Big Sky Mountain

chapter SIX



MADISON, AFTER GREETING a wildly joyful Daisy the moment they entered the new house, where there were still boxes all around, accumulated over several days of moving, took Hutch by one hand and practically dragged him from one room to another, showing the place off. Of course the dog followed them, occasionally putting in her two-bits with a happy little bark.

Kendra, emotionally winded from a long and eventful day, remained in the kitchen doing busywork, washing her hands at the sink, debating whether or not she ought to brew some coffee. The stuff could keep her up half the night, but as she remembered only too well, Hutch could drink the strongest java at midnight and still enjoy the sleep of the innocent and the just.

Talk about ironic.

Still Hutch had brought her and Madison safely home from the hospital visit to see the newest member of the Barlow clan—she was going to be Trace’s godmother and the honor humbled her—and she owed the man the courtesy of a cup of coffee if he wanted one.

He’d pretty well gone to the wall that day, Hutch had, and he’d been a big part of some very memorable experiences for both her and Madison. At his suggestion, she’d left the keys to her Volvo at the hospital reception desk, and a couple of his ranch hands were already en route from Whisper Creek to pick up the vehicle and bring it to her.

Yes, the least she could do was offer the man coffee.

She didn’t dare think about the most she could have done.

In the distance she heard Madison’s ringing laugh, the dog’s excitement at having the family intact and a visitor thrown in as a bonus, and Hutch’s now-and-again comment, all along the lines of, “Well, isn’t that something.”

By the time the three wayfarers got back to the kitchen, Kendra had brewed a coffee for Hutch and an herbal tea for herself, using the one-cup wonder machine brought over from the big house. The device looked massive in this much smaller room, and way too fancy, but it served its purpose and for now that was enough.

“This is quite a change from the mansion,” Hutch observed quietly as Madison hurried for the back door, calling over one shoulder that Daisy needed to go outside, and quick!

Kendra merely smiled and held out the cup of black coffee.

“Don’t mind if I do,” Hutch said, taking the mug. It looked fragile as a china teacup in his strong rancher’s hands. “Thanks.”

She inclined her head toward the table and he drew back a chair, but waited until she sat down with her tea before he took a seat himself.

His manners were yet another of Hutch’s contradictions: he would leave a woman practically at the altar, wearing her heirloom wedding dress, break her heart right there in the presence of all her friends and family, but he opened doors for anyone of the female persuasion, whatever her age, and his male elders, too.

Through the open screen door, with its creaky hinges, Madison could be heard encouraging Daisy to hurry up and be a good girl so they could go back inside and be with the cowboy man.

Hutch grinned across the expanse of the tabletop and Kendra grinned back.

“This has been quite a day,” she said, wondering if Hutch had the same odd mixture of feelings as she had where Slade and Joslyn’s new baby was concerned. He was clearly happy for the Barlows, but she knew he wanted kids, too—it had been a favorite topic between them, back in the day, how many children they’d have, the ideal ratio of boys to girls, and even what their names would be.

A weary sort of sorrow overtook Kendra, just for that moment, and nearly brought tears to her eyes.

She shook it off. No sense getting all moody and nostalgic.

“That it has,” Hutch agreed in his own good time, which was the way he did everything. The habit could be exasperating, Kendra reflected, except in bed.

Whoa, she thought. Don’t go down that road.

A warm flush pulsed in her cheeks, though, and he noticed, of course. He always noticed what she’d rather have hidden, and overlooked things that should have caught his attention.

She looked away for a moment, recovering from the sexual flashback.

Madison and the dog came back inside, which helped Kendra calm down, and Madison sort of hovered around Hutch like a moth around a lightbulb.

Kendra finally sent Madison into the living room to watch the cartoon channel for the allowed half-hour before bath and bed, not because she wanted to get rid of her, but because the child’s obvious adoration for Hutch was so unnerving.

Only cartoons could have distracted Madison from this admittedly fascinating man and even then she was reluctant to leave the room.

As soon as they were alone, Kendra opened her mouth and stuck her foot in it. “Don’t let her get too attached to you, Hutch,” she heard herself almost plead, in a sort of fractured whisper. “Madison’s already lost so much.”

Hutch looked stunned; he even paled a little, under his year-round tan, but in a nanosecond, he’d gone from stunned to quietly furious.

“What the hell is that supposed to mean?” he demanded, and though he kept his voice low, it rumbled like thunder gathering beyond the nearby hills.

Kendra let out a long breath, closed her eyes briefly, and rubbed her temples with the fingertips of both hands. “I wasn’t saying—”

He leaned slightly forward in his chair, his bluish-green eyes fierce on her face. “What were you saying, then?” he pressed. She knew that look—he wasn’t going to let this one go, would sit there all night if he had to, until he got an answer he could accept as the unvarnished truth.

“Madison is only four years old,” she said weakly. Carefully. “She doesn’t understand that your charm, like sunshine and rain, pretty much falls on everybody.” She tried for more clarity and spoke with more strength now. “I don’t want her getting too fond of you, Hutch. You’re so nice to her and she might read things into that that aren’t there.”

Hutch shoved a hand through his hair in a gesture of pure annoyance. His jawline went a bloodless white, he was clenching his back molars together so tightly. “You think I play games with people—with kids?” he finally asked, as though the concept had come out of left field and mowed him down. “You think I get some kind of kick out of making them believe I care so I can kick their feelings around later, just for the fun of it?”

Kendra hiked up her chin and met his gaze straight on. “Maybe not with children,” she allowed evenly, “but do you ‘play games’ with women? That’s a definite yes, Hutch. And I’m sure Brylee Parrish isn’t the only person who’d be willing to back me up on the theory.”

“You believe all that—” he paused, looked back over one shoulder, probably to make sure Madison hadn’t wandered back into earshot and, seeing that she hadn’t, finished with “—crap on the internet?”

Kendra’s chuckle was light, but edged with a degree of bitterness that surprised even her. “Pictures don’t lie,” she said. “Besides, this goes back a lot further than your infamy on the web. Maybe you’ve forgotten that one of those broken hearts was mine?”

He looked as though he couldn’t believe what he was hearing. “And maybe you’ve forgotten that we had something good going for us before you decided to kick off the traces and become Lady Chamberlain.”

“It wasn’t like that at all!” Kendra whispered.

“Go ahead and rewrite history to suit yourself,” Hutch rasped, pushing back his chair and standing up, his half-finished coffee forgotten. He made the move so quietly that his chair didn’t so much as scrape the floor, but rage was hardwired into every lean, powerful line of him. He set his hands on his hips and looked down at her for a long moment, then added, “The fact is, sweetheart, you walked out on me.”

A knock sounded at the screen door just then, and a man’s face appeared on the other side of the mesh. “Brought the car,” he said, jangling the keys.

Hutch crossed the room, yanked the screen door open, and stormed right past the guy without even glancing at him.

The ranch hand looked at him curiously and extended the Volvo keys to Kendra, who had followed Hutch as far as the threshold, even though she had no intention of pursuing him. All the things she wanted to say to Hutch—okay, scream at him—were lodged painfully in the back of her throat, where she’d barely managed to stop them.

“Thank you,” Kendra said mildly, taking the keys from the visitor’s hand.

“You’re mighty welcome,” the weathered cowboy replied with a practiced tug at his hat brim. A mischievous twinkle lit his eyes. “Seems like this wouldn’t be a good time to hit the boss up for a raise.”

Kendra smiled at the joke. “You’re probably right,” she replied.

Hutch’s truck started up with a roar, and both Kendra and the ranch hand winced a little when the tires screeched as he pulled away from the curb.

The cowboy shook his head, smiled ruefully and turned toward the other Whisper Creek truck waiting in the short driveway alongside the house, a second man at the wheel.

Kendra waved, closed the screen door, then its inside counterpart, hung the keys on a nearby hook and turned to find herself facing her daughter.

Madison and Daisy stood side by side, in the middle of the kitchen, their heads tilted at exactly the same angle, their gazes questioning and worried.

Kendra had to smile at the picture they made, even though she was still so irritated with Hutch that she felt like tearing out hanks of her own hair.

“The cowboy man didn’t say goodbye,” Madison said, and her lower lip wobbled slightly.

It was one of those rare times when only a lie would do, Kendra decided ruefully. “Actually, Mr. Carmody was in a big hurry, and he asked me to tell you goodbye and say he was sorry he had to rush off.”

Madison, being an intelligent child, looked skeptical and unappeased, but she accepted the fib—to a degree. “I heard mad voices,” she challenged Kendra after a few beats.

They’d been so careful not to yell, she and Hutch, though she’d wanted to and it was probably safe to assume Hutch had, as well. Madison had picked up on the energy of the exchange, rather than the actual words.

“It’s time for your bath and a story,” Kendra said moderately, striving for normalcy. How could Hutch claim, for one moment, that she’d been the one to break them up? He’d virtually handed her over to Jeffrey and walked away whistling.

“You should be nice to people,” Madison lectured. “That’s what you always tell me.”

Kendra placed splayed fingers gently between her daughter’s shoulders and started her in the direction of the main bathroom. “Let’s have this discussion another time, please,” she said.

Daisy’s toenails clicked on the hardwood floor behind them as she and Madison headed down the hall, Madison resisting ever so slightly as they went.

“But you forgot supper,” the child reasoned.

Sure enough, Kendra realized, the evening meal had completely slipped her mind. “You’re right,” she replied, at once chagrined and glad to find common ground, even if it was a little shaky. “Tell you what—we’ll feed Daisy and then, after you’ve had your bath, I’ll whip up a couple of grilled cheese sandwiches for us. How would that be?”

Madison looked up at her and something in her small, obstinate face relented. “I like grilled cheese sandwiches,” she admitted.

Kendra smiled. “Me, too,” she said.

With Madison stripping and Daisy supervising the whole enterprise, Kendra managed to prepare the little girl’s bath—a few inches of warm water with bubbles.

Madison climbed in and Daisy rested her muzzle on the edge of the bathtub, watching her small mistress, brown eyes shining with love.

“Can Daisy get into the tub, too?” Madison asked, reaching for her pink sponge and the duck-shaped bar of soap she favored.

“Not this time, sweetie,” Kendra said, since that seemed better than a flat no.

Madison huffed out a sigh and began her ablutions, perfectly capable of bathing herself.

A few minutes later, she announced, “I’m clean now, Mommy!”

Smiling, despite the quiet but persistent ache in the region of her heart Hutch still claimed, Kendra gave her a kiss and reached for a towel.

* * *

HUTCH HAD ALWAYS been good at letting stuff roll off his back—he’d had to be—but that tangle with Kendra back at her place made him want to fight.

With anybody, about anything.

When the lights of Boone’s cop car flashed behind him, just before the turn-in at Whisper Creek, it almost pleased him to pull over.

“What?” he snapped, rolling down the window on the passenger side of the truck so Boone could peer in at him.

“You headed for a fire?” Boone countered. “I clocked you at fifty in a thirty-five back there.”

Hutch swore under his breath, tightened his grip on the steering wheel. “Sorry,” he lied, glaring through the windshield at the dirt road ahead. It did some twisting and turning, that old road, before it joined the highway and rolled right on into Idaho and Washington.

At the moment, he sure felt like following it till it ended at the Pacific Ocean.

“Look at me, Hutch,” the sheriff said, and he sounded dead serious.

Hutch turned his head, met Boone’s gaze. “Write the ticket and be done with it,” he growled.

“Well, who spit in your oatmeal this morning?” Boone asked, folding his arms against the base of the window and studying Hutch intently.

“I’ve got a lot on my mind right now,” Hutch snapped. “All right?”

Boone sighed, shoved a hand through his dark hair. “I know that,” he said, “but I can’t let you go speeding around my county, now can I? Pretty soon, folks will be saying I turn a blind eye when my friends break the law and I can’t have that, Hutch. You know I can’t.”

“So write the ticket,” Hutch reiterated. He just wanted to be gone, to be moving, to be riding hard across darkening ground on a horse or climbing Big Sky Mountain on foot—anything but sitting still.

“Have it your way,” Boone said. He took his ticket book from his belt, scrawled on a piece of paper, ripped it free, and held it out to Hutch, who snatched it from his hand and barely managed to keep from chucking it out his own window out of sheer cussedness.

“Thanks,” Hutch told him, glaring.

Boone laughed. “I’d say ‘you’re welcome,’ but that would add up to one too many smart-asses per square yard.” He wouldn’t unpin Hutch from that penetrating gaze of his. “I’m off duty and I was headed for home until you went shooting by me like a bat out of hell,” he said companionably. “Why don’t you follow me back over to my place? We’ll have a couple of beers and feel sorry for ourselves for a while.”

Hutch had to chuckle at that, though it was against his will and he resented it. “All right,” he agreed at last, and grudgingly. “Long as you promise not to run me in for drunk driving after plying me with liquor.”

“You have my word,” Boone said with a grin. “See you over there.”

With that, he backed away from the window and strolled back to his cruiser where the lights were still swirling, blue and white, causing the few passersby to slow down to gawk.

Boone’s land, situated on the far side of Parable from where they started, was prime, fronting the river and sloping gently up toward the foothills, but it had the look of a place bogged down in hard times. The double-wide trailer was ugly as sin, and there were a couple of junked-out cars parked in the tall grass that surrounded it.

The double-wide had rust around its skirting, the makeshift porch dipped in the middle, and there was an honest-to-God toilet out front, with a bunch of dead flowers poking out of the bowl. Boone and his wife, Corrie—she’d never have stood for a john in the yard—had planned to live in the trailer only until they’d built their modest dream house, but when Corrie died of breast cancer a few years back, everything else in Boone’s life seemed to stall.

If he’d had a dog, folks said, he’d have given it away. He had sent his two young sons, Griffin and Fletcher, off to live with his sister and her family in Missoula, where he probably figured they were better off.

Running for sheriff, after Slade announced that he wouldn’t be seeking reelection, had been the first real sign of life in Boone since Corrie was laid to rest and for a while optimistic locals had hoped he’d get his act together, bring his kids home to Parable where they belonged, and just generally get on with things.

Parking behind the cruiser, Hutch felt an ache of sorrow on his friend’s behalf—Boone had loved Corrie with all he had, from first grade on through college and in some ways, it was as if he’d just given up and crawled right into that grave with her.

“I swear this place looks worse every time I see it,” Hutch remarked after getting out of the truck. There should have been two little boys running to greet their dad after a day at work, he thought, and a dog barking in celebration of his return, if not a woman smiling on the porch of the new house.

Instead it was dead quiet, like a graveyard with rusted headstones.

“You sound like the chicken rancher,” Boone responded dryly, cocking a thumb in the direction of the neighboring place where Tara Kendall had set up housekeeping the year before. “She says this place is an eyesore.”

Hutch had to grin. “She has a point,” he said. Then, aware that he was pushing it, he added, “How are the boys?”

Boone, starting toward the sagging porch, tossed him a look. “They’re just fine with their aunt and uncle and their brood,” he said. “So don’t start in on me, Hutch.”

Hutch pretended to brace himself for a blow from his oldest and best friend. “You won’t hear any relationship advice from me, old buddy,” he said. “These days, I’m on America’s Ten Most Unwanted list, which hardly makes me an authority.”

“Damn straight,” Boone grumbled. “And that’s where you belong, too. On a master shit-list, I mean. I knew all that womanizing was bound to catch up with you someday.”

Hutch laughed and followed his friend into the trailer. Boone always said what he thought; nobody was required to like it.

The inside of the double-wide was clean enough, but it was dismal, too. Full of shadows and smelling of the bachelor life—musty clothes left in the washing machine too long, garbage in need of taking out, the remains of last night’s lonely pizza.

Boone opened the refrigerator and took out two cans of beer, handing one to Hutch and popping the top on another, taking a long drink before starting back outside again to sit in one of the rickety lawn chairs on that sorry excuse for a porch.

Hutch joined him.

“Old friend,” Hutch ventured, looking out over what passed for a yard, “you need a woman. And that’s just the start.”

Boone grinned ruefully. “So do you,” he said. “But you keep running them off.”

Hutch sipped his beer. It was icy cold and it hit a dry spot, way down deep, unknotting him a little. “Slade’s a dad now,” he remarked, letting the gibe pass. “Can you believe it?”

“Hell, yes, I can believe it,” Boone responded. They had a three-cornered alliance, Slade and Hutch and Boone. Slade and Hutch, being half brothers, hadn’t gotten along until after the old man died, but Boone was close friends with both of them and always had been. “One look at Joslyn and Slade was a goner. Mark my words, they’ll have a houseful of little Barlows before too long.”

Hutch chuckled, but his thoughts had taken a somber turn just the same. “I reckon they enjoy the process of making them, all right,” he said. A pause followed and another slow sip of cold beer. “What do you suppose it is about Slade, that’s missing in you and me?” he asked.

Boone didn’t pretend not to understand the question, but he took his time answering. “I hate to admit it,” he finally replied, “but I think it’s just plain-old backbone. Slade’s not afraid to throw his heart in the ring and risk getting it stomped on. You and me, now, we’re a couple of cowards.”

Hutch absorbed that for a while. It was a tough truth to acknowledge—he wasn’t afraid of anything besides climbing the water tower in town and giving up a chunk of his ranch to some vindictive ex-wife—but he couldn’t deny that Boone had a point. Therefore, he didn’t take offense. “What scares you the most, Boone?” he asked quietly.

Boone studied the horizon for a few moments, weighing his reply. “Loving a woman the way I loved Corrie,” he said at long last. “And then losing her in the same way I lost Corrie. I don’t honestly think I could take that, Hutch.”

They were quiet for a long time, beers in hand, gazes fixed on things that were long ago and faraway.

“Your boys are growing up, Boone,” Hutch ventured, after a decent interval. “They need you.”

“They need what they have,” Boone said, his voice taut now, his grip on his beer threatening to crush the can between his fingers, “which is a normal life with a normal family.” He paused, swore, shook his head. “Hell, Hutch, you know I can’t take care of them the way Molly does.”

Hutch bit back the obvious response—that if Boone would just get his act together, he could make a home for himself and his boys, like millions of other single parents did. But who was he to talk about having it together, after all?

He didn’t have kids and a wife waiting at home, either.

Didn’t even have a dog, for God’s sake, since Jasper had moved in with Slade.

For whatever reason, Boone didn’t point out the holes in Hutch’s own story, but that didn’t mean he’d let him off the conversational hook, either.

Fair was fair and Hutch had been the one to set this particular ball rolling.

“That’s quite a hubbub Brylee’s friends are stirring up on the web,” Boone said.

Hutch swallowed a sigh—and a couple more gulps of beer. “I am,” he replied gravely, “a casualty of the digital age.”

Boone laughed outright at that. “And innocent as the driven snow on top of it all,” he added, before swilling more beer. As Slade had done when he held the office, Boone rarely wore a uniform—he dressed like any other Montana rancher, in jeans, boots and shirts cut Western-style. Now he unfastened the top two buttons of his shirt and breathed in as if he’d been smothering until then. “You and me,” he said, “we’re destined to be crusty old bachelors, it seems.”

Kendra filled Hutch’s mind just then. He saw her in the kitchen at his place, starting supper. He saw Madison, too, and even the dog, Daisy, hurrying out of the house to greet him when he got out of his truck or climbed down off his horse.

“I guess there are worse fates,” Hutch allowed, but his throat felt tight all of a sudden and a little on the raw side.

“Like what?” Boone asked, gruffly companionable, still reflective. He was probably remembering happier days and hurting over the contrast between then and now.

“Being married to the wrong woman,” Hutch said with grim certainty.

Boone sighed, finished his beer and stared solemnly at the can. “I wouldn’t know about that,” he answered, and though his voice didn’t actually break, there was a crack in it. He’d been hitched to the right woman, was what he meant.

Finished with his own beer, Hutch stood up. He had work to do at home and besides, the emptiness would be there waiting, no matter how long he delayed his return, so he might as well get it over with. “We’re a pair to draw to,” he said, tossing the can into a wheelbarrow overflowing with them in roughly the place where Corrie used to set flowers in big pots.

Boone stood, too. Tried for a grin and fell short.

“You signed up for the bull-riding again this year?” he asked, referring to the upcoming rodeo. The Fourth fell on a Saturday this year, a convenient thing for most folks if not for Boone, who would surely have to bring a few former deputies out of retirement to make sure Parable County remained peaceable.

“Course I am,” Hutch retorted, feeling a mite touchy again. “Walker Parrish promised me the worst bull that ever drew breath.”

“I’ll just bet he did,” Boone said with another chuckle, throwing his own beer can in the general direction of the wheelbarrow and missing by a couple of feet. “When it’s your turn to ride, I reckon a few of the spectators will be rooting for the bull.”

Hutch started toward his truck. Twilight was gathering at the edges of the land, pulling inward like the top of a drawstring bag, and his horses would be wondering when he planned on showing up with their hay and grain rations. “No different than any other year,” he said. “Somebody’s always on the bull’s side.”

“You might want to think about that,” Boone answered, and damn if he didn’t sound serious as a heart attack. Him, with his sons farmed out to kinfolk, however loving, and the weeds taking over, threatening to swallow up the trailer itself.

Hutch stopped in his tracks. “Think about what?” he demanded.

“Life. People. How time gets away from a man and, before he knows it, he’s sitting in some nursing home without a tooth in his head or a hope in his heart that anybody’s going to trouble themselves to visit.”

“Damned if you aren’t dumber than the average post,” Hutch said, moving again, jerking open the door of his truck and climbing inside.

“At least I know my limitations,” Boone said affably.

“Thanks for the beer,” Hutch replied ungraciously, and slammed the truck’s door.

He drove away at a slower pace than he would have liked, though. Boone had already written him up for speeding once and he wasn’t above doing it again.

By the time he got back to Whisper Creek, he’d simmered down quite a bit, though what Boone had said about the pair of them being cowards still stuck in him like barbed wire.

A familiar station wagon, three years older than dirt, was parked next to the house when he pulled in.

Opal, he realized, had arrived early.

He muttered something under his breath, got out of the pickup and went directly into the barn, where he spent the better part of an hour attending to horses.

It was almost dark by the time he’d finished, and the lights were on in the kitchen, spilling a golden glow of welcome into the yard.

Stepping inside, he nodded a howdy to Opal, refusing to give her the satisfaction of demanding to know what the hell she was doing in his house. For one thing, he already knew—she was frying up chicken, country-style, and it smelled like three levels of heaven.

“Wash up before you eat,” Opal ordered, tightening her apron strings and eyeing him through the big lenses of her glasses.

“I generally do,” Hutch said mildly, running water at the sink and picking up the bar of harsh orange soap he kept handy.

“Look at those boots,” Opal scolded with that strange, gruff tenderness she reserved for people in need of her guidance and correction. “Bet the soles are caked with manure.”

Hutch sighed. He’d scraped them clean outside, on the porch, as he’d been taught to do around the time he started wearing boots.

“With you over here,” he quipped, “who’s going to nag Slade Barlow?”

“Shea’s mama got in early,” Opal replied, spearing pieces of chicken onto a platter with a meat fork. “So I figured I might as well get started setting things to rights around here.”

Hutch dried his hands on a towel and grinned at her. “You’re off to a good start with supper,” he conceded.

She chuckled. “I made mashed potatoes and gravy, too, and boiled up some green beans with bacon and onion to boot. Sit yourself down, Hutch Carmody, and eat the first balanced meal you’ve probably had in a month of Sundays.”

He waited until all the food was on the table and Opal was seated before taking a chair, wryly amused to recall that this was just the scenario he’d imagined for himself earlier.

Only the woman was different.