Big Sky Wedding by Linda Lael Miller Page A

his face averted. “But Mom was always there. There weren’t many extras, but she made sure we went to school, saw the dentist and the doctor when necessary—no small thing, since she never earned more than minimum wage and a few dollars in tips. Health insurance was an impossible dream for her.”
    “Dad home schooled me,” Nash said, almost triumphantly.
    “Oh, yeah?” Zane asked. “How? By parking you in front of the Discovery Channel once in a while?”
    Nash reddened, and his fists, resting on his bony knees now that the dog had gone off to track something through the tall grass, tightened until the knuckles went white. “No,” he said furiously. “He bought those special books at Costco or somewhere, and I had to do all the lessons in them. I can read as well as anybody, and I’m good at math, too!”
    Zane sighed. He hadn’t meant to rile the kid up again, but when it came to their father, he had a hard time being tactful. “Have you ever gone to a real school?” he asked evenly.
    “Lots of them,” Nash said, in a so-there tone of voice.
    “I’ll just bet,” Zane replied, with another sigh.
    After that, things just kept right on rolling downhill. They heated up a frozen pizza for supper, when mealtime came around, and ate in stony silence at the card table in the kitchen.
    Then Nash fed the dog while Zane disposed of their paper plates and plastic knives and forks, the bachelor equivalent of doing the dishes.
    Cleo would have a cow when she got a look at this setup. Smiling a little at the thought, Zane opened his laptop and logged on, while Nash and Slim disappeared into Nash’s room. They returned to the kitchen almost immediately, and Nash slammed a thick paperback down on the flimsy card table, next to Zane’s computer.
    “I read this,” Nash said, shoving the words through his teeth. “Twice.”
    Zane glanced at the cover of the book. Saw that it was a four-in-one volume, containing The Hobbit and the Lord of the Rings trilogy. With a grin, he picked up the tattered tome in one hand, enjoying the heft of it—and the memory of consuming the Tolkien stories, one by one, courtesy of whatever library happened to be close enough to visit. Long past bedtime, he’d read the books voraciously, in the time-honored flashlight-under-the-blankets way of sneaky kids everywhere.
    “All right,” he said dryly, “you’ve convinced me. You can read. What grade are you supposed to be in, come fall?”
    “I tested out of seventh,” Nash answered, plunking down in the chair opposite Zane’s and reclaiming the book, an obvious treasure. “So I guess I’m in eighth. Or even ninth.”
    “We’ll see,” Zane said.
    “Not that I’ll probably be here,” Nash said. “Dad’s bound to show up, soon as his luck takes a turn for the better.” Then, with a stubborn set of his chin, “When he comes to get me, I’m leaving with him.”
    The hell you are, Zane thought, but what he said was, “Let’s cross that bridge when we get to it.”
    That seemed to satisfy Nash, but just barely. He was definitely in a recalcitrant frame of mind. “I’m going to bed,” he said, as though expecting an argument.
    “You do that,” Zane replied affably.
    Nash left the room, taking the book along, but this time the dog didn’t go with him. Instead, Slim gave a deep sigh and stretched out at Zane’s feet for a snooze.
    The rest of the evening dragged by, and Zane didn’t sleep much that night, between thinking about Brylee Parrish and wondering how a person went about raising a twelve-year-old boy. The window-framed sky was still spangled with silvery stars when he gave up on getting anything like eight hours’ sleep and rolled off the air mattress—he’d set the new bed up in the room Cleo would occupy—pulled on jeans, a shirt, socks and boots, and wandered outside. Slim went along.
    Night sounds filled the air, a natural chorus of owls and crickets and critters scurrying through the grass. The