Cowboy Ever After: Big Sky Mountain. Maisey Yates

over to my place? We’ll have a couple of beers and feel sorry for ourselves for a while.”

      Hutch had to chuckle at that, though it was against his will and he resented it. “All right,” he agreed at last, and grudgingly. “Long as you promise not to run me in for drunk driving after plying me with liquor.”

      “You have my word,” Boone said with a grin. “See you over there.”

      With that, he backed away from the window and strolled back to his cruiser where the lights were still swirling, blue and white, causing the few passersby to slow down to gawk.

      Boone’s land, situated on the far side of Parable from where they started, was prime, fronting the river and sloping gently up toward the foothills, but it had the look of a place bogged down in hard times. The double-wide trailer was ugly as sin, and there were a couple of junked-out cars parked in the tall grass that surrounded it.

      The double-wide had rust around its skirting, the makeshift porch dipped in the middle, and there was an honest-to-God toilet out front, with a bunch of dead flowers poking out of the bowl. Boone and his wife, Corrie—she’d never have stood for a john in the yard—had planned to live in the trailer only until they’d built their modest dream house, but when Corrie died of breast cancer a few years back, everything else in Boone’s life seemed to stall.

      If he’d had a dog, folks said, he’d have given it away. He had sent his two young sons, Griffin and Fletcher, off to live with his sister and her family in Missoula, where he probably figured they were better off.

      Running for sheriff, after Slade announced that he wouldn’t be seeking reelection, had been the first real sign of life in Boone since Corrie was laid to rest and for a while optimistic locals had hoped he’d get his act together, bring his kids home to Parable where they belonged, and just generally get on with things.

      Parking behind the cruiser, Hutch felt an ache of sorrow on his friend’s behalf—Boone had loved Corrie with all he had, from first grade on through college and in some ways, it was as if he’d just given up and crawled right into that grave with her.

      “I swear this place looks worse every time I see it,” Hutch remarked after getting out of the truck. There should have been two little boys running to greet their dad after a day at work, he thought, and a dog barking in celebration of his return, if not a woman smiling on the porch of the new house.

      Instead it was dead quiet, like a graveyard with rusted headstones.

      “You sound like the chicken rancher,” Boone responded dryly, cocking a thumb in the direction of the neighboring place where Tara Kendall had set up housekeeping the year before. “She says this place is an eyesore.”

      Hutch had to grin. “She has a point,” he said. Then, aware that he was pushing it, he added, “How are the boys?”

      Boone, starting toward the sagging porch, tossed him a look. “They’re just fine with their aunt and uncle and their brood,” he said. “So don’t start in on me, Hutch.”

      Hutch pretended to brace himself for a blow from his oldest and best friend. “You won’t hear any relationship advice from me, old buddy,” he said. “These days, I’m on America’s Ten Most Unwanted list, which hardly makes me an authority.”

      “Damn straight,” Boone grumbled. “And that’s where you belong, too. On a master shit-list, I mean. I knew all that womanizing was bound to catch up with you someday.”

      Hutch laughed and followed his friend into the trailer. Boone always said what he thought; nobody was required to like it.

      The inside of the double-wide was clean enough, but it was dismal, too. Full of shadows and smelling of the bachelor life—musty clothes left in the washing machine too long, garbage in need of taking out, the remains of last night’s lonely pizza.

      Boone opened the refrigerator and took out two cans of beer, handing one to Hutch and popping the top on another, taking a long drink before starting back outside again to sit in one of the rickety lawn chairs on that sorry excuse for a porch.

      Hutch joined him.

      “Old friend,” Hutch ventured, looking out over what passed for a yard, “you need a woman. And that’s just the start.”

      Boone grinned ruefully. “So do you,” he said. “But you keep running them off.”

      Hutch sipped his beer. It was icy cold and it hit a dry spot, way down deep, unknotting him a little. “Slade’s a dad now,” he remarked, letting the gibe pass. “Can you believe it?”

      “Hell, yes, I can believe it,” Boone responded. They had a three-cornered alliance, Slade and Hutch and Boone. Slade and Hutch, being half brothers, hadn’t gotten along until after the old man died, but Boone was close friends with both of them and always had been. “One look at Joslyn and Slade was a goner. Mark my words, they’ll have a houseful of little Barlows before too long.”

      Hutch chuckled, but his thoughts had taken a somber turn just the same. “I reckon they enjoy the process of making them, all right,” he said. A pause followed and another slow sip of cold beer. “What do you suppose it is about Slade, that’s missing in you and me?” he asked.

      Boone didn’t pretend not to understand the question, but he took his time answering. “I hate to admit it,” he finally replied, “but I think it’s just plain-old backbone. Slade’s not afraid to throw his heart in the ring and risk getting it stomped on. You and me, now, we’re a couple of cowards.”

      Hutch absorbed that for a while. It was a tough truth to acknowledge—he wasn’t afraid of anything besides climbing the water tower in town and giving up a chunk of his ranch to some vindictive ex-wife—but he couldn’t deny that Boone had a point. Therefore, he didn’t take offense. “What scares you the most, Boone?” he asked quietly.

      Boone studied the horizon for a few moments, weighing his reply. “Loving a woman the way I loved Corrie,” he said at long last. “And then losing her in the same way I lost Corrie. I don’t honestly think I could take that, Hutch.”

      They were quiet for a long time, beers in hand, gazes fixed on things that were long ago and faraway.

      “Your boys are growing up, Boone,” Hutch ventured, after a decent interval. “They need you.”

      “They need what they have,” Boone said, his voice taut now, his grip on his beer threatening to crush the can between his fingers, “which is a normal life with a normal family.” He paused, swore, shook his head. “Hell, Hutch, you know I can’t take care of them the way Molly does.”

      Hutch bit back the obvious response—that if Boone would just get his act together, he could make a home for himself and his boys, like millions of other single parents did. But who was he to talk about having it together, after all?

      He didn’t have kids and a wife waiting at home, either.

      Didn’t even have a dog, for God’s sake, since Jasper had moved in with Slade.

      For whatever reason, Boone didn’t point out the holes in Hutch’s own story, but that didn’t mean he’d let him off the conversational hook, either.

      Fair was fair and Hutch had been the one to set this particular ball rolling.

      “That’s quite a hubbub Brylee’s friends are stirring up on the web,” Boone said.

      Hutch swallowed a sigh—and a couple more gulps of beer. “I am,” he replied gravely, “a casualty of the digital age.”

      Boone laughed outright at that. “And innocent as the driven snow on top of it all,” he added, before swilling more beer. As Slade had done when he held the office, Boone rarely wore a uniform—he dressed like any other Montana rancher, in jeans, boots and shirts cut Western-style. Now he unfastened the top two buttons of his shirt and breathed in as if he’d been smothering until then. “You and me,” he said, “we’re destined to be crusty old bachelors, it