Big Sky Country. Linda Lael Miller

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СКАЧАТЬ hands trembled a little as she pulled the carafe out from under the trickling stream of coffee and sloshed some into each of the mugs.

      “If you say so,” Kendra said mildly.

      As Joslyn turned, a cup in each hand, Kendra pushed back her chair and stood. “I’d better run,” she added. “I have a closing this morning, and then I’m showing a chicken farm for the seventeenth time to the same potential buyer.” She looked down at her shoes. “Do you think I should wear boots instead of these heels?”

      Joslyn was so relieved by the change of subject that she didn’t protest. “Probably,” she agreed, imagining Kendra high-heeling it around a chicken farm.

      “Would you mind stopping by the office once or twice, just in case someone drops in wanting to look at a property? Slade Barlow has a habit of coming over to ask if the Kingman place has sold.”

      The name registered in an instant, like a sharp dart to the esophagus, and Joslyn had to swallow before she could nod. As kids, she and Slade had lived in different worlds, hers rich, his poor. Back then, she’d been his brother Hutch’s girl, which hadn’t helped, either. Although Slade had never actually come out and said as much—he’d barely spoken to her at all, in fact—she’d known what he thought of her: that she was spoiled, self-centered and shallow.

      Worse, he’d been right.

      When the financial roof had caved in and all those honest, hardworking people realized they’d been cheated out of their savings by the town’s onetime favorite son—Joslyn’s stepfather, Elliott—her charmed life was over. Once popular, Joslyn had found out who her real friends were, and fast. Only Kendra and Hutch had stuck by her. Soon after Rossiter’s arrest, she and her mother had packed what they could into Opal’s old station wagon and left town in the dark of night.

      The recollection still shamed Joslyn. Running away went against everything she believed in.

      “It wasn’t your fault,” Kendra reminded her. She’d always been perceptive—so perceptive, in fact, that sometimes she seemed to be a mind reader. Like now, for instance. “Nobody blames you for what happened, Joss.”

      That lump was back in her throat, aching and bitter, and it was another moment before she could say anything. Joslyn put the mugs down on the table, nearly spilling their contents, and forced herself to meet Kendra’s eyes.

      “But you still think I shouldn’t have come here,” she said, her voice small and uncommonly shaky.

      Kendra reached out and touched Joslyn’s arm. “Most folks around here understand that you didn’t have anything to do with the scam,” she said. “For pity’s sake, you were just a kid. But some are still carrying a grudge. They might say things, do things—”

      Joslyn closed her eyes tightly for a moment, then resolutely opened them again. Nodded her understanding.

      She was doing what she knew she had to do, even if she couldn’t precisely explain the reasons, but one thing was definite: it wasn’t going to be easy.

       CHAPTER TWO

      ONCE KENDRA HAD GONE, Joslyn showered, pulled on jeans and a short-sleeved cotton top, white with tiny green flowers, slid her feet into her favorite pair of sandals and got to work.

      She unpacked the two large suitcases she’d brought from Phoenix and put away her limited clothing supply, then rolled up the sleeping bag and looked around for a place to store it. This was a challenge, since space was at a real premium in the guesthouse, but, with some effort, she managed to stuff the unwieldy bundle under the bathroom cabinet. Next, she helped herself to a set of time-softened sheets that still smelled faintly of fresh air and sunshine and hastily made up the bed.

      Riding a swell of ambition, Joslyn set her high-powered laptop on the small desk in front of the living-room window, but she couldn’t quite bring herself to fire it up and log on. She’d worked too many eighteen-hour days designing and redesigning software, marketing the innovative game she’d developed and patented and finally selling the whole enterprise to a multinational corporation for big bucks.

      She’d been a very rich woman—for about five minutes. Now she had a secondhand car, enough money in the bank to cover a year’s living expenses—if she was frugal—and, for the first time since she was seventeen, some peace of mind.

      Arriving in Parable by night had been one thing, though, and venturing out in broad daylight, where she was bound to run into the locals, was another. Still, she needed groceries, since she’d only bought nonperishables the day before, and she had promised Kendra she’d stop by at the office and keep an eye out for drop-ins.

      Plus, she reminded herself stalwartly, she hadn’t come back to Parable to hide.

      The reasons for her return were far from concrete, as many times as she’d rolled the whole situation through the cogs and gears of her brain. Obviously, she wanted to make things right with the people her stepfather had cheated. At the same time, she knew she wasn’t responsible for another person’s actions.

      So why had she come back? Why had she sacrificed so much, giving up a good job, selling the company she’d built by working nights and weekends, forsaking her luxury condo and her dream car?

      The only answer Joslyn could have given, at that moment or any other, was that something—her overdeveloped conscience?—had driven her back. The compulsion to return had been cosmic in scope, as impossible to ignore as a tsunami or an earthquake.

      The mandate, it seemed to her, had arisen from some secret part of her soul, pushing her to take the next step and then the next, operating almost entirely on faith.

      It was like walking a tightrope blindfolded. There was no turning back, and if she didn’t keep moving, she was sure to lose her balance and fall.

      Joslyn sighed and headed for the door, moving resolutely.

      Visiting Kendra’s office meant going inside the main house, of course—and she knew she’d be beset by all sorts of memories as soon as she set foot over the threshold—but there was something to be said for just getting things like this over with. Kendra lived on the second floor and ran her real-estate firm out of the huge living room, where, as of Monday morning, Joslyn would be working full-time.

      Might as well bite the bullet and brave the first and inevitably emotional reentry while she had some privacy. After sucking in a deep breath and squaring her shoulders, Joslyn crossed the wide lawn where flowers of all sorts and shades and fragrances rioted all around her, climbed the wooden steps to the enclosed sunporch and reached for the handle of the screen door. Locked.

      Joslyn sighed, recalling Kendra’s remarks about Parable having its share of petty crime these days. Evidently, her friend practiced what she preached, but, since she hadn’t offered a key, the front door was probably open.

      Joslyn descended the steps and followed the familiar flagstone path around to the side of the house, running parallel to the glittering white driveway with its layers of limestone gravel.

      The front yard, like the back, nearly overflowed with flowers, and Joslyn heard the somnambulant buzz of bees and the busy chirping of birds as she paused to look around. For a moment, she felt like Dorothy in the movie version of The Wizard of Oz, thrust with tornado force from a black-and-white СКАЧАТЬ