Linda Lael - Big Sky Summer

Dawson’s face, cloudy before, busted loose with a dazzling smile. “Yes!” he said, punching the air with one triumphant fist.

Walker, who had been holding his hat until then, carefully placed it on his head, gave the brim a slight pull for Patsy’s benefit, a tacit signal that he was done here and he’d be going on his way now. Treat simmered behind her, but for once he had the good sense not to offer an opinion.

“I’ll be in touch in the next few days,” Walker said, grinning down at Dawson.

“Thanks,” Dawson replied, almost breathless. “I’ll be waiting to hear from you.”

Walker said goodbye and meandered through the milling congregation, making his way back to his truck. He had just short of ninety minutes to kill before turning up at Casey’s place for the pancake feed, but he wasn’t about to pass them hanging around a bake sale.

* * *

CASEY SMILED AND SERVED strawberry shortcake to a long line of eager customers, Clare obligingly squirting canned whipped cream on each plateful before handing it over, Shane making change from a cigar box balanced on the seat of a folding chair.

By the time the sale was over—the men of the congregation had been volunteered by their wives to clean up afterward and stow away the folding tables and other gear, since the women had done most of the baking and selling—Casey was more than ready to go home, have a few unhurried cups of coffee and enjoy another of Doris’s incomparable Sunday brunches.

And never mind that the pit of her stomach felt jittery, hungry as she was, because Walker would be joining them.

It was crazy—she’d had two children by the man, after all, and though they hadn’t been intimate in a long time, there was no part of her body Walker Parrish didn’t know his way around—but she was as jumpy as a wallflower suddenly elected prom queen.

Walker had that effect on her, even now.

“So what’s this about needing somebody to keep Mitch from talking me into booking another concert tour?” she asked when she and the kids were buckled into their respective seats in her unassuming blue SUV and rolling in the direction of Rodeo Road. “In the first place, I gave you two my word I’d stay off the road until further notice, and, in the second place, I’ve never, in my whole entire life, had any trouble standing up to Mitch Wilcox or anybody else.”

Clare, whose turn it was to ride shotgun, flicked a glance at the rearview mirror, the next best thing to making eye contact with her brother, seated in back. The exchange wasn’t exactly guilty, Casey noted with some amusement, but there was clearly some collusion going on there. Considering last night’s row in the upstairs corridor, by no means an unusual occurrence, unfortunately, it was almost a relief that brother and sister seemed to be on the same page, however briefly.

Neither of them spoke, though.

Casey sighed, keeping her eyes on the road ahead. By now, she knew every street in Parable and most of the ones in Three Trees, too, to the point that she could have driven them in her sleep, but you never knew when somebody might run a stop sign, or a dog might dash out into the road.

Careerwise, Casey was a card-carrying risk taker, but when it came to her children, she didn’t take chances.

Unless you counted lying to them for their whole lives, she thought with a slight wince.

“Fess up,” she said. “What’s going on here?”

“Walker looked like he might say no,” Clare finally answered. “To breakfast, I mean.”

“Ah,” Casey said knowingly. The knowing routine was sometimes an act; her kids were smart, and they confounded her more often than she’d have liked to admit. This time, though, she would have had to be in a coma not to pick up on their motivation.

“You could have invited him yourself,” Shane put in, addressing his mother and sounding slightly put out, as though he thought she’d been remiss. “It wouldn’t kill you to be nice to Walker, you know.”

Casey waited, sure there was more and unwilling to share her suspicion that being too nice to Walker Parrish might well kill her, because he had the power to break her heart.

“Did you see Walker talking to Dawson McCullough?” Shane asked, still fretful. “I heard him say Dawson could come out to the ranch and ride horses with him.”

A pang struck Casey’s heart. Did Shane envy the attention Walker had paid the other boy?

“I saw,” Clare told her brother, none too sympathetically. “Get over it, dweeb. Dawson’s in a wheelchair, in case you missed that, and he used to work for Walker sometimes, before he got hurt. They’re friends.”

Casey let the “dweeb” remark pass, and Shane maintained a glum and resentful silence the rest of the way home.

When they pulled into the driveway, Mitch Wilcox’s rental car, a white compact, was parked beside the guest cottage, and he was already lugging suitcases over the threshold.

How long, Casey wondered, was her manager planning to stick around? He’d called to say he’d like to “drop by,” and once he’d emailed his arrival time—Mitch had flown in from Nashville—Casey had replied that she and the kids would be out when he got to Parable, but she’d leave the key to the cottage under the doormat. He was to go ahead and make himself at home.

Evidently, he’d taken her at her word. From the looks of his luggage, he wasn’t just making himself at home; he was moving in.

Yikes.

Twenty years older than Casey and several times divorced, Mitch was still an attractive man, with his tall, graceful frame and full head of silver-gray hair. It would be easy enough to figure him for a catch, Casey supposed, provided you didn’t know him the way she did.

He set his bags down and waved as Casey parked the SUV. The kids got out of the rig immediately. Shane sprinted toward the house so he could let the dogs out to run in the yard for a while. Clare approached Mitch with one hand gracefully extended, like a princess welcoming a visiting dignitary.

Casey walked slowly behind her daughter, nervous now that Mitch had actually arrived. Most of the time, when he made plans to visit, he had an agenda—an offer to appear in a TV movie, perhaps, or some other “huge” opportunity she’d be a fool to turn down, but he was also prone to canceling his travel plans at the last minute. She’d hoped this would be one of those times, and for all the bravado she’d shown in the car, for the kids’ benefit, she was uneasy.

Mitch wasn’t one of the most successful managers in the music business because he wasn’t persuasive. The man could sell sand in Morocco or mosquitos in Minnesota. And she was feeling oddly vulnerable just now.

“Try to contain your enthusiasm,” he teased, planting a light kiss on Casey’s cheek. “I’m the bearer of good news.”

Casey smiled and folded her arms, then wished she hadn’t. Folded arms were classic body language for Don’t convince me, I’m feeling too convincible, and Mitch was more than shrewd enough to read her. In fact, he was a master at it.

“Get settled in,” she said cordially. “Doris is back from church by now, and she’s about to start stacking serious numbers of pancakes.”

Mitch laughed. “Wonderful,” he said. “I’m starved. They served three peanuts, two broken pretzels and a cup of bad coffee on the plane—and that was in first class.”

“Poor you,” Clare said, linking her arm with Mitch’s. During the years on the road, he’d been like a grandfather to Casey’s kids, and they were both fond of him, though not in the way they were of Walker.

Another tide of guilt washed through Casey’s beleaguered soul with that thought. What would her children say, what would they think of her, if they ever found out that Walker, the man they adored, was their father? On one level, they’d both be thrilled, she surmised, believing, as they did now, that they didn’t have a dad at all. And then they’d be furious—with her. She’d been the secret keeper, the villain of the piece, the one who’d raised them on lies, however well-intentioned. The one who’d robbed them of what they probably wanted most—a father.