Cowboy Ever After: Big Sky Mountain

By God, he was through keeping a low profile—he meant to fire up one of the ranch trucks, drive into Parable to the Butter Biscuit Café, claim one of the stools at the counter and order up his usual cheeseburger, shake and fries. As for the joshing and the questions and the speculative glances he was bound to run into?

Bring it, he thought.

KENDRA HAD HAD a week to put that off-the-wall encounter with Hutch the previous Saturday night behind her and she was mostly over it.

Mostly.

She’d been busy, after all, overseeing the move of her real estate company from the mansion on Rodeo Road to the little storefront, catty-corner from the Butter Biscuit Café, enrolling Madison at the year-round preschool/day-care center and scanning the multiple-listings for cozy two-bedroom houses within a reasonable radius of Parable.

In a town like that one, smaller properties were always hard to find—people didn’t necessarily sell their houses when they retired to Florida or Arizona or entered a nursing home. They often passed them down to the next generation.

At present, Kendra’s choices were a double-wide trailer in the very court where she’d grown up so unhappily with her grandmother—no possible way—what resembled a converted chicken coop on the far side of Three Trees, which was thirty miles away, or the cramped apartment over old Mrs. Lund’s garage on Cinch Buckle Street, which rented for a tidy sum and didn’t even have its own entrance.

With her fifteen-thousand-square-foot mega-mansion on the market, already swarming with cleaning people and painters these days in preparation for showing—she and Madison had taken up temporary residence in the estate’s small guesthouse.

Given that two different potential buyers, both highly qualified, had already expressed interest in the main residence, Kendra had no intention of getting too settled in the cottage, cheery and convenient though the place was. Upscale homes were much easier to sell than regular houses, at least in that part of Montana, because so many jet-setters liked to buy them up and visit them once in a blue moon.

For now, though, the guesthouse was sufficient for their needs. Madison loved the big yard, the thriving flower gardens and the swing on the mansion’s screened-in sun porch. The four-year-old was content to share the cottage’s one bedroom with Kendra, take meals in the tiny, sun-splashed kitchen, and ease, an hour or two at a time, into the preschool program, where there were plenty of playmates around her own age.

Already Madison’s fair skin was golden, having absorbed so much country sunshine, and she didn’t cry at the prospect of even the shortest separation from Kendra.

Tara Kendall stopped by the real estate office just as Kendra was about to close up for the day. She and Madison planned on picking up a takeout meal over at the Butter Biscuit, then eating at the small white wrought-iron table at the edge of the rose garden on Rodeo Road.

“Can we get a dog now?” Madison was asking for the umpteenth time, when Tara breezed in, pretty with her shoulder-length brown hair expertly layered and her perfect makeup that looked like no makeup at all.

“Do I have an offer for you,” Tara said, with a broad grin. She wore a sleek yellow sundress that flattered her slight but womanly figure, and her legs were so tanned she didn’t need panty hose. “My golden retriever, Lucy, just happens to have a sister who still needs a home.”

“Gee,” Kendra drawled, feeling self-conscious in her jeans and T-shirt. “Thanks so much for that suggestion, Tara.”

Madison was already jumping up and down in anticipation. “My very own dog!” she crowed.

Tara chuckled and reached out a manicured hand to ruffle Madison’s bright copper curls. “Oops,” she said, addressing Kendra in a singsong voice that sounded warmly insincere. “Did I just put my foot in my mouth?”

“More like your entire leg,” Kendra replied sweetly. Tara, a relative newcomer to Parable, had fit right in with her and Joslyn, turning a duet into a trio—the three of them had been fast friends from the beginning. “We’re not ready for a dog yet, since we don’t really have a place to—” She paused, looked down at Madison, who was glowing like a firefly on a moonless night, and reconsidered the word she’d intended to use, which was “live,” diverting to “permanently reside.”

“We have the cottage,” Madison pointed out. “There’s a yard and Lucy’s sister could sleep with us.”

“Says you,” Kendra said, but with affection. She remembered how badly she’d wanted a pet as a little girl, but her grandmother had always refused, saying she had enough on her hands looking after a kid. She wasn’t about to clean up after a dog or a cat, too.

“You promised,” Madison reminded her sagely. She was so like Jeffrey—she had his eyes, his red hair, his insouciant certainty that everything good would come to him as a matter of course—including golden retriever puppies with sisters named Lucy.

“I said we could get a pet when we were settled,” Kendra clarified patiently after shooting a see-what-you’ve-done glance at a singularly unrepentant Tara. “We’ll be moving soon.”

“So will the dog,” Tara put in lightly. “Martie Wren can only keep her at the shelter for so long, then it’s off to—well—wherever.”

“Thanks again, Tara,” Kendra said. She knew her friend meant well, but the woman wasn’t known for her good judgment. Hadn’t she given up a great job in New York, heading up a world-class cosmetics company, to buy, of all things, a dilapidated chicken ranch on the outskirts of Parable, Montana?

Huge tears welled in Madison’s eyes. “Nobody wants Lucy’s sister?”

At last, Tara looked shamefaced. “She’s a beautiful dog,” she told the little girl gently. “Somebody will adopt her for sure.”

“You, for instance?” Kendra said.

“I guess she could live with Lucy and me for a while,” Tara decided, shifting her expensive hobo bag from her right shoulder to her left.

Madison grabbed Kendra’s hand, squeezed. “We could just look at Emma, couldn’t we?”

“Emma?” Kendra echoed, dancing on ice now, Bambi with all four limbs scrabbling for traction.

“That’s what we’d call Lucy’s sister,” Madison said matter-of-factly, her little face shining more brightly than the sunset gathering in shades of pink and orange at the rims of the mountains to the east. “Emma.”

Emma. It was Madison’s birth mother’s name. Did she know that?

How could she? She’d been only a year old when Emma gave her up.

“Why ‘Emma’?” Kendra asked carefully, hoping to hide her dismayed surprise from the child.

Tara, she instantly noted, had already read her face, though she couldn’t have known the significance of the name, and she looked way beyond apologetic.

“It’s a pretty name,” Madison said. “Don’t you think so, Mommy?”

“It’s lovely,” Kendra conceded. “Now, shouldn’t we pick up our supper and head for home?” She glanced at Tara. “Join us? Nothing fancy—we’re getting takeout—but we’d love to share.”

Tara blinked, clearly uncertain what response she ought to give. “Well—”

“And it would be fun to meet Lucy,” Madison went on. “Is she with you?”

“As a matter of fact,” Tara said, “yes. She’s in the car. We just came from the vet’s office and—”

“You’re both welcome,” Kendra insisted. Firstly because Tara was a dear friend and secondly, because she was enjoying the other woman’s obvious discomfort. “You and Lucy.”

“Well,” Tara murmured, with a weak little smile, “okay.”

Kendra smiled. “Let’s go, then,” she said, jingling the ring of keys she’d just plucked from her purse.

She shut off the inside lights, stepped out onto the sidewalk and locked up behind them. Leaving Kendra’s Volvo in the parking lot out back, they crossed the street to the Butter Biscuit Café. Tara’s flashy red sports car was parked on the street in front of the restaurant, the yellow dandelion-fluff dog, Lucy, pressing her muzzle against the driver’s-side window, steaming up the glass.

Kendra’s heart softened at the very sight of that dog, while Madison rushed over to stand on tiptoe and press the palms of both hands against the window.

“Hello, Lucy!” Madison cried gleefully.

Lucy barked joyously, her brown eyes luminous with impromptu adoration. She tongued the window where Madison’s right palm rested.

Tara laughed. “See?” she said, giving Kendra a light elbow to the ribs. “It’s fate.”

“I’ll get you for this,” Kendra told her friend with an undertone.

“No, you’ll thank me.” Tara beamed, all confidence again. “I’m counting on Emma to win you over.” She whispered that last part.