Big Sky Wedding (9 page)

It’s a date.
She could have kicked herself for phrasing her reply that way, but there was nothing for it. The damage was done.

She blushed again.

Zane grinned that devastating grin, the one that fairly set Brylee back on her heels. “Five-thirty,” he said. “See you then.”

“Right,” she said, somewhat awkwardly. She waved goodbye to Nash, turned away and started back toward the woods, Snidely keeping pace as always.

She was barely aware of the trees towering all around her, or of the creek when she crossed it, making her way from rock to rock. As before, Snidely chose to swim to the other side.

Reaching the opposite bank, where Brylee was waiting for him, he slogged up out of the stream and shook himself mightily, showering her with shining diamonds of ice-cold water, causing her to whoop in good-natured protest and then laugh right out loud.

It wasn’t smart—or safe—to be this happy, she decided, even as her heart took wing and soared against the periwinkle sky.

CHAPTER FIVE

A
FTER
DOUBLE
-
CHECKING
to make sure the warehouse and offices were secured, Brylee grabbed her handbag and car keys, and she and Snidely got into her SUV to head for home.

She felt dazed and oddly reckless. More than once, she caught herself humming some nameless tune. “It’s official,” she told Snidely, as they came to a dust-raising stop near the barn. “I’ve lost my ever-lovin’ mind.”

She spotted Walker over by the corral fence, watching from under the brim of his battered hat as one of the ranch hands tried out a new bucking horse, probably fresh from the range. The cowboy pitched skyward well before the eight-second mark and landed on the ground in a graceful somersault, rolling right up onto his feet and grinning as he retrieved his hat.

As Brylee stepped up beside her brother, he smiled and jabbed an approving thumb in the air. Like any stock contractor, he appreciated a badass bronco or bull, mainly because he loved rodeo, and they were likely to perform well. The harder the critters were to ride, the better his reputation in the business.

“I remember a time when you would have ridden that bronco yourself,” Brylee commented. “You getting old, big brother?”

Walker laughed, adjusted his dusty hat, glanced down at her with a sparkle in his eyes. “If I am,” he replied, “then you are, too.”

She gave him a mock punch in the arm, narrowed her gaze to give him the once-over. “I’ll bet Casey made you promise not to play cowboy,” she surmised mischievously. “Why, Walker Parrish, some folks might even say you’re henpecked.”

“Not to my face, they won’t,” Walker replied, unruffled. Of all the men Brylee had ever known, her older brother was one of the most self-possessed
and
the most confident, and not without reason. He seemed to be good at everything he did. “And it just so happens, little sister,” he continued mildly, “that my lovely wife didn’t ‘make me’ promise any such thing. She merely
suggested
that, since I’m a husband and a father three times over now, I might want to be a bit more careful not to break every bone in my body.”

This time, it was Brylee who laughed. “Oh,
well,
” she teased. “As long as it was only a
suggestion...
”

Walker ruffled her hair, the way he used to do when they were kids. “There’s some color in your face,” he commented. “Your eyes are sparkling, and you haven’t stopped smiling since you got here. What’s going on?”

Brylee thought of her rash agreement to go horseback riding with Zane the next afternoon, a little surprised to discover that she still didn’t regret the decision. “Can’t a woman smile around here without being asked what it’s all about?” she threw out.

Walker grinned, adjusted his disreputable hat again. “Sure,” he answered. “But you’ve got to admit, you’ve been pretty long in the face for the last while.”

“The last while”? A classic understatement. What he’d really meant was,
Since Hutch Carmody left you at the altar,
but Brylee didn’t get her back up. It was true enough that she’d taken her sweet time getting over the wedding-that-wasn’t, and Walker, like everyone else in her life, had been concerned about her.

She stood on tiptoe to plant a light kiss on her brother’s beard-stubbly cheek. “That was then,” she said mysteriously, “and this is now.”

With that, she and Snidely made their way around the barn, toward the plot of land where the tamer horses were pastured during the day.

Reaching the fence, Brylee gave a low whistle, and her black-and-white pinto gelding, Toby, lifted his head at the sound, approached her at an eager trot.

She smiled and nuzzled his nose with her own, reaching up to rub his ears. “Hey, boy,” she said, choked up because of the way he’d hurried toward her, with a gleeful whinny. It had been too long since she’d ridden Toby, or even paid much attention to him. “You up for a little spin around the pasture?”

Toby nickered and tossed his head, as if to say yes, making Brylee laugh and, though she quickly blinked back the tears, cry a little, too.

She climbed over the fence, while Snidely shinnied underneath, agile as a trained soldier low-crawling to avoid a barrage of bullets zipping by within inches of his hide.

Toby allowed her to check all four of his hooves; he was a patient horse, but young, and, as Walker liked to say, full of piss and vinegar.

When she found no stones or little sticks that might make him go lame or simply cause him discomfort, she looped her arms around Toby’s thick neck and swung up onto his bare back, settled there and entwined the fingers of one hand in his gleaming black-and-white mane.

He sidestepped, tossed his head again, and when Brylee touched his sleek sides with the heels of her shoes, he took a few hesitant steps forward, looked back at her as if to confirm that she truly wanted to ride and then leaped straight into a gallop, which quickly became a run.

Brylee, leaning over his neck, holding on with her knees more than her hands, gave a shout of pure joy.

The other horses in the pasture watched with casual, grass-munching interest as Toby shot past like a spotted cannonball, soaring over the low barbed-wire fence on the far end of the five-acre pasture and landing with the grace of a private jet on automatic pilot. Without so much as a stumble, he raced onto the open range, while Snidely ran alongside, full-out, a furry blur.

Gradually, Brylee slowed Toby down, with just the lightest tug at his mane and a practiced motion of her knees, turning him around to head back toward the pasture at a leisurely walk. Breathless with the exhilaration of riding again, she pressed her face down into the sweaty hide of his neck and whispered, “I’m back, old buddy. I am finally
back.
”

It was true, Brylee realized, with a wild rush of happy relief. She hadn’t just come back to her horse, either—she’d returned to her life, to the person she’d been before she’d fallen for Hutch. She’d come home to
herself.

* * *

“A
RE
YOU
GOING
to ride him?” Nash asked, indicating Blackjack. Though still cautious, the boy had ventured a little closer, no doubt reeled in by his fascination with the creature, like a fish on the line.

The delivery man had set Blackjack’s saddle, bridle and blanket atop a nearby fence rail after the horse was out of the trailer, and as a reply to his brother’s question, Zane inclined his head toward the gear. “Yep,” he said. “A little, anyhow, just to get him used to having a rider on his back again.”

Nash’s eyes widened slightly, and he drew in an audible breath. “How long since Blackjack’s been ridden?” he asked, looking wary and interested, both at the same time.

Zane patted the horse’s neck, in part as a tacit apology for their lengthy separation. “The outfit where I boarded him was top-notch, and daily exercise was part of the deal, along with veterinary care and the rest. Most likely, somebody saddled him up and took him out the same day he left the stables.”

“Still,” Nash said, looking doubtful, “he’s been shut up in that trailer for what, two days? Three, maybe?”

Zane ran a light hand over Blackjack’s side, his back, his flank, letting him get used to being touched. “Three, probably,” he answered distractedly. “That’s why we’re going to take it real easy today. He needs time to get used to being free of that trailer, but he also needs to work the kinks out a little.” He nodded toward the gear propped on the fence rail. “Get me that bridle, will you?”

“Sure,” Nash replied eagerly, already on his way. “But don’t you want the saddle and blanket, too?”

Zane shook his head. “That can wait until tomorrow,” he said. Blackjack was anything but fragile, but he’d been cooped up in small quarters all the way from California, and just as the driver had said, he might be pretty jumpy for a while. No sense in asking more of the animal than necessary, after a long trip.

Nash brought the bridle over, handed it to Zane. “Will you teach me to ride?” he asked, with such hope in his voice that Zane hated to have to douse him with cold water.

“Not on this horse,” he said, easing the bit into Blackjack’s mouth and slipping the bridle over his head. After soothing the animal for another few moments, he swung up onto his back, waited to see how he’d react.

Nash had prudently moved back out of kicking range, but he was scowling and patches of red glowed in his cheeks. “I don’t see any
other
horses around here,” he said. “So that means I’m just shit out of luck, right?”

A quiver went through Blackjack’s frame, from his shoulders to his flanks, but he didn’t buck or go into a tight spin, one of his favorite ways to unseat a rider.

“Watch your language,” Zane said mildly. “You’re only twelve, remember?”

“How am I supposed to learn to ride a horse if you won’t even let me try?” Nash demanded, ramming his hands into the pockets of his new jeans.

Zane sighed, eased Blackjack into a slow walk. “I didn’t say you couldn’t learn to ride,” he pointed out reasonably. “I said you couldn’t learn on Blackjack.”

Nash was still testy. “Why not?”

Because I said so.
Zane almost said it, but then he remembered how much it had rubbed him raw as a kid, hearing those words from any adult, and he bit them back. “He’s high-strung,” he said instead. “He’s also big, in case you missed that, and it takes an experienced rider to handle him.” He paused, relaxing into Blackjack and, by that strange and inexplicable synergy that had always existed between them, becoming a part of the animal.

“Which leaves me up sh—up the creek,” Nash protested.

“We’ll get you a horse,” Zane assured the boy. “But that means you’ll have to look after the critter. There’s a lot of work—and a lot of responsibility—involved.”

Nash stared up at him, practically gaping. “You’d buy me a horse?” he asked, in a tone of stunned disbelief. “One that would be just mine?”

“Yes,” Zane answered, as Blackjack moved along the rutted driveway.

Nash hurried alongside, as did Slim. “For
real?
” he quizzed, breathless. “I could name him myself, and have my own saddle and everything?”

“Your own saddle and everything,” Zane confirmed, hiding a grin. “Don’t be expecting Seabiscuit or Man o’ War, though. We’re talking about a kid-horse here, even-tempered and slow-moving.”

Nash was frowning again. “Not a pony,” he specified.

Zane chuckled. “Not a pony,” he agreed, figuring the kid was probably picturing a Shetland. Even at twelve, Nash was too tall for one of those—his feet would drag the ground when he rode, and the experience wouldn’t be all that good for the horse, either.

“I’ll feed him and groom him and all the rest,” Nash volunteered eagerly, mollified now that he knew he wouldn’t be learning to ride on a four-legged refugee from some petting zoo or crummy kiddie carnival.

“You sure will,” Zane answered, letting Blackjack have his head when the horse began to pull a little, making the reins go taut. “Keep that in mind when you figure you’d rather watch TV or play video games than muck out stalls and fill feeders.”

Impatient now that he was no longer confined to a trailer or a stall, Blackjack broke into a trot, then a gallop, and they soon left the boy far behind, though the dog managed to keep up for a while.

There was a lot that was unsettled in Zane’s mind and in his life—he had career and business decisions to make, a ranch house and barn to rebuild, a twelve-year-old brother to look after—but on the back of that horse, he felt the peculiar and perfect happiness of being an ordinary cowboy again. Just a man on a horse, nothing more and nothing less.

It was pure bliss.

Ten minutes later, back at the stone barn, Zane dismounted and led Blackjack into the largest stall. He’d picked up a few bales of grass hay and some feed on the shopping junket to town the day before, and had cleaned out the water trough and filled it from the garden hose.

He showed Nash, who was leaning against the stall gate and watching like a hawk, how to check the horse’s hooves for rocks or other common problems, how much hay to put in the feeder, how to brush the animal down after a ride.

“How come you know so much about horses?” Nash asked presently. “You’re an
actor.
Those guys just
pretend
they’re good at stuff like that.”

Zane chuckled as he gave Blackjack a farewell pat, slipped the bridle off over the horse’s head and passed through the gate into the wide breezeway, forcing Nash to step back out of the way. “Before I was an actor,” he said, “I followed the rodeo circuit.”

Nash’s blue eyes were practically popping out of his head. “No shit?”

Zane gave him a level look. He swore himself, on occasion, but then, he wasn’t twelve years old.

The kid corrected himself. “For real, I mean?”

“For real,” Zane said.

“Did you ride bulls?” Nash was double-stepping alongside as Zane strode out of the barn and into the sunlight.

“No,” Zane answered. “Broncs.”

“Were you any good?”

“I collected my share of prize money,” Zane said, smiling again, thinking that maybe—just maybe—this whole crazy idea
might
work, after all, him and the boy living under the same roof on a permanent basis, forging some semblance of a family.

It was a nice thought, and Zane almost immediately shied away from it. This was the real world, he reminded himself, not some movie guaranteed to have a happy ending. Nash had problems.
He
had problems. Solving them wouldn’t just take effort, it would require luck, too. And lots of it.

“And buckles?” Nash pressed. “Did you win any of those?” He didn’t wait for Zane to answer, but rushed right on, carried away by his enthusiasm. “I watch rodeo on ESPN sometimes,” he blurted, “and some of those buckles are so fancy you can’t believe it.”

Zane grinned, called to the dog as they drew nearer the house. “I might have a buckle or two,” he said. In truth, he’d lost count of how many he’d won over the years, before he got suckered into the Hollywood scene. The only good thing that had come out of
that
was money. More money than he knew what to do with, actually.