Maisey Yates - Cowboy Ever After

He removed the hat, acknowledging Kendra with a cordial nod, and grinned down at Daisy, who by then must have decided he didn’t represent a threat after all. Far from growling at him, she was nuzzling the hand he lowered for her to inspect.

It was a moment or two before Kendra placed the man—not a stranger, but not a resident of Parable proper, either. Of course, some new people could have moved into town while she was traveling, somehow managing to escape her notice, but that didn’t seem very likely. After all, it was her business to know what was going on in the community, who was moving in and who was moving out, and she’d kept pretty close tabs on such local doings, through Joslyn, even while she was away.

The visitor smiled and recognition finally clicked. His name was Walker Parrish, and he was a wealthy rancher with a place over near Three Trees. Besides raising prize beef, he bred bulls and broncos for rodeos, as well.

And he was brother of the almost-bride, Brylee Parrish, Hutch’s latest casualty-of-the-heart.

Surely, Kendra thought, a little desperately, he didn’t think she’d been a factor in the wedding-day breakup? Everyone knew she’d been involved with Hutch at one time, but that had been over for years.

Still, what other business could Parrish have with her? He already owned a major chunk of the county, so he probably wasn’t looking to acquire property, and since his place had been in his family for several generations, she couldn’t imagine him selling out, either.

She finally gathered enough presence of mind to smile back at him and ask, “What can I help you with today, Mr. Parrish?”

“Well,” he said with a grin that cocked up at one side, “you could start by calling me by my given name, Walker.”

Daisy, by that time, had dropped to her belly in what looked like a dog-swoon, her long nose resting atop Walker’s right boot, as though to pin him in place so she could stare up at him forever in uninterrupted adoration.

“All right,” Kendra said. “Walker it is, then.” As a somewhat flustered afterthought, she added, “I’m Kendra.”

Again, the grin flashed. “Yes,” he said. “I know who you are.” He cleared his throat. “I came by to ask you about the house on Rodeo Road. I understand you’re getting ready to sell it.”

Kendra nodded, surprised and hoping it didn’t show. Maybe she’d been wrong earlier, deciding that Walker hadn’t come to buy or sell real estate. “Yes,” she said, at last summoning up her manners and offering him one of the chairs reserved for customers while she moved behind her desk and sat down. “What would you like to know?”

Daisy sighed and lifted her head when Walker moved away, then wandered off to curl up in a corner of the office for a snooze.

Once Kendra was seated, Walker took a seat, too, letting his hat rest, crown to the cushion, on the chair nearest his. There was an attractive crease in his brown hair where the hatband had been, and it struck her, once again, how handsome he was—and how, oddly, his good looks didn’t move her at all.

She reviewed what she knew about him—which was almost nothing. She didn’t think he had a wife or even a girlfriend, but since the impression was mainly intuitive, she couldn’t be sure.

Wishful thinking? Perhaps. If he was single, the question was, why? Why was a man like Walker Parrish still running around loose? Evidently the good ones weren’t already taken.

“I guess I’d be interested in the price, to start,” Walker replied with a slight twinkle in his eyes. Had he guessed what she was thinking in regard to his marital status? The idea mortified her instantly.

Her tone was normal when she recited the astronomical numbers.

Walker didn’t flinch. “Reasonable,” he said.

The curiosity was just too much for Kendra. “You’re thinking of moving to Parable?” she asked.

He chuckled at that, shook his head. “No,” he said. “I’m here on behalf of a friend of mine. She’s—in show business, divorced, and she has a couple of kids she’d like to raise in a small town. Wants a big place because she plans to set up her own recording studio, and between the band and the road crew and her household and office staff, she needs a lot of elbow room.”

Kendra couldn’t help being intrigued—and a little wary. It wasn’t uncommon for famous people to buy land around Parable, build houses even bigger than her own and landing strips for their private jets, and proceed to set up “sanctuaries” for exotic animals that didn’t mix all that well with the cattle, horses, sheep and chickens ordinary mortals tended to raise, among other visibly noble and charitable efforts. Generally these out-of-towners were friendly enough, and the locals were willing to give them the benefit of the doubt, but in time the newcomers always seemed to stir up trouble over water rights or bounties on wolves and coyotes or some such, alienate all their neighbors, and then simply move on to the next place, the next adventure.

It was as though their lives were movies and Parable was just another set, instead of a real place populated by real people.

“Anybody I might have heard of?” Kendra asked carefully.

Something in Walker’s heretofore open face closed up just slightly. “You’d know her name,” he replied. “She’s asked me not to mention it right away, that’s all. In case the whole thing comes to nothing.”

Kendra nodded; she’d had plenty of practice with this sort of thing. Most celebrities were private nearly to the point of paranoia, and not without reason. Besides the paparazzi, they had to worry about stalkers and kidnappers and worse. Safety—or the illusion of it—lay in secrecy, and safety was usually what made places like Parable and Three Trees attractive to them.

“Fair enough,” she said easily. “There are always a few upscale properties available in the county....” She could think of two that had been standing empty for a while; one had an Olympic-size indoor pool, and the other boasted a home theater with a rotating screen and plush seats for almost a hundred. The asking prices were in the mid-to-high seven-figure range, not surprisingly, but it didn’t sound as though that would strain Walker’s mysterious friend’s budget.

But Walker was already shaking his head. Being a local, he knew as well as anybody which properties were for sale, what kind of shape they were in, and approximately what they’d cost to buy, restore and maintain—and he’d asked specifically about the house on Rodeo Road. “She wants to be in town,” he said. Then a frown creased his tanned forehead. “Is there some reason why you don’t want to show your house just yet?”

“No, no,” Kendra said, “it’s nothing like that. We can head over there right now if you want. It’s just that—” She stopped in the middle of the sentence because she couldn’t think of a diplomatic way to go on.

“Show business people are sometimes unreliable,” Walker finished for her. The frown had smoothed away and he was grinning again. “I remember that rock band a few years back—the ones who built a pseudo haunted house, trashed the Grange Hall in Three Trees one night when they were partying and then nearly burned down a state forest, conducting some kind of crazy ritual. But it wouldn’t be fair to hold that against everybody who sings and plays a guitar to earn a paycheck, would it?”

Kendra let out a long breath, shook her head no. Walker was right—that wouldn’t be fair—and besides, hadn’t he said this woman wanted to raise her children in a small town? That gave her at least one thing in common with Kendra herself, and with most of her friends, too.

Parable had its problems, like any community, but the crime rate was low, people knew each other and down-to-earth values were still important there. In a very real sense, Parable was a family . And it was cousin to Three Trees.