Big Sky Wedding

Nash dragged back the second folding chair, which completed the dining ensemble, and fell to the seat with a sigh. “It’s not so bad,” he said, taking Zane by surprise. Had the kid actually said something civil? “Anyway, beggars can’t be choosers. That’s what my mom always tells me. When I can find her, that is.”

“You’re not a beggar, Nash,” Zane said, looking up from the computer screen, which indicated that he had a shitload of emails waiting for him. A daunting prospect, since at least eight of them were from his ex-wife, Tiffany. Tiffany. What had he been thinking, marrying that woman-child? Maybe he’d give her the monumental water bed; God knew, she’d get plenty of use out of it, and maybe even sleep once in a while. “You’ve had a run of hard luck, that’s all. It happens to the best of us.”

“With me, it’s a lifestyle,” Nash said, leaning back indolently, though his eyes were alert for any sign that trouble might be about to land on him like a cougar dropping out of a tree.

“You could look at it that way,” Zane replied, “if you were inclined to feel sorry for yourself. You’ve had it tough, but so have lots of other people. What matters is where you go from here, what you do next. When you get right down to it, it seems to me, almost everything hinges on what attitude you decide to take.”

Nash widened his eyes, and his mouth had a scornful set to it. “What are you—some kind of rah-rah motivational speaker now?”

“I’m your brother. You can keep up the act for as long as you want, but it’s basically a waste of energy, because, trust me, I can outlast you.” Zane paused, letting his words sink in. “Also, I know a thing or two about having a no-account for a father myself, as it happens. And that means I understand you better than you think I do.”

Nash’s face, so like his own and, for that matter, like Landry’s, too, hardened in all its planes and angles. Once the boy grew into himself, he’d be a man to be reckoned with.

“Dad’s not a no-account,” he retorted coldly.

“You have a right to your opinion,” Zane answered. “And I have a right to mine.”

Nash slammed one palm down hard on top of the rickety table, causing the dog to jump in alarm. “What’s that supposed to mean?” he demanded.

“Exactly what it sounded like it meant—you have a right to your opinion. Mine happens to differ a little, it would seem. And don’t scare the dog again—he’s been through enough as it is.”

“Dad’s made a few mistakes, but he’s not a bum,” Nash said, but he lacked conviction. The sidelong look he gave Slim was genuinely remorseful. “Sorry, boy,” he muttered, under his breath.

“He is what he is.” Zane spoke in a moderate tone, but no power on earth could have gotten him to make Jess Sutton out to be more than he was. The man was good-looking, charming to the max and absolutely useless in the real world, an overage Peter Pan.

“You sound just like Landry,” Nash accused, flaring up again. “Both of you are full of yourselves, the high and mighty movie star and Mr. Moneybags. I couldn’t believe the things Landry said, right to Dad’s face!”

“Guess that’s better than saying them behind his back,” Zane observed diplomatically. “Maybe you had a different experience with the old man than Landry and I did, growing up. We saw him every few years, when he needed a couch to sleep on between wives and girlfriends. When he did have a few bucks in his pocket, it was only because one of his scams had finally panned out, and he sure as hell never shared it with Mom.”

Nash sat stony-faced and still. They were at a standoff, obviously, neither one of them willing to take back anything they’d said, though Zane, for his part, was beginning to wish that he’d kept his opinions to himself. If it comforted the kid to make-believe the old man had his best interests at heart, well, where was the harm in that?

Nash scowled on, two bright patches burning on his otherwise pale cheeks. Zane didn’t look away, nor did he speak.

“He could have changed,” Nash finally said. “Dad, I mean.”

“Yeah,” Zane agreed, after unlocking his jawbones so he could open his mouth at all. “Or not.”

Nash leaned forward, both hands flat on the tabletop now, fingers splayed. At least he didn’t make a loud noise or a fast move and scare the dog again.

“Look,” the kid ground out, eyes narrowed, breath quick and shallow, “I didn’t ask to come here, to Butthole Creek or whatever this place is called, all right? I didn’t ask to be dumped off on Landry’s doorstep, either. So don’t go thinking I’m some poor orphan who needs to be preached at, okay?”

“Far be it from me to preach,” Zane said calmly.

Nash glared even harder. “In the movies, you always play an easygoing cowboy with a slow grin and a fast draw. Now, all of a sudden, you’re talking like some college professor or something.”

“That first part,” Zane responded, “is called ‘acting.’ It was my job.”

“Did you go to college?” From Nash’s tone, he might have been asking, Did you rob a bank—mug an old lady—kick a helpless animal?

“Now and then,” Zane replied. “Mostly, though, I just read a lot.”

There was another pause. Then, “You think you’re better than Dad—better than me.” Nash Sutton was obstinate to the core—just like both his older brothers.

“There’s only one man I try to be better than, and that’s the one I was last week, last month or last year. It’s a simple creed, but it serves me well, most of the time.” Privately, Zane wondered where those lofty words had come from and, at the same time, realized they were true. He wanted to be himself, not the movie cowboy with the smooth lines, too much money and the steady supply of silicone-enhanced women, Tiffany included.

It was time to get real, damn it.

Another long silence stretched between them, broken when Nash finally asked, “Am I going to have to sleep on the floor?”

Zane grinned, aware that the tension had eased up a little and thus felt relieved. Although he could be pretty hardheaded—bull-stubborn, his mom would have said—he wasn’t unreasonable. He liked people and preferred to get along with them when he could. Especially when they were kin—like Nash.

“No,” he said. “You won’t have to sleep on the floor. We’ll head into town and buy a couple of decent beds in a little while—with luck, we’ll be able to haul them home in the back of the truck and set them up right away. If that plan doesn’t work out for some reason, you can use the air mattress in the meantime.”

“Beds,” Nash ruminated. He seemed wistful now, but that might be an act. “With sheets and blankets and pillows and everything?”

Where in hell had this kid been sleeping? Zane wondered that and many other things. “With sheets and blankets and everything,” he confirmed, hoping the boy didn’t notice the slight catch in his voice.

Nash’s grin flashed, Landry-like. Zane-like.

There was certainly no question of his paternity. He was Jess Sutton’s kid, all right, full of bravado and brains and smart-ass attitudes. Were there other siblings out there? Zane wondered, as he often did. Did he and Landry and Nash have sisters and brothers they knew nothing about?

It seemed more than possible.

“Let’s go, then,” Nash said. He actually seemed eager now.

Zane, not at all sure he wasn’t being shined on, was unaccustomed to power-shopping—or any shopping at all, really, since Cleo or some assistant had done most of that for him.

Until now.

The furniture store in Three Trees agreed to deliver the beds, mattresses and box springs, dressers and bureaus later that same day, which was a good thing, because by the time he and Nash were done filling several carts at the big discount store out on the highway, there wasn’t an inch of space left in the back of Zane’s truck.

Even with the two of them working, it took twenty minutes just to carry all the bags and boxes inside and pile them in the far corner of the kitchen to be dispersed to other parts of the house later on.

Nash, evidently benefiting from the heavy dose of retail therapy, rustled through the loot until he found a towel, a bottle of liquid soap, new jeans, a long-sleeved gray sweatshirt, socks and underwear that actually fit him and, finally, boots.

He disappeared into a nearby bathroom—there were several in the house, but the others were in various states of rust and wreckage—and, soon after, Zane heard the shower running.

Nash was in there so long that Zane had time to log back on to his laptop and wade through his emails. He skipped over the ones from Tiffany, replied with regrets to half a dozen party invitations and deleted the obvious sales pitches. There were three missives from his agent, Sam Blake, each one more exasperated than the last. “Damn it,” Sam had written, with a lot of caps and punctuation marks, he had “the role of a lifetime” lined up for Zane. All he had to do was get off this stupid hick-kick he was on, whatever it was, hustle back to L.A. and sign on the bottom line.

Zane sighed, decided to reply later and opened the last of the lineup, a virtual ear-boxing from Cleopatra Livingston, his former housekeeper. Where the dickens did he think she was going to find another job, she demanded, at her age, and in a tanked economy, no less. And what in blazes gave him the idea that he could get by without her? Who was going to cook his meals and wash and iron his shirts? When she wasn’t around, she further declared, he tended to be careless about things like that.

Grinning slightly, Zane picked up his phone again. Keyed in Cleo’s number. She didn’t carry a cell, so he’d have to reach her at home. If she didn’t answer—a possibility that had its merits, given the mood she’d been in when she wrote that email—he’d leave a message.

And say what? That he was sorry? That he’d send more money? That she could go on living in his condo until he got around to selling it? Only if he wanted to piss her off all over again by making her feel like a charity project.

“It’s about damn time you called me!” Cleo boomed into her receiver, probably one of those bulky, old-fashioned ones, broad-jumping right over “howdy” and straight into giving him seven kinds of hell.

“I left a note,” Zane said. Now there was a half-assed explanation.