Cowboy Ever After

Shea, Slade’s lovely dark-haired stepdaughter, just turned seventeen, burst into the house first, her violet eyes huge with excitement. “You’re not going to believe this, Grands,” she told Callie breathlessly. “The music was playing. The bridesmaids were all lined up and the preacher had his book open, ready to start. And what do you suppose happened?”

Kendra’s heart fluttered in her chest, but she didn’t speak.

A number of drastic scenarios flashed through her mind—a wedding guest toppling over from a heart attack, then a cattle truck crashing through a wall, followed by lightning boring its way right through the roof of the church and striking the bridegroom dead where he stood.

She shook the images off. Waited with her breath snagged painfully in the back of her throat.

“What?” Callie prodded good-naturedly, studying her step-granddaughter. She and Shea were close—the girl worked part-time at Callie’s Curly Burly Hair Salon in town, and during the school year, Shea went to Callie’s place after the last bell rang, spending hours tweaking the website she’d built for the shop.

“Hutch called the whole thing off,” Shea blurted. “He stopped the wedding!”

“Oh, my,” Callie said. The door was still open, and Kendra heard Joslyn’s voice, then Opal’s, as they came toward the house. Slade must have been with them, but he was keeping quiet, as usual.

Kendra realized she was squeezing Madison too tightly and relaxed her arms a little. Her mouth had dropped open at some point and she closed it, hoping no one had noticed. Just then, she couldn’t have uttered a word if the place caught fire.

Opal, tall and dressed to the nines in one of her home-sewn and brightly patterned jersey dresses, crossed the threshold next, shaking her head as she unpinned her old-fashioned hat, with its tiny stuffed bird and inch-wide veiling.

Slade and Joslyn came in behind her, Joslyn’s huge belly preceding her “by half an hour,” as her adoring husband liked to say.

By then, the bomb dropped, Shea had shifted her focus to Madison. She’d been trying to win the little girl over from the beginning, and her smile dazzled, like sunlight on still waters. “Hey, kiddo,” she said. “Since we missed out on the wedding cake, I’m up for a major cookie binge. Want to join me?”

Somewhat to Kendra’s surprise, Madison slid down off her lap, Rupert the kangaroo dangling from one small hand, and approached the older girl, albeit slowly. “Okay,” she said, her voice tentative.

Joslyn, meanwhile, lumbered over to the table, pulled back a chair and sank into it. She looked incandescent in her summery maternity dress, a blue confection with white polka dots, and she fanned her flushed face with her thin white clutch for a few moments before plunking it down on the tabletop.

“Do you need to lie down?” Callie asked her daughter-in-law worriedly, one hand resting on Joslyn’s shoulder.

Madison and Shea, meanwhile, were plundering the cookie jar.

“No,” Joslyn told her. “I’m fine. Really.”

Opal tied on an apron and instructed firmly, “Now don’t you girls stuff yourselves on those cookies with me fixing to put a meal on the table in a little while.”

A swift tenderness came over Kendra as she took it all in—including Opal’s bluster. As Kendra was growing up, the woman had been like a mother to her, if not a patron saint.

Slade, his blue gaze resting softly on Joslyn, hung up his hat and bent to ruffle the dog’s ears.

“Poor Brylee,” Opal said as she opened the refrigerator door and began rummaging about inside it for the makings of one of her legendary meals.

“Sounded to me like it was her own fault,” Slade observed, leaving the dog in order to wash his hands at the sink. He was clad in a suit, but Kendra knew he’d be back in his customary jeans, beat-up boots and lightweight shirt at the first opportunity. “Hutch said he told Brylee he didn’t want to get married, more than once, and she wouldn’t listen.”

For Slade, this was a virtual torrent of words. He was a quiet, deliberate man, and he normally liked to mull things over before he offered an opinion—in contrast to his half brother, Hutch, who tended to go barreling in where angels feared to tread and consider the wisdom of his words and actions later. Or not at all.

Joslyn, meanwhile, tuned in on Kendra’s face and read her expression, however guarded it was, with perfect accuracy. They’d been friends since they were barely older than Madison was now, and for the past year, they’d been business partners, too—Joslyn taking over the reins at Shepherd Real Estate, in nearby Parable, while Kendra scoured the countryside for Jeffrey’s daughter.

“Thank heaven he came to his senses,” Joslyn said, with her usual certainty. “Brylee is a wonderful person, but she’s all wrong for Hutch and he’s all wrong for her. They wouldn’t have lasted a year.”

The crowd in the kitchen began to thin out a little then—Shea, the dog and Madison headed into the family room with their cookies, and Callie followed, Shea regaling her “Grands” with an account of who did what and who wore what and who said what.

Slade ascended the back stairway, chuckling, no doubt on his way to the master bedroom to change clothes. Except for bankers and lawyers, few men in rural Montana wore suits on a regular basis—such get-ups were reserved for Sunday services, funerals and...weddings, ill-fated or otherwise.

Opal, for her part, kept murmuring to herself and shaking her head as she began measuring out flour and lard for a batch of her world-class biscuits. “Land sakes,” she muttered repeatedly, along with, “Well, I never, in all my live-long days—”

Joslyn laid her hands on her bulging stomach and sighed. “I swear this baby is practicing to be a rodeo star. It feels as though he’s riding a bull in there.”

Kendra laughed softly, partly at the image her friend had painted and partly as a way to relieve the dizzying tension brought on by Shea’s breathless announcement. Hutch called the whole thing off. He stopped the wedding.

“The least you could do,” she teased Joslyn, trying to get a grip on her crazy emotions, “is go into labor already and let the little guy get a start on his cowboy career.”

As serene as a Botticelli Madonna, Joslyn grinned. “He’s taking his time, all right,” she agreed. The briefest frown flickered in her shining eyes as she regarded Kendra more closely than before. “It’s only fair to warn you,” she went on, quietly resolute, “that Slade invited Hutch to come to supper with us tonight—”

Joslyn continued to talk, saying she expected both Slade and Hutch would saddle up and ride the range for a while, but Kendra barely heard her. She flat-out wasn’t ready to encounter Hutch Carmody, even at her closest friend’s table. Why, the last time she’d seen him, after that stupid, macho horse race of his and Slade’s, she’d kicked him, hard, in the shins.

Because he’d just kissed her.

Because he’d risked his life for no good reason.

Because hers was just one of the many hearts he’d broken along his merry way.

Plus she was a mess. She’d been on the road for three days, and even after a good night’s sleep in Joslyn’s guest room and two showers, she felt rumpled and grungy.

She stood up. She’d get Madison and head for town, she decided, hurry to her own place, where she should have gone in the beginning.

Not that she planned to live there very long.

The mega-mansion was too big for her and Madison, too full of memories.

“Kendra,” Joslyn ordered kindly, “sit down.”

Opal could be heard poking around in the pantry, still talking to herself.

Slade came down the back stairway, looking like himself in worn jeans, a faded flannel shirt and boots.

Passing Joslyn, he paused and leaned down to plant a kiss on top of her head. Kendra sank slowly back into her own chair.

“Don’t start without me,” Slade said, spreading one big hand on Joslyn’s baby-bulge and grinning down into her upturned face.

It was almost enough to make a person believe in love again, Kendra thought glumly, watching these two.

“Not a chance, cowboy,” Joslyn replied, almost purring the words. “We made this baby together and we’re having it together.”

Kendra was really starting to feel like some kind of voyeuristic intruder when Opal came out of the pantry, looked Slade over from behind the thick lenses of her glasses, and demanded, “Just where do you think you’re going, Slade Barlow? Didn’t I just say I’m starting supper?”

Slade straightened, smiled at Opal. “Now don’t get all riled up,” he cajoled. “I’m just going out to check on the horses, not driving a herd to Texas.”

“Do I look like I was born yesterday?” Opal challenged, with gruff good humor. “You mean to saddle up and ride. I can tell by looking at you.”

Slade laughed, shook his head, shoved a hand through his dark hair before crossing the room to take his everyday hat from a peg beside the back door and plop it on his head. “I promise you,” he told Opal, “that the minute that dinner bell rings, I’ll be here.”

Opal huffed, cheerfully unappeased, then waved Slade off with one hand and went back to making supper.

“You might as well stay here and face Hutch,” Joslyn told Kendra, as though there had been no interruption in their conversation. “After all, Parable is a small town, and you’re bound to run into him sooner rather than later. Why not get it over with?”

The twinkle in Joslyn’s eyes might have annoyed Kendra if she hadn’t been so fond of her. Like many happily married people, Joslyn wanted all her friends to see the light and get hitched, pronto.

An image of Brylee Parrish bloomed in Kendra’s mind and she felt a stab of sorrow for the woman. Loving Hutch Carmody was asking for trouble—she could have told Brylee that.

Not that Brylee would have listened, any more than she had long ago, when various friends had warned her that she was marrying Jeffrey on the rebound, had urged her to take time to think before leaping feetfirst into a whole different world.

“I need to get Madison settled,” Kendra fretted. “There are groceries to buy and I’ve been away from the business way too long as it is—”

“The business is just fine,” Joslyn said reasonably. “And so is Madison.”

As if on cue, the little girl gave a delighted laugh in the next room.

It was a sweet sound, all too rare, and it made the backs of Kendra’s eyes scald. “I don’t know if I can handle it,” she confessed, very softly. “Seeing Hutch again right away, I mean. I was counting on having some time to adjust to being back—”

Joslyn reached out, took her hand. Squeezed. “You can handle it,” she said with quiet certainty. “Trust yourself, Kendra. Nothing is going to happen between you and Hutch unless you want it to.”

“That’s just the trouble,” Kendra reflected miserably, careful to keep her voice down so Madison wouldn’t overhear. “Wanting a man—wanting Hutch—and knowing better the whole time—well, you know—”

“I do know,” Joslyn said, smiling.

“I have a daughter now,” Kendra reminded her friend. “I want Madison to grow up in Parable, go to the same schools from kindergarten through high school. I want to give her security, a real sense of community, the whole works. And getting sucked into Hutch’s orbit would be the stupidest thing I could possibly do.”

“Would it?” Joslyn asked, raising one delicate eyebrow as she waited for a reply.

“Of course it would,” Kendra whispered fiercely. “The man broke my heart into a gazillion pieces, remember? And now he’s dumped some poor woman virtually at the altar, which only goes to prove he hasn’t changed!”

“Did it ever occur to you,” Joslyn inquired, unruffled, “that Hutch might have ‘dumped’ Brylee for the simple reason that she’s not you?”

“No,” Kendra said firmly, shaken by the mere possibility, “that did not occur to me. He did it because he can’t commit to anything or anyone long-term, because Whisper Creek Ranch is all he really cares about in this world—because he’s a heartless, womanizing bastard.”

Before Joslyn could offer a response to that, Madison, Shea, Callie and the dog trailed back in the kitchen, making further discussion of Hutch Carmody impossible.

Kendra was still flustered, though. Her heart pounded and her throat and sinuses felt strangely thick—was she coming down with something? Every instinct urged her to get the heck out of there, now, but the idea seemed cowardly and, besides, Madison was just starting to let herself be part of the group.

If they rushed off to town, the little girl would be understandably confused.

So Kendra decided to stay, at least until after supper.

She was a grown woman, a mother. Joslyn had been right—it was time she started trusting herself. Hutch had always held an infuriating attraction for her, but she was older now, and wiser, and she had more self-control.

The next hour was taken up with getting ready, coming and going, table-setting and a lot of companionable, lighthearted chatter. Slade returned from the barn as he’d promised and, after washing up in a downstairs bathroom, made the whole crew promise not to pester Hutch with questions about the interrupted wedding.

As if, Kendra thought. She probably wouldn’t say more than a few polite words to the man. If she spoke to him at all.

She felt strong, confident, ready for anything.

Until he actually walked into the ranch house kitchen, that is.

Seeing her, he tightened his jaw and shot an accusatory glance in his half brother’s direction.

“Didn’t I mention that Kendra’s here?” Slade asked, breaking the brief, pulsing silence. There was a smile in his voice, though his blue eyes conveyed nothing but innocent concern.

Hutch, his dark blond hair sun-kissed with gold, recovered his normal affable manner within the space of a heartbeat.

He even smiled, flashing those perfect white teeth and setting Kendra back on her figurative heels.

“Hello, Kendra,” he said with a nod, after taking off his hat. Like Slade, he was dressed “cowboy” and the look suited him.

Kendra replied with a nod of her own. “Hutch,” she said, turning from the chopping board, where she’d been preparing a salad, and wished she’d cleared her throat first, because the name came out like a croak.

His gaze moved straight to Madison, and Kendra read the questions in his eyes even before he hid them behind a smile. Madison, meanwhile, raised Rupert, as if presenting him to this stranger for inspection.

“Howdy, there,” he said, all charm. “Do my eyes deceive me or is that critter a kangaroo?”

CHAPTER TWO

THE WAY HUTCH figured it, a solid week should have been plenty long enough for the fuss over the wedding-that-never-was to die down, but when Saturday afternoon rolled around again and he sat down at his computer to get a quick read on the gossip situation, tired from rounding up strays with the ranch hands since just after dawn, he was promptly disabused of the notion.

This jabber-fest was getting worse by the moment.

Apparently he’d made every “jerk” list in cyberspace, not just locally, but worldwide. Indignant females from as far away as the Philippines thought he ought to be tarred and feathered, and a couple of Brylee’s girlfriends, bless their vengeful little hearts, had set up a page on one of the major networking sites solely for the purpose of warning every woman with a pulse to steer clear of Hutch Carmody.

The reverse version, he supposed, grimly amused, of an old West “Wanted” poster.

Of course, this being the digital age, there were pictures up the wazoo—Bride-Doll Brylee, flushed and furious in her over-the-top dress, stomping on her bouquet in the church aisle. Brylee, outside in the bright June sunshine, probably only moments after the first shot was taken, wrenching the taped-on “Just Married” sign from the back of the limo that would have carried the two of them over to the Community Center for the reception, ripping the cardboard in two and flinging the pieces into the gutter. Brylee, later still, hair pulled back and caught up in a long, messy ponytail, face puffy and scrubbed clean of makeup, her gown swapped out for jeans and a T-shirt bearing the motto Men Suck. She was surrounded by a dozen or so of her friends, at a table in the center of the Boot Scoot Tavern, the jukebox lit up behind her. No doubt, it was playing a somebody-done-me-wrong song.

Hutch sighed. He hadn’t escaped the amateur paparazzi himself—these days, every yahoo and his Aunt Bessie had a smart phone, and they were mighty quick on the draw with them.

One memorable image showed him standing in the center of the sanctuary, clearly uncomfortable in the penguin get-up he’d rented from Wally’s Wedding World, over in Three Trees, the neighboring town, looking pale and bleakly determined not to get married no matter what he had to do to avoid it. And those were just the stills—there were videos, too. In one thirty-second wonder, he could be seen climbing into his rusted-out pickup truck, right there in the Presbyterians’ gravel parking lot, and in the next, he was heading for the horizon, a dust plume spiraling behind his rig.

Yep, that was him all right, beating a hasty retreat, like a yellow-bellied coward on the run.

That impression rested sour on the back of his tongue.

Someday, he suspected, when Brylee met up with her own personal Mr. Right, got hitched for real, and had herself a houseful of kids, she’d thank him for stopping the wedding and thereby preventing certain catastrophe.

At present, though, that particular “someday” seemed a long way off.

Weary to the aching marrow of his bones, Hutch logged off the internet, pushed back from the rolltop desk that had been in his family since the Lincoln administration, and stood up, stretching luxuriously before retrieving his coffee mug and ambling out of the little office behind the ranch house kitchen.

Taking Slade’s advice, he’d kept a low profile since the day that, like the bombing of Pearl Harbor and the 9/11 attacks, would forever live in infamy. Against his own better judgment, he hadn’t gone to see Brylee in person, called her on the phone, or even sent her an email.

He hadn’t done much guilt-wallowing, either, which might be proof that he really was a “selfish, heartless, narcissistic bastard,” as members of Team Brylee universally agreed, at least online. By now, the group probably had its own secret handshake.

Hutch regretted hurting Brylee, of course, and he certainly wished he could have spared her the humiliation of that very public breakup, but his overriding emotion was a sense of relief so profound that it still made his head reel even after a week.

Train wreck, averted.

Apocalypse, canceled.

Check and check.

Running into Kendra Shepherd at Slade and Joslyn’s place after the debacle had definitely thrown him, however—slammed the wind out of him as surely as if he’d been hurled off the back of a bad bull or a sun-fishing bronco and landed on hard ground.

He’d loved Kendra once and he’d believed she loved him.

He’d expected to spend the rest of his life with the woman, happy to make babies, run Whisper Creek Ranch with Kendra at his side, a full partner in every way.

Instead, enter Jeffrey Chamberlain, he of the nominal titles and English estates, practically a prince to a woman like Kendra, brought up in a small Montana town by a grandmother who resented the responsibility of raising her errant daughter’s child. Chamberlain had been visiting friends at the time—Hollywood types with delusions of living the ranching life in grand style—and damned if Sir Jeffrey hadn’t struck up a conversation with Kendra at the post office one fine day and parlayed that, over the coming weeks, into a romance so epic that it could only have ended badly.

Not that Kendra had fallen for Chamberlain right away—at the get-go, she’d insisted he was just a friend, interesting and funny. Hutch, though nettled, had reluctantly—okay, grudgingly—accepted the explanation.

Down deep, he’d been out-of-his-gourd jealous, though, and soon enough the bickering commenced.

Chamberlain, knowing full well what he’d set in motion, had found excuses to stay on in Parable and he just bided his time while things got worse and worse between Hutch and Kendra.

Inevitably, the bickering escalated to fiery yelling matches and, worse, single words, terse and biting, punctuated by long, achy silences.

Eventually, Kendra had given Hutch an ultimatum—trust her or leave her.

He’d chosen the latter option, being a stubborn, hard-headed cowboy from a long line of stubborn, hard-headed cowboys, never really thinking she’d go at all, let alone stay gone; everybody knew they belonged together, he and Kendra. After a semidecent interval, though, she’d hauled off and eloped with Jeffrey.

There were still days—moments, really—when Hutch couldn’t believe it had come to that, and this was one of them.

Now, standing in his kitchen, he closed his eyes, remembering.

Kendra had called him three days after tying the knot down in Vegas.

Even then he’d wanted to say, “This isn’t right. Come home.”

But he’d been too cussed proud to take the high road.

He’d wished “Lady Chamberlain” well and hung up in her ear. Hard. They’d seen each other numerous times afterward, the way things shook out, especially after Chamberlain bought his way out of the marriage and crossed the pond to resume his Lord-of-the-manor lifestyle while Kendra remained in Parable, rattling around in that hotel-sized mansion on Rodeo Road.

Small as Parable was, he and Kendra had come close to patching things up a few times, making another start, but something always went wrong, probably because neither one of them trusted the other any further than they could have thrown them.

They’d been civil last Saturday night at Slade and Joslyn’s noisy supper table, but Kendra had looked ready to jump out of her skin at any moment, and as soon as the meal was over and the dishes were in the machine, she’d grabbed up her little girl and boogied for town in her boxy mom-car.

What had happened to that little BMW convertible she used to drive?

“She wasn’t expecting to see you tonight,” Joslyn had explained, touching his hand once Kendra and the child were out of the house.

Hutch had slanted an evil look at his half brother. “I know the feeling,” he’d said.

Slade had merely looked smug.

Now with another long, dirty workday behind him and lunch a distant memory, Hutch stood there in his stupidly big kitchen and tried to shift his focus to rustling up some kind of a supper, but the few budding science experiments hunkered down in the fridge held no appeal. Neither did the resoundingly empty house—by rights, the place should have been bursting with noisy ranch kids and rescued dogs by now. Instead it was neat, cold and stone silent.

Hutch sighed, shoved a hand through his hair. Stepped back from the refrigerator and shut the door.

Upstairs he took a quick shower and donned fresh jeans, a white shirt and go-to-town boots.

He’d hidden out long enough, damn it.

By God, he was through keeping a low profile—he meant to fire up one of the ranch trucks, drive into Parable to the Butter Biscuit Café, claim one of the stools at the counter and order up his usual cheeseburger, shake and fries. As for the joshing and the questions and the speculative glances he was bound to run into?

Bring it, he thought.

KENDRA HAD HAD a week to put that off-the-wall encounter with Hutch the previous Saturday night behind her and she was mostly over it.

Mostly.

She’d been busy, after all, overseeing the move of her real estate company from the mansion on Rodeo Road to the little storefront, catty-corner from the Butter Biscuit Café, enrolling Madison at the year-round preschool/day-care center and scanning the multiple-listings for cozy two-bedroom houses within a reasonable radius of Parable.