Linda Lael - Big Sky Summer

She must have turned a little pale just then, because Mitch narrowed his wise blue eyes at her and asked with concern, “Are you feeling all right?”

Clare was already tugging Mitch toward the house. Mostly, she was eager to get out of her church clothes and into shorts and a T-shirt.

The three dogs clamored across the sunporch floor and shot down the steps like fur-covered bullets, overjoyed by the heady return of freedom and the presence of their significant humans.

“I’m fine,” Casey said, moving to head off the dogs. If she hadn’t, they’d have knocked poor Mitch to the ground in their exuberance.

Mitch looked skeptical, but he didn’t refute her statement.

Doris, who attended a different church, was back in her regular clothes and all smiles and bustling busyness. She’d set the big table on the sunporch with fine china and the best crystal, and well-polished silverware gleamed at each place.

“Walker’s coming to breakfast, too,” Clare said happily. “I’ll get another place setting.”

With that, she zipped into the kitchen, and Casey indulged in a proud moment, because her children hadn’t been raised to expect Doris or anyone else to wait on them or do their bidding. They cleaned their own rooms and washed their own clothes, for instance, though Shane was admittedly less of a laundry expert than his sister.

Doris said hello to Mitch and gave Casey a wry look. “Walker, is it?” she asked. “Imagine.”

Casey wondered, not for the first time, how much her cook/housekeeper had guessed over the years, and looked away quickly, pretending to straighten the perfect bouquet of spring flowers in the center of the table.

“Do my eyes deceive me,” Mitch inquired, “or did I actually see a genuine merry-go-round in the yard?”

Doris had already hurried back to the kitchen, and Clare returned with a plate, silverware and a glass for Walker, which she carefully placed, Casey noted, opposite the place where she normally sat.

“We had a wedding reception here yesterday,” Clare chirped in explanation. Miraculously, in the short time she’d been out of sight, she’d swapped out her dress for denim shorts and a tank top—probably raiding the laundry room and changing there. “Mom likes to make sure the little kids have something fun to do whenever she entertains.”

Outside, wheels ground up the gravel driveway. The dogs barked out a happy chorus, and Shane called out his usual “Hey, Walker!”

Clare abandoned the table to rush out and join the welcoming party.

Mitch, meanwhile, arched one neatly trimmed gray eyebrow and remarked quietly, “I wondered if he wasn’t part of the reason you decided to settle in Podunk, Montana.”

Casey blushed. “He’s a friend,” she said, sounding more defensive than she might have wished. “A good friend.”

Something sad moved in Mitch’s eyes, there for a millisecond and then gone again. “Yes,” he said, almost sighing the word.

Casey watched through the screen enclosing the sunporch on three sides as her children and the dogs ushered Walker toward the house, surrounding him like an entourage. Both Clare and Shane chattered fit to wear off his ears, but he didn’t seem to mind. In fact, he looked as happy as they did.

Casey’s stomach clenched, a not entirely unpleasant sensation but an alarming one nonetheless.

If—when—the secret was out, Clare and Shane wouldn’t blame Walker for the deception. They’d place the onus on Casey herself, and rightfully so. Dread filled her, even as the old, ill-advised excitement sang in her veins and made her nerve endings crackle. Had she been lying so long that she didn’t recognize the truth when she encountered it?

She wanted Walker Parrish, and not just as a friend, either. She wanted him as a man, as a lover. Heat surged through her as she remembered their times together, alone and lost in each other while the world flowed on past, like some oblivious river.

Walker looked up just at that moment—luck wouldn’t have had it any other way, Casey figured sadly—and when their glances connected, the planet slipped off its axis for the length of a heartbeat.

She went to the screen door, opened it and smiled her most cordial smile, the one she wore for guests and special fans. “You made it,” she said, that being country for hello.

Walker’s smile, slow and cowboy-confident, made her heart skitter. “Good to see you again, Casey,” he said, as though it had been days or even years since they’d last met, instead of an hour and a half.

The kids and the dogs and Walker all spilled onto the sunporch, forming a crowd.

Walker looked at Mitch.

Mitch looked at Walker.

And, finally, the two men shook hands.

Was she imagining it, Casey asked herself, or had she just heard the sound of antlers locking in combat?

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