Healing Montana Love
Bear Grass Springs, Book Eleven
Ramona Flightner
Grizzly Damsel Publishing
Copyright © 2020 by Ramona Flightner
All rights reserved. No portion of this book may be reproduced in any form or by any electronic or mechanical means including information storage and retrieval systems – except in the case of brief quotations in articles or reviews – without permission in writing from its publisher, Ramona Flightner and Grizzly Damsel Publishing. Copyright protection extends to all excerpts and previews by this author included in this book.
This novel is a work of fiction. Names, characters, businesses, places, events and incidents are either the products of the author’s imagination or used in a fictitious manner. Any resemblance to actual persons, living or dead, or actual events is purely coincidental.
All brand names and product names used in this book are trademarks, registered trademarks, or trade names of their respective holders. The author or publisher is not associated with any product or vendor in this book.
Cover design by Jennifer Quinlan.
Contents
Chapter 1
Chapter 2
Chapter 3
Chapter 4
Chapter 5
Chapter 6
Chapter 7
Chapter 8
Chapter 9
Chapter 10
Chapter 11
Chapter 12
Chapter 13
Chapter 14
Chapter 15
Chapter 16
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About the Author
Chapter 1
Mountain Bluebird Ranch, Montana Territory; May 1889
Charlotte Ingram stood on the bunkhouse stoop at the Mountain Bluebird Ranch near the town of Bear Grass Springs, Montana. A meadowlark warbled, and she gave thanks the breeze blew in the opposite direction today, sending the barn’s stench away from the bunkhouse. Although she understood she should be thankful for the pungent odors—as it meant there was milk and butter and food to eat—she had yet to become accustomed to ranch life.
Although she had been on the ranch since February, the months seemed to crawl by. First because she was in a miasma of pain and despair. Now because every day consisted of a monotony of similar chores. She took a deep breath of the fresh air, closing her eyes with delight, as she scented the faint hint of lilacs on the breeze. Finally Montana’s version of spring was arriving. Wisps of reddish-blond hair tickled her cheeks, as they fluttered in the faint breeze, having escaped the braid down her back. Her sensible faded blue calico dress flapped at her ankles, and she tugged her serviceable shawl around her shoulders.
With a sigh, she returned to the kitchen to prepare another meal for the men. Although they were courteous, few were overtly flirtatious, and none crossed the line into impropriety. The men knew they would be fired and forced to find work on another less prosperous ranch if they harassed her. Saying a silent prayer of thanksgiving for men like Frederick Tompkins and his foreman, Slims, for ensuring she was respected, she hummed while she worked.
Soon Charlotte was lost to her work, focusing on preparing a large apple crumble from the last of the previous year’s crop, while bread baked in the oven, and stew bubbled on the stove. As someone tapped her arm, she shrieked, spinning and jabbing with the knife in her hand. “Stay away,” she gasped.
The ranch hand Dalton held up his hands, his blue eyes rounded with surprise, as he barely backed away in time to prevent a stabbing. The sound of his shirt tearing filled the otherwise silent room. “Miss Ingram,” he murmured in a low voice. “I didn’t mean to startle you. You were woolgathering.” He shrugged, as he took another step backward, his alert gaze noting how her arm quivered. “Why don’t you put down the knife? No one will harm you here.” He stood half a foot taller than her, and his long arms could have easily manhandled the knife from her. However, he did not attempt to touch her again.
In an instant, Charlotte flushed beet red and spun to turn away from him. The muffled sound of her stifling a sob carried, and he took a hesitant step in her direction. However, he couldn’t see the knife, and he had no desire for her aim to prove more accurate this time. “Miss Ingram?”
“Forgive me,” she gasped, her sherry-colored eyes filled with humiliation, as she looked at him over her shoulder. “I was foolish. If you leave me your shirt, I’ll mend it.” She bowed her head, as she fought to control her quivering. The knife clattered to the countertop beside the stove.
He took a few ponderous steps, pulling out a chair with a loud scrape, as though to indicate he were a fair distance from her. “I wondered if any coffee was left in the pot.”
A hysterical laugh burst forth, and she slammed her hand over her mouth to prevent any further inappropriate sounds from emerging. However, she knew she was on the verge of giving in to her fears of never feeling secure, and she could not prevent the hot scald of tears as they poured down her cheeks.
“Miss?” he murmured, suddenly standing behind her again. At the soft touch to her shoulder, she flinched and then relaxed. “Miss, you’re safe here. You know the men are loyal to you.”
She refused to turn and face him. In a stuttering voice, she rasped, “No, they’re loyal to the Missus. The two Missuses. They tolerate me. And give me a wide berth because they don’t want to lose their jobs.” She took a long breath, finally corralling her out-of-control emotions. Reaching out a shaking hand, she grasped a coffee cup and filled it. “I believe you like it black.” She turned to hand it to him, refusing to meet his gaze.
“Look at me,” he whispered. When she kept her eyes downcast, he murmured, “Please.”
At the entreaty, her gaze flew to his, and she frowned in confusion. Men gave her orders. They didn’t make polite requests which she could refuse. She met his worried gaze—his blue eyes with wrinkles at the corners—as he focused all his attention on her. His brown hair was scrunched down, like he’d just taken off his hat, and she fought an irrational urge to run her hands through it.
“I know someone hurt you, Miss Ingram. It’s plain to see. But not all men are scoundrels.” He paused as he reached to accept the cup of coffee from her. “One day you’ll come to realize you can trust more than yourself.” With a nod of his head, he left.
Charlotte stood in frozen wonder for a long moment, wondering if she had imagined the entire interlude. Interlude? She berated herself for being fanciful. Her imagination was what had led to her nearly assaulting the man. With a shiver, she faced the stove again, determined to forget Dalton. To forget his solicitude. His kindness. His constancy. For she knew it was always a pretense to entice a woman to do something she might have had the sense to decline.
She took a deep breath to calm her nerves. Instead his alluring scent teased her senses. Musky, with a hint of sandalwood cologne, mixed with sweat and the scent of horses. With a huff, she turned to the window and took a gulp of the clean spring air, determined to ignore any and all attraction for a ranch hand named Dalton.
* * *
Dalton stood in the yard, sipping his cup of coffee, his mind filled with images of Charlotte. Voluptuous, graceful, beautiful Charlotte. Her fine silky-looking red-gold hair never managed to stay tamed by a braid or a bun, and wisps of it always framed her rounded cheeks. He fought a constant yearning to run a work-roughened hand over her enticing hair but knew it would be wholly inappropriate.
Although he had spent a few moments with her when she f
irst arrived at the ranch last year, he had suspected she was angling after his good friend and boss, Slims. When that proved to be a false assumption, after she ran off in December, he had forced himself to forget any fanciful imaginings he’d had about her. Then, when she returned a few months later, bruised in spirit and skittish of her own shadow, he had told himself that he merely wanted to protect her from suffering any more harm.
“Fool,” he muttered to himself. When he saw his friend and foreman approaching, Dalton grunted a greeting. Slims was the largest man he’d ever met at six and a half feet tall and barrel chested. Although he could run the ranch through sheer domination, he was a gentle giant. Unless someone threatened people Slims cared for, then he was fierce.
“Who’s a fool?” Slims asked.
Grinning as he took a sip of coffee, Dalton shrugged. “I am.”
“I could have told you that,” Slims said with a wry chuckle. His alert gaze roved over the outbuildings and the fields closest to the big house. “There’s plenty of fresh grass this year. The cattle will eat well.”
Dalton shrugged and slurped another sip. He’d never found it necessary to expound on the obvious. He slanted a covert glance at his friend, watching as Slims’s entire demeanor softened at the sight of Davina, Slims’s wife, walking toward them. “Missus,” Dalton said with a deferential nod.
“Hello, Dalton,” she said with a smile that faded into one of confusion. “What happened to yer shirt?” She reached out to finger the hole on the left side of his belly. “Did someone try to stab ye?” Although a tiny woman at barely five feet tall, she and her giant of a husband did not make an incongruous pair. Somehow they were a perfect match. Seeing them together filled Dalton with an intense yearning.
“I startled Charlotte, Miss Ingram.” He shrugged once more, as though a near stabbing were a normal everyday occurrence. “It was entirely my fault.”
Davina squinted her brown eyes, as she flicked a quick glance at her husband. “When someone takes me by surprise, I jump. Or yelp. I dinna come at them with a knife.” Her Scottish accent was as strong as the day she had arrived at the ranch in January, four months ago. Although she and Slims had had a whirlwind romance, they had found a deep and abiding love.
Slims rocked back on his heels. “Come on, Dav. You know there’s much we don’t understand about her.”
Dalton felt his hackles rise at the implied criticism of Charlotte, although he knew it was justified. Charlotte had attempted to harm their marriage in February. “I thought you were no longer bitter,” he murmured.
“And I thought you were more sensible,” Slims shot back.
“Boys,” Davina said with a wry smile. “There’s nae need to argue. I can mend Dalton’s shirt afore anyone asks more questions, and we now ken to make a wee bit of noise if Charlotte’s back is turned to us. One of ye should inform Frederick, so he and Sorcha are aware.”
“I will,” Dalton said, as he took the final sip of his cup of coffee. “If you’ll wait a moment, Missus.” He nodded to her, leaving her to flirt with her husband on this fine morning, as he slipped inside to change into his other shirt. When he returned, he handed the torn shirt to her and motioned for her to walk beside him, as they approached the big house.
The ranch was a combination of three homesteads the Tompkinses had cobbled together in the mid-1860s, along with other parcels of land they had purchased over the years. Frederick Tompkins’s grandparents, Harold and Irene, had moved here from Fort Benton with their son, his wife, and children to stake their claims, prove them up, and turn their dreams into reality. Now they had a thriving cattle ranch, and Dalton had found the family he’d yearned for, since he’d lost his in the Civil War.
Rather than follow Davina inside to chat with her as she mended his shirt, he saw Frederick looking over the fields. He nodded at Davina and ambled in that direction. Frederick was the youngest of the Tompkins brothers at thirty-four, and he had a deep love of the land, which his two older brothers had never discovered. A tall lanky broad-shouldered man, Frederick had attracted the attention of all the eligible single women in Bear Grass Springs. However, the only woman who made his blue eyes shine bright was his wife, Sorcha. Now he stood at the fence, his hat tipped forward to shield his eyes.
“Beautiful morning, Dalton,” Frederick said, as Dalton sidled up beside him. “How are the new hands workin’ out?”
Dalton chuckled. “Fine. Dixon’s runnin’ them through their paces.” He paused as he saw Frederick smile at the thought of the young hand showing anyone the ropes. “He seems to enjoy it.”
“He would,” Frederick said, his eyes crinkling with merriment. “He’s probably sick of you, Slims, and Shorty ridin’ herd on him all the time. Must be nice for him to have the chance to turn the focus onto someone else.”
Dalton tilted his head, momentarily considering the other two ranch hands, Shorty and Dixon, who worked at the ranch year-round with him and Slims. Shorty was Slims’s best friend and barely taller than Davina. Shorty was an expert horseman and cattleman, and had seen the ranch through difficult times. Dixon was as eager as an untrainable puppy and had the energy to go with. Dalton had always thought the four of them combined made a good team.
“I thought you’d be on the range today,” Frederick said, a slight note of censure in his voice. Although a fair and caring employer, he expected his men to work hard.
“I had thought to, but Miss Ingram was out of sorts.” When Frederick stared at him inquisitively, Dalton murmured, “One of the men mentioned Mrs. MacKinnon’s newspaper article about the Copper Kings in Butte.” He paused, as though recalling breakfast and how pale Charlotte had become. “I thought she’d faint dead away.” He shrugged. “It didn’t seem right leaving her this mornin’, Boss, not after you told us you thought we needed to protect her once she arrived here.”
“A Copper King?” Frederick muttered. “Is that why he was worried?”
When Frederick stared at him a long moment, as though deciding if Dalton would answer his question, Dalton bit back a swear. “Who?”
Frederick sighed and rubbed at his forehead. “That damn lawyer. He uses his thousand-dollar words and charming smile to convince you to do something, but you don’t even know why you’re doing it.” He pounded a hand on the fence, making the wood rattle. “He never explained why he wanted Charlotte to hide away here on the ranch with us. Now I wonder if he was worried about a Copper King coming after her.”
Perplexed at the rancor in Frederick’s voice, Dalton said, “I thought you liked Mr. Clark.”
Warren Clark was Bear Grass Springs’s resident lawyer and married to one of the town’s healers, Helen. Warren was also a close friend of the MacKinnons. As Sorcha was a MacKinnon, it meant he was automatically a friend of Frederick’s. However, Frederick had also befriended Helen, offering her a place of refuge, when she and Warren were having a difficult time earlier in their relationship.
“I like the man fine but sometimes lose patience with the lawyer part of him,” Frederick said with a wry quirk of his lips. “What else is there? You wouldn’t seek me out because you didn’t ride out today.”
“Miss Ingram is easily startled, Boss. When I went into the kitchen for a cup of coffee, she didn’t hear me and would have stabbed me if I hadn’t backed away.”
Frederick’s gaze roved over Dalton, nodding in reassurance to find his man unharmed. “You unarmed her?”
“No, I backed away in time. I thought you should warn Sorcha. I wouldn’t want anything to happen to her or the twins.”
Frederick’s gaze hardened at the thought. “Perhaps Miss Ingram should leave the ranch. I won’t risk my family’s safety, Dalton.”
Dalton nodded. He rested his arms on the top rail and leaned against it, as he looked out at the vast landscape. Nearby green grass and rolling fields filled the vista, whereas dramatic mountain peaks rose up to frame the valley in the distance. Snow hugged the peaks, although each day more and more of it melted away. A creek
surrounded with willows and cottonwood trees meandered through the verdant valley. “I understand, Boss. But she doesn’t strike me as a woman out to cause harm. Not now. She’s still desperate. And in need of someone to help her. You’re offering her refuge, and I keep thinkin’ she’s in need of it.”
Frederick sighed and took his hat off to slap it on his thigh before jamming it on his head again. “Perhaps,” he groused, “but how long did Warren expect me to continue to offer her a safe haven? I thought she’d be here a few weeks. Maybe a month. It’s close to four months since she arrived.” He paused and cast an assessing look at his ranch hand. “You’re quick to come to her defense.”
Dalton nodded. “I’d like to think, if my sisters had lived, someone would have looked after them too.” His jaw tightened, and his gaze hardened. “And whoever did this to Miss Ingram should pay, Boss.”
Sighing again, Frederick nodded. “Aye,” he murmured, repeating a word his Scottish wife often said and that they had all picked up, “they should. No woman should be afraid of her own shadow.” He slapped Dalton on his back. “Do what you feel’s right. I trust you.” He ambled away in the direction of his horse barn.
Dalton watched him for a moment before sighing, as he considered Charlotte’s reaction this morning. With a shake of his head, he feared this was just the prelude to the storm.
* * *
That evening Dalton sat on the front porch of the bunkhouse in one of the rocking chairs, listening to an owl hoot and to coyotes yip in the distance. He hoped none had a notion to dine on one of their calves, but he knew it was the nature of things to lose a few head each year to them. With a sigh, he closed his eyes and listened as Charlotte first hummed and then sang to herself, while cleaning up the kitchen.
Healing Montana Love: Bear Grass Springs, Book Eleven Page 1