Cowboy Ever After: Big Sky Mountain

“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 butter-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 grass 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 glass 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 glass 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.”

CHAPTER THREE (#u01e1452d-cfc2-529f-9208-b15cd31f0d4c)

THE NEXT MORNING after church, Kendra gave in to the pressures of fate—and her very persistent daughter—and drove across town to Paws for Reflection, the private animal shelter run by a woman named Martie Wren.

Martie, an institution in Parable, oversaw the operation out of an office in her small living room, surviving entirely on donations and the help of numerous volunteers. She’d converted the two large greenhouses in back to dog-and-cat housing, though she also took in birds and rabbits and even the occasional pygmy goat. The place was never officially closed, even on Sundays and holidays.

A sturdy woman with kindly eyes and a shock of unruly gray hair, Martie was watering the flower beds in her front yard when Kendra and Madison arrived, parking on the street.

“Tara said you might be stopping by,” Martie sang out happily, waving and then hurrying over to shut off the faucet and wind the garden hose around its plastic spool.