Parable, Montana [4] Big Sky Summer Page 22

  Clare’s expression turned stubborn, but she backed down quickly enough. She knew how to push Casey’s buttons, Walker figured, but he was another matter. “Aren’t you going to check on her?” she asked petulantly. “I just told you she was feeling sick, after all.”

  “I’m headed her way,” Walker replied, resting his hands on his hips and regarding his daughter solemnly, “but I’ve got a few things to say to you first.”

  Clare’s green eyes, so like her mother’s, widened, and the thick lashes fluttered a couple of times. “What?”

  “I realize that finding out that you’re mine must have come as a shock, and you’ll need a while to sort through all of it, but, mistakes or no mistakes, your mom has had your best interests at heart all along, yours and your brother’s. Sooner or later, you’re going to have to make a decision, Clare. You can rebel and make an all-around fool of yourself, like the poor, abused children of other celebrities we could both name, or you can make her proud. You can try to get back at her, or you can stand by her, the way she’s always stood by you. So, which is it, cowgirl? In the long run, are you going to be an asset or a liability?”

  “Wow,” Clare breathed after a few moments, looking amazed. “Coming from you, that was practically the Gettysburg Address. I’m used to cowboy-speak, like yep and nope and howdy and so long.”

  “Get used to dad-speak,” Walker advised, firmly but not unkindly. “You can be as mad at me as you want to. You can yell and throw things and call me by my first name until we’re both old and gray. But you will not make life harder for your mother, punishing her for whatever sins you think she’s committed—not on my watch. Understood?”

  Clare sighed, and she didn’t answer for a long time.

  “Understood,” she said, conceding that round.

  Walker returned to the house then, Clare and Doolittle following, and found Brylee and Shane in the kitchen, playing Parcheesi at the table.

  “We need to go get the dogs, Dad,” Shane said.

  Walker gave a crisp nod. “In a little while,” he replied, his gaze sliding to meet Brylee’s. “Is Casey in our room?”

  Brylee nodded.

  Walker made his way past the dining and living rooms and into the corridor. After rapping lightly at the bedroom door, he stepped inside.

  Casey lay in the middle of the bed, almost in a fetal position, fully dressed and shivering a little.

  She looked so small and so alone that Walker’s heart turned over, a slow, bruising process. Casey Elder might be world famous, and one of the strongest, most courageous women he’d ever known, but she’d been fighting her own battles for so long that she’d worn herself out.

  Gently, he covered her with a quilt his grandmother had made before he was even born, and sat down on the edge of the bed, wanting to touch her but not sure he ought to.

  “I hear you’re feeling a little under the weather,” he ventured when Casey didn’t say anything.

  “I’ll be fine,” she said, her voice so small he barely heard her. “Eventually.”

  “You don’t sound fine, Casey Jones,” Walker pointed out. “And you don’t look all that terrific, either.”

  “Gee,” she murmured with flimsy irony, “thanks.”

  Walker chuckled, laid a hand lightly on her shoulder, squeezed. “Anything I can do?”

  “Shoot me,” Casey groaned, then gave a strangled little chortling sound that might have been part sob.

  “Not an option,” Walker replied. “I’m a law-abiding man.”

  Pulling the quilt up over her head, Casey started to cry.

  Walker sighed, methodically kicked off one boot, then the other, and stretched out beside her, gathering her quilt-bundled self into his arms, careful not to hold her too tightly. The moment was fragile, and so was his wife.

  “Talk to me,” he said.

  Her voice was muffled and croaky. “I’m pregnant.”

  Walker waited out a swell of pure jubilation. “Isn’t it a little early to know that?” he asked gruffly. “It’s only been—”

  “I know when I’m pregnant, Walker Parrish,” she said.

  “And you figure this is a bad thing?” he prompted carefully. There wasn’t much he was afraid of, but the thought that Casey might not want this baby scared the hell out of him.

  “Of course not!” she wailed, sounding for all the world as though she was still hoping he’d shoot her. How the devil was he supposed to know how she really felt when she acted one way and talked another?

  Walker uncovered her face, which was tear-streaked and puffy around the eyes, kissed her red-tipped nose. “If it’s a boy,” he teased in a mischievous drawl, “can I raise him to be a bull rider?”

  Casey laughed and freed one hand from the quilt long enough to slug him in the arm. “No,” she said with reassuring spirit. “He’s going to be president.”

  Walker grinned. “And if this little stranger turns out to be a girl?”

  “President,” Casey reiterated firmly, finally snuggling up a little closer.

  After that, the conversation lapsed into an easy silence.

  Walker held Casey, stroked her hair and waited. He’d had a whole lot of practice at waiting for Casey Elder, he thought, and, most likely, he’d have plenty more of it in his future. He propped his chin on top of her head. No matter what the future might bring, he was in this for the duration.

  He was just about to tell Casey that, straight out, when he realized she’d drifted off to sleep.

  *

  WHEN CASEY WOKE UP, afternoon was fading into evening, and she was still wrapped up snug in that time-softened, lavender-scented quilt Walker had spread over her earlier. When had anyone done that for her, seen to her comfort in that simple, homey way?

  It had been years before, she realized, when she’d had a bad case of stomach flu and Lupe—dear Lupe—had looked after her. Slowly, things came into sharper focus.

  Walker was gone now, and she wondered how long he’d stayed with her, holding her, letting her feel what she was feeling without any apparent need to hurry her through the crying jag. Walker’s head had left an indentation in the pillow, and his fresh-air, meadow-grass scent lingered, too.

  With a smile, Casey touched the crumpled covers next to her, where he’d lain, and even though the warmth of Walker’s body was long gone, she got a sense of him, a physical vibration, just the same. She rolled onto her back, waited to see if her stomach would rebel and, when it didn’t, she stretched out luxuriously, peeled away the quilt and got up.

  The ranch house, while not huge, was good-sized, and she heard voices from the distant kitchen, laughter and the intermittent, happy barking of the dogs.

  Casey padded into the bathroom she now shared with Walker, brushed her teeth, splashed cool water on her face, fluffed out her hair. Her T-shirt was wrinkled, but her jeans looked okay, so she didn’t bother changing clothes.

  When she reached the kitchen, brightly lit and ranch-house cheery, Brylee and Clare were there, with the three chocolate Labs and Snidely keeping them company. Shane and Walker were absent, and Doolittle must have been with them.

  Casey greeted her dogs with head pats and the nonsense words that meant “I love you,” at least to those of the canine persuasion.

  “I see the rescue mission was successful,” she said with a smile.

  “Went off without a hitch.” Brylee grinned. “And we didn’t see a single reporter, either. They must have crawled back into their holes.”

  Casey chuckled. “Good,” she said.

  Clare’s expression was more subdued, a combination of sadness and stubborn pride. What was going on in that complicated adolescent brain of hers?

  “The cats are here, too,” she offered. “I put them in my room.”

  Casey smiled. Could this child possibly know how much her mother loved her? Probably not, though that would change when Clare was grown-up and married, with children of her own.

  Don’t go there. She’s still your girl.
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br />   “They’ll feel safe there,” she said of the cats. “In your room, I mean.”

  Clare nodded slowly. For a moment, she looked as though she might say something more but, in the end, she cast a brief glance at Brylee and went back to what she’d been doing when Casey came in—which was peeling potatoes.

  Amazing.

  “Are you feeling better?” Brylee asked Casey. Her tone was light, nonintrusive, but her eyes betrayed quiet concern.

  “I just needed to rest for a little while,” Casey said with a nod. “Are Walker and Shane around?”

  “They’re doing chores,” Brylee replied. “Walker sent the ranch hands home early, since they’ve been guarding gates and patrolling the property lines on horseback most of the day.”

  Casey winced inwardly—nothing could prepare hardworking, down-to-earth people like Walker and Brylee for the kind of onslaught they’d experienced that day, and yet Walker was out doing chores and Brylee was making supper, which was probably business as usual.

  “Can I do something to help?” Casey asked, mindful of her sad lack of cooking skills but still optimistic that she could at least learn the basics, given half a chance. She’d taught herself to read music, after all, along with a number of other useful things.

  Brylee started to say no, caught herself, smiled warmly and scooted aside to make room for Casey at the counter, where she was dipping plump pieces of chicken in beaten egg, then rolling them in seasoned flour. An electric frying pan stood nearby, the grease inside it hot enough to bubble.

  Casey, normally a stickler for good nutrition, grinned. Good old-fashioned country food, she thought appreciatively. Just what the doctor ordered.

  Pretty soon, she was taking over for Brylee, who stood virtually at her elbow to supervise. The chicken went into the waiting pan, piece by piece, each time raising a loud sizzling sound, and the aroma was heavenly, even at that early stage.

  “Bacon grease,” Brylee explained with wicked glee. “I usually bake chicken, and eat it without the skin, but once in a while, a person’s got to pull out all the stops and go for broke.”

  “Amen.” Casey laughed. “What do we do now?” she asked when all the chicken pieces were in the frying pan and the noise had abated a little.

  “We brown the bird on one side,” Brylee answered, happy to be helpful, “and then we brown it on the other. Then we put on the lid and turn down the heat and wait.”

  The side door opened then, and Walker and Shane came in, fresh from doing chores. Shane was walking tall, his face flushed with pride, his eyes shining. He washed up at the kitchen sink, following Walker’s lead, and then sniffed the air.

  “Mom.” He beamed. “You’re cooking.”

  Casey grinned. “With a lot of help from your aunt,” she said, but she was as pleased as if her son had just given her a big compliment.

  “I’m cooking, too, dweeb,” Clare put in, glowering at Shane.

  “Peeling potatoes,” Shane said. “Anybody can do that.”

  Clare stuck her tongue out at him, but there was no venom in the response. It was, Casey figured, sibling lingo, habitual and, in an odd way, nice.

  “I’ll keep an eye on the chicken,” Brylee told Casey, raising her eyebrows comically, widening her eyes and inclining her head toward Walker.

  Casey got the message—only a lighted billboard could have conveyed it more clearly—and approached Walker, taking his outstretched hand.

  He led her out onto the side porch, and the two of them sat down in the swing.

  The sky was a pale shade of purple by then, and the stars were popping out everywhere. The moon, full and brilliant, seeming almost close enough to touch, loomed over the western foothills.

  Casey pictured the remains of that old homestead, where Walker’s people had settled so long ago, imagined how it would look in the twilight, surrounded by tangled mobs of flowers, and felt soothed, connected, somehow. She could fall in love with Timber Creek Ranch, she thought, if she let herself.

  They rocked slowly back and forth, she and Walker, content with saying nothing at all. Lights glistened on the far side of the river, and distant laughter rode over on the breeze—children playing games, dogs barking with glee, screen doors creaking on their hinges, grown-ups calling out that supper was ready.

  Ordinary sounds, Casey supposed, but they brought back precious memories—not of her life in her grandparents’ stately mansion, but of the times she’d spent with Lupe and Juan in the country, running free with their legions of nieces and nephews, playing softball and hide-and-seek until it was too dark to continue.

  Rare and precious as those interludes had been, they were more than Clare and Shane had had when they were small, their other advantages aside.

  Just be, Casey told herself. Let now be now.

  Walker didn’t release her hand, and she allowed herself to enjoy the sensation as he stroked her knuckles lightly with the calloused pad of one thumb. There was nothing sexual about his touch, but Casey knew that would change once they were alone in their bedroom later that night, and she felt a racy little thrill at the prospect.

  “I guess I was a little overemotional this afternoon,” she said, for his ears alone. “Thanks for riding out the storm.”

  Walker let go of her hand then, but only so he could slip his arm around her shoulders. She allowed herself to lean into him, rested her head against his strong upper arm. “Anytime,” he finally replied.

  She felt a need to warn him, like an honest person selling a used car with a few hitches in its get-along. “I’m like that when I’m—stressed out.”

  “It happens,” Walker said easily. “You’re allowed, Casey Jones.”

  Casey was willing to lose herself in this Walker, the gentleman rancher, the easygoing cowboy, the expert lover, at least for a little while, but that didn’t mean she’d forgotten the other one, the man who wasn’t sure he’d ever be able to forgive her for keeping him from his children for so long. That Walker was just as real as the one who’d covered her in a quilt a few hours before, held her while she cried, made her feel safer than safe and finally led her out here to sit in a porch swing and admire the moon and the stars.

  “This is good,” she told him.

  “And it’ll get better,” he promised with a grin.

  Sure enough, after supper was over and the dishes were cleared away, after Brylee had retreated into her apartment, taking both kids and four out of five dogs right along with her to watch the current crop of reality shows on her big-screen TV, after Walker and Casey had shared a bath in his long, deep tub, things did get better, and then better still.

  *

  MONTANA SPRAWLED all around Walker, blessedly normal, as he and Shane rode out to look for strays, accompanied by all three of the boy’s dogs.

  The uproar in the media had gone on for the better part of a week, but then, after a catastrophic earthquake in South America, Casey and Walker and their “love children” became old news.

  Hell of a way to escape the limelight, though. Relief agencies from all over the world had their operations up and running at the scene of the disaster, and the situation was dire.

  Deliberately turning his mind back to his usual concerns, since there was nothing he could do for the earthquake victims besides making a donation, Walker readjusted his hat and shifted a little in the saddle, wondering how Casey had managed to raise Clare and Shane to be reasonably grounded human beings when practically everything she did or said seemed to be a matter for public scrutiny. Granted, this last round had been unusual, even for them, but Walker wouldn’t be forgetting it anytime soon.

  Beside him, riding Smokey, Shane mimicked the hat-shifting gesture the way he mimicked just about everything Walker did. The kid seemed to be trying out different mannerisms, picking the ones he liked.

  Walker was both amused and touched.

  “So the Parable County Rodeo is coming up,” Shane said. It was an intro, of course, a preamble, an opening riff.

 
Walker grinned to himself. Let the kid think he was being subtle. Where was the harm in that?

  “Yep,” he agreed. Remembering what Clare had said about his one-word sentences, he grinned again. “It’s always the weekend right before the Fourth of July.”

  “And we’ll be providing the bucking stock?”

  “Always do,” Walker said. Two words now. Why, he was turning downright loquacious! He didn’t ask the boy where the conversation was headed, because he already knew.

  Sure enough, Shane finally came out with it. “Do you think I could enter one of the junior events?”

  Walker didn’t smile, but he wanted to. “You mean, like the mutton busting?” he teased. The younger kids rode sheep in that particular event, and it was a lot harder than it looked—Walker had done it himself, back when he was knee-high to the proverbial grasshopper. So had Brylee.

  Shane colored up, glaring out from under the brim of the hat he’d found in the tack room a few days before and immediately appropriated. It didn’t quite fit him, and he kept having to push it back off the bridge of his freckled nose, where a red welt was forming. “Riding sheep?” he marveled furiously. “That’s for little kids!”

  Walker was unruffled. He cast a sidelong glance in his son’s direction and drawled, “You’re too easy to rile, boy. If you don’t get over that, and quick, you’ll get nothing else done but defending your honor.”

  Shane gulped and scowled into the distance, ostensibly looking for strays.

  “As for the rodeo,” Walker went on idly when Shane didn’t reply, “you’re gonna have to consult your mother on that one.”

  “You’re my dad,” Shane pointed out, still testy but leaking steam instead of spouting it, as before. “Your permission should be enough.”

  Walker chuckled. “That theory might have held water once upon a time,” he said, “but ‘once upon a time’ was quite a while ago.”

  “So you’re saying Mom is the boss and you’ll do whatever she says?”

  He sighed. “Watch it,” he warned pleasantly. “What I’m saying is, your mother has raised you and Clare this far, with no help from me, and I can’t see my way clear to step in now and start overriding her decisions.”