Big Sky Secrets. Linda Miller Lael

spreading a napkin over her blue-jeaned lap and taking a deep breath in an effort to restore her equanimity.

      She’d been hungry before, but now, suddenly, her appetite was iffy. She nibbled at one half of the sandwich and spooned up some of the soup, then gave up and cleared the table. Methodically—because Ria Manning was nothing if not methodical—she tossed the leftovers into the trash and rinsed off her plate and bowl in the sink before wandering into the front room, taking her cup of lukewarm tea with her.

      The face, dark brown, hairy and horned, and roughly the size of an armchair, loomed suddenly in the center of the picture window. And even though Ria knew, on one level, exactly what she was looking at, she was startled enough that she gave a little squeal of alarm, leaped backward and nearly dropped her china cup and saucer.

      The creature at the window made an awful, plaintive sound, a sort of forlorn bellow. The drapes, still open, of course, gave the impression of stage curtains, as though Ria made up the entire audience at a horror show.

      Recovering slightly, Ria set her tea aside on an end table, her hand shaking all the while, and pressed splayed fingers to her pounding heart.

      Bessie. As the shock subsided, Ria’s temper kicked in.

      “Not again,” she said, coming to a simmer. “Damn it, not again!”

      By contrast, the cow buffalo standing in Ria’s flower bed seemed to have calmed down considerably. After that one harrowing cry, Bessie ducked her massive head out of sight, and when she raised it again, she was chewing on a big clump of freshly planted petunias. In the near distance, Ria spotted Bessie’s yearling calf, now nearly as big as its mama, making a meal of the bright orange poppies growing in an old wheelbarrow.

      For a moment or so longer, Ria was frozen where she stood. Bessie looked quite content now, but that didn’t mean she wouldn’t get riled again. Since she probably weighed as much as a farm truck, the prospect was terrifying. With one swing of that gigantic head, she could shatter the picture window to smithereens. Why, she might even scramble through the opening and run amok in the living room.

      Get a grip, Ria admonished herself. This is not an emergency.

      It didn’t help much.

      Walking backward, she fled to the kitchen, dived for the landline receiver on the wall above her computer desk and speed-dialed.

      “Sutton residence,” Highbridge intoned formally. “May I help you?”

      “They’re out again,” Ria announced. “Those—creatures—”

      “Oh, dear,” Highbridge commiserated. “I do apologize. Have they done any damage?”

      “Besides scaring me half to death and eating my flowers, you mean?” Ria knew the situation wasn’t Highbridge’s fault—he was a butler, not a ranch hand—but since he was directly in the line of fire, he got the worst of it. “Do you realize, Mr. Highbridge, that Oriental poppies don’t bloom until the second year after they’re planted?”

      “Just Highbridge, if you don’t mind,” he interjected mildly. British to the core, he managed to convey both concern and carefully controlled amusement.

      “And one of these animals just pulled them all up?” Ria went on.

      “Mr. Sutton will be right over to collect the beasts,” Highbridge replied. “And I’m sure he’ll be happy to compensate you for any damage, as usual.”

      Mr. Sutton will be right over.

      Well, that was something, Ria thought, simmering down slightly. When Landry arrived, she’d simply pretend she wasn’t home.

      CHAPTER TWO

      RIA DID NOT like Landry Sutton, did not like him one bit—never had, never would—which was why she intended to make herself scarce when he came to round up his smelly, flea-bitten, poppy-scarfing buffalo.

      Landry had arrived in Parable County at about the same time as Ria, a little over a year before, and, from the very beginning, he’d struck her as bullheaded, full of himself and, for the most part, insufferably stubborn. Only his impossibly good looks—the classic square jaw, those perfectly sculpted features and blue eyes that changed, according to his mood, from periwinkle to cornflower, that shock of shaggy, wheat-blond hair, a lean but powerful build, not to mention innate masculinity—kept him from being entirely unendurable.

      Physical qualities were genetic, after all, accidents of birth; it wasn’t as if the man could take credit for having good DNA, for Pete’s sake.

      But, being Landry, he probably did anyway. He had the air of a man who had never failed at anything he attempted, and since that was humanly impossible, Ria had long since dubbed him a poser.

      Now, stepping up to the darkened picture window—an act that set her barely calmed heart to pounding all over again, because she knew she’d jump right out of her skin if she found herself face-to-face with Buffalo Bessie for a second time in one night—she squinted through the glass.

      The lumbering creatures were nowhere in sight—not surprising considering the density of the gloom—but Ria had no illusions that the animals had wandered conveniently homeward, never to trouble her again. That would have been too easy, and while her life hadn’t been any more difficult than anyone else’s, she was accustomed to dealing with obstacles.

      She checked her watch, frowned. The great Landry Sutton was certainly taking his sweet time getting over here and tending to business, that was for sure. At least an hour had passed since she’d called his place to demand action.

      Following a surge of renewed frustration, Ria stretched out her arms, grabbed hold of the drapes and yanked them shut. She might have been in a more forgiving state of mind if this same disaster hadn’t befallen her, and her struggling crops of zinnias and gerbera daisies, half a dozen times in the past few months.

      Then she heard the noise. It was an alarmingly loud and wholly horrific combination of furious thumping and repeated scraping, and it was coming from the front, right-hand corner of the cottage, just a few feet from where she stood, in the questionable safety of her own living room. Holding her breath, Ria crooked an index finger to pull one of the drapes aside by a couple of inches and then looked out again, but she still couldn’t see what was going on.

      Which was not to say she hadn’t guessed.

      Incredibly, the nerve-shattering racket intensified. Once or twice, she would have sworn that the whole house trembled on its ancient and probably cracked foundation.

      Her sense of caution exceeded only by a need to confirm her suspicions, Ria tiptoed over to the door, flipped on the porch light, turned the dead bolt from its locked position with a decisive twist of one wrist and stepped outside, poised to run back over the threshold in a heartbeat if the situation warranted.

      Inside its bug-speckled cover, the single bulb glowed a sickly yellow, throwing a small spill of light onto the welcome mat, no threat to the thick darkness of a near-moonless night in the Montana countryside.

      All around her, crickets croaked in the balmy gloom, and although the sky was spangled with stars, they certainly didn’t illuminate the landscape.

      A sudden, roaring bellow froze her blood in an instant.

      But this was her house, her property. And, damn it, enough was enough.

      Steeling herself, Ria ventured a few steps closer to the corner of the porch, where shadows loomed, knowing, on some level, what she’d find there, but, at the same time, not quite believing it.

      Sure enough, there was Bessie, scratching her mangy hide against the corner of the house.

      “Shoo!” Ria whispered hoarsely, making a flapping motion with both hands but otherwise standing still. “Go away!”

      The response was another earsplitting, window-rattling bellow. Was the animal warning her? Issuing some kind of primitive protest?

      Ria