"Do you miss your mom, now that's she's gone home to Santa Fe?" Kendra asked Joslyn, deciding to skip the doughnuts because her stomach was still a little touchy.

"Of course I do," Joslyn said. "It was lovely, having her here, but she has a life to get back to and, besides, we're sure to see her again soon."

"We shouldn't have forwarded that webpage to you," Tara interjected, looking fretful again. "I don't know what we were thinking."

"It's all right," Kendra said truthfully. "I would have seen it sooner or later anyway, and it was better that it came from the two of you."

"You really went to see Brylee Parrish?" Joslyn asked, wide-eyed.

"No," Kendra joked. "I just said that to get a rise out of you. Yes, I went to see Brylee, and I feel like an idiot. One of those people who are always on the lookout for something to raise a fuss about."

"I'd say you had reason to raise a fuss," Tara said, loyal to the end. "Sometimes things like that picture of you and Hutch being posted with a snarky comment start out small and then mushroom into a major ha.s.sle."

"Well, anyway, it's done," Kendra went on with a little shrug. "Brylee is actually a very nice person, you know. She's going to make sure the page gets taken down-so no harm done."

"Did she ask if you and Hutch are involved?" Joslyn asked. No sense in pulling any punches; cut right to the chase-that was Joslyn's way.

"She wanted to," Kendra said, "but she didn't."

"Are you?" Tara prodded.

"Am I what?" Kendra stalled.

"Involved. With. Hutch. Carmody," Tara said with exaggerated patience.

"No," Kendra said, thinking, not if you don't count that hot kiss by Whisper Creek yesterday afternoon.

"I heard he bought a pony for Madison," Tara persisted.

"Who told you that?" Kendra wanted to know.

"Word gets around," Tara said.

"Opal," Kendra guessed, and knew she was right by the looks of fond chagrin on her friends' faces.

"Don't be mad at Opal," Joslyn was quick to say. "We were talking on the phone and it just slipped out that Hutch bought a pony for Madison to ride and, well, it's only natural to draw some conclusions."

"Which, of course, you did," Kendra pointed out sweetly. "It just so happens that you're wrong, though. Hutch bought the pony because the people who owned it before said it was lonely, with their kids grown up and gone from home."

Tara and Joslyn exchanged knowing looks.

"Every hardworking cattle rancher needs a pony named Ruffles," Joslyn observed dryly and with a twinkle.

"It means nothing," Kendra insisted.

"Whatever you say," Tara agreed, grinning.

"You two are impossible."

"At least we're objective," Joslyn said. "Unlike some people I could mention."

Kendra picked up her teacup and took a measured sip. "You are so not objective," she said at some length.

"We want you to be happy," Tara said.

"Well, I want you to be happy, too," Kendra immediately replied. "So why aren't we trying to throw you together with somebody-like Boone Taylor, for instance?"

Tara turned a fetching shade of apricot-pink. "Oh, please," she said.

Joslyn, comfortably ensconced in her own marriage and family life, grinned at both of them. Happy people could be downright insufferable, Kendra reflected, especially when they were trying to make a point. "There was a time," she reminded them, "when I couldn't stand Slade Barlow. And look how that turned out."

"Oh, right," Tara said grumpily. Her teacup made a clinking sound as she set it back in her saucer. "We'll just go out and find men we absolutely cannot abide, won't we, Kendra, and live happily ever after. Why didn't we think of that?"

Joslyn's eyes shimmered with mischievous amus.e.m.e.nt. "You might be surprised if you gave Boone even the slightest encouragement," she said before turning her gaze on Kendra. "And as for you, Ms. Shepherd, we all know that Hutch Carmody makes your little heart go pitty-pat, so why try to pretend otherwise?"

Kendra sighed a long, sad sigh. "Maybe he does," she confessed, almost in a whisper. "But that doesn't mean things will work out between us. They didn't before, remember."

"You do feel something for him, then," Joslyn pointed out kindly, patting Kendra's hand.

"I don't know what I feel," Kendra said. "Except that he scares me half to death."

"Why?" Tara asked. Her tone was gentle.

"Once burned, twice shy, I guess," Kendra answered. She glanced down at her watch, partly as a signal that she didn't want to talk about Hutch anymore. "I'd better get back to the office," she added, "before people decide I've gone out of business because I'm never there."

n.o.body argued. Both Tara and Joslyn rose to hug their friend goodbye.

Kendra called to Daisy and within minutes the two of them were on the road again.

When she reached the office and checked her voice mail, Kendra learned that three prospective new listings were in the works. She called back each of the people who'd decided to sell their property, arranging meetings for the afternoon, glad to be busy.

The first of the three was a modest ranch-style house with a big yard, a detached garage and plenty of s.p.a.ce for flower beds and gardens. The owner, an aging widower named John Gerard, had decided to share a condo in Great Falls with his brother. The place had been impeccably maintained, but it needed some upgrading, too-it would make a good starter home for a young couple, with or without a family.

Kendra and Mr. Gerard agreed on an asking price and other details, and papers were signed.

The second property was commercial-a spooky old motel that would be difficult to sell, given the dilapidated state it was in, but Kendra liked challenges, so she took that listing on, too, mainly because it was in a good location, almost in the middle of town.

By the time she visited the third offering, a double-wide trailer in her grandmother's old neighborhood, she was getting anxious. She had to be at the preschool by three o'clock to pick up Madison, that being the present arrangement, and she couldn't be late.

The owner-in her distracted state Kendra hadn't connected the dots-was Deputy Treat McQuillan. His face was still colorfully bruised from the set-to with Walker Parrish the other night at the Boot Scoot Tavern. By now the incident had a.s.sumed almost legendary proportions in and around Parable and she wondered, a little nervously, if Deputy McQuillan had followed through on his threat to press charges against Walker for a.s.sault.

In uniform, McQuillan was waiting on his add-on porch when Kendra pulled up in her car. She'd dropped Daisy off at home on her way over and, at the moment, she was glad. There was something about this man that made her feel slightly overprotective, of Madison and her dog.

"h.e.l.lo," she sang out pleasantly, a businesswoman through and through, leaving her purse in the car and unlatching the creaky wooden gate that opened onto the rather hardscrabble front yard. "I hope I haven't kept you waiting."

"Some things," McQuillan drawled, letting his gaze drag over her in a way that was at once leisurely and sleazy, "are worth waiting for."

Kendra felt profoundly uncomfortable and not just because her last encounter with this man, when he'd warned her about Hutch at the b.u.t.ter Biscuit Cafe, still irritated her. Her grandmother's old place was just two doors down, on the other side of the unpaved road, and the old sense of futility and sorrow settled over her as surely as if she'd stepped back in time and turned into her childhood self, abandoned and scared.

"You're planning to move?" she asked sunnily, pretending this was business as usual. McQuillan was, after all, a sheriff's deputy and, even if he had stepped over the line with Brylee over at the cowboy bar, there was no reason to paint him as a rapist on the prowl for his next victim.

"I'm not sure yet," the deputy replied, keeping his eyes on her face now, instead of her b.r.e.a.s.t.s. "Maybe I'll buy a patch of land and build a house, if I can get the right price for this double-wide."

Kendra approached confidently, with her shoulders back and her spine straight. "I see," she said. "What if it sells right away, though? Where would you live in the interim?"

He favored her with a slow grin that made her skin crawl a little and stepped down off the porch to put out a hand to her. "I haven't thought that far ahead," he admitted, gesturing toward the trailer behind him. "I'm just taking things as they come." He glanced at his watch. "I'm on duty in a few minutes," he went on, handing her a ring with two keys dangling from it. "You go on in and take a look around and, if you wouldn't mind, lock up on your way out. I'll pick up the keys later on and we'll work out the details."

Kendra was used to being alone in houses and apartments with people who made her uneasy-that was part of being in the real estate business-but she was wildly relieved that McQuillan meant to leave her to explore on her own. The idea of being confined in a small s.p.a.ce with this man made her more than edgy.

She smiled, though, and nodded. "I'll be back at the office around three-thirty," she said. "You could stop by any time after that."

"Fine," he said, and walked on toward the gate. With a jaunty wave of farewell, he left the yard, crossed the sidewalk and got into his personal vehicle, a small green truck, clearly old but polished to a high shine.

Kendra waited until he'd driven away with a merry toot of his horn, before starting up the porch steps.

The front door stood open, but there was a sliding screen, so she moved that aside to step into a living room exactly like her grandmother's.

Her stomach curled around what was left of her quick lunch, a fruit cup and some yogurt hastily consumed at home while she was getting Daisy settled, and she instructed herself, silently and sternly, to get over it.

She wasn't a little girl anymore and this wasn't her grandmother's mobile home.

Deputy McQuillan's living room was shabby-the carpet, drapes and furniture had all seen better days-but every surface was immaculately clean, like the outside of his truck.

She made a hasty circuit, checking out the kitchenette, the fanatically neat bathroom, the three bedrooms, two of which were desperately small. The master bedroom boasted a water bed with a huge, mirrored headboard, and the coverlet was made of crimson velvet.

Cringing a little, Kendra backed out of that room. It was a silly reaction, she knew, but she had to force herself to walk-not run-through the kitchenette and the living room to the front door.

Outside, she sucked in several deep breaths and resolutely took a tour of the yard. There was a tool shed, a detached garage and a small rose garden encircled by chicken-wire that was painted white. The blossoms inside seemed timid, somehow, like prisoners waiting to be rescued.

Now she was really being silly, she decided.

It was a relief, just the same, to get into her car, shut and lock the doors and drive away.

"I 'POLOGIZED!" MADISON announced when Kendra picked her up at preschool. "Becky and me are friends now! She invited me to sleep over sometime-and she has horses at her house-"

Kendra bit back the correction-Becky and I-and smiled as she strapped Madison into her car seat. "That's wonderful," she said. "Did you apologize to Miss Abbington, too?"

Madison nodded vigorously, but a frown creased her forehead. "Where's Daisy? You didn't give her back to that lady at the shelter, did you?"

Slightly stunned, Kendra straightened. "Daisy's at home," she said gently. "And of course I didn't give her back, sweetheart. Why would I do that?"

"Sometimes people give kids back," Madison ventured.

Kendra swallowed hard, worked up another smile. Madison had been shunted from one foster home to the next during her short life, so it wasn't difficult to figure out the source of the child's concern, for Daisy and for herself.

"You're staying with me," Kendra said carefully, "until you're all grown up and ready to go off to college. And even then, you'll always have a home to come back to, and a mommy, too."

"You won't give me back? Not ever?"

"Not ever," Kendra vowed, fighting tears. "And the same goes for Daisy. We're in this for the long haul, all three of us. We're a family, forever and ever."

"It would still be nice if there was a daddy," Madison mused, though she looked appeased by Kendra's promise never to leave. It was one she'd made a thousand times before, and would probably make a thousand more times in the future.

"I guess," Kendra allowed, getting quickly behind the wheel and starting up the car so they could head for home.

"If I could pick out a daddy, I'd choose Mr. Carmody," Madison went on.

By then, Kendra was beginning to wonder if she was being played, but she didn't hesitate to give her daughter the benefit of a doubt. Carefully, she put the car in gear and drove away from the community center, waving to other mothers and fathers coming to collect their children. "Unfortunately," she explained, "it doesn't work that way."

"How does getting a daddy work, then?"

Kendra suppressed a sigh. "It's not like baking cookies, honey," she said. "There's no recipe to follow. No formula."

"Oh," Madison said, and the note of sadness in her voice made Kendra ache.

They drove in silence for a minute or two.

Then Madison spoke up again. "It's not fair," she said.

"What's not fair?" Kendra asked patiently, concentrating on the road ahead.

"That my daddy's in heaven instead of right here in Parable with us," Madison replied succinctly. "I want a daddy I can see and talk to."

Kendra didn't trust herself to answer without bursting into tears, so she held her tongue.

CHAPTER FOURTEEN.

THAT EVENING, AFTER supper and a story and going-to-sleep prayers-Madison asked G.o.d for a daddy and suggested Hutch Carmody as a promising candidate for the job-Kendra sat alone at her kitchen table for a while, a little dazed by all that had been going on lately.

She'd had a heck of a time keeping back the tears while Madison was putting in her request for a father; now, as she sat there with a cup of herbal tea before her, they ran freely.

Daisy, who had been snuggled up at the foot of Madison's new bed only a few minutes before, meandered into the kitchen, came straight over to Kendra's chair and stood on her hind legs to plant her forepaws on Kendra's thigh. Her brown eyes shone with canine sympathy and she made a low, whimpering sound in her throat.

Kendra gave a raw chuckle, sniffled and laid a gentle hand on the dog's golden head. "You're a good dog, Daisy," she said, thick-throated with all the complicated emotions swamping her just then.

Daisy rested her muzzle on Kendra's leg and sighed sweetly.

Kendra continued to stroke the dog, used her free hand to raise her teacup to her mouth.