Linda Lael - Big Sky Mountain

Hutch shook his head. “No, thanks,” he said, offering no further explanation, which was like him.

Kendra could hear Madison in the bathroom, running water in the sink, splashing around, talking non-stop to Daisy about the new house and the new bed and whether or not they’d be allowed to watch a DVD that night before they had to go to bed.

“Why are you here?” she finally asked very quietly. And this time, it wasn’t a challenge. She was too tired for challenges, too wrung-out emotionally from the things Madison had said in the car.

Hutch sighed.

The distant splashing continued, as did the child-to-dog chatter.

“I’m not entirely sure,” he said at some length, taking Kendra aback a little.

She couldn’t remember one single instance in all the time she’d known Hutch Carmody when he hadn’t been completely sure of everything and everybody, especially himself.

“That’s helpful,” she said mildly.

Any moment now Madison would be back in the room, thereby curtailing anything but the most mundane conversation.

“Joslyn tells me there’s a cleanup day over at Pioneer Cemetery on Saturday,” he finally said, after casting about visibly for something to say. “There’ll be a town picnic afterward, like always, and, well, I was just wondering if you and Madison and Daisy might be interested in going along.” He paused, cleared his throat. “With me.”

Kendra was astounded, not so much by the invitation as by Hutch’s apparent nervousness. Was he afraid she’d say no?

Or was he afraid she’d say yes?

“Okay,” she agreed, as a compromise between the two extremes. She wanted, she realized, to see how he’d react.

Would he backpedal?

Instead he favored her with a dazzling grin, rose from his chair and passed her to set his coffee cup, still mostly full, in the sink. Their arms brushed and his nearness, the hard heat of his very masculine body, sent a jolt of sweet fire through her.

“Okay,” he said with affable finality.

Madison was back by then, holding up her clean hands for Kendra to see but obviously more interested in Hutch than in her mother.

“Very good,” Kendra said approvingly, and began moving briskly around the infinitesimal kitchen, setting out plates and silverware and glasses—which Madison promptly counted.

“Aren’t you hungry, cowboy man?” she asked Hutch when the tally was two places at the table, rather than three.

He looked down at Madison with such fondness that Kendra felt another pang of—something. “Can’t stay,” he said. “I have horses to look after and they like their supper served on time, just like people do.”

Madison’s eyes widened. “You have horses?” From her tone she might have asked, “You can walk on water?”

“Couldn’t very well call myself a cowboy if I didn’t have horses,” Hutch said reasonably.

Madison pondered that, then nodded in agreement. Her eyes widened. “Can I ride one of your horses sometime? Please?”

“That would definitely be your mother’s call,” Hutch told her. It was grown-up vernacular, but Madison understood and immediately turned an imploring face to Kendra.

“Maybe sometime,” Kendra said, because she couldn’t quite get to a flat-out no. Not with all that ingenuous hope beaming up at her.

Remarkably, that noncommittal answer seemed to satisfy Madison. She scrambled into her chair at the table and waited for supper to start.

“See you on Saturday,” Hutch said lightly.

And then he tousled Madison’s hair, nodded to Kendra and the dog, and left the house.

“Are we going to see the cowboy man on Saturday?” Madison asked eagerly. Once again, it struck Kendra that, for a four-year-old, the child didn’t miss much.

“Yes,” Kendra said, setting the salad bowl in the center of the table and then pouring milk for herself and Madison. Daisy curled up on her dog bed in the corner, rested her muzzle on her forepaws, and rolled her lively brown eyes from Madison to Kendra and back again. “The whole town gets together every year to spruce the place up for the rodeo and the carnival. Lots of people like to visit the Pioneer Cemetery while they’re here, and we like it to look presentable, so you and I and Hutch will be helping out there. After the work is done, there’s always a picnic, and games for the kids to play.”

“Games?” Madison was intrigued. “What kind of games?”

“Sack races.” Kendra smiled, remembering happy times. “Things like that. There are even prizes.”

“What’s a sack race?” Madison pursued, a little frown creasing the alabaster skin between her eyebrows.

Kendra explained about stepping into a feed sack, holding it at waist level and hopping toward the finish line. She didn’t mention the three-legged race, not wanting to describe that, too, but she smiled at the memory of herself and Joslyn tied together at the ankles and laughing hysterically when they lost their balance and tumbled into the venerable cemetery grass.

“And there are prizes?” Madison prompted.

Kendra nodded. “I won a doll once. She had a real camera hanging around her neck by a plastic strap. I still have her, somewhere.”

Madison’s eyes were huge. “Wow,” she said. “There were cameras when you were a little girl?”

Kendra laughed. “Yes,” she replied, “there were cameras. There were cars, too, and airplanes and even TVs.”

Madison pondered all this, the turning gears in her little brain practically visible behind her forehead. “Wow,” she repeated in awe.

After supper, Madison had her bath and put on her pajamas, and Kendra popped a favorite DVD of an animated movie into the player attached to the living room TV.

Madison snuggled on the floor with Daisy, one arm flung companionably across the small dog’s gleaming back, and the two of them were quickly absorbed in the on-screen story.

Kendra, relieved that she wouldn’t have to sit through the movie for what must have been the seventy-second time, set up her laptop on the freshly cleared kitchen table and booted it up.

She’d surf the web for a while, she decided, and see if there were any for-sale-by-owner listings posted for the Parable/Three Trees area. She was, after all, a working real estate broker, and sometimes a well-placed phone call to said owners would produce a new client. Most folks didn’t realize all that was entailed in selling a property themselves—title searches and tax liens were only some of the snags they might run into.

Alas, despite her good intentions, Kendra ended up running a search on Hutch Carmody instead, using the key word wedding.

The page that came up might as well have been called “We Hate Hutch.”

Kendra found herself in the odd position of wanting to defend him—and furiously—as she looked at the pictures.

Brylee, the discarded bride, heartbroken and furious in her grandmother’s wedding gown.

Hutch, standing straight and tall and obviously miserable midway down the aisle, guests gawking on either side as he held up both hands in a gesture that plainly said, “Hold everything.”

The condolence party over at the Boot Scoot Tavern, Brylee wearing a sad expression and a T-shirt that said Men Suck.

Beware, murmured a voice in the back of Kendra’s mind.

But even then she knew she wouldn’t heed her own warning.

After all, what could happen in broad daylight, in a cemetery, with Madison and half the county right there?

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