Maisey Yates - Cowboy Ever After

“I’ve had just about enough out of you, Treat,” she said, her voice ringing off every window and wall. “You behave yourself, or I’ll call Boone and have you hauled out of here!”

McQuillan flushed a dangerous crimson. “You’ll have to call Slade instead,” he retorted bitterly, apropos of who-knew-what, “because he’s filling in for Boone. Guess he didn’t quite get being sheriff out of his system, old Slade.”

“I’ll call the damn President, if I have to,” Essie answered back, “and don’t you sass me again, Treat McQuillan. I knew your mama.”

I knew your mama.

Kendra almost smiled at the familiar phrase, in spite of the tinderbox climate in the Butter Biscuit Café that sunny and otherwise beautiful late June morning. In Parable, the bonds of friendship and enmity both ran deep, intertwining like tree roots under an old-growth forest until they were hopelessly tangled.

“I knew your mama” was enough to shut most anybody up.

Sure enough, McQuillan subsided, spun around on his stool, stepped down and strode out of the cafe, looking neither to the right nor the left.

The chuckles and comments commenced as soon as the door closed behind him.

“I’m not sure that man is entirely sane,” Essie observed, watching him go.

Nobody disagreed.

Kendra ordered her latte and croissant, waited, paid for her purchase and left the restaurant, still feeling strangely shaken by the episode.

Walking back to the office, she got out her cell phone and speed-dialed Joslyn’s number, hoping she wouldn’t wake her friend up from a post-partum nap or something equally vital.

Joslyn answered on the first ring, though, sounding too chipper to have delivered a baby so recently or to be contemplating a nap. “Hi, Kendra,” she said. “What’s up?”

“I’m not sure,” Kendra answered honestly. Why was she calling Joslyn?

Joslyn simply waited.

“I hear Slade is standing in for Boone,” Kendra finally said, reaching her storefront and fumbling with her keys. “As sheriff, I mean.” She was used to juggling purses and briefcases, cell phones and coffee, but her fingers seemed slippery this morning.

Joslyn replied cheerfully. “Boone’s sons are coming for a visit, so he needed some time off to get his place ready. Slade offered to take over the job for a few days.”

“Oh,” Kendra said, opening the office door and practically fleeing inside. What was she going to say if Joslyn wanted to know why she’d bother to ask about something so clearly not her concern in the first place?

“Why do you ask?” Joslyn said, right on cue.

Kendra sighed, dropping her purse onto her desk, then setting down the coffee and the bag with the croissant inside, too. Even with those few extra seconds to think, she didn’t come up with a plausible excuse for the inquiry.

The truth was going to have to do. “Deputy McQuillan was making a big fuss when I stopped in at the Butter Biscuit a little while ago. Going on about how Walker Parrish assaulted him last night and he’s going to see that he’s charged.”

Joslyn sighed. “There was a little scuffle at the Boot Scoot last night, as I understand it,” she said with just a touch of hesitation.

“And Hutch was involved,” Kendra said.

“Indirectly,” Joslyn confirmed.

“Not that it’s any business of mine, what Hutch Carmody does.” Kendra was speaking to herself then, more than Joslyn.

Joslyn gave a delighted little chuckle. “Except that you do seem a little worried,” she observed. “Why don’t you just admit, if only to me, your main BFF, that you still have a thing for the guy?”

“Because I don’t ‘have a thing for the guy.’”

“Right,” Joslyn replied.

“I’m a mother now,” Kendra prattled on, unable, for some weird reason, to stop herself. “I have a dog and a Volvo, and I need to make a life.”

This time, Joslyn actually laughed. “All of which means— what, exactly? That you don’t need a little romance in this life you’re making? A little sex, maybe?”

“Sex?” The word came out high-pitched, like a squeak. “Who said anything about sex?”

“You did,” Joslyn replied with good-humored certainty. “Oh, not in so many words. But you’re feeling a little jealous, aren’t you? Because you have some scenario in your head of Hutch defending Brylee’s honor at the Boot Scoot Tavern?”

“I wouldn’t call it...jealousy,” Kendra finally replied, her tone tentative.

“Okay,” Joslyn agreed sunnily. “What would you call it?”

“You’re no help at all,” Kendra accused, further deflated, but smiling now. Talking to Joslyn always made her feel better, even when nothing was really resolved.

“Let’s do lunch in a couple of days,” Joslyn said, “after Mom goes back to Santa Fe and things return to normal around here. Maybe Tara can join us.”

Still feeling like an idiot, Kendra replied that she’d enjoy a girlfriend lunch, said goodbye and hung up.

She spent the morning noodling around on her computer, carefully avoiding the “Down With Hutch Carmody” webpage, along with the temptation to add a thing or two, and answered a grand total of two inquiries by phone.

By ten forty-five, she felt so restless that she set the business phone to forward any calls to her cell, locked up the office and drove out to Tara’s chicken ranch, intending to pick up Daisy and go home. Madison still had a couple of hours to go at preschool, which she was starting to enjoy, and Kendra didn’t want to disrupt the flow by taking her out early.

Tara was outside when Kendra pulled into her rutted dirt driveway, wearing red coveralls and wielding a shovel. Daisy and Lucy frolicked happily nearby, playing catch-tumble-roll with each other.

“Don’t tell me,” Tara chimed mischievously, approaching Kendra’s car on the driver’s side. “You’re here to help me clean out the chicken coop! What a true friend you are, Kendra Shepherd.”

Kendra laughed. “You wish,” she said. It was a relief to stop thinking about Hutch Carmody and sex for a while. They were two separate subjects, of course, but she hadn’t been able to untangle one from the other since her phone conversation with Joslyn.

“Then what are you doing here?” Tara asked, looking like half of “American Gothic,” except young and pretty instead of severe.

“Can’t I visit a friend?” Kendra bantered back, pushing open the door and stepping somewhat gingerly into the muck of the barnyard. She wished she’d swapped out her Manolos for a pair of gum boots before leaving town.

Not that she actually owned gum boots.

Tara laughed at Kendra’s mincing steps, pointed out a relatively clean pathway nearby and paused to lean her shovel against the wall of the chicken coop before following Kendra toward the old farmhouse she’d been refurbishing over the past year.

The woman was the very personification of incongruity, to Kendra’s mind, with her model’s face and figure and those ridiculous coveralls.

They settled in chairs on Tara’s porch, since the weather was so nice and the dogs seemed to be having such a fine time dashing around in the grass, two flashes of happy gold, busy being puppies.

Once seated, Tara nodded in the direction of Boone Taylor’s place, which neighbored hers. “He’s finally cleaning up over there,” she said in a tone that struck Kendra as oddly pensive. “I wonder why.”

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