Big Sky Mountain(4)

Hutch chuckled at that. “I’ll stop by later tonight,” he offered. “What time does Madison go to bed?”

“Eight,” Kendra said weakly.

“Then I’ll be there around eight-thirty.”

There was a pause, during which Hutch half expected Kendra to change her mind, tell him there was no need to come over in person because she could just say what she had to say right there on the phone.

Except that, for whatever reason, Kendra didn’t seem to want Madison to be privy to what was said.

“Eight-thirty,” Kendra confirmed, sighing the words.

Hutch agreed on the time, set his phone aside and hurried home, where he fed the horses, took a shower, wolfed down cold chicken and potato salad, leftovers from the meal Opal had served over at Boone’s earlier in the day, and checked the clock about every five minutes.

It wasn’t even six yet.

He’d done everything that needed doing at warp-speed, it seemed. What the hell was he supposed to do with the two and a half hours still to go before he could show up on Kendra’s doorstep?

“You’ve sure got a burr under your hide about something,” Opal commented, putting away the remains of the feast. She’d left some of the overflow with Boone and given shares to the ranch hands who’d helped out with the work, too. Nobody turned down Opal’s potato salad, ever. “Jumpy as a cat on a griddle, that’s what you are.”

Good-naturedly, Hutch elbowed her aside and took over the job she’d been doing, shoving chicken and potato salad every which way into the fridge. “Why don’t you take the night off?” he asked companionably, when he thought enough time had elapsed so the question wouldn’t sound contrived.

“Given that I don’t work for you in the first place,” Opal informed him, “that’s an interesting suggestion. What are you up to, Hutch Carmody? You planning on heading back to the Boot Scoot Tavern again tonight, looking to drum up some more trouble?”

He laughed. “No,” he said. “I’m not going to the Boot Scoot, and never mind that, it’s none of your business if I do.”

Opal’s eyes were sly, even suspicious. “There’s Bingo tonight,” she said. “I never miss a game, especially when I’m on a lucky streak. Since I’m headed into town anyway, I could drop you someplace, pick you up later on.”

“I do my own driving these days,” he reminded her dryly. “Have been since the day I got my license.”

“Fine,” Opal said with a sniff, untying her apron and heading for her part of the house, presumably to get dolled up for a big night wielding Bingo daubers in the basement of the Elks’ Club. “Don’t tell me what’s going on. It isn’t as if I won’t find out sooner or later. All I’ve got to do is keep my ear to the ground and sure enough, somebody will mention seeing you tonight, and they’ll have the details, too.”

Hutch laughed again, shook his head. He’d have sworn he’d never miss being nagged by a woman, but he surely had. Having Opal around was like having a mom again—a good feeling, even if it was a bit on the constricting side. “I’m going to see Kendra,” he admitted. “And don’t ask me why, because the whole thing was her idea and I don’t have the first clue what she wants.”

Opal’s eyes were suddenly alight with mischievous supposition. “Well, now,” she said. “Kendra wants to see you. As for what she wants, anybody but a big dumb cowboy like you would know that from the get-go.” She paused to reflect for a few moments, and at the tail end of the thought process, she was looking a little less delighted than before. “You get on the wrong side of her again? Is that it?”

“I’m always on the wrong side of Kendra,” Hutch said lightly. But the view is good from any direction.

Opal shuffled past him, yanked open the refrigerator, and neatly rearranged everything he’d just shoved in there. “Make sure you pick up some flowers on your way over,” she instructed, dusting her hands together as she turned to face him again. “That way if you are in the doghouse, which wouldn’t surprise me, Kendra might forgive you quicker.”

“Forgive me?” Hutch echoed, pretending to be offended. “I haven’t done anything she needs to forgive me for.”

“Maybe not recently,” Opal conceded, with another sniff and a glance that begrudged him all grace. “But you did enough damage to last a lifetime back in the day. Get the flowers. There were some nice Gerbera daisies at the supermarket when I was there yesterday.”

Hutch executed a deep bow of acquiescence.

Opal gave a scoffing laugh, waved a hand at him and went off to get ready for a wild night of Bingo.

* * *

KENDRA PEERED INTO the yellow glow of the porch light and caught her breath.

She’d been expecting Hutch, of course, but for some reason, every encounter with the man, planned as well as unplanned, made her feel as though she’d just taken hold of the wrong end of a cattle prod.

He wore newish jeans, a crisply pressed and possibly even starched cotton shirt in a pale shade of yellow, polished boots and a good hat instead of the usual one that looked as though it had just been trampled in a stampede or retrieved from the bed of a pickup truck.

And he was holding a colorful bouquet of flowers in his left hand.

He must have misunderstood her phone call, she thought, with a sort of delicious desperation. Her heart hammered against her breastbone, and her breathing was so shallow that she was afraid she might hyperventilate if she didn’t get a grip.

After drawing a very deep breath, Kendra opened the front door; he’d seen her through the frosted oval window, so it was too late to pretend she wasn’t home.

He took off the hat with a deftness that reminded her instantly of other subtle moves he’d made, under much more intimate circumstances, way back in those thrilling days—and nights—of yesteryear.

“The flowers were Opal’s idea,” he said first thing.

Kendra’s mouth twitched with amusement. Hutch was doing a good job of hiding the fact, but he was as nervous as she was, maybe even more so.

“No wine?” she quipped. “You’re slipping, cowboy.”

He let his gaze range over her, just briefly, as she stepped back so he could come inside. “I figured that would be pushing my luck,” he said, and she couldn’t tell if he was kidding or serious.

Kendra led the way through the house to the kitchen and offered him a seat at the table. She’d long since cleared away all evidence of supper, supervised Madison’s bath, read her a story and heard her prayers, and she’d checked on the child a couple of times over the past half hour, as well.

Both Madison and Daisy had been sound asleep each time she looked in.

Kendra accepted the flowers, found a vase and arranged them quickly. The colors, reds and maroons, oranges and deep pinks and purples, thrilled her senses, a riot of beauty.

When she turned around with the bouquet in hand, she nearly collided with Hutch.

Color climbed her cheeks and she stepped around him to set the flowers in the middle of the kitchen table.

“There’s coffee, if you’d like some,” she told him, feeling as shy as if he were a stranger and not a man who’d made love to her in all sorts of scandalous places and positions.

Stop it, she scolded herself.

Hutch’s eyes twinkled as he watched her—he was seeing too much. Although he could be infuriatingly obtuse, he had a perceptive side, too. One that generally worked to his advantage. “Thanks,” he said, “but I’ve had plenty of java already. One more cup and I’ll be up all night putting a new roof on the barn or something.”

Kendra smiled at the image, calming down a little on the inside. “I’ll just look in on Madison once more,” she said, and beat a hasty retreat for the hallway. What was it about Hutch that made all her nerves rise to the surface of her skin and sizzle there, like some kind of invisible fire?

He said nothing as she hurried away, but she would have sworn she felt the heat of his gaze wherever her shorts and tank top left her skin bare—on the backs of her arms and calves, on her nape.

Madison, she soon discovered, was still asleep in her “princess bed,” or doing a darned good job of playing possum. Daisy, curled up by Madison’s feet, raised her downy golden head, yawned and descended back into the realm of doggy dreams.

Since there was no excuse for lingering—and she’d been the one to suggest this rendezvous in the first place—Kendra forced herself to go back to the kitchen and face Hutch.

He was still standing in the center of the room, hat in hand, and he pulled back a chair at the table for her as adeptly as if they’d been in some fancy restaurant instead of her own modest kitchen.

She sat, interlaced her fingers on the table top and silently wondered why she’d gotten herself into a situation like this—it wasn’t like her. The pop-psychology types would probably say she had an unconscious agenda—sex, for instance.

Definitely not true.

Sex was out of the question with Madison in the house.

Thanks to this particular cowboy, though, the small kitchen seemed charged with the stuff, even electrified.

While Kendra’s brain was trying to make sense of her own actions, Hutch hung his hat from a peg beside the back door and came to sit down across from her. He watched her in silence for a few moments, his expression solemn, and finally uttered a mildly plaintive, “What?”

Kendra, all fired up over his promise to take Madison for a horseback ride earlier, felt silly now. Why hadn’t she simply said what she wanted to say while they were on the phone before?

Because she’d wanted to see Hutch, that was why. Ever since she’d watched him on Tara’s porch, through those binoculars, he’d been on her mind. She was trying to prevent Madison from being disappointed over a much wanted horseback ride that didn’t ever quite happen—any mother would feel the same—but in retrospect, the requested meeting looked...well...transparent.

God, this was embarrassing.

“This is really no big deal,” she began awkwardly. “It’s just—”

And then she couldn’t force out another word. Her face burned and she wanted to look away from Hutch’s face, but pride wouldn’t let her take the easy way out.

“I’m listening,” he reminded her quietly.

“Madison is really counting on a horseback ride,” Kendra blurted, still awkward.

He raised one eyebrow in silent question. “And?” his expression prompted.

“I’m getting this all wrong,” Kendra fretted. “It seemed like such a good idea before, to get everything out in the open and all that, but now—”

Hutch looked genuinely puzzled, maybe even flummoxed. If Kendra hadn’t felt like such an idiot the look on his face would have made her laugh.

“But now?” he urged, his voice low and baffled. “You’ve decided against letting Madison go for a horseback ride?”

Suddenly, she giggled. It was some kind of nervous reaction, of course, but the release of tension was welcome, even though it did feel a lot like the spring of an old-fashioned watch breaking and spinning itself unwound. “No, that isn’t it,” she managed, after a moment of recovery. “I just got to thinking that you might forget what you told Madison, about going riding, I mean, and she’s—”

“She’s counting on it,” Hutch confirmed, looking only slightly less confused than before. “Kendra, what the hell are you talking about?”

This time the giggle came out as a half-hysterical little laugh. She put a hand over her mouth and rocked, hoping the mysteries of incontinence would not be revealed to her. Especially in front of Hutch Carmody.

Before she could frame an answer, though, Hutch’s eyes darkened with realization, reminding her of a sky working up a booming spate of thunder that might last for a while instead of blowing over quickly.

“You just automatically assumed I’d let her down, is that it?” he demanded, leaning in a little. His eyes flashed with indignation.

Kendra straightened her spine. Lifted her chin a notch or two. “Not exactly,” she hedged. “Not exactly”? mocked a voice in the back of her mind. Come on. He’d just verbalized her precise thoughts on the matter. She’d been afraid he’d hurt and disappoint her little girl, and decided not to let it happen—that was the size of it.

“If you’ll remember,” Hutch went on, filling her in in case she hadn’t noticed the figurative skywriting arching across the firmament overhead, “I told Madison she could ride one of my horses if it was all right with you. You’re the one who didn’t want to commit to a straight-out ‘yes’ and just barely settled for ‘maybe.’ And now it’s my fault for letting her down?”

Kendra swallowed miserably. Looked away.

“Kendra,” Hutch insisted. Just that one word, just her name, was all he said, but it carried weight.

“All right,” she whispered, meeting his gaze again. “I’m sorry. I was wrong. Can we just get past that, please?”

His mouth smiled, but his eyes were solemn, even sad. “I meant what I said before,” he finally replied. “If you’re agreeable, we’ll put Madison on the gentlest horse I own and she’ll have her ride. Or she can ride with me, whatever you think best.”

Kendra’s throat tightened and she had to look away once more before reconnecting. Those eyes of his seemed to see into the deepest part of her, seeking and finding every secret she’d hidden away over the years, even from herself.

“When?” she asked, still mortified by her own behavior but trying to put a good face on things. “Madison will expect specifics.”

He smiled again, this time with his whole face. “Whenever you say,” he answered.

Kendra sighed. The ball was in her court and he wasn’t going to let her forget that. “Tomorrow?” she threw out tentatively. “After she gets out of preschool?”

“That’ll work,” Hutch said, watching her. “About what time should I expect you and the munchkin to show up on Whisper Creek?”

“Three-thirty? Is that too early? I know you probably have a lot of work to do and I wouldn’t want to impose or anything.”

Lame. Of course she was imposing—but she was in too deep and there was no other way out.

“Three-thirty,” Hutch agreed. Then, unexpectedly, he reached across the table and closed his fingers gently around her hand. “One question, Kendra. Why was it so hard for you to get all this said? We have a history, you and I, and not all of it was bad—not by a long shot.”

“I’m—not sure,” Kendra admitted softly.

“That’s an honest if inadequate answer,” he said, but his grin, if slight, was genuine. He got up, walked over to retrieve his hat, held it in one hand as he looked back at Kendra. “Tomorrow, three-thirty, Whisper Creek Ranch?”

“If it’s inconvenient for you, another time would be fine, honestly—”

Hutch narrowed his eyes, not in anger, but bewilderment, as though by squinting he might make out some aspect of her nature he hadn’t spotted before. “Women,” he said with a note of consternation in his voice.

Kendra got to her feet, led the way back through the house toward the front door. “Men,” she retorted with a roll of her eyes.

She’d never planned for it to happen, and maybe Hutch hadn’t either, but once they’d stepped beyond the cone of light thrown by the porch fixture, into the soft, summery shadows, they found themselves standing close to each other—too close.

Hutch curved a hand under Kendra’s chin, lifted her face and kissed her, as naturally as they would have done in the old days.

And Kendra kissed him back, her body coming awake as both new and very familiar sensations took hold, expanding and contracting, soaring and then plummeting.

Kendra gave a silent gasp. It was still there, then, all of it, the passion, the need, the wildness, the things she’d tried so hard to forget over the years since their breakup.

She knew she ought to change directions, put on the brakes before they collided in the train wreck of the century—but she just couldn’t.

She was lost in that kiss, lost in the way it felt to have Hutch’s arms around her again, strong and sure, holding her close.

Her knees went weak, and she knotted her fists in the fabric of his shirt and held on, and still the kiss continued, seemingly taking on a life of its own, now playful, now deep and commanding.

“Mommy?”

The word, coming from just beyond the screened door, sliced down between them like a knife.

Both of them stepped back.

“You didn’t tell me the cowboy man was here,” Madison said innocently, rubbing away sleep with one hand even as she pressed her little nose against the worn screen, looking curious but nothing more. Her sidekick, Daisy, did the same.

“I didn’t want to wake you up,” Hutch said chivalrously. “Your mom and I were deciding on when you ought to take that horseback ride we talked about.”

Madison’s eyes instantly widened, and she stepped back far enough to open the screen door so she and Daisy could bolt through the gap.

“Really?” the child cried. “When? Where?”

Hutch lifted her easily, naturally into his arms, grinned. “Really,” he said. “Tomorrow afternoon, at my ranch.”

“I told you she’d ask for specifics,” Kendra managed to say. Her face was still flaming, her heart was pounding, and she was frantic to know how much Madison had seen, and understood, before interrupting that foolish, wonderful kiss.

Madison literally squealed with delight. “Yes!” she cried, punching the air with one small, triumphant fist.

Hutch chuckled and set her back on her bare feet, tousled her tumbling copper curls lightly, though by then his gaze was fixed on Kendra again. She couldn’t read his expression very well, since he was standing on the fringes of the glow from the porch light, but she saw the white flash of his teeth as he smiled.

“I guess that’s settled, then,” he said. He set his hat on his head, tugged at the brim in farewell and added, “Good night, ladies. I’ll see you tomorrow.”

And he turned to go.

“Wait!” Madison blurted, and Kendra was relieved to realize she hadn’t been the one to speak, because that exact same word had swelled in the back of her throat and very nearly tumbled out over her tongue.

Wait.

Wait for what? A second chance? A miracle? Some passage opening between now and the time when everything had been good and right between them?

You’re losing it, Kendra thought to herself.

Hutch paused at the top of the steps, turned to look back over one shoulder and waited quietly for the little girl to go on.

Kendra had forgotten that quietness in him. Hutch was still a rowdy cowboy inclined toward the rough-and-tumble and that probably hadn’t changed, but he carried a vast silence inside him, too, as though he were somehow anchored to the core of the universe and drew confidence from that.

“Can Daisy come, too?” Madison asked earnestly.

“It’s all right with me if it’s all right with your mother,” Hutch replied almost gruffly.

Kendra didn’t dare say anything, so she nodded. She wanted Hutch to stay, though. She wanted more of his kisses, and still more, and she ached to return to the sweet, secret places where she knew they would take her.

But it wasn’t going to happen, she told herself. Not tonight, anyway.

Hutch went his way—down the walk, through the gate, around to the driver’s door of his truck; and she went to hers—back into the house, with Madison and Daisy.

* * *

HEADED HOME TO the ranch through a pale purple summer night, Hutch felt exuberant and scared shitless, both at the same time. The aftereffects of the kiss he and Kendra had shared on her porch still reverberated through his system like bullets ricocheting around inside a cement mixer and every instinct urged him to get far away from the woman, fast.

Except that there was nowhere to go.

He rolled down the window, switched on the radio and sang along with a country-western drinking song at the top of his lungs for the first mile or so, and by the time he was about to round the last bend, some of the adrenaline had ebbed and there was at least a remote possibility that he could think straight.

He wasn’t speeding—the ticket Boone had given him was still fresh in his mind—but he nearly hit the critter sitting in the middle of the road anyhow.

He swerved, screeched to a stop, shut off the engine but not the headlights, and shoved open the door. Sprinting around the back of the truck, he was surprised—and relieved—to see that the animal, either a black dog or a very skinny bear, was still in one piece. The creature hadn’t moved from the middle of the road, and as he approached, it whimpered low in its throat and cowered a little.

“You hurt?” Hutch asked, mindful that another rig could come around the bend at any moment and send both him and what turned out to be a dog headlong into the Promised Land. Swiftly, he crouched, ran experienced rancher’s hands over the creature’s matted back and all four legs. He stood up again. “Come on, then,” he said, satisfied that nothing was broken. “Let’s see if you can walk.”

Hutch started slowly back toward the truck.

The dog got up and limped after him.

Carefully, he hoisted the stray into the passenger’s seat of his truck.

“You oughtn’t to sit in the road like that,” he said, once he was behind the wheel again and turning the key in the ignition. “It’s a good way to get killed.”

Here he was, talking to a dog.

A strange thing to do, maybe, but it felt good.

The dog turned to look at him with weary, limpid eyes and shivered a little.

Hutch debated turning around, taking the stray back to town, to the veterinary clinic, or at least to Martie Wren’s place, so she could take a look at it, maybe check for one of those microchips that served as canine GPS. He’d been around horses and dogs and cattle all his life, though, and he knew instinctively that this one was sound, underneath all that dirt and deprivation.

Pulling in at the top of his driveway, Hutch was relieved to see Opal’s station wagon parked up ahead. Evidently Bingo was over for the night, because she probably wouldn’t have left the Elks’ basement before the last number was called.

He parked, lifted the dog out of the truck and set him on his four thin, shaky legs. “You’re going to be all right, fella,” he told the animal gruffly. “You’ve got my word on that.”

They went inside.

Opal was at the table, drinking tea and reading from her Bible.

“Land sakes,” she said, at the sight of the dog, “what is that?”

Hutch gave her a wry look. “Just a wayfarer fallen on hard times,” he said.

Opal closed her Bible, stood up, removing her glasses, polishing them with the hem of her apron, and putting them back on again, so she could examine the dog more closely. “Poor critter,” she said. “Let’s have us a good look at you.”

Next she moved her teacup and Bible and draped a large plastic bag over the table.

“Heft him on up here,” she said.

Hutch complied.

The dog stood uncertainly in the middle of the table, convinced, no doubt, that he was breaking some obscure human law and would be punished for it. He took to shivering again.

“Nobody’s going to hurt you now,” Opal told him, with gentle good humor, as she began to examine and prod. “Just look at that rib cage,” she remarked, finally stepping back. “When’s the last time you had anything to eat, dog?”

Hutch put the critter back on the floor, went to the cupboard for a bowl, filled it with water at the sink, and set it down in front of the newcomer.

The animal drank every drop and looked up at Hutch, asking for more as surely as if he’d spoken aloud.

Hutch refilled the bowl.

Opal, meanwhile, washed her hands and proceeded to ferret around in the fridge, finally emerging with two pieces of chicken and a carton of cottage cheese.

Deftly, like she cared for starving strays every day of her life, she peeled the meat off the bones and broke the chicken into smaller chunks. She mixed in some of the cottage cheese and set the works down on the floor on a plate.

The dog, lapping up water until then, fell on that food like he was afraid it would vanish before his eyes. He made short work of the meal, and Hutch would have given him another helping, but Opal nixed the idea.

“His poor stomach has all it can do to deal with what’s already in there,” she said.

After that, Hutch bathed the dog in the laundry room sink, helped himself to a couple of towels fresh from the dryer and rubbed that bony mutt down until his hide gleamed and his fur stuck out in every direction.

When he and the dog got back to the kitchen, Opal had cleared the table and resumed her Bible reading and her tea drinking. She tapped at the Good Book with one index finger and said, “Leviticus. That’s the perfect name for our friend here.”

“How so?” Hutch asked, washing up at the kitchen sink. The whole front of his good shirt was muddy and wet from giving the dog a bath, but he didn’t care.

“Because that’s what I was reading when you brought him in.”

Hutch smiled to himself. He remembered when he was a kid and his mom would read through the whole Bible every year, a day at a time. She always said if a person could get through the book of Leviticus, they could get through anything.

“I take it Bingo was a bust?” he ventured, watching as Leviticus ambled over to the pile of old blankets Opal must have put out for him, settled himself, gave a sigh and closed his eyes.

“I won the blackout,” Opal informed Hutch proudly with a smile and a shake of her head. “Five hundred dollars. So I’m pretty flush.”

Hutch looked at the now sleeping dog and felt a space open wide in his heart to accommodate him. “Speaking of money,” he said, “I owe you some for all you’ve done around here, and over at Boone’s place today, too.”

Opal executed another dismissive wave of one hand. “I don’t want your money, Hutch,” she said. “And didn’t I just now tell you I’ve got five hundred beautiful dollars in my wallet at this very moment?”

He chuckled, shook his head. “You,” he said, “are one hardheaded woman.”

“All the more reason not to argue with me,” Opal replied. She arched both eyebrows and Hutch saw the question coming before the words left her mouth. “How did things go over at Kendra’s?”

Hutch folded his arms, leaned back against the counter alongside the sink. “Well enough that she and Madison will be coming out here tomorrow afternoon for a horseback ride,” he said. It was more than he would have told most people, but he owed Opal, and besides, talking to her was easy.

Opal beamed. “They’ll stay for supper,” she announced. “I’ll make my famous tamale pie. Kendra always loved it and so will that sweet little girl of hers.”

Hutch spread his hands. “You’d better be the one to offer the invitation,” he said, remembering the kiss. By now the regret would be setting in, Kendra would be wishing she’d slapped him instead of kissing him right back. “If it comes from me, she’s more likely to say no than yes.”

“Now why do you suppose that is?” Opal pretended to ponder, but her gaze found the dog again and she smiled. “You mean to keep Leviticus, don’t you?” she asked.

“Unless somebody’s looking for him,” Hutch replied. “I’ll check with Martie tomorrow.”

“Nobody’s looking for Leviticus,” Opal said with sad certainty. “He’d have a collar and tags if he belonged to someone.”

Hutch felt a peculiar mixture of sympathy and possessiveness where Leviticus was concerned. The dog was bound to be nothing but trouble—he’d chew things up and he probably wasn’t housebroken—but Hutch wanted to keep him, wanted that more than anything except to find some common ground with Kendra, so they wouldn’t be so jumpy around each other.

Tomorrow couldn’t come soon enough to suit him.





CHAPTER ELEVEN



“I’LL NEED BOOTS,” Madison announced the next morning at breakfast. “Can we buy some, please? Today?”

Practically from the moment she’d opened her eyes, Madison had been fixating on the upcoming horseback ride out at Whisper Creek Ranch. Even as she spooned her way diligently through a bowlful of her favorite cereal, her feet were swinging back and forth under the table as though already carrying her toward the magic hour of three-thirty in the afternoon.

“Let’s wait and see,” Kendra said, sipping coffee. She didn’t normally skip breakfast, but that day she couldn’t face even a bite of toast. She had orchestrated this whole horseback riding thing, set herself up for yet another skirmish with Hutch and now the reality was almost upon her—and Madison.

What had she done?

More importantly, why had she put herself and her daughter in this position?

“Everybody at preschool has boots,” Madison persisted. Daisy, having finished her kibble, crossed the room to lay her muzzle on the child’s lap and gaze up at her with the pure, selfless love of a saint at worship.

“Most of those children have been riding since they were babies,” Kendra reasoned, making a face as she set her coffee cup down. Usually a mainstay, the stuff tasted like acid this morning. “Suppose you get on that horse today and find out you hate riding and you never want to do it again?”

“That won’t happen,” Madison said with absolute conviction. Where did all that certainty come from? Was it genetic—some vestige of all those English ancestors riding to the hunt, soaring over hedges and streams?

Kendra shook off the thought. She hadn’t slept all that well the night before, imagining all the things that might go wrong today, and now she was paying the price. Her thoughts were as muddled as her emotions.

“What makes you so sure of yourself, young lady?” she challenged with a small smile.

Madison grinned back at her. “You’re always saying it’s good to try new things,” she said with a note of triumph that underscored Kendra’s impression that the child was only posing as a four-year-old—she was really an old soul.

Busted, Kendra thought. She was always telling Madison that she shouldn’t be afraid—of preschool, for instance, or speaking up in class, or making friends on the playground—and now here she was, projecting her own misgivings onto her daughter. Speaking to the frightened little girl she herself had once been, instead of the bold one sitting across from her on a sunny, blue-skied morning full of promise.

“I’ll make a deal with you,” Kendra said, brightening. “If you still want boots after this first ride, we’ll get you a pair.” She wondered if the child had visions of racing across the open countryside on the back of some gigantic steed, when she’d most likely wind up on a pony or an arthritic mare.

“Okay,” Madison capitulated, not particularly pleased but willing to negotiate. “But I’m still going to want those boots.”

Kendra laughed. “Hurry up and finish your breakfast,” she said. “Then go and brush your teeth while I let Daisy out for a quick run in the backyard. You need to be on time for preschool and I have to get to the office.”

The spiffing-up process over at the mansion was winding down, according to reports from the painting and cleaning crews, and she already had two appointments to show the place, one at noon and one the following morning.

Things were moving along.

Why did it suddenly seem so difficult to keep up?

Madison set her spoon down, wriggled off her chair, and carried her mostly empty cereal bowl over to the sink. She stood on tiptoe to set it on the drainboard, humming under her breath as she headed back toward the bathroom.

Daisy started to follow her small mistress, but when Kendra opened the back door, the dog rushed through it, wagging her tail. Kendra followed.

The morning was glorious—the grass green, with that fresh-cut smell, and lawn sprinklers sang their rhythmic songs in the surrounding yards. Birds whistled in the branches of trees and a few perched on Kendra’s clothesline, regarding Daisy’s progress with placid nonchalance.

Madison returned to the kitchen just as Daisy and Kendra were coming in from outside. She opened her lips wide to show Kendra her clean teeth.

Kendra pretended to be dazzled, going so far as to raise both hands against the sudden glare, as if blinded by it.

Madison giggled, this being one of their many small games. “You’re silly, Mommy,” she said.

Kendra tugged lightly at one of Madison’s coppery curls and bent to kiss the top of her head. “Have I mentioned that I love you to the moon and back?” she countered, taking Daisy’s leash from its hook and snapping it to the dog’s collar.

“I love you ten times that much,” Madison responded on cue.

“I love you a hundred times that much,” Kendra pronounced, juggling her purse, car keys and a leash with an excited puppy at the other end.

“I love you the last number in the world times that much,” Madison said.

“I love you ten thousand times that much,” Kendra told her as they trooped outside and headed for the driveway, where the trusty Mom-mobile was parked.

“That isn’t fair,” Madison argued. “I said the last number in the world.”

“Okay,” Kendra answered, smiling. “You win.”

* * *

HUTCH MOVED FROM one stall to the next, assessing every horse he owned.

They were ordinary beasts, most of them, but they all looked too big and too powerful for a four-year-old to ride.

Was it too late to buy a pony?

He chuckled at the idea and shook his head. Whisper Creek was a working ranch and the horses pulled their weight, just as the men did. He’d be laughed right out of the Cattleman’s Association if he ran a Shetland on the same range as all these brush cutters and ropers. The sweet old mare he’d reserved for greenhorns had passed away peacefully one night last winter and much as he’d loved the animal, it hadn’t occurred to him to replace her. It was a matter of attrition.

Opal stepped into the barn just as he turned from the last stall, dressed for going to town. She wore a jersey dress, as usual, but a hat, too, and shiny shoes, and she carried a huge purse with a jeweled catch.

“I’ve got a meeting at the church,” she informed him. “After that, I thought I’d look in on Joslyn’s bunch, see how they’re doing.”

Hutch smiled, walked slowly in her direction. He’d already sent the ranch hands out onto the range for the day, assigning them to the usual tasks, which left him with nothing much to do other than look himself up on the internet and see how he was faring in the court of public opinion.

Not that he couldn’t have guessed. Team Brylee was probably still on the warpath, and so far a Team Hutch hadn’t come together.

“You don’t work for me,” he reminded Opal affably, as she had recently reminded him. “No need to explain your comings and goings.”

Opal stood stalwartly in his path, clutching her purse to her chest with both hands as though she expected some stranger to swoop in and grab it if she relaxed her vigilance for a fraction of a second. “I’m living under your roof,” she said matter-of-factly, “so it’s just common courtesy to tell you my plans.”

Hutch stopped, cleared his throat, smiled again. “All right,” he agreed. “You’ve told me. It was unnecessary, but I appreciate it just the same.”

Opal didn’t move, though she might have loosened her grip on her handbag just a little; he couldn’t be sure. “You and Boone,” she mused, sounding almost weary, even though it hadn’t been an hour since breakfast. “I declare, the two of you will worry me right into an early grave.”

Hutch’s chuckle sounded hoarse. He shoved a hand through his hair. “That would be a shame, Opal,” he said. “Boone will be fine and so will I.”

“Just the same,” Opal replied, “I sometimes wonder if I’m ever going to be able to cross you off my active prayer list.”

Hutch felt his mouth quirk at one corner. “We’re on your prayer list?” he responded. “Why, Opal, I’m both touched and flattered.”

“Don’t be,” she told him gruffly. “It means you’re a hard case, and so is Boone.”

“I see,” Hutch said, though he didn’t really. He wanted to laugh, but some instinct warned him that Opal was dead serious about this prayer list business. “Well, then, maybe I’m not flattered after all,” he went on presently. “But I’m still touched.”

She smiled that slow, warm smile of hers, the one that seemed to take in everybody and everything for miles around, like a sunrise. “There may be hope for you yet,” she said, her tone mischievously cryptic. “I’ll be back in plenty of time to make supper for you and Kendra and that sweet little child of hers. Try not to say the wrong thing and drive them off before I get back.”

Hutch merely nodded and Opal turned, her purse still pressed to her bosom, to leave the barn.

He’d fed the horses earlier; now he began the process of turning them out of their stalls and into the pasture—all except Remington, that is. He heard Opal’s station wagon start up with a gas-guzzling roar, listened as she drove away, tires spitting gravel.

Opal did everything with verve.

He smiled as he fetched his gear from the tack room, carried it back to where the gelding waited, patiently chewing on the last of his grain ration.

Hutch opened the stall gate, and Remington stepped out into the breezeway—he knew the drill, and suddenly he was eager to be saddled, to leave the confines of that barn for the wide-open spaces.

Five minutes later, Hutch was mounted up, and the two of them were moving over the range at a graceful lope, headed for Big Sky Mountain.

Reaching the base of the trail Hutch favored, the horse slowed for the climb, rocks scrabbling under his hooves as he started up the incline.

Hutch bent low over the animal’s neck as they passed through a stand of oak and maple trees, the branches grabbing at both man and horse as they went.

The mountain was many things to Hutch Carmody—for as long as he could remember, he’d gone there when he had something to mourn or something to celebrate, or when he simply wanted to think.

From a certain vantage point, he could see the world that mattered most to him—the sprawling ranch lands, the cattle and horses, the streams and the river and, in the distance, the town of Parable.

After about fifteen minutes of fairly hard travel, he and Remington reached the small clearing that was, for him, the heart of Whisper Creek Ranch.

It was here that, as a boy of twelve, he’d cried for his lost mother.

It was here that he’d raged against his father, those times when he was too pissed off or too hurt or both to stay put in school or in his room or out in the hay-scented sanctuary of the barn.

And it was here that he and Kendra had made love for the first time—and the last.

He sighed, swinging down from the saddle and leaving Remington to graze on the tender grass.

The pile of rocks was still there, of course—waist-high and around six feet long, resembling a tomb, he thought wryly, or maybe an altar for Old Testament–style offerings to a God he didn’t begin to understand and, frankly, didn’t much like.

Opal definitely would not approve of such an attitude, he thought with a smile. She’d keep him on her hard-case prayer list for the duration.

No doubt, he belonged there.

After taking a moment to center himself, he walked over to the improvised monument, laid his hands on the cool, dusty stones on top and remembered. Every one of those rocks represented something he’d needed to say to John Carmody and never could, or something he had said and wished he hadn’t.

High over his head, a breeze whispered through the needles of the Ponderosa pines and the leaves of those stray maples and oaks that had taken root in this place long before he was born. Remington nickered contentedly, his bridle fittings jingling softly.

A kind of peace settled over Hutch.

“You were hard to love, old man,” he said very quietly.

John Carmody wasn’t actually buried under those rocks—he’d been laid to rest in the Pioneer Cemetery—but this was where Hutch came when he felt the need to make some connection with his father, whether in anger or in sorrow.

The anger had mostly passed, worn away by intermittent rock-stacking sessions following the old man’s death, but the sorrow remained, more manageable now, but still as much a part of Hutch as the land and the fabled big sky.

And that, he decided, was all right, because life was all of a piece, when you got right down to it, a jumbled mixture of good and bad and everything in between.

He turned his back to the rock pile then, folded his arms and drew the vast view into himself like a breath to the soul.

In the distance he could see the spires of Parable’s several small churches, the modest dome of the courthouse, with the flag rippling proudly at its peak. There was the river, and the streams breaking off from it, the spreading fingers of a great, shimmering hand.

His gaze wandered, finally snagged on the water tower.

Like the high meadow where he stood, that rickety old structure had meaning to him. He’d ridden bulls and broncos, ranging from mediocre to devil-mean, over the years, breaking a bone or two in the process. He’d floated some of the wildest rivers in the West, raced cars and skydived and bungee jumped, you name it, all without a flicker of fear.

And then there was the water tower.

Like most kids growing up in or around Parable, he’d climbed it once, made his way up the ancient ladder, rung by weathered rung, with his heart pounding in his ears and his throat so thick with terror that he could hardly breathe.

Reaching the flimsy walkway, some fifty feet above the ground, he’d suddenly frozen, gripping the rail while the whole structure seemed to sway like some carnival ride gone crazy. A cold sweat broke out all over him, clammy despite the heat of a summer afternoon and, just to complete his humiliation, Slade Barlow had been there.

Slade, his half brother, and at the time, sworn enemy, had dared him to make the climb in the first place. Ironically, Slade had been the one to come up that ladder and talk him down, too, since there was nobody else around just then.

Thank God.

Even now, after all his time, the memory settled into the pit of Hutch’s stomach and soured there, like something he shouldn’t have eaten.

He forced his attention away from the tower—most folks agreed that, being obsolete anyhow, the thing ought to be torn down before some darn-fool kid was seriously hurt or even killed, but nobody ever actually did anything about the idea. Maybe it was nostalgia for lost youth, maybe it was plain old inertia, but talking seemed to be as good as doing where that particular demolition project was concerned.

Hutch sighed, a little deflated, wondering what he’d expected to achieve by coming up here, approached Remington and gathered his reins before climbing back into the saddle.

He stood in the stirrups for a moment or two, stretching his legs, and then he headed for home, where no one was waiting for him.

* * *

AT NOON, KENDRA showed the mansion to the first potential client, a busy executive from San Francisco who was looking, he said, for investment opportunities. His wife, he told Kendra, had always wanted to start and run a bed-and-breakfast in a quaint little town exactly like Parable.

She’d smiled throughout, listening attentively, asking and answering questions, and finally telling the man straight out that there were already three bed-and-breakfasts in town, and they were barely staying afloat financially.

The man had nodded ruefully, thanked Kendra for her time and driven away in his rented SUV. Most likely he’d promised his wife he’d take a look, and now he’d done that and could dismiss the plan in good conscience. Instinctively she knew no offer would be forthcoming, but she wasn’t discouraged.

Kendra had returned to the office afterward, where she’d left Daisy snoozing contentedly in a corner, and eaten lunch—a carton of yogurt and an apple—at her desk.

Taking a client through the mansion, although almost certainly a fruitless enterprise, had served as a welcome distraction from her mixed-up thoughts about Hutch and that afternoon’s horseback ride, but now she was alone in her quiet office, except for Daisy, and her imagination threatened to run wild.

The phones were silent.

The computer monitor yawned before her like the maw of a dragon, ready to suck her in and devour her whole.

She was ridiculously grateful when the mailman dropped in with a handful of flyers and bills, thrilled when the meter reader put in a brief appearance.

“I’m losing my mind,” she confided to Daisy, when the two of them were alone in the silent office again. “You’ve been adopted by a crazy woman.”

Daisy yawned broadly, closed her lovely brown eyes, and went back to sleep.

“Sorry if I’m boring you,” she told the dog.

Daisy gave a soft snore.

By the time three o’clock rolled around, Kendra was practically climbing the walls. She attached Daisy’s leash to her collar, shut off the lights, locked the front door and all but raced out the back way to her car.

When she arrived at the community center, Madison was waiting for her, along with her teacher, Miss Abbington.

Miss Abbington did not look like a happy camper.

“What’s wrong?” Kendra asked as soon as she’d parked the car and gotten out.

“I think Madison should answer that,” Miss Abbington said. She was a small, earnest woman with pointy features that made her look hypervigilant—a quality Kendra appreciated, especially in a person who spent hours with her daughter every day.

Madison flushed, but her chin was set at an obstinate angle. “I was incordiable,” she told Kendra.

“Incorrigible,” Miss Abbington corrected stiffly.

“What happened?” Kendra asked the little girl, at once alarmed and defensive. How could a four-year-old child be described as “incorrigible?” Wasn’t that word usually reserved for hard-core criminals?

“I misrupted the whole class,” Madison said, warming to the subject.

“Disrupted,” Miss Abbington said.

Kendra gave the woman a look, then refocused her attention on her daughter. “That isn’t good, Madison,” she said. “What, specifically, did you do?”

Madison squared her small shoulders and tugged her hand free from Miss Abbington’s. “I borrowed Becky Marston’s cowgirl boots,” she admitted without a hint of shame. “When she took them off to put on her sneakers for gym class.”

“Without permission,” Miss Abbington embellished, looking down her long nose at Madison. “And then, when Becky asked for her boots back, you told her you weren’t through wearing them yet.”

“Madison.” Kendra sighed. “We talked about the boot thing, remember? This morning at breakfast?”

“I just wanted to see what they felt like,” Madison said, but her lower lip was starting to wobble and she didn’t look quite as sure of her position as before. “I would have given them back tomorrow.”

Kendra looked at Miss Abbington again. Miss Abbington’s gaze connected with hers, then skittered away.

“I’ll take it from here,” Kendra told the other woman.

“Fine,” Miss Abbington said crisply.

“It’s wrong to take someone else’s things, Madison,” Kendra told her daughter. “You know that.”

From the car, Daisy poked her muzzle through a partly open window and whimpered.

Madison’s eyes filled with tears, real ones. She was a precocious child, but she didn’t cry to get her way. “Are you mad at me, Mommy?”

“No,” Kendra said quickly, trying not to smile at the image of her little girl clomping around the schoolroom in a pair of purloined boots. This isn’t funny, she scolded herself silently, but it didn’t help much.

“Do I still get to go to the cowboy man’s house and ride a horse?”

Canceling the outing would have made sense, giving Madison reason to think about her behavior at preschool, but Kendra privately nixed the idea on two counts. One, she knew Madison’s disappointment would be out of all proportion to the misdemeanor she’d committed and, two, she’d have to reschedule the ride and she didn’t think her nerves could take the strain.

She was a wreck as it was.

“Yes,” she said, leading Madison to the car and helping her into the safety seat in back. Daisy was on hand to lick the little girl’s face in welcome. “You can still ride Mr. Carmody’s horse. But tomorrow, as soon as you get to school, you will apologize to Miss Abbington and to Becky for acting the way you did.” A pause. “Fair enough?”

Madison considered the proposition as though it were a proposition and not an order. “Okay,” she agreed. “But I still think Becky is a big crybaby.”

“Don’t push your luck, kiddo,” Kendra warned.

She got behind the wheel, fastened her seat belt, started the engine.

“None of this would have happened,” Madison offered reasonably, “if I had my own cowgirl boots.”

Kendra closed her eyes for a moment, swallowed a laugh. She wanted Madison to be spirited and proactive, yes. But a demanding brat? No way.

“One more word about those boots,” she said, glancing at the rearview mirror to read her daughter’s face, “and there will be no visit to Mr. Carmody’s ranch, no horseback ride and definitely no day at the rodeo.”

Madison’s jaw clamped down tight. She obviously had plenty more to say, but she was too smart to say it.

She wanted that ride.

Half an hour later, after a quick stop at home, where Kendra and Madison both changed into jeans and T-shirts and gave Daisy a chance to lap up some water and squat in the backyard, the three of them set out for Whisper Creek Ranch.

On the way, Kendra told herself silently that she was making too big a deal out of this. Nothing earthshaking was going to happen; Hutch would lead a horse out of the barn, Madison would sit in the saddle for a few minutes and that would be it.

She and Madison could turn right around and come home, none the worse for the experience.

Big Sky Mountain loomed in the near distance as they drove on toward the ranch, towering and ancient. If there was one thing in or around Parable that made Kendra think of Hutch Carmody, it was that mountain.

How many times had they gone there, on horseback and sometimes on foot, to be alone in that hidden meadow he loved so much, to talk and laugh and, often, to make love in the warmth of the sun or the silvery glow of starlight?

A blush climbed her neck and pulsed in her cheeks.

Too many times, she thought glumly.

It had been wonderful.

Her grandmother had found out about the trysts eventually—probably by reading Kendra’s diary—and said, “You’re just like your mother. I can’t trust you out of my sight any more than I could trust her. You turn up pregnant, girl, and I’ll wash my hands of you.”

Kendra had taken great care not to get pregnant, but not because of her grandmother’s threat—the old woman had long since washed her hands of her daughter’s child. No, it was because she hadn’t wanted to trap Hutch, force him into marriage because she was having his baby. A few of the other girls in school had gone that route with their boyfriends, and the consequences were sobering, to say the least.

Though she’d loved Hutch, and sometimes feared that she still did, Kendra had wanted to go to college. Yes, she’d wanted children, but at the right time and in the right way. Knowing what it felt like to be a living, breathing burden, she’d been determined to wait, to start her family when she and Hutch were both ready.

Instead she’d gotten involved with Jeffrey Chamberlain. It had been an innocent friendship at first—she’d been fascinated by Jeffrey’s accent, his dry British sense of humor, his style and manners.

Still, she hadn’t married him out of love, not really. She’d wanted to love him, wanted the fairy-tale life he offered, wanted things to be settled, once and for all, so she could get on with her life.

But right up until the moment she’d said, “I do,” she’d expected Hutch to step in, to reclaim her, to be willing to slay dragons to keep her.

He’d done none of those things, of course. And she’d been a dreamy-eyed fool to expect him to.

Now nearing the gate at the base of Hutch’s long driveway, Kendra put the past firmly out of her mind.

That was then. This is now.

Hutch was in front of the barn, and he’d saddled three horses—two regular-size ones and a little gray pony with black-and-white spots.

Daisy began to bark, noticing the shy black dog lurking nearby, and Madison, spotting the pony, gave a delighted squeal.

But Kendra was still counting the horses.

By her calculations, there was one too many.

She barely got the car stopped before Madison was freeing herself from the restraint of her safety seat, pushing open the rear door, scrambling out.

Daisy leaped out after her, and Hutch laughed as both the dog and the little girl bounded toward him and the horses. He introduced his own dog, Leviticus, who stayed a little apart, looking on cautiously.

“That’s the littlest horse in the whole world!” Madison raved, having barely noticed the dog, stopping finally to stare at the pony in wonder.

“Maybe,” Hutch agreed, grinning. His gaze rose slowly to Kendra’s face and locked on with an impact she actually felt.

“I’m little, too,” Madison chattered on eagerly.

Hutch looked serious, thoughtful. “Now, isn’t that a coincidence?” he asked. “You and the pony being so suited to each other, I mean?”

Kendra tightened her fists at her sides, forcibly relaxed them. She knew next to nothing about the day-to-day operation of Whisper Creek Ranch, but she was ninety-nine percent sure there was no job here for such a tiny horse.

Everything about the animal was miniature, even by pony standards, including the Lilliputian saddle and bridle.

“Simmer down,” Hutch said to Kendra in a near whisper, though he was still grinning. “I borrowed the horse from a neighbor. She’s as gentle as they come.”

Kendra swallowed. “Oh,” she said.

Hutch’s attention shifted back to Madison. The little girl basked in the glow of his quiet approval. “Want to give this thing a try?” he asked her.

Madison nodded wildly. Daisy had lost interest by then, and gone off to sniff the surrounding area for heaven only knew what. Leviticus followed her, as if to make sure she behaved throughout the visit.

Once again, Hutch’s eyes rested on Kendra’s face. He was waiting for her permission.

“You’re sure this animal is tame?” she asked him.

“Sure as can be,” Hutch assured her.

“Well—” She stopped, bit her lower lip. “All right, then.”

Hutch chuckled, put his hands to Madison’s waist and swung her easily into the saddle. He put the reins in her small hands, told her how to hold them, explaining quietly that she shouldn’t pull on them too hard, because that was hard on the pony’s mouth.

Madison, for her part, looked not just overjoyed, but transported.

“Look, Mommy!” she cried. “I’m on a horse! I’m on a real horse!”

Kendra had to smile. “Yes,” she agreed. “You certainly are.”

Hutch led the pony around in slow but ever widening circles, there in the barnyard, letting Madison get the feel of riding. The child seemed spangled in light, she was so happy.

I’m on a horse! I’m on a real horse!

Inwardly, Kendra sighed.

Madison was hooked.

And that meant she was, too.





CHAPTER TWELVE



HUTCH WATCHED KENDRA watching her daughter ride, on her own now, and he was glad he’d “borrowed” Ruffles from a family up the road, even though he was sure to get a joshing from the ranch hands, among others. The plain truth of the matter was that he’d bought the pony outright—the Hendrix kids were grown and gone and the little mare had been “mighty lonely these last few years,” according to Paula Hendrix.

He moved to stand alongside Kendra, close enough but not too close.

Her eyes brimmed with happy tears, and she fairly glowed with motherly pride. “She’s loving this,” she murmured so softly that Hutch wasn’t sure if she was talking to him at all.

“Madison’s a natural, all right,” he agreed quietly. “A born rider.”

“You went to a lot of trouble,” Kendra went on, still not looking his way. “Borrowing a pony and everything, I mean.” She was pleased, he knew, but there was a tension in her, too—she was ready to spring into action if anything went wrong, rush in to save her baby. And there was something else, too—a kind of wariness that probably didn’t have much to do with either Madison or the horse.

Just then, Hutch felt a strange ache in a far corner of his heart. In a perfect world, Madison would have been their child, his and Kendra’s. Her last name would be Carmody, not Shepherd or Chamberlain or whatever it was, and riding a horse wouldn’t be a rare adventure, it would be part of her daily life, like it was of any ranch kid’s.

But then, this wasn’t a perfect world, now was it? It was the real deal, and that meant things would go wrong, and people could get sidetracked, screw up their whole lives because of things they should or shouldn’t have said or done.

“Ready to ride?” he asked, to get the conversation rolling again.

“I haven’t been on horseback in years,” Kendra confessed. “Not since—”

Her words fell away into an awkward silence, and she blushed.

She was obviously remembering what he was remembering—all those wild rides they’d taken, back in the day, in and out of the saddle.

“It’s like riding a bike,” he said mildly, throwing her a lifeline. “Once you learn how to sit a horse, you never forget.”

She turned her gaze back to Madison, who was riding in their direction now, beaming. The pup had fallen into step with Ruffles—Leviticus watched from the shade of the barn—and they sure made a picture, all of them, an image straight off the front of a Western greeting card.

When Kendra spoke, she jarred him a little. “How do we get past this, Hutch?” she asked very softly.

“This what?” Hutch asked just as quietly.

Her shoulders moved in a semblance of a shrug. “The awkwardness, I guess,” she said, and there was the smallest quaver in her voice. She paused, shook her head slightly, as if to clear her brain. “I can’t pretend that nothing happened between us,” she went on as Madison and Ruffles and the dogs drew nearer. “But I keep trying to do just that and it makes me crazy.”

Hutch chuckled. “Well, then,” he reasoned, “why don’t you stop trying and just let things be what they are? It’s not as if any of us have much of a choice in the matter, anyhow.”

She sighed and kept her eyes on Madison, but she seemed a little less edgy than before. “You’re right,” she said. “Much as we might want to change the past, we can’t.”

He wanted to ask what she would change, if she could, but Opal’s station wagon pulled through the gate just then and came barreling up the driveway.

“Look!” Madison called, as Opal got out of her car. “I’m riding a horse!”

“You sure enough are,” Opal agreed, her smile wide. Her gaze swept over Hutch and Kendra, and the two other horses waiting to be ridden. “You about done with riding now?” she asked the child. “Because I’ve got supper to start and I could sure use a hand with the job.”

Madison, Hutch suspected, could have stayed right there on Ruffles’ back for days on end, given the opportunity, but she turned out to be the helpful sort.

“I guess I’m done,” she said. “For right now, anyway.”

Hutch approached and lifted her down off Ruffles’s back. “You go on ahead with Opal,” he told the little girl when she looked up at him in concern. He could guess what she was thinking. “I’ll tend to Ruffles, and show you how to do that another time.”

Madison nodded solemnly and patted the pony’s nose. “I wish you were my very own,” she told Ruffles. Then she smiled up at Kendra, waiting for a nod.

Kendra did nod, a little reluctantly, Hutch thought.

Opal put out a hand to Madison, Madison took it without hesitation, and they headed toward the house, chatting amicably, the dogs ambling along behind them.

“That was slick,” Kendra observed with wry amusement, watching as the four disappeared through the kitchen doorway.

Hutch took Ruffles’s reins and led the pony toward the barn door. “I didn’t put Opal up to anything, if that’s what you mean,” he said, grinning back at her. “Make sure those horses don’t take off. I’ll be right back.”

I’ll be right back.

Kendra sighed. Now she’d have to go riding—alone with Hutch Carmody, no less—and she had nobody to blame but herself. She’d put herself in this position, sealed her own fate.

She was crazy.

Gingerly, she gathered the reins of the two horses and waited for Hutch to unsaddle Ruffles and tuck her away in a stall. And she waited.

She recognized the big gelding as Remington, Hutch’s favorite mount, but the long-legged mare was a stranger.

“I have a child to raise and a business to run,” she told the mare in a hurried undertone. “I cannot afford to break any bones, so don’t try anything fancy.”

The mare nickered companionably, as if promising to behave herself.

Hutch came back before Kendra was ready for him to, taking Remington’s reins from her hands. “That’s Coco,” he said, nodding at the mare. “She’s a roper, so she’s lively and fast, but she’s fairly kindhearted, too.”

“Fairly?” Kendra echoed, waiting for muscle memory to kick in so she could mount up without making an even bigger fool of herself than she already had.

Hutch laughed, steadied the mare for her by taking a light hold on the bridle strap. “This isn’t a dude ranch,” he pointed out, clearly enjoying her trepidation. “Except for Ruffles, all these horses earn their keep, one way or another.”

Having nothing to say to that—nothing civil, that is—Kendra reached up, gripped the saddle horn with damp palms, shoved her left foot in the stirrup and hoisted.

Hutch gave her a startling boost by splaying one hand across her backside and pushing.

She gasped, surged skyward and landed in the saddle with a thump.

He laughed again, mounted Remington and reined in alongside Kendra. “Ready?” he asked.

Her face was on fire, and she refused to look at him on the ridiculous premise that if she couldn’t see him, he couldn’t see her, either. “Ready,” she confirmed, stubborn to the end.

“Good,” he said, and he and Remington were off, leading the way, heading for the open range at a slow trot.

Kendra’s horse followed immediately, her rider bouncing hard in the saddle with every step. Kendra concentrated on syncing herself with Coco and, when they’d traveled a hundred yards or so, she found her stride.

Hutch’s gelding clearly wanted to run—please, God, no—but he held the horse in check with an ease that was both admirable and galling. Everything seemed to come easily to this man, and it wasn’t fair.

“Where to?” he asked, grinning over at her as Coco matched her pace to Remington’s.

“Anywhere but the high meadow,” Kendra answered and was immediately embarrassed all over again. Talk about your Freudian slip—Hutch hadn’t suggested riding to their secret, special place, now had he? She’d been the one to bring it up.

He chuckled at her miserable expression. “Tell me, Kendra,” he began easily, “who are you more afraid of—me or yourself?”

“Don’t be ridiculous,” she sputtered. “It’s just that I haven’t ridden in a long time and the meadow is halfway up the mountain and—”

“Easy,” Hutch admonished good-naturedly. Was he addressing her or his horse?

It had damned well better be the horse.

Alas it turned out to be her, instead. “Kendra,” he went on, “I’m not fixing to jump your bones the second we’re alone. We’re two old friends out for a horseback ride, and that’s all there is to it.”

Maybe for you, Kendra thought peevishly. The answer to his earlier question was thrumming in her head by now, all too obvious. She was afraid of herself, not him. Afraid of her own desires and the way her intelligence seemed to take a dive whenever he turned on the charm.

Not that he’d been obvious about it.

Still the damage was done.

Whether he knew it or not—and it would be naive to think he didn’t—Hutch had been in the process of seducing her almost from the moment she and Madison had arrived at the ranch. All he’d had to do to melt her resolve was to act like what Madison wanted most right now—a daddy.

They rode in silence for a while, the horses choosing their direction, or so it seemed to Kendra, the animals pausing alongside a stream to lower their huge heads and drink.

Hutch’s expression had turned solemn; he seemed far away, somehow, even though he was right beside her. Sunlight danced on the surface of the creek as the water whispered by.

“Why did you come here, Kendra?” he finally asked, narrowing his eyes against the brightness of the late-afternoon sun as he studied her face.

“To the ranch?”

“To Parable,” Hutch said.

She bristled. “Because it’s home,” she said tightly. “Because I want to raise Madison in a place where people know and care about each other.”

Hutch dismounted, stood beside Remington, looking up at her. “And you were so happy here as a child that you figured Madison would be, too?” he asked. It wasn’t a gibe, exactly, but he knew all about Kendra’s life with her grandmother, so the remark hadn’t been entirely innocent, either.

“Not always,” she admitted, her tone a little distant. She was tempted to get down off the horse and stand facing him, but that would mean getting back on again and her legs felt too unsteady to manage it. “Nobody’s happy all the time, are they?”

He gave a raspy chuckle, gazing out over the rippling water that gave his ranch its name—Whisper Creek. “That’s for sure,” he said.

She shifted uncomfortably in the saddle. No way around it, she was going to be sore after this ride, unaccustomed as she was.

Oh, well. Better achy body parts she could soak in a hot bathtub with Epsom salts, she figured, than an achy heart.

“I lied about the pony,” Hutch said out of the blue. He bent as he spoke, picked up a pebble and skipped it across the busy water with an expert motion of one hand.

Kendra frowned, confused. Everything about this man confused her, in fact. “What?” she asked.

“I didn’t borrow Ruffles,” he replied, meeting her gaze again. “I bought her. The kids she used to belong to grew up and went away, and she’s been lonely.”

Something softened inside Kendra. Finally she began to relax a little. “Well, then,” she said. “Why didn’t you just say so in the first place?”

He cleared his throat. “Because I figured you’d think I was trying to get to you through Madison,” he told her.

Some reckless Kendra took over, pushed the day-to-day Kendra aside. “Were you?” she asked. “Trying to get to me through my daughter, that is?”

She saw his jaw tighten, release again.

“That would be wrong on so many levels,” he said. He was clearly angry, which was rich, considering he’d been the one to raise the topic in the first place. “Madison’s not a pawn. She’s a person in her own right.”

“I quite agree,” Kendra said, sounding prim even in her own ears.

That was when Hutch reached up, looped an arm around Kendra’s waist and lifted her down off Coco’s back. She came up against him, hard.

“If I want to ‘get to’ you, Kendra,” he informed her, “I can—and without using an innocent little kid or anybody else.”

She stared up at him, startled, breathless and without a thought in her head.

And that was when he kissed her, not gently, not tentatively, but with all the hunger a man can feel for a woman, all the need and the strength and the hardness and the heat.

Instantly she turned to a pillar of fire. Her arms slipped around Hutch’s neck and tightened there, and she stood on tiptoe, pouring herself into that kiss without reservation.

This was what she had feared, some vague part of her knew that.

This was what she had longed for.

It was Hutch who broke away first. His breath was ragged, and he thrust the fingers of his right hand through his hair in a gesture that might have been frustration. “Damn it,” he cursed.

Kendra, all molten passion just moments before, went ice-cold. “Don’t you dare blame me for that, Hutch,” she warned, in a furious whisper. “You started it.”

He didn’t answer, didn’t even look at her.

No, he turned away, gave her his back.

“I’m sorry,” he said, after a long time, his voice rough as dry gravel.

He was sorry? He’d rocked her to the core, thrown the planet off its axis, changed the direction of the tides with that kiss. And he was sorry?

“So much for two old friends just out for a simple horseback ride,” she heard herself say. Humiliation and anger combined gave her the impetus to get back on Coco with no help from Hutch Carmody, thank you very much.

Hutch turned then, glowering up at her. “Don’t,” he warned. “Don’t be flippant about this, Kendra. Something just happened here, something important.”

“Yes,” Kendra said lightly. He was standing and she was mounted and that gave her a completely false sense of power, which she permitted herself to enjoy for the briefest of moments. “You kissed me, remember?”

“I’m not talking about that,” Hutch told her.

“Then what are you talking about?”

“We’re not finished, you and I,” Hutch said. “That’s what I’m talking about.”

“That’s where you’re wrong,” Kendra retorted, coming to a slow simmer. “We are so finished. So over. So done. So through. We have been for years, in case you haven’t noticed.”

“The way you just kissed me says different,” he replied, mounting up at last, reining the gelding around so that he and Kendra were facing each other.

“You kissed me,” she reiterated, almost frantic.

“You’re damn right, I did,” Hutch answered. “And you kissed me right back. If we’d been up at the meadow where it’s private, instead of down here on the open range, we’d be making love right now, hot and heavy. Just like in the old days.”

“Your ego,” she snapped, “is exceeded only by your ego. I’m not one of—one of those women, the kind you can have whenever you want!”

He laughed, but it was a tight sound, a challenge, a promise. “Prove it,” he said.

Kendra was practically beside herself by then. She wanted to get back to the barn, get off this damnable horse, collect her daughter and her dog, and race for home, where she could reasonably pretend none of this had ever happened. “What do you mean, ‘prove it’?” she practically spat.

“Opal is looking after Madison,” he said. “Let’s ride up the mountain, Kendra—just you and me. Right now.”

“Absolutely not,” Kendra shot back loftily, amazed at how badly she wanted to take him up on what would surely be, for her, a losing bet.

“Scared?” he asked, leaning in, almost breathing the word. His mouth rested lightly, briefly, against hers, setting her ablaze all over again.

“Yes,” she said in a burst of honesty.

“Of me?”

Kendra swallowed hard, shook her head from side to side. He’d been right before—she was afraid of herself, not him—but she wasn’t going to admit that out loud.

“It’s probably inevitable,” Hutch said, sounding gleefully resigned. “Our making love, I mean.”

“Think what you like,” Kendra bluffed, her tone deliberately tart. “But I’ve been down that road before, Hutch, and I’m not going back. I’m not a gullible young girl anymore. I’m a responsible woman with a daughter.”

“And that means you can’t have a sex life?”

“I will not discuss this with you,” she bit out, turning Coco around and heading back toward the house and the barn and Madison. Back toward sanity and good sense.

Of course Hutch had no difficulty catching up. He looked cocky, riding beside her, all cowboy, all man.

She was in big trouble here.

Big, big trouble.

* * *

SHE AND MADISON had to stay for supper—Opal wouldn’t hear of anything else, and besides, Kendra knew that leaving in a huff would reveal too much.

So she stayed.

She left Hutch to put the horses away by himself, except for his devoted shadow, Leviticus, then went into the house and washed her hands at the kitchen sink while Madison, swaddled in an oversize apron and elbow-deep in floury dough, regaled her with her new knowledge of cooking.

“She’s ready for her own show on the Food Channel,” Opal put in proudly, standing next to Madison at the center island and supervising every move.

“I don’t doubt that for a moment,” Kendra agreed, hoping her coloring had returned to normal by now.

“I’m making biscuits,” Madison said.

“Impressive,” Kendra replied. “Will you teach me how to make them, too?”

Madison giggled at that. “Silly Mommy,” she said. “You just need to look in a cookbook and you’ll know how.”

Kendra kissed her daughter’s flour-smudged cheek. “You’ve got me there,” she said, with a little sigh.

“Coffee’s fresh,” Opal said with a nod in the direction of the machine. “Mugs are in the cupboard above it.”

“Thanks.” Kendra needed something to do with her hands, so she got out a cup, poured herself some coffee and took a slow sip, hoping it wouldn’t keep her awake half the night, thinking about the most recent go-round with Hutch. She was jangly enough as it was.

“How was the ride?” Opal asked, and her attempt to put the question casually was a total flop.

“Fine,” Kendra replied noncommittally.

“Where’s Mr. Hutch?” Madison wanted to know.

So, Kendra thought. He’d graduated from cowboy man to Mr. Hutch. What was next—Daddy?

“He’s looking after the horses,” Kendra answered, leaning against the counter and taking another sip of coffee. Oddly the caffeine seemed to be settling her down rather than riling her already frayed nerves, and she was grateful for this small, counterintuitive blessing.

“When can we get my boots?” Madison chimed in.

Kendra laughed. “Does that mean you want to go riding again?” she hedged.

Madison nodded eagerly, still working away at the dough she’d been kneading in the big crockery bowl in front of her. “I want to ride far,” she said. “Not just around and around in the yard, like a little kid.”

“You are a little kid,” Kendra teased.

“I reckon that biscuit dough is about ready to be rolled out and cut,” Opal put in. Without missing a beat, she gently removed Madison’s hands from the bowl, wiped them clean with a damp dish towel and lifted the child down off the chair she’d been standing on.

“I can help,” Madison offered.

“Sure you can,” Opal agreed.

The woman was the soul of patience. Kendra smiled at her, mouthing the words “Thank you.”

“But first I need to say good-night to Ruffles,” Madison said.

“After supper,” Kendra answered.

Hutch came in then, rolling up the sleeves of his shirt as he stepped over the threshold in stocking feet, having left his dirty boots outside on the step. His hair was rumpled, and there were bits of hay on his clothes. Kendra was struck by how impossibly good he looked, even coming straight from the barn.

He nodded a greeting to Opal and Kendra in turn, then spared a wink for Madison as he used an elbow to turn on the hot water in the sink. He lathered his hands and forearms with a bar of pungently scented orange soap, rinsed and lathered up again.

To look at him, nobody would have guessed that less than an hour before he’d kissed Kendra as she’d never been kissed before—even by him—and thrown her entire being into sweet turmoil in the space of a few heartbeats. He’d plundered her mouth with his tongue and she’d not only allowed it, she’d responded, no question about it.

He’d said it was inevitable that they’d make love. Dared her to ride up the mountain with him, to that cursed, enchanted meadow where heaven and earth seemed to converge as their bodies converged.

Stop it, she told herself sternly.

“I made the biscuits,” Madison was saying to Hutch as he turned away from the sink, drying his hands on a towel. “Well, I helped, anyway.”

Opal chuckled. She’d gotten out a rolling pin and a biscuit cutter. “Get back up on this chair, young lady, and I’ll show you what to do next.”

Madison scrambled to obey.

Opal gave the child’s hands another going over with a damp cloth.

Together they rolled the dough out flat, used the cutter to make circles, placed these on a baking sheet lined with parchment paper.

Hutch crossed to the oven and reached for the handle on the door.

“Don’t you open that oven,” Opal immediately commanded. “You’ll let out all that good steam.”

For a moment Hutch looked more like a curious little boy than a man. “Whatever it is, it sure smells good,” he said.

“It’s my special tamale pie, like I said I’d make,” Opal replied briskly, “and I’ll thank you not to go messing with it before we’ve even sat down to say grace.”

Hutch grinned, spread his hands in a conciliatory gesture. “Yes, ma’am,” he said. “Far be it from me to mess with supper.”

“And don’t you forget it,” Opal said, evidently determined to have the last word.

It was a mundane exchange, but Kendra enjoyed the hominess of good-natured banter between people who cared for each other as if they were family. When she was growing up, meals had been catch-as-catch-can affairs, and if her grandmother did bother to cook, she slammed the pots and pans around in the process, letting Kendra know it was an imposition. That she was an imposition.

Those days were long gone, she reminded herself. She’d come through okay, hadn’t she? And she was a good mother to Madison, at least partly because she wanted things to be different for her.

“I’d sure like to know what’s going on in that head of yours right about now,” Hutch said, surprising her. When had he crossed the room, come to stand next to her, close enough to touch? And why did he have to be so darned observant?

“I was just thinking how lucky I am,” she said.

He grinned, watching as Madison “helped” slide the biscuits into the extra oven built into the wall beside the stove. “You definitely are,” he said, and there was something in his voice that took a lot of the sting out of things he’d said earlier.

That was the thing she had to watch when it came to Hutch.

He could be kind one moment and issuing a challenge the next.

Most of the time, he was impossible to read.

Soon enough, they all sat down to supper, Opal and Madison, Kendra and Hutch, and it felt a little too right for comfort. After struggling so hard to regain her emotional equilibrium, Kendra was back on shaky ground.

She was hungry, though, despite her jumpy nerves, and she put away two biscuits as well as an ample portion of Opal’s delectable tamale pie.

Madison had had a big day, and by the time supper was over, she was fighting to stay awake. “Mommy said I could say good-night to Ruffles,” she insisted, yawning, when the table had been cleared and the plates and silverware loaded into the dishwasher.

Hutch lifted the child into his arms, though he was looking at Kendra when he spoke. “And your mommy,” he said, “is a woman of her word. Let’s go.”

What was that supposed to mean? Was there a barb hidden somewhere in that statement?

Kendra decided not to invest any more of her rapidly waning energy wondering. She thanked Opal for supper and for letting Madison help with the preparations, and followed Hutch, Madison and the ever-alert Daisy out the back door. They crossed the yard, headed for the barn, and Madison, half-asleep by then, rested her head on Hutch’s shoulder.

Hutch flipped on the light as they entered, and carried Madison to Ruffles’s stall.

Kendra watched, stricken with a tangle of bittersweet emotions, as Madison leaned over the stall door to pat the pony’s head.

“Good night, Ruffles,” she said, keeping her other arm firmly around Hutch’s neck. Solemnly, she instructed the little horse to sleep well and have sweet dreams.

Kendra’s heart turned over in her chest and her throat tightened.

Too late, she realized that Hutch was watching her and, as usual, seeing more than she wanted him to see.

“We’d better go now,” she said, forcing the words out.

Hutch nodded. Still carrying Madison, he led the way back outside, setting the child in her car seat as deftly as if he’d done it a thousand times before, chuckling when the dog joined them in a single bound.

Kendra resisted the urge to double-check the fastenings on the car seat, just to make sure he’d gotten it right.

Of course he’d gotten it right. He was Hutch Carmody, and he got just about everything right—when he chose to, that is.

“Thanks,” Kendra said, standing beside the car, hugging herself even though the night was warm. Since she didn’t want him jumping to the conclusion that her thank-you included that soul-sundering kiss beside Whisper Creek, she added, too quickly, “For letting Madison ride Ruffles, I mean.”

A slow grin spread across Hutch’s face as he watched her. Overhead, a million gazillion silvery stars splashed across the black velvet sky and the moon glowed translucent, nearly full.

“Anytime,” he said easily, Leviticus waiting quietly at his side.

“Right,” Kendra said, at a loss.

Hutch opened the driver’s door for her, waited politely for her to slip behind the wheel, fumble in her bag for the keys, fasten her seat belt and start the engine.

Madison was already asleep—if she hadn’t been, Kendra knew, she would have been asking when she could come back and ride Ruffles again.

When Hutch remained where he was, Kendra rolled down her window. She had her issues with the man, but she didn’t want to run over his feet backing out. “Was there something else?” she asked, hoping she sounded casual.

He leaned over to look in at her. “Yeah,” he said. “You planning on coming to the rodeo? You and Madison?”

She nodded, smiled. “There’s no way I could get out of it even if I wanted to,” she said. “Madison’s never been and she’s looking forward to the whole weekend, rodeo, fireworks and all.”

Speaking of fireworks, she thought, as the memory of that kiss coursed through her, hot and fierce, causing her heart to kick into overdrive.

“I’m entered in the bull-riding on Saturday afternoon,” Hutch said, “but I’d sure like to buy the two of you supper and maybe take Madison on a few of the carnival rides before taking in the fireworks.”

All she had to do was say no, take time to step back and regain her perspective.

Instead she said, “Okay.” Immediately.

Hutch grinned. “Great,” he said. “I’ll be in touch, and we’ll work out the details.”

She nodded, as though nothing out of the ordinary had happened that day.

Maybe for him nothing had.

Dismal thought.

Kendra murmured good-night, Hutch stepped away from the car and she put the Volvo in motion.

At home, she unbuckled Madison, awake but sleepy, and carried her into the house. She helped the child into her pajamas, oversaw the brushing of teeth and the saying of prayers, tucked her daughter in and kissed her forehead.

“Good night, Annie Oakley,” she said.

Daisy, probably needing to go outside, fidgeted in the doorway.

“Who’s that?” Madison asked, yawning big again, but she was asleep before Kendra had a chance to answer.

Leaving Madison’s bedroom, she followed Daisy back to the kitchen and stood on the porch while the dog did what had to be done.

As soon as she was back inside the house, Daisy headed straight for Madison’s room.

Kendra, a little too wired to sleep, tidied up the already tidy house, watered a few plants and finally retreated to her home office and logged on to the computer. She’d check her email, both business and personal, she decided, and then soak in a nice hot bath, a sort of preemptive strike against the saddle soreness she was bound to be feeling by morning.

She weeded out the junk mail—somehow some of it always got past the filter—and that left her with two messages, one from Tara and one from Joslyn. Both had attachments—forwards, no doubt.

She clicked on Joslyn’s, expecting a cute picture of the new baby.

Instead she was confronted with a page from a major social-media site, a photo someone had snapped of her and Hutch running the three-legged race at the cemetery picnic the previous weekend. Both of them were laughing, pitching forward into the fall that sent them tumbling into the grass.

The caption was short and to the point. “Up to his old tricks,” it read. “Already.”





CHAPTER THIRTEEN



KENDRA STIFFENED IN her chair, staring at the computer monitor and the picture of her and Hutch, feeling as though she’d been slapped across the face. She clicked back to the main body of Joslyn’s email and read, “Now they’ve gone too far. This means war.”

The second message, from Tara, was similar.

The anti-Hutch campaign was one thing, as far as Kendra’s two closest friends were concerned, but dragging her into it was one step over the line. Clearly they were prepared to do battle.

She sat back, drew a few long, deep breaths, releasing them slowly, and reminded herself that this wasn’t such a big deal—the page was a petty outlet for people who apparently had too much free time on their hands, not a cross blazing on her front lawn or a brick hurled through her living room window.

She answered both Tara’s and Joslyn’s emails with a single response. “I’ll handle it.” Then, calmer but no less indignant at some stranger’s invasion of her privacy, she printed out a copy of the webpage, folded it carefully into quarters and took it back to the kitchen, where she’d left her purse. She tucked the sheet of paper away in the very bottom, under her wallet and cosmetic case, looked in on her daughter once more and retreated to the bathroom for that long soak she’d promised herself.

The warm water soothed her, as did the two over-the-counter pain relievers she took before crawling into bed. She hadn’t expected to sleep, but she did, deeply and dreamlessly, and the next thing she knew, sunlight was seeping, pink-orange, through her eyelids.

Her thighs and backside were sore from the horseback ride, but not sore enough to matter.

She threw herself into the morning routine—getting Madison up and dressed and fed, making sure Daisy went outside and then had fresh water and kibble. She skipped her usual coffee, though, and sipped herbal tea instead.

“You look pretty, Mommy,” Madison said, taking in Kendra’s crisp linen pantsuit. Lately, she’d been wearing jeans.

“Thank you,” Kendra replied lightly, pausing to bend over Madison’s chair at the breakfast table and kiss the top of her head. “I have an appointment this morning—a client is coming to see the other house—so hurry it up a little, will you?”