Big Sky Wedding by Linda Lael Miller

when you would have ridden that bronco yourself,” Brylee commented. “You getting old, big brother?”
    Walker laughed, adjusted his dusty hat, glanced down at her with a sparkle in his eyes. “If I am,” he replied, “then you are, too.”
    She gave him a mock punch in the arm, narrowed her gaze to give him the once-over. “I’ll bet Casey made you promise not to play cowboy,” she surmised mischievously. “Why, Walker Parrish, some folks might even say you’re henpecked.”
    “Not to my face, they won’t,” Walker replied, unruffled. Of all the men Brylee had ever known, her older brother was one of the most self-possessed and the most confident, and not without reason. He seemed to be good at everything he did. “And it just so happens, little sister,” he continued mildly, “that my lovely wife didn’t ‘make me’ promise any such thing. She merely suggested that, since I’m a husband and a father three times over now, I might want to be a bit more careful not to break every bone in my body.”
    This time, it was Brylee who laughed. “Oh, well, ” she teased. “As long as it was only a suggestion... ”
    Walker ruffled her hair, the way he used to do when they were kids. “There’s some color in your face,” he commented. “Your eyes are sparkling, and you haven’t stopped smiling since you got here. What’s going on?”
    Brylee thought of her rash agreement to go horseback riding with Zane the next afternoon, a little surprised to discover that she still didn’t regret the decision. “Can’t a woman smile around here without being asked what it’s all about?” she threw out.
    Walker grinned, adjusted his disreputable hat again. “Sure,” he answered. “But you’ve got to admit, you’ve been pretty long in the face for the last while.”
    “The last while”? A classic understatement. What he’d really meant was, Since Hutch Carmody left you at the altar, but Brylee didn’t get her back up. It was true enough that she’d taken her sweet time getting over the wedding-that-wasn’t, and Walker, like everyone else in her life, had been concerned about her.
    She stood on tiptoe to plant a light kiss on her brother’s beard-stubbly cheek. “That was then,” she said mysteriously, “and this is now.”
    With that, she and Snidely made their way around the barn, toward the plot of land where the tamer horses were pastured during the day.
    Reaching the fence, Brylee gave a low whistle, and her black-and-white pinto gelding, Toby, lifted his head at the sound, approached her at an eager trot.
    She smiled and nuzzled his nose with her own, reaching up to rub his ears. “Hey, boy,” she said, choked up because of the way he’d hurried toward her, with a gleeful whinny. It had been too long since she’d ridden Toby, or even paid much attention to him. “You up for a little spin around the pasture?”
    Toby nickered and tossed his head, as if to say yes, making Brylee laugh and, though she quickly blinked back the tears, cry a little, too.
    She climbed over the fence, while Snidely shinnied underneath, agile as a trained soldier low-crawling to avoid a barrage of bullets zipping by within inches of his hide.
    Toby allowed her to check all four of his hooves; he was a patient horse, but young, and, as Walker liked to say, full of piss and vinegar.
    When she found no stones or little sticks that might make him go lame or simply cause him discomfort, she looped her arms around Toby’s thick neck and swung up onto his bare back, settled there and entwined the fingers of one hand in his gleaming black-and-white mane.
    He sidestepped, tossed his head again, and when Brylee touched his sleek sides with the heels of her shoes, he took a few hesitant steps forward, looked back at her as if to confirm that she truly wanted to ride and then leaped straight into a gallop, which quickly became a run.
    Brylee, leaning over his neck, holding on with her knees more than her hands, gave a shout of