The Marriage Pact (Hqn) (29 page)

She smiled as she and Lucy bounded up the creaky staircase to
the second floor, along the hallway to her bedroom. Most of the house was still
under renovation, but this room was finished, having been a priority. White lace
curtains graced the tall windows, and the huge “garden” tub was set into the
gleaming plank floor, directly across from the fireplace.

The closet had been a small bedroom when Tara had purchased the
farm, but she’d had it transformed into every woman’s dream storage area soon
after moving in, to contain her big-city wardrobe and vast collection of shoes.
It was silly, really, keeping all these supersophisticated clothes when the
social scene in Parable called for little more than jeans and sweaters in winter
and jeans and tank tops the rest of the time, but, like her books and vintage
record albums, Tara hadn’t been able to give them up.

Parting with Elle and Erin had been sacrifice enough to last a
lifetime—she’d forced herself to leave them, and New York, in the hope that
they’d be able to move on, and for the sake of her own sanity. Now, they were
coming to Parable, to stay with her, and she was filled with frightened joy.

She selected a red print sundress and white sandals from the
closet and passed up the tub for the room just beyond, where the shower stall
and the other fixtures were housed.

Lucy padded after her in a casual, just-us-girls way, and sat
down on a fluffy rug to wait out this most curious of human endeavors, a shower,
her yellow-gold head tilted to one side in an attitude of patient amazement.

Minutes later, Tara was out of the shower, toweling herself dry
and putting on her clothes. She gave her long brown hair a quick brushing,
caught it up at the back of her head with a plastic squeeze clip and jammed her
feet into the sandals. Her makeup consisted of a swipe of lip gloss and a light
coat of mascara.

Lucy trailed after her as she crossed the wider expanse of her
bedroom and paused at one particular window, for reasons she couldn’t have
explained, to look over at Boone Taylor’s place just across the field and a
narrow finger of Big Sky River.

She sighed, shook her head. The view would have been perfect if
it wasn’t for that ugly old trailer of Boone’s, and the overgrown yard
surrounding it. At least the toilet-turned-planter and other examples of extreme
bad taste were gone, removed the summer before with some help from Hutch Carmody
and several of his ranch hands, but that had been the extent of the sheriff’s
home improvement campaign, it seemed.

She turned away, refusing to succumb to irritation. The girls
were as good as on their way. Soon, she’d be able to see them, hug them, laugh
with them.

“Come on, Lucy,” she said. “Let’s head for town.”

Downstairs, she took her cell phone off the charger, and she
and the dog stepped out onto the back porch, walked toward the detached garage
where she kept her sporty red Mercedes, purchased, like the farm itself, on a
whimsical and reckless what-the-hell burst of impulse, and hoisted up the door
manually.

Fresh doubt assailed her as she squinted at the car.

It was a two-seater, after all, completely unsuitable for
hauling herself, two children and a golden retriever from place to place.

“Yikes,” she said, as something of an afterthought, frowning a
little as she opened the passenger-side door of the low-slung vehicle so Lucy
could jump in. Before she rounded the front end and slid behind the steering
wheel, Tara was thumbing the keypad in a familiar sequence.

Her friend answered with a melodic, “Hello.”

“Joslyn?” Tara said. “I think I need to borrow a car.”

Copyright © 2012 by Linda Lael Miller

ISBN-13: 9781460332962

THE MARRIAGE PACT

Copyright © 2014 by Hometown Girl Makes Good, Inc.

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