Big Sky Summer Part 8

"I don't suppose you remember how to saddle a horse," Walker ventured, getting out of the truck, going around to open Casey's door for her and then hoisting Doolittle from the backseat to the ground.

"I never knew how in the first place," Casey responded nonchalantly, jumping down from the running board. Walker wondered if she was scared, if it was a lamebrain idea on his part, having one of the most important discussions of their lives somewhere on the open range. Maybe they ought to go inside the house, like normal people, to have their say.

Except that, to Walker, the exchange was much too important, and too sacred, to take place anywhere but under the big sky. The house, s.p.a.cious as it was, would close in around him, making it hard to breathe, let alone concentrate on the subject at hand.

"Allow me," he said with a grand gesture in the direction of the barn.

If Casey was scared, she wouldn't have let him know it. Chin high and shoulders back, she sashayed through the tall, open doorway of that barn like Annie Oakley about to perform a little trick riding and some fancy shooting in a Wild West show.

Whatever else a person might say about Casey Elder, Walker conceded silently, she had guts, no question about it. He saddled Smokey, the gelding Shane had ridden the day before, and then Mack, his own favorite. Casey trailed after him as he led both horses out of the barn.

Sunlight glistened on the animals' well-brushed coats, and Doolittle wandered over, curious about the goings-on.

Cussedly independent, Casey mounted up on her own-somewhat awkwardly, though Walker pretended not to notice that-and he put down an urge to show off a little and simply put one foot in the stirrup and swung sedately up into the saddle. The fact was, he and Brylee had grown up riding bareback, often using halters instead of bridles, and when it came to getting on or off a horse, they were as agile as a pair of Apaches.

"You can come along if you want to," he told Doolittle, who stood looking up at him, head tilted slightly to one side as he pondered this new development.

Instead of following, though, the dog turned away, walked slowly toward the porch, lapped up some water from Snidely's outside bowl and settled down for a nap in the shade.

"I'll be," Walker said.

"He knows you'll be back," Casey observed softly.

"So it seems," Walker agreed.

He looked back a couple of times as they headed for the road-one of his favorite trails snaked up into the foothills from the other side-but old Doolittle didn't move a muscle. Maybe he'd had enough excitement for one morning.

Casey, it turned out, was a natural in the saddle. She held the reins correctly, instead of sawing on them as most greenhorns did, and as they climbed the hill just across the road, Walker and Mack leading the way, she knew to lean forward over Smokey's neck instead of grasping the saddle horn in both hands and holding on for dear life as he'd half expected her to do.

Walker was proud of her, in a quiet and private way that had little or nothing to do with her status as a world-famous singer. He resettled his hat, pleased, and rode on, slowing his pace when he figured Casey was having trouble keeping up.

After twenty minutes or so, they reached the high, wide pasture overlooking the valley where his cattle, the ones he raised for beef, grazed on sweet gra.s.s and drank from Timber Creek, an offshoot of the Big Sky River.

Dismounting in a copse of maple and oak trees-there had been a cabin here once, though only part of the chimney remained, along with a few weathered floorboards with wildflowers growing between the cracks-Walker looked up at Casey, stricken by the sight of her. For the umpteenth time since they'd met, years before, during some down-at-the-heels rodeo where she'd been asked to sing the national anthem and he'd been entered in the bull-riding compet.i.tion, he thought how impossibly beautiful she was.

Casey got down off Smokey, stretched the small of her back and looked around. "Who lived here?" she asked, still holding the reins.

"My great-great-grandparents," Walker replied, and he could almost feel roots sprouting from the soles of his feet, reaching deep into the rocky but fertile ground. "This was the original homestead, where they parked the covered wagon, unhitched the oxen, dug a well and threw together a shack just before winter hit."

Casey approached a runaway thicket of peony bushes, tall as trees and laden with red blossoms and buzzing with lazy bees. "These must have been her flowers," she said, her voice wistful. "Your great-great-grandmother's, I mean."

Walker nodded. "She brought them all the way from Kansas," he answered. "Planted them that first spring, as the story goes."

Casey turned to look at him, shading her eyes from the sun with one hand. "It's a happy sorrow," she said, "seeing them untended, in this lonely place, but growing like crazy just the same."

A happy sorrow. It was a phrase Walker wouldn't have thought up in a million years, but it sounded like poetry coming from Casey. He figured she'd eventually weave it into one of her songs. He secured the reins and left Mack to graze, and did the same for Casey's horse.

"It was a hard life," he said, remembering the small gravestone hidden in the tall gra.s.s, where his ancestors had buried their three-month-old daughter after she died of scarlet fever. "But they stuck it out, made it mean something."

Casey wandered farther afield, and bent to pluck something from the ground. It was a spear of asparagus, the stray remnant of a garden that had been gone for better than a century. "It's perfect," she said, pleased.

"Grows all over the place," Walker said, pleased himself, and a little hoa.r.s.e with it. "Brylee and I used to gather asparagus by the bushel out here, take it home and boil it up for supper."

Casey stopped, gazing at him. "Is that a happy story?" she asked. "Or is it more like a tale of hard luck?"

Walker grinned, though something about her question made his throat thicken a little. "We were okay as kids," he replied. "Mom didn't take a whole lot of interest in us, but Dad was rock solid."

"I wish I'd known him."

"Me, too," Walker answered. "He'd have liked you."

Casey found a large, flat rock rising out of the gra.s.s, brushed away dirt and pine needles and sat down. "My folks died when I was a toddler," she said without a trace of self-pity. "I grew up with my paternal grandparents."

"Yes," Walker replied, joining her, since the rock was wide enough to accommodate both of them. "I think I read about that in People magazine."

Casey's smile was a little thin by then, but her lips quirked up at the corners for a moment. "You read People magazine?" she joked. "I had you pegged for a Western Horseman subscriber."

"I'm that, too," Walker admitted. "But when your face or your name is on the cover of a magazine-any magazine-I buy it and I read it."

That seemed to unsettle her slightly. She slid her palms along the thighs of her jeans, as though smoothing a skirt. "You know, of course, that there's a lot of hype out there. You can't believe everything you read, and all that."

Walker nodded, removed his hat, held it loosely between his hands. "Yep," he said. Then he grinned. "I admit I was intrigued by that tabloid story about your having a secret husband tucked away somewhere."

She drew a deep breath, let it out slowly, taking in the hardy antique flowers and the ruins of the cabin and the herd, way off in the distance. "You think that was bad?" she countered lightly. "What about the one that claimed I was abducted by aliens and my children are the result?"

Walker chuckled. "I might have believed it happened once," he joked. "But twice would stretch my credulity."

She laughed, but that was quickly followed by a barely stifled sob.

"Hey," Walker said awkwardly. "Don't cry."

For G.o.d's sake, don't cry.

She turned her head to look directly at him, her beautiful eyes moist. "I can't help it," she said. "Clare and Shane are the most important people in my life, and now I have to tell them I've been lying through my teeth since day one!"

Walker set his hat aside, took her hand, interlaced his fingers with hers. "If you need more time-"

"No," Casey broke in, glumly resolved. "I should have told them a long time ago. Putting it off would only make everything harder."

Walker was quiet for a long time, still holding her hand. Then he asked, his voice husky and pitched low, "Why didn't you, Casey? Why didn't you tell Clare and Shane that I'm their father? And why didn't you tell me the truth, right from the beginning?"

She swallowed hard, swiped at her eyes with the back of one hand, sat up a little straighter. Her chin wobbled, but she got the answer out, hard as it was to hear. "I thought you'd want us to get married."

"I did," Walker said, remembering. Hurting. "But I wouldn't have held a gun to your head, Casey. You could have said no."

"That's easy for you to say." She sniffled. "You wouldn't have needed a gun-you could have talked me into anything, including marriage, and it would have been all wrong because-because dammit, I wanted to sing, on a real stage, in front of a real audience. I had something to prove, and you, Walker Parrish, didn't need to prove a darn thing!"

"So you told me Clare was another man's child," Walker said evenly. After all these years, it still stuck in his craw, that memory.

"I'm sorry about that," Casey said. "I was young and I was confused and I just didn't know what else to do."

"You could have trusted me just a little, Case," Walker told her, sad through and through. "I might be a cowboy, and I might be a little old-fashioned, too, but I wouldn't have forced you to give up your career, move to this ranch and start ironing shirts, raising vegetables and cranking out more babies." He paused, dealing with old wounds that still hurt like h.e.l.l whenever he acknowledged them, which wasn't often. "I knew how much your music meant to you, how talented you were. Knew even then, when you were singing for peanuts, that you had a big future. I would have done my level best to help you any way I could."

Casey started crying again then, in earnest. Even the horses noticed, looking up from their gra.s.s-munching as though catching the scent of trouble on the breeze.

Walker gathered Casey in his arms, not knowing what else to do. He held her close, feeling her hot tears soaking through the fabric of his shirt, propped his chin on top of her head and waited in silence for the storm to subside. Words wouldn't help now, even if he'd known what to say. He'd probably said too much as it was.

After a while, Casey recovered her composure enough to accept the clean cotton handkerchief he handed her. She swabbed her puffy cheeks and then blew her nose, foghorn-style.

"How are we going to tell Clare and Shane the truth?" she finally asked, her voice small and her shoulders drooping a little.

"I've been thinking about that," Walker said, not holding her quite so tightly but not turning her loose, either. "It'll have to be just the four of us, in a quiet place, but there's no way to make this easy, Casey. It's a hard thing to tell, and it'll be a hard thing to hear."

She nodded, sniffled again, started to hand the handkerchief back to him in a crumpled wad, decided against that and stuffed it into her bra, where it bulged comically. "I don't think I could do this alone," she said, looking away.

Walker cupped her chin lightly, turned her face toward him, looked into the Irish-green depths of her eyes. "You don't have to do it alone," he told her.

And then, without intending to, he kissed her, a mere brush of their mouths at first. Her lips felt damp against his, and tasted of salt.

She stiffened, then opened to him, sliding her arms around his neck, drawing him closer. Need rocked him, as powerful as an earthquake deep underground, the kind that starts tsunamis, far out to sea.

The kiss deepened.

Casey moaned softly, warm against him. Curvy and pliable, the perfect fit.

Walker pulled away, got to his feet, grabbing up his hat as he moved, breathing hard and keeping his back to Casey while he fought to regain control. He felt her approach, almost flinched when she laid her hands, fingers splayed wide, on his shoulder blades. Fire raced through his system and branded his soul.

"Walker," she said. That was all, just his name, but there was a world of sorrow and regret in that one word.

"We'd better go," he said, still not turning to face her, his voice rough as gravel. "I don't know about you, but I'm on the ragged edge of doing something stupid right about now, and with our track record, you'd probably get pregnant."

She was silent for a few moments, then she slipped around in front of him, put her arms around his waist. Looking up at him with eyes full of tears, she gave a raspy chuckle. "I can see where that might be a problem for you," she confessed, "my getting pregnant, that is, but I kind of like the idea."

Of all the things Casey might have said at that moment, that was the last one he would have expected. Something inside Walker soared at the thought of Casey carrying and then bearing his child, but another part of him was downright p.i.s.sed off. What part of We're in a big fix here did she not understand?

"I've already got two kids who are bound to think, at least for a little while, that they're mistakes we tried to cover up," he said coldly, "and I'm not about to let that happen to a third."

Casey looked startled, almost as though he'd struck her. She started to say something, then caught herself and clamped her mouth shut.

Moving stiffly, she strode over to Smokey, stuck a foot in one stirrup, grabbed the saddle horn in her right hand and hauled herself up onto the gelding's back.

Walker knew he could have stated his case in a more tactful manner, but he also knew he'd been speaking the G.o.d's truth, so he locked his jaws at the hinges and mounted Mack, and he and Casey rode all the way back down the hill, across the road and into the barnyard without a single word pa.s.sing between them.

When they arrived, Brylee was sitting on the porch steps, Doolittle on one side of her, Snidely on the other.

Well, Walker fumed silently, that was just fine. Not only were he and Casey virtually at each other's throats-again-but there was an eyewitness to their folly.

Brylee stood, her wide smile fading as she sized up the situation. She slid her hands backward into the rear pockets of her jeans and came toward them.

The dogs, blessed with better sense, stayed where they were.

"Peace," Brylee said weakly, making the two-fingered hippie sign.

Walker dismounted, as did Casey, and the women remained behind while he led Mack and Smokey into the barn to remove their saddles and other tack and brush them both down. Doolittle kept him company, waiting sympathetically in the breezeway while Walker drew out ch.o.r.es he could have performed in his sleep for as long as possible.

Casey and Brylee had gone into the house; they were probably sitting in the kitchen, drinking coffee or tea, and talking about hardheaded men.

Though he would rather have avoided another encounter with Casey, however brief, that would have been an act of cowardice. He'd brought Casey to the ranch, and therefore it was his responsibility to take her back home. So he made for the porch steps, crossed to the door and stepped over the threshold, hat in hand, dog at his heels.

Sure enough, the two women were at the table, with steaming cups before them, talking in quiet voices. Naturally, they fell silent when they heard Walker's footsteps on the porch.

Casey lowered her eyes when he and Doolittle entered the kitchen, but Brylee glared at him through narrow eyes. She might as well have shouted the word fool, her thoughts were so obvious.

Walker suppressed a sigh and hung his hat on a peg. Then he ambled over to the sink, rolled up his sleeves and scrubbed his hands with the harsh yellow soap that was always waiting for him there.

That done, he picked up Doolittle's water bowl, rinsed it out under the faucet and filled it again.

Still, n.o.body said anything, though Brylee kept trying to wither him with her stare.

He scowled at her, leaned back against the counter while Doolittle lapped up water and folded his arms. "There are two sides to every story," he said, and then wished he hadn't, because now he'd given away the fact that the argument between him and Casey was still stuck under his hide like a fishhook.

"n.o.body said there weren't," Brylee informed him coldly.

Casey finally met his eyes, squaring her shoulders and jutting out her chin as she did. "If you wouldn't mind," she said, "I'd like to go home now."

"That's fine with me," Walker replied without inflection. And he gestured toward the screen door. "After you."

Casey sc.r.a.ped back her chair and got to her feet. "Thank you for the tea," she said to Brylee, both of them rendering Walker invisible in that mysterious way women have.

"I could take you back to Parable," Brylee offered. To look at her, a person would have thought she was Casey's sister, not his. She knew zip about the situation, but she'd already thrown in with Casey-that much was obvious.

Casey shook her head. "Thanks, but I know you have to get back to work. Walker can drop me off."

With that, Walker opened the screen door and held it for Casey, who blew through it like a redheaded wind.

He was a little stung when Doolittle decided to stay behind, with Brylee and her German shepherd, instead of coming along for the ride. Dammit, Walker thought, even the dog was against him.

He and Casey were both in the truck, buckled up and rolling down the driveway, before he spoke. "What did you tell Brylee?" he rasped after unsticking his jawbones.

"Nothing about Clare and Shane, if that's what you're thinking," Casey said, self-righteous as a fanatical Puritan. "I just told her you were impossible." She tossed off a mockery of a smile. "Turns out, she already knew that. Go figure."

That was the end of the day's conversation.

CHAPTER SEVEN.