Big Sky Wedding by Linda Lael Miller

Author:Linda Lael Miller [Miller, Linda Lael]
Language: eng
Format: epub, mobi
Publisher: HQN
Published: 2013-08-29T04:00:00+00:00

CHAPTER TEN

ZANE SMILED TO himself as he saddled Blackjack early the next morning, when the sky was still more peach and gold than blue and he was feeling a sudden and specific need for lots of wide-open spaces around him. Dinner with Brylee and her family Saturday night, a barbecue at Whisper Creek Ranch on Sunday—and he’d thought the Hollywood scene was a social whirl. What was next? A barn dance? A hayride, maybe, followed by hot dogs and beans spiced with tall tales swapped around a campfire?

Grinning at his own whimsical turn of mind, he led the gelding out of the barn and mounted up, leaning forward slightly in the saddle to pat the animal’s neck and speak a few words to him. Slim, losing interest in the whole project by that point, though he’d supervised the goings-on in the barn, ambled over to the porch, curled up near the kitchen door and dozed.

Since Landry’s part of the ranch, beyond a line of trees at the far end of the pasture, with its fallen fences and weedy ground, seemed as good a destination as any, Zane headed that way. Nothing helped him think like riding alone, way out in the countryside, choosing his course as the spirit moved him.

And Zane needed to think. He felt swamped by choices and options—not that either was a bad thing; it was just the way his mind worked. Despite his accidental career in the movies, he was a planner at heart and he was always happier if his ducks were in a row.

The first leg of the ride took fifteen minutes or so, the air pleasantly chilly and the sky so big and sprawling and blue that he ached to look at it. When he emerged from the stand of pines and cottonwoods and scrub brush that served as an informal boundary line between the two properties, Zane found himself at the edge of acres and acres of wind-rippled, sun-washed meadow grass. A wide creek cut through the area to the east, shining like mercury in the daylight. He’d been here before, of course, in the truck, but taking it all in on horseback was a different experience altogether.

All that grass and domed sky, edged with green foothills and, in the distance, framed by snow-capped mountains that couldn’t adequately be described even by the word majestic, lassoed his breath somewhere around his gizzard and hog-tied it.

Zane simply waited, letting all that peace and quiet settle over him, a balm to his spirit and his usually busy brain.

Presently, Zane stood in the stirrups for a few seconds, stretching his legs and recalling how he and Landry had divided Hangman’s Bend Ranch in the first place—by swapping plat maps via the internet, drawing property lines, dickering by email and redrawing said lines until they were both satisfied.

Zane didn’t regret any of the choices he’d made where the joint purchase was concerned—he saw potential in both the old house and the stone barn, and the scenery

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