Big Sky Secrets. Linda Lael Miller

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СКАЧАТЬ if Zane had ever suffered any lack of “company,” even before he’d settled on the run-down, abandoned ranch outside Three Trees, Montana, the one he and Landry had bought together, sight unseen, a few years before. These days, Zane had his beautiful bride, Brylee, first and foremost. And then there was the formidable but ever-faithful Cleo, their housekeeper—and Nash, Zane and Landry’s half brother, a rowdy thirteen-year-old with a childhood behind him that made their hardscrabble upbringing look downright pampered.

      “I’ll get around to it,” Landry allowed, still distracted by other thoughts. “Getting a dog, I mean.” A pause, followed by an irritated “There’s no hurry, is there?”

      Zane didn’t answer, and that was all right, because sometimes—and this was one of them—they didn’t feel a need to talk. The rig bounced down the long, rutted driveway, dog and gear rattling in the back.

      Walker’s place, called Timber Creek, was a prosperous spread, to put it mildly, but the dirt trail leading to the main gate was in little better shape than a cow path after a month of pounding rain followed by a ten-year drought. Out here in the wilds of Montana, Landry had observed, folks weren’t overly concerned with either convenience or appearances, whether they had two nickels to rub together or not. It probably wouldn’t have occurred to most of them to smooth the way with a layer of asphalt. Sure, one or two showy types might have sprung for a load of gravel, if the bills were current and the price of beef was decent, he supposed, but nobody paved a driveway.

      Nope, even ranchers as successful as Walker Parrish seemed content to cope with whatever conditions presented themselves—waist-high snow in the winter, the sticky mud of spring, which the locals called “gumbo,” or the deep, dry dirt furrows of summer and fall.

      There were times, usually short-lived, when the lure of the place eluded Landry completely—like now.

      Still cheerfully pensive, Zane drove on. The living quarters on his share of Hangman’s Bend Ranch were relatively modest, considering the size of his bank account. He’d been what amounted to a modern-day John Wayne before he suddenly decided to leave movie stardom behind for good, go back to the land and subsequently reinvent himself. Now he and Brylee shared a nicely renovated stone house, large and comfortable, but certainly nothing fancy, by Hollywood standards at least. The barn was sturdy and the old-fashioned garage was detached, with a dented aluminum door that had to be raised and lowered by hand. Neither a tennis court nor a swimming pool marred the landscape.

      Brylee was weeding the vegetable garden when Zane and Landry drove in, her ever-present German shepherd, Snidely, supervising from the sidelines.

      Zane’s bride wore a floppy straw hat, her rich brown hair stuffed fetchingly up inside, a sleeveless blouse and denim jeans, frayed where she’d cut them off above the knees to make shorts. Brylee’s long legs were sun-browned, like her arms, and her feet were probably muddy and probably bare.

      Seeing the truck, she beamed like a war bride at the approach of an overdue troop train and came toward them, hurrying but graceful, moving between rows of corn and green beans and Bibb lettuce.

      Watching Brylee, Landry felt a pang of something sharp and forlorn, bleaker than loneliness, but not quite qualifying as envy, while Zane jumped out of the rig, strode to meet his wife and, with a laugh, swept her right off her feet, swinging her around in a broad circle of celebration and then kissing her soundly.

      Slim, like any good country dog, bounded down from the back of the truck and rushed toward his master and mistress, barking, delighted by the ruckus, making himself part of it.

      Brylee had lost her hat by then, and her hair spilled down over her shoulders in glorious, coffee-colored spirals, threaded with gold. Belatedly noting Landry’s presence, his sister-in-law blushed apricot-pink, a modern-day Eve just now coming to the realization that she and her Adam weren’t blissfully alone in the Garden of Eden after all.

      So much for a bout of lovemaking right there in the tall grass, Landry thought. He wouldn’t have put it past them, if the circumstances were right. Wouldn’t have blamed them for it, either.

      He smiled a “hello” at Brylee, reached for his hat and remembered that he’d tossed it into the back of Zane’s pickup, but the words in his head, surprisingly affable, were meant for his brother. You lucky bastard.

      “I promised this yahoo a beer,” Zane announced, still grinning, cocking a thumb toward Landry to identify him as the yahoo in question. The taut air around the couple almost snapped, like a rubber band stretched beyond its limits, and then let go. “As you can see, the man’s a little the worse for wear.”

      Although he was sure Zane hadn’t meant anything by it, the remark reminded Landry with a wallop that he’d been thrown three times, that his clothes were stiff with dust and dried sweat and a combination of the two and that his boots were caked with manure. Plenty of good old-fashioned dirt had ground itself right into his hide, filling every pore, coating every hair on his head.

      Again, it swamped him, that sense of self-consciousness mingled with some indefinable loss, a factor he’d never had to cope with before the move to Montana.

      “I’ll be fine out here on the porch,” he suggested, and instantly wished he’d kept his mouth shut, if only because the offer sounded so lame.

      Brylee smiled warmly. Although she hadn’t liked Landry when he first arrived in Parable County, she’d mellowed noticeably since last Christmas, when she and Zane had gotten married. “Don’t worry about it,” she responded, with a rueful glance at her own grimy feet. “This is a ranch, and dirt comes with the territory.”

      The screen door creaked just then, and Cleo—Zane and Brylee’s housekeeper—trundled through the gap and out onto the porch, her skin a glistening ebony, her dark eyes flashing, her gray hair partially tamed by a bandanna scarf. She looked stern, but that was a pose, Landry suspected, the ruse of a tenderhearted person trying to hold on to a little personal space.

      “Say what, Mrs. Sutton?” Cleo challenged, making it clear that she’d overheard Brylee’s statement about ranches and the inevitability of dirt. “I just now finished mopping the kitchen floor—it isn’t even dry yet—and I don’t care how much dirt it takes to make up this ranch. You’re not setting foot in my clean house until you hose those feet off good.” In the next instant, Cleo’s gaze moved over both Zane and Landry, sweeping them up into her good-natured consternation. “Same goes for the two of you. I don’t work my fingers to the bone around this place for my health, you know. And a person’s got to have standards!”

      Zane, apparently used to being lectured, simply grinned and gave the woman an affable salute of acquiescence. The discourse sounded familiar to Landry, too—he could easily imagine that warning coming from Highbridge, not quite so colorful, but with better enunciation and grammar.

      Ah, Highbridge. Yet another reason Landry fit in around here about as well as an extra toe in a narrow-soled boot. He employed a butler. What self-respecting cowboy did that?

      “You tell me what you want and I’ll bring it out here,” Cleo prattled on, hands on her hips, elbows jutting. By then, the hint of a grin had appeared in her eyes, and the corners of her mouth twitched slightly. Like Highbridge, she clearly relished stating her opinion, asked for or not.

      “Beer,” Zane replied lightly. “And make sure it’s cold, if you don’t mind.”

      Cleo narrowed her eyes, then fixed Brylee with a look. “Iced tea or lemonade for you,” she informed her crisply. “If you’re not pregnant, it’s not for lack of effort, now, is it, and we both know alcohol СКАЧАТЬ