Big Sky Mountain. Linda Miller Lael

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      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.

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