Big Sky Wedding Read Free Page A

any more work done today, might as well accept it.
    Snidely gave a small, sympathetic whimper and rested his muzzle on her thigh, lending what comfort he could.
    Brylee lifted her face, gave a broken chuckle and tousled the dog’s ears. “If I ever meet a man who’s half as loyal as you are,” she told Snidely, “I’d marry him in a heartbeat. Even if I have to hog-tie him first and then drag him to the altar.”
    Snidely whined again, as if in agreement.
    Brylee bent and planted a smacking kiss on the top of his sleek, hairy head and pushed back her desk chair carefully, so she wouldn’t run over one of Snidely’s paws. “Let’s go home,” she said, with gentle resignation.
    Home was the family ranch, Timber Creek, and she and Walker owned it jointly, though Walker ran the place and did most of the work involved. Brylee and Snidely lived in a spacious apartment, an add-on behind the kitchen, and those quarters had always suited her just fine, since she spent most of her time at Décor Galore, anyway.
    Now, though, Walker had married his singing-cowgirl sweetheart, Casey Elder, whom Brylee loved dearly, as she loved their two teenage children, Clare and Shane, and their new baby, three-month-old Preston. Casey and Walker were adding on to the house—they planned on having several more children—and happy chaos reigned.
    As hard as her brother and sister-in-law tried to include her in things, though, Brylee felt like a third wheel, even an intruder. Walker and Casey were still on their honeymoon, even after a year of marriage, and the way those two loved each other, they’d probably be perpetual newlyweds.
    They needed privacy, family time.
    Besides, Brylee was beginning to feel like a spinster aunt, the legendary old maid hovering on the fringes of everybody else’s lives.
    Was it wrong to want a home, a husband and children of her own? Or was she asking too much? After all, she had a fabulous business, one she’d built with her own two hands, and barring global financial catastrophe, money would never be a problem. Maybe it was just greedy to want more, especially when so many people didn’t have enough of anything, including the basic necessities of life.
    She was still debating the subject when she arrived at the home-place, minutes later, in her trusty-dusty SUV. Casey sat in the porch swing, gently rocking the little bundle that was Preston in her arms.
    Casey was a fiery redhead, beautiful and talented, but in that moment she resembled nothing so much as a Renaissance woman in a painting by one of the masters, a vision in shades of titian and green.
    She smiled as Brylee and Snidely got out of Brylee’s rig.
    “Come sit a minute,” she said, in her soft Texas drawl, patting the cushion beside her. “Preston is sleeping, and I’m just sitting here thinking about how I’m the luckiest woman in the world.”
    Something of what she was feeling must have shown in Brylee’s face as she approached, because Casey’s expression changed for an instant, and there was a flicker of sadness in her eyes. “You know,” she said fretfully, “it’s a wonder I can walk right, what with one foot in my mouth at all times.”
    Brylee smiled, climbed the porch steps, joined Casey and her sleeping nephew on the ancient swing. It had been there for as long as she could remember, that swing, the place where, as a little girl, she’d cried every time her mother left again. The place where she’d dreamed big dreams, and talked herself out of the blues a thousand times, especially after the breakup with Hutch.
    Would she ever rock her own sleeping baby there, as Casey was doing now?
    For some reason, Zane Sutton popped into her mind just then, and she must have blushed, because Casey narrowed her green eyes and studied her closely, missing little or nothing.
    “What’s up?” Casey asked. “And don’t say ‘nothing,’ Brylee Parrish, because I wasn’t born yesterday, and you look as though you might be coming