Big Sky Wedding (22 page)

Landry was still scowling over Zane’s comments on his duds, and he shoved open the truck door before Zane even came to a full stop under the fake-stucco portico outside the lobby. He got out, slammed the passenger door behind him, wrenched open the one in back to get his traveling gear and then slammed that door, too, hard enough to dent the framework. Without a goodbye or even a backward glance, let alone a thanks-for-the-ride, Landry walked away and disappeared into the inn.

Zane was at once relieved and stricken by the seemingly unbridgeable chasm that had yawned between him and his brother, once his closest friend, from around the time their mother died.

He let out a breath, drove away into the dark country night and headed for home. The lights were out in the house when he got there, except for one dim bulb glowing above the kitchen sink, which might mean he could avoid Cleo and Nash until morning. That would be
some
consolation at least.

He parked the truck, jammed the keys into his pocket and made his way to the barn, where he spent a few soothing minutes leaning against Blackjack’s stall door, communing with the sleepy gelding. Horse-energy almost always restored Zane’s equanimity, and that night was no different.

Later, walking toward the darkened porch, he scrolled through the lengthy contact list on his cell phone and came to a number for Casey. Since the area code covered that part of Montana, he figured it must be current. Keying it into his phone must have been his agent’s doing—Marcella was big on building and maintaining networks.

Zane touched the green Call icon and waited. Inside the kitchen, Slim scratched at the other side of the door and gave a plaintive whimper, so Zane let him out and waited, the phone pressed between his shoulder and his ear, as the dog darted into the yard and ran around in a big circle, wild with the joy of being on the loose.

Zane had to smile then, and it made him feel better.

“Hello? Zane?” The voice was Casey’s; she’d picked up just as he was about to disconnect, realizing he hadn’t checked the time before dialing, and everybody over at Timber Creek might have already been asleep—until he rousted them, that is.

Zane bit the figurative bullet, grateful for caller ID because he didn’t feel like explaining who he was or even talking on the phone at all in the first place, and besides, he felt like a first-class heel for lying his way out of a perfectly good supper invitation. “Hi, Casey, I’m sorry if I woke you up or anything—I didn’t—”

She laughed. “Heck, Zane,” she replied, “the baby and I are both night owls, anyway. Besides, it’s only about ten-thirty or so. How’ve you been since I saw you last, anyhow?”

“Good,” Zane said, his tone giving the lie to the response. “You?” he took a breath, not waiting for the answer. “It was big news when you got married, and even
bigger
news when you came up pregnant.”

Casey grinned; he heard it in that famously musical voice of hers. “Why, old buddy, I’m as happy as a pig in a puddle of molasses,” she told him, deliberately thickening that honeyed Texas drawl of hers. “It’s been too long, Zane. I can’t wait to catch up over supper tomorrow night, have you meet Walker and the kids—”

Zane wedged in a sigh, stopping the flow of Casey’s words. “That’s the thing,” he said glumly. And then he lost his momentum, lapsing into an awkward silence.

Casey hazarded a guess. “You can’t make it,” she said, making no effort to hide the drop in her level of enthusiasm.

“Not tomorrow night,” he managed. “Maybe another time, but—”

“Sure,” Casey replied, quick to let him off the hook. She was an easygoing type, as he recalled, and he’d liked her from the first. On the set of their TV movie, they’d been pals, skipping the usual hanky-panky to have fun instead of set-trailer sex. “Another time.”

“Thanks,” Zane said, feeling like three kinds of an SOB. At least Casey hadn’t pushed for the reason he was begging off, which spared him the necessity of lying to her outright.

Zane straightened his spine, glanced up at the stars and reminded himself that he was doing this for Brylee. He was giving her space, that’s all.

“I’ll give you a call in a few days,” Casey told him.

Would a few days be long enough for some of the dangerous heat smoldering between him and Brylee to die down? He sure hoped so, because he couldn’t keep on like this for much longer. Real life was no place for honing his acting skills, and besides, blowing people off was
Landry’s
usual M.O., not his. “That would be good,” he finally replied, feeling even more like a shithead in the face of Casey’s kindness.

Goodbyes were exchanged and they both hung up.

“Crap,” Zane told the dog, who’d finished his celebratory dash through the overgrown grass and stood looking up at him now, watchful and adoring, tongue lolling as he panted in happy exhaustion.

Slim, of course, had no answer for that. He simply wagged his tail and followed Zane inside the pile of junk lumber they called home.

Time to call it a night.

CHAPTER THIRTEEN

B
RYLEE
’
S
DAD
HAD
always told her and Walker that no matter how bad something seemed at night, it would look better in the morning light, and her present good mood certainly bore the theory out.

The night before, she’d been in a classic dither, beelining for home after fleeing the Boot Scoot parking lot, seeking the sanctuary of her small apartment like a rabbit bolting for its hole with a pack of hungry coyotes closing in fast.

She’d blown in like a hurricane, heart pounding, breathing fast and shallow, kicked off those bad-news shoes right away and then tossed them decisively into the trash bin for good measure. Snidely, baffled by this unusual behavior but happy to be reunited with his beloved mistress just the same, had followed her to her bedroom, where she’d immediately peeled off the red dress, dropped it in a silky heap at her feet and then kicked it into the dim recesses of her closet, from whence it came. This time, she didn’t bother with a hanger.

Awash in furious satisfaction, next she’d stomped into the bathroom, scrubbed off the layers of makeup, disposed of her ruined panty hose and let down her hair, brushing and brushing until it was no longer stiff with spray, took her nightshirt from the hook on the back of the door and squirmed into it. She had trouble finding the armholes, and for a moment or so, she felt as though she’d been slapped into a straitjacket—a strangely appropriate image, taking her mental state into consideration.

Even after swilling two cups of herbal tea like a drunk downing whiskey after a lengthy dry spell, followed by a much calmer and wholly genuine attempt to mellow the heck out by slowing down her brain, sleep had still eluded her. Mindful of Snidely’s patient confusion—the way she’d been carrying on, for pity’s sake, the poor dog must have thought the world was ending, at that very moment—she finally flung herself into bed, wriggled around a bit in a vain effort to settle in, then shot bolt upright again, muttering, because she’d forgotten to switch off the lamp on her nightstand.

For all that ruckus, Snidely, seemingly reassured that civilization would continue on its usual hurly-burly course, for the time being, anyway, curled up in his customary place on the hooked rug beside Brylee’s bed, gave a sigh of profound relief and drifted off to doggy dreamland with enviable ease.

Brylee, by contrast, lay stewing in her own juices, her face hot with self-recrimination as she relived every wretched detail of her over-the-top, silly-schoolgirl reaction to Zane Sutton’s mere
presence
at the Boot Scoot. As if he’d broken some cosmic law by showing up in a place she hadn’t expected to run into him, and therefore hadn’t had a chance to prepare in advance for the encounter.

And what was
that
about, this need to gird her figurative loins, like a female gladiator about to go into battle, before having the briefest contact with her sexy new neighbor?

Brylee had always prided herself on her cool head and good manners—the only real exception to the rule having occurred at the wedding-that-wasn’t, after Hutch dumped her without even letting her get as far as the altar. On that infamous day, she’d thrown down her bouquet, stomped on it a couple of times and then marched outside in her fairy-tale bridal gown to snatch the Just Married sign, with its wacky shoe-polish letters, right off the back of the waiting limo. She’d ripped the strip of cardboard into shreds and thrown the remains in the gutter.

On top of making a fool of herself in front of people
with cameras,
she’d gone and
littered.
While she wasn’t proud of acting like a character in a bad soap opera, she did wonder who could really blame her. Her
wedding
had been ruined, after all, and no red-blooded woman would have smiled sweetly and said, “Oh, well,” now would they? But last night, in Parable—well, that was a different matter entirely. She’d behaved like an idiot, especially after the kiss.

The kiss.

And holy crapola,
what
a kiss. She’d never experienced one like it before, not even with Hutch, and she’d been crazy about the man—crazy enough to want to
marry
him, for Pete’s sake.

Thank God for unanswered prayers,
she’d thought, lying there in her lonely bed. And soon after that, she’d begun to feel like herself—her
true
self—again. Anyone with eyes could see that Hutch belonged with Kendra, not with her. And she belonged with—well, who the hell
knew
who she belonged with?

Maybe nobody, the way things were shaping up.

Okay, so she might have to soldier on alone—lots of women did—but she’d do it with class and aplomb, by God. She’d dress to kill and speak her mind and go for the things she wanted. Why, she’d be the Katharine Hepburn of Parable County, Montana.

Finally, after much angst and a few vain efforts to figure things out—again—she’d tumbled into an awkward slumberlike state, shallow as a mud puddle and anything but restful.

But now it was morning, and the world was a whole different place. Zippity-do-dah!

The sun was shining fit to bring up next spring’s grass right along with what was there already, the famous big sky was bluer than blue had any business being, without a permit from God, and she could ramble around her place in sweats all morning, if she wanted to, except for brief forays outside with Snidely, of course, and a quick trip to the supermarket in town. She could indulge her not-so-secret passion—cooking.

Why, she probably wouldn’t even set foot in the warehouse all weekend, and for her, that was a major shift.

Yes, sir, Brylee had a plan, and she followed it, awash in that crazy mixture of anticipation and wary dread no man had ever made her feel before.

Until Zane Sutton.

Tonight, he would be coming over for supper, bringing Cleo and Nash with him, and she’d be fully restored by then, batteries charged, ready for anything. Well, maybe not
anything,
but she had regained most of her composure, and she might at least be able to get through the evening without making a spectacle of herself.

She was humming cheerfully when a soft knock sounded at the inside door and Casey opened it to call out, “Anybody home?” The phrase was part of the vernacular in that household, had been for as long as Brylee could remember.

“Come in!” Brylee practically sang, from the kitchen, where she was running cold water over the frozen game hens she’d bought at the supermarket on her brief grocery run into Three Trees. Hastily, dressed like a gym rat and hoping to go unnoticed, Snidely waiting in the car, she’d selected four bottles of the best wine one could expect to find on supermarket shelves, taken her time choosing prime brussels sprouts and premium baby potatoes and all the stuff for a whiz-bang salad.

Maybe she couldn’t hold on to a man, but damn it, nobody made a better salad.

Casey wandered on in, Preston nestled against her right shoulder, patting the baby’s tiny back distractedly. When she focused on the array of food and cooking accoutrements set out on Brylee’s center island, a tiny frown creased the porcelain-perfect skin between her eyebrows.

“What?” Brylee prodded good-naturedly, though Casey’s troubled expression had her a little worried.

Casey scanned the produce and the frozen game hens once more, and then sighed a big, shoulder-moving sigh. Her beautiful necklace, a gift from Walker, specially designed, with a heart and two tiny, dangling Western hats, one representing her, the other, her husband, gleamed between the lapels of her faded cotton shirt. Somewhat nervously, she ran her free hand down the side of her respectably worn jeans.

“Something came up,” Casey said, at long last, and her effort to overrule her reluctance and say what she’d come to say was painfully obvious.

Preston stirred a little, made baby sounds and Casey soothed him with another back pat and a gentle, “Shush now, sweet pea. Everything’s fine.”

The infant settled down right away.

“Something came up,” Brylee repeated. “Such as?”

Not that she didn’t have a sneaking suspicion what the answer was going to be. She’d made such a scene the night before, at the Boot Scoot, that Zane must have decided to back off, keep a prudent distance.

Funny how that realization, which should have provided a modicum of relief, opened a trap door in the pit of Brylee’s stomach instead, one she thought she might just fall right through, end over end, forever, never quite hitting bottom.

Casey’s reply confirmed everything Brylee had already guessed. “Zane isn’t coming to supper,” she said sadly, and Brylee knew her sister-in-law wasn’t sad for herself, or for Walker and the kids, much as they’d all been looking forward to entertaining a genuine movie star. Oh, no. Casey was sad for
her,
Brylee, the spinster—the woman who had made a lifestyle of being kicked to the curb by every man she found attractive.

“Oh,” Brylee said, because that was all that came to her and because hiding things from the ultraperceptive Casey had proven impossible from the very beginning.

Casey looked pained, and though she tried to smile, the effort faltered on her mouth and failed to stick. “Something must have come up,” she hastened to add. Again, she checked out the baby potatoes, the perfect brussels sprouts, the game hens just beginning to thaw in the island sink. “He said they’d come over some other time, he and the rest of his outfit. Sometime soon.”

Sometime. Soon. In a pig’s eye. Zane Sutton was on the run, thanks to her. He probably wouldn’t come within a country mile of Timber Creek, ever.

Brylee was definitely
not
going to cry, she decided, even though, for some inexplicable reason, she wanted very much to do exactly that. Maybe the alternate personality, she of the red dress and the sexy shoes and the hey-sailor hairstyle, was trying to reassert herself, take over again and cause even
more
trouble.

She,
the crazy fringe persona, might feel bad that Zane would be a no-show for supper, but the authentic Brylee, the person she truly was and wanted to remain, thank you very much, was
glad
to be spared an unavoidably awkward evening.

Really
glad, damn it.

“Whatever,” she said, with a breeziness that, of course, didn’t deceive Casey for a second. She gestured toward all that carefully chosen food laid out on the island. “I’ll cook this stuff up, anyway—no sense trying to jam it into the fridge. We’ll have a nice family dinner, just you and Walker, Shane and Clare, and me.”

The look in Casey’s expressive green eyes wasn’t one of pity, but she was trying too hard to project good cheer and optimism for Brylee’s comfort. Obviously, Casey knew the truth: that her sister-in-law’s already-tattered pride had just been rubbed raw. “You’re sure?” she asked hesitantly, gently. “I mean, really, that seems like a lot of work to go to, just for us.”

“‘Just for you’?” Brylee asked, summoning up another smile, though this one felt as though it had been cemented to her mouth and was already beginning to crumble because there was nothing to hold on to. “‘Just,’ nothing, Casey Parrish. Nobody is more important to me than all of you.
Nobody.
”

Casey couldn’t seem to make herself leave, though she did turn slightly, angling one shoulder toward the door she’d come through just minutes before. “There’s probably a good reason,” she reiterated lamely. “After working sixteen hours a day with Zane on the set of that TV movie we did a few years ago, I
know
he’s not the type to change his mind on a whim....”

What Casey
didn’t
know, of course, was that Zane had kissed Brylee, just the night before, kissed her like she’d never been kissed before, at the edge of a gravel parking lot, beneath a sparkling spill of stars, and she’d not only
liked
it, she’d wanted a whole lot more. She’d let him know it, too.
Then,
as if that wasn’t bad enough, she’d flipped some emotional switch and gone from a red-dress, spiked-heel-wearing buckle bunny on the make to a sniveling, half-hysterical child—in a matter of a few heartbeats, no less.

The man had probably thought she was screwed up enough to qualify for a whole slew of twelve-step programs, and who could blame him? He’d probably encountered obsessed
fans
who were more rational, and those poor souls at least had the excuse of needing medication.

Worst of all, he’d never even
met
the real Brylee.

“Don’t worry, please,” she told Casey, smiling so hard now that she thought her face might actually crack.
Fake it till you make it.
Wasn’t that one of the stand-by slogans in the recovery movement? “I’m fine. Really. I don’t even
like
Zane all that much.”

Oh, no,
not much
. She’d merely have gone home with him, and straight to his bed, if he’d kissed her even once more, that was all.

Casey wasn’t buying any of it, of course, but she nodded compliantly and retreated into the other part of the house, humming under her breath to the baby as she went.

“Well,
hell,
” Brylee told Snidely, who, as usual, was stuck to her like a postage stamp with too much glue on the back.

Snidely gave a philosophical-sounding sigh and meandered to the back door, wanting to be let out.

Brylee crossed the room, opened the door for him and watched as he zipped through the space, as if anxious to be shut of her for a while and find himself some better company to hang out with.

There seemed to be a lot of that going around lately.

* * *

Z
ANE
HAD
GONE
to bed feeling like a damn peckerhead the night before, and he woke up with the same low opinion of himself. Rolling off his crumpled air mattress, he stood, rooted through dresser drawers until he found clean shorts and some socks. He put them on, then snatched yesterday’s jeans from the floor and got into those, following up with a colorless T-shirt and his shit-kicking boots.