you doing there?” Landry demanded. It didn’t seem to bother him that he was pushing the envelope, given that he obviously planned on asking a favor.
A greenhorn through and through, Landry wore custom-made three-piece suits, lived in a massive penthouse condo in Chicago, employed a chauffeur and even a butler, which was just plain embarrassing, if you asked Zane, which, of course, nobody had. A complete stranger to horses and every other aspect of country life, Landry ponied up the money to pay for his half of the ranch as some kind of tax maneuver.
“I got tired of, well, just about everything,” Zane admitted, suddenly weary. The inflatable bed hadn’t held out much appeal earlier, especially since it was womanless, but by then, he’d started to think he could sleep for days, if not decades. “So I left.”
“Whatever.” Landry sighed. Dealing with Zane was an ordeal for him, what with his blatant superiority and all. “You have to take Nash,” he said. “Dad dumped him on me—evidently our dear father has to lay low for a few months until his poker buddies calm down enough to change their minds about having his knees broken. It’s you or foster care, and I think the poor kid’s had his fill of that already.”
“What about Barbara?” Zane asked moderately. “You remember her? Nash’s mother?”
“She’s out of the picture,” Landry said. His tone was flat, matter-of-fact.
Their own mother, an early casualty of Jess Sutton’s incomprehensible charm, had died a few years before of a lingering illness. Disagreements about how to care for Maddie Rose at the end remained a major sore spot between the two brothers.
“How so? Is Barbara sick? Dead?”
“She’s somewhere in India or Pakistan—one of those third-world countries—on some kind of spiritual quest,” Landry replied with disdain. “That’s Dad’s story, anyway. Suffice it to say, Barbara isn’t exactly a contender for Mother of the Year.”
“And this is my problem because...?” Zane asked, stalling. He couldn’t turn his back on his own flesh and blood and Landry knew that, damn him. Still, it was an imposition, a responsibility he wasn’t prepared to take on at this juncture, when his whole life was in transition.
“Because Nash is your brother,” Landry said, with extreme patience.
“He’s also yours,” Zane pointed out. He was already wondering what a person said to a twelve-year-old kid who’d probably been shuffled between the homes of strangers, their dad’s distant relations, the girlfriend du jour and then back through the whole cycle again. Repeatedly.
“If I don’t make this meeting in Berlin,” Landry replied, “I could lose one of my most important accounts.”
“Sucks to be you,” Zane responded mildly. “Who’s been raising this child all this time, anyway?”
“My understanding,” Landry supplied stiffly, “is that he’s been knocking around the country with Dad. Recently, that is.” His voice softened a little. “He’s not a bad kid, Zane. And he didn’t have the kind of mom who would go to bat for him, like ours did for us.”
In that moment, Zane could see his late mother—an inveterate optimist, their Maddie Rose—in such vivid detail that she might as well have been standing right there in his kitchen. She’d waited tables for a living, and the three of them had lived out of her beat-up old station wagon more than once, when she was between waitressing gigs, but life had been good with her, despite all the Salvation Army Christmases and secondhand school clothes and food-bank vittles. She’d had a way of “reframing” a situation—her word—so that moving on, when a job ended or a romance went sour, always seemed like an exciting adventure instead of the grinding hardship it usually was. Even when it involved considerable sacrifice on her part, Maddie Rose always made sure they stayed put when school was in session, come hell or high water, and she’d checked their homework and encouraged them to read library books and made them say grace, too.
As always, he wished Maddie Rose had lived to see her elder son become something more than a rodeo bum, wished he could have set her up in a good house and made sure she never lacked for anything again, but, too often, life didn’t work that way.
She’d died in a hospital somewhere in rural South Dakota, a charity case, suffering from an advanced case of leukemia, before Zane could so much as cash his first Hollywood paycheck, let alone provide for her the way he would have done, given the chance.
Although he and Landry usually avoided the whole topic of Maddie Rose’s death, it lay raw between them, all right, like a wound deep enough to rub the skin away, and, even now, it hurt.
“Send Nash to Missoula,” Zane heard himself say. “Let me know when he’s getting in, and I’ll be there to pick him up.”
“Good.” Landry almost murmured the word. “Good.”
It wasn’t a thank-you, but it would have to do.
Zane didn’t ring off with a goodbye. He simply hit the end call button and sent his phone skittering across the tabletop, causing Slim to perk up his mismatched ears and straighten his knobby spine.
Zane grinned, then ruffled the hide on the dog’s back to reassure him. “You’re not in any kind of trouble, boy,” he told Slim. Then, with a philosophical sigh, he added, “And that makes one of us.”
* * *
THE NEXT AFTERNOON, Zane was late getting to the airport in Missoula, and it was easy to spot Nash, since the kid was standing all by himself, next to the luggage carousel, a battered green duffel bag at his feet. Earbuds piped music into his head, and his blondish-brown hair stood up in spikes, as though he’d been accidentally electrified. Seeing Zane, he scowled in recognition and dispensed with whatever tunes he’d been listening to while he waited.
“Montana sucks,” Nash said sullenly, and without preamble. “I thought I was going to Hollywood, and now I find out I’m stuck here.”
“Life is hard,” Zane replied, smoothly casual, “and then you die.”
Nash rolled cornflower-blue eyes. His clothes were a sorry collection of too-big jeans, cut off at the knees and showing a good bit of his boxers, sneakers with no laces, a ragged T-shirt of indeterminate color and a pilled hoodie enlivened by a skull-and-crossbones pattern in neon green. “Thanks for the 411,” he drawled, making it plain he’d already mastered contempt, even before hitting his teens. “I probably couldn’t have figured that out on my own.”
Zane sighed inwardly and reminded himself to be patient. Maddie Rose had seen that he and Landry had it good, in comparison with most poor kids, but Nash had been through the proverbial wringer.
“You hungry?” he asked the boy, stooping to pick up the duffel bag by its frayed and grubby handle.
“I’m always hungry,” Nash replied, without a shred of humor. “Just ask Dad. I’m a royal pain in the ass, wanting to eat at least once a day, no matter what. Too bad the kind of motels he could afford didn’t have room service.” A beat passed. “I was lucky to get a bed.”
Zane felt a clenching sensation—sympathy—but he didn’t let it show. He remembered all too well how poverty ground away at a person’s pride, how he’d hated it when people felt sorry for him and Landry. “Let’s get out of here,” he said. “We’ll find you some food once we’ve
