"n.o.body's looking for Leviticus," Opal said with sad certainty. "He'd have a collar and tags if he belonged to someone."

Hutch felt a peculiar mixture of sympathy and possessiveness where Leviticus was concerned. The dog was bound to be nothing but trouble-he'd chew things up and he probably wasn't housebroken-but Hutch wanted to keep him, wanted that more than anything except to find some common ground with Kendra, so they wouldn't be so jumpy around each other.

Tomorrow couldn't come soon enough to suit him.

CHAPTER ELEVEN.

"I'LL NEED BOOTS," Madison announced the next morning at breakfast. "Can we buy some, please? Today?"

Practically from the moment she'd opened her eyes, Madison had been fixating on the upcoming horseback ride out at Whisper Creek Ranch. Even as she spooned her way diligently through a bowlful of her favorite cereal, her feet were swinging back and forth under the table as though already carrying her toward the magic hour of three-thirty in the afternoon.

"Let's wait and see," Kendra said, sipping coffee. She didn't normally skip breakfast, but that day she couldn't face even a bite of toast. She had orchestrated this whole horseback riding thing, set herself up for yet another skirmish with Hutch and now the reality was almost upon her-and Madison.

What had she done?

More importantly, why had she put herself and her daughter in this position?

"Everybody at preschool has boots," Madison persisted. Daisy, having finished her kibble, crossed the room to lay her muzzle on the child's lap and gaze up at her with the pure, selfless love of a saint at worship.

"Most of those children have been riding since they were babies," Kendra reasoned, making a face as she set her coffee cup down. Usually a mainstay, the stuff tasted like acid this morning. "Suppose you get on that horse today and find out you hate riding and you never want to do it again?"

"That won't happen," Madison said with absolute conviction. Where did all that certainty come from? Was it genetic-some vestige of all those English ancestors riding to the hunt, soaring over hedges and streams?

Kendra shook off the thought. She hadn't slept all that well the night before, imagining all the things that might go wrong today, and now she was paying the price. Her thoughts were as muddled as her emotions.

"What makes you so sure of yourself, young lady?" she challenged with a small smile.

Madison grinned back at her. "You're always saying it's good to try new things," she said with a note of triumph that underscored Kendra's impression that the child was only posing as a four-year-old-she was really an old soul.

Busted, Kendra thought. She was always telling Madison that she shouldn't be afraid-of preschool, for instance, or speaking up in cla.s.s, or making friends on the playground-and now here she was, projecting her own misgivings onto her daughter. Speaking to the frightened little girl she herself had once been, instead of the bold one sitting across from her on a sunny, blue-skied morning full of promise.

"I'll make a deal with you," Kendra said, brightening. "If you still want boots after this first ride, we'll get you a pair." She wondered if the child had visions of racing across the open countryside on the back of some gigantic steed, when she'd most likely wind up on a pony or an arthritic mare.

"Okay," Madison capitulated, not particularly pleased but willing to negotiate. "But I'm still going to want those boots."

Kendra laughed. "Hurry up and finish your breakfast," she said. "Then go and brush your teeth while I let Daisy out for a quick run in the backyard. You need to be on time for preschool and I have to get to the office."

The spiffing-up process over at the mansion was winding down, according to reports from the painting and cleaning crews, and she already had two appointments to show the place, one at noon and one the following morning.

Things were moving along.

Why did it suddenly seem so difficult to keep up?

Madison set her spoon down, wriggled off her chair, and carried her mostly empty cereal bowl over to the sink. She stood on tiptoe to set it on the drainboard, humming under her breath as she headed back toward the bathroom.

Daisy started to follow her small mistress, but when Kendra opened the back door, the dog rushed through it, wagging her tail. Kendra followed.

The morning was glorious-the gra.s.s green, with that fresh-cut smell, and lawn sprinklers sang their rhythmic songs in the surrounding yards. Birds whistled in the branches of trees and a few perched on Kendra's clothesline, regarding Daisy's progress with placid nonchalance.

Madison returned to the kitchen just as Daisy and Kendra were coming in from outside. She opened her lips wide to show Kendra her clean teeth.

Kendra pretended to be dazzled, going so far as to raise both hands against the sudden glare, as if blinded by it.

Madison giggled, this being one of their many small games. "You're silly, Mommy," she said.

Kendra tugged lightly at one of Madison's coppery curls and bent to kiss the top of her head. "Have I mentioned that I love you to the moon and back?" she countered, taking Daisy's leash from its hook and snapping it to the dog's collar.

"I love you ten times that much," Madison responded on cue.

"I love you a hundred times that much," Kendra p.r.o.nounced, juggling her purse, car keys and a leash with an excited puppy at the other end.

"I love you the last number in the world times that much," Madison said.

"I love you ten thousand times that much," Kendra told her as they trooped outside and headed for the driveway, where the trusty Mom-mobile was parked.

"That isn't fair," Madison argued. "I said the last number in the world."

"Okay," Kendra answered, smiling. "You win."

HUTCH MOVED FROM one stall to the next, a.s.sessing every horse he owned.

They were ordinary beasts, most of them, but they all looked too big and too powerful for a four-year-old to ride.

Was it too late to buy a pony?

He chuckled at the idea and shook his head. Whisper Creek was a working ranch and the horses pulled their weight, just as the men did. He'd be laughed right out of the Cattleman's a.s.sociation if he ran a Shetland on the same range as all these brush cutters and ropers. The sweet old mare he'd reserved for greenhorns had pa.s.sed away peacefully one night last winter and much as he'd loved the animal, it hadn't occurred to him to replace her. It was a matter of attrition.

Opal stepped into the barn just as he turned from the last stall, dressed for going to town. She wore a jersey dress, as usual, but a hat, too, and shiny shoes, and she carried a huge purse with a jeweled catch.

"I've got a meeting at the church," she informed him. "After that, I thought I'd look in on Joslyn's bunch, see how they're doing."

Hutch smiled, walked slowly in her direction. He'd already sent the ranch hands out onto the range for the day, a.s.signing them to the usual tasks, which left him with nothing much to do other than look himself up on the internet and see how he was faring in the court of public opinion.

Not that he couldn't have guessed. Team Brylee was probably still on the warpath, and so far a Team Hutch hadn't come together.

"You don't work for me," he reminded Opal affably, as she had recently reminded him. "No need to explain your comings and goings."

Opal stood stalwartly in his path, clutching her purse to her chest with both hands as though she expected some stranger to swoop in and grab it if she relaxed her vigilance for a fraction of a second. "I'm living under your roof," she said matter-of-factly, "so it's just common courtesy to tell you my plans."

Hutch stopped, cleared his throat, smiled again. "All right," he agreed. "You've told me. It was unnecessary, but I appreciate it just the same."

Opal didn't move, though she might have loosened her grip on her handbag just a little; he couldn't be sure. "You and Boone," she mused, sounding almost weary, even though it hadn't been an hour since breakfast. "I declare, the two of you will worry me right into an early grave."

Hutch's chuckle sounded hoa.r.s.e. He shoved a hand through his hair. "That would be a shame, Opal," he said. "Boone will be fine and so will I."

"Just the same," Opal replied, "I sometimes wonder if I'm ever going to be able to cross you off my active prayer list."

Hutch felt his mouth quirk at one corner. "We're on your prayer list?" he responded. "Why, Opal, I'm both touched and flattered."

"Don't be," she told him gruffly. "It means you're a hard case, and so is Boone."

"I see," Hutch said, though he didn't really. He wanted to laugh, but some instinct warned him that Opal was dead serious about this prayer list business. "Well, then, maybe I'm not flattered after all," he went on presently. "But I'm still touched."

She smiled that slow, warm smile of hers, the one that seemed to take in everybody and everything for miles around, like a sunrise. "There may be hope for you yet," she said, her tone mischievously cryptic. "I'll be back in plenty of time to make supper for you and Kendra and that sweet little child of hers. Try not to say the wrong thing and drive them off before I get back."

Hutch merely nodded and Opal turned, her purse still pressed to her bosom, to leave the barn.

He'd fed the horses earlier; now he began the process of turning them out of their stalls and into the pasture-all except Remington, that is. He heard Opal's station wagon start up with a gas-guzzling roar, listened as she drove away, tires spitting gravel.

Opal did everything with verve.

He smiled as he fetched his gear from the tack room, carried it back to where the gelding waited, patiently chewing on the last of his grain ration.

Hutch opened the stall gate, and Remington stepped out into the breezeway-he knew the drill, and suddenly he was eager to be saddled, to leave the confines of that barn for the wide-open s.p.a.ces.

Five minutes later, Hutch was mounted up, and the two of them were moving over the range at a graceful lope, headed for Big Sky Mountain.

Reaching the base of the trail Hutch favored, the horse slowed for the climb, rocks scrabbling under his hooves as he started up the incline.

Hutch bent low over the animal's neck as they pa.s.sed through a stand of oak and maple trees, the branches grabbing at both man and horse as they went.

The mountain was many things to Hutch Carmody-for as long as he could remember, he'd gone there when he had something to mourn or something to celebrate, or when he simply wanted to think.

From a certain vantage point, he could see the world that mattered most to him-the sprawling ranch lands, the cattle and horses, the streams and the river and, in the distance, the town of Parable.

After about fifteen minutes of fairly hard travel, he and Remington reached the small clearing that was, for him, the heart of Whisper Creek Ranch.

It was here that, as a boy of twelve, he'd cried for his lost mother.

It was here that he'd raged against his father, those times when he was too p.i.s.sed off or too hurt or both to stay put in school or in his room or out in the hay-scented sanctuary of the barn.

And it was here that he and Kendra had made love for the first time-and the last.

He sighed, swinging down from the saddle and leaving Remington to graze on the tender gra.s.s.

The pile of rocks was still there, of course-waist-high and around six feet long, resembling a tomb, he thought wryly, or maybe an altar for Old Testamentstyle offerings to a G.o.d he didn't begin to understand and, frankly, didn't much like.

Opal definitely would not approve of such an att.i.tude, he thought with a smile. She'd keep him on her hard-case prayer list for the duration.

No doubt, he belonged there.

After taking a moment to center himself, he walked over to the improvised monument, laid his hands on the cool, dusty stones on top and remembered. Every one of those rocks represented something he'd needed to say to John Carmody and never could, or something he had said and wished he hadn't.

High over his head, a breeze whispered through the needles of the Ponderosa pines and the leaves of those stray maples and oaks that had taken root in this place long before he was born. Remington nickered contentedly, his bridle fittings jingling softly.

A kind of peace settled over Hutch.

"You were hard to love, old man," he said very quietly.

John Carmody wasn't actually buried under those rocks-he'd been laid to rest in the Pioneer Cemetery-but this was where Hutch came when he felt the need to make some connection with his father, whether in anger or in sorrow.

The anger had mostly pa.s.sed, worn away by intermittent rock-stacking sessions following the old man's death, but the sorrow remained, more manageable now, but still as much a part of Hutch as the land and the fabled big sky.

And that, he decided, was all right, because life was all of a piece, when you got right down to it, a jumbled mixture of good and bad and everything in between.

He turned his back to the rock pile then, folded his arms and drew the vast view into himself like a breath to the soul.

In the distance he could see the spires of Parable's several small churches, the modest dome of the courthouse, with the flag rippling proudly at its peak. There was the river, and the streams breaking off from it, the spreading fingers of a great, shimmering hand.

His gaze wandered, finally snagged on the water tower.

Like the high meadow where he stood, that rickety old structure had meaning to him. He'd ridden bulls and broncos, ranging from mediocre to devil-mean, over the years, breaking a bone or two in the process. He'd floated some of the wildest rivers in the West, raced cars and skydived and bungee jumped, you name it, all without a flicker of fear.

And then there was the water tower.

Like most kids growing up in or around Parable, he'd climbed it once, made his way up the ancient ladder, rung by weathered rung, with his heart pounding in his ears and his throat so thick with terror that he could hardly breathe.

Reaching the flimsy walkway, some fifty feet above the ground, he'd suddenly frozen, gripping the rail while the whole structure seemed to sway like some carnival ride gone crazy. A cold sweat broke out all over him, clammy despite the heat of a summer afternoon and, just to complete his humiliation, Slade Barlow had been there.

Slade, his half brother, and at the time, sworn enemy, had dared him to make the climb in the first place. Ironically, Slade had been the one to come up that ladder and talk him down, too, since there was n.o.body else around just then.

Thank G.o.d.

Even now, after all his time, the memory settled into the pit of Hutch's stomach and soured there, like something he shouldn't have eaten.

He forced his attention away from the tower-most folks agreed that, being obsolete anyhow, the thing ought to be torn down before some darn-fool kid was seriously hurt or even killed, but n.o.body ever actually did anything about the idea. Maybe it was nostalgia for lost youth, maybe it was plain old inertia, but talking seemed to be as good as doing where that particular demolition project was concerned.

Hutch sighed, a little deflated, wondering what he'd expected to achieve by coming up here, approached Remington and gathered his reins before climbing back into the saddle.

He stood in the stirrups for a moment or two, stretching his legs, and then he headed for home, where no one was waiting for him.

AT NOON, KENDRA showed the mansion to the first potential client, a busy executive from San Francisco who was looking, he said, for investment opportunities. His wife, he told Kendra, had always wanted to start and run a bed-and-breakfast in a quaint little town exactly like Parable.

She'd smiled throughout, listening attentively, asking and answering questions, and finally telling the man straight out that there were already three bed-and-breakfasts in town, and they were barely staying afloat financially.

The man had nodded ruefully, thanked Kendra for her time and driven away in his rented SUV. Most likely he'd promised his wife he'd take a look, and now he'd done that and could dismiss the plan in good conscience. Instinctively she knew no offer would be forthcoming, but she wasn't discouraged.