know. “I’ve been just fine, Tara,” he replied evenly and without rancor. “Except, of course, for that whole non-wedding thing.”

Tara blushed.

So did Kendra.

“G-good,” Tara said.

“We’d better place our order,” Kendra added, and immediately felt like a complete fool. A well-spoken person otherwise, she never seemed to know what to say around Hutch. “B-before the café gets any busier, I mean—”

“Plus Lucy’s locked up in the red car outside,” Madison put in.

“Plus that,” Kendra said lamely.

“Lucy?” Hutch asked, raising one eyebrow.

“My dog,” Tara explained.

“Right,” Hutch answered. His gaze remained on Kendra, stirring up all sorts of totally unwanted memories, like the way his hands felt on her bare thighs or the touch of his lips gliding softly over the tops of her breasts. “Nice to see you again,” he added casually.

When he looked at her that way, Kendra always felt as though her clothes were made of cellophane, and that got her hackles up. Not to mention her nipples, which, thankfully, were well hidden under the loose fabric of her T-shirt.

Even though she turned away quickly and began studying the big menu board on the wall behind the cash register, Kendra was still acutely aware of Hutch, of little Madison, who so clearly adored him, and of Tara, who was trying to pick up the dangling conversational thread.

“Rodeo Days are almost upon us,” Tara said brightly. Every Independence Day weekend since the beginning of time, Parable had hosted the county rodeo, fireworks and carnival. People came from miles around to eat barbecued pork and beef in the park, root for their favorite cowboys and barrel-racing cowgirls, and ride the Ferris wheel and the Whirly-Gig. “The cleanup committee is looking for volunteers. Shall I put your name down to help out, Hutch?”

The woman was wasted as a chicken rancher, Kendra thought, pretending to puzzle between the café’s famous corn-bread casserole and deep-fried catfish. Tara should have been selling ice to penguins.

“Sure,” she heard Hutch say.

Kendra settled on the corn-bread casserole, preferring to avoid deep-fried anything, slanted a glance at Tara and raised her voice a little to place the order with a waitress. “To go, please,” she added, perhaps a touch pointedly.

She heard Hutch chuckle, low and gruff.

What was funny?

Tara edged over to Kendra’s side, digging in her purse for money.

“My treat,” Kendra said, watching out of the corner of her eye as Madison tore herself out of Hutch’s orbit and joined the women in front of the cash register.

The food was packed for transport, handed over and paid for, all in due course. As they were leaving, Madison turned back to wave at Hutch.

“I like that cowboy man,” she announced, to all and sundry, her little voice ringing like a silver bell at Christmas.

An affectionate group chuckle rippled through the café and Kendra hid a sigh behind the smile she turned on her daughter. “Let’s go,” she said, taking Madison’s small and somewhat grubby hand in hers before they crossed the street to get to Kendra’s Volvo.

“Meet you at your place,” Tara called, unlocking her car door and then laughing as she wrestled the eager puppy back so she could slide into the driver’s seat and take the wheel.

Kendra nodded and, when the Walk sign flashed, she and Madison started across the street.

“Don’t you like the cowboy man, Mommy?” Madison asked, wrinkling her face against the bright dazzle of afternoon sunshine.

The question surprised Kendra so much that she nearly stopped right there in the middle of the road. “Now why on earth would you ask such a thing, Madison Rose Shepherd?” she asked, keeping her tone light, almost teasing.

“If he looks at you,” Madison observed, as they stepped up onto the sidewalk and started toward the Volvo, “you look away.”

Thinking it was uncanny, the things children not only noticed but could verbalize, Kendra turned up her inner-smile dial a notch and squeezed Madison’s hand gently. “Do I?” she countered, knowing full well that she did.

Madison nodded. “He looks at you a lot, too,” she added.

Mercifully they’d reached the car, and the next few minutes were taken up with settling Madison in her booster seat and placing the take-out bag carefully on the floor, so the food inside wouldn’t spill.

A four-year-old’s attention span being what it was, Kendra had reason to hope the subject would have changed by the time she’d buckled herself in behind the wheel and started the car with an unintended roar of the motor.

“Do you know if the cowboy man likes dogs?” Madison ventured, from her perch in the backseat.

Kendra calmly took her foot off the gas pedal, shifted into Drive and steered carefully into the nonexistent traffic. “Yes, I think so,” she replied, as matter-of-factly as she could.

“That’s good,” Madison said happily.

Kendra wasn’t about to pursue that observation. “Have you ever been to a rodeo?” she asked, a way of deflecting the topic away from dogs and Hutch Carmody.

“What’s a rodeo?” Madison asked.

Kendra took the short drive home to describe the phenomenon in words her small daughter might be expected to understand.

“Oh,” Madison said when Kendra was finished. “Will the cowboy man be there?”

* * *

LUCY THE GOLDEN RETRIEVER turned out to be a real charmer, with her butter-colored fur and those saintly brown eyes dancing with intermittent mischief.

After supper, served as planned at the metal table beside the rose garden, Madison and the pup ran madly around the yard, celebrating green grass and vivid colors and the cool breeze of a summer evening.

Watching them, Tara smiled. “I’m sorry if I put you on the spot before,” she said to Kendra, after taking a sip from her glass of iced tea. “About Lucy’s sister, I mean.”

“That was her birth mother’s name,” Kendra reflected, watching the child and the dog as they played in the gathering twilight.

Tara set the glass down. “What? Lucy?”

Kendra shook her head. “No,” she said, very softly. “Emma. Do you suppose Madison remembers her mother?”

“You are Madison’s mother,” Tara replied.

“Tara,” Kendra said wearily.

“From what you’ve told Joslyn and me, Madison’s been in foster care since she was a year old. How could she remember?”

Kendra lifted one shoulder slightly, then let it fall. “It seems like a pretty big coincidence that Madison would choose that particular name. She must have overheard it somewhere.”

“Probably,” Tara allowed. Then she added, “Kendra, look at me.”

Kendra shifted her gaze from drinking in the sight of Madison and Lucy, frolicking against a backdrop of blooming flowers of every hue, to Tara’s concerned face.

“You’re not afraid she’ll come back, are you?” Tara prompted, almost in a whisper. “This Emma person, I mean, and try to take Madison away?”

Kendra shook her head. She was at once comforted and saddened by the knowledge that Madison’s biological mother hadn’t wanted her baby enough to fight for her.

The woman had demanded money, naturally, but she’d signed off readily enough once Jeffrey’s American lawyers got the point across that the buying and selling of babies was illegal.

“She’s relinquished all rights to Madison,” she finally answered.

Tara sighed. “It’s hard to understand some people,” she said.

“Impossible,” Kendra agreed. Oddly, though, she wasn’t thinking of Madison’s birth mom anymore, but of Hutch.

The man was a mystery, an enigma.

He fractured women’s hearts with apparent impunity—there always seemed to be another hopeful waiting in the wings, certain she’d be the exception to the rule—and yet kids, dogs and horses saw nothing in him to fear and everything to love.

Was he actually a good man, underneath all that bad-boy mojo and easy charm?

“Still planning to sell this place, then?” Tara asked with a gesture of one hand that took in the mansion as well as the grounds.

Kendra nodded. “I’ll be putting the proceeds in trust for Madison,” she said. She hadn’t told Joslyn and Tara everything, but they both knew Jeffrey had fathered the little girl. “It’s rightfully hers.”

Tara absorbed that quietly and took another sip from her iced tea. “You won’t miss it? The money, I mean? Living in the biggest and fanciest house in town?”

Kendra’s smile was rueful. “I’m not broke, Tara,” she said. “I’ve racked up a lot of commissions since I started Shepherd Real Estate.” She looked back over one shoulder at the looming structure behind them. “As for missing this house, no, I won’t, not for a moment. It’s a showplace, not a home.”

Tara didn’t answer. She seemed to be musing, mulling something over.

“So,” Kendra said, “how’s the chicken ranch coming along?”

At that, Tara rolled her beautiful eyes. “It’s a disaster,” she answered with honest good humor. “The nesting-house roof is sagging, the hens aren’t laying—I suspect that’s because the roosters are secretly gay—and Boone Taylor still refuses to plant shrubbery to hide that eyesore of a trailer he lives in so it won’t be the first thing I see when I look out my kitchen window every morning.”

“Regrets?” Kendra asked gently. Madison and Lucy seemed to be winding down; moving in slow motion as the shadows thickened. After a bath and a story, Madison would sleep soundly.

Tara immediately shook her head. “No,” she said. “It’s hard, but I’m a long way from giving up.”

“Good,” Kendra said with a smile. “Because I’d feel guilty if you were having second thoughts, considering I was the one who sold you the place.”

“You might have warned me about the neighbors,” Tara joked.

“Boone isn’t so bad,” Kendra felt honor-bound to say. She’d known him since childhood, known his late wife, Corrie, too. He’d lost interest in life for a long time after Corrie’s death from breast cancer a few years back, but last November he’d up and run for sheriff and gotten himself elected by a country mile. “He’s just stubborn, like most of the men around here. That’s what gets them through the hard times.”

Tara’s eyes widened a little. “Does that apply to Hutch, too?”

Kendra stood up, beckoned to her tired daughter. “Time to get ready for bed,” she called to Madison, who meandered slowly toward her—proof in itself that she was exhausted. Like most small children, she normally resisted sleep with all her might, lest she miss something.

The puppy trotted over to Tara, nuzzling her knee, and she laughed as she bent to ruffle her ears.

“If you think Lucy’s perfect,” she said, instead of goodbye, “just wait till you meet her sister.”

CHAPTER THREE

THE NEXT MORNING after church, Kendra gave in to the pressures of fate—and her very persistent daughter—and drove across town to Paws for Reflection, the private animal shelter run by a woman named Martie Wren.

Martie, an institution in Parable, oversaw the operation out of an office in her small living room, surviving entirely on donations and the help of numerous volunteers. She’d converted the two large greenhouses in back to dog-and-cat housing, though she also took in birds and rabbits and even the occasional pygmy goat. The place was never officially closed, even on Sundays and holidays.

A sturdy woman with kindly eyes and a shock of unruly gray hair, Martie was watering the flower beds in her front yard when Kendra and Madison arrived, parking on the street.

“Tara said you might be stopping by,” Martie sang out happily, waving and then hurrying over to shut off the faucet and wind the garden hose around its plastic spool.

Kendra, busy helping Madison out of her safety rigging in the backseat, smiled wryly back at the other woman. “Of course she did,” she replied cheerfully.

“We’re here to see Lucy’s sister,” Madison remarked.

Martie, at the front gate by then, pushing it wide open in welcome, chuckled. “Well, come on inside then, and have a look at her. She’s been waiting for you. Got her all dolled up just in case the two of you happened to take a shine to each other.”

Kendra stifled a sigh. She wanted a dog as much as Madison did—there had been a canine-shaped hole in her heart for as long as she could remember—but she’d hoped to find a permanent place to live before acquiring a pet. Get settled in.

Alas, the universe did not seem concerned with her personal plans.

She and Madison passed through the gate, closing it behind them, and Martie led the way onto the neatly painted front porch and up to the door.

The retriever puppy did indeed seem to be waiting—she was sitting primly on the hooked rug in the tiny entryway, with a bright red ribbon tied to her collar and her chocolate-brown eyes practically liquid with hope.

Kendra immediately melted.

Madison, meanwhile, placed her hands on her hips and tilted her head to one side, studying the yellow fluff-ball intently.

The puppy rose from its haunches and approached the little girl, looking for all the world as though it were smiling at her. Where have you been? the animal’s expression seemed to say. We’re supposed to be having fun together.

Madison turned her eyes to Kendra. “She’s so pretty,” she said, sounding awed, as though there had never been and never would be another dog like this one.

“Very pretty,” Kendra agreed, choking up a little. She saw so much of her childhood self in Madison and that realization made her cautious. Madison was Madison, and trying to soothe her own childhood hurts through her daughter would be wrong on so many levels.

Martie, an old hand at finding good homes for otherwise unwanted critters, simply waited, benignly silent. She believed in letting things unfold at their own pace—not a bad philosophy in Kendra’s opinion, though she’d yet to master it herself.

As a little girl she’d had to fight for every scrap of her grandmother’s attention. In her career she’d been virtually driven to succeed, believing with all her heart that nothing good would happen unless she made it happen.

Now that Madison had entered her life, though, it was time to make some changes. Shifting her type-A personality down a few gears, so she could appreciate what she had, rather than always striving for something more, was at the top of the list.

Madison was still gazing at Kendra’s face. “Can we take her home with us, Mommy?” she asked, clearly living for a “yes.” “Please? Can we name her Daisy?”

Kendra’s eyes burned as she crouched beside her daughter, putting herself at eye level with the child. “I thought you wanted to call her Emma,” she said.

Madison shook her head. “Daisy’s not an Emma. She’s a Daisy.”

Kendra put an arm around Madison, but loosely. “Okay,” she said, very gently. “Daisy it is.”

“She can come home with us, then?” Madison asked, wide-eyed, a small, pulsing bundle of barely contained energy.

“Well, there’s a procedure that has to be followed,” Kendra replied, looking over at Martie as she stood up straight again, leaving one hand resting on the top of Madison’s head.

“Daisy’s had her shots,” Martie said, “and I’ve known you since you were the size of a bean sprout, Kendra Shepherd. You’ll give this dog a good home and lots of love, and that’s all that matters.”

Something unspoken passed between the two women. Martie was probably remembering other visits to the shelter, when Kendra was small. She’d been the youngest volunteer at the shelter, cleaning kennels, filling water bowls and making sure every critter in the place got a gentle pat and a few kind words.

“You get a free vet visit, too,” Martie said, as though further persuasion might be required.

Madison’s face shone with delight. “Let’s take Daisy home right now,” she said.

Kendra and Martie both laughed.

“There are a few papers to be signed,” Martie said to the child. “Why don’t you and Daisy come on into the office with your mom and me, and keep each other company while we grown-ups take care of a few things?”

Madison, though obviously eager to take Daisy and run before one of the adults changed their mind, nodded dutifully. “All right,” she said, her hand nestled into the golden fur at Daisy’s nape. “But we’re in a hurry.”

Martie chuckled again.

Kendra hid a smile and said, “Madison Rose.”

“We’ll be very quick,” Martie promised over one shoulder.

They all trailed into Martie’s office, Daisy sticking close to Madison’s side.

“It isn’t polite to rush people, Madison,” Kendra told her daughter.

“You said,” Madison reminded her, “that the church man took too long to stop talking, and everybody wanted to get out of there and have lunch. You wanted him to hurry up and finish.”

Kendra blushed slightly. She had said something along those lines as they were driving away from the church, but that was different from standing up when the sermon seemed never-ending and saying something like, “Wrap it up, will you? We’re in a hurry.”

Explaining that to a four-year-old, obviously, would take some doing.

Martie chuckled again. “Lloyd’s a dear, but he does tend to run on when he’s got a captive audience on a Sunday morning,” she remarked with kindly tolerance. “Bless his heart.”

The Reverend Lloyd Atherton, like Martie, was a fixture in Parable. Long-winded though he was, everybody loved him.

Kendra made a donation, in lieu of a fee, listened to a brief and heartrending explanation of Daisy’s background—she’d literally been left on Martie’s doorstep in a cardboard box along with six of her brothers and sisters—and signed a simple document promising to return Daisy to Paws for Reflection if things didn’t work out.

“Is Daisy hungry?” Madison wanted to know. It was a subtle nudge. We’re in a hurry.

Martie smiled. “Puppies always seem to think they are, but Daisy had a bowl of kibble less than half an hour ago. She’ll be just fine until supper time.”

Madison nodded, apparently satisfied. She was staring raptly at the little dog, stroking its soft coat as she waited for the adoption to be finalized.

Soon enough, the details had been handled and Madison was in the back of the Volvo again, buckled into her booster seat, with Daisy sitting alertly beside her, panting in happy anticipation of whatever.

They made a quick stop at the big discount store out on the highway, leaving Daisy waiting patiently in the car with a window partly rolled down for air while they rushed inside to buy assorted gear—a collar and leash, a package of poop bags, a fleecy bed large enough for a golden retriever puppy to grow into, grooming supplies, a few toys and the brand of kibble Martie had recommended.

Daisy was thrilled at their return and when Kendra tossed the bed into the backseat, the animal frolicked back and forth across the expanse of it, unable to contain her delight, causing Madison to laugh in a way Kendra had never heard her laugh before—rambunctiously and without self-consciousness or restraint.

It was a beautiful thing to hear and Kendra was glad there were so many small tasks to be performed before she could put the car in motion, because her vision was a little blurred.

Back at the guesthouse, Kendra put away the dog’s belongings while Madison and Daisy ran frenetically around the backyard, both of them bursting with pent-up energy and pure celebration of each other.

“We need a poop bag, please,” Madison announced presently, appearing in the cottage doorway, a vision in her little blue Sunday-school dress.

Smiling, Kendra opened the pertinent package, followed Madison outside to the evidence and proceeded to demonstrate the proper collection and disposal of dog doo-doo.

Afterward, she insisted they both wash their hands at the bathroom sink.

Daisy looked on from the doorway, wagging her tail and looking pleased to be in the midst of so much interesting activity.

Lunch, long overdue by then, was next on the agenda. Madison and Kendra made peanut butter and jelly sandwiches in the impossibly small kitchen, and Kendra poured a glass of milk for both of them.

Daisy settled herself near Madison’s chair, ears perked forward, nose raised to sniff the air, probably hoping that manna, in the form of scraps of a PB and J, might fall from heaven.

Martie had been adamant on that point, though. No people food and very few treats. The treat a dog needed most, she’d said, was plenty of love and affection.

When the meal was over and the table had been cleared, Madison announced, yawning, that Daisy had had a big morning and therefore needed a nap.

Amused—Madison normally napped only under protest—Kendra suggested that they ought to change out of their church clothes first.

Madison put on pink cotton shorts and a blue short-sleeved shirt, and Kendra opted for jeans and a lightweight green pullover. When she came out of the bedroom, Madison and Daisy were already curled up together on the new fleece dog bed, and Kendra didn’t have the heart to raise an objection.

Lie down with dogs, get up with fleas, she heard her grandmother say.

Shut up, Gramma, was her silent response.

“Sleep tight,” she said aloud, taking a book from the shelf and stepping outside, planning to sit in the shade of the maple trees and read for a while.

The scene was idyllic—bees buzzing, flowers nodding their many-colored heads in the light breeze, the big Montana sky sweeping blue and cloudless and eternal overhead.

Kendra relaxed as she read, and at some point, she must have dozed off, because she opened her eyes suddenly and found Hutch Carmody standing a few feet away, big as life.

She blinked a couple of times, but he didn’t disappear.

Not a dream, then. Crap.

“Sorry,” he said without a smidgeon of regret. “Didn’t mean to wake you.”

Kendra straightened and glanced toward the open doorway of the cottage, looking for Madison. There was no sign of either the child or the dog, but Kendra went inside to check on them anyway. They were both sleeping, curled up together on Daisy’s cloud-soft bed.

Quietly, Kendra went back outside to face Hutch.

How could she not have heard him arrive? His truck was parked right there in the driveway, a stone’s throw from where she’d been sitting. At the very least, she should have heard the tires in the gravel or the closing of the driver’s door.

“What are you doing here?” she whispered, too rattled to be polite.

Hutch spread his hands wide, grinning. “I’m unarmed,” he said, sidestepping the question. He was, she recalled, a master at sidestepping any topic he didn’t want to discuss. “Don’t shoot.”

Kendra huffed out a sigh, picked up her book, which she’d dropped in the grass when she’d woken up to an eyeful of Hutch, and held it tightly against her side. “What. Are. You. Doing. Here?” she repeated.

He gestured for her to sit down, and since her knees were weak, she dropped back into her lawn chair. He drew another one up alongside hers and sat. They were both gazing straight ahead, like two strangers in the same row on an airplane, intent on the seat belt/oxygen mask lecture from an invisible flight attendant.

“Tell me about your little girl,” Hutch finally said.

“Why should I?” Kendra asked reasonably, proud of her calm tone.

“I guess because she could have been ours,” he replied.

For a moment, Kendra felt as if he’d elbowed her, hard, or even punched her in the stomach. Once the adrenaline rush subsided, though, she knew there was no point in withholding the information.

A person could practically throw a rock from one end of Parable to the other and juicy stories got around fast.

“You’ll hear about it soon enough,” she conceded, though ungraciously, keeping her voice down in case Madison woke up and somehow homed in on the conversation, “so I might as well tell you.”

Hutch gave a long-suffering sigh and she felt him looking in her direction now, though she was careful not to meet his gaze. “Might as well,” he agreed quietly.

“Not that it’s any of your business,” Kendra pointed out.

He simply waited.

Distractedly, Kendra wondered if the man thought she’d given birth to Madison herself and kept her existence hidden from everyone in Parable all this time.

“Madison is adopted,” she said. It was a simple statement, but it left her feeling as though she’d spilled her guts on some ludicrous tell-all TV show.

“Why do I think there’s more to the story?” Hutch asked after a pause. His very patience galled Kendra—what right did he have to be patient? This was a courtesy explanation—she didn’t owe it to him. She didn’t owe him anything except maybe a broken heart.

“Madison’s father was my ex-husband,” Kendra said. Suddenly, she wanted to cry and it had nothing to do with her previous hesitation to talk about something so bruising and private. Why couldn’t Madison have been born to her, as she should have been?

“And her mother?”

Once again, Kendra looked to make sure Madison hadn’t turned up in the cottage doorway, all ears. “She was one of Jeffrey’s girlfriends.”

Hutch swore under his breath. “That rat bastard,” he added a moment later.

Kendra stiffened her spine, squared her shoulders, jutted out her chin a little way. “I beg your pardon?” she said in a tone meant to point out the sheer irony, not to mention the audacity, of the pot calling the kettle black.

“Could we not argue, just this once?” Hutch asked hoarsely.

“Just this once,” Kendra said, and one corner of her mouth twitched with a strange urge to smile. Probably some form of hysteria, she decided.

“I’m sorry I called your ex-husband a rat bastard,” Hutch offered.

“You are not,” Kendra challenged, still without looking at him. Except out of the corner of one eye, that is.

“All right,” Hutch ground out, “fine.” He sighed and shoved a hand through his hair. “Let me rephrase that. I’m sorry I didn’t keep my opinion to myself.”

A brief, sputtering laugh escaped Kendra then. “Since when have you ever been known to keep your opinion to yourself?”

“You’re determined to turn this into a shouting match, aren’t you?”

“No,” Kendra said pointedly, bristling. “I am not planning on arguing with you, Hutch Carmody. Not ever again.”

“Kendra,” Hutch said, “you can hedge and stall all you want, but eventually we’re going to have this conversation, so we might as well just go ahead and get it done.”

She made a swatting motion in his general direction, as though trying to chase away a fly. Now she was digging in her heels again and she couldn’t seem to help it. “Madison is my daughter now, and that’s all that matters.”

“You’re an amazing woman, Kendra,” Hutch told her, and he sounded so serious that she swiveled on the seat of her lawn chair to look at him with narrowed, suspicious eyes.

“I mean it,” he said with a gruff chuckle, the sound gentle and yet innately masculine. “Some people couldn’t handle raising another woman’s child—under those circumstances, anyhow.”

“It isn’t Madison’s fault that Jeffrey Chamberlain was a—”

Hutch’s mouth crooked up at one corner and sad mischief danced in his eyes. “Rat bastard?” he finished for her.

“Yes,” she said. “That’s about the size of it.”

He grinned full-out, which put him at an unfair advantage because when he did that, her bones turned to jelly and her IQ plummeted at least twenty points. “Well now,” he said. “We finally agree on something.”

“Go figure,” Kendra remarked, going for a snippy tone but not quite getting there.

“We’re on a roll.”

“Or not.”

He laughed, shook his head. “I’m about to say something you’ll have to agree with, whether you want to or not,” he warned.

She felt a weird little thrill and could have shaken herself for it. “Is that so?”

Hutch nodded toward the cottage doorway, where Madison finally stood, rubbing her eyes and yawning, Daisy at her side. “You’re lucky to have that little girl in your life, however it came about, and the reverse is true, too. You were born to be a mother, Kendra—and a good one.”

“Damn it,” Kendra muttered, at a loss for a comeback.

Hutch grinned as Madison’s eyes widened—she was slowly waking up—and a glorious smile lit her face. She scrambled toward them.

“Hello, cowboy man!” she whooped, feet still bare, curls rumpled, cheeks flushed.

Hutch laughed again. “I guess you might as well call me that as anything else,” he said. He exuded the kind of quiet, wholesome approval little girls crave from daddy-types.

Not that Hutch was any such thing.

“Do you like dogs?” Madison asked earnestly.

As if she’d already made her own decision on that score, Daisy suddenly leaped into Hutch’s lap in a single bound, bracing her forepaws on his shoulders and licking his face.

“Yep,” he said from behind all that squirming dog. “And, as you can see, they’re inclined to like me, too.”

“Good,” Madison said.

Kendra felt unaccountably nervous, though she couldn’t have said why. “Madison—” she began, but her voice fell away.

“Do you like kids, too?” Madison pressed.

Kendra groaned inwardly.

Hutch set Daisy carefully on the ground, patting her still-bouncing head. “I like kids just fine,” he said.

“Do you have any?”

Hutch shook his head. “Nope.”

“Madison,” Kendra repeated, with no more effect than before.

“Do you like my mommy, too?”

Kendra squeezed her eyes shut.

“As a matter of fact,” Hutch replied easily, “I do. Your mother and I are old friends.”

Kendra squirmed again and forced herself to open her eyes.

Even rummaged up a smile that wouldn’t quite stick.

Before she could think of anything to say, however, Hutch unfolded himself from his lawn chair with Madison standing nearby, still basking in his presence. “I guess I’d better head on home before I wear out my welcome,” he drawled, and there was a twinkle in his eyes when he snagged Kendra’s gaze. “See you around,” he added.

Madison caught hold of his hand. “Wait,” she said, in a near whisper.

He leaned down, resting his hands on his knees. “What?” he asked, with a smile in his voice.

“Will you be at the rodeo thing?” Madison continued.

“Sure enough,” Hutch said, his tone and manner so void of condescension that he might have been addressing another adult. Maybe that was his gift, that he treated children like people, not some lesser species. “Never miss it. After all, I’m a cowboy man.”

Madison beamed, evidently satisfied, and when Daisy bounded off in pursuit of a passing butterfly, her small mistress gamboled after her, arms wheeling as if she might take flight.

“Cowboy man,” Kendra reflected thoughtfully.

“I’ve been called worse,” Hutch joked.

“That’s a fact,” Kendra said brightly. She could have listed half a dozen names she’d called him over the years, to his face and in the privacy of her own head.

Whistling some ditty under his breath, and still grinning, Hutch turned and headed for his truck, lifting a hand in farewell as he went.

He got behind the wheel and drove away, and Kendra didn’t watch him go.

* * *

“YOU’RE WAY TOO pregnant to be at work,” Kendra told Joslyn the next day, stepping into the storefront office after dropping Madison off for the morning preschool session and leaving Daisy at Tara’s for a doggy playdate with Lucy, only to find her business partner already there, tapping away at the keyboard of her computer.

Joslyn flashed her a smile as she looked up from the monitor. “So I hear,” she said. She sighed good-naturedly. “From Slade. From Opal. From Callie.”

“And now, from me,” Kendra replied, setting her handbag on the edge of the desk since she’d be going out again as soon as she’d checked her messages. She was due at her lawyer’s office at ten-thirty, which was why she hadn’t brought Daisy to work with her.

Madison had been beside herself at the thought of Daisy being left at home alone because, as she’d explained it, “Daisy is a puppy and a puppy is the same as a baby and a baby needs somebody with it at all times.”

Kendra had given in, at least temporarily.

“You’re supposed to be on maternity leave, remember?” she prompted, happy to see her friend for whatever reason, all protests aside.

“Ouch,” Joslyn said out of nowhere, spreading a hand over her zeppelin of a belly and making a wincey face.

“Is the little guy practicing his rodeo moves again?” Kendra asked, smiling. If only every baby could be born into a union as loving and warm as Joslyn and Slade’s—it would be a different world.

“It would seem he’s switched to pole vaulting,” Joslyn said in a tone of cheerful acceptance. After a few slow, deep breaths, she focused on the computer monitor again. “Come over here and check out this listing, Kendra. It’s a rental, but I think it might be exactly what you’ve been looking for.”

Immediately interested, Kendra rounded her friend’s desk to stand behind her and peer at the small white house on the screen. She recognized it, of course; she had at least a passing knowledge of every piece of property in Parable County, be it residential or commercial.

This charming little one-story colonial, with its white clapboard walls and green shutters and wraparound porch, was situated across the street from the town park, just two blocks from the public library. Both Madison’s preschool and the new real estate office were within easy walking distance.

“Why didn’t I know about this?” Kendra mused, studying the enticing image on the monitor.

Joslyn raised and lowered one shoulder, very slightly. “You’ve been out of town,” she replied. “Plus we only sell real estate, we don’t manage rentals.”

Kendra’s brain sifted through the facts she already knew: the colonial had belonged to attorney Maggie Landers’s late aunt, Billie. Upon Billie’s death, at least a decade before, Maggie had inherited the property. She’d had some much-needed renovations done, Kendra recalled, but never actually lived in the house herself. She’d rented it out to a schoolteacher, long-term. Now, apparently, it was empty—or about to be.

She practically dived for the telephone. Sure she already had an appointment with Maggie about Madison’s trust fund, but she didn’t want someone else snapping up the house.

Maggie’s front office assistant put Kendra through to the boss right away.

“Tell me you’re not canceling our appointment,” Maggie said without preamble. “If you do, you’ll be the third one today.”

Kendra’s heart had begun to pound. “No,” she said quickly, smiling. Hoping. “No, it isn’t that—I’ll be there at ten-thirty, like we agreed—”

“Kendra,” Maggie broke in, sounding concerned now. “What on earth is the matter? You sound as though you’ve just completed a triathlon.”

“Your house—the rental—Joslyn just showed me the listing on the internet—”

Maggie gave a nervous little laugh and Kendra could see her in her mind’s eye, fiddling with that strand of priceless pearls she always wore. “Yes? What about it?”

“Is it still available?”

Maggie sounded relieved when she answered, “Of course. The ad just went up today.”

“I’ll take it,” Kendra burst out. Her own recklessness left her gasping for breath—she never did reckless things. Well, not reckless things that didn’t involve Hutch Carmody, anyway.

“Sight unseen?” Maggie echoed.

“It’s perfect for Madison and me,” Kendra said, relaxing a little.

“Don’t you even want to know how much the rent will be?”

Kendra strained to see Joslyn’s monitor again and scanned quickly for the price. “That won’t be a problem,” she nearly chimed.

Maggie was quiet for a few moments, taking it all in. “All right,” she said finally. “Come early and we’ll go over the details of the trust fund, then run over to the house so you can have a look inside before you commit yourself to a year’s lease—”

Kendra bit back a very un-Kendra-like response, which would have gone something like this: I’m committing right now. Do you hear me? Right now!

“Fine,” she said moderately. “But please don’t show it to anyone else in the meantime.”

“In the meantime?” Maggie echoed, with a friendly little laugh. “As in, say, the next half hour? Relax, Kendra—if you want the house, it’s yours.”

Joslyn was grinning throughout the whole conversation.

“Thank you,” Kendra said, near tears, she was so excited. She said goodbye, hung up and grabbed her purse from the corner of her desk.

“Kendra,” Joslyn said, “take a breath. It’s meant to be.”

“That,” Kendra retorted lightly, already on her way to the door, car keys in hand, “is what you said about Hutch and me. Remember?”

“Oh,” Joslyn answered breezily, “I haven’t changed my mind on that score. Sooner or later, I’m sure you’ll both come around.”

Kendra shook her head, gave a rueful chuckle. “Don’t work too hard,” she said, opening the office door. “If you’re still here when I get back, I’ll buy you lunch at the Butter Biscuit.”

“One more lunch at the Butter Biscuit,” Joslyn said, “and I’ll be a butterball. Anyway, I promised to meet Shea at the Curly Burly at one—we’re going shopping.”

Kendra nodded and rushed out.

Five minutes later, she was seated in Maggie’s office, on the very edge of her chair.

Maggie had already warned her that building a legal structure that would protect Madison’s considerable financial interests would require a series of meetings, if only because of the complexity of the task.

Kendra listened to Maggie’s explanations and suggestions as patiently as she could, but her mind was on the one-story colonial with the fenced backyard. This, too, was unlike her—she usually focused keenly on whatever she was doing at the time, but today, it was impossible.

Maggie, a pretty woman with short hair, gamine eyes and very nice clothes, finally chuckled and laid down her expensive fountain pen.

“You’re not getting a word of this, are you, Kendra?” she asked.

Kendra smiled and shook her head. “I’m sorry. From the moment I realized the house might be available, I’ve been fidgety.”

Maggie collected her handbag from a drawer of her desk. “Then let’s go and do the walk-through,” she said. “Then we’ll come back here and take another shot at running the numbers for Madison’s fund.”

“I’d like that,” Kendra said, feeling almost giddy.

“Follow me, then,” Maggie said, jangling her car keys.

The cottage had been freshly painted, Kendra noticed with a pang of sweet avarice, and so had the picket fence out front. The flower beds were in full bloom and the lawn, newly mown, smelled sweetly of cut grass.

It was so easy to imagine herself and Madison living here.

“I knew you were selling the mansion, of course,” Maggie said when they got out of their cars and met on the sidewalk in front of the colonial. “But I guess I thought you’d be in the market to buy a place, rather than rent.”

“I did plan on buying,” Kendra answered, letting her gaze wander over the sleeping-in-the-sunshine face of that perfect little house, “but I’m learning that it’s wise to be open to surprises.”

Maggie smiled and opened the creaky gate. “Isn’t that the truth?” she responded.

CHAPTER FOUR

WHEN HUTCH FINALLY caught up with Brylee, she was in her small but well-organized warehouse on the outskirts of Three Trees, helping to stack boxes as they were unloaded from the back of a delivery truck.

Clad in jeans, sneakers and a blue U of M pullover, she looked more like a teenager than a thirty-year-old woman with a successful business and a bad-luck wedding day to her credit. Her russet-brown hair hung down her back in a long, fairly tidy braid, and she hadn’t bothered with makeup.

She didn’t notice Hutch right away and he used those moments to gather his resolve, all the while wishing he felt something for Brylee—God knew, she was beautiful and she was sweet and she was smart. She was definitely wife and mother material—but she didn’t stir him down deep where it counted and that was a deal-breaker.

At last Brylee stilled, like a doe catching the scent of some threat on the wind, she turned her head his way and saw him standing just a few feet inside the roll-up doorway of the warehouse,

Her large eyes, bluish today because of the color of the shirt she was wearing, looked hollow as she took him in and he knew she was weighing her options—seriously considering walking away without deigning to speak, if not shooting him down where he stood or running him over with the first handy forklift.

Brylee had a temper and she could be as hardheaded as any statue, but she was no coward. She spoke sotto voce to the other workers, all female, all of whom were staring now, as though Hannibal Lector had just appeared in their midst, wearing the leather mask and holding a plate of fava beans, and then came slowly toward him.

Brylee ran a small but thriving party-planning company that sold home decor items and various gifts. She had a network of sales people that covered a five-state area, holding lucrative little gatherings in people’s homes, and operated a thriving online store, as well.

“Hello, Hutch,” she said, indicating her nearby office with a nod and leading the way.

He fell into step with her after muttering a gruff “hello” of his own.

The office was small and furnished in early army surplus. Brylee evidently reserved her creative capacities for choosing and photographing products, training her “independent home decor consultants” and coming up with innovative marketing strategies. Here, in this little room off the warehouse, she handled the practical end of things.

“I wondered when you’d show up,” she said once they were inside her enclave with the door closed against listening ears.

“I wanted to come and see you right after the—well, after—but I was persuaded that it wouldn’t be a good idea,” Hutch replied. He stood with his back to the door, while Brylee perched on the edge of her beat-up steel desk, with her arms folded and her head tipped to one side in skeptical anticipation.

“I could have spared you the trouble of paying a visit,” Brylee replied quietly. She looked strained, exhausted, a little pale, but pride flashed in her changeable hazel eyes and stiffened her generous mouth. “I don’t have anything to say to you, Hutch. Nothing I’d want written in the Book of Life, anyway.”

“Well,” he drawled, after stifling a wry chuckle, “it just so happens that I have something to say to you.”

Brylee arched one eyebrow and waited. She looked bored now, but wary, too. What, she might have been wondering, was this yahoo going to spring on her now?

Hutch shoved a hand through his hair. He’d left his hat in the truck, but otherwise he was dressed as usual in work clothes and boots. Whisper Creek Ranch practically ran itself these days, well-staffed and well-organized as it was, but he still felt the need to get up every morning before the sun rose and tend to the business of herding cattle, mending fences and all the rest.

Today he hadn’t been able to keep his mind on the routine, though, and it was a damn confusing situation, too. He thought about Kendra 24/7, but he’d been drawn to Brylee ever since that broken-road wedding that didn’t quite come off.

“I can’t say I’m sorry for what I did,” he said straightforwardly. “Going through with that ceremony would have been the mistake of a lifetime—for both of us.”

“Yes, you made that pretty clear,” Brylee answered, her tone terse. “Is that what you drove all the way from Whisper Creek to tell me?”

“No,” Hutch said, standing his ground. “I came to say that you’ll find the right man, no matter what you think now, and when you do, you’ll be damn glad you didn’t marry me and wreck your chances to be happy.”

“Maybe I’m already ‘damn glad I didn’t marry you,’” Brylee reasoned tartly. “Did you ever consider that possibility?”

He grinned. “That one did occur to me, believe it or not,” he said. “I should have made you listen to me, Brylee, before things went as far as they did.”

“That was my grandmother’s dress I was wearing,” she said, after a short pause. “It had to be restored and altered and specially cleaned. I spent a fortune on the cake and the invitations and the flowers and all the rest. It’s going to take weeks, even with help from my friends, to send back all those wedding gifts.” Her shoulders moved in the ghost of a shrug. “But, hey, what the heck? You win some, you lose some. And besides, who needs six toaster ovens anyhow?”

Tears brimmed in her eyes and she looked away, fiercely dignified.

“Brylee,” Hutch said, not daring to touch her or even take a step in her direction. “I know you’re hurt. I’m sorry about that—sorrier than I’ve ever been about anything in my life. And I’m more than ready to reimburse you for any of the costs—”

“I don’t want your money!” she flared suddenly, looking straight at him now, with fire flashing behind the pride and sorrow in her eyes. “This was never about money—I have plenty of my own, in case you haven’t noticed.”

“I know that, Brylee,” he said gently.

“Then what did you expect to accomplish by coming here?” She held up an index finger. “Wait, let me answer for you,” she added. “Your conscience is bothering you—what passes for a conscience with you—and you want me to say all is forgiven and we can be friends and go on as if nothing happened.” With that, Brylee slipped past him and jerked the office door open wide. “Well, you can just go to hell, Hutch Carmody, and take your lame apologies with you.” A sharp, indrawn breath. “Get out.”

“You might want to try listening to what’s really being said to you, Brylee, instead of just the parts you want to hear,” he told her calmly, not moving. “It would save a lot of wear and tear on you and everybody else.”

“Get. Out.” Brylee parsed the words out. “Now.”

He spread his hands in an “I give up” gesture and ambled past her, across the warehouse, which was as still as a mausoleum, and out through the doorway into the sunshine.

Walker Parrish, Brylee’s brother, had just driven up in a big, extended-cab pickup with his stock company logo painted on the doors. He raised rodeo stock on his ranch outside of Three Trees, where he and Brylee had grown up.

Hutch stopped. He frankly wasn’t in the mood for any more yammer and recrimination, but he wouldn’t have it said that he’d tucked his tail and run from Walker or anybody else.

“We-e-e-l-ll,” Walker said, dragging out the word. “If it isn’t the runaway bridegroom.”

Hutch wasn’t about to give an inch. “No autographs, please,” he retorted dryly. He wasn’t looking for a fight, but if Walker wanted one, he’d come to the right man.

Walker chuckled and shook his head. Hutch knew women found Brylee’s big brother attractive, with his lean but wide-shouldered build and his rugged features, but so far he’d managed to steer clear of marriage, which should have made him at least a little sympathetic to Hutch’s side of the story, and clearly hadn’t.

“I can’t imagine what you’re doing on my sister’s property right now,” Walker observed, his water-gray eyes narrowed as he studied Hutch.

Hutch took his time shaping a reply. “I felt a need to offer an apology,” he finally said, his tone level, even affable. “She wasn’t in the frame of mind to accept it.”

“I don’t reckon she would be,” Walker said. “Far as I’m concerned, Brylee always was half again too good for you, and in the long run you probably did her a favor by calling off the wedding. None of which means I wouldn’t like to smash your face in for putting her through all that.”

While Hutch privately agreed with much of what Walker had just said, he wasn’t inclined to explain his repeated attempts to put the brakes on before he and Brylee and half the town ended up in the church on that fateful Saturday afternoon. And he’d come to Three Trees to apologize to Brylee, not her brother.

“If you want a fight, Walker,” he said, “I’ll give you one.”

Walker appeared to consider the pros and cons of getting it on right there in the warehouse parking lot. In the end, though, he shook his head. “What goes around, comes around,” he finally said. “You’ll get what’s coming to you.” Then, as an apparent afterthought, he added, “You planning on entering the rodeo this year?”

“Don’t I always?” Hutch answered, mindful that Walker provided the bulls and broncos for such events all over the West, including the one in Parable. He was well-known for breeding almost unrideable critters.

Walker grinned. “Here’s hoping you draw the bull I have in mind for you,” he said. “He’s a real rib-stomper.”

“Bring him on,” Hutch replied, grinning back.

With that, the two men, having said their pieces, went their separate ways—Hutch heading for his truck, Walker going on into the warehouse.

Behind the wheel of his pickup, Hutch ground the key into the ignition.

He didn’t know what he’d expected of this first post-disaster encounter with Brylee, but he’d hoped they could at least begin the process of burying the hatchet.

After all, neither of them were going anywhere.

Parable and Three Trees were only thirty miles apart, and the two communities were closely linked. In other words, they’d see each other all the time.

He sighed and drove away. Maybe there was something to Brylee’s accusation that, in coming on this fool’s errand, he’d been more interested in soothing his own conscience than making any kind of amends, but at least he’d tried—again—to set things right, so they could at least be civil to each other.

He figured it was probably too soon and wondered if the anti-Hutch internet campaign would ramp up a notch or two, since several of the key players—Brylee’s friends and employees—had basically witnessed the confrontation.

These days everybody was an ace reporter.

“Well, cowboy man,” he muttered to himself, “you’re batting a thousand. Might as well go for broke.”

Reaching the highway, he rolled on toward Parable.

And Kendra.

* * *

MADISON WAS THRILLED with the new house when Kendra sprang the surprise on the little girl after picking her up at preschool that afternoon, and Daisy was thrilled with the spacious backyard.

The small colonial boasted two quite spacious bedrooms, plus a little cubicle Kendra planned to use as a home office, and two full baths. The kitchen was sunny, with plenty of cupboard space and a small pantry, and there was a large, old-fashioned brick fireplace in the living room. Closer inspection revealed small hooks in the wooden mantel for hanging Christmas stockings.

All in all, the place was perfect—except, of course, for being a rental and therefore impermanent. Kendra had asked Maggie about buying the house, but Maggie was understandably reluctant to sell. She said it would be like putting a price on her childhood, and she couldn’t do that.

“This is my room!” Madison exulted now, standing in the center of the space with window seats and built-in bookshelves and shiny plank floors worn to a warmly aged patina. The folding closet doors were louvered, and the overhead light fixture was small but ornate.

Daisy gave a single joyous bark, as though seconding Madison’s motion and making a claim of her own.

Kendra laughed. “Yes,” she said to both of them. “This is your room.”

“Am I going to have a bed?” Madison inquired matter-of-factly.

“Of course,” Kendra replied. “We’ll visit the furniture store over in Three Trees and you can pick it out yourself.”

The town of Three Trees was actually smaller than Parable by a couple of thousand people, but it boasted a large outlet mall that drew customers from all over that part of the state, along with a movie house, a large bookstore and a Main Street lined with shops.

“Can we go now?” Madison asked.

“I don’t see why not,” Kendra replied. Her gaze fell on Daisy. Shopping for furniture with a puppy in tow didn’t mesh.

The next question was inevitable, not to be forestalled. “Can Daisy come with us?” Madison wanted to know.

Sadly, Kendra shook her head. “That won’t work, sweetie. But she’ll be fine at the guesthouse, I promise.”

Madison mulled that over, then her face brightened again. “All right,” she said. “Daisy must be tired from playing with Lucy all day. She can take a nap while we’re gone.”

“Good thinking,” Kendra said, holding out a hand to her daughter. “Let’s get going.”

Daisy was remarkably cooperative when they got back to the guest cottage. She lapped up half the water in her bowl, munched on some kibble, went outside with Madison to take care of dog business and returned to settle on her soft bed in the kitchen, yawning big.

Kendra’s heart swelled into her throat as Madison crouched next to the puppy, patting its head gently and whispering, “Don’t be scared, okay? Because Mommy and I will be back before it gets dark.”

For the thousandth—if not millionth—time, Kendra wondered what life in that series of foster homes had been like for Madison. Had she felt safe, secure, loved?

According to the social workers, Madison’s care had been exceptional—most foster parents were decent, dedicated people, generous enough to make room in their homes and their hearts for children in crisis.

Still, Madison had been passed around a lot, shuffled from one stand-in family to another. How could she not have been affected by so many changes in her short life?

Kendra was pondering all these things as she fastened the child into her booster seat in the backseat of the Volvo, and then as she slipped behind the wheel and started the engine. “I’m not going anywhere, you know,” she felt compelled to say, making an effort to keep her voice light as they pulled out onto Rodeo Road.

She didn’t so much as glance at the mansion either as they passed it or in the rearview mirror; it might have been rendered invisible.

Maybe, as some scientists claimed, things didn’t actually exist until someone looked at them.

“Yes, you are too going somewhere,” Madison responded, after a few moments of thought. “You’re going to Three Trees so we can buy a bed!”

Kendra laughed, blinked a couple of times and focused her attention on the road, where it belonged. “That isn’t what I meant, silly.”

“My first mommy left,” Madison said, perhaps sensing that Kendra’s conversation was leading somewhere.

“Yes,” Kendra said gently. “I know.”

“But you won’t leave,” Madison said with reassuring conviction. “Because you like being a mommy.”

Kendra sniffled. Blinked again, hard. “I love being your mommy,” she replied. “You’re the best thing that’s ever happened to me, kiddo. Remember that, okay?”

“Okay,” Madison said, her tone almost breezy. “Some of the kids at preschool have daddies, not just mommies.”

The ache of emotion slipped from Kendra’s throat to settle into her heart. Part of the child’s remark echoed to the very center of her soul. Not just mommies.

“My daddy died,” Madison went on. It was an exchange they’d had before, but repeating the facts seemed to comfort the little girl somehow, to anchor her in a new and better present. “He’s in heaven.”

“Yes,” Kendra said, thick-voiced. She considered pulling over for a few moments, in order to pull herself together. “But he loved you very much. That’s why he sent me to find you.”

Thank you for that, Jeffrey. In spite of everything else, thank you for bringing Madison into my life.

The topic ricocheted with the speed of a bullet. “Is the cowboy man somebody’s daddy?”

The question pierced Kendra’s heart like an arrow. They were near the park, and she pulled over in the shade of a row of hundred-year-old maples, all dressed up in leafy green for summer, to regain her composure.

“I don’t think so,” she managed, after swallowing hard.

“I like the cowboy man,” Madison said. A short pause followed and when she spoke again she sounded puzzled. “Why are we stopping, Mommy?”

Kendra touched the back of her right hand to one cheek, then the other. “I just needed a moment,” she said.

“Are you crying?” Madison sounded worried now.

“Yes,” Kendra answered, because it was her policy never to lie to the child, if it could be avoided.

“Why?”

“Because I’m happy,” Kendra said. And that was the truth. She was happy and she was grateful. She had a great life.

Still, there was the daddy thing.

As a little girl, lonely and adrift, tolerated by her grandmother rather than loved, Kendra had longed for a father even more than she had for a dog or a kitten. She could still feel the ache of that singular yearning to be carried, laughing, on strong shoulders, to feel protected and cherished and totally safe.

She was all grown up now, perfectly capable of protecting and cherishing her daughter as well as looking after herself and a certain golden retriever puppy in the bargain. But could she be both mother and father to her little girl?

Was she, and the love she offered, enough?

“I don’t cry when I’m happy,” Madison said as Kendra pulled the car back out onto the road. “I laugh when I’m happy.”

“Makes sense,” Kendra conceded, laughing herself.

They drove on to Three Trees, parked in front of the furniture store and hastened inside, hand in hand.

And they found the perfect bed almost immediately—it was twin-size, made of gleaming brass, with four high posts and a canopy frame on top. A dresser, a bureau and two night tables, all French provincial in style, completed the ensemble.

Kendra paid for their purchases—the pieces were to be delivered the next day, bright and early—and before they knew it, they were almost home again.

Madison, seemingly deep in thought for most of the drive, piped up as they pulled into the driveway. “Mommy, we forgot to buy a bed for you.”

“I already have one, honey,” Kendra responded, stopping the car alongside the guesthouse. She’d selected a few modest pieces from the mansion to take along to the new place. Most of the furniture in the main house was too big and too fancy for the simple colonial. There was a queen-size bed in one of the guest rooms that would work, a floral couch in the study, and they could use the table and chairs from Opal’s old apartment.

Kendra wanted to leave room for some new things, too.

She parked the car and turned Madison loose, and they raced each other to the guest cottage, where Daisy met them at the door, barking a happy greeting.

Kendra set aside her purse, washed her hands, and searched the cottage fridge for the makings of an evening meal. She was chopping the vegetables for a salad, to which she would add leftover chicken breasts, also chopped, when she heard a vehicle coming up the driveway.

Peering out the kitchen window, she saw Hutch Carmody getting out of his truck.

Her stomach lurched and her heartbeat quickened as she hurriedly wiped her hands on a dish towel and went outside. Daisy and Madison, who had been playing in the kitchen moments before, rushed out to greet him.

Soon they were all over him.

He laughed at their antics and swung Madison off the ground and up onto his shoulders, where she clung, laughing, too.

The last of the afternoon sunlight caught in their hair—Hutch’s a butternut color, Madison’s like copper flames—and the dog circled them, barking her excitement.

Kendra couldn’t help being struck by the sight of the man and the little girl and the dog, looking so happy, so right.

She went outside.

“I was here earlier,” Hutch told her, easing Madison off his back and setting her on her feet, where she jumped, reaching up, wanting to be lifted up again. “You weren’t home.”

Kendra couldn’t speak for a moment, knowing, as she somehow did, that she might never get the image of the three of them together out of her head. It had been unspeakably beautiful, like some otherworldly vision of what family life could be.

“Hello?” Hutch teased, when she didn’t say anything, standing close to her now, his head tipped a little to one side, like his grin. All the while, Madison was trying to climb him like a bean pole and he finally swung her back onto his shoulders.

“Come in,” Kendra heard herself say, her voice all croaky and strange.

He nodded and followed her into the guest cottage, ducking so Madison wouldn’t bump her head on the door frame. This time when he put the child down, she seemed content just to hover nearby.

He accepted the chair Kendra offered him at the small dining table and the coffee she brought him—black, the way he liked it.

Funny, the things you didn’t forget about a person—mostly small and ordinary stuff, like coffee preferences and the way they always smelled of sun-dried cloth, even after a day spent hauling cattle out of mud holes or digging postholes.

Kendra gave herself a mental shake, sent a protesting Madison off to wash her hands and face before supper. Daisy, of course, tagged along with her small mistress, though she cast a few glances back at Hutch as she went.

“Join us for supper?” Kendra asked, hoping she sounded—well—neighborly.

Hutch shook his head. “No, thanks,” he said, offering no further explanation, which was like him.

Kendra could hear Madison in the bathroom, running water in the sink, splashing around, talking non-stop to Daisy about the new house and the new bed and whether or not they’d be allowed to watch a DVD that night before they had to go to bed.

“Why are you here?” she finally asked very quietly. And this time, it wasn’t a challenge. She was too tired for challenges, too wrung-out emotionally from the things Madison had said in the car.

Hutch sighed.

The distant splashing continued, as did the child-to-dog chatter.

“I’m not entirely sure,” he said at some length, taking Kendra aback a little.

She couldn’t remember one single instance in all the time she’d known Hutch Carmody when he hadn’t been completely sure of everything and everybody, especially himself.

“That’s helpful,” she said mildly.

Any moment now Madison would be back in the room, thereby curtailing anything but the most mundane conversation.

“Joslyn tells me there’s a cleanup day over at Pioneer Cemetery on Saturday,” he finally said, after casting about visibly for something to say. “There’ll be a town picnic afterward, like always, and, well, I was just wondering if you and Madison and Daisy might be interested in going along.” He paused, cleared his throat. “With me.”

Kendra was astounded, not so much by the invitation as by Hutch’s apparent nervousness. Was he afraid she’d say no?

Or was he afraid she’d say yes?

“Okay,” she agreed, as a compromise between the two extremes. She wanted, she realized, to see how he’d react.

Would he backpedal?

Instead he favored her with a dazzling grin, rose from his chair and passed her to set his coffee cup, still mostly full, in the sink. Their arms brushed and his nearness, the hard heat of his very masculine body, sent a jolt of sweet fire through her.

“Okay,” he said with affable finality.

Madison was back by then, holding up her clean hands for Kendra to see but obviously more interested in Hutch than in her mother.

“Very good,” Kendra said approvingly, and began moving briskly around the infinitesimal kitchen, setting out plates and silverware and glasses—which Madison promptly counted.

“Aren’t you hungry, cowboy man?” she asked Hutch when the tally was two places at the table, rather than three.

He looked down at Madison with such fondness that Kendra felt another pang of—something. “Can’t stay,” he said. “I have horses to look after and they like their supper served on time, just like people do.”

Madison’s eyes widened. “You have horses?” From her tone she might have asked, “You can walk on water?”

“Couldn’t very well call myself a cowboy if I didn’t have horses,” Hutch said reasonably.

Madison pondered that, then nodded in agreement. Her eyes widened. “Can I ride one of your horses sometime? Please?”

“That would definitely be your mother’s call,” Hutch told her. It was grown-up vernacular, but Madison understood and immediately turned an imploring face to Kendra.

“Maybe sometime,” Kendra said, because she couldn’t quite get to a flat-out no. Not with all that ingenuous hope beaming up at her.

Remarkably, that noncommittal answer seemed to satisfy Madison. She scrambled into her chair at the table and waited for supper to start.

“See you on Saturday,” Hutch said lightly.

And then he tousled Madison’s hair, nodded to Kendra and the dog, and left the house.

“Are we going to see the cowboy man on Saturday?” Madison asked eagerly. Once again, it struck Kendra that, for a four-year-old, the child didn’t miss much.

“Yes,” Kendra said, setting the salad bowl in the center of the table and then pouring milk for herself and Madison. Daisy curled up on her dog bed in the corner, rested her muzzle on her forepaws, and rolled her lively brown eyes from Madison to Kendra and back again. “The whole town gets together every year to spruce the place up for the rodeo and the carnival. Lots of people like to visit the Pioneer Cemetery while they’re here, and we like it to look presentable, so you and I and Hutch will be helping out there. After the work is done, there’s always a picnic, and games for the kids to play.”

“Games?” Madison was intrigued. “What kind of games?”

“Sack races.” Kendra smiled, remembering happy times. “Things like that. There are even prizes.”

“What’s a sack race?” Madison pursued, a little frown creasing the alabaster skin between her eyebrows.

Kendra explained about stepping into a feed sack, holding it at waist level and hopping toward the finish line. She didn’t mention the three-legged race, not wanting to describe that, too, but she smiled at the memory of herself and Joslyn tied together at the ankles and laughing hysterically when they lost their balance and tumbled into the venerable cemetery grass.

“And there are prizes?” Madison prompted.

Kendra nodded. “I won a doll once. She had a real camera hanging around her neck by a plastic strap. I still have her, somewhere.”

Madison’s eyes were huge. “Wow,” she said. “There were cameras when you were a little girl?”

Kendra laughed. “Yes,” she replied, “there were cameras. There were cars, too, and airplanes and even TVs.”

Madison pondered all this, the turning gears in her little brain practically visible behind her forehead. “Wow,” she repeated in awe.

After supper, Madison had her bath and put on her pajamas, and Kendra popped a favorite DVD of an animated movie into the player attached to the living room TV.

Madison snuggled on the floor with Daisy, one arm flung companionably across the small dog’s gleaming back, and the two of them were quickly absorbed in the on-screen story.

Kendra, relieved that she wouldn’t have to sit through the movie for what must have been the seventy-second time, set up her laptop on the freshly cleared kitchen table and booted it up.

She’d surf the web for a while, she decided, and see if there were any for-sale-by-owner listings posted for the Parable/Three Trees area. She was, after all, a working real estate broker, and sometimes a well-placed phone call to said owners would produce a new client. Most folks didn’t realize all that was entailed in selling a property themselves—title searches and tax liens were only some of the snags they might run into.

Alas, despite her good intentions, Kendra ended up running a search on Hutch Carmody instead, using the key word wedding.

The page that came up might as well have been called “We Hate Hutch.”

Kendra found herself in the odd position of wanting to defend him—and furiously—as she looked at the pictures.

Brylee, the discarded bride, heartbroken and furious in her grandmother’s wedding gown.

Hutch, standing straight and tall and obviously miserable midway down the aisle, guests gawking on either side as he held up both hands in a gesture that plainly said, “Hold everything.”

The condolence party over at the Boot Scoot Tavern, Brylee wearing a sad expression and a T-shirt that said Men Suck.

Beware, murmured a voice in the back of Kendra’s mind.

But even then she knew she wouldn’t heed her own warning.

After all, what could happen in broad daylight, in a cemetery, with Madison and half the county right there?

CHAPTER FIVE

“DOES THIS SEEM a little weird to you?” Kendra asked Joslyn on Saturday morning as they helped Opal and a dozen other women set out tons of home-prepared food on the picnic tables at Pioneer Cemetery. “Holding what amounts to a party in a graveyard, I mean?”

Joslyn, who looked as though she might be having trouble keeping her center of gravity balanced, smiled and plunked herself down on one of the benches while the cheerful work went on around her. “I think it’s one of the best things about small towns,” she replied. “The way life and death are integrated—after all, they’re part of the same cycle, aren’t they? You can’t have one without the other.”

Thoughtful, Kendra scanned the surrounding area for Madison, something that came automatically to her now, and found her and Daisy industriously “helping” Hutch, Shea and several of the older girl’s friends from school pull weeds around a nearby scattering of very old graves. The water tower loomed in the distance, with its six-foot stenciled letters reading “Parable,” its rickety ladders and its silent challenge to every new generation of teenagers: Climb me.

“I guess you’re right,” Kendra said very quietly, though by then the actual substance of her friend’s remark had essentially slipped her mind. An instant later, though, at some small sound—a gasp, maybe—she turned to look straight at Joslyn.

Joslyn sat with one hand splayed against either side of her copiously distended stomach, her eyes huge with delighted alarm. “I think it’s time,” she said in a joyous whisper.

“Oh, my God,” Kendra replied, instantly panicked, stopping herself just short of putting a hand to her mouth.

Opal stepped up, exuding a take-charge attitude. “Now everybody, just stay calm,” she commanded. “Babies are born every second of every day in every part of the world, and this is going to turn out just fine.”

“G-get Slade,” Joslyn managed, smiling and wincing at the same time. “Please.”

No one had to go in search of Joslyn’s husband; he seemed to have sonar where his wife was concerned.

Kendra watched with relief as he came toward them, his strides long and purposeful, but calm and measured, too. He was grinning from ear to ear when he reached Joslyn and crouched in front of her, taking both her hands in his.

“Breathe,” he told her.

Joslyn laughed, nodded and breathed.

“It’s time, then?” he asked her, gruffly gentle. His strength was quiet and unshakable.

“Definitely,” Joslyn replied.

“Then let’s get this thing done,” Slade replied, straightening to his full height and easing Joslyn to her feet, supporting her in the curve of one steel-strong arm as they headed for the parking lot.

Opal took off her apron, thrust it into the hands of a woman standing nearby and hurried after them, taking her big patent leather purse with her.

Shea materialized at Kendra’s side with Madison and Daisy and leaned into her a little, her expression worried and faintly lost.

Kendra wrapped an arm around the teenage girl’s slender shoulders and squeezed. “Everything’s going to be all right,” she said softly. “Just like Opal said.”

“They forgot all about me,” Shea murmured, staring after her stepparents and Opal as they retreated.

“No, sweetheart,” Kendra said quickly. “They’re just excited because the baby’s coming and maybe a little scared, that’s all.”

Shea bit her lower lip, swallowed visibly, and rummaged up a small, tremulous smile. “A baby brother will be hard to compete with,” she reflected. “Especially since he really belongs to them and I don’t.”

Kendra knew Shea adored Slade—her mother, his ex-wife, was remarried and living in L.A.—and she also knew that Slade loved this girl as much as if he’d fathered her himself. And Joslyn loved her, too.

“You belong to them, too, Shea,” Kendra assured the girl. “Don’t forget that.”

Madison, perhaps sobered by Shea’s mood—the two had been hanging out together since Madison and Kendra had arrived with Hutch—slipped her hand into Kendra’s and looked up at her with wide, solemn eyes.

“Are babies better than big kids?” she asked very seriously.

Kendra’s heart turned over. “Babies are very special,” she answered carefully, “and so are the big kids they turn into.”

As she spoke, Hutch stepped into her line of sight, and something happened inside Kendra as she watched him watching Slade and Joslyn’s departing vehicle. Opal sat tall and stalwart in the backseat.

What was that look in his eyes? Worry, perhaps? Envy?

Back in high school, Kendra recalled, Joslyn had been Hutch’s first love and he hers. Most people had expected them to marry at some point, perhaps after college, but they’d grown apart instead, from a romantic standpoint at least. They had remained close friends.

She, Kendra, had been his second love.

Maybe that was why he hadn’t stepped in when she threw herself into an ill-fated relationship with Jeffrey Chamberlain, way back when. Possibly, letting her go had been easy because he hadn’t really been over Joslyn at that point.

In fact it could well be that he still wasn’t over her, even though she was happily married to his half brother and about to give birth to their first child.

Now you’re just being silly, Kendra scolded herself silently, straightening her spine and raising her chin. Besides, what did it matter who Hutch Carmody did or did not love? He’d hurt every woman he’d ever cared about—except Joslyn.

“Do you want me to drive you to the hospital?”

The question had come from Hutch and he was looking at Shea as he spoke. Although he and Slade were still working on being brothers, he was already an uncle to Shea and she was a niece to him.

Shea shook her head, slipped away from Kendra’s side and held out a hand to Madison. “The three-legged race is starting soon,” she said to the little girl. “Want to be my partner?”

Madison nodded eagerly and crowed, “Yes!” for good measure, in case there might be any ambiguity in the matter.

“Let’s go check out the prize table then,” Shea said. And just like that, they were off, racing through the grass, Daisy and Jasper, the Barlows’ dog, bounding after them.

“Slade and Joslyn do realize,” Kendra began, without really meaning to say anything at all, “that Shea is worried that they won’t love her as much once the baby is here?”

Hutch, standing nearer than she’d thought, replied quietly, “Slade and I may have our differences,” he said, “but the man is rock-solid when it comes to loving his family.” A pause followed, then a wistful, “Not a trait he learned from our dad.”

Picking up on the pain in his words, she looked at him directly.

They were essentially alone together, under those leafy, breeze-rustled trees, because everyone else had gone back to what they were doing before Joslyn had gone into labor—setting out food, pulling weeds, mowing grass, generally getting ready for the festivities that would follow on the heels of the cleanup effort.

Hutch, meanwhile, looked as though he regretted the remark about John Carmody, not because he hadn’t meant it, but because it revealed more than he wanted her or anyone else to know.

“Tell me about your dad,” Kendra said, pushing the envelope a little. She remembered the elder Carmody clearly, of course, but she hadn’t really known him. He’d been a grown-up, after all, and a reserved one at that, handsome like Slade and almost religious about minding his own business.

Hutch took her hand, and she let him, and they drifted away from the others to sit on rocks overlooking the town of Parable, nestled into the shallow valley below. “Not much to tell,” he said in belated reply to her earlier request. “The old man and I didn’t see eye to eye on most things, and he made it pretty plain that I didn’t measure up to his expectations.”

“But you loved him?”

“I loved him,” Hutch confirmed, staring out over the town, past the church steeples and the courthouse roof. “And I guess, in his own way, he probably loved me. Do you remember your dad, Kendra?”

She shook her head. “He was long gone by the time I was born,” she said.

Remarkably, as close as they’d been, she and Hutch hadn’t talked much about their childhoods. They’d been totally, passionately engrossed in the present.

Now Kendra thought about her mother, Sherry, beautiful and flaky and too footloose to raise a little girl on her own. In a moment, Kendra was right back there, like a time traveler, standing in the overgrown yard in front of her grandmother’s trailer, clutching Sherry’s fingers with one hand and gripping the handle of a toy suitcase in the other.

She’d been five years old at the time, only a few months older than Madison was now.

“I’ll be back soon, I promise,” she heard Sherry say as clearly as if a quarter of a century hadn’t passed since that summer day. “You just sit there on the porch like a good girl and wait for your grandma to get home from work. She’ll take care of you until I can come and get you.”

Maybe the suitcase, hastily purchased in a thrift store, should have been a clue about what was to come, but Kendra was, after all, a child and a trusting one at that. She hadn’t known she was being lied to, not consciously at least.

Most likely Sherry hadn’t known she was lying, either. Never mean, Sherry had always meant well. She just had trouble following through on her better intentions.

In the end, she’d leaned down, kissed Kendra on the top of her head, promised they’d be together again soon, this time for good. They’d get a house of their own and a dog and a nice car.

With that, Sherry waggled her fingers in farewell, climbed into her ancient, smoke-belching station wagon and drove away.

Kendra simply sat and waited—it wouldn’t have occurred to her to wander off or run after Sherry’s car.

When her grandmother arrived home a couple hours later, she got out of her car, lit up a cigarette and drew deeply on the smoke. Then she crossed the overgrown yard to stand there frowning down at Kendra.

With her bent and buckled plastic suitcase beside her, Kendra looked up into her grandmother’s lined and sorrow-hardened face, and saw no welcome there.

“Just what I need,” the old woman had said bitterly. “A kid to take care of.”

But Alva Shepherd had given Kendra a home, however reluctantly.

She’d put food on the table and kept a roof over their heads and if love and laughter had been lacking from the relationship, well, nobody had everything. If Sherry hadn’t dropped her off that day, she probably would have been killed in the car accident that took her mom’s life six months later.

After that, her grandma had been a little nicer to her, not out of compassion—she didn’t seem to grieve over losing a daughter or Kendra’s loss of her mother, apparently regarding it as a fitting end to a misspent life—but because Kendra became eligible for a small monthly check from the government. That made things easier all around.

“Kendra?” Hutch tugged her back into the here and now, still holding her hand.

“There are too many broken people in this world,” she said, thinking aloud.

Hutch simply gazed at her for a long, unreadable moment. “True enough,” he agreed finally, almost hoarsely. “But there are plenty of good ones, too, built to stay the course.”

Happy noises in the distance indicated that the games were about to start and picnic food was being served. Hutch was right, of course—these sturdy people all around them were the proof, teaming up to tend the grounds of a decrepit old cemetery, to serve potato salad and hot dogs and the like to old friends and new, to hold races for children who would remember sunny, communal days like this one well into their own old age.

In that moment, Kendra felt a wistful sort of hope that places like Parable would always exist, so babies could be born and grow up and get married and live on into their golden years, always in touch with their own histories and those of the people around them, always a part of something, always belonging somewhere.

It was what Kendra had wanted for Madison, that kind of stability, and what she wanted for herself, too—because her story hadn’t ended with her overwhelmed grandmother on the rickety porch of a double-wide that had, even then, seen better days. Because Opal had taken her into her heart and Joslyn had been the sister she’d never had, and the generous souls who called Parable home had taken her into their midst without hesitation, made her one of them.

Tears brimmed in her eyes.

Hutch, seeing them, stopped and cupped a hand under her chin. “What?” he asked with a tenderness that made Kendra’s breath catch.

“I was just thinking how perfect life is,” Kendra admitted, “even when it’s imperfect.”

He grinned. “It’s worth the trouble, all right,” he agreed. “Want to enter the three-legged race? I can’t think of anybody I’d rather be tied to at the ankle.”

She laughed and said yes, and threw herself headfirst into the celebration.

* * *

PARABLE COUNTY HOSPITAL was small, with brightly painted white walls, and most of the staff had been born and raised within fifty miles of the place, so folks felt safe when they were sick or hurt, knowing they’d be cared for by friends, or friends of friends, or even kinfolk.

Hutch hadn’t been there since his dad died, but now there was the baby boy, born a few hours before, ratcheting up the population by one. The numbers on the sign at the edge of town were magnetic, so they could be altered when somebody drew their first breath, sighed out their last one or simply moved to or from the community.

Slade, standing beside him, rested a hand briefly on his shoulder. After the races and the picnic and the prizes, he’d dropped Kendra and Madison and that goofy dog of theirs off at their new digs before heading home to shower, shave, put on clean clothes and make the drive back to town.

“You done good, brother,” Hutch said without looking at Slade.

Slade chuckled. He hadn’t taken his eyes off that little blue-bundled yahoo in the plastic baby bed since they’d stepped up to the window. “Thanks,” he replied, “but Joslyn deserves at least some of the credit. She handled the tough part.”

Hutch smiled, nodded. The kid hadn’t even been in the world for a full day and he was already looking more like John Carmody, as did Slade, by the second. He guessed it was the old man’s way of keeping one foot in the world, even though he was six feet under. “What are you going to call him?” he asked.

“Trace,” Slade answered, with a touch of quiet awe in his voice, as though he didn’t quite believe his own good fortune. “Trace Carmody Barlow.”

Hutch wasn’t prepared for the “Carmody” part. While Slade was technically as much a Carmody as Hutch himself was, their dad hadn’t raised him, hadn’t even claimed him until his will was read.

Slade interpreted his half brother’s silence accurately. “It’s a way of telling the truth,” he said. “About who Trace is and who I am.”

Hutch swallowed. Nodded. “How’s Joslyn?” he managed to ask.

“She’s ready to take the boy and head home to Windfall,” Slade said with another chuckle. “Opal and I overruled her, insisting that she spend the night here in the hospital, just to make sure she and the baby don’t run into any hitches.”

Windfall was the aptly chosen name of Slade and Joslyn’s ranch, which bordered Hutch’s land on one side. Slade had bought the spread with the proceeds from selling his share of Whisper Creek to Hutch and, as convoluted as the situation had been, Hutch would always be grateful. He was a part of that ranch and it was a part of him, and losing half of it would have been like being chopped into two pieces himself.

“I see you brought Kendra and her little girl to the cleanup today,” Slade remarked lightly.

Hutch looked straight at him. “Some first date, huh?” he joked, not that it actually was a first date, considering that he and Kendra had once been a couple. “A picnic at a cemetery.”

Slade grinned. “I took Joslyn to a horse auction the first time we went out,” he reminded Hutch. “Maybe chivalry runs in the family.”

“Or maybe not,” Hutch said, and they both laughed. Shook hands.

“Thanks for showing up to have a look at the boy,” Slade said.

Hutch nodded, said a quiet goodbye and turned to go while Slade stayed behind to admire his son for a little while longer.

Shea and Opal were standing in the corridor when Hutch got there, talking quietly with a beaming Callie Barlow.

“That’s one fine little brother you’ve got there,” he told Shea.

Apparently over her earlier angst at no longer being the only bird in the nest, Shea smiled brightly and nodded in happy agreement. Callie hugged her step-granddaughter, her own eyes full of tears.

“He’s the best,” Shea murmured.

“Congratulations,” Hutch said to Callie. It was, if he recalled correctly, the first word he’d ever said to the woman, even though he’d always known her. It wasn’t that he’d judged her—he supposed she’d loved the old man once upon a time, since she’d had a child with him—but Hutch’s mother’s heartache and rage over the affair was still fresh in his mind. Until Trace, acknowledging Callie would have seemed like an act of disloyalty to his mom, as crazy as that sounded. After all, she’d died when he was twelve.

“Thank you, Hutch,” Callie said, dashing at her wet eyes with the back of one hand.

“You look skinnier every time I see you,” Opal put in, giving Hutch the once-over and frowning with devoted disapproval. To Opal, everybody in Parable was her concern, one way or the other. “You need me to come out to Whisper Creek and cook for you for a couple of weeks. Put some meat on those bones. And who ironed that shirt—a chimpanzee?”

Hutch grinned, though he felt a thousand years old all of a sudden and bone-weary in the bargain. “Nobody ironed it,” he said, even as he wondered why he’d risen to the bait. “It’s permanent press.” He’d taken the garment out of the dryer and pulled it on just before leaving the house to drive back to town.

“There’s no such thing as ‘permanent press.’” Opal sniffed. “A shirt ought to be ironed.”

That seemed like a good time to steer the conversation in another direction. “I appreciate your offer, Opal,” he said honestly, “but Joslyn’s going to need you to help take care of Trace.”

“Joslyn’s mama is on her way to Parable as we speak,” Opal replied succinctly. “She’ll provide all the lookin’ after that family needs, at least for a week or two. I’ll be at your place first thing tomorrow morning with my suitcase, so be ready for me.”

Hutch opened his mouth, closed it again.

There was no point in arguing with Opal Dennison once she’d made up her mind, which she obviously had. If she meant to take over his house—or his whole life, for that matter—she’d do it. She was about as stoppable as a tornado gobbling up flat ground.

Best to just get out of the way and wait for the dust to settle.

“See you tomorrow,” he finally said.

“Pick up some spray starch on your way home,” Opal ordered. “And a decent iron, too, if you don’t have one.”

He pretended not to hear and walked off toward the elevator.

* * *

THE ELEVATOR DOORS opened, and Kendra came face-to-face with Hutch when she stepped out.

Even after spending much of the day in his company over at the Pioneer Cemetery, she felt startled by the encounter. Unprepared and very nervous.

“Where’s Madison?” he asked, his gaze drifting lightly over Kendra’s cotton print sundress, which she changed into after the picnic, and then back to her face.

Kendra found her voice. Stepping past him, she remembered that she’d come to the hospital on a mission—to see her best friend’s brand-new baby for the first time. “Downstairs,” she answered automatically. “The receptionist is looking after her.”

“I’ll say howdy to her on my way out,” Hutch replied.

He entered the elevator. The doors whispered shut between them and Kendra was left with the odd sensation that she’d imagined the whole exchange, if not the whole crazy day.

Had she really entered—and lost—a three-legged race at a cemetery picnic?

Seeing Callie and Shea and Opal in a happy huddle, she joined them.

“How’s the new mama?” she asked.

Shea rolled her eyes. She was flushed and twinkly with excitement, like a girl-shaped topiary draped in fairy lights. “Would you believe Joss wants to go home—right now? Dad and Opal are making her stay the night, though—just to be on the safe side.”

“So I guess that means Joslyn’s doing just fine,” Kendra said, smiling.

“She’s amazing,” Callie put in. “And so is little Trace. Lordy, he looks just like his daddy. Slade Barlow in miniature, that’s him.”

“Dad’s walking about a foot off the ground,” Shea said, pleased.

“Hutch’s mama would roll over in her grave if she saw him wearing that wrinkled shirt out in public,” Opal fretted, her gaze focused on the closed elevator doors. “She took pride in things like that.”

Kendra blinked, confused.

“Don’t mind Opal,” Shea said in a conspiratorial whisper, slipping an arm through Kendra’s. “She’s suffering from a laundry fixation at the moment—it’ll pass.”

“Oh,” Kendra said, no less confused than before but allowing herself to be swept into Joslyn’s room.

Her friend was sitting up in bed, hair brushed, face scrubbed and glowing, eyes lively with joy. “Did you see him yet?” she asked, her tone happy and urgent.

Kendra laughed. “Not yet,” she admitted. “I just got here a minute ago.”

That dazed feeling, as if she couldn’t quite catch up with herself, was still with her.

There were flowers everywhere, making the small quarters look and feel more like a garden than a hospital room.

Joslyn beamed. “I can’t wait to have another one,” she said.

“Whoa,” protested Slade, from the doorway, grinning. “We just got out of the delivery room a couple of hours ago, woman.”

“Come here and kiss me,” Joslyn told him.

Shea laughed and made a face. “Gross,” she said fondly.

By that time, Slade had crossed the room, bent over Joslyn, and touched his mouth to hers. The air crackled with electricity.

Kendra, still befuddled, remembered the bouquet of yellow carnations she was carrying and found a place for it among the tangle of color filling the room nearly to overflowing.

A nurse brought little Trace in then and placed him gently in Joslyn’s waiting arms. The sight of the three of them—father, mother and child—was a poignant one to Kendra and she felt a warm twinge of affection—along with a touch of envy. The latter was followed by a swift plunge into guilt, because she loved Madison so fiercely, and wanting to bear a child of her own seemed almost greedy.

Joslyn’s gaze over the baby’s downy head rested warmly on Kendra for a moment and the kind of understanding only close friends can share passed between them.

Shea took a cautious step forward. “Could—could I hold him?” she asked.

Joslyn smiled at the girl. “Of course,” she replied easily. “Here—let me show you how to support his head....”

As simply, as beautifully, as that, Shea took her place in this newly expanded family—and then there were four.

Kendra was so choked up she nearly fled the room, fearing she’d cry and Joslyn would misunderstand.

“I’ll pay you a visit when you get home,” she told her friend, aware of Callie and Opal entering the room behind her. The walls were starting to close in; she needed fresh air and space to recover her equilibrium.

What was wrong with her, anyway?

“Wait,” Joslyn said when Kendra would have made her exit. “There’s something I want to ask you before you go and it’s important.”

Kendra, mystified and strangely hopeful, approached the bedside. Shea, holding the baby expertly, made room for her in the small, cozy circle, and Slade looked at her with a smile in his eyes.

Up close, Trace was so beautiful that he claimed a piece of Kendra’s heart, right then and there, and she knew she’d never get it back, never even want to get it back.

“Will you be Trace’s godmother?” Joslyn asked softly, reaching out to cover Kendra’s cool and somewhat unsteady hand with her own warm one. Her grasp was firm.

The request was a simple one and yet it touched Kendra to the center of her soul, an unexpected grace. “I’d be proud,” she managed in a ragged voice.

Joslyn squeezed her hand. “Good,” she said, tearing up herself. “That’s good.”

Overcome, Kendra touched Trace’s tiny head, turned and hurried out of Joslyn’s hospital room. The instant she crossed the threshold, the tears came in rivers and she ducked into the women’s restroom to pull herself together.

At one of the sinks, she splashed cold water on her face, not caring that she’d ruined her mascara. She used a moist paper towel to wipe away the dark trails on her cheeks, drew a deep breath and squared her shoulders, ready to face the world.

For the most part, anyway.

Downstairs Madison was ensconced at the main desk, coloring importantly and enjoying being the center of attention.

It threw Kendra a little when she realized that Hutch was there, too, chatting amicably with the receptionist. Barely out of her teens, the young woman, whose name tag read Darcy, looked up at him with an expression that resembled wonder, hanging on his every word.

Kendra found herself withdrawing slightly—she might have been able to hide her puffy eyes from Madison, but Hutch was another matter. He noticed right away and she knew he probably wouldn’t ignore the only-too-obvious fact that she’d been crying, very recently and a lot.

He might even deduce that, while she was very happy for Slade and Joslyn, she was feeling oddly hopeless at the moment, and that would make her too vulnerable to all that cowboy charm.

“Maybe I ought to drive you and Madison home in my truck,” he said, straightening and stepping back from the tall reception counter. “I can call one of the ranch hands to bring your car back over to your place.”

Hutch’s attention had fully shifted by then, entirely focused on Kendra, and the receptionist seemed not just miffed but crestfallen, as though the sun had suddenly stopped shining for good.

“Mommy cries when she’s happy,” Madison announced. “She told me so, when we went to buy my bed at the store in Three Trees.”

Hutch’s mouth quirked upward at one side. “Crying and driving don’t mix very well,” he said easily, huskily. “Especially when there’s precious cargo aboard.”

“What’s precipitous car-blow?” Madison asked.

“It’s what you are,” Hutch told the child, though his eyes hadn’t left Kendra’s face.

There was no question of refusing to accept his offer of a ride home; that would make her look like a careless mother, willing to risk her daughter’s safety in order to protect her pride, which, of course, she wasn’t. And never mind that she was perfectly capable of operating a motor vehicle; it wasn’t as if she’d been drinking, for Pete’s sake.

For these reasons, and others not so easy to recognize, she gave in.

She even said, “Thank you.”

Outside Hutch sprinted over to the Volvo to fetch Madison’s car seat from the back, and within a few moments he was installing the gear inside his extended cab truck. His hands moved with a deftness Kendra well remembered as he hoisted Madison into the seat—he, the bachelor rancher and local heartthrob, might have performed the task a million times before.

Madison loved being fussed over by a daddy type—what little girl didn’t?—and if she’d been wearing a dress instead of those little jeans and a T-shirt, she probably would have stood right there in the hospital parking lot and twirled her skirt.

A softness settled over Kendra’s heart as she looked on, but it was soon replaced by a flicker of dread. She could certainly prevent herself from falling in love with Hutch Carmody, but could she prevent Madison from buying into the illusion?

Hutch, despite his wild ways, was decent through and through. He genuinely liked people, particularly children, and he talked to them with a rare, enfolding ease that naturally made them feel special, even entirely unique.

It wasn’t a deception, Kendra concluded sadly, not really. The problem was that, to Hutch, every child was special and every woman. Every dog and horse, too.

She tried to shake off these thoughts as she climbed into the front passenger seat, once Madison was settled, and buckled herself in for the short ride home.

If she didn’t allow herself to care too much for this man, she reasoned fitfully, as Hutch took the wheel and started the truck’s engine, maybe Madison wouldn’t care too much for him, either.

CHAPTER SIX

MADISON, AFTER GREETING a wildly joyful Daisy the moment they entered the new house, where there were still boxes all around, accumulated over several days of moving, took Hutch by one hand and practically dragged him from one room to another, showing the place off. Of course the dog followed them, occasionally putting in her two-bits with a happy little bark.

Kendra, emotionally winded from a long and eventful day, remained in the kitchen doing busywork, washing her hands at the sink, debating whether or not she ought to brew some coffee. The stuff could keep her up half the night, but as she remembered only too well, Hutch could drink the strongest java at midnight and still enjoy the sleep of the innocent and the just.

Talk about ironic.

Still Hutch had brought her and Madison safely home from the hospital visit to see the newest member of the Barlow clan—she was going to be Trace’s godmother and the honor humbled her—and she owed the man the courtesy of a cup of coffee if he wanted one.

He’d pretty well gone to the wall that day, Hutch had, and he’d been a big part of some very memorable experiences for both her and Madison. At his suggestion, she’d left the keys to her Volvo at the hospital reception desk, and a couple of his ranch hands were already en route from Whisper Creek to pick up the vehicle and bring it to her.

Yes, the least she could do was offer the man coffee.

She didn’t dare think about the most she could have done.

In the distance she heard Madison’s ringing laugh, the dog’s excitement at having the family intact and a visitor thrown in as a bonus, and Hutch’s now-and-again comment, all along the lines of, “Well, isn’t that something.”

By the time the three wayfarers got back to the kitchen, Kendra had brewed a coffee for Hutch and an herbal tea for herself, using the one-cup wonder machine brought over from the big house. The device looked massive in this much smaller room, and way too fancy, but it served its purpose and for now that was enough.

“This is quite a change from the mansion,” Hutch observed quietly as Madison hurried for the back door, calling over one shoulder that Daisy needed to go outside, and quick!

Kendra merely smiled and held out the cup of black coffee.

“Don’t mind if I do,” Hutch said, taking the mug. It looked fragile as a china teacup in his strong rancher’s hands. “Thanks.”

She inclined her head toward the table and he drew back a chair, but waited until she sat down with her tea before he took a seat himself.

His manners were yet another of Hutch’s contradictions: he would leave a woman practically at the altar, wearing her heirloom wedding dress, break her heart right there in the presence of all her friends and family, but he opened doors for anyone of the female persuasion, whatever her age, and his male elders, too.

Through the open screen door, with its creaky hinges, Madison could be heard encouraging Daisy to hurry up and be a good girl so they could go back inside and be with the cowboy man.

Hutch grinned across the expanse of the tabletop and Kendra grinned back.

“This has been quite a day,” she said, wondering if Hutch had the same odd mixture of feelings as she had where Slade and Joslyn’s new baby was concerned. He was clearly happy for the Barlows, but she knew he wanted kids, too—it had been a favorite topic between them, back in the day, how many children they’d have, the ideal ratio of boys to girls, and even what their names would be.

A weary sort of sorrow overtook Kendra, just for that moment, and nearly brought tears to her eyes.

She shook it off. No sense getting all moody and nostalgic.

“That it has,” Hutch agreed in his own good time, which was the way he did everything. The habit could be exasperating, Kendra reflected, except in bed.

Whoa, she thought. Don’t go down that road.

A warm flush pulsed in her cheeks, though, and he noticed, of course. He always noticed what she’d rather have hidden, and overlooked things that should have caught his attention.

She looked away for a moment, recovering from the sexual flashback.

Madison and the dog came back inside, which helped Kendra calm down, and Madison sort of hovered around Hutch like a moth around a lightbulb.

Kendra finally sent Madison into the living room to watch the cartoon channel for the allowed half-hour before bath and bed, not because she wanted to get rid of her, but because the child’s obvious adoration for Hutch was so unnerving.

Only cartoons could have distracted Madison from this admittedly fascinating man and even then she was reluctant to leave the room.

As soon as they were alone, Kendra opened her mouth and stuck her foot in it. “Don’t let her get too attached to you, Hutch,” she heard herself almost plead, in a sort of fractured whisper. “Madison’s already lost so much.”

Hutch looked stunned; he even paled a little, under his year-round tan, but in a nanosecond, he’d gone from stunned to quietly furious.

“What the hell is that supposed to mean?” he demanded, and though he kept his voice low, it rumbled like thunder gathering beyond the nearby hills.

Kendra let out a long breath, closed her eyes briefly, and rubbed her temples with the fingertips of both hands. “I wasn’t saying—”

He leaned slightly forward in his chair, his bluish-green eyes fierce on her face. “What were you saying, then?” he pressed. She knew that look—he wasn’t going to let this one go, would sit there all night if he had to, until he got an answer he could accept as the unvarnished truth.

“Madison is only four years old,” she said weakly. Carefully. “She doesn’t understand that your charm, like sunshine and rain, pretty much falls on everybody.” She tried for more clarity and spoke with more strength now. “I don’t want her getting too fond of you, Hutch. You’re so nice to her and she might read things into that that aren’t there.”

Hutch shoved a hand through his hair in a gesture of pure annoyance. His jawline went a bloodless white, he was clenching his back molars together so tightly. “You think I play games with people—with kids?” he finally asked, as though the concept had come out of left field and mowed him down. “You think I get some kind of kick out of making them believe I care so I can kick their feelings around later, just for the fun of it?”

Kendra hiked up her chin and met his gaze straight on. “Maybe not with children,” she allowed evenly, “but do you ‘play games’ with women? That’s a definite yes, Hutch. And I’m sure Brylee Parrish isn’t the only person who’d be willing to back me up on the theory.”

“You believe all that—” he paused, looked back over one shoulder, probably to make sure Madison hadn’t wandered back into earshot and, seeing that she hadn’t, finished with “—crap on the internet?”

Kendra’s chuckle was light, but edged with a degree of bitterness that surprised even her. “Pictures don’t lie,” she said. “Besides, this goes back a lot further than your infamy on the web. Maybe you’ve forgotten that one of those broken hearts was mine?”

He looked as though he couldn’t believe what he was hearing. “And maybe you’ve forgotten that we had something good going for us before you decided to kick off the traces and become Lady Chamberlain.”

“It wasn’t like that at all!” Kendra whispered.

“Go ahead and rewrite history to suit yourself,” Hutch rasped, pushing back his chair and standing up, his half-finished coffee forgotten. He made the move so quietly that his chair didn’t so much as scrape the floor, but rage was hardwired into every lean, powerful line of him. He set his hands on his hips and looked down at her for a long moment, then added, “The fact is, sweetheart, you walked out on me.”

A knock sounded at the screen door just then, and a man’s face appeared on the other side of the mesh. “Brought the car,” he said, jangling the keys.

Hutch crossed the room, yanked the screen door open, and stormed right past the guy without even glancing at him.

The ranch hand looked at him curiously and extended the Volvo keys to Kendra, who had followed Hutch as far as the threshold, even though she had no intention of pursuing him. All the things she wanted to say to Hutch—okay, scream at him—were lodged painfully in the back of her throat, where she’d barely managed to stop them.

“Thank you,” Kendra said mildly, taking the keys from the visitor’s hand.

“You’re mighty welcome,” the weathered cowboy replied with a practiced tug at his hat brim. A mischievous twinkle lit his eyes. “Seems like this wouldn’t be a good time to hit the boss up for a raise.”

Kendra smiled at the joke. “You’re probably right,” she replied.

Hutch’s truck started up with a roar, and both Kendra and the ranch hand winced a little when the tires screeched as he pulled away from the curb.

The cowboy shook his head, smiled ruefully and turned toward the other Whisper Creek truck waiting in the short driveway alongside the house, a second man at the wheel.

Kendra waved, closed the screen door, then its inside counterpart, hung the keys on a nearby hook and turned to find herself facing her daughter.

Madison and Daisy stood side by side, in the middle of the kitchen, their heads tilted at exactly the same angle, their gazes questioning and worried.

Kendra had to smile at the picture they made, even though she was still so irritated with Hutch that she felt like tearing out hanks of her own hair.

“The cowboy man didn’t say goodbye,” Madison said, and her lower lip wobbled slightly.

It was one of those rare times when only a lie would do, Kendra decided ruefully. “Actually, Mr. Carmody was in a big hurry, and he asked me to tell you goodbye and say he was sorry he had to rush off.”

Madison, being an intelligent child, looked skeptical and unappeased, but she accepted the fib—to a degree. “I heard mad voices,” she challenged Kendra after a few beats.

They’d been so careful not to yell, she and Hutch, though she’d wanted to and it was probably safe to assume Hutch had, as well. Madison had picked up on the energy of the exchange, rather than the actual words.

“It’s time for your bath and a story,” Kendra said moderately, striving for normalcy. How could Hutch claim, for one moment, that she’d been the one to break them up? He’d virtually handed her over to Jeffrey and walked away whistling.

“You should be nice to people,” Madison lectured. “That’s what you always tell me.”

Kendra placed splayed fingers gently between her daughter’s shoulders and started her in the direction of the main bathroom. “Let’s have this discussion another time, please,” she said.

Daisy’s toenails clicked on the hardwood floor behind them as she and Madison headed down the hall, Madison resisting ever so slightly as they went.

“But you forgot supper,” the child reasoned.

Sure enough, Kendra realized, the evening meal had completely slipped her mind. “You’re right,” she replied, at once chagrined and glad to find common ground, even if it was a little shaky. “Tell you what—we’ll feed Daisy and then, after you’ve had your bath, I’ll whip up a couple of grilled cheese sandwiches for us. How would that be?”

Madison looked up at her and something in her small, obstinate face relented. “I like grilled cheese sandwiches,” she admitted.

Kendra smiled. “Me, too,” she said.

With Madison stripping and Daisy supervising the whole enterprise, Kendra managed to prepare the little girl’s bath—a few inches of warm water with bubbles.

Madison climbed in and Daisy rested her muzzle on the edge of the bathtub, watching her small mistress, brown eyes shining with love.

“Can Daisy get into the tub, too?” Madison asked, reaching for her pink sponge and the duck-shaped bar of soap she favored.

“Not this time, sweetie,” Kendra said, since that seemed better than a flat no.

Madison huffed out a sigh and began her ablutions, perfectly capable of bathing herself.

A few minutes later, she announced, “I’m clean now, Mommy!”

Smiling, despite the quiet but persistent ache in the region of her heart Hutch still claimed, Kendra gave her a kiss and reached for a towel.

* * *

HUTCH HAD ALWAYS been good at letting stuff roll off his back—he’d had to be—but that tangle with Kendra back at her place made him want to fight.

With anybody, about anything.

When the lights of Boone’s cop car flashed behind him, just before the turn-in at Whisper Creek, it almost pleased him to pull over.

“What?” he snapped, rolling down the window on the passenger side of the truck so Boone could peer in at him.

“You headed for a fire?” Boone countered. “I clocked you at fifty in a thirty-five back there.”

Hutch swore under his breath, tightened his grip on the steering wheel. “Sorry,” he lied, glaring through the windshield at the dirt road ahead. It did some twisting and turning, that old road, before it joined the highway and rolled right on into Idaho and Washington.

At the moment, he sure felt like following it till it ended at the Pacific Ocean.

“Look at me, Hutch,” the sheriff said, and he sounded dead serious.

Hutch turned his head, met Boone’s gaze. “Write the ticket and be done with it,” he growled.

“Well, who spit in your oatmeal this morning?” Boone asked, folding his arms against the base of the window and studying Hutch intently.

“I’ve got a lot on my mind right now,” Hutch snapped. “All right?”

Boone sighed, shoved a hand through his dark hair. “I know that,” he said, “but I can’t let you go speeding around my county, now can I? Pretty soon, folks will be saying I turn a blind eye when my friends break the law and I can’t have that, Hutch. You know I can’t.”

“So write the ticket,” Hutch reiterated. He just wanted to be gone, to be moving, to be riding hard across darkening ground on a horse or climbing Big Sky Mountain on foot—anything but sitting still.

“Have it your way,” Boone said. He took his ticket book from his belt, scrawled on a piece of paper, ripped it free, and held it out to Hutch, who snatched it from his hand and barely managed to keep from chucking it out his own window out of sheer cussedness.

“Thanks,” Hutch told him, glaring.

Boone laughed. “I’d say ‘you’re welcome,’ but that would add up to one too many smart-asses per square yard.” He wouldn’t unpin Hutch from that penetrating gaze of his. “I’m off duty and I was headed for home until you went shooting by me like a bat out of hell,” he said companionably. “Why don’t you follow me back over to my place? We’ll have a couple of beers and feel sorry for ourselves for a while.”

Hutch had to chuckle at that, though it was against his will and he resented it. “All right,” he agreed at last, and grudgingly. “Long as you promise not to run me in for drunk driving after plying me with liquor.”

“You have my word,” Boone said with a grin. “See you over there.”

With that, he backed away from the window and strolled back to his cruiser where the lights were still swirling, blue and white, causing the few passersby to slow down to gawk.

Boone’s land, situated on the far side of Parable from where they started, was prime, fronting the river and sloping gently up toward the foothills, but it had the look of a place bogged down in hard times. The double-wide trailer was ugly as sin, and there were a couple of junked-out cars parked in the tall grass that surrounded it.

The double-wide had rust around its skirting, the makeshift porch dipped in the middle, and there was an honest-to-God toilet out front, with a bunch of dead flowers poking out of the bowl. Boone and his wife, Corrie—she’d never have stood for a john in the yard—had planned to live in the trailer only until they’d built their modest dream house, but when Corrie died of breast cancer a few years back, everything else in Boone’s life seemed to stall.

If he’d had a dog, folks said, he’d have given it away. He had sent his two young sons, Griffin and Fletcher, off to live with his sister and her family in Missoula, where he probably figured they were better off.

Running for sheriff, after Slade announced that he wouldn’t be seeking reelection, had been the first real sign of life in Boone since Corrie was laid to rest and for a while optimistic locals had hoped he’d get his act together, bring his kids home to Parable where they belonged, and just generally get on with things.

Parking behind the cruiser, Hutch felt an ache of sorrow on his friend’s behalf—Boone had loved Corrie with all he had, from first grade on through college and in some ways, it was as if he’d just given up and crawled right into that grave with her.

“I swear this place looks worse every time I see it,” Hutch remarked after getting out of the truck. There should have been two little boys running to greet their dad after a day at work, he thought, and a dog barking in celebration of his return, if not a woman smiling on the porch of the new house.

Instead it was dead quiet, like a graveyard with rusted headstones.

“You sound like the chicken rancher,” Boone responded dryly, cocking a thumb in the direction of the neighboring place where Tara Kendall had set up housekeeping the year before. “She says this place is an eyesore.”

Hutch had to grin. “She has a point,” he said. Then, aware that he was pushing it, he added, “How are the boys?”

Boone, starting toward the sagging porch, tossed him a look. “They’re just fine with their aunt and uncle and their brood,” he said. “So don’t start in on me, Hutch.”

Hutch pretended to brace himself for a blow from his oldest and best friend. “You won’t hear any relationship advice from me, old buddy,” he said. “These days, I’m on America’s Ten Most Unwanted list, which hardly makes me an authority.”

“Damn straight,” Boone grumbled. “And that’s where you belong, too. On a master shit-list, I mean. I knew all that womanizing was bound to catch up with you someday.”

Hutch laughed and followed his friend into the trailer. Boone always said what he thought; nobody was required to like it.

The inside of the double-wide was clean enough, but it was dismal, too. Full of shadows and smelling of the bachelor life—musty clothes left in the washing machine too long, garbage in need of taking out, the remains of last night’s lonely pizza.

Boone opened the refrigerator and took out two cans of beer, handing one to Hutch and popping the top on another, taking a long drink before starting back outside again to sit in one of the rickety lawn chairs on that sorry excuse for a porch.

Hutch joined him.

“Old friend,” Hutch ventured, looking out over what passed for a yard, “you need a woman. And that’s just the start.”

Boone grinned ruefully. “So do you,” he said. “But you keep running them off.”

Hutch sipped his beer. It was icy cold and it hit a dry spot, way down deep, unknotting him a little. “Slade’s a dad now,” he remarked, letting the gibe pass. “Can you believe it?”

“Hell, yes, I can believe it,” Boone responded. They had a three-cornered alliance, Slade and Hutch and Boone. Slade and Hutch, being half brothers, hadn’t gotten along until after the old man died, but Boone was close friends with both of them and always had been. “One look at Joslyn and Slade was a goner. Mark my words, they’ll have a houseful of little Barlows before too long.”

Hutch chuckled, but his thoughts had taken a somber turn just the same. “I reckon they enjoy the process of making them, all right,” he said. A pause followed and another slow sip of cold beer. “What do you suppose it is about Slade, that’s missing in you and me?” he asked.

Boone didn’t pretend not to understand the question, but he took his time answering. “I hate to admit it,” he finally replied, “but I think it’s just plain-old backbone. Slade’s not afraid to throw his heart in the ring and risk getting it stomped on. You and me, now, we’re a couple of cowards.”

Hutch absorbed that for a while. It was a tough truth to acknowledge—he wasn’t afraid of anything besides climbing the water tower in town and giving up a chunk of his ranch to some vindictive ex-wife—but he couldn’t deny that Boone had a point. Therefore, he didn’t take offense. “What scares you the most, Boone?” he asked quietly.

Boone studied the horizon for a few moments, weighing his reply. “Loving a woman the way I loved Corrie,” he said at long last. “And then losing her in the same way I lost Corrie. I don’t honestly think I could take that, Hutch.”

They were quiet for a long time, beers in hand, gazes fixed on things that were long ago and faraway.

“Your boys are growing up, Boone,” Hutch ventured, after a decent interval. “They need you.”

“They need what they have,” Boone said, his voice taut now, his grip on his beer threatening to crush the can between his fingers, “which is a normal life with a normal family.” He paused, swore, shook his head. “Hell, Hutch, you know I can’t take care of them the way Molly does.”

Hutch bit back the obvious response—that if Boone would just get his act together, he could make a home for himself and his boys, like millions of other single parents did. But who was he to talk about having it together, after all?

He didn’t have kids and a wife waiting at home, either.

Didn’t even have a dog, for God’s sake, since Jasper had moved in with Slade.

For whatever reason, Boone didn’t point out the holes in Hutch’s own story, but that didn’t mean he’d let him off the conversational hook, either.

Fair was fair and Hutch had been the one to set this particular ball rolling.

“That’s quite a hubbub Brylee’s friends are stirring up on the web,” Boone said.

Hutch swallowed a sigh—and a couple more gulps of beer. “I am,” he replied gravely, “a casualty of the digital age.”

Boone laughed outright at that. “And innocent as the driven snow on top of it all,” he added, before swilling more beer. As Slade had done when he held the office, Boone rarely wore a uniform—he dressed like any other Montana rancher, in jeans, boots and shirts cut Western-style. Now he unfastened the top two buttons of his shirt and breathed in as if he’d been smothering until then. “You and me,” he said, “we’re destined to be crusty old bachelors, it seems.”

Kendra filled Hutch’s mind just then. He saw her in the kitchen at his place, starting supper. He saw Madison, too, and even the dog, Daisy, hurrying out of the house to greet him when he got out of his truck or climbed down off his horse.

“I guess there are worse fates,” Hutch allowed, but his throat felt tight all of a sudden and a little on the raw side.

“Like what?” Boone asked, gruffly companionable, still reflective. He was probably remembering happier days and hurting over the contrast between then and now.

“Being married to the wrong woman,” Hutch said with grim certainty.

Boone sighed, finished his beer and stared solemnly at the can. “I wouldn’t know about that,” he answered, and though his voice didn’t actually break, there was a crack in it. He’d been hitched to the right woman, was what he meant.

Finished with his own beer, Hutch stood up. He had work to do at home and besides, the emptiness would be there waiting, no matter how long he delayed his return, so he might as well get it over with. “We’re a pair to draw to,” he said, tossing the can into a wheelbarrow overflowing with them in roughly the place where Corrie used to set flowers in big pots.

Boone stood, too. Tried for a grin and fell short.

“You signed up for the bull-riding again this year?” he asked, referring to the upcoming rodeo. The Fourth fell on a Saturday this year, a convenient thing for most folks if not for Boone, who would surely have to bring a few former deputies out of retirement to make sure Parable County remained peaceable.

“Course I am,” Hutch retorted, feeling a mite touchy again. “Walker Parrish promised me the worst bull that ever drew breath.”

“I’ll just bet he did,” Boone said with another chuckle, throwing his own beer can in the general direction of the wheelbarrow and missing by a couple of feet. “When it’s your turn to ride, I reckon a few of the spectators will be rooting for the bull.”

Hutch started toward his truck. Twilight was gathering at the edges of the land, pulling inward like the top of a drawstring bag, and his horses would be wondering when he planned on showing up with their hay and grain rations. “No different than any other year,” he said. “Somebody’s always on the bull’s side.”

“You might want to think about that,” Boone answered, and damn if he didn’t sound serious as a heart attack. Him, with his sons farmed out to kinfolk, however loving, and the weeds taking over, threatening to swallow up the trailer itself.

Hutch stopped in his tracks. “Think about what?” he demanded.

“Life. People. How time gets away from a man and, before he knows it, he’s sitting in some nursing home without a tooth in his head or a hope in his heart that anybody’s going to trouble themselves to visit.”

“Damned if you aren’t dumber than the average post,” Hutch said, moving again, jerking open the door of his truck and climbing inside.

“At least I know my limitations,” Boone said affably.

“Thanks for the beer,” Hutch replied ungraciously, and slammed the truck’s door.

He drove away at a slower pace than he would have liked, though. Boone had already written him up for speeding once and he wasn’t above doing it again.

By the time he got back to Whisper Creek, he’d simmered down quite a bit, though what Boone had said about the pair of them being cowards still stuck in him like barbed wire.

A familiar station wagon, three years older than dirt, was parked next to the house when he pulled in.

Opal, he realized, had arrived early.

He muttered something under his breath, got out of the pickup and went directly into the barn, where he spent the better part of an hour attending to horses.

It was almost dark by the time he’d finished, and the lights were on in the kitchen, spilling a golden glow of welcome into the yard.

Stepping inside, he nodded a howdy to Opal, refusing to give her the satisfaction of demanding to know what the hell she was doing in his house. For one thing, he already knew—she was frying up chicken, country-style, and it smelled like three levels of heaven.

“Wash up before you eat,” Opal ordered, tightening her apron strings and eyeing him through the big lenses of her glasses.

“I generally do,” Hutch said mildly, running water at the sink and picking up the bar of harsh orange soap he kept handy.

“Look at those boots,” Opal scolded with that strange, gruff tenderness she reserved for people in need of her guidance and correction. “Bet the soles are caked with manure.”

Hutch sighed. He’d scraped them clean outside, on the porch, as he’d been taught to do around the time he started wearing boots.

“With you over here,” he quipped, “who’s going to nag Slade Barlow?”

“Shea’s mama got in early,” Opal replied, spearing pieces of chicken onto a platter with a meat fork. “So I figured I might as well get started setting things to rights around here.”

Hutch dried his hands on a towel and grinned at her. “You’re off to a good start with supper,” he conceded.

She chuckled. “I made mashed potatoes and gravy, too, and boiled up some green beans with bacon and onion to boot. Sit yourself down, Hutch Carmody, and eat the first balanced meal you’ve probably had in a month of Sundays.”

He waited until all the food was on the table and Opal was seated before taking a chair, wryly amused to recall that this was just the scenario he’d imagined for himself earlier.

Only the woman was different.

CHAPTER SEVEN

THE MANSION ON Rodeo Road seemed strangely hollow the next morning when Kendra stepped through the front door, even though most of the original furniture remained and there were painters and other workers in various rooms throughout.

Standing in the enormous entryway, she tipped her head back and looked up at the exquisite ceiling, waited for a pang of regret—some kind of sadness was to be expected, she supposed, given that she’d spent part of her life here. She’d wanted so much to live in this house, long before she’d met and married Jeffrey Chamberlain, and after her marriage a number of dreams had lived—and died—right here in these rooms.

Somewhat surprisingly, what Kendra actually felt was a swell of relief, a healthy sense of letting go, of moving on, even of becoming some more complete and authentic version of herself.

There was comfort in that, even exhilaration.

When she’d first set foot in the place, as an awestruck little girl recently dumped on the porch of a rundown double-wide on the wrong side of the railroad tracks, Joslyn had been the one who lived here, along with her mom, Dana, and stepfather, Elliott, and, of course, Opal.

To Kendra the place had seemed like a castle, especially at Christmas, with Joslyn as resident princess.

During her childhood and her teens, the mere scope of that house had amazed Kendra—there were rooms not just for sleeping or eating or bathing, like in most homes, but ones set aside just for plants to grow in, or for playing cards and watching TV, or for reading books and doing homework or simply for sitting. Her grandmother’s trailer had closets, of course, but here there were dressing rooms, too, with glass cubicles for shoes and handbags, and what seemed like a million bathrooms. There had even been a nook—several times larger than the living room in the double-wide—set aside for wrapping gifts, tying them up with elaborate bows, decorating them with small ornaments or glittery artificial flowers.

To a child who was handed money and told to buy her own birthday and Christmas presents, the mere concept of such finery had been magical.

Alas Kendra had been quick enough to realize, once she became the mistress of this monstrosity of a place, that it was never the structure itself, or any of its fancy trappings, that she’d wanted.

Instead it was the family, the sense of fitting in and belonging somewhere, of being a valued part of something larger.

Seen from the outside, Joslyn’s life had certainly seemed happy in those early days, even enchanted, although a shattering scandal would eventually erupt, leaving everything in ruins.

Before her stepfather’s financial fall from grace, when he’d ripped off friends and strangers alike, Joslyn had had it all—and while some people had been jealous of her and thought of her as spoiled and self-centered, Kendra had seen a different side of Joslyn. She’d shown empathy for Kendra’s very different situation, but never pity, and she’d been willing to share her toys and her skates and, later on, her beautiful clothes.

More importantly, Joslyn had shared her mom and Opal and the little cocker spaniel, Spunky. Elliott Rossiter, the stepfather, had come and gone, funny and affable and generous, but always busy doing something important.

Stealing, as it turned out.

As an adult, Kendra had hoped to fulfill at least a part of her own dream with Jeffrey—the formation of a family—and in a roundabout way, she’d succeeded, because she had Madison now.

“Hello?” The voice startled Kendra out of her musings, even though she’d known she wasn’t alone, having seen the painters’ and cleaning service’s vans in the driveway.

Charlie Duke, who ran Duke’s Painting and Construction, stepped into view, clad in splotched overalls and wiping his hands on a shop rag. He grinned, showing the wide gap between his front teeth.

“Mornin’, Ms. Shepherd,” he said. “Here to see how the place is comin’ along, are you?”

Kendra smiled. “Something like that,” she replied. She’d known Charlie and his wife, Tina, for years and in the post office or the grocery store or over at the Butter Biscuit Café, either one of them would have addressed her simply as “Kendra,” but the Dukes were old-fashioned people. When Charlie was on the job, all exchanges were formal, and Kendra was “Ms. Shepherd.”

“We’ve about finished up in the main parlor,” Charlie told her, with quiet pride, leading the way along the corridor. He wore paper booties over his work boots, and his T-shirt had a hole in the right shoulder, only partially covered by one of his overall straps.

Kendra followed, like someone taking a tour of some grand residence in an unfamiliar country.

It was almost as though she’d never been inside the place before, which was crazy of course, but such was her mood—reflective, calmly detached.

The parlor had been her office, as well as the main reception area for Shepherd Real Estate, and what furniture she hadn’t moved over to the storefront was still in place, though covered by huge canvas tarps. The walls, formerly a soft shade of dusty rose, were now eggshell, neutral colors allegedly being the way to go when a house was on the market, in the hope of appealing to a broader spectrum of potential buyers.

Kendra did a quick walk-through—no small undertaking in a house the size of the average high school gymnasium—greeted Charlie’s two sons, who were busy painting the kitchen a very pale yellow, and various members of the cleaning team, perched stoutly on high ladders, polishing window glass, and then went back to her car, where Daisy waited patiently in the passenger seat. They’d dropped Madison off at preschool first thing, the two of them, and the next stop was Kendra’s office.

Upon arriving there, she took Daisy for a quick turn around the parking lot and then they both entered through the back way.

While Daisy explored the space—she’d been there before but, in her canine brain, there was always the exciting possibility that something had changed since the last visit—sniffing at silk plants and file cabinets and windowsills, Kendra booted up her computer, unlocked the front door and turned the Closed sign around to read Open.

She was in the tiny, closed-off kitchenette/storage room, starting a pot of coffee brewing, when she heard someone come in from the street. Daisy’s low, almost inquisitive growl made her hurry back to the main part of the office.

The man standing just inside the door was strikingly handsome, wearing the regulation jeans, boots, Western-cut shirt and hat, as most men in Parable did.

He removed the hat, acknowledging Kendra with a cordial nod, and grinned down at Daisy, who by then must have decided he didn’t represent a threat after all. Far from growling at him, she was nuzzling the hand he lowered for her to inspect.

It was a moment or two before Kendra placed the man—not a stranger, but not a resident of Parable proper, either. Of course, some new people could have moved into town while she was traveling, somehow managing to escape her notice, but that didn’t seem very likely. After all, it was her business to know what was going on in the community, who was moving in and who was moving out, and she’d kept pretty close tabs on such local doings, through Joslyn, even while she was away.

The visitor smiled and recognition finally clicked. His name was Walker Parrish, and he was a wealthy rancher with a place over near Three Trees. Besides raising prize beef, he bred bulls and broncos for rodeos, as well.

And he was brother of the almost-bride, Brylee Parrish, Hutch’s latest casualty-of-the-heart.

Surely, Kendra thought, a little desperately, he didn’t think she’d been a factor in the wedding-day breakup? Everyone knew she’d been involved with Hutch at one time, but that had been over for years.

Still, what other business could Parrish have with her? He already owned a major chunk of the county, so he probably wasn’t looking to acquire property, and since his place had been in his family for several generations, she couldn’t imagine him selling out, either.

She finally gathered enough presence of mind to smile back at him and ask, “What can I help you with today, Mr. Parrish?”

“Well,” he said with a grin that cocked up at one side, “you could start by calling me by my given name, Walker.”

Daisy, by that time, had dropped to her belly in what looked like a dog-swoon, her long nose resting atop Walker’s right boot, as though to pin him in place so she could stare up at him forever in uninterrupted adoration.

“All right,” Kendra said. “Walker it is, then.” As a somewhat flustered afterthought, she added, “I’m Kendra.”

Again, the grin flashed. “Yes,” he said. “I know who you are.” He cleared his throat. “I came by to ask you about the house on Rodeo Road. I understand you’re getting ready to sell it.”

Kendra nodded, surprised and hoping it didn’t show. Maybe she’d been wrong earlier, deciding that Walker hadn’t come to buy or sell real estate. “Yes,” she said, at last summoning up her manners and offering him one of the chairs reserved for customers while she moved behind her desk and sat down. “What would you like to know?”

Daisy sighed and lifted her head when Walker moved away, then wandered off to curl up in a corner of the office for a snooze.

Once Kendra was seated, Walker took a seat, too, letting his hat rest, crown to the cushion, on the chair nearest his. There was an attractive crease in his brown hair where the hatband had been, and it struck her, once again, how handsome he was—and how, oddly, his good looks didn’t move her at all.

She reviewed what she knew about him—which was almost nothing. She didn’t think he had a wife or even a girlfriend, but since the impression was mainly intuitive, she couldn’t be sure.

Wishful thinking? Perhaps. If he was single, the question was, why? Why was a man like Walker Parrish still running around loose? Evidently the good ones weren’t already taken.

“I guess I’d be interested in the price, to start,” Walker replied with a slight twinkle in his eyes. Had he guessed what she was thinking in regard to his marital status? The idea mortified her instantly.

Her tone was normal when she recited the astronomical numbers.

Walker didn’t flinch. “Reasonable,” he said.

The curiosity was just too much for Kendra. “You’re thinking of moving to Parable?” she asked.

He chuckled at that, shook his head. “No,” he said. “I’m here on behalf of a friend of mine. She’s—in show business, divorced, and she has a couple of kids she’d like to raise in a small town. Wants a big place because she plans to set up her own recording studio, and between the band and the road crew and her household and office staff, she needs a lot of elbow room.”

Kendra couldn’t help being intrigued—and a little wary. It wasn’t uncommon for famous people to buy land around Parable, build houses even bigger than her own and landing strips for their private jets, and proceed to set up “sanctuaries” for exotic animals that didn’t mix all that well with the cattle, horses, sheep and chickens ordinary mortals tended to raise, among other visibly noble and charitable efforts. Generally these out-of-towners were friendly enough, and the locals were willing to give them the benefit of the doubt, but in time the newcomers always seemed to stir up trouble over water rights or bounties on wolves and coyotes or some such, alienate all their neighbors, and then simply move on to the next place, the next adventure.

It was as though their lives were movies and Parable was just another set, instead of a real place populated by real people.

“Anybody I might have heard of?” Kendra asked carefully.

Something in Walker’s heretofore open face closed up just slightly. “You’d know her name,” he replied. “She’s asked me not to mention it right away, that’s all. In case the whole thing comes to nothing.”

Kendra nodded; she’d had plenty of practice with this sort of thing. Most celebrities were private nearly to the point of paranoia, and not without reason. Besides the paparazzi, they had to worry about stalkers and kidnappers and worse. Safety—or the illusion of it—lay in secrecy, and safety was usually what made places like Parable and Three Trees attractive to them.

“Fair enough,” she said easily. “There are always a few upscale properties available in the county....” She could think of two that had been standing empty for a while; one had an Olympic-size indoor pool, and the other boasted a home theater with a rotating screen and plush seats for almost a hundred. The asking prices were in the mid-to-high seven-figure range, not surprisingly, but it didn’t sound as though that would strain Walker’s mysterious friend’s budget.

But Walker was already shaking his head. Being a local, he knew as well as anybody which properties were for sale, what kind of shape they were in, and approximately what they’d cost to buy, restore and maintain—and he’d asked specifically about the house on Rodeo Road. “She wants to be in town,” he said. Then a frown creased his tanned forehead. “Is there some reason why you don’t want to show your house just yet?”

“No, no,” Kendra said, “it’s nothing like that. We can head over there right now if you want. It’s just that—” She stopped in the middle of the sentence because she couldn’t think of a diplomatic way to go on.

“Show business people are sometimes unreliable,” Walker finished for her. The frown had smoothed away and he was grinning again. “I remember that rock band a few years back—the ones who built a pseudo haunted house, trashed the Grange Hall in Three Trees one night when they were partying and then nearly burned down a state forest, conducting some kind of crazy ritual. But it wouldn’t be fair to hold that against everybody who sings and plays a guitar to earn a paycheck, would it?”

Kendra let out a long breath, shook her head no. Walker was right—that wouldn’t be fair—and besides, hadn’t he said this woman wanted to raise her children in a small town? That gave her at least one thing in common with Kendra herself, and with most of her friends, too.

Parable had its problems, like any community, but the crime rate was low, people knew each other and down-to-earth values were still important there. In a very real sense, Parable was a family. And it was cousin to Three Trees.

The two towns were rivals in many ways, but when trouble came to one or the other, they stood up to it shoulder to shoulder.

“If you have time,” she reiterated, “I can show you through the house right now.”

“That would be great,” Walker said, rising from his chair. “I was there a few times when I was a kid, for parties and the like, but I don’t remember too many of the details.”

Kendra stood, too, simultaneously reaching for her purse and Daisy’s leash. She blushed a little, imagining the state of the Volvo’s interior. Pre-Madison and pre-dog, she’d kept her vehicles immaculate, as a courtesy to her clients, but now...

“I’m afraid my car needs vacuuming. The dog...”

Walker laughed. “Given my line of work,” he said, “I’m not squeamish about a little dog hair. Matter of fact, I have three of the motley critters myself. But I’ll take my own rig because I’ve got some other places to go to this morning, after we’re through at your place.”

Kendra nodded, clipped on Daisy’s leash and indicated that she’d be leaving by the back way, so she’d need to lock up behind Walker after he stepped outside.

“Meet you over there,” he said, and went out.

She nodded and locked the door between them.

Daisy paused for a pee break in the parking lot, and then Kendra and the retriever climbed into the Volvo and headed for Rodeo Road for the second time that morning.

* * *

“AT THIS RATE,” Hutch grumbled good-naturedly, surveying the meal Opal had just set before him—a late lunch or an early supper, depending on your perspective, “I’ll be too fat to ride in the rodeo, even though it’s only a few days away.”

Opal laughed. “Oh, stop your fussing and sit down and eat,” she ordered.

She’d been busy—had the ironing board set up in the middle of the kitchen, and she must have washed and pressed every shirt he owned because she’d evidently been hard at it all day. Except, of course, for when she took time out to build the meat loaf she’d just set down in front of him. The main dish was accompanied by creamed peas and mashed potatoes drowning in gravy; and just looking at all that food, woman-cooked and from scratch, too, made his mouth water and his stomach growl.

But he didn’t sit, because Opal was still standing.

With a little sigh and a sparkle of flattered comprehension in her eyes, she took the chair indicated and nodded for him to follow suit.

He did, but he was still uncomfortable. “Aren’t you going to join me?” he asked, troubled to notice that she hadn’t set a place for herself.

Opal’s chuckle was warm and vibrant, vaguely reminiscent of the gospel music she loved to belt out when she thought she was alone. “I can’t eat like a cowboy,” she answered. “Be the size of a house in no time if I do.”

Hutch was fresh out of self-restraint. He was simply too hungry, and the food looked and smelled too good. He took up his knife and fork and dug in. After complimenting Opal on her cooking—by comparison to years of eating his own burnt sacrifices or his dad’s similar efforts, it seemed miraculous they survived—he asked about Joslyn and the baby.

“They’re doing just fine,” Opal said with satisfaction. Her gaze followed his fork from his plate to his mouth and she smiled like she might be enjoying the meal vicariously. “Dana—that’s Joslyn’s mother, you remember—is a born grandma, and so is Callie Barlow. Between the two of them, Slade, Shea and of course the little mama herself, I was purely in the way.”

“I doubt that,” Hutch observed. Opal, it seemed to him, was more than an ordinary human being, she was a living archetype, a wise woman, an earth mother.

And damned if he wasn’t going all greeting-card philosophical in his old age.

“I like to go where I’m needed,” she said lightly.

Hutch chuckled. “So now I’m some kind of—case?” he asked, figuring he was probably that and a lot more.

Opal’s gaze softened. “Your mama was a good friend to me when I first came to Parable to work for old Mrs. Rossiter,” she said, very quietly. “Least I can do to return the favor is make sure her only boy doesn’t go around half-starved and looking like a homeless person.”

That time, he laughed. “I look like a homeless person?” he countered, at once amused and mildly indignant. Living on this same land all his life, like several generations of Carmodys before him, letting the dirt soak up his blood and sweat and tears, he figured he was about as unhomeless as it was possible to be.

“Not exactly,” Opal said thoughtfully, and in all seriousness, going by her expression and her tone. “A wifeless person would be a better way of putting it.”

Hutch sobered. Opal hadn’t said much about the near-miss wedding, but he knew it was on her mind. Hell, it was on everybody’s mind, and he wished something big would happen so people would have something else to obsess about.

An earthquake, maybe.

Possibly the Second Coming.

Or at least a local lottery winner.

“You figure a wife is the answer to all my problems?” he asked moderately, setting down his fork.

“Just most of them,” Opal clarified with a mischievous grin. “But here’s what I’m not saying, Hutch—I’m not saying that you should have gone ahead and married Brylee Parrish. Marriage is hard enough when both partners want it with all their hearts. When one doesn’t, there’s no making it work. So by my reckoning, you definitely did the right thing by putting a stop to things, although your timing could have been better.”

Hutch relaxed, picked up his fork again. “I tried to tell Brylee beforehand,” he said. He’d long since stopped explaining this to most people, but Opal wasn’t “most people.” “She wouldn’t listen.”

Opal sighed. “She’s headstrong, that girl,” she reflected. “Her and Walker’s mama was like that, you know. Folks used to say you could tell a Parrish, but you couldn’t tell them much.”

Hutch went right on eating. “Is there anybody within fifty miles of here whose mama you didn’t know?” he teased between bites. He was ravenous, he realized, and slowing down was an effort. Keep one foot on the floor, son, he remembered his dad saying, whenever he’d shown a little too much eagerness at the table.

“I don’t know a lot of the new people,” she said, “nor their kinfolks, neither. But I knew your mother, sure enough, and she certainly did love her boy. It broke her heart when she got sick, knowing she’d have to leave you to grow up with just your daddy.”

Hutch’s throat tightened slightly, making the next swallow an effort. He’d been just twelve years old when his mother died of cancer, and although he’d definitely grieved her loss, he’d also learned fairly quickly that the old man believed in letting the dead bury the dead. John Carmody had rarely spoken of his late wife after the funeral, and he hadn’t encouraged Hutch to talk about her, either. In fact, he’d put away all the pictures of her and given away her personal possessions almost before she was cold in the grave.

So Hutch had set her on a shelf in a dusty corner of his mind and tried not to think about the hole she’d left in his life when she was torn away.

“Dad wasn’t the best when it came to parenting,” Hutch commented belatedly, thinking back. “But he wasn’t the worst, either.”

Opal’s usually gentle face seemed to tighten a little, around her mouth especially. “John Carmody was just plain selfish,” she decreed with absolute conviction but no particular rancor. To her, the remark amounted to an observation, not a judgment. “Long as he got what he wanted, he didn’t reckon anything else mattered.”

Hutch was a little surprised by the bluntness of Opal’s statement, though he couldn’t think why he should have been. She was one of the most direct people he’d ever known—and he considered the trait a positive one, at least in her. There were those, of course, who used what they liked to call “honesty” as an excuse to be mean, but Opal wasn’t like that.

He opened his mouth to reply, couldn’t think what to say, and closed it again.

Opal smiled and reached across the table to lay a hand briefly on his right forearm. “I had no business saying that, Hutch,” she told him, “and I’m sorry.”

Hutch found his voice, but it came out gruff. “Don’t be,” he said. “I like a reminder every once in a while that I’m not the only one who thought my father was an asshole.”

This time it was Opal who was taken aback. “Hutch Carmody,” she finally managed to sputter, “I’ll thank you not to use that kind of language in my presence again, particularly in reference to the departed.”

“Sorry,” he said, and the word was still a little rough around the edges.

“We can either talk about your daddy and your mama,” Opal said presently, “or we can drop the whole subject. It’s up to you.”

His hunger—for food, at least—assuaged, Hutch pushed his mostly empty plate away and met Opal’s gaze. “Obviously,” he said mildly, “you’ve got something to say. So go ahead and say it.”

“I’m not sure what kind of father Mr. Carmody was,” she began, “but I know he wasn’t up for any awards as a husband.”

Offering no response, Hutch rested his forearms on the tabletop and settled in for some serious listening.

When she went on, Opal seemed to be picking up in the middle of some rambling thought. “Oh, I know he wasn’t actually married to your mother when he got involved with Callie Barlow, but she had his engagement ring on her finger, all right, and the date had been set.”

Hutch guessed the apple didn’t fall far from the tree, as the old saying went. He hadn’t cheated on Brylee, but he’d done the next worst thing by breaking up with her at their wedding with half the county looking on.

“That was hard for Mom,” he said. “She never really got over it, as far as I could tell.”

Opal nodded. “She was fragile in some ways,” she replied.

Hutch felt the sting of chagrin. He’d loved his mother, but he’d always thought of her as weak, too, and maybe even a mite on the foolish side. She’d gone right ahead and married the old man, after all, knowing that he’d not only betrayed her trust, but fathered a child by another woman.

A child—Slade Barlow—who would grow up practically under her nose and bear such a resemblance to John Carmody that there could be no doubt of his paternity.

“I guess she liked to think the whole thing was Callie’s fault,” Hutch reasoned, “and Dad was just an innocent victim.”

“Some victim,” Opal scoffed, but sadly. “He wanted Callie and he went after her. She was young and naive, and he was good-looking and a real smooth talker when he wanted to be. I think Callie really believed he loved her—and it was a brave thing she did, barely grown herself and raising Slade all by herself in a place the size of Parable.”

Hutch recalled his encounter with Callie at the hospital, how happy she was about the new baby, her grandson. And his heart, long-since hardened against the woman, softened a little more. “I reckon most people are doing the best they can with whatever cards they were dealt,” he said. “Callie included.”

“It’s a shame,” Opal said after a long and thoughtful pause, “that you and Slade grew up at odds. Why your daddy never acknowledged him as his son is more than I can fathom. It just doesn’t make any sense, the two of them looking so much alike and all.”

Hutch considered what he was about to say for a long moment before he actually came out with it. Opal knew everybody’s business, but she didn’t carry tales, so he could trust her. And he didn’t want to sound as if he felt sorry for himself, because he knew that, for all of it, he was one of the lucky ones. “When it was just Dad and me,” he finally replied, “nobody else around, he used to tell me he wished I’d been the one born on the wrong side of the blanket instead of Slade. I guess by Dad’s reckoning, Callie got the better end of the deal.”

Opal didn’t respond immediately, not verbally anyway, but her eyes flashed with temper and then narrowed. “Slade is a fine man—Callie did a good job bringing him up and no sensible person would claim otherwise—but he’s no better and no worse than you are, Hutch.”

Hutch just smiled at that, albeit a bit sadly. Sure, he wished his dad had shown some pride in him, just once, but there was no point in dwelling on things that couldn’t be changed. To his mind, the only way to set the matter right was to be a different kind of father himself, when the time came.

He pushed back his chair, stood up and slowly carried his plate and silverware to the sink.

Opal was right there beside him, in a heartbeat, elbowing him aside even as she took the utensils out of his hand. “I’ll do that,” she said. “You go on and do whatever it is you do in the evenings.”

Hutch smiled. “I was thinking I might head into town,” he said. “See what’s happening at the Boot Scoot.”

“I’ll tell you what’s happening at that run-down old bar,” Opal said, with mock disapproval. “Folks are wasting good time and good money, swilling liquor and listening to songs about being in prison and their mama’s bad luck and how their old dog got run over when their wife left them in a hurry.”

“Why, Opal,” Hutch teased cheerfully, “does that mean you don’t want to go along as my date?”

“You just hush,” Opal scolded, snapping at him with a dish towel and then giving a laugh. “And mind you don’t drink too much beer.”

CHAPTER EIGHT

AFTER TAKING A quick shower and putting on clean clothes, Hutch traveled a round-about road to get to the Boot Scoot Tavern that night—a place he had no real interest in going to—and the meandering trail led him right past Kendra Shepherd’s brightly lit rental house.

In simpler times, he wouldn’t have needed a reason to knock on Kendra’s door at pretty much any hour of the day or night, but things had certainly changed between them, and not just because she had a daughter now. Not even because he’d almost married Brylee Parrish and Kendra had married Sir Jeffrey, as Hutch privately thought of the man—when he was in a charitable frame of mind, that is.

No, there was more to it.

The whole time he’d known Kendra, she’d coveted that monster of a house over on Rodeo Road. As a kid, she’d haunted it like a small and wistful ghost, Joslyn’s pale shadow. As a grown-up, she’d found herself a prince with the means to buy the place for her and after the divorce she’d held on to it, rattling around in it all alone for several years, like a lone plug of buckshot in the bottom of a fifty-gallon drum.

Now all of a sudden, she’d moved into modest digs, rented from Maggie Landers, opened a storefront office to sell real estate out of and switched rides from a swanky sports car to a Volvo, for God’s sake.

What did all of that mean—beyond, of course, the fact that she was now a mother? Did it, in fact, mean anything? Women were strange and magnificent creatures, in Hutch’s opinion, their workings mysterious, often even to themselves, never mind some hapless man like him.

Kendra had, except for staying put in Parable, turned her entire life upside down, changed practically everything.

Was that a good omen—or a bad one?

Hutch wanted an answer to that question far more than he wanted a draft beer, but since he could get the latter for a couple of bucks and the former might just cost him a chunk of his pride, he kept going until he pulled into the gravel-and-dirt parking lot next to the Boot Scoot.

The front doors of that never-painted Quonset hut, a relic of World War II, stood open to the evening breeze, and light and sound spilled and tumbled out into the thickening twilight—he heard laughter, twangy music rocking from the jukebox, the distinctive click of pool balls at the break.

With a smile and a shake of his head, Hutch shut off the headlights, cranked off the truck’s trusty engine, pushed open the door and got out. The soles of his boots crunched in the gravel when he landed, and he shut the truck door behind him, then headed for the entrance.

Once the place would have been blue with shifting billows of cigarette smoke, hazy and acrid, but now it was illegal to light up in a public building, though the smell of burning tobacco—and occasionally something else—was still noticeable even out in the open air. He caught the down-at-the-heels Montana-tavern scent of the sawdust covering the floor as he entered, stale sweat overridden by colognes of both the male and female persuasions, and he felt that peculiar brand of personal loneliness that drove folks to the Boot Scoot when they had better things to be doing elsewhere.

Hutch nodded to a few friends as he approached the bar and then ordered a beer.

Two or three couples were dancing to the wails of the jukebox—he thought of Opal’s description of the tavern and smiled at its accuracy—but most of the action seemed to center around the two pool tables at the far end of the long room.

Hutch’s beer was drawn from a spigot and brought to him; he paid for it, picked up the mug in one hand and made his way toward the pool tables. By the weekend, when the rodeo and other Independence Day celebrations would be in full swing, the crowds would be so thick in here, at least at night, that just getting from one side of the tavern to the other would be like swimming through chest-deep mud of the variety Montanans call “gumbo.”

Finding a place to stand without bumping elbows with anybody, Hutch watched the proceedings. Deputy Treat McQuillan, off duty and out of uniform but still clearly marked as a cop by his old-fashioned buzz haircut, watched sourly, pool cue in hand, while another player basically ran the table, plunking ball after ball into the appropriate pocket.

Never a gracious loser, McQuillan reddened steadily throughout, and when the bloodbath was over, he turned on one heel, rammed his cue stick back into the wall-rack with a sharp motion of one scrawny arm and stormed off.

A few of the good old boys, mostly farmers and ranchers Hutch had known since the last Ice Age, shook their heads in tolerant disgust and then ignored McQuillan, as most people tended to do. Getting along with him was just too damn much work and consequently the number of friends he could claim usually hovered somewhere around zero.

For some reason Hutch couldn’t put his finger on—beyond a prickle at the nape of his neck—he was strangely uneasy and getting more so by the moment. He watched the deputy shoulder his way toward the bar, evidently impervious to the good-natured joshing of the people he passed.

Hutch had never liked McQuillan, and he certainly wasn’t in the minority on that score, but in that moment he found himself feeling a little sorry for the man, if no less watchful. The very air had a zip in it, a sure sign that something was about to go down, and it probably wasn’t good.

Halfway across the sawdust-covered floor, McQuillan stopped at a table encircled by women, put out his hand and jerked one of them to her feet, hard against his torso and into a slow dance. At first, Hutch couldn’t make out who she was, with folks milling in between.

A scuffle ensued—the lady evidently preferred not to participate, at least not with Treat McQuillan for a dancing partner—and the other females at the table rose as one, so fast that a few of their chairs tipped over backward.

“Stop it, Treat,” one of them said.

And then, as people shifted and pressed in on the scene, Hutch recognized the woman who didn’t want to dance. It was Brylee.

He plunked down his mug on another table and instinctively headed in that direction, ready to take McQuillan apart at the joints like a Sunday-supper chicken just out of the stewpot. But right when he would have reached the couple, an arm shot out in front of his chest and stopped him as surely as if a steel barricade had slammed down from the ceiling.

“My sister,” Walker Parrish said evenly, “my fight.”

Hutch hadn’t spotted either Walker or Brylee when he came in, so he hadn’t had a chance to square away their presence in his mind. He felt a little off-balance.

In the next instant, Parrish shoved McQuillan away from Brylee, hard, hauled back one fist and clocked the deputy square in the beak.

That was it. The whole fight. Though in the days to come it would grow with every retelling, eventually becoming almost unrecognizable.

McQuillan’s eyes rolled back, his knees buckled and he went down.

Walker, meanwhile, gripped Brylee firmly by one arm, barely giving her a chance to retrieve her purse from the floor next to her chair, and propelled her toward the exit.

“We’re going home now,” he was heard to say in a tone that left no room for negotiation.

“Damn it, Walker,” Brylee yelled in response, struggling in vain to yank free from her brother’s grasp. “Let me go! I can take care of myself!”

In spite of everything, Hutch had to smile a little, because what Brylee said was true—she could take care of herself and in the long run she’d be just fine.

Oh, the woman had spirit, all right. Life would have been so much simpler all around, Hutch thought, if only he could have loved her.

Moments later, the Parrishes were gone and somebody was helping McQuillan back to his feet. He was rubbing his jaw and had one hell of a nosebleed going, but he looked all right, otherwise—no obvious need for any wires, stitches or casts, anyhow.

“I’m pressing charges!” McQuillan raged. “You’re all witnesses! You all saw what Walker Parrish did to me!”

“Ah, Treat,” one man drawled, “let it go. You put your hands on the man’s sister, and after she told you straight out she didn’t care to dance—”

McQuillan’s small, beady eyes flashed fire. He was trying to staunch the nosebleed with the sleeve of his shirt, but not having much luck. Some of the sawdust on the floor would definitely have to be shoveled out and replaced.

“I mean it,” he insisted furiously. “Parrish assaulted an officer of the law and he’s going to face the consequences!”

Hutch, standing nearby, flexed his fist slowly and waited for the urge to drop McQuillan right back to the floor again to pass.

Presently, it did.

The show was over and Hutch turned, meaning to go back for the beer he’d set aside minutes earlier. He nearly collided with Brylee’s best friend, Amy Jo DuPree in the process.

“You have your nerve coming in here, Hutch Carmody!” Amy Jo seethed, standing practically toe-to-toe with him and craning her neck back so she could look up at him. Five-foot-nothing and weighing a hundred pounds soaking wet, Frank and Marge DuPree’s baby girl was a pretty thing, but feisty, afraid of nothing and no one.

Montana seemed to breed women like that.

Hutch arched an eyebrow. “Excuse me?” he countered, raising his voice a little as the jukebox cranked up and Carrie Underwood took to extolling the virtues of baseball bats and kerosene-fueled revenge.

Maybe that was what was making the whole female sex seem more impossible to deal with by the day, Hutch speculated fleetingly. Maybe it was the inflammatory nature of the music they listened to on their iPods and other such devices.

“You heard me,” Amy Jo all but snarled through her little white teeth, and gave him a light but solid punch to the solar plexus.

Intrigued and, okay, a little pissed off at the injustice of it all, Hutch took Amy Jo by the arm and squired her outside.

The parking lot was hardly quieter than the interior of the bar, what with Walker and Brylee yelling at each other and then peeling away in Walker’s truck, and then Boone arriving with his lights flashing and his siren giving a single mournful whoop in case the blinding strobe left any doubt he was there.

“Hell,” Hutch breathed, watching as the sheriff climbed, somewhat wearily, out of his cruiser and came toward the doors of the Boot Scoot. “McQuillan’s really going to do it—he’s going to press charges against Walker.”

“Somebody ought to press charges against you,” Amy Jo huffed out, but she wasn’t quite as steam-powered as before. “How could you, Hutch? How could you let things go so far and then humiliate Brylee in public the way you did? Do you even know how much a wedding means to a woman? She looks forward to it her whole life, from the time she’s a little bit of a thing, and then—”

Boone passed them, nodded in grim acknowledgment as he went inside the tavern to investigate the scene of the crime, as McQuillan, who must have gotten right on his cell phone to report the event, would no doubt term it.

By now the damn idiot had probably taped off a body-shape in the sawdust, to mark the place where he’d fallen.

Hutch turned his attention back to Amy Jo. “Just exactly what is it,” he asked, exasperated, “that you people want me to do, here?”

Amy Jo jutted out her spunky little chin. “‘You people’? You mean Brylee’s friends?”

“I mean,” Hutch bit out tersely, “that all this Team Brylee crap is getting old. I’ve always lived here and I always will, and I will be damned if I’ll stay away from the Boot Scoot or anyplace else I want to go, just because you and the rest of Brylee’s bunch think I ought to be ashamed of what I did.” He leaned in, and Amy Jo’s eyes widened. “Here’s a flash for you—pass it on. Post it on that stupid website. Print up T-shirts, put fliers on windshields, whatever. I’m not going anywhere. Deal with it.”

Amy Jo blinked. She wasn’t a bad sort, really. It was just that she and Brylee had grown up as close friends, the way Kendra and Joslyn had. The way he and Slade might have, if it hadn’t been for the old man’s cussed determination to ignore one of them and browbeat the other.

Loyalty was an important quality in a friend, even when it was the bullheaded kind like Amy Jo’s.

“Nobody expects you to move away or anything,” Amy Jo said belatedly and in a lame tone.

“Good,” Hutch sputtered, as another ruckus of some kind erupted inside the Boot Scoot. “Because when hell freezes over, I’ll still be right here in Parable.”

Amy Jo swallowed, nodded and went back into the tavern to find her friends.

Although Hutch’s better angels urged him to get in his truck and go home, where he should have stayed in the first place, he figured Boone might need some help settling things down, so he followed Amy Jo inside.

McQuillan was out of control, waving his free arm and guarding his gushing nose with the other, yelling in Boone’s face.

Boone, for his part, calmly stood his ground. “Now, Treat,” he reasoned, amiable but serious, “I would hate to have to run one of my own deputies in for drunk-and-disorderly and creating a public nuisance, but I’ll do it, by God, I’ll throw you straight into the hoosegow if you keep this up.”

At the periphery of his vision, Hutch saw Amy Jo and the rest of the Brylee contingent quietly gather their purses and other assorted gear and trail out of the tavern. Probably a wise decision, given the incendiary mood McQuillan was creating.

“Arrest me?” the deputy bellowed. Treat never had known when to keep his mouth shut, which was part of his problem. “I’m the victim here! I was assaulted!”

“We’ll discuss that,” Boone assured him, “but not until you calm down.”

“I’d have knocked you on your ass, too, McQuillan,” a male voice contributed from somewhere in the dwindling crowd. “You can’t expect any different when you grab on to a woman in a goddamn cowboy bar!”

“Harley,” Boone said, recognizing the speaker immediately, and without looking away from McQuillan’s bloody, temper-twisted face, “shut up.”

Hutch, looking on, privately agreed with Harley. Manhandling a lady was asking for trouble pretty much anywhere, but square in the middle of cowboy-central, it was close to suicidal.

Just the same, he positioned himself at Boone’s left side, not quite in his space but close enough to jump in if the shit hit the fan.

Boone slanted a brief glance in his direction. “You involved in this?” he asked.

Hutch folded his arms, rocked back slightly on his heels. “Now Boone, I am downright insulted by that question. I just happened to be here, that’s all.”

Boone’s expression remained skeptical, but only mildly so. He sighed heavily. “Come on, Treat,” he said to his disgruntled deputy. “I’ll give you a lift over to the hospital, get them to check you out, and take you home. No way you’re in any condition to drive.”

Treat was all bristled up, like a little rooster with his feathers brushed in the wrong direction. “I’d rather walk,” he replied coldly. Boone might have been McQuillan’s boss, but he was also the man who’d trounced him at the polls last Election Day and he clearly wasn’t over the disappointment. McQuillan had wanted to be sheriff from the time he was little, never mind that he was constitutionally unsuited for the job.

“Whatever you say, Treat,” Boone responded. “But leave your rig right where it’s parked until morning.”

“I’ll be filing charges against Walker Parrish as soon as the courthouse opens,” McQuillan maintained, but he was on the move as he spoke, headed for the doors.

The onlookers finally lost all interest and dispersed, going back to their pool playing and their beer drinking and their armchair quarterbacking.

Boone turned to Hutch. “What happened here?” he asked.

The incident, though it had already drifted into the annals of history, still chapped Hutch’s hide a little. He wasn’t in love with Brylee Parrish, but standing around watching while some drunken bastard strong-armed her into something she didn’t want to do went against his grain in about a million ways.

Hutch told Boone the story, leaving out the part about how he’d meant to go after McQuillan himself but Walker had stepped in and thrown a punch of his own.

“Well,” Boone said on a long breath, “that’s fine. That’s just fine. Because if McQuillan doesn’t cool off overnight—and experience tells me that won’t happen—I’ll probably have to charge Walker with assault.”

“Come on,” Hutch protested. “I told you what happened—McQuillan brought that haymaker on himself.”

Boone was on his way toward the exit and Hutch, tired of the bar, tired of just about everything, followed. “Walker had the right to defend his sister,” the sheriff allowed quietly, over one shoulder, “but he took it too far. He’s half again McQuillan’s size and whatever my personal opinion of old Treat might be, he is a sworn officer of the court. Landing a punch in the middle of his face, though a sore temptation at times, I admit, is a little worse in the eyes of the law than if Walker had decked, say, for instance—you.”

They were in the parking lot by then. The lights on top of Boone’s squad car still splashed blue and white over everything around them in dizzying swirls.

“He’s welcome to try,” Hutch said, hackles rising again. Did everybody, even his best friend, think he had a fat lip and a shiner coming to him just because he hadn’t gone through with the wedding?

Boone opened his cruiser door, leaned in and shut off the lights, which was a relief to Hutch, who was starting to get a headache. “Go home, Hutch,” Boone said. “I’ve got one loose cannon on my hands in Treat McQuillan and I don’t need another one.”

“I’m not breaking any laws,” Hutch pointed out, putting an edge to the words. There it was again, somebody telling him where to go, what to do. Damn it, the last time he looked, he’d still lived in a free country.

“True,” Boone agreed. “But if Walker hadn’t gotten to McQuillan first, you’d have clocked him yourself, and don’t try to claim otherwise, because I know you, Hutch. You’ve got pissed-off written all over you, and if you hang around town on the lookout for trouble, you’re bound to find some.” The sheriff sighed again. “It’s my job to keep the peace and I mean to do it.”

Hutch’s strongest instinct was to dig in his heels and stand up for his rights, even if Boone was making a convoluted kind of sense. And it still stung a little, remembering how Walker had gotten in his way back there when McQuillan crossed the line with Brylee. He felt thwarted and primed for action at the same time—not a promising combination.

Before he could say anything more, though, Boone changed the subject in midstream by announcing, “My boys are coming for a visit. Spending the Fourth of July weekend with me.”

Hutch went still. Grinned. “That’s good,” he said, pleased. Then, after a pause, “Isn’t it?”

“Hell, no, it isn’t good,” Boone answered, looking distracted and miserable. “That trailer of mine isn’t fit for human habitation. I wouldn’t know what to feed them, or what time they ought to go to bed, or how much television they should be allowed to watch—”

Hutch laughed, and it was a welcome tension-breaker. The muscles in his neck and shoulders relaxed with a swiftness that almost made him feel as though he’d just downed a double-shot of straight whiskey.

“Then maybe you ought to clean the place up a little,” he suggested. “As for bedtime and TV, well, it shouldn’t take a rocket scientist to figure those things out. These are kids we’re talking about here, Boone, not some alien species nobody knows anything about.”

Boone ground some gravel under the toe of his right boot. “That’s easy enough for you to say, old buddy, since you don’t have to do a damn thing except share your infinite wisdom with regard to parenting.”

Hutch slapped Boone’s shoulder. “What if I told you, old buddy, that if you can take a day or two off from sheriffing, I’ll come over and help you dig out?”

Boone narrowed his eyes. “You’d do that?”

Hutch pretended injury. “You doubt me? You, who was almost the best man at my almost wedding?”

Boone eased up a little himself, even chuckled, albeit hoarsely. “I’ll have to deal with McQuillan, one way or the other, but I can take tomorrow off and part of the next day, too.”

“Fine,” Hutch said. “Give me a call when you’re ready to start and I’ll be at your place with a couple of machetes and some dynamite.”

Boone laughed, this time for real. “Machetes and dynamite?” he echoed, taking mock offense. “No flame gun?”

“Fresh out of flame guns,” Hutch answered, walking away, getting into his truck and starting up the engine.

He honked the horn once and headed for home.

* * *

KENDRA, HAVING JUST dropped Madison off at preschool and Daisy at Tara’s for a doggy playdate with Lucy, stopped by the Butter Biscuit Café to buy a chocolate croissant and a double-tall nonfat latte before heading to the office the next morning. She was in a buoyant mood, since Walker Parrish had shown definite interest in the mansion the day before when she’d taken him through it. He hadn’t come right out and said the place was exactly what his mystery friend was looking for, but Kendra’s well-honed sales instincts had struck up an immediate ka-ching chorus.

No offer had been made, she reminded herself dutifully, as she waited at the counter to place her take-out order. And a deal was only a deal, at least in the real estate business, when the escrow check cleared the bank.

Thus focused on her internal dialogue, Kendra didn’t notice Deputy McQuillan right away. When she did, she saw that he sat nearby at the long counter with open spaces on both sides of him, crowded as the Butter Biscuit always was during the breakfast rush, his nose not only bandaged, but splinted and both his eyes blackened.

“I’m pressing charges,” he said to everyone in general, his tone as stiff as a wire brush. He had the air of a man just winding up a long and volatile oration.

The café patrons politely ignored him.

“Don’t mind Treat,” the aging waitress whispered to Kendra when she reached the counter, order pad in hand. “He’s just running off at the mouth because he made a move on Brylee Parrish last night, over at the Boot Scoot Tavern, and Walker let him have it, right in the teeth.”

Kendra winced at the violent image. “Ouch,” she said, keeping her voice down.

“Broke his nose for him,” the waitress added unnecessarily and with a note of satisfaction.

McQuillan must have overheard because his gaze swung in their direction, and Kendra felt scalded by it, as though he’d splashed her with acid.

“Go ahead, Millie,” he growled at the still recalcitrant waitress. “Tell the whole world Walker’s side of the story.”

“It’s everybody’s side of the story,” Millie said, undaunted. “You made a damn fool of yourself at the Boot Scoot and that’s a fact. Ask me, you’re just lucky Walker got to you before Hutch Carmody did.”

Hutch’s name, at least in connection with an apparent bar brawl over one Brylee Parrish, caught in Kendra’s throat like rusty barbed wire snagging in flesh.

McQuillan’s face flamed, and his full attention shifted, for whatever reason, to Kendra. “You’d do well to think twice before you take up with Carmody again,” he informed her. “He’s no good.”

Kendra couldn’t speak, she was so galled by McQuillan’s presumption. Who the hell did the man think he was, talking to her like that?

“Shut up, Treat,” Millie said dismissively. “All these good people are trying to enjoy their morning coffee or catch a quick breakfast. Why don’t you let them?”

A terrible tension stretched taut across the whole café, like massive rubber bands. The snap-back, if it happened, would be terrible.

Chair legs scraped against the floor as men in various parts of the room pushed back from tables, ready to intercede if the situation went any further south.

“All I wanted to do,” McQuillan went on, as an ominous, anticipatory silence settled over the place, “was help Brylee forget about her broken heart. Dance with her a little, maybe buy her a drink.” He pointed to his battered face with one index finger. “And this is what I got for my trouble.”

Just then, Essie, the long-time owner of the Butter Biscuit and a no-nonsense type to the crepe soles of her sensible shoes, trundled out of the kitchen, wiping her hands on her apron and advancing until she stood opposite Treat McQuillan with only the counter between them. Her eyes, with their Cleopatra-style liner and shadow, were hot with temper.

“I’ve had just about enough out of you, Treat,” she said, her voice ringing off every window and wall. “You behave yourself, or I’ll call Boone and have you hauled out of here!”

McQuillan flushed a dangerous crimson. “You’ll have to call Slade instead,” he retorted bitterly, apropos of who-knew-what, “because he’s filling in for Boone. Guess he didn’t quite get being sheriff out of his system, old Slade.”

“I’ll call the damn President, if I have to,” Essie answered back, “and don’t you sass me again, Treat McQuillan. I knew your mama.”

I knew your mama.

Kendra almost smiled at the familiar phrase, in spite of the tinderbox climate in the Butter Biscuit Café that sunny and otherwise beautiful late June morning. In Parable, the bonds of friendship and enmity both ran deep, intertwining like tree roots under an old-growth forest until they were hopelessly tangled.

“I knew your mama” was enough to shut most anybody up.

Sure enough, McQuillan subsided, spun around on his stool, stepped down and strode out of the cafe, looking neither to the right nor the left.

The chuckles and comments commenced as soon as the door closed behind him.

“I’m not sure that man is entirely sane,” Essie observed, watching him go.

Nobody disagreed.

Kendra ordered her latte and croissant, waited, paid for her purchase and left the restaurant, still feeling strangely shaken by the episode.

Walking back to the office, she got out her cell phone and speed-dialed Joslyn’s number, hoping she wouldn’t wake her friend up from a post-partum nap or something equally vital.

Joslyn answered on the first ring, though, sounding too chipper to have delivered a baby so recently or to be contemplating a nap. “Hi, Kendra,” she said. “What’s up?”

“I’m not sure,” Kendra answered honestly. Why was she calling Joslyn?

Joslyn simply waited.

“I hear Slade is standing in for Boone,” Kendra finally said, reaching her storefront and fumbling with her keys. “As sheriff, I mean.” She was used to juggling purses and briefcases, cell phones and coffee, but her fingers seemed slippery this morning.

Joslyn replied cheerfully. “Boone’s sons are coming for a visit, so he needed some time off to get his place ready. Slade offered to take over the job for a few days.”

“Oh,” Kendra said, opening the office door and practically fleeing inside. What was she going to say if Joslyn wanted to know why she’d bother to ask about something so clearly not her concern in the first place?

“Why do you ask?” Joslyn said, right on cue.

Kendra sighed, dropping her purse onto her desk, then setting down the coffee and the bag with the croissant inside, too. Even with those few extra seconds to think, she didn’t come up with a plausible excuse for the inquiry.

The truth was going to have to do. “Deputy McQuillan was making a big fuss when I stopped in at the Butter Biscuit a little while ago. Going on about how Walker Parrish assaulted him last night and he’s going to see that he’s charged.”

Joslyn sighed. “There was a little scuffle at the Boot Scoot last night, as I understand it,” she said with just a touch of hesitation.

“And Hutch was involved,” Kendra said.

“Indirectly,” Joslyn confirmed.

“Not that it’s any business of mine, what Hutch Carmody does.” Kendra was speaking to herself then, more than Joslyn.

Joslyn gave a delighted little chuckle. “Except that you do seem a little worried,” she observed. “Why don’t you just admit, if only to me, your main BFF, that you still have a thing for the guy?”

“Because I don’t ‘have a thing for the guy.’”

“Right,” Joslyn replied.

“I’m a mother now,” Kendra prattled on, unable, for some weird reason, to stop herself. “I have a dog and a Volvo, and I need to make a life.”

This time, Joslyn actually laughed. “All of which means—what, exactly? That you don’t need a little romance in this life you’re making? A little sex, maybe?”

“Sex?” The word came out high-pitched, like a squeak. “Who said anything about sex?”

“You did,” Joslyn replied with good-humored certainty. “Oh, not in so many words. But you’re feeling a little jealous, aren’t you? Because you have some scenario in your head of Hutch defending Brylee’s honor at the Boot Scoot Tavern?”

“I wouldn’t call it...jealousy,” Kendra finally replied, her tone tentative.

“Okay,” Joslyn agreed sunnily. “What would you call it?”

“You’re no help at all,” Kendra accused, further deflated, but smiling now. Talking to Joslyn always made her feel better, even when nothing was really resolved.

“Let’s do lunch in a couple of days,” Joslyn said, “after Mom goes back to Santa Fe and things return to normal around here. Maybe Tara can join us.”

Still feeling like an idiot, Kendra replied that she’d enjoy a girlfriend lunch, said goodbye and hung up.

She spent the morning noodling around on her computer, carefully avoiding the “Down With Hutch Carmody” webpage, along with the temptation to add a thing or two, and answered a grand total of two inquiries by phone.

By ten forty-five, she felt so restless that she set the business phone to forward any calls to her cell, locked up the office and drove out to Tara’s chicken ranch, intending to pick up Daisy and go home. Madison still had a couple of hours to go at preschool, which she was starting to enjoy, and Kendra didn’t want to disrupt the flow by taking her out early.

Tara was outside when Kendra pulled into her rutted dirt driveway, wearing red coveralls and wielding a shovel. Daisy and Lucy frolicked happily nearby, playing catch-tumble-roll with each other.

“Don’t tell me,” Tara chimed mischievously, approaching Kendra’s car on the driver’s side. “You’re here to help me clean out the chicken coop! What a true friend you are, Kendra Shepherd.”

Kendra laughed. “You wish,” she said. It was a relief to stop thinking about Hutch Carmody and sex for a while. They were two separate subjects, of course, but she hadn’t been able to untangle one from the other since her phone conversation with Joslyn.

“Then what are you doing here?” Tara asked, looking like half of “American Gothic,” except young and pretty instead of severe.

“Can’t I visit a friend?” Kendra bantered back, pushing open the door and stepping somewhat gingerly into the muck of the barnyard. She wished she’d swapped out her Manolos for a pair of gum boots before leaving town.

Not that she actually owned gum boots.

Tara laughed at Kendra’s mincing steps, pointed out a relatively clean pathway nearby and paused to lean her shovel against the wall of the chicken coop before following Kendra toward the old farmhouse she’d been refurbishing over the past year.

The woman was the very personification of incongruity, to Kendra’s mind, with her model’s face and figure and those ridiculous coveralls.

They settled in chairs on Tara’s porch, since the weather was so nice and the dogs seemed to be having such a fine time dashing around in the grass, two flashes of happy gold, busy being puppies.

Once seated, Tara nodded in the direction of Boone Taylor’s place, which neighbored hers. “He’s finally cleaning up over there,” she said in a tone that struck Kendra as oddly pensive. “I wonder why.”

CHAPTER NINE

WHEN HUTCH ARRIVED at Boone’s place that morning, he brought along plenty of tools, a truck with a hydraulic winch for heavy lifting and half a dozen ranch hands to help with the work. Opal followed in her tank of a station wagon, bucket-loads of potato salad and fried chicken and homemade biscuits stashed in the backseat.

Boone, standing bare-chested in his overgrown yard, plucked his T-shirt from the handle of a wheelbarrow where he’d left it earlier, now that he was in the presence of a lady.

Hutch grinned at the sight, and backed the truck up to a pile of old tires and got out.

Boone walked over to greet him, taking in the other trucks, the ranch hands and Opal’s behemoth vehicle with a nod of his head. “You always were something of a show off, Carmody,” he said.

“Go big or go home,” Hutch answered lightly. “That’s my motto.”

“Along with ‘make trouble wherever possible’ and ‘ride bulls at rodeos till you get your teeth knocked out’?” Boone gibed.

“Is there a law, Sheriff Andy Taylor, that says I can only have one motto?” Hutch retorted. The Maybury reference had been a running joke between them since the election results came in last November.

“Reckon not,” Boone conceded, looking around at the unholy mess that was his property and turning serious. “I appreciate your help, old buddy,” he said.

“Don’t mention it,” Hutch replied easily. “It’s what friends do, that’s all.”

Boone nodded, looked away for a moment, cleared his throat. “What if Griff and Fletch get here and want to turn right around and head back to Missoula?” he asked, keeping his voice down so the ranch hands and Opal wouldn’t overhear.

“One step at a time, Boone,” Hutch reminded him. “Seems like the first thing on our agenda ought to be making sure the little guys don’t get lost in all this tall grass.”

Boone’s chuckle was gruff. “I laid in plenty of beer,” he said.

“Well,” Hutch replied, heading around to the back of his pickup to haul out shovels and electric Weedwackers, “don’t bring it out while Opal’s around or we’ll get a rousing sermon on the evils of alcohol, instead of all that good grub she was up half the night making.”

Boone’s chuckle was replaced by a gruff burst of laughter. “If she’s brought any of her famous potato salad, she can preach all the sermons she wants,” he answered, and went to greet the woman as she climbed out of her car and stood with her feet planted like she was putting down roots right there on the spot.

Out of the corner of his eye, Hutch watched as Boone leaned down to place a smacking kiss on Opal’s forehead.

Pleased, she flushed a color she would have described as “plum” and pretended to look stern. “It’s about time you got your act together, Boone Taylor,” she scolded. Right away, her gaze found the toilet with the flowers growing out of the bowl and her eyes widened in horrified disapproval. “That commode,” she announced, “has got to go.”

She summoned two of the ranch hands and ordered them to remove the offending lawn ornament immediately. Two others were dispatched to carry the food and cleaning supplies she’d brought into Boone’s disreputable trailer.

“If it isn’t just like a man to put a toilet in his front yard,” she muttered, shaking her head as she followed her willing lackeys toward the sagging front porch. “What’s wrong with one of those cute little gnomes, for pity’s sake, or a big flower that turns when the wind blows?”

“Does she always talk to herself like that?” Boone asked, helping himself to a Weedwacker from the back of Hutch’s pickup.

“In my limited experience,” Hutch responded, reaching for a plastic gas can to fill the tank on the lawnmower, “yes.”

The next few hours were spent whacking weeds, and the result was to reveal a lot more rusty junk, numerous broken bottles and the carcass of a gopher that must have died of old age around the time Montana achieved statehood.

Opal occasionally appeared on the stooped porch, shaking out her apron, resting her hands on her hips and demanding to know how any reasonable person could live in a place like that.

“She thinks you’re reasonable,” Hutch commented to Boone, who was working beside him, hefting debris into the backs of the several trucks to be hauled away.

“Imagine that.” Boone frowned, shaking his head in puzzlement. He’d worked up a sweat, like the rest of them, and his T-shirt stuck to his chest and back in big wet splotches.

“And don’t think I didn’t notice all that beer in the fridge!” Opal called out, to all and sundry, before turning and grumbling her way back inside that sorry old trailer to fight on in her private war against dust, dirt and disarray of all kinds.

“Beer,” one of the ranch hands groaned, his voice full of comical longing. “I could sure use one—or ten—right about now.”

Later on, when the sun was high and all their bellies were rumbling, Opal appeared on the porch again and announced that the kitchen was finally fit to serve food in, and the thought of her cooking rallied the troops to trail inside, take turns washing up at the sink and fill plates, buffet style, at the table.

The ranch hands each sneaked a can of beer from the fridge—Opal turned a blind eye to those particular proceedings—and wandered outside to eat in the shade of the trees.

Opal sat at the table in the middle of Boone’s freshly scrubbed kitchen, and Boone and Hutch joined her.

“You’re a miracle worker,” Boone told her, looking around. The place was still scuffed and worn, just this side of being condemned by some government agency, but all the surfaces appeared to be clean.

“And you’ve been without a woman for way too long,” Opal retorted, with her trademark combination of gruffness and relentless affection.

Boone loaded up on potato salad—he probably hadn’t had the homemade version since before Corrie got sick—and helped himself to a couple of crunchy-coated chicken breasts. “I’m surprised at you, Opal,” he teased. “To hear you tell it, women are made to clean up after men. If that gets out, militant females will burn you in effigy.”

She expelled a huffy breath and waved off the remark for the foolishness it was. After a moment or two, her expression turned solemn and she studied Boone as though she’d never seen him before, peering at him through the lenses of her out-of-style eyeglasses.

“This isn’t what Corrie would want, Boone,” she said quietly. “Not for you and certainly not for those two little boys of yours.”

Boone put down his fork, still heaping with potato salad, and stared down into his plate in silence. He looked so stricken that Hutch felt a crazy need to come to his friend’s rescue somehow, but he quelled it. Intellectually, he knew Opal was right; maybe she could get through to Boone where he and Slade and a lot of other people had failed.

“We weren’t planning to live in this trailer for more than a year,” Boone said without looking up. “It was just a place to hang our hats while we built the new house.”

“I know,” Opal said gently. “But don’t you think it’s time you moved on—built that house, brought your boys home where they belong and maybe even found yourself a wife?”

At last, Boone looked up. The misery in his eyes made the backs of Hutch’s sting a little.

“I can’t marry a woman I don’t love,” he said hoarsely, “and I’m never going to love anybody but Corrie.”

A silence fell.

Boone took up his fork again, making a resolute effort to go on eating, but his appetite was clearly on the wane.

“It was a hard thing, what happened to you,” Opal allowed after some moments, her voice quiet and gentle to the point of tenderness, “but Corrie’s gone for good, Boone, and you’re still alive, and so are your sons. They need their daddy.”

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