Big Sky Mountain Part 3

Lucy barked joyously, her brown eyes luminous with impromptu adoration. She tongued the window where Madison's right palm rested.

Tara laughed. "See?" she said, giving Kendra a light elbow to the ribs. "It's fate."

"I'll get you for this," Kendra told her friend with an undertone.

"No, you'll thank me." Tara beamed, all confidence again. "I'm counting on Emma to win you over." She whispered that last part.

They practically had to drag Madison away from the car, and the dog, each adult gripping one of her small hands as they approached the entrance to the b.u.t.ter Biscuit Cafe.

The place was rocking, as always, with dishes clinking and waitresses rushing back and forth and the jukebox blaring an old Randy Travis song.

All the noise and busyness subsided though, at least for Kendra, when her gaze found and landed unerringly on Hutch Carmody.

He sat alone at the counter, ridiculously handsome in ordinary jeans, a white shirt and black boots. A plate sat in front of him, containing half a cheeseburger, a few French fries and some pickles.

It wouldn't have been so awkward if he hadn't noticed Kendra-or at least, if he'd pretended not to notice her-but he turned toward her immediately, as though equipped with Kendra-detecting radar.

A slow smile lifted his mouth at one corner and his greenish-blue eyes sparked with amused interest.

Madison rushed straight toward him, as if they were old friends. "We're getting a dog!" she piped. "Well, maybe."

Hutch grinned down at the child, his expression softening a little, full of a kindness Kendra had never seen in him before, not even in their most private and tender moments. The man definitely had a way with kids.

"Is that so?" he asked companionably. "Is this dog purple, like your kangaroo?"

Madison giggled at this question. "No, silly," she said. "Dogs are never purple!"

Hutch chuckled. "Neither are kangaroos, in my experience. Not that we have a whole lot of them hopping around the great state of Montana."

"They mostly live in Australia," Madison told him solemnly. "Rupert is only purple because he's a toy."

"I guess that explains it," Hutch replied, his gaze rising slowly to reconnect with Kendra's. Electricity arced, potent, between them. "I'm glad to have the purple kangaroo question settled. It's been troubling me a lot."

And that wasn't the only thing he'd been wondering about, Kendra suddenly realized. He wanted to know how she'd managed to produce a child without ever being pregnant.

As if that were any of his business.

"h.e.l.lo, Hutch," Kendra said, her voice strangely wooden.

He merely nodded.

Tara spoke up. "How have you been?" she asked him nervously.

Something flickered in Hutch's eyes; it was obvious that he'd figured out what Tara really wanted to know. "I've been just fine, Tara," he replied evenly and without rancor. "Except, of course, for that whole non-wedding thing."

Tara blushed.

So did Kendra.

"G-good," Tara said.

"We'd better place our order," Kendra added, and immediately felt like a complete fool. A well-spoken person otherwise, she never seemed to know what to say around Hutch. "B-before the cafe gets any busier, I mean-"

"Plus Lucy's locked up in the red car outside," Madison put in.

"Plus that," Kendra said lamely.

"Lucy?" Hutch asked, raising one eyebrow.

"My dog," Tara explained.

"Right," Hutch answered. His gaze remained on Kendra, stirring up all sorts of totally unwanted memories, like the way his hands felt on her bare thighs or the touch of his lips gliding softly over the tops of her b.r.e.a.s.t.s. "Nice to see you again," he added casually.

When he looked at her that way, Kendra always felt as though her clothes were made of cellophane, and that got her hackles up. Not to mention her nipples, which, thankfully, were well hidden under the loose fabric of her T-shirt.

Even though she turned away quickly and began studying the big menu board on the wall behind the cash register, Kendra was still acutely aware of Hutch, of little Madison, who so clearly adored him, and of Tara, who was trying to pick up the dangling conversational thread.

"Rodeo Days are almost upon us," Tara said brightly. Every Independence Day weekend since the beginning of time, Parable had hosted the county rodeo, fireworks and carnival. People came from miles around to eat barbecued pork and beef in the park, root for their favorite cowboys and barrel-racing cowgirls, and ride the Ferris wheel and the Whirly-Gig. "The cleanup committee is looking for volunteers. Shall I put your name down to help out, Hutch?"

The woman was wasted as a chicken rancher, Kendra thought, pretending to puzzle between the cafe's famous corn-bread ca.s.serole and deep-fried catfish. Tara should have been selling ice to penguins.

"Sure," she heard Hutch say.

Kendra settled on the corn-bread ca.s.serole, preferring to avoid deep-fried anything, slanted a glance at Tara and raised her voice a little to place the order with a waitress. "To go, please," she added, perhaps a touch pointedly.

She heard Hutch chuckle, low and gruff.

What was funny?

Tara edged over to Kendra's side, digging in her purse for money.

"My treat," Kendra said, watching out of the corner of her eye as Madison tore herself out of Hutch's...o...b..t and joined the women in front of the cash register.

The food was packed for transport, handed over and paid for, all in due course. As they were leaving, Madison turned back to wave at Hutch.

"I like that cowboy man," she announced, to all and sundry, her little voice ringing like a silver bell at Christmas.

An affectionate group chuckle rippled through the cafe and Kendra hid a sigh behind the smile she turned on her daughter. "Let's go," she said, taking Madison's small and somewhat grubby hand in hers before they crossed the street to get to Kendra's Volvo.

"Meet you at your place," Tara called, unlocking her car door and then laughing as she wrestled the eager puppy back so she could slide into the driver's seat and take the wheel.

Kendra nodded and, when the Walk sign flashed, she and Madison started across the street.

"Don't you like the cowboy man, Mommy?" Madison asked, wrinkling her face against the bright dazzle of afternoon sunshine.

The question surprised Kendra so much that she nearly stopped right there in the middle of the road. "Now why on earth would you ask such a thing, Madison Rose Shepherd?" she asked, keeping her tone light, almost teasing.

"If he looks at you," Madison observed, as they stepped up onto the sidewalk and started toward the Volvo, "you look away."

Thinking it was uncanny, the things children not only noticed but could verbalize, Kendra turned up her inner-smile dial a notch and squeezed Madison's hand gently. "Do I?" she countered, knowing full well that she did.

Madison nodded. "He looks at you a lot, too," she added.

Mercifully they'd reached the car, and the next few minutes were taken up with settling Madison in her booster seat and placing the take-out bag carefully on the floor, so the food inside wouldn't spill.

A four-year-old's attention span being what it was, Kendra had reason to hope the subject would have changed by the time she'd buckled herself in behind the wheel and started the car with an unintended roar of the motor.

"Do you know if the cowboy man likes dogs?" Madison ventured, from her perch in the backseat.

Kendra calmly took her foot off the gas pedal, shifted into Drive and steered carefully into the nonexistent traffic. "Yes, I think so," she replied, as matter-of-factly as she could.

"That's good," Madison said happily.

Kendra wasn't about to pursue that observation. "Have you ever been to a rodeo?" she asked, a way of deflecting the topic away from dogs and Hutch Carmody.

"What's a rodeo?" Madison asked.

Kendra took the short drive home to describe the phenomenon in words her small daughter might be expected to understand.

"Oh," Madison said when Kendra was finished. "Will the cowboy man be there?"

LUCY THE GOLDEN retriever turned out to be a real charmer, with her b.u.t.ter-colored fur and those saintly brown eyes dancing with intermittent mischief.

After supper, served as planned at the metal table beside the rose garden, Madison and the pup ran madly around the yard, celebrating green gra.s.s and vivid colors and the cool breeze of a summer evening.

Watching them, Tara smiled. "I'm sorry if I put you on the spot before," she said to Kendra, after taking a sip from her gla.s.s of iced tea. "About Lucy's sister, I mean."

"That was her birth mother's name," Kendra reflected, watching the child and the dog as they played in the gathering twilight.

Tara set the gla.s.s down. "What? Lucy?"

Kendra shook her head. "No," she said, very softly. "Emma. Do you suppose Madison remembers her mother?"

"You are Madison's mother," Tara replied.

"Tara," Kendra said wearily.

"From what you've told Joslyn and me, Madison's been in foster care since she was a year old. How could she remember?"

Kendra lifted one shoulder slightly, then let it fall. "It seems like a pretty big coincidence that Madison would choose that particular name. She must have overheard it somewhere."

"Probably," Tara allowed. Then she added, "Kendra, look at me."

Kendra shifted her gaze from drinking in the sight of Madison and Lucy, frolicking against a backdrop of blooming flowers of every hue, to Tara's concerned face.

"You're not afraid she'll come back, are you?" Tara prompted, almost in a whisper. "This Emma person, I mean, and try to take Madison away?"

Kendra shook her head. She was at once comforted and saddened by the knowledge that Madison's biological mother hadn't wanted her baby enough to fight for her.

The woman had demanded money, naturally, but she'd signed off readily enough once Jeffrey's American lawyers got the point across that the buying and selling of babies was illegal.

"She's relinquished all rights to Madison," she finally answered.

Tara sighed. "It's hard to understand some people," she said.

"Impossible," Kendra agreed. Oddly, though, she wasn't thinking of Madison's birth mom anymore, but of Hutch.

The man was a mystery, an enigma.

He fractured women's hearts with apparent impunity-there always seemed to be another hopeful waiting in the wings, certain she'd be the exception to the rule-and yet kids, dogs and horses saw nothing in him to fear and everything to love.

Was he actually a good man, underneath all that bad-boy mojo and easy charm?

"Still planning to sell this place, then?" Tara asked with a gesture of one hand that took in the mansion as well as the grounds.

Kendra nodded. "I'll be putting the proceeds in trust for Madison," she said. She hadn't told Joslyn and Tara everything, but they both knew Jeffrey had fathered the little girl. "It's rightfully hers."

Tara absorbed that quietly and took another sip from her iced tea. "You won't miss it? The money, I mean? Living in the biggest and fanciest house in town?"

Kendra's smile was rueful. "I'm not broke, Tara," she said. "I've racked up a lot of commissions since I started Shepherd Real Estate." She looked back over one shoulder at the looming structure behind them. "As for missing this house, no, I won't, not for a moment. It's a showplace, not a home."

Tara didn't answer. She seemed to be musing, mulling something over.

"So," Kendra said, "how's the chicken ranch coming along?"

At that, Tara rolled her beautiful eyes. "It's a disaster," she answered with honest good humor. "The nesting-house roof is sagging, the hens aren't laying-I suspect that's because the roosters are secretly gay-and Boone Taylor still refuses to plant shrubbery to hide that eyesore of a trailer he lives in so it won't be the first thing I see when I look out my kitchen window every morning."

"Regrets?" Kendra asked gently. Madison and Lucy seemed to be winding down; moving in slow motion as the shadows thickened. After a bath and a story, Madison would sleep soundly.

Tara immediately shook her head. "No," she said. "It's hard, but I'm a long way from giving up."

"Good," Kendra said with a smile. "Because I'd feel guilty if you were having second thoughts, considering I was the one who sold you the place."

"You might have warned me about the neighbors," Tara joked.

"Boone isn't so bad," Kendra felt honor-bound to say. She'd known him since childhood, known his late wife, Corrie, too. He'd lost interest in life for a long time after Corrie's death from breast cancer a few years back, but last November he'd up and run for sheriff and gotten himself elected by a country mile. "He's just stubborn, like most of the men around here. That's what gets them through the hard times."

Tara's eyes widened a little. "Does that apply to Hutch, too?"

Kendra stood up, beckoned to her tired daughter. "Time to get ready for bed," she called to Madison, who meandered slowly toward her-proof in itself that she was exhausted. Like most small children, she normally resisted sleep with all her might, lest she miss something.

The puppy trotted over to Tara, nuzzling her knee, and she laughed as she bent to ruffle her ears.

"If you think Lucy's perfect," she said, instead of goodbye, "just wait till you meet her sister."