Big Sky Wedding (28 page)

“You’re awake, then.” The voice was Zane’s.

And the sound of it jolted Brylee into full sensibility, in the span of a mere moment, something even the late-night ringing of her phone hadn’t done.

“I am,” she confirmed, quite unnecessarily.

Zane cleared his throat. “Tonight was—” He fell silent, and she could feel him searching for just the right words to let her down easy.

Brylee squeezed her eyes shut, waited. The man certainly hadn’t wasted any time clarifying the situation, had he?

Zane began again. “Tonight was incredible, Brylee.
You
were incredible.”

Tears brimmed along her lower lashes, sudden and hot. Her heart pounded so hard she could feel it on the outside of her body, and in unusual places, too, like her knees and elbows and the balls of her feet. An odd, semihysterical giggle escaped her, wouldn’t be held in.

“Who is this?” she quipped, dabbing at her cheeks with the back of one hand.

Zane laughed, a quiet, thoroughly masculine sound.

Brylee pushed a lock of hair back from her forehead.

On the rug beside her bed, Snidely chased rabbits in his sleep, all four legs moving.

The silence lengthened, but it wasn’t unpleasant. In fact, it was faintly electrical.

Finally, Brylee asked, “How do you define
incredible?
”

He chuckled, and that was as nice to hear as his laugh had been. “In this case,” he replied gruffly, “I’d define it as incomparable, as better than any other night of my life.”

Brylee’s throat thickened, and her eyes scalded with fresh tears. “You said it yourself,” she said gently, cautiously. “It’s too soon, Zane. We have to put on the brakes, before it’s too late.”

CHAPTER SIXTEEN

B
RYLEE
’
S
PRONOUNCEMENT
THAT
it was time to step back from each other for a while, catch their breath and get some perspective made perfect sense to Zane. After all, they’d actually been acquainted for about five minutes, a fact he’d tried to remind her—and himself—of the night before.

Before the lovemaking. The epic, apocalyptically good lovemaking that had rocked Zane to the foundations of his being, altered his worldview—hell, his view of this and any other universe that might be out there—had turned him, essentially, from one man into another.

Was this a bad thing? That seemed unlikely, if only because the whole Brylee experience had an almost sacred feel to it, but it might be a long time before the dust settled enough for either one of them to see clearly.

He sighed. There were his own words again, back to bite him in the ass.
It’s too soon.

On the other hand, how the
hell
was he supposed to do without the woman, give up everything he’d been searching for all his life? It would be easier to swear off oxygen and water.

Now that his entire psyche had just been flame-gunned and then rebuilt so completely that he’d have to get to know himself all over again, and staying away from Brylee Parrish was probably the only remedy for what ailed him.

Once the phone call was over, he’d stood there in his dark room for a long time, staring out at a shadowy, moon-washed landscape, wondering how he was going to survive this.

He didn’t even attempt to sleep—it would have been futile, draining rather than restoring him—and by morning, he was like a wild man, pacing, anxious, unable to focus on anything but the shattering prospect of losing something he’d never really had in the first place.

It was crazy.
He
was crazy.

When Cleo entered the kitchen, soon after daybreak, wearing a pair of fluffy slippers and a bright purple chenille bathrobe with a few full tours of duty behind it already, given the signs of wear, she stopped at the sight of Zane, drew in an audible breath and rounded her big eyes so the whites seemed much more prominent than usual.

“What’s happened?” she asked, small-voiced and clearly expecting to be told that someone near and dear had died, or at least received a sobering diagnosis.

Zane sighed and his shoulders drooped without conscious instructions from his brain; he’d never meant to worry the poor woman. He hadn’t even expected to encounter her at this ungodly hour, for that matter.

“There’s no tragedy unfolding,” he said hoarsely.
Not for anybody but me, anyway.
“This is something personal.”

Cleo, visibly relieved, steamrolled over to the coffeemaker, took a mug from the lineup on the counter beside it and poured herself a stiff dose of caffeine—the dregs of the last batch, since Zane had been swilling the stuff for hours.

While her cup steamed on the counter, she hastily built another pot of coffee, and when she turned toward him again, she looked like her normal, exasperated-with-it-all self.

“You look
awful,
” she told him, before taking a sip from her mug, making a horrified face and sluicing the contents into the sink. Since the new batch was just beginning to brew, she padded over to the card table and sank into one of the chairs to wait for it, simultaneously directing Zane to take the other one.

Still only two chairs, Zane thought, tracking no better than he had at any point since the telephone conversation with Brylee. If he didn’t invest in some new furniture, and soon, they’d have to start eating meals in rotating shifts.

To say he sat down would have been an embellishment; it was more like his knees gave out and the chair seat happened to be situated in just the right place to break his fall.

Cleo regarded him in shrewd silence for some time, then stealth-bombed him with, “Is this about Brylee Parrish?”

Zane’s mouth dropped open, and he’d have sworn he heard the hinges creak when he closed it again. He’d groused to her about Landry, and his dad, and even his agent, but said very little about Brylee’s effect on him.

Cleo gave a rich, throaty laugh, a throwback to her torch-singer days, most likely, and shook her head. “You thought it was some big secret?” she asked. Then she waved a hand in amused dismissal. “Well, come on up to speed, Mr. Boss Man, because the whole
county
knows you fell for Brylee the first time you saw her. We ladies of a certain age discussed it at the barbecue and between every number called at bingo.”

Zane didn’t try to deny anything—obviously, that would have been pointless. Anyhow, he was too busy scrambling to get even a slippery grip on how such an event as falling in love could have been so evident to everybody but him.

And maybe to Brylee.

He began to feel just a little bit better, but it must not have shown on the outside.

Cleo assessed him with a sweep of her eyes. He saw fondness in her gaze, along with sympathy and no small amount of wisdom. “Well, now,” she said, “I reckon most people would see something like this as a
good
thing. So why do you look as though your very best hopes and dreams are about to be repossessed, hooked up to a tow truck and hauled away, like some ole car you can’t meet the payments on?”

The image she’d painted, colorful as her clothes and down-to-earth as her converted-cooler suitcase, forced a chuckle out of Zane, but it sounded like sandpaper gnawing at rusted iron. “I look that bad?” he countered, stalling.

“Worse,” Cleo said. She folded her bathrobed arms in front of her and leaned on them, bent slightly forward, like a senator trying to look stern during a complicated but boring investigation into some questionable industry.

Except, of course, that Cleo really cared what he’d say next. “You gonna sidestep this all day,” she challenged, “or tell me what’s going on? I might be able to help, you know.”

Zane sighed. Spread his hands briefly, maybe in a gesture of baffled helplessness, maybe just to buy another few seconds. “Brylee’s scared,” he finally replied, keeping his voice low because this was definitely not a subject he wanted to let Landry and/or Nash in on. “She didn’t say as much, but I’m thinking she’s getting ready to run, get as far away from Parable County—and me—as possible.”

“Well,” Cleo said, drawing out the word as she mused for a while, “that wouldn’t be any kind of solution, of course—running away, I mean—but I can understand her concern. She’s been through the romantic wringer, that girl, and it’s natural that she’d be a mite on the skittish side.”

“I agree,” Zane said. “I’m willing to give Brylee all the space she needs, no problem. But at the same time, I’m afraid I’m going to lose her for good.” He sighed, shoved a hand through his already-mussed hair. He was still wearing yesterday’s clothes, and his whole face itched because he hadn’t shaved and the stubble crop was coming in. Little wonder Cleo thought he looked like a long stretch of rutted road with nothing good at the end of it—he sure as hell
felt
like one. “Maybe I ought to take Nash, head for L.A., tie up some loose ends, like selling the condo and sorting out my stuff. Brylee’s lived around here her whole life—she has family and friends and a thriving business to think about, while I’m the new guy—”

Cleo rolled her eyes, but her smile was tender. “Hold it,” she said. “Before you go gallivanting off to California, or Brylee runs off to wherever, why don’t you
talk
to the woman? You know, hammer out some kind of a plan, agree on a course of action you can both live with.”

Zane laughed outright this time. “Why didn’t I think of that?” he teased.

“Because you’ve been too busy chasing your tail, that’s why,” Cleo responded, with righteous certainty. The coffeemaker had chortled through its cycle by then, and she got up to pour some for herself. She offered a refill to Zane by raising the carafe, and then set it down again when he shook his head.

Privately, Zane reflected that it hadn’t been his own tail he’d been chasing, but Brylee’s. Well, last night he’d caught her. And he’d be a damn fool if he let her go, because it might be ten lifetimes before he met another woman like her. It might be never.

Slapping both palms down onto the surface of the card table in resolution, he scraped back his chair, stood up and headed out of the kitchen and back to his room, peeling off clothes as soon as he’d crossed the threshold, finally jarring Slim out of his deep slumber on the rug.

Never mind the dog. Right now, Zane needed a shower. He needed a shave. He needed to shape the hell up and tackle this thing like a man.

He stepped into a hot shower, soaped up, rinsed, remembered he had a horse to feed and shifted down a few gears. He’d take his time, wait for the rest of the world to open for business—and then he’d home in on Brylee Parrish like a heat-seeking missile.

* * *

T
HE
HABIT
OF
going to work was so ingrained in Brylee that staying home to listen to sad music and use up facial tissue didn’t even occur to her, sorrowful as she felt.

She dressed in jeans and a blue cotton shirt, brushed her hair and caught it up in a clip, forced down half a serving of fat-free yogurt standing in front of the fridge with the door hanging open, while Snidely gobbled kibble. Soon after she’d given up on breakfast, she brushed her teeth again and set out for Décor Galore.

Snidely went with her, like always, but her loyal sidekick kept looking over at her from the passenger seat, during the brief drive, as if expecting her to do something wholly un-Brylee-like. Again.

She smiled and reached over to pat the dog’s ruff. “What do you say we put Amy in charge of the company, spend some of that money we’ve piled up on an RV and hit the trail for a year or two, old buddy? See where the road takes us?”

Snidely gave a soft whimper at the prospect. For a dog, he could be a real stick in the mud.

Brylee felt her shoulders droop as her own enthusiasm ebbed. Leaving her business in Amy’s care wasn’t a problem, because she’d already scaled all those professional mountains, met every career goal, and now she desperately needed a change—a
big
one—but she wouldn’t just be leaving Décor Galore, Zane Sutton and the heart-threat he represented if she took off.

She’d be leaving Walker and Casey, too. Shane and Clare and Preston and, in essence, the new niece or nephew due in six months or so.

She’d be leaving Three Trees, and Parable County, and her church, which, admittedly, she’d been attending only intermittently for the past couple of years. The people who made up the congregation mattered, though, even if some of them did still have their noses out of joint because she’d caved and agreed to hold her and Hutch’s wedding in
his
hometown instead of her own.

She’d be leaving good friends, and the annual rodeo, flaking out on her promise to Casey that she’d serve on the panel charged with the responsibility of picking a queen to reign over that year’s festivities.

She’d be leaving Timber Creek Ranch and her horse, Toby, and alternate Friday nights at the Boot Scoot Tavern, with Amy and the others in their close-knit group.

By the time she pulled into her parking space next to the warehouse, she was downright disenchanted with the whole idea of a lengthy road trip. Besides, she knew what Walker would say, what Casey would say, what
everybody
who mattered to her would say—that she was taking the coward’s way out. She’d been burned by love once, yes, and badly. But did that mean she should let plain old, garden-variety fear dictate the course of her life?

No.

Still, what were the alternatives?

She sighed heavily, blinked back tears of frustration—and, yes, bitter sorrow—shut off the SUV and reached into the back for her purse.

She and Snidely got out of the rig and made their way to the side door, as usual, the one that opened onto the warehouse, near her office. The forklifts were running, transferring boxed merchandise from here to there. Amy was spouting orders like an army drill sergeant.

With a wan smile, Brylee ducked into her office, with Snidely, and pulled the shades on the window overlooking the main part of the warehouse, a tacit don’t-bother-me gesture she rarely used. One of her most fundamental policies was, after all, accessibility to her people.

Methodical as a robot programmed to represent her normal self, Brylee put away her purse, made sure Snidely’s water bowl was full and sat down decisively in front of her computer monitor.

Half an hour later, when she was mercifully embroiled in the accounting program that had been giving her fits on Friday, a knock sounded at her office door, vigorous enough to make the window blinds rattle and cause Snidely, heretofore sleeping near her feet, to lift his head and prick his ears forward.

“Go away, Amy,” Brylee called, in a pleasant but firm tone. “I’m busy.”

The door opened. And Zane Sutton stood in the gap, looking like three different kinds of bad news.

The echoes of last night’s stellar sex marathon sparked like tiny bonfires all over Brylee’s body. She opened her mouth, closed it again.

Zane stepped inside and shut the door behind him with slightly more force than necessary. “Thanks,” he said acidly, “I think I
will
come in. Nice of you to ask.”

Brylee’s face flamed, and her throat went so tight that it hurt to swallow. Damn, but the man was hot, even in old jeans, a plain cotton shirt and barn boots.

Snidely, no longer alarmed for whatever strange reason, lowered his muzzle to his outstretched forelegs and let his eyes roll shut again.

Zane, meanwhile, stormed over to Brylee’s desk, slapped both hands down hard on the surface and leaned in until their noses were nearly touching.

“What—” she managed to croak, but that was it. For the moment at least, her entire vocabulary seemed to consist of one word.

A muscle bunched in Zane’s jaw, and his eyes blazed with blue heat. “I
love
you,” he said.