Big Sky Summer Part 19

Casey felt sick, pressed her free hand to her stomach.

Brylee came back on the phone. "Boone's here," she said with obvious relief. "We'll be on our way shortly."

Casey nodded, opened her mouth to answer, but the dial tone was already buzzing in her ear.

Numbly, she turned to Walker, explained that the press had effectively cornered Brylee, Clare and Shane inside a supermarket.

Walker shoved a hand through his hair as he listened, his jawline so tight that a white pallor pulsed under his tan. He'd caught the reference to Boone, though, or he might have been even more upset than he was.

Casey finished the account as it had been relayed to her, and then swallowed hard, willing herself not to cry. She'd had run-ins with the tabloid press before, of course, but never like this, with her children trapped inside a public building, and never in Parable or Three Trees. She felt violated, helpless and scalded all over with fury, all at once.

Walker took her firmly by the shoulders, probably afraid her knees would give out and she'd crumple to the floor if he didn't hold her up. The rage in his eyes softened to a kind of bleak comprehension.

Casey knew he was realizing what it could really mean, being married to someone like her, and in another moment or two, he'd be wis.h.i.+ng he'd never heard of Casey Elder, let alone fathered two of her children, brought them all here to Timber Creek and effectively blown the lid off his otherwise ideal life.

"I'm sorry," she whispered.

Walker drew Casey close, just when she would have expected him to push her away, cupped the back of her head in one hand, squas.h.i.+ng her ponytail. "Don't apologize," he said hoa.r.s.ely. "This isn't your fault."

She tilted her head back, looked up at him, astonished. "Of course it is, Walker," she argued. "And I wouldn't mind if I was the only one who might get hurt in all this, but I'm not. Shane and Clare are directly in the line of fire, and so are you."

He kissed her forehead, gave her ponytail a light, teasing tug. "The kids are safe, Casey," he reminded her. "Brylee, too. Right now, that's what matters. And you saw this coming, remember?" His mouth twitched at one corner. "It's the main reason you got down on one knee and asked for my hand in marriage, as I recall."

Casey gave a raw little rasp of laughter, in spite of herself, and thumped Walker's chest with the side of her right fist. "I didn't get down on one knee," she said. "Let's get that straight."

The twitch became a full-fledged grin. "But you did propose," he insisted.

"I suggested." Even as she spoke, Casey wondered what was wrong with her. Why was her first response to Walker always an urge to argue?

Just then, a rap sounded, rattling the screen door, and Al Pickens stuck his head partway inside. "Boss? Is there a problem?"

Walker turned to look at his most faithful employee and longtime friend, and smiled. "It might be time to circle the wagons, all right," he said.

Briefly, Walker explained the situation.

Casey frowned, puzzled. Do what?

Al clearly understood, which was more than she could have claimed. He nodded and said, "I'll put a couple of men at the main gate, and the rest can beat the brush for any of them sneaky reporters, make sure they don't get close to the house again."

Walker nodded. "No rough stuff," he specified mildly.

"Darn." Al grinned, showing a few missing teeth, and tugged once at the brim of his battered hat. His face was round and weather-worn, his eyes small and twinkly. "I was kinda looking forward to going all John Wayne on at least one of those yahoos."

Walker chuckled, waved Al off with a motion of one hand and focused his attention on Casey again.

She felt as though the floor had turned to rubber under her feet, and she thought she might throw up.

Walker eased her back into the chair she'd been sitting on before the phone rang, lost in the arcane realm of home cooking, and related what Brylee had told her about the supermarket siege. He walked over to one of the cupboards, got out a gla.s.s, moved to the sink, filled it to the brim with cold water and brought it to Casey.

She took the gla.s.s in both hands, sipped slowly, in hopes that the stuff would stay down.

Walker took the chair nearest hers and waited with her, lightly ma.s.saging her nape, where the muscles had clenched up tight, like a knot in a length of steel cable.

Slowly, Casey began to feel a little better, though she knew she wouldn't relax completely until Shane and Clare got there, until she could see both her children with her own eyes and touch them and know for sure that they hadn't been hurt.

"Has this happened before?" Walker asked gently, after she'd stopped trembling and begun rolling her head from side to side in response to the ma.s.sage. The release of tension was almost s.e.xual.

"I've tangled with the so-called press a few times in the past," Casey responded, "and they've made up some pretty nasty stories about Clare and Shane along the way, too. Especially Shane. They claimed he was on drugs and I sued them for that one, but this is the most aggressive they've ever gotten." She remembered what her daughter had said about the early editions of the weekly tabloids, headlines and photos blazing with manufactured scandals. Extra! Extra! Read all about it!

Thoughtfully, Walker sorted through her answer in his head. Then he pushed back his chair, crossed to the desktop computer on a counter against the far wall and logged on.

Even before she saw his back stiffen, Casey knew it was bad. Maybe worse than bad.

Walker swore under his breath, clicking from one site to another.

When he turned around to face her again, his face was like a storm cloud. He looked as though he might be about to go find Al and the other cowboys and form a posse, vigilante-style, forgetting the "No rough stuff" decree he'd issued earlier.

Casey went to him, slipped her arms around his waist. This time, she was the voice of reason. "This will pa.s.s, Walker," she said gently. "It always does."

He looked grim, even harried. Again, he raked his fingers through his hair. "Greaseball reporters are one thing," he ground out, "and the crazies who take everything they write as gospel are another, dammit. Suppose some freak job hears voices telling him to kidnap Clare and Shane and actually follows through? Have you ever thought of that?"

She touched his cheek, felt the stubble of a new beard bristling against her palm, even though she'd watched him shave less than two hours before. "Only about a million times," she answered softly. "Walker, I'm truly sorry for dragging you into this-"

Walker's nostrils flared, and his eyes flashed, bull angry. "'Dragging me into this'?" he retorted through his teeth. "These are my children we're talking about here, Casey. I should have been in the loop a long time ago, don't you think? I'm Clare and Shane's father, remember? What if something had happened to them because I wasn't around to protect them?"

Casey had never seen Walker, or anybody else, so furious. "Nothing did happen, though," she said, very carefully and very quietly. "I was never, ever careless about their safety, Walker. When I thought there was a need for extra security, I notified the police, in whatever city we happened to be in, or I hired bodyguards-"

His nose was practically touching hers, and his eyes continued to shoot fire. She was half expecting him to paw at the ground with one foot, sprout horns and lower his head to charge. "I'm their father," he said. "You kept me from them, all this time." A pause, one of those dangerous moments when everything can change. "How am I supposed to forgive you?"

There it was, the elephant in the room, the thing they hadn't really talked about.

If Walker couldn't forgive her, Casey reasoned dizzily, he certainly couldn't love her, either. The honeymoon, such as it had been, was definitely and permanently over, and last night's lovemaking, as powerful, as transformative, as sacred as it had seemed, hadn't been lovemaking at all. It had been garden-variety s.e.x, the cheap, meaningless kind that belonged in the backseats of cars or in trashy rooms rented by the hour.

If Walker had drawn back his fist and punched Casey in the stomach, he couldn't have hurt her any more deeply. She reeled away from him, shrugged him off when he tried to lay his hands on her shoulders, stared blindly out one of the windows until she saw Boone's squad car turn in the gate, lights whirling.

Two other official cars followed close behind the sheriff's, while news vans and less impressive rigs of all sorts trailed behind, at a cautious distance, but advancing just the same.

Casey got to the door before Walker did, even though he was closer, elbowed her way past him and dashed across the porch, down the steps, out into the yard.

Boone brought his cruiser to a stop nearby, and, through the winds.h.i.+eld and the blinding blue-and-white swirl of light, Casey spotted Brylee's face on the pa.s.senger side, pale moon rising. Clare and Shane rode in back, behind the grill, and as soon as Boone put on the brakes, they spilled out on either side of the vehicle, das.h.i.+ng toward her.

Casey wrapped one arm around each of them.

Clare cried, while Shane, almost gleeful, seemed to see the experience as an adventure.

Walker stood at a little distance, painfully separate, while Brylee rounded the car from the other side, heading toward her brother, and Boone climbed from behind the wheel, his expression sober.

"It was so awesome, Mom!" Shane crowed. "Like one of those action-adventure movies, where Bruce Willis goes after the bad guys, even when he has to walk barefoot over broken gla.s.s-"

Casey winced at the image, but it was Clare who spoke.

"Oh, shut up!" she broke in tearfully, glaring at her brother. "It wasn't awesome! It was terrible! And this isn't one of your stupid Die Hard movies!"

Shane rolled his eyes, looking disgusted by this display of emotion. "Whatever," he said in a dismissive drawl. Then, under his breath, he added, "Hormones."

Casey gave her son a warning look and he shrugged and ambled off toward Walker.

She took Clare's face between her hands. "Honey," she said, "I know this was scary, but those guys wouldn't have hurt you-they just wanted a story."

Clare pulled free, glared at her. "Oh, yeah?" she challenged furiously. "Then how come the sheriff had to bring us home in a police car, with a bunch of deputies to run interference?"

How could Casey answer that? Maybe the reporters presented no physical danger, they were just pesky, but Walker had been right-the "freak jobs" who obsessed over every aspect of a celebrity's life definitely did pose a threat. And they tended to follow the newshounds wherever they went, getting some kind of sick satisfaction out of hanging around on the fringes, watching and hoping to get involved in some way.

Clare, evidently tired of waiting for an answer her mother didn't have to offer, pulled away and hurried into the house, slamming the screen door hard behind her.

Casey, feeling that odd sense of dissociation again, as though she'd split into two people, one concerned, one impa.s.sive, walked over to Boone, who tried to smile and failed.

"Thank you," Casey told him, putting out her hand.

Boone took it, gave her fingers a squeeze, nodded ever so slightly. "I can post a couple of deputies at your gate if you'd like," he said, inclining his head in that direction, "but it looks like the ranch hands have things under control, for the moment, anyhow."

Casey swallowed, nodded back. "We'll be all right," she a.s.sured the sheriff. "Once the excitement dies down a little, anyway."

We'll be all right.

She and the children? They'd be fine, because a new story would come along any minute, and the stringers would be off chasing some other celebrity, climbing the trees in their yard, hara.s.sing their children, peeking through their windows and generally complicating every other aspect of their lives. No matter how juicy the current scandal, there was always another, better, one, waiting in the wings.

But would she and Walker be all right? As a couple?

Not likely. Walker was a regular person, those spectacular looks aside, and things like this didn't happen to people like him. Try though he might to understand, intelligent as he was, he had no frame of reference for the downside of fame. How could he?

To him, fame meant bright lights, glamorous photo shoots, designer clothes, star-studded parties, limos and private jets and packed arenas all over the world. Thousands of unseen hands holding up their lighters, creating a flickering backdrop of flame.

To Casey and, by extension, to her children, it meant those things, all right, but there was a whole heck of a lot more to the celebrity lifestyle. It meant taking extreme security precautions, even in places where normal people felt safe. It meant keeping her eyes wide-open, no matter how tired she was, staying alert, even when there were bodyguards on all sides. It meant avoiding malls, popular restaurants and movie theaters, never personally answering a knock at a hotel room door, even when room service was expected. It meant flinching when someone raised a camera or shoved a pen at her, when all they wanted was a snapshot or an autograph.

Usually, that was all it was. And then there were the other times.

Had John Lennon expected to be shot dead by a fan, right out in front of his own apartment building? Of course not-the possibility probably hadn't even crossed his mind. Why should it? He'd been going about his business, that was all. Living his life. Meeting someone for drinks or dinner, expecting to be home before bedtime.

Except that none of that happened.

Stop it, Casey told herself. Get a grip.

Shane and Clare were already inside the house by then, and Brylee was close behind. Casey followed, while Walker remained where he was, talking solemnly with Boone and the deputies.

In the kitchen, Brylee tossed a fistful of undersize "newspapers" onto the table, while Clare fled to her appointed bedroom and Shane crouched to greet a waggy-tailed Doolittle with an ear-ruffling and a tummy rub.

"If we had a parrot, we could use these," Brylee said of the tabloids, "to line the cage."

Casey reached for a copy, her hand trembling slightly, and, though she'd thought she was prepared, the sight of Clare, photographed standing beside the piano the day before in her pretty, modest dress, singing the song that was her wedding gift to her parents, struck Casey like a freight train going downhill.

Clare was fully clad, of course, unlike certain movie stars who'd been captured for posterity sunbathing nude on the deck of some yacht, or British royalty indulging in hanky-panky beside a swimming pool, but there was something too intimate about the shot just the same. It was, Casey decided, the sense of close proximity; the picture might have been taken by someone attending the ceremony, instead of through a window.

Love child turns songbird, the caption read and, beneath that, in smaller print, But will she fly the coop, now that her famous mama and cowboy daddy have finally tied the knot?

"Love child," Casey murmured, shaking her head. She supposed the term was apt enough, if ridiculously outdated. She and Walker hadn't been married when it counted, that was true, but there had never been any doubt that Clare was loved, and Shane, too.

Brylee busied herself at the counter, brewing coffee. "Snidely's still in town," she fretted. "I thought we'd be going back to your place after we picked up the stuff to make tacos, but-"

Snidely, Casey recalled distractedly, was Brylee's faithful German shepherd, and, according to Walker, they went everywhere together.

"Dad and I will go get him for you," Shane a.s.sured her manfully, getting to his feet and heading for the refrigerator. Growing as fast as he was, he was forever taking on fuel. "Maybe we can bring our dogs out here, too. The cats will probably be okay where they are for a while-"

Brylee, moving deftly, stepped between Shane and the fridge. "Wash your hands first," she said.

"Good call," Casey agreed, distracted, still leafing through the other "special editions." There were pictures of her and Walker exchanging vows, then, later, laughing as they fed each other wedding cake, an image of Shane loading Dawson's wheelchair into the back of Patsy's van while Walker lifted Dawson himself onto the pa.s.senger seat. None of it was offensive, but all of it was too personal, too private.

The headlines, however, grew progressively worse.

One rag featured a picture of Walker, crouching beside Dawson's wheelchair on the ranch house porch, talking earnestly, faces solemn.

Another of the cowboy's love children? screeched the inch-high, boldfaced line beneath the photo.

Shane, meanwhile, washed his hands, as ordered by his aunt, then rooted through the fridge in earnest, coming away with an armload of cellophane-covered refreshments left over from the wedding.

He and Brylee discussed the plan for dog retrieval in quiet voices, somewhere at the periphery of Casey's awareness.

When she thought enough time had elapsed, Casey headed for Clare's room-once Brylee's-and tapped at the door, resting her forehead against the panel while she waited.

"Go away," Clare said predictably.

"You know I'm not going to do that," Casey responded, keeping her tone light. She turned the gla.s.s k.n.o.b, realized that she was locked out. Got her hackles up just a smidge. "Let me in, Clare."

"There's nothing you can say to make this better," Clare retorted.

"Let me in," Casey repeated. When it came to stubbornness, her daughter would find her a worthy opponent. Besides, Brylee could probably come up with a spare key to the room in no time.

Clare's sigh was loud enough to come right through the thick wood of that st.u.r.dy door. There was a sc.r.a.ping sound as she worked the lock, and then she was peeking out, the crack so narrow that only one of her eyes was visible.

Casey eased the door the rest of the way open, careful not to push too hard and stub one of Clare's toes, which were probably bare, since, like her mom, the girl never wore shoes if she could avoid it.

The room was s.p.a.cious, though not as big as its counterpart on Rodeo Road, with a window seat and built-in bookshelves and even a small Franklin stove. The closet ran the length of one wall, and the furniture was obviously antique: four-poster bed, matching bureau, chest of drawers and nightstands. A pair of delicate chairs, slipcovered in a muted pink floral fabric, faced the stove.

A few of Clare's belongings were scattered around, here and there-the tiny chiming clock she treasured, a stack of books, a framed photo of the three of them-Casey, Clare and Shane-with a remarkably authentic Santa Claus, back when the lie was still working.

Casey picked up the photograph and smiled, remembering the Nashville party where it had been taken, four or five years before. Was it really that long ago? It seemed like yesterday.

"That was quite a night," she reflected somewhat wistfully, setting the photo back on the shelf where she'd found it.