Big Sky Wedding (17 page)

Now, Brylee thought, hugging her brother’s child once more for good measure, if she could just convince
herself
that Hutch Carmody hadn’t represented her very last chance at happiness...

CHAPTER TEN

Z
ANE
SMILED
TO
himself as he saddled Blackjack early the next morning, when the sky was still more peach and gold than blue and he was feeling a sudden and specific need for lots of wide-open spaces around him. Dinner with Brylee and her family Saturday night, a barbecue at Whisper Creek Ranch on Sunday—and he’d thought the
Hollywood
scene was a social whirl. What was next? A barn dance? A hayride, maybe, followed by hot dogs and beans spiced with tall tales swapped around a campfire?

Grinning at his own whimsical turn of mind, he led the gelding out of the barn and mounted up, leaning forward slightly in the saddle to pat the animal’s neck and speak a few words to him. Slim, losing interest in the whole project by that point, though he’d supervised the goings-on in the barn, ambled over to the porch, curled up near the kitchen door and dozed.

Since Landry’s part of the ranch, beyond a line of trees at the far end of the pasture, with its fallen fences and weedy ground, seemed as good a destination as any, Zane headed that way. Nothing helped him think like riding alone, way out in the countryside, choosing his course as the spirit moved him.

And Zane
needed
to think. He felt swamped by choices and options—not that either was a bad thing; it was just the way his mind worked. Despite his accidental career in the movies, he was a planner at heart and he was always happier if his ducks were in a row.

The first leg of the ride took fifteen minutes or so, the air pleasantly chilly and the sky so big and sprawling and blue that he ached to look at it. When he emerged from the stand of pines and cottonwoods and scrub brush that served as an informal boundary line between the two properties, Zane found himself at the edge of acres and acres of wind-rippled, sun-washed meadow grass. A wide creek cut through the area to the east, shining like mercury in the daylight. He’d been here before, of course, in the truck, but taking it all in on horseback was a different experience altogether.

All that grass and domed sky, edged with green foothills and, in the distance, framed by snow-capped mountains that couldn’t adequately be described even by the word
majestic,
lassoed his breath somewhere around his gizzard and hog-tied it.

Zane simply waited, letting all that peace and quiet settle over him, a balm to his spirit and his usually busy brain.

Presently, Zane stood in the stirrups for a few seconds, stretching his legs and recalling how he and Landry had divided Hangman’s Bend Ranch in the first place—by swapping plat maps via the internet, drawing property lines, dickering by email and
re
drawing said lines until they were both satisfied.

Zane didn’t regret any of the choices he’d made where the joint purchase was concerned—he saw potential in both the old house and the stone barn, and the scenery on his part of the spread still caught him by surprise now and then, pumping a little jolt of adrenaline through him at unexpected moments, kicking his heartbeat up a notch. Now, surveying Landry’s share of the land, he knew the deal he’d made with his brother was a fair one, on both sides.

Which wasn’t to say that Landry was likely to lay eyes on the place, anytime soon. Oh, sure, he’d made noises about coming out for a look around when they talked on the phone before, but Zane knew the man preferred bright lights, big cities and a ready supply of sexy, sophisticated women. They’d both grown up ragtag, he and Landry, living in cheap motels and run-down trailer parks and, back then, neither of them had felt particularly deprived, despite the things they did without.

Zane still had a pretty clear idea of what he genuinely needed—not much more than food, freedom, shelter and the regular company of dogs and horses, even now—but Landry had changed, and changed a lot. Sometimes it was hard to believe he’d ever been that eager kid with freckles and a buzz cut, wearing secondhand clothes and ratty sneakers with the laces always broken off, and always ready for the next adventure.

If Landry even
owned
a pair of jeans these days—and it wasn’t a sure bet by any stretch of the imagination—they were probably the custom-made kind that cost as much as a decent used car. And that kind of getup was bound to be an embarrassment in a place where all the men and many of the women wore one particular brand of denims, the known favorite of country people everywhere, readily available at any discount store for a price regular folks could manage when the mortgage was paid and the kids didn’t need shoes.

Zane shifted in the saddle, loosened the reins when Blackjack tossed his head, letting it be known that he’d stood still long enough and wanted to get on with whatever it was they’d headed out to do.

So they proceeded, man and horse, the grass, rich and fragrant, actually
smelling
green, reaching almost to Blackjack’s breast in places. They came to the creek and splashed across it, raising jewel-bright sprays to sparkle on all sides. Reaching the other shore, Blackjack hauled himself up the steep bank and then paused to shake off the water like a dog after a hosing down.

Zane’s boots were soaked, and so were his jeans, right to his knees, but he not only didn’t care, he barely noticed. He could have stayed out there on the range for days on end, he reckoned, sleeping under a black-velvet canopy dappled with stars at night, following that bright, twisting creek wherever it led, letting the song it sang ease his parched soul, wash away every memory save the good ones.

He sighed at the thought—he really
was
getting fanciful in his old age—and crested a rise, letting the horse choose his own path now, and that was when he saw the fields of flowers on the next place, more colorful than any rainbow. He didn’t know the names of a single one of those blossoms—well, except for the roses and the lilacs, anyway—but just looking at the tidy rows of orange and yellow, blue and red and pink and white, stretching almost to the horizon, was somehow inspiring.

A small, slender woman, clad in worn jeans, a long-sleeved flannel shirt and sneakers, carrying a box from the back of an old truck toward the modest wooden house, spotted him and Blackjack approaching right away, hesitated visibly and finally waved. As Zane rode nearer, she set the box on the edge of a rickety porch, pressed both hands to the small of her back and stretched, clearly weary even though the sun hadn’t been up all that long.

She had a short cap of dark hair, round blue eyes and an expressive mouth. Smiling, she crossed the yard, shading her face with one hand as she looked up at him.

“Zane Sutton,” he said, by way of introduction, and tugged at the brim of his hat.

The woman stretched out one hand, so he leaned from the saddle to clasp it briefly in greeting. “I know,” she responded, with a little twinkle and a lot of reserve. “I’m Ria Manning, and I’m new here, as you’ve probably guessed.”

“Me, too,” Zane said, wishing he hadn’t gone and made himself famous, because it was so often a barrier that made the prudent and practical types hold back. Hell, even his own name had been hijacked, belonging more to his big-screen persona than to him. “This is quite a layout.”

The house and the outbuildings weren’t much, but Zane wasn’t inclined to share that opinion. After all, considering the shape Hangman’s Bend was in, he didn’t have room to talk.

Ria drew a deep breath, hugged herself with both arms as she looked around at the acres of flowers and, finally, sighed happily. “It sure is,” she agreed. “Lots of work to be done, since the owner died a few years ago, and except for a few kindly neighbors stopping by to water and do a little weeding, nobody’s turned a hand since then. Still, I’d say the place is in pretty good shape, all in all.”

A shapely gamine type with an air of tired mischief about her, Ria Manning was the type—read: unHollywood—who would surely have caught Zane’s eye, before he’d met Brylee, that is. His interest in her now was cordial, in a neighborly way, period. And that was a little unsettling, given all the years he’d spent chasing women. He wondered distractedly if it was some kind of curse, this sudden feeling that there was only one woman in the world he could hope to share a life with, and that woman seemed to think he was—what?

He didn’t rightly know what Brylee thought of him, that was the problem. One moment, she treated him with benign disdain, as if he’d been molded from plastic, like some toy action figure instead of a flesh-and-blood man, knitted together in his mother’s womb like everybody else on the planet. The next, she was cautiously friendly, going so far as to invite him to supper—with Nash and Cleo and a full contingent of family around to run interference, of course.

Ria watched him, arms akimbo, head tilted to one side, probably waiting for him to leave so she could get on with her day, polite though her expression was. “I’d better get back to work,” she finally said, and that was when he reined in his wandering thoughts and noticed the gold band on the ring finger of her left hand. Married, then. Odd that the husband didn’t seem to be around, helping out with the lifting and carrying, but maybe he was working or something.

Zane nodded in response to her statement, shifting the pressure of the reins from one side of Blackjack’s neck to the other. He’d have offered to lug boxes for her, but he figured that might make her uneasy, since she was evidently alone. She’d recognized his face and his name, but that didn’t mean she trusted him. He was still a stranger, after all.

He cocked a thumb over one shoulder, indicating Hangman’s Bend. “I live on the next place over,” he told her. “Old house, stone barn. If you need anything, don’t hesitate to let me know.”

“Thanks,” Ria said, after another hesitation, brief but thoughtful.

Then she raised a hand slightly in farewell, summoned up a semblance of a smile, picked up the box she’d set on the edge of the porch a few minutes back and got on with it.

Zane, wondering about Ria Manning—there was a brave fragility about her that gave him pause—reined Blackjack around and headed for home.

* * *

B
RYLEE
SAT
AT
her office desk, studying the same columns of figures over and over again and making no sense of them whatsoever.

She gave a groaning sigh and Snidely, napping under the desk, muzzle resting on her left foot, crept out of his dented metal burrow to look up at her with concern.

Brylee chuckled ruefully and patted his head. “No worries, buddy,” she said gently. “I do seem to have misplaced my handy-dandy Protestant work ethic, though. Seen it around anywhere?”

Just then, a shadow figure—Amy-shaped—tapped at the frosted glass set into the door, opened it a crack and stuck her blond head around it. “We shipped off the last of the orders for the week,” she said. “I sent the warehouse crew and the office people home an hour ago—no sense in running up a big overtime tab.”

Startled, Brylee checked the digits in the lower right-hand corner of her monitor and grimaced.
Six o’clock? Already?

How was that possible? One moment, she’d been clocking in at 8:30 a.m., as usual, primed for an ordinary Friday; the next, the warehouse and offices were dark and empty.

A lonely feeling swept over her in that moment of realization.

Lingering, Amy bit her lower lip, and Brylee registered a hint of concern in her friend’s eyes. “Some of us are meeting up over at the Boot Scoot, in Parable, in an hour or so, for some cold beer, greasy junk food and music guaranteed not to improve our minds.” Another pause, another faltering smile. “Wanna meet us there?”

Brylee, still barely tracking what was going on in the real world outside her computer, took one last look at her on-screen ledger, gave up on untangling the numbers and logged off, all with the few seconds it took to decide on her reply. “Not tonight, thanks,” she said, with false good cheer. “Snidely’s been stuck inside all day, and he needs some exercise before it gets dark. Plus, I have a million things to do at home.”

Amy looked disappointed. “You
always
have a million things to do, Bry. When are you planning to start having some
fun
again?”

Again.
As in,
since Hutch Carmody cut you loose at the altar and you crawled into a hole and pulled it right in after you.

Brylee sighed. Girls’ night out was a long-standing tradition in her circle of friends—half a dozen of them had been meeting over at the Boot Scoot at least two Friday nights out of any given month, since forever, just to hang out and stay current on one another’s lives. They’d been friends for most of their lives, and they were tight, partly because they were the ones who’d stayed on in Parable County after high school or, in Brylee’s case, college.

They’d been there for her before, during and after the wedding-that-wasn’t, coming up with an estimated eight million ways for Hutch Carmody to die while they drank too much wine and beer and lamented the sad state of good old-fashioned romance in today’s society. Some were married, some divorced, and one was widowed. Brylee was the only certified old maid in the bunch.

“Hello?” Amy prompted, ducking her head a little way to peer into Brylee’s face.

“Next time,” Brylee said. “I promise.”

Amy’s slender shoulders sagged visibly under her T-shirt, and she frowned at Brylee, narrowing her eyes. “You always say that,” she countered. “Do you realize that you’ve been ducking out on us—your
best
friends—a
lot,
since you and Hutch broke up?”

Brylee waited for the pang of sorrow that usually struck her, somewhere in the region of her heart, whenever the Great Debacle was mentioned.

But it didn’t happen. Now that she’d ventured out of her head and started to reenter reality, leaving the accounting snarl behind in her brain to be dealt with later, it was Zane Sutton who’d invaded her thoughts, not Hutch.

She promptly shook him off, and a long to-do list scrolled through her brain. Snidely
did
need some time to run and, well, just behave like a dog in general. It wasn’t normal for him to be confined in an office for so many hours at a stretch—they usually took regular breaks, outdoors when the weather was good.