Linda Lael - Big Sky River

Lucy followed her into the house, wagging her plumy tail. Something was up, and like any self-respecting dog, she was game for whatever might happen next.

The inside of the farmhouse was cool, because there were fans blowing and most of the blinds were drawn against the brightest part of the day. The effect had been faintly gloomy, before James’s call.

How quickly things could change, though.

After tomorrow, Tara was thinking, she and Lucy wouldn’t be alone in the spacious old house—the twins would fill the place with noise and laughter and music, along with duffel bags and backpacks and vivid descriptions of the horrors wrought by the last few nannies in a long line of post-divorce babysitters, housekeepers and even a butler or two.

She smiled as she and Lucy bounded up the creaky staircase to the second floor, along the hallway to her bedroom. Most of the house was still under renovation, but this room was finished, having been a priority. White lace curtains graced the tall windows, and the huge “garden” tub was set into the gleaming plank floor, directly across from the fireplace.

The closet had been a small bedroom when Tara had purchased the farm, but she’d had it transformed into every woman’s dream storage area soon after moving in, to contain her big-city wardrobe and vast collection of shoes. It was silly, really, keeping all these supersophisticated clothes when the social scene in Parable called for little more than jeans and sweaters in winter and jeans and tank tops the rest of the time, but, like her books and vintage record albums, Tara hadn’t been able to give them up.

Parting with Elle and Erin had been sacrifice enough to last a lifetime—she’d forced herself to leave them, and New York, in the hope that they’d be able to move on, and for the sake of her own sanity. Now, they were coming to Parable, to stay with her, and she was filled with frightened joy.

She selected a red print sundress and white sandals from the closet and passed up the tub for the room just beyond, where the shower stall and the other fixtures were housed.

Lucy padded after her in a casual, just-us-girls way, and sat down on a fluffy rug to wait out this most curious of human endeavors, a shower, her yellow-gold head tilted to one side in an attitude of patient amazement.

Minutes later, Tara was out of the shower, toweling herself dry and putting on her clothes. She gave her long brown hair a quick brushing, caught it up at the back of her head with a plastic squeeze clip and jammed her feet into the sandals. Her makeup consisted of a swipe of lip gloss and a light coat of mascara.

Lucy trailed after her as she crossed the wider expanse of her bedroom and paused at one particular window, for reasons she couldn’t have explained, to look over at Boone Taylor’s place just across the field and a narrow finger of Big Sky River.

She sighed, shook her head. The view would have been perfect if it wasn’t for that ugly old trailer of Boone’s, and the overgrown yard surrounding it. At least the toilet-turned-planter and other examples of extreme bad taste were gone, removed the summer before with some help from Hutch Carmody and several of his ranch hands, but that had been the extent of the sheriff’s home improvement campaign, it seemed.

She turned away, refusing to succumb to irritation. The girls were as good as on their way. Soon, she’d be able to see them, hug them, laugh with them.

“Come on, Lucy,” she said. “Let’s head for town.”

Downstairs, she took her cell phone off the charger, and she and the dog stepped out onto the back porch, walked toward the detached garage where she kept her sporty red Mercedes, purchased, like the farm itself, on a whimsical and reckless what-the-hell burst of impulse, and hoisted up the door manually.

Fresh doubt assailed her as she squinted at the car.

It was a two-seater, after all, completely unsuitable for hauling herself, two children and a golden retriever from place to place.

“Yikes,” she said, as something of an afterthought, frowning a little as she opened the passenger-side door of the low-slung vehicle so Lucy could jump in. Before she rounded the front end and slid behind the steering wheel, Tara was thumbing the keypad in a familiar sequence.

Her friend answered with a melodic, “Hello.”

“Joslyn?” Tara said. “I think I need to borrow a car.”

CHAPTER TWO

LIKE TRAFFIC LIGHTS, ATMs were few and far between in Parable, which was why Boone figured he shouldn’t have been surprised to run into his snarky—if undeniably hot—neighbor, Tara Kendall, right outside Cattleman’s First National Bank. He was just turning away from the machine, traveling cash in hand, his mind already in Missoula with his boys and the others, when Tara whipped her jazzy sports car into the space next to his borrowed truck. She wore a dress the same cherry-red as her ride, and her golden retriever, a littermate to Kendra’s dog, Daisy, rode beside her, seat belt in place.

Tara’s smile was as blindingly bright as the ones in those ads for tooth-whitening strips—she’d probably recognized the big extended-cab pickup he was driving as belonging to Hutch and Kendra, and expected to meet up with one or both of them—but the dazzle faded quickly when she realized that this was a case of mistaken identity.

Her expression said it all. No Hutch, no Kendra. Just the backwoods redneck sheriff who wrecked her view of the countryside with his double-wide trailer and all-around lack of DIY motivation.

The top was down on the sports car and Boone could see that, like its mistress, the dog was wearing sunglasses, probably expensive ones, a fact that struck Boone as just too damn cute to be endured. Didn’t the woman know this was Montana, not L.A. or New York?

Getting out of the spiffy roadster, Tara let her shades slip down off the bridge of her perfect little nose and looked him over in one long, dismissive sweep of her gold-flecked blue eyes, moving from his baseball cap to the ratty old boots on his feet.

“Casual day at the office, Sheriff?” she asked, singsonging the words.

Boone set his hands on his hips and leveled his gaze at her, pleased to see a pinkish flush blossom under those model-perfect cheekbones of hers. He and Tara had gotten off on the wrong foot when she had moved onto the land adjoining his, and she’d made it plain, right from the get-go, that she considered him a hopeless hick, a prime candidate for a fifteen-minute segment on The Jerry Springer Show. She’d come right out and said his place was an eyesore—in the kindest possible way, of course.

In his opinion, Tara was not only a city slicker, out of touch with ordinary reality, but a snob to boot. Too bad she had that perfect body and that head of shiny hair. Without those, it would have been easier to dislike her.

“Hello to you, too, neighbor,” Boone said, in a dry drawl when he was darned good and ready to speak up. “How about this weather?”

She frowned at him, making a production of ferreting through her shoulder bag and bringing out her wallet. Behind her, in the passenger seat, the dog yawned without displacing its aviator glasses, as though bored. The lenses were mirrored.

“If you’re finished at the machine—?” Tara said, with a little rolling motion of one manicured hand. For a chicken rancher, she was stylin’.

Boone stepped aside to let her pass. “You shouldn’t do that, you know,” he heard himself telling her. It wasn’t as if she’d welcome any advice from him, after all, no matter how good it might be.

“Do what?” She had the faintest sprinkling of freckles across her nose, he noticed, oddly disconcerted by the discovery.

“Get your wallet out between the car and the ATM,” Boone answered, in sheriff mode even if he was dressed like a homeless person. He was in a hurry to get to Missoula, that was all. Hadn’t wanted to take the time to change clothes. “It’s not safe.”