LITMIR.BIZ

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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 seems.”

      Kendra filled Hutch’s mind just then. He saw her in the kitchen at his place, starting supper. He saw Madison, too, and even the dog, Daisy, hurrying out of the house to greet him when he got out of his truck or climbed down off his horse.

      “I guess there are worse fates,” Hutch allowed, but his throat felt tight all of a sudden and a little on the raw side.

      “Like what?” Boone asked, gruffly companionable, still reflective. He was probably remembering happier days and hurting over the contrast between then and now.

      “Being married to the wrong woman,” Hutch said with grim certainty.

      Boone sighed, finished his beer and stared solemnly at the can. “I wouldn’t know about that,” he answered, and though his voice didn’t actually break, there was a crack in it. He’d been hitched to the right woman, was what he meant.

      Finished with his own beer, Hutch stood up. He had work to do at home and besides, the emptiness would be there waiting, no matter how long he delayed his return, so he might as well get it over with. “We’re a pair to draw to,” he said, tossing the can into a wheelbarrow overflowing with them in roughly the place where Corrie used to set flowers in big pots.

      Boone stood, too. Tried for a grin and fell short.

      “You signed up for the bull-riding again this year?” he asked, referring to the upcoming rodeo. The Fourth fell on a Saturday this year, a convenient thing for most folks if not for Boone, who would surely have to bring a few former deputies out of retirement to make sure Parable County remained peaceable.

      “Course I am,” Hutch retorted, feeling a mite touchy again. “Walker Parrish promised me the worst bull that ever drew breath.”

      “I’ll just bet he did,” Boone said with another chuckle, throwing his own beer can in the general direction of the wheelbarrow and missing by a couple of feet. “When it’s your turn to ride, I reckon a few of the spectators will be rooting for the bull.”

      Hutch started toward his truck. Twilight was gathering at the edges of the land, pulling inward like the top of a drawstring bag, and his horses would be wondering when he planned on showing up with their hay and grain rations. “No different than any other year,” he said. “Somebody’s always on the bull’s side.”

      “You might want to think about that,” Boone answered, and damn if he didn’t sound serious as a heart attack. Him, with his sons farmed out to kinfolk, however loving, and the weeds taking over, threatening to swallow up the trailer itself.

      Hutch stopped in his tracks. “Think about what?” he demanded.

      “Life. People. How time gets away from a man and, before he knows it, he’s sitting in some nursing home without a tooth in his head or a hope in his heart that anybody’s going to trouble themselves to visit.”

      “Damned if you aren’t dumber than the average post,” Hutch said, moving again, jerking open the door of his truck and climbing inside.

      “At least I know my limitations,” Boone said affably.

      “Thanks for the beer,” Hutch replied ungraciously, and slammed the truck’s door.

      He drove away at a slower pace than he would have liked, though. Boone had already written him up for speeding once and he wasn’t above doing it again.

      By the time he got back to Whisper Creek, he’d simmered down quite a bit, though what Boone had said about the pair of them being cowards still stuck in him like barbed wire.

      A familiar station wagon, three years older than dirt, was parked next to the house when he pulled in.

      Opal, he realized, had arrived early.

      He muttered something under his breath, got out of the pickup and went directly into the barn, where he spent the better part of an hour attending to horses.

      It was almost dark by the time he’d finished, and the lights were on in the kitchen, spilling a golden glow of welcome into the yard.

      Stepping inside, he nodded a howdy to Opal, refusing to give her the satisfaction of demanding to know what the hell she was doing in his house. For one thing, he already knew—she was frying up chicken, country-style, and it smelled like three levels of heaven.

      “Wash up before you eat,” Opal ordered, tightening her apron strings and eyeing him through the big lenses of her glasses.

      “I generally do,” Hutch said mildly, running water at the sink and picking up the bar of harsh orange soap he kept handy.

      “Look at those boots,” Opal scolded with that strange, gruff tenderness she reserved for people in need of her guidance and correction. “Bet the soles are caked with manure.”

      Hutch sighed. He’d scraped them clean outside, on the porch, as he’d been taught to do around the time he started wearing boots.

      “With you over here,” he quipped, “who’s going to nag Slade Barlow?”

      “Shea’s mama got in early,” Opal replied, spearing pieces of chicken onto a platter with a meat fork. “So I figured I might as well get started setting things to rights around here.”

      Hutch dried his hands on a towel and grinned at her. “You’re off to a good start with supper,” he conceded.

      She chuckled. “I made mashed potatoes and gravy, too, and boiled up some green beans with bacon and onion to boot. Sit yourself down, Hutch Carmody, and eat the first balanced meal you’ve probably had in a month of Sundays.”

      He waited until all the food was on the table and Opal was seated before taking a chair, wryly amused to recall that this was just the scenario he’d imagined for himself earlier.

      Only the woman was different.

       CHAPTER SEVEN

      THE MANSION ON Rodeo Road seemed strangely hollow the next morning when Kendra stepped through the front door, even though most of the original furniture remained and there were painters and other workers in various rooms throughout.

      Standing in the enormous entryway, she tipped her head back and looked up at the exquisite ceiling, waited for a pang of regret—some kind of sadness was to be expected, she supposed, given that she’d spent part of her life here. She’d wanted so much to live in this house, long before she’d met and married Jeffrey Chamberlain, and after her marriage a number of dreams had lived—and died—right here in these rooms.

      Somewhat surprisingly, what Kendra

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