Big Sky Country. Linda Miller Lael

he had no right to say.

      “You could send her here, to Parable, just for the summer.”

      There was a brief and, Slade thought, hopeful silence.

      “You mean it?” Layne asked, very tentatively, after a few moments.

      “Yes,” Slade said, as surprised as anybody. “I mean it.”

      All the while, his brain was reeling. Where was he going to put a sixteen-year-old kid? And what if, like Layne, he simply couldn’t get through to Shea? If she got into trouble, it would be his fault.

      “Okay,” Layne said. “Let’s give this a try. If Shea calms down a little after a summer away from home, we can revisit the whole boarding school question in the fall.”

      “Okay,” Slade echoed.

      Layne laughed softly, but there was something broken in the sound. “I wish we could have made it,” she said. “You and me.”

      “Me, too,” Slade said. “But we didn’t.”

      “No,” Layne agreed. “You’re probably the only person on earth I’d trust with my daughter—you know that, don’t you?”

      “Yeah,” he said, his voice gravelly. He was moved, because there was no doubt that Layne was telling the truth: she could count on him and she knew it. “I appreciate that, Layne. It means a lot.”

      There was a brief pause, brimming with all that might have been.

      “I’ll speak to Shea and get back to you so we can agree on the travel arrangements,” Layne said at length. “And, Slade?”

      He waited.

      “Thanks,” Layne finished.

      They said their goodbyes, and Slade hung up.

      “What the hell am I going to do now?” he asked Jasper, who had surfaced, yawning, from his nap just as Slade replaced the phone receiver in its cradle.

      Jasper gazed quizzically up at him, probably wondering what kind of yahoo asked a dog a question right out loud and half expected to get an answer.

      He shoved a hand through his hair, heaved a sigh. Headed for the dinky bathroom, with its dinky shower stall and dinky tub. He started water running in the shower and fetched a change of clothes from the bureau in his bedroom.

      Jasper stayed right on his heels the whole time, sat right there in the bathroom doorway while Slade stripped, climbed into the shower and scrubbed until he felt refreshed.

      After that, he dried off with a ratty-looking towel—he’d need to get new towels before Shea arrived, for sure. Hell, he’d need a new house.

      Fifteen minutes later, he and Jasper were in the truck and headed for Whisper Creek Ranch.

      There was still a lot of daylight left, but the sky was turning a pinkish orange where it rimmed the distant mountains, soon to be followed by a lavender twilight and then moon-laced darkness.

      If he wanted a good look at the ranch that was legally half his, he’d have to wait for tomorrow, but at least he could get Jasper back home, where he belonged.

      The Carmody house was a long, rambling structure, two stories high. The lawn looked one hell of a lot better than Slade’s own, and some kind of fluffy flower grew everywhere, in a profusion of pink and red, yellow and white.

      He stopped his truck in front of the house, and before he shut off the engine, Hutch came out of the front door and stood on the broad porch, looking unfriendly.

      Slade got out of the pickup. “I brought your dog back,” he said.

       CHAPTER FOUR

      JASPER HUNKERED DOWN in the passenger seat of Slade’s truck, suddenly as unwieldy as a feed sack stuffed with scrap iron.

      Hutch, an incongruous sight in that yard full of flowers, looked mildly amused as he came through the gate in the picket fence to watch the struggle.

      “I’ll tell you something about that dog,” Hutch offered after a few beats. “He can be real cussed.”

      “Ya think?” Slade countered, exasperated. By now, Jasper wasn’t just a dead weight; he’d turned slippery as a brook trout in the bargain. And he was still in the truck seat, where he clearly intended to remain.

      Hutch laughed. Stood nearby with his arms folded and his head cocked to one side. He must have resembled his late mother, Lottie Hutcheson, Slade thought distractedly, because he didn’t look a thing like the old man.

      No, that was his cross to bear—never looking into a mirror without seeing a younger version of the man who had denied him since birth.

      “You might just as well take him back home with you,” Hutch continued, surprising Slade. “Jasper’s like Dad was—once he’s made up his mind about something, he’s not likely to change it.”

      Slade slanted an appraising look at the man who was, biologically at least, blood kin. They were nothing alike, the two of them. Or were they? Down deep, at the DNA level, there had to be some similarities.

      “Got any suggestions?” Slade finally asked.

      Hutch considered the question at his leisure before offering an offhanded reply. “Like the ranch, I reckon old Jasper is half yours and half mine. Since he’s taken a notion to be your dog from here on out, you might as well stop trying to wrestle him out of that truck and spare him the long walk back to town. You leave him here, he’ll follow you home for sure.”

      Slade rubbed the back of his neck, pondering Hutch’s words. He didn’t need a mutt any more than he needed the responsibility of looking after a sixteen-year-old girl, but he figured Hutch was right. For whatever reason, Jasper had appointed himself sidekick. For the duration, evidently.

      Slade knew he’d welcome the company, though—he’d kept his life and his heart closed up tight since the divorce, doing his job, showing up, putting one foot in front of the other. Maybe it was time to open up a little, let somebody in.

      Even if that somebody happened to have four feet and a tail.

      It was a beginning, he supposed, though he wasn’t sure of what.

      “All right,” he agreed slowly and shut the truck door with Jasper still inside.

      “I’d swear that critter looks out-and-out relieved,” Hutch said drily. “And in case you’re wondering, I never mistreated him. Jasper was always a one-man dog, and Dad was that man. Now, I guess, the torch has been passed.”

      Slade studied his half brother for a long moment. Hutch’s manner wasn’t exactly cordial, but he wasn’t waving a loaded shotgun and ordering him off the property, either. “Thanks,” he said.

      “You given any more thought to selling me your share of Whisper Creek?” Hutch asked after waiting a moment or two.

      “I’ve given it plenty of thought,” Slade answered, squinting a little against the last dazzling light of another summer day, “but I haven’t come to any decision.”

      Hutch absorbed that response with a slight but oddly affable frown creasing the skin between his eyebrows. Then he gestured toward the house. “At the moment, the place is as much yours as it is mine,” he said, and there was no reading either his tone or his expression. Carmody would be able to hold his own in a high-stakes poker game, that was for sure, Slade reflected—and he wouldn’t need a hooded sweatshirt, a baseball cap or wraparound shades to manage it. “You might as well come inside and take a look around.”

      Slade looked past Hutch, taking in the rambling lines of that house. He’d never set foot in the place, and now fifty percent of it was legally his. It was a hard thing to take in.

      “All right,” he said after a long hesitation. He looked