“The business is just fine,” Joslyn said reasonably. “And so is Madison.”
As if on cue, the little girl gave a delighted laugh in the next room.
It was a sweet sound, all too rare, and it made the backs of Kendra’s eyes scald. “I don’t know if I can handle it,” she confessed, very softly. “Seeing Hutch again right away, I mean. I was counting on having some time to adjust to being back—”
Joslyn reached out, took her hand. Squeezed. “You can handle it,” she said with quiet certainty. “Trust yourself, Kendra. Nothing is going to happen between you and Hutch unless you want it to.”
“That’s just the trouble,” Kendra reflected miserably, careful to keep her voice down so Madison wouldn’t overhear. “Wanting a man—wanting Hutch—and knowing better the whole time—well, you know—”
“I do know,” Joslyn said, smiling.
“I have a daughter now,” Kendra reminded her friend. “I want Madison to grow up in Parable, go to the same schools from kindergarten through high school. I want to give her security, a real sense of community, the whole works. And getting sucked into Hutch’s orbit would be the stupidest thing I could possibly do.”
“Would it?” Joslyn asked, raising one delicate eyebrow as she waited for a reply.
“Of course it would,” Kendra whispered fiercely. “The man broke my heart into a gazillion pieces, remember? And now he’s dumped some poor woman virtually at the altar, which only goes to prove he hasn’t changed!”
“Did it ever occur to you,” Joslyn inquired, unruffled, “that Hutch might have ‘dumped’ Brylee for the simple reason that she’s not you?”
“No,” Kendra said firmly, shaken by the mere possibility, “that did not occur to me. He did it because he can’t commit to anything or anyone long-term, because Whisper Creek Ranch is all he really cares about in this world—because he’s a heartless, womanizing bastard.”
Before Joslyn could offer a response to that, Madison, Shea, Callie and the dog trailed back in the kitchen, making further discussion of Hutch Carmody impossible.
Kendra was still flustered, though. Her heart pounded and her throat and sinuses felt strangely thick—was she coming down with something? Every instinct urged her to get the heck out of there, now, but the idea seemed cowardly and, besides, Madison was just starting to let herself be part of the group.
If they rushed off to town, the little girl would be understandably confused.
So Kendra decided to stay, at least until after supper.
She was a grown woman, a mother. Joslyn had been right—it was time she started trusting herself. Hutch had always held an infuriating attraction for her, but she was older now, and wiser, and she had more self-control.
The next hour was taken up with getting ready, coming and going, table-setting and a lot of companionable, lighthearted chatter. Slade returned from the barn as he’d promised and, after washing up in a downstairs bathroom, made the whole crew promise not to pester Hutch with questions about the interrupted wedding.
As if, Kendra thought. She probably wouldn’t say more than a few polite words to the man. If she spoke to him at all.
She felt strong, confident, ready for anything.
Until he actually walked into the ranch house kitchen, that is.
Seeing her, he tightened his jaw and shot an accusatory glance in his half brother’s direction.
“Didn’t I mention that Kendra’s here?” Slade asked, breaking the brief, pulsing silence. There was a smile in his voice, though his blue eyes conveyed nothing but innocent concern.
Hutch, his dark blond hair sun-kissed with gold, recovered his normal affable manner within the space of a heartbeat.
He even smiled, flashing those perfect white teeth and setting Kendra back on her figurative heels.
“Hello, Kendra,” he said with a nod, after taking off his hat. Like Slade, he was dressed “cowboy” and the look suited him.
Kendra replied with a nod of her own. “Hutch,” she said, turning from the chopping board, where she’d been preparing a salad, and wished she’d cleared her throat first, because the name came out like a croak.
His gaze moved straight to Madison, and Kendra read the questions in his eyes even before he hid them behind a smile. Madison, meanwhile, raised Rupert, as if presenting him to this stranger for inspection.
“Howdy, there,” he said, all charm. “Do my eyes deceive me or is that critter a kangaroo?”
THE WAY HUTCH figured it, a solid week should have been plenty long enough for the fuss over the wedding-that-never-was to die down, but when Saturday afternoon rolled around again and he sat down at his computer to get a quick read on the gossip situation, tired from rounding up strays with the ranch hands since just after dawn, he was promptly disabused of the notion.
This jabber-fest was getting worse by the moment.
Apparently he’d made every “jerk” list in cyberspace, not just locally, but worldwide. Indignant females from as far away as the Philippines thought he ought to be tarred and feathered, and a couple of Brylee’s girlfriends, bless their vengeful little hearts, had set up a page on one of the major networking sites solely for the purpose of warning every woman with a pulse to steer clear of Hutch Carmody.
The reverse version, he supposed, grimly amused, of an old West “Wanted” poster.
Of course, this being the digital age, there were pictures up the wazoo—Bride-Doll Brylee, flushed and furious in her over-the-top dress, stomping on her bouquet in the church aisle. Brylee, outside in the bright June sunshine, probably only moments after the first shot was taken, wrenching the taped-on “Just Married” sign from the back of the limo that would have carried the two of them over to the Community Center for the reception, ripping the cardboard in two and flinging the pieces into the gutter. Brylee, later still, hair pulled back and caught up in a long, messy ponytail, face puffy and scrubbed clean of makeup, her gown swapped out for jeans and a T-shirt bearing the motto Men Suck. She was surrounded by a dozen or so of her friends, at a table in the center of the Boot Scoot Tavern, the jukebox lit up behind her. No doubt, it was playing a somebody-done-me-wrong song.
Hutch sighed. He hadn’t escaped the amateur paparazzi himself—these days, every yahoo and his Aunt Bessie had a smart phone, and they were mighty quick on the draw with them.
One memorable image showed him standing in the center of the sanctuary, clearly uncomfortable in the penguin get-up he’d rented from Wally’s Wedding World, over in Three Trees, the neighboring town, looking pale and bleakly determined not to get married no matter what he had to do to avoid it. And those were just the stills—there were videos, too. In one thirty-second wonder, he could be seen climbing into his rusted-out pickup truck, right there in the Presbyterians’ gravel parking lot, and in the next, he was heading for the horizon, a dust plume spiraling behind his rig.
Yep, that was him all right, beating a hasty retreat, like a yellow-bellied coward on the run.
That impression rested sour on the back of his tongue.
Someday, he suspected, when Brylee met up with her own personal Mr. Right, got hitched for real, and had herself a houseful of kids, she’d thank him for stopping the wedding and thereby preventing certain catastrophe.
At present, though, that particular “someday” seemed a long way off.
Weary to the aching marrow of his bones, Hutch logged off the internet, pushed back from the rolltop desk that had been in his family since