Big Sky Secrets. Linda Miller Lael

stuffed fetchingly up inside, a sleeveless blouse and denim jeans, frayed where she’d cut them off above the knees to make shorts. Brylee’s long legs were sun-browned, like her arms, and her feet were probably muddy and probably bare.

      Seeing the truck, she beamed like a war bride at the approach of an overdue troop train and came toward them, hurrying but graceful, moving between rows of corn and green beans and Bibb lettuce.

      Watching Brylee, Landry felt a pang of something sharp and forlorn, bleaker than loneliness, but not quite qualifying as envy, while Zane jumped out of the rig, strode to meet his wife and, with a laugh, swept her right off her feet, swinging her around in a broad circle of celebration and then kissing her soundly.

      Slim, like any good country dog, bounded down from the back of the truck and rushed toward his master and mistress, barking, delighted by the ruckus, making himself part of it.

      Brylee had lost her hat by then, and her hair spilled down over her shoulders in glorious, coffee-colored spirals, threaded with gold. Belatedly noting Landry’s presence, his sister-in-law blushed apricot-pink, a modern-day Eve just now coming to the realization that she and her Adam weren’t blissfully alone in the Garden of Eden after all.

      So much for a bout of lovemaking right there in the tall grass, Landry thought. He wouldn’t have put it past them, if the circumstances were right. Wouldn’t have blamed them for it, either.

      He smiled a “hello” at Brylee, reached for his hat and remembered that he’d tossed it into the back of Zane’s pickup, but the words in his head, surprisingly affable, were meant for his brother. You lucky bastard.

      “I promised this yahoo a beer,” Zane announced, still grinning, cocking a thumb toward Landry to identify him as the yahoo in question. The taut air around the couple almost snapped, like a rubber band stretched beyond its limits, and then let go. “As you can see, the man’s a little the worse for wear.”

      Although he was sure Zane hadn’t meant anything by it, the remark reminded Landry with a wallop that he’d been thrown three times, that his clothes were stiff with dust and dried sweat and a combination of the two and that his boots were caked with manure. Plenty of good old-fashioned dirt had ground itself right into his hide, filling every pore, coating every hair on his head.

      Again, it swamped him, that sense of self-consciousness mingled with some indefinable loss, a factor he’d never had to cope with before the move to Montana.

      “I’ll be fine out here on the porch,” he suggested, and instantly wished he’d kept his mouth shut, if only because the offer sounded so lame.

      Brylee smiled warmly. Although she hadn’t liked Landry when he first arrived in Parable County, she’d mellowed noticeably since last Christmas, when she and Zane had gotten married. “Don’t worry about it,” she responded, with a rueful glance at her own grimy feet. “This is a ranch, and dirt comes with the territory.”

      The screen door creaked just then, and Cleo—Zane and Brylee’s housekeeper—trundled through the gap and out onto the porch, her skin a glistening ebony, her dark eyes flashing, her gray hair partially tamed by a bandanna scarf. She looked stern, but that was a pose, Landry suspected, the ruse of a tenderhearted person trying to hold on to a little personal space.

      “Say what, Mrs. Sutton?” Cleo challenged, making it clear that she’d overheard Brylee’s statement about ranches and the inevitability of dirt. “I just now finished mopping the kitchen floor—it isn’t even dry yet—and I don’t care how much dirt it takes to make up this ranch. You’re not setting foot in my clean house until you hose those feet off good.” In the next instant, Cleo’s gaze moved over both Zane and Landry, sweeping them up into her good-natured consternation. “Same goes for the two of you. I don’t work my fingers to the bone around this place for my health, you know. And a person’s got to have standards!”

      Zane, apparently used to being lectured, simply grinned and gave the woman an affable salute of acquiescence. The discourse sounded familiar to Landry, too—he could easily imagine that warning coming from Highbridge, not quite so colorful, but with better enunciation and grammar.

      Ah, Highbridge. Yet another reason Landry fit in around here about as well as an extra toe in a narrow-soled boot. He employed a butler. What self-respecting cowboy did that?

      “You tell me what you want and I’ll bring it out here,” Cleo prattled on, hands on her hips, elbows jutting. By then, the hint of a grin had appeared in her eyes, and the corners of her mouth twitched slightly. Like Highbridge, she clearly relished stating her opinion, asked for or not.

      “Beer,” Zane replied lightly. “And make sure it’s cold, if you don’t mind.”

      Cleo narrowed her eyes, then fixed Brylee with a look. “Iced tea or lemonade for you,” she informed her crisply. “If you’re not pregnant, it’s not for lack of effort, now, is it, and we both know alcohol is no good for babies.”

      Brylee shook her head, but her color was high again. “Cleo,” she scolded, laughing a little.

      Cleo remained undaunted. “Iced tea or lemonade?” she repeated, folding her plump arms now.

      Brylee sighed, put up both palms in a gesture of surrender and sat down at the small wicker table in a shady corner of the porch. Zane and Landry joined her.

      “Tea, please,” Brylee said, almost primly.

      Cleo gave a stiff nod and ducked back into the house to fetch the refreshments.

      “Cleo can be a tyrant sometimes,” Brylee confided, smiling, but still pink in the cheeks. Every time she glanced in Zane’s direction, the air sizzled.

      “But only between the hours of midnight and twelve a.m.,” Zane said. He’d taken Brylee’s hand by then, and their fingers were interlaced, the gesture easy, ordinary and yet somehow profoundly intimate.

      Landry did a quick mental scan of the few tempestuous years he’d spent with Susan and was saddened by the swift, searing realization that they’d never been close in the way Zane and Brylee were, not even in the best of times. The sex had been good, he thought, but then, in his experience, which was relatively broad, bad sex was a rarity.

      He shoved a hand through his filthy hair, wondering what had prompted all this introspection.

      The two dogs meandered up onto the porch then and curled up in separate shady spots for an afternoon snooze. Bees buzzed in the flower beds nearby, and way off in the distance, one of the cattle bawled, probably calling her calf.

      Cleo bustled and banged out of the house again, lugging a tray this time. On it were one glass of iced tea, a plateful of cookies and two long-necked brown bottles with thin sleeves of ice melting off their sides.

      She served Brylee first, then plunked a beer down in front of each of the men.

      “You seen Nash lately?” she asked, evidently addressing the whole group. Before anybody could reply, she continued. “I’m fixing to wring that boy’s neck if he doesn’t pick up his dirty laundry, like I told him. A person can’t walk across the floor of his room for all the empty pizza boxes and soda cans. This keeps up, well, the next thing we know, this whole place will be crawling with bugs!”

      Zane, who had just taken a swig of beer, made a choking sound, part chuckle, and lowered the bottle from his mouth. “Nash went to that bull sale up in Missoula, with Walker and Shane,” he reminded the disgruntled woman. “When he gets back, though, I’ll be sure to have him slapped in irons.”

      Cleo didn’t smile at the joke. “I’d like to know who told that child he could go off gallivanting that way, and not a one of his chores done,” Cleo fussed. She lifted three snow-white, crisply pressed cloth napkins from the otherwise empty tray and slapped them down on the tabletop in a fan shape, like a winning hand of cards.

      “That would have been me,” Zane responded mildly.

      “Spoiled, that’s what Nash Sutton is,” Cleo harrumphed, before turning on the heel of one lime-green