Big Sky Wedding Read Online Free PDF Page A

dreamy.
    Uh-oh, Brylee thought. Up to that moment, she’d been ready to dismiss a nagging sense that something was off. Now, she guessed she’d been right to worry, if only a little.
    “Luke and I are going to sit together on the bus, that’s all,” Clare said. “And just sort of, well, hang out while we’re in Helena. You know, hold hands and stuff, when nobody’s looking. Spend a little time alone together, if we get the chance.”
    “You don’t know Opal Beaumont very well if you think she won’t be keeping an eagle eye on every last one of you the whole time,” Brylee pointed out, with a little smile. She’d had a lecture or two from Opal herself—mostly on the subject of finding herself a good man and settling down—and she knew the woman didn’t miss much, if anything at all. A matchmaker extraordinaire, she was credited, sometimes indirectly, with jump-starting at least four relationships, all of which had led to marriage.
    By the same token, though, Opal was devout, with the corresponding firm morals, and she’d guard her younger charges, girls and boys, with the ferocity of a tigress on the prowl.
    Clare moved her slender shoulders in a semblance of a shrug. “Mom and Dad already said I could go,” she said, cheeks pink.
    “And they know it’s an overnighter?” Brylee pressed, but gently.
    Clare nodded. Then, guiltily, she added, “It’s the sitting together and the holding hands and the alone-time part I didn’t tell them about.”
    Holding her palms up and opening and closing the fingers of both hands, Brylee imitated the sound the refrigerator made when she hadn’t shut the door all the way. “Danger,” she said, smiling again. “If you had a clear conscience about this, my girl, you wouldn’t feel any need to keep secrets from your folks. There’s something you’re not telling me.”
    Clare sighed and looked at Brylee through lowered eyelashes, thick ones, like her mother’s. Like her father’s, for that matter. “Honestly, Aunt Brylee, Luke and I aren’t planning to do anything.”
    “Then why sneak around?” Brylee challenged, though carefully. She’d been a teenager herself once, after all, and she knew coming on too strong would only cause more problems.
    Clare answered with an uncomfortable question. “Are you going to tell Mom and Dad?”
    Until several months after her parents’ long overdue marriage, Clare had persisted in referring to Walker by his first name, angry that he and Casey had kept the truth about their parentage from her and her brother, and, for that matter, the rest of the world. Both Clare and Shane were indeed Walker’s biological children, but calling him “Dad” was a relatively recent development, at least for Clare. Shane, already full of admiration for the man he’d always believed was a close family friend but wished was his father instead, had been thrilled when Casey and Walker broke the news.
    Not so Clare.
    “No,” Brylee said, after due consideration. “I’m not going to tell your mom and dad anything. You are.”
    “They’ll just make a big deal out of it—maybe they’ll even say I can’t go on the trip at all,” Clare protested, temper rising. “Especially if they find out Luke’s a little older than I am.”
    “How much older?” Brylee asked. Clare tended to be adventurous and impulsive, and she’d been in trouble for shoplifting at one point, too, so if Walker and Casey kept a closer watch on her than they might have otherwise, Brylee couldn’t blame them.
    “Nineteen,” Clare replied in a small voice.
    Oh, Lordy, Brylee thought, but she wouldn’t allow herself to overreact. After all, she didn’t want her niece to stop running things like this by her older and, presumably, wiser aunt.
    “You like this Luke person a lot?” Brylee ventured.
    “He’s awesome,” Clare said, softening visibly.
    “And you met him at youth group?” Tread carefully here, Aunt Brylee. This is treacherous ground.
    “I met him at