Cowboy Ever After: Big Sky Mountain

As a little girl, lonely and adrift, tolerated by her grandmother rather than loved, Kendra had longed for a father even more than she had for a dog or a kitten. She could still feel the ache of that singular yearning to be carried, laughing, on strong shoulders, to feel protected and cherished and totally safe.

She was all grown up now, perfectly capable of protecting and cherishing her daughter as well as looking after herself and a certain golden retriever puppy in the bargain. But could she be both mother and father to her little girl?

Was she, and the love she offered, enough?

“I don’t cry when I’m happy,” Madison said as Kendra pulled the car back out onto the road. “I laugh when I’m happy.”

“Makes sense,” Kendra conceded, laughing herself.

They drove on to Three Trees, parked in front of the furniture store and hastened inside, hand in hand.

And they found the perfect bed almost immediately—it was twin-size, made of gleaming brass, with four high posts and a canopy frame on top. A dresser, a bureau and two night tables, all French provincial in style, completed the ensemble.

Kendra paid for their purchases—the pieces were to be delivered the next day, bright and early—and before they knew it, they were almost home again.

Madison, seemingly deep in thought for most of the drive, piped up as they pulled into the driveway. “Mommy, we forgot to buy a bed for you.”

“I already have one, honey,” Kendra responded, stopping the car alongside the guesthouse. She’d selected a few modest pieces from the mansion to take along to the new place. Most of the furniture in the main house was too big and too fancy for the simple colonial. There was a queen-size bed in one of the guest rooms that would work, a floral couch in the study, and they could use the table and chairs from Opal’s old apartment.

Kendra wanted to leave room for some new things, too.

She parked the car and turned Madison loose, and they raced each other to the guest cottage, where Daisy met them at the door, barking a happy greeting.

Kendra set aside her purse, washed her hands, and searched the cottage fridge for the makings of an evening meal. She was chopping the vegetables for a salad, to which she would add leftover chicken breasts, also chopped, when she heard a vehicle coming up the driveway.

Peering out the kitchen window, she saw Hutch Carmody getting out of his truck.

Her stomach lurched and her heartbeat quickened as she hurriedly wiped her hands on a dish towel and went outside. Daisy and Madison, who had been playing in the kitchen moments before, rushed out to greet him.

Soon they were all over him.

He laughed at their antics and swung Madison off the ground and up onto his shoulders, where she clung, laughing, too.

The last of the afternoon sunlight caught in their hair—Hutch’s a butternut color, Madison’s like copper flames—and the dog circled them, barking her excitement.

Kendra couldn’t help being struck by the sight of the man and the little girl and the dog, looking so happy, so right.

She went outside.

“I was here earlier,” Hutch told her, easing Madison off his back and setting her on her feet, where she jumped, reaching up, wanting to be lifted up again. “You weren’t home.”

Kendra couldn’t speak for a moment, knowing, as she somehow did, that she might never get the image of the three of them together out of her head. It had been unspeakably beautiful, like some otherworldly vision of what family life could be.

“Hello?” Hutch teased, when she didn’t say anything, standing close to her now, his head tipped a little to one side, like his grin. All the while, Madison was trying to climb him like a bean pole and he finally swung her back onto his shoulders.

“Come in,” Kendra heard herself say, her voice all croaky and strange.

He nodded and followed her into the guest cottage, ducking so Madison wouldn’t bump her head on the door frame. This time when he put the child down, she seemed content just to hover nearby.

He accepted the chair Kendra offered him at the small dining table and the coffee she brought him—black, the way he liked it.

Funny, the things you didn’t forget about a person—mostly small and ordinary stuff, like coffee preferences and the way they always smelled of sun-dried cloth, even after a day spent hauling cattle out of mud holes or digging postholes.

Kendra gave herself a mental shake, sent a protesting Madison off to wash her hands and face before supper. Daisy, of course, tagged along with her small mistress, though she cast a few glances back at Hutch as she went.

“Join us for supper?” Kendra asked, hoping she sounded—well—neighborly.

Hutch shook his head. “No, thanks,” he said, offering no further explanation, which was like him.

Kendra could hear Madison in the bathroom, running water in the sink, splashing around, talking non-stop to Daisy about the new house and the new bed and whether or not they’d be allowed to watch a DVD that night before they had to go to bed.

“Why are you here?” she finally asked very quietly. And this time, it wasn’t a challenge. She was too tired for challenges, too wrung-out emotionally from the things Madison had said in the car.

Hutch sighed.

The distant splashing continued, as did the child-to-dog chatter.

“I’m not entirely sure,” he said at some length, taking Kendra aback a little.

She couldn’t remember one single instance in all the time she’d known Hutch Carmody when he hadn’t been completely sure of everything and everybody, especially himself.

“That’s helpful,” she said mildly.

Any moment now Madison would be back in the room, thereby curtailing anything but the most mundane conversation.

“Joslyn tells me there’s a cleanup day over at Pioneer Cemetery on Saturday,” he finally said, after casting about visibly for something to say. “There’ll be a town picnic afterward, like always, and, well, I was just wondering if you and Madison and Daisy might be interested in going along.” He paused, cleared his throat. “With me.”

Kendra was astounded, not so much by the invitation as by Hutch’s apparent nervousness. Was he afraid she’d say no?

Or was he afraid she’d say yes?

“Okay,” she agreed, as a compromise between the two extremes. She wanted, she realized, to see how he’d react.

Would he backpedal?

Instead he favored her with a dazzling grin, rose from his chair and passed her to set his coffee cup, still mostly full, in the sink. Their arms brushed and his nearness, the hard heat of his very masculine body, sent a jolt of sweet fire through her.

“Okay,” he said with affable finality.

Madison was back by then, holding up her clean hands for Kendra to see but obviously more interested in Hutch than in her mother.

“Very good,” Kendra said approvingly, and began moving briskly around the infinitesimal kitchen, setting out plates and silverware and glasses—which Madison promptly counted.

“Aren’t you hungry, cowboy man?” she asked Hutch when the tally was two places at the table, rather than three.

He looked down at Madison with such fondness that Kendra felt another pang of—something. “Can’t stay,” he said. “I have horses to look after and they like their supper served on time, just like people do.”

Madison’s eyes widened. “You have horses?” From her tone she might have asked, “You can walk on water?”