Big Sky Wedding (16 page)

Zane was a little taken aback. He’d been prepared to dislike Carmody, but it was proving difficult, even at this early stage of the game. The last thing he’d expected from him was an invitation to a barbecue.

“That would be great!” Nash piped up, instantly enthused. “Can we bring our housekeeper? Her name is Cleo and she dresses wild and talks loud, but, down deep, she’s okay.”

Carmody grinned at that. “Sure,” he said, before shifting his gaze away from the boy and back to Zane. “Well, then,” he added, “I guess it’s decided. We’ll start things rolling around one in the afternoon, and there’s no need to bring anything, because my wife and all her friends will be building potato salads and stuff all week.”

Lunch arrived just then, delivered by a chagrined and speechless Lucy, who barely managed to set the plates down on the table without spilling the contents to hell and gone.

Hutch chuckled as she rushed back for the milk shake and the cola. “We live at Whisper Creek,” he told Zane, in parting. “The ranch is easy to find. Name’s on the mailbox, number’s in the book.”

With that, he walked away. Like Barlow and Sheriff Boone Taylor before him, he paid his bill, took his hat from a peg on the wall and settled it on his head as he went out.

“Thanks for jumping right in there and accepting for both of us,” Zane told Nash with a frown, after the drinks had arrived and Lucy had left them to eat in relative peace. “I really appreciate it.”
Not.

“Don’t you want to be sociable, big brother? Get to know the locals?” Nash asked, that impish glint back in his eyes, as he swabbed a French fry through a pool of ketchup on his plate.

The truth was, Zane wanted to be part of the community, and that meant getting acquainted with the folks who lived in Parable County. Still, he liked to make decisions like whether to attend a barbecue or not himself. “In the future,” he said, casting an appreciative glance over the good old-fashioned bacon, lettuce and tomato sandwich on his plate, along with a pile of fries and a few slices of pickle, “I’d prefer to speak for myself.”

“I bet it’ll be cool,” Nash speculated thoughtfully, reaching for a second French fry. “Visiting a real ranch, I mean.”

“As opposed to one like ours?” Zane countered, arching an eyebrow slightly and picking up half his sandwich. His mouth was already watering, but he remembered his mother’s advice on etiquette—
Keep one foot on the floor while you eat, boys. That’s all I ask.

“You know what I mean. Whisker Creek probably has lots of horses and some cattle—”

“I believe the name is
Whisper
Creek,” Zane commented. For the next few seconds, he was busy eating, and so was Nash.

“Well,
excuse
me,” Nash said, after chewing and swallowing what appeared to be a full one-quarter of his cheeseburger in one bite. “
Whisper
Creek, then.”

Zane chuckled, then shook his head. “Sometimes,” he observed, “you’re a real pain in the ass, you know that?”

Nash looked righteously affronted.
“Language,”
he said.

Zane laughed.

“I’m just a kid,” Nash hastened to remind him. “You have to set a good example or God knows how I might turn out.”

“God and Cleo,” Zane clarified. “She’s reason enough to behave yourself, because if you don’t, she’ll have your hide.”

Nash absorbed that information and they both went on eating, enjoying their lunch and keeping the chatter to a minimum.

* * *

C
LARE
BURST
INTO
Brylee’s office right after lunch and shut the door hard behind her. She looked frantic, rather than angry, and more childlike than she’d probably intended in sandals and an airy sundress, pink, with ruffles and touches of white eyelet.

Brylee, who had been going over an inventory list with her employee and best friend, Amy Dupree, frowned slightly, concerned. Was something wrong at home? Were Walker and Casey and Shane and little Preston all right?

Amy, a petite blonde, hurried out of the room, rolling her eyes at Brylee before closing the door in her wake.

“Clare, what on earth—” Brylee began, pushing back her chair, about to leap to her feet and take appropriate measures against, well, whatever.

“I’m going to be an old maid!” Clare burst out. “A spinster! I will never,
never
have a social life!”

Relieved, Brylee hid a smile and gripped her niece gently by the shoulders. “Sit down,” she counseled gently. Last night at supper, with the rest of the family, Brylee had engaged Clare in conversation, just as Shane had asked her to do. The girl had opened right up, prattling about something her friend had said in a text about a boy they both knew, the pair of shoes she was certain she couldn’t live without and the book she was reading for her school’s summer extra-credit program. Now, she was in tizzy mode—big-time.

“People still use the word
spinster?
” Brylee teased, buying time, perching on the edge of her ugly desk. Clare was slumped in the extra chair by then, shoulders hunched, head down, hands twisted together in her lap.

Clare looked up at Brylee in that moment, and her eyes, the same incredible shade of green as Casey’s, brimmed with tears. “I’m
serious,
Brylee,” she said, in a wail-like whisper. “My life is
over.
”

Do not smile,
Brylee instructed herself silently. Having been a teenager herself once, she knew that whatever was going on in her niece’s young life—or
not
going on—seemed earth-shattering, apocalyptic and very, very final to her.

“Okay,” Brylee said carefully. “Talk to me, kiddo. What’s going on?”

“It’s
awful,
” Clare sputtered, wiping furiously at one eye, then the other, with the back of her right hand. Her slender body rippled with a visible shudder.

“Sweetheart,” Brylee persisted, “
what
is awful?”

“Mom and Dad are having another baby,” Clare replied. “I heard them talking about it in the kitchen this morning. They were all moony and it was—
gross.
I mean, Preston is so little and already—I mean, don’t they do anything but
have sex?
”

Brylee felt several emotions at once—joy, excitement and, alas, envy. “First of all, Clare, you shouldn’t eavesdrop when people are having private conversations. Second, your parents are adults, they’re still young, they’re legally married and they are very much in love. Furthermore, they’ve been up front about wanting a big family from the beginning.” She folded her arms then, watching her niece’s face, huffed out a sigh and went on. “
Third,
I fail to see how getting a new brother or sister will condemn you to spinsterhood. What’s the connection?”

Clare looked exasperated. Her hands gripped the arms of the spare office chair. “They won’t let me date, even when I’m old enough,” she said. “I’ll have to
babysit.
By the time Preston and Little Whoever can take care of themselves, all the good guys will already be taken—and there’ll be nobody left but
fortune hunters!
Jerks who only like me because I have a famous mother!”

Adolescent hormones, Brylee thought pragmatically, were a force to be reckoned with. She’d forgotten how crucial it was for a young girl to be like the others in her social circle, how easily molehills could be ratcheted up to mountain status. Still, Clare
did
face special challenges, being the child of a celebrity.

“So, you think your folks are just going to turn this baby over to you and expect you to raise him or her single-handedly while they waltz off to do other things?” Brylee asked, letting a touch of humor creep into her voice and her expression—but
just
a touch. “Is that what’s happened since Preston came along?”

“No,” Clare admitted, with another sniffle. “But I’ll be older when the new baby comes—old enough to
babysit.
”

“Clare,” Brylee reasoned, “I’m having a hard time believing you’re really this upset about something that hasn’t even happened yet. What’s
really
going on here?”

Clare was silent for a long time, then she started to cry again. “Shane gets to go on the rodeo circuit with Dad,” she said miserably. “I wanted to go along and Dad said no, I’d better stay home in case Mom or Preston needed me. Obviously, it’s because I’m a
girl.
”

“Oh,” Brylee said, frowning a little. Her brother, Walker, wasn’t a chauvinist, but he
was
a classic alpha male, so he tended to be overprotective, especially where his daughter was involved.

“It’s not fair,” Clare insisted, calming down a little but still riled.

There was no way Brylee was going to offer an opinion, since how Walker and Casey raised their children was their own business and certainly none of hers, but she did see Clare’s point. As a little girl, Brylee had accompanied her own father and big brother when they hauled bucking stock to various rodeos, but once she’d sprouted breasts and most of her sharp angles had turned to curves, her dad had started leaving her behind. Shaking his head sadly at her tearful protests, making lame excuses.

They’d have to share cramped motel rooms along the way, the three of them, her father had pointed out, albeit somewhat apologetically, which meant there would be zero privacy. And a young woman needed privacy. Plus, he and Walker would be busy all day and probably half the night, too, unable to keep an eye on her the way they should, and they’d be in rough company some of the time, etc, etc, etc.

The problem with that logic was, they’d always bunked in together when she was younger and, rough company or none, between the two of them, her dad and brother had kept an eye on her just fine, thank you very much.

Looking back, Brylee understood her father’s concerns, but her heart had been broken, just the same. She’d stood in the dusty driveway, watching a virtual convoy of trucks and trailers full of livestock pull out as her dad, brother and half the ranch hands on the place lit out for other towns, near and far, headed for the rodeo, and she’d wondered what she’d done wrong.

Now, Brylee brought herself back to the present moment and focused on her niece. “Did you talk this over with your mother?” she asked. A simple question, right? That wouldn’t qualify as meddling—would it?

Clare bit her lower lip. “She’s on
his
side. Just because I got into a little trouble that time, at the Parable rodeo—it was, like,
forever
ago—Mom doesn’t trust me.”

“Hmm,” Brylee said, remembering that particular incident. Clare, feeling rebellious, had swiped something from one of the vendors’ booths on the rodeo grounds and subsequently gotten herself arrested, hauled away in a police car. Casey and Walker had dealt with the situation admirably, and the charges were dismissed, but the tabloid press had a field day, running pictures of Clare in handcuffs, Clare being marched into Parable’s tiny police station, Clare leaving said station, subdued and ashamed, with a grim-faced Walker at her side. The headlines had petered out pretty quickly, but they’d been humiliating, not only for Clare herself, but for Walker and Casey as well and, by extension, even for Shane.

“I know what you’re thinking,” Clare accused, though she seemed to be running out of emotional steam. “That I blew it and now I have to take the consequences. But that was
a long time ago,
and what? I’m supposed to stay grounded until I’m fifty?”

Finally, Brylee smiled. “There was that thing about the boy you met at youth group, and the bus trip to Helena,” she said.

Clare sighed, sagging back in her chair. She was, as Shane often claimed, the original drama queen. Even without a rose between her teeth and a limp hand against her forehead, she was the very embodiment of hopeless martyrdom.

“One
more
reason I’ll be an old maid,” the child lamented forlornly. “Because, through no fault of my own, I happen to have
Casey Elder
for a mother, and if some guy likes me, it’s only because he’s trying to get to
her.
”

Brylee chuckled then, drew her niece to her feet and gathered her in her arms for a brief but heartfelt hug. “Trust me,” she said, holding Clare by the shoulders again and leaning back just far enough to study the girl’s tearstained face. “When you’re ready, as in grown up—” she paused, sighed, went on “—and, alas, you’ll probably have to kiss your share of frogs along the way, like most of us do—you’ll definitely find Mr. Right. Most likely, you’ll have your choice of
several
Mr. Rights, and the lucky man you fall in love with won’t care
whose
daughter you are. He’ll love you for your smart, beautiful, funny self, I promise.”

Clare’s angst gave way to curious concern, and her brow wrinkled with a slight frown as she looked back at Brylee. “
Your
Mr. Right turned out to be a frog,” she said, not unkindly.

Innocent though it was, the remark struck Brylee like a blow, the kind that leaves bruises but doesn’t show. She managed a small laugh. “Hutch Carmody
wasn’t
Mr. Right, but he wasn’t a frog, either. He’s a very nice man, actually—with the good sense to see what a mistake we were about to make.”

“Why didn’t
you
see it?” Clare asked, her eyes liquid with sympathy. The poor child was a hopeless romantic, that was obvious. No doubt there would be other tear storms and hissy fits as she traveled the difficult road to womanhood.

Brylee thought a few moments before she answered. “I guess because I didn’t want to see the truth,” she admitted, not only to Clare, but to herself. “I was in love with love, and I had stars in my eyes. I wanted a husband and a home and babies and I was out to make it all happen, by hook or by crook.” She touched Clare’s cheek gently. “Don’t be in such a hurry to grow up, honey. Just trust that everything will work out in the long run, because it will.”

Clare hesitated, then accepted the advice with a little sigh and another sniffle.

“If you say so,” she finally murmured.