Big Sky Summer. Linda Miller Lael

keeping her hands busy fussing with the cellophane covering all those little yellow rounds of shortcake. “It was nice of you to help with the table and everything.”

      Walker felt his Adam’s apple travel the length of his throat and back down again, like mercury surging in a thermometer, and hoped his ears weren’t glowing bright red. He was a confident man, at home in his own hide and stone-sure of his own mind, but something about this ordinary exchange made him swear he’d reverted to puberty in the space of a few moments. “That’s all right,” he managed, apropos of whatever. The appropriate answer, of course, would have been something along the lines of You’re welcome.

      Everything seemed to go still around him and Casey as they stood there, looking at each other in the shade of half a dozen venerable oak and maple trees, the new-mown lawn under their feet. Birds didn’t sing, and the voices of the bake-sale ladies and the congregation inside the church faded to a mere hum. Right then, Walker would have bet the earth had stopped turning and the universe had ceased expanding.

      There was so much he wanted, needed, to say to this woman, but his throat was immovable, like a cement mixer with its contents left to dry out and form concrete.

      Fortunately—or unfortunately, the jury was still out on that one—church finally let out and people spilled into the yard, streaming colorfully along both sides of the building and through the rear doors, too.

      It was Shane who broke the spell, jarring the whole of Creation back into a lurching motion with a happy “Hey, Walker—can you have breakfast with us, after the bake sale is over? Doris is making stacks of blueberry pancakes, and there are always too many—”

      Clare appeared at her brother’s side, equally insistent. “Please?” she added. “Mitch will be there, too, and he’s probably planning on bugging Mom about going on the road again. You could run interference!”

      Mitch Wilcox, Walker knew, was Casey’s longtime manager. He’d never really liked the man, though there was no denying Wilcox was the best at what he did. Whatever that was.

      Casey had regained her composure—if she’d ever lost it—while Walker was still trying to get his vocal cords to come unstuck.

      “You’d be welcome,” she said, gently amused, her smile making Walker feel light-headed and very much off his game. “And you don’t have to ‘run interference.’ I can handle Mitch Wilcox just fine.” With that, she sent a mildly reproving glance in Clare’s direction, but the girl was undaunted, all her attention focused on Walker’s face.

      “Say you’ll be there,” Clare wheedled, guilelessly wily.

      “Yeah,” Shane put in. “’Cause if I have to eat your share of the pancakes on top of mine, I’ll probably puke or something.”

      “Shane,” Casey warned sweetly, “this is no place for that kind of talk.”

      “Sorry,” Shane said, clearly unrepentant.

      Walker knew it would be better to refuse the invitation, especially since it hadn’t been Casey’s idea, but, looking into the hopeful faces of his children, he couldn’t bring himself to say no. “All right,” he said gruffly, finding that his voice had gathered some rust in the past few minutes.

      “The bake sale will wind up in an hour or so,” Casey said. “After that, we’ll be heading for home, and Doris will be ready to put brunch on the table.” She checked her watch, the plastic kind sold from kiosks in shopping malls. “Stop by around one-thirty?” she concluded.

      Walker nodded and was just turning to walk away when he nearly collided with a smiling Patsy McCullough. Her young daughter wasn’t in evidence, but Dawson was beside her, seated in his wheelchair, grinning up at Walker. Just behind Patsy’s right shoulder stood Treat McQuillan, Parable’s chief of police and most irritating citizen.

      The look that passed between Walker and Treat was deadly, though brief.

      Once upon a time, when he was still working as a sheriff’s deputy, Treat had crossed a line by putting a hand on Brylee in the Boot Scoot Tavern, demanding that she dance with him.

      She’d indicated that she’d rather not, but Treat hadn’t taken no for an answer. He’d made the mistake of trying to drag Walker’s kid sister onto the small dance floor, really just a table-free space in front of the jukebox, since the establishment was nothing fancy, and Walker had clocked him for it. For a while afterward, Treat had made a lot of noise about pressing assault charges against an officer of the law, but in the end, he and Walker had come to a gentlemen’s agreement, the details of which Walker couldn’t exactly recall. Treat hadn’t filed a complaint with his boss, Boone Taylor, and he’d mostly kept himself out of Walker’s way.

      None of which meant he wasn’t as sneaky as a rattlesnake curled up in a woodpile, ready to strike when the right opportunity presented itself.

      Dawson, a handsome kid with dark hair and inquisitive blue eyes, broke the silence by asking, “When can I come out to Timber Creek and ride a horse again?”

      Out of the corner of his eye, Walker saw a stricken look cross Patsy’s thin face.

      “You just say the word, cowboy,” Walker said to the boy, hoping his smile covered the sorrow he felt whenever he thought of the way Dawson had been before he’d climbed that damn water tower and fallen nearly fifty feet, doing permanent damage to his spine.

      “You know he can’t ride a horse,” Treat growled. As always, he was on the peck, beating the brush for something he could get all riled up over.

      Patsy, a plain, hard-worn woman in a cotton dress, eased herself between Treat and Walker and offered up a feeble smile. “What Treat means is,” she warbled nervously, “we wouldn’t want Dawson to get hurt—”

      Dawson groaned angrily.

      “Patsy,” Walker said, ignoring McQuillan the way he ignored flies when he was shoveling out stalls, “I wouldn’t let anything happen to your boy. You can be sure of it.”

      “I know,” Patsy allowed after a fleeting glance over her shoulder to gauge the heat of her escort’s temper, followed by a longer, softer look down at her son. It was clear that she loved the boy, felt torn between protecting her child and letting him spread his wings as far as their limited span permitted. “I guess it would be all right,” she went on, still focused on Dawson. “As long as Mr. Parrish was right there with you the whole time and all.”

      Dawson’s face, cloudy before, busted loose with a dazzling smile. “Yes!” he said, punching the air with one triumphant fist.

      Walker, who had been holding his hat until then, carefully placed it on his head, gave the brim a slight pull for Patsy’s benefit, a tacit signal that he was done here and he’d be going on his way now. Treat simmered behind her, but for once he had the good sense not to offer an opinion.

      “I’ll be in touch in the next few days,” Walker said, grinning down at Dawson.

      “Thanks,” Dawson replied, almost breathless. “I’ll be waiting to hear from you.”

      Walker said goodbye and meandered through the milling congregation, making his way back to his truck. He had just short of ninety minutes to kill before turning up at Casey’s place for the pancake feed, but he wasn’t about to pass them hanging around a bake sale.

      * * *

      CASEY SMILED AND SERVED strawberry shortcake to a long line of eager customers, Clare obligingly squirting canned whipped cream on each plateful before handing it over, Shane making change from a cigar box balanced on the seat of a folding chair.

      By the time the sale was over—the men of the congregation had been volunteered by their wives to clean up afterward and stow away the folding tables and other gear, since the women had done most of the baking and selling—Casey was more than ready to go home, have a few unhurried cups of coffee and enjoy another of Doris’s incomparable Sunday brunches.

      And never mind that the