Big Sky Summer

Since then, Casey had had plenty of second thoughts, though she’d never actually regretted the decision to settle in a small town where it was still safe for kids to go trick-or-treating on Halloween, where everybody knew everybody else and people not only went to church on Sundays and then had breakfast over at the Butter Biscuit Café, but voted in every election.

It was living in close proximity to Walker Parrish that made her question this particular choice. By doing so, she’d put the secret she’d guarded for years in obvious jeopardy.

Frowning thoughtfully, Casey left the bathroom, crossed to her big, lonely bed and switched out the lamp on the nightstand.

Was it possible that, on some level, she’d wanted the truth to come out?

CHAPTER THREE

IRRITABLE AFTER A RESTLESS NIGHT, Walker spoke briefly with his longtime foreman, Al Pickens, leaving the orchestration of yet another fairly routine workday on the ranch to him. Climbing into his truck, the backseat jam-packed with boxes of Brylee’s homemade bread, each loaf carefully wrapped in shining foil and tied with a ribbon for the church bake sale, it occurred to Walker—and not for the first time—that he was more of a figurehead than a real rancher.

Sure, he ran things, made all the major decisions, personally hauled badass bulls and even badder broncos to rodeos all over the western United States and parts of Canada, led roundups and rode fence lines here at the homestead, signed the paychecks and paid the bills. But, in point of fact, his crew was so competent that they could manage without him, any day of the week.

He headed for Parable, a thirty-mile drive, with his windows rolled down and a worn Johnny Cash CD blaring out of the dashboard speakers, tapping out the familiar rhythms on the steering wheel with one hand as he drove. There were some days, he thought wryly, when nothing but songs like “Folsom Prison Blues” and “A Boy Named Sue” could keep a man’s mind off his problems.

When he reached the same small clapboard church he’d sat in the day before, watching Boone and Tara tie the proverbial knot, the Sunday services were still going on. He found a parking place in the crowded gravel lot, and not without difficulty, as the Reverend Walter Beaumont was a popular preacher.

Since the day was warm and the congregation wouldn’t spring for air-conditioning, the doors were propped open, and the voices of those gathered to make a joyful noise before the Lord spilled out into the sunshine, curiously comforting simply because the words of the old hymn were so familiar.

Spotting the booths set up in back of the church—members who had probably attended the early service were out there lining up goods for the bake sale—Walker briefly recalled the Sundays of his youth. His mother had branded the whole idea of religion as pure hypocrisy—and, in her case, that was certainly true—but their dad had carted him and Brylee off to a similar place of worship over in Three Trees every single week until they reached the “age of reason,” that being, by Barclay Parrish’s reckoning, twelve.

Life had its rough patches, the old man had quietly maintained, and, in his opinion, a person could take the dogma or leave it, but over the long run, they’d be better off believing than not believing. If nothing else, he’d figured, Walker and Brylee would lead better lives just for trying.

Brylee had continued to attend services, on and off, but Walker had gone his own way when he was given the option. He wasn’t a believer or a nonbeliever—it seemed obvious to him that nobody really knew what the celestial deal was—but he was grateful for the training and the Bible verses he’d had to memorize for Sunday school just the same. Those lines of Scripture had a way of popping into his mind when he needed them.

Opal Dennison, soon to be Opal Beaumont since she was engaged to the preacher, beamed at him from behind one of the booths. A tall, handsome black woman, Opal carried herself with an easygoing dignity and served as matchmaker and mother confessor to half the county. Rumor had it that she’d been directly involved in hooking up not only Boone and Tara, but Hutch and Kendra Carmody, and Slade and Joslyn Barlow, as well.

A part of Walker tended to turn nervous whenever he encountered Opal—he might suddenly find himself married if he wasn’t careful.

She approached as he was opening the back door of the truck and reaching in for the first box of Brylee’s homemade bread.

“Mercy,” Opal marveled, her eyes widening a little at the sheer bounty. “Talk about the miracle of the loaves and fishes. Without the fishes, of course.”

Walker grinned at her. “Brylee got a little carried away,” he said, recognizing this as an understatement of no small consequence. “Where do you want this?”

Opal pointed out a nearby booth, consisting of a portable table covered with a checkered vinyl cloth and shaded by an old patio umbrella with its pole held in place by a pyramid of cinder blocks. A charitable frown creased her forehead as she walked alongside Walker, subtly herding him from here to there in case he got lost between the truck and the backyard bake sale. “I didn’t see Brylee at the wedding yesterday,” she said before adding in a confidential whisper, “I worry about that girl.”

Walker set the first box down on the appointed table and started back for another. Opal stuck with him, marching along in her sensible shoes and her flowery dress, which she’d probably sewn herself.

“Me, too,” he admitted, thinking admissions like that one came all too easily with Opal. She did have a way about her.

Picking up the second of three boxes brimming with wrapped and beribboned loaves, Walker raised an eyebrow and grinned. “You keeping attendance records at weddings these days, Miss Opal?” he asked.

She laughed. “I’ve got what you might call a photographic memory,” she explained, sunlight glistening on the lenses of her old-fashioned eyeglasses. “It’s a God-given gift—if anybody’s missing from anywhere, I know it right away.” She paused, ruminating. “It’s time that sister of yours got her act together, as far as love and marriage are concerned. And past time she put what happened with Hutch Carmody behind her once and for all and moved on.”

“I couldn’t agree more,” Walker said on the return trip to the booth.

“Not that you’re doing all that great in the love department yourself,” Opal observed, benignly forthright. “You’re not getting any younger, you know. Living out there in that big house, all alone except for your sister and her dog—haven’t you noticed just how happy your good friends Slade, Hutch and Boone are these days?”

“It would be hard to miss that,” Walker allowed with another grin, this one slightly wicked, “what with Joslyn and Kendra coming a-crop with new babies and all.”

Opal smiled widely, and mischief danced in her eyes. “That’s just the way it should be,” she said with confidence.

Walker set down the box of bread and returned to his truck for the last one.

Again, Opal accompanied him every step of the way, there and back again.

“I wouldn’t dream of arguing with you, Miss Opal,” Walker said as they covered the final leg of the journey.

“Good,” she answered, “because you wouldn’t win.”

He laughed, tugged at the brim of his hat, intending to bid her farewell and get out of there, reasoning that if he headed straight for the Butter Biscuit Café, he might beat some of the after-church rush, especially since it was safe to assume a large portion of folks from the other local denominations would gravitate to the bake sale.

Opal caught hold of his shirtsleeve. “Don’t you go rushing off. These other ladies and me, we could use some help setting up extra tables.”

Walker suppressed a sigh. He couldn’t turn Opal down—that would go against his grain and she knew it—but he did narrow his eyes at her so she’d know he had his suspicions concerning what she might be up to.

She just laughed and pointed him toward a half-assembled booth with boxes of fresh strawberries stacked all around it. It was no big surprise when Casey Elder came out of the church kitchen carrying a tray loaded with shortcake to go with the strawberries. Seeing Walker, she stopped in midstep, rummaged up a smile and then marched straight toward him.

“Hello, Walker,” she said sweetly.

Walker had set his hat aside and crouched to wrestle with a table leg that refused to unfold. That put him at a physical disadvantage, the way he saw it. “Casey,” he replied with a brief nod and no smile. After all, this woman and her stubborn streak had cost him the better part of a night’s sleep—and not just this once, either.

Her mouth quirked up at one corner, and she cast a glance in Opal’s direction before meeting his gaze again. “This must be some kind of record,” she said. “Walker Parrish setting foot on church property twice in two days, I mean.”

He got the table leg unjammed with a hard jerk of one hand, straightened, hat in hand. Walker rarely made small talk—there wasn’t much call for it on a ranch, working with a bunch of seasoned cowboys—and he didn’t have a quip at the ready.

He felt heat climb his neck and throb behind his ears.

Opal whisked over and, with a billowy flourish, spread a cotton cloth over the rickety table before vanishing again. Casey set the tray of shortcakes down with a knowing and possibly annoyed little smile.

“I’m sorry,” she murmured without looking at Walker.

The interlude gave him time to recover some of his equilibrium, and he was secretly grateful, though he wasn’t sure to whom. “For what?” he asked calmly. Oh, yeah, Mr. Suave-and-Sophisticated, that was him.

“Giving you a hard time just now,” Casey answered, meeting his gaze but keeping her hands busy fussing with the cellophane covering all those little yellow rounds of shortcake. “It was nice of you to help with the table and everything.”

Walker felt his Adam’s apple travel the length of his throat and back down again, like mercury surging in a thermometer, and hoped his ears weren’t glowing bright red. He was a confident man, at home in his own hide and stone-sure of his own mind, but something about this ordinary exchange made him swear he’d reverted to puberty in the space of a few moments. “That’s all right,” he managed, apropos of whatever. The appropriate answer, of course, would have been something along the lines of You’re welcome.

Everything seemed to go still around him and Casey as they stood there, looking at each other in the shade of half a dozen venerable oak and maple trees, the new-mown lawn under their feet. Birds didn’t sing, and the voices of the bake-sale ladies and the congregation inside the church faded to a mere hum. Right then, Walker would have bet the earth had stopped turning and the universe had ceased expanding.

There was so much he wanted, needed, to say to this woman, but his throat was immovable, like a cement mixer with its contents left to dry out and form concrete.

Fortunately—or unfortunately, the jury was still out on that one—church finally let out and people spilled into the yard, streaming colorfully along both sides of the building and through the rear doors, too.

It was Shane who broke the spell, jarring the whole of Creation back into a lurching motion with a happy “Hey, Walker—can you have breakfast with us, after the bake sale is over? Doris is making stacks of blueberry pancakes, and there are always too many—”

Clare appeared at her brother’s side, equally insistent. “Please?” she added. “Mitch will be there, too, and he’s probably planning on bugging Mom about going on the road again. You could run interference!”