Big Sky Wedding

“Let’s get you home,” Brylee said, after crouching in front of the dog and taking a casual glance at its tags.

Sure enough, he belonged to Zane. And his name was Slim. Was that some kind of cruel joke? On a surge of righteous indignation, Brylee shot like a geyser to her full height.

Snidely climbed gamely out of the creek and shook himself off, sprinkling both her and Slim with shimmering diamonds of sun-infused water, pure as crystal and freezing cold.

The march through the woods was familiar to Brylee, of course—she’d visited often, when her friend Karrie had lived on Hangman’s Bend Ranch. Back then, of course, the place had been in good repair, a working cattle spread, with a larger house and barn than most of its neighbors boasted, to be sure, but Karrie and her family had been regular people, well-grounded country folks—not pearly teethed movie stars living out some weird fantasy of getting back to the land and all that other sentimental hogwash.

By the time she, Snidely and Slim emerged into the large clearing where the house, barn and corral stood, Brylee had worked up a powerful huff.

The illustrious Mr. Sutton was outside, shirtless, evidently repairing the corral fence. His jeans rode low on his lean hips, and his chest and back were muscular, probably honed by hours in some swanky gym. Seeing Brylee and the two dogs coming out of the trees, he paused, hammer in hand, a row of nails between his lips, and watched as they approached.

“Is this your dog?” Brylee demanded furiously, when she’d come within a dozen feet of the man and then suddenly stopped in her tracks. It was as though some kind of barrier or force field had slammed down between them.

“Yep,” Zane said, after taking the nails out of his mouth and dropping them into the pocket of his beat-up jeans. They certainly didn’t fit his image, those jeans—was he trying to look as if he belonged in Montana? “He’s mine, all right.”

Brylee sputtered for a few inglorious seconds. “Did it ever occur to you to feed him once in a while?”

Zane opened his mouth, closed it again. His grin was so insolent, and so damned sexy, that she would have slapped it right off his face, if her personal principles allowed—which, of course, they didn’t.

A boy came out of the house just then, also shirtless, and sprinted toward them. “Slim!” he called jubilantly. “I wondered where you’d wandered off to.”

Zane flicked a glance at the gangly child, a preteen actually, on the verge of a rapid growth spurt. “Brylee Parrish,” he said quietly, “meet my kid brother, Nash.”

Nash looked so pleased to make her acquaintance that what remained of Brylee’s animal rights lecture died in her throat.

“Hello, Nash,” she said, after swallowing.

The boy turned shy, blushing extravagantly. “Hello,” he murmured.

Zane seemed to find the exchange mildly amusing. “Take old Slim into the house,” he told Nash quietly, “and see if you can get him to chow down on some kibble.”

Nash hesitated, glanced at Brylee again, from under the thickest eyelashes she’d ever seen on any guy—except maybe Zane himself—and whistled low to summon the dog.

The two of them vanished inside, Nash reluctantly, Slim going with the flow.

“He’s a stray,” Zane said presently. “I haven’t had him long enough to fatten him up.”

Brylee was flummoxed. She’d steamed over here on a mission of justice and mercy, and now, suddenly, she was becalmed, a ship with no wind in its sails.

“The boy or the dog?” she asked.

Zane’s smile was affable, with a twinkle to it. “Both, I guess,” he said.

By then, Brylee felt like a complete fool. She’d assumed the worst—movie stars, that disruptive, now-you-see-them, now-you-don’t class of people, rarely proved her first impression of them wrong. This one had, though, and the realization left her tongue-tied and embarrassed, wishing she hadn’t come on like the storied gangbusters, full of accusations and spitting fire.

“Oh,” she said.

Zane’s smile eased off into a sexy grin. “Is that all you have to say?” he asked, obviously enjoying her discomfort. “‘Oh’?”

Heat burned her cheeks, and she knew her eyes were flashing again. “If you’re waiting for an apology,” she said, “don’t hold your breath.”

Zane leaned in a little—she hadn’t realized how close together they were standing, though one of them must have moved—and she felt his substance, his energy, in every cell and nerve, like some kind of biochemical riot. “Now why would I expect an apology?” he drawled, though he seemed more amused than angry. “Just because you rolled onto my land like an armored tank and flat-out accused me of animal cruelty?”

Brylee blinked. Swallowed. “The dog’s ribs show,” she said lamely, after too many moments had passed. “Anyone would think—”

“He’d been going hungry for a while,” Zane finished, when her words fell away in midstream. “As it happens, he wound up in a good shelter in L.A. just a few days before I adopted him. I’ve been giving old Slim as much kibble as he can handle, Ms. Parrish, but it’s a slow process, requiring patience and understanding.”

Brylee longed to melt into a puddle, like the Wicked Witch of the West in The Wizard of Oz. She wanted to say she was sorry, too, that she’d jumped to conclusions, but her throat had constricted like the top of a drawstring bag, pulled tight.

Damn her Parrish pride, anyway. It would be her downfall for sure.

Idly, Zane stepped back, collected his shirt from a nearby fence post and shrugged into it.

For Brylee, this was both a relief and a crying shame. All that spectacular man-muscle, covered up, hidden from view. Thank heaven. Or darn it. Whichever.

He turned his attention to Snidely then, bending to favor the dog with a few pats on the head and a grin that left no doubt of his love for four-legged furry people.

On that score, at least, Brylee had misjudged Zane Sutton, no doubt about it, but she still couldn’t bring herself to apologize. It wasn’t just her pride, either—she had a vague and very disturbing sense that she’d be opening a door to a whole slew of unpredictable developments if she dared let down her guard, even for a moment.

“Come inside,” he finally said. “I can’t offer you iced tea or a mint julep, but we do have sodas and ice, and I could probably rustle up some coffee, if you’d rather have that.”

Oddly, it never occurred to Brylee to refuse the invitation. She simply followed Zane toward the house, shamelessly enjoying the rear view, while Snidely trotted along at her side, oblivious to the fact that the planet had just shifted off its axis and Ecuador could suddenly become the new north pole at any given moment.

By then, the boy, Nash, was in the kitchen, trying to look busy. He’d pulled on a T-shirt, and Slim, the slat-ribbed dog, was crunching away on a recently replenished supply of kibble.

Brylee looked around, remembering, and remembering eased some of her tension, made her smile.

Her friend Karrie’s mom, Donna, had taught both her daughter and Brylee to cook in this kitchen, imparted simple sewing skills, listened benevolently to the ceaseless girl-chatter about boys and cheerleading tryouts and prom dresses, driven them to and from school events and the movies.

“You’ve been here before,” Zane observed quietly, watching her.

His words startled Brylee out of her reverie. “Yes,” she said. “My best friend, Karrie, used to live in this house.” There was so much more to the story, of course—Donna, recognizing Brylee as what she was, basically a motherless child, had made room for her in this house, and in her heart. The Jacksons had been her second family.

Nash and Slim were both staring at Brylee now. Did she have something in her teeth? Stuck to the heel of her shoe?

Zane moved to the refrigerator—the same one that had always been in that spot, unless Brylee was mistaken—and opened the door. “What’ll it be?” he asked. “Soda? Water?”

“Nothing for me, thanks,” Brylee said, feeling a little like one of the birds who occasionally flew into her warehouse and got trapped there, wheeling and swooping in increasing desperation as it searched for a way out. “I really can’t stay— I just—”

Nash moved to the card table in the center of the room, drew back a chair with a manly flourish. “You can’t leave yet,” he said with a grin, gesturing for her to have a seat. “You’re the only person I know in this godforsaken place, except for my brother, and he’s practically a stranger.”

Brylee sat down, slightly mystified. Nash had charm, and he’d exhibited good manners by offering her a chair, but what was up with calling Montana—the place she loved best in all the earth, her soul’s true home—“godforsaken”?

“Nash is used to finer digs than this old, neglected ranch,” Zane explained dryly, when Brylee proved to be at a loss for a reply. With a weary sigh, he sat down opposite her at the rickety folding table. “You know—homeless shelters, juvenile detention centers, maybe a bunk in a rusted-out camper in somebody’s backyard now and then.”

Brylee’s eyes widened. Where she came from—which was right there in Parable County, thank you very much—those were fighting words, yet Zane’s tone wasn’t unkind, merely matter-of-fact. And she’d thought her family relationships were complicated.

Nash, left to stand like the odd man out in a game of musical chairs, leaned casually back against a counter and folded his underdeveloped arms. There was something very reminiscent of Zane about the posture. The man-child smiled winningly and said, “As you can see by the way my brother treats me, I am in drastic need of a friend.”