Big Sky Wedding by Linda Lael Miller Read Free Book Online

ex-wife—again—had probably come to the same conclusion about her own place in Landry’s high-octane life.
    Zane seethed a little, feeling self-righteous—until he recalled that, up until Landry’s phone call, he couldn’t have said where Nash was, what he was doing, who he was with. He hadn’t kept any better track of his kid brother than Landry had.
    The boy was blood. How had he been able to ignore that fact for so long?
    “Where do I put my stuff?” Nash asked, breaking into Zane’s rueful thoughts, having reclaimed the duffel bag when they got out of the truck a few minutes before. “By the back door, maybe?”
    “You plan on making a quick getaway?” Zane countered evenly, as he refilled Slim’s water bowl and set it on the floor so the thirsty dog could drink.
    Nash responded with a mocking grin. “You never know,” he said. He made a hitchhiking motion with one thumb. “I’m a travelin’ man.”
    “You’re a kid, ” Zane pointed out, after taking a few seconds to rule out the snarky answers that came to mind ahead of that one. Leaning back against the sink, he folded his arms while Slim lapped loudly from the bowl of water. “And you ought to know, better than most, how mean the big world out there can really be.”
    Nash didn’t bat an eyelash; he was already a hard case—at twelve, for God’s sake. “But I’m safe now, right?” he drawled, dripping sarcasm. “No worries. You’re going to give me a home, right here on the range.”
    A familiar desire to find Jess Sutton and throttle the man with his bare hands washed over Zane, but it was quickly displaced by a flash of admiration for Nash. The kid might be a smart-ass, but he had a quicksilver brain.
    “Where, as it happens,” Zane responded, playing along, “the buffalo don’t roam.”
    Nash rolled his eyes, then his shoulders. He was on the small side, and skinny and raw-boned, but he’d match Zane’s six-foot height one day in the not-too-distant future, maybe even exceed it.
    “Can I take a look around?” the boy asked, sounding glum. Obviously, he wasn’t expecting much.
    “Be my guest,” Zane answered. “Pick out a bedroom while you’re at it. There are plenty to choose from.”
    Offering no comment, Nash wandered off to explore the premises. He was gone for a while, Slim trailing faithfully after him, which gave Zane a chance to assess the grub situation, peering into the fridge, opening and closing cupboard doors. Despite yesterday’s shopping trip in Three Trees, it wasn’t a pretty picture.
    “Don’t you have any furniture?” Nash asked, upon his return.
    Zane shook his head. His household goods were still in L.A., in his condo, and he already knew there was no point in having all that expensive junk trucked to Montana. None of it would look right here—especially his bed. It was a gigantic, mirrored thing, a monument to unbridled hedonism, lacking only notches on one of the pillar-size posts to tally his conquests.
    He would miss the water-filled mattress, though.
    All the other pieces—chairs and couches, a dining room set, a TV so big it took up a whole wall—were decorator-approved and half again too fancy for a run-down stone ranch house. Like the bed, they’d be so ostentatious as to be an embarrassment.
    Not that he’d be showing off his sleeping quarters anytime soon, of course.
    When an image of Brylee Parrish seeped into his mind like smoke, he nearly laughed out loud. As if, he thought. She’d probably already written him off as a hedonistic, interfering movie star, but even if she hadn’t, she would once she checked all the online gossip sites and found his name on practically every one of them.
    “Just moved here myself,” he finally replied, feeling a distinct lack of nostalgia for the old place back in L.A., and the fast-paced life that went with it. “I haven’t had time to make a plan, let alone shop for a houseful of stuff.” By then, he was sitting at the card table in the