Montana Dad

by Jeannie Watt

  A new start in Montana

  ...or new love?

  Alex Ryan fled her career, her home and her family to start over in Montana. Somewhere her past can’t find her. Now her biggest danger is Nick Callahan, the gorgeous single dad—and cowboy—next door. Alex can’t let anyone get close to her or her heart. But this particular rancher might just give Alex the strength to stop running from her past...and see a future with him.

  “I need an answer, Alex...

  “If I work on your place, I’ll be here while the gate’s open,” Nick added. “You won’t be alone. The gate will be locked every night. I’ll handle that.”

  “I...” Alex let out a soft sigh, pressing her lips together. “We’ll negotiate as we go.”

  “I know this isn’t easy.”

  “The gate has to be locked at night. That’s my...difficult...time.”

  He hated the thought of her—of anyone really—having difficulties getting through the night. He knew what it was like to lie awake, haunted by thoughts, wishes, regrets.

  “I’ll see to it.”

  Neither of them moved from where they stood.

  Finally she said, “Should we shake hands or something?”

  Nick’s lips twitched. “I think we’re okay.”

  She took a small backward step. “Great. I need to get back to my mowing before it gets too hot.”

  “I need to get to work myself.” He smiled, wishing that they both felt good about this deal. “Thank you, Alex.” I won’t let anything happen to you...

  Dear Reader,

  When I was young, The Waltons was one of my favorite television shows. I love stories that involve members of a family working their way through life, overcoming obstacles, learning life lessons, finding love and dealing with personal growth as it relates to the family.

  This is what inspired me to write the Sweet Home, Montana series. I wanted to write about a family with multiple generations, so I created the Callahans—a family that consists of widower

  Nick Callahan, his two young daughters, his sisters and his grandmother. Each of the Callahans have their own personal challenges and each find love in their own way—including the grandmother. Yay, late-in-life romance.

  I hope you enjoy this series and the journeys of the tightly knit Callahan family.

  I love to hear from readers and I am available on Facebook, Facebook.com/jeannie.watt.1, and my website, jeanniewatt.com, where you can sign up for my newsletter.

  Happy reading!

  Jeannie Watt

  Montana Dad

  Jeannie Watt

  Jeannie Watt lives on a small cattle ranch and hay farm in southwest Montana with her husband, her ridiculously energetic parents and the usual ranch menagerie. She spends her mornings writing, except during calving season, and during the remainder of the day enjoys sewing, doing glass mosaics and fixing fence. If you’d like more information about Jeannie and her books, please visit her website at jeanniewatt.com, where you can also sign up for her newsletter.

  Books by Jeannie Watt

  Harlequin Heartwarming

  Her Montana Cowboy

  A Ranch Between Them

  Harlequin Western Romance

  Montana Bull Riders

  The Bull Rider Meets His Match

  The Bull Rider’s Homecoming

  A Bull Rider to Depend On

  The Bull Rider’s Plan

  Harlequin Superromance

  The Brodys of Lightning Creek

  To Tempt a Cowgirl

  To Kiss a Cowgirl

  To Court a Cowgirl

  Molly’s Mr. Wrong

  Wrangling the Rancher

  Visit the Author Profile page at www.Harlequin.com for more titles.

  Contents

  CHAPTER ONE

  CHAPTER TWO

  CHAPTER THREE

  CHAPTER FOUR

  CHAPTER FIVE

  CHAPTER SIX

  CHAPTER SEVEN

  CHAPTER EIGHT

  CHAPTER NINE

  CHAPTER TEN

  CHAPTER ELEVEN

  CHAPTER TWELVE

  CHAPTER THIRTEEN

  CHAPTER FOURTEEN

  CHAPTER FIFTEEN

  EPILOGUE

  EXCERPT FROM SOLDIER OF HER HEART BY SYNDI POWELL

  CHAPTER ONE

  ALEX RYAN CLIMBED out of her car and stretched the kinks out of her back before swinging the door shut with a satisfying slam. Two thousand miles, three nights on the road, four days of checking the rearview mirror for familiar-looking cars, and she was finally here.

  And she was alone. She was sure of it.

  She’d had the highway to herself as she left the Gavin, Montana, real-estate office where she’d picked up the keys to both the house and the gate closing off her isolated home from anyone who accidentally started down the road. The graveled lane leading from the highway to the ranch turnoff had been equally empty, and when she’d gotten out of the car to unlock the gate, the only sign of life had been a flock of geese flying toward a distant river.

  Yes. Alone.

  She let out a long breath and rolled her shoulders as she took stock of her purchase. The two-story house was smaller than she remembered. More run-down. The paint was flaking and one of the shutters hung at an odd angle. Behind the house, the garden shed was losing its roof, and the barn didn’t look as if it was in much better shape and the low hanging rainclouds made everything look just that much drearier. But it was home. Alex pulled the keys out of her raincoat pocket and crossed the weathered porch to the equally weathered front door. The house and her life had a lot in common. Both needed work.

  The old bolt slid sideways, and Alex pushed open the door. A wave of musty air rolled over her and then a sharp gust of wind blew in from behind her and dissipated the nasty smell. She hunched her shoulders against the cool air and stepped inside, letting the door swing shut behind her.

  The house was totally, utterly silent. The kind of silence that pressed in on the ears...the kind of silence Alex relished. She stood for a good minute, straining her ears to hear anything over the sound of the breeze lightly rattling the shutters.

  Not so much as a creak inside the place. She didn’t know what she would have done had she heard a creak. Investigate? Dash for the door?

  She was tired. And jumpy. A rotten combination and one she’d been living with for over two months. But a faint stirring of excitement began to bloom inside her as she stood in the center of the empty living room, wrinkling her nose against the musty smell that resurfaced now that the door was closed.

  This was her house. A place to rebuild. A place to start a new life, far from the disaster that had been her old.

  Nobody here would look sideways at her when she entered a store, or suddenly stop talking when she came into a room. No one would be caught creeping around her property. The encounter with the person in her living room a few days after she’d been cleared of criminal charges might have been unrelated to everything else that had gone down over the past several weeks, but she was taking no chances. She’d moved in with her mother after the break-in and endured almost three weeks of “I told you so” before closing the private deal on the house and heading across the country.

  Alex walked through the living room and dining room to the smallish kitchen with its painted beadboard walls and limited counter space. There was work to be done here—painting, if nothing else. She tilted her chin up to study the grease-stained ceiling above the stove. A ventilation fan would be a wonderful addition to the room.

  Funny that she didn’t remember the place being th
is small and...greasy.

  She’d spent a summer in this house during her early teens, reading, making cookies and riding horses while her parents traveled Europe. At the time she’d had no inkling about what made a workable kitchen; she and Juliet had turned out sheets of chocolate chip cookies and whipped up batches of fudge using the kitchen table and a rolling cart for additional workspace.

  There was no longer a table or a rolling cart—only about twenty-four inches of counter space on either side of the enameled cast-iron sink, which would be adequate space for Alex’s needs, because she didn’t see herself doing a lot of entertaining.

  A choked laugh escaped her lips. Had she really given up her new apartment with the state-of-the-art kitchen that she’d loved so much for this?

  Yes. And you are fortunate to have this place.

  Agreed.

  Things weren’t perfect, but buying this house from her aunt Juliet gave her a place to land far away from the drama she’d been facing at home. A place where she had a passing familiarity, yet no one knew her. But it almost hadn’t happened.

  Less than a week before Alex contacted Juliet about buying the place, a neighbor had made an offer on the property, which Juliet had been in the process of accepting, pending loan approval. Alex had pleaded with her aunt to sell to her instead, digging deep into her savings to outbid the neighbor.

  Juliet allowed herself to be swayed, and they’d closed the deal days later, signing a private contract. No mortgage. No paper trail. Juliet’s name was still on the deed, for the time being, and she carried the loan—which she could afford to do, having outlived three relatively wealthy husbands. The trick, she’d confided to Alex during their cookie making, was to marry a much older man. They appreciated younger women, expected less and gave more.

  At the time the advice had seemed callous, but Alex had thought maybe she’d understand it better once she grew up. And now she did. Her aunt Juliet used people, but she’d also come to Alex’s rescue—for a price—so she wasn’t going to get all judgy.

  The important thing was that she had the house, and here she would be Alex Ryan, newcomer, self-employed technical writer if anyone asked about her occupation, rather than Alex Ryan Evans, private investment firm accountant and embezzlement suspect. Technical writing seemed like a believable pretend occupation—one that didn’t invite awkward questions, because it wasn’t all that exciting.

  She would have loved to have landed a job related to accounting or finance while living in Montana, but there was no way she’d make it through a background check without a sea of red flags popping up, thanks to Jason Stoddard, her former boss. She’d left behind a lot of things she loved, including a career, because of that man, who was now probably living the good life on a beach in Rio.

  Alex tamped down yet another wave of impotent anger. It did her no good to mentally rail against Jason. The guy had played her and that was that. She was still suffering repercussions, but here in Montana, as long as she kept to herself, her past should stay where it belonged—in an upscale Virginia community.

  She walked through the dining room to the staircase leading to the three upstairs bedrooms, and automatically went to the room that had been hers during her summer visit. She crossed to the window and looked out over the fields and river. This would be her office when she decided it was safe to resume her accounting career, but that time, she feared, might be a long way off. She had to be certain that all repercussions of the nightmare phase of her life were over and done. That no one was looking for her, believing that she knew more about Jason’s whereabouts than she did.

  As she opened the closet and took in the unexpected stack of cardboard boxes and plastic storage bins, the distinctive sound of water hitting wood brought her up short.

  No.

  A quick look into the room that had once been her aunt’s crafting room told her yes. The roof had a leak. A persistent one, judging from the size of the stain on the ceiling.

  She needed to find a towel and a container to catch the drips.

  But if the biggest problem she had in her new life was a leaky roof, she could live with it. Such things were to be expected in an older house—especially one that had been bought sight unseen and hadn’t been inhabited for almost two years. The only thing that bothered her was that she’d really hoped to lay low for a few months. Assure herself that she hadn’t been followed. That the ski-mask-wearing guy who’d broken into her apartment and slammed her up against the wall hadn’t been one of the people Jason had screwed out of a fortune before taking off to parts unknown.

  No one believed she was clueless as to his whereabouts, but there was no evidence that she was involved, either. Some of her former neighbors and the people associated with Stoddard Investments would probably take her disappearance as proof positive, but she couldn’t keep them from thinking that, so she wasn’t going to worry about it. She’d leave that to her mother, Cécile Ryan Evans.

  Alex watched as another drip slowly built, the droplet growing so slowly that it would probably be several minutes until gravity took hold and pulled it from the ceiling. A slow leak. Which meant she would have time to find someone to fix it, as much as she hated having anyone on the property just yet. She was still too raw.

  But leaks did tend to grow, so she was going to have to rein in her paranoia and seek out a handyman.

  Not a problem. You’re in Montana. Thousands of miles away from the people who believed she knew more than she did. She controlled access to the ranch via a locked gate, and she was about to get a very big dog.

  She was going to be okay hiring a roof-repair guy. But she was going to settle in, get her bearings first.

  * * *

  “DO YOU WANT me to come to the Dunlop ranch with you?”

  Nick Callahan hadn’t told his sister, Katie, where he was going that morning, but she was pretty good at putting two and two together. “I can handle it,” he said dryly.

  “Be tactful.”

  As if he wouldn’t be tactful. He wasn’t exactly the laid-back guy he’d once been, but he could still finesse a situation. “Thanks for the suggestion.”

  “Daddy!”

  Nick’s youngest daughter, Bailey, came barreling out of the kitchen at a dead run. He swung her up in his arms.

  “What’s up?”

  “She thinks that you need to stay and make cookies with us,” Kendra said from behind him.

  “I’ll be back to frost them,” he promised his five-year-old as his almost-three-year-old patted his face with her hands.

  “More like to eat the frosting,” Katie murmured.

  “I do my part.”

  She rolled her eyes and reached for Bailey, masterfully transferring the toddler into her arms and then balancing her on one hip. Nick gave Bailey a quick kiss on top of her curly head as his grandmother Rosalie came out of the kitchen, wiping her hands on a towel.

  “Are you going to the Dunlop ranch?”

  Was every woman in his family a mind reader? “Yes.”

  His grandmother nodded but had the good grace not to remind him to be tactful. “I have to head back to town as soon as the cookie dough is finished, but I want to know what happens.”

  “I thought you were staying for the day.”

  The ranch was now Rosalie’s home away from home. She’d lived there for most of her life, but after the death of her husband, she moved to town where she and her best friend, Gloria Gable, bought a house and started a gift and garden business.

  “Gloria called a little while ago. We’re meeting with a local artisan this afternoon to see if her creations are a good fit for The Daisy Petal.”

  “I’ll keep you in the loop,” Nick promised.

  “Thank you.” Rosalie turned to the girls. “Who wants to turn on the electric mixer?”

  “I do!” Kendra gave Nick a quick hug. “Hurry back, Daddy.” She f
ollowed Rosalie into the kitchen as Katie hefted Bailey a little higher on her hip.

  “Good luck. And remember, you catch more flies with, well, you know.”

  “I will be tactful.”

  Katie raised an eyebrow as if she didn’t fully believe him, and he couldn’t really blame her. Two weeks ago, when he’d discovered that his offer on the property next door—property his family needed for access to their ranch—had been rejected, he’d pretty much gone ballistic. He’d been outbid at the last minute and the seller hadn’t given him a chance to bid again. Juliet Dunlop simply told him the deal was off.

  Since that time, he hadn’t managed to get much information on the new buyer, except that she’d paid cash and was from the East Coast. That smacked of entitlement, but he told himself not to jump to conclusions. He needed very much to get along with this woman.

  “Hey. I used to be charming.”

  Katie smiled a little. “Once again, good luck.”

  Nick left the house to a chorus of “Bye, Daddy,” and got into his truck, drove over the cattle guard, then took the bumpy side road that led from the Callahan ranch to the old Dunlop place. The gate that separated the two properties was constructed of three strands of barbed wire connected to thin posts. He unhooked the latch and dragged the wire across the road, drove through and left the gate lying beside the road. He’d be back soon enough, and the cattle were on the river pasture, so they wouldn’t be straying through the gate.

  Losing the bridge two months ago during a series of spring floods had hurt, and now the family had to jump through hoops to get it rebuilt. Permitting regulations had changed since the original bridge had been rebuilt in the 1960s, and the process was moving forward at a glacial pace thanks to a county commissioner who kept throwing roadblocks into the process and Nick suspected he knew why.

  He realized then that his fingers were tight on the steering wheel and forced himself to relax. He really didn’t want to fight with anyone. He just wanted to raise his daughters in peace on the ranch where he’d grown up. And to do that, he kind of needed easy access to the place.