by Megan Crane
The second his eyes met hers she knew this was no chance encounter.
“Sage.”
He walked right up to the counter and gave her a look that made her instantly remember all the things she had once found so irresistible about this man.
“It’s been a long time,” he added.
He looked at her as if he knew her inside and out. Which he did. Or at least he had. Then his gaze swept the shop, the shelves of attractively packaged chocolate. However you liked it, she had it. Dark chocolate covering silky mint creams, milk chocolate over salt-flecked toffee, chocolate shavings and chocolate mixed with nuts. Bars of dark, milk or white chocolate. Chocolate in the shape of horses, cowboy boots...or the letters from A to Z. And more.
“Quite a departure from barrel-racing.”
“That was kind of the point.” Finally she’d found her voice. And now that the shock of seeing him was settling down, anger began seeping into its place. “If you’re here to buy something—please do it quickly. Otherwise, it would be best if you just left.” She looked pointedly at the door, hoping she’d kept the nerves out of her voice.
He rubbed the side of his face, using his left hand. No wedding ring, she noticed. But then there hadn’t been last time, either.
He gave her a lopsided smile. “Sounds like you’re still a little angry.”
“I’m not angry, O’Dell. Just really not interested in seeing you. Or talking to you. Or even breathing the same air as you.”
His eyebrows went up. “That’s harsh.”
Obviously not harsh enough because he didn’t leave. Instead he wandered to the display of chocolate letters and selected an “S.”
For Sage?
“ I owe you an apology,” he allowed.
“Five years ago you owed me an apology. Now, you just need to walk out that door and let me go on pretending I never met you.”
He sighed like she was the dolt in the classroom who just didn’t get it. “I did try to apologize. But you left town mighty fast.”
Less than twenty-four hours after she crashed on that second barrel, her father had shown up in Casper, Wyoming and had whisked her home. But there had been time for Dawson to reach her. If he’d wanted to.
That had been the last rodeo she’d ever competed in. And it had been the last time she’d let herself get tangled up with a cowboy, too.
“Sage, even if it is a little late, I still want to say it. I was sorry then, and I’m sorry now.”
Damn, if he didn’t look sincere. But she hardened her heart. Facts were facts and how sorry could he be if he’d waited so long to find her?
Keeping her tone artificially sweet, she asked, “What exactly are you sorry for? Would that be for sleeping with me even though you were married?”
He winced.
“Or for your wife catching me butt naked in your bed and then pointing a rifle in my face?”
His gaze dropped to the counter and he swallowed hard. The words--she’d never spoken them aloud before—hung out there, embarrassing, and true, damn it. All too true.
“Sure sounds bad, when you put it like that.”
“They are the plain and simple facts Now, may I point you in the direction of the door one more time?” She glanced out the window, seeing scores of shoppers out on the street. Would one of you please come in and buy some chocolate? Save me from having to say anything more to this guy?
“I’ll be on my way soon,” he promised. “Let me pay for this first.” He put the “S” on the counter. He’d chosen milk chocolate. She preferred dark.
“That’ll be ten dollars.”
His eyebrows went up. “That’s a lot of money for one piece of chocolate.”
“It’s premium quality. Made from scratch in-house. I buy the beans myself, directly from Venezuela. But if you want to put it back, go right ahead.”
“No, no, I’ll take it.” He pulled out his wallet and counted out a five and some ones.
“For someone special?” she couldn’t resist asking, after placing the confection in a cute paper bag and tying the handles with some copper ribbon. “Susan, maybe? Sandra? Sonya?”
“Savannah, actually.”
She was such a fool for thinking, for even a second, that he’d selected it for her. “Here you go.”
As she handed him the bag, she noticed him checking out her fingers. Oh my God, was he looking to see if she was married, too? What about this Savannah girl? The man was incorrigible.
And lucky. She couldn’t believe they hadn’t been interrupted by another customer during all this time.
“O’Dell?” He was looking at her like she was a toy in a catalogue that he couldn’t afford. “Shouldn’t you be leaving now?”
“Yup. Just wanted to say, it was nice to see you, Sage. You’re even prettier than I remembered.”
She couldn’t help softening at those words, and the sincere look in his eyes as he said them. But then she remembered how she’d felt staring down the barrel of that shotgun, and her resolve was back, stronger than ever. “Goodbye, O’Dell.”
On his way out the door, he turned over the “open” sign in the window.
Had he...?
He gave her a wink and another one of his killer smiles. “Didn’t want anyone walking in on us, did I?”
Damn it, he had.
But she still managed to get the last word. “You mean like last time?”
* * *
Dawson dropped the smile, along with the pretense of being cool and collected, the moment he left Sage’s store. That had been harder than he’d thought it would be. But he hadn’t lied when he said it was good to see her, because it had been. Damn good.
He knew he deserved every bit of her cool disdain.
But he’d hoped to see a crack in the veneer. There’d been one sweet second when he’d caught a glimpse of something that wasn’t hatred in her eyes. But then it was gone and all that was left was a solid concrete wall, with her on one side and him on the other.
Well. He’d said his apology at least. Taken the first step.
He took a moment to soak in the ambiance of Marietta, Montana. It was cool in the shade, but if you stepped into the sun you could almost believe you’d been transported back to summer. He liked the look of the park in front of the Courthouse. And the way Copper Mountain shone above the town, sunlight glinting off the granite facets.
It was a real town, solid and also beautiful.
He just hoped he hadn’t made a big mistake coming here.
* * *
Dawson was in town for the rodeo, Sage supposed. But had it really been necessary for him to come to her town? There were rodeos all over this country and he had to pick Copper Mountain Rodeo in Marietta Montana. The big weekend started tomorrow, with a live band and street dancing. Volunteers and shop owners had been getting ready for weeks. There were banners on Main Street and most of the stores had a Western-themed display in their front window. Last night she had coerced her friend Jenny into helping her set out bales of hay, and a rusted wagon wheel in her own window, using them as background for her display of pretty copper boxes.
Poor Jenny. Her big fancy wedding had been called off and she was really beside herself. But maybe it had been for the best. Sage hadn’t been all that fond of Charles.
Hopefully the rodeo would distract Jenny from her heartache. The kick-off was happening tomorrow night with street dancing and a fund-raising dinner. In the morning the barricades would go up, blocking off traffic from the three blocks that were considered the heart of the town.
Sage’s shop was within this area and she was expecting her chocolate cowboy boots to sell like crazy. Not so much the hot chocolate—that was a big hit in winter. But she’d just started making chocolate dipped frozen vanilla yogurt bars and she suspected she’d have a run on those as well.
With the store sign saying “Open” once more, customers resumed coming in, some to browse, but most to buy. She noticed her hands trembling as she counted out change to
the first few of them.
Damn that O’Dell. After all this time he should have just let it be.
* * *
At six o’clock Sage closed her shop, dropped a deposit off at the bank, then got on her bike to cycle home. As usual her route took her along Bramble Lane, the nicest street in town, with stately brick and stone homes on one side and the Marietta River on the other. Many of the original mining magnates who had built this town on the profits of copper, had chosen this road for home.
Her own mother, Beverly Bramble, had descended from one of those families, and not only this street, but also the family home, still bore their name. Sage was passing it now, a red brick mansion on a stone foundation with white trim and a gracious porch. There was a turret above the porch and a widow’s walk to the left of that.
When her mother was still alive, she used to take Sage and her three sisters to have tea with great-aunt Mabel once a month. That tradition had died, along with her mother, over fifteen-years ago. But great-aunt Mabel still lived on—now supported by a grand-niece who had turned most of the bedrooms in the old mansion into guest rooms.
Sage still popped in on the old lady now and then. But Mabel was so rude, she never looked forward to those visits and suspected her great-aunt didn’t get much enjoyment out of them either.
She only continued them as a nod to her mother’s memory.
Several blocks further on Bramble Lane, past the mansions, were some more modest homes. Sage hit her brakes when she saw a ‘Conditional Sale’ sign on a pretty two-story with a red door and a charming stone walkway. The house had been for sale for almost three months. Now it seemed, someone had made a serious offer.
She stuck out her bottom lip, disappointed. Not that she had the money for a down payment—she’s checked the price and it was too high. But while the house was on the market, at least she’d been able to dream.
Sage placed her foot back on the pedal of her bike, then pushed off, continuing down Bramble Lane then taking a left toward the center of town. She loved cycling to and from work, but never more than in the autumn when the cottonwoods were golden and the air was as crisp as the Spartan apples that grew in the valleys up north of Marietta.
At the next street she began to feel the old ache in her knee like a whisper from her past. Not so much pain as a reminder of what happened when you tried to please someone else, rather than yourself.
The days of trying to impress her dad were over for her now. It had been an uphill battle from the start, since she’d been born a girl, rather than a boy, the third of four sisters, the quiet one of the bunch, pretty but not beautiful like Mattie, reasonably intelligent but not brilliant like Dani, and, God knows, nowhere near as tough and brave as Callan who still lived and worked on the family ranch with their dad.
When she reached the house she was currently renting—small and utterly charmless compared to the Bramble Lane one--Sage wheeled her bike into the garage, then headed in the back door to the kitchen where she exchanged her bike helmet and gloves for her purse and a box of the salted caramels from the fridge holding her extra inventory. She thought about changing her outfit. It was family reunion time at the Circle C Ranch tonight. Though Dani lived in Seattle, and Mattie and Wes had a spread up near Missoula, they always came home for the Copper Mountain Rodeo. The night before festivities officially began was family night, marked by a big barbeque at the ranch house.
Sage opened her closet door to consider her choices. But the sight of the pumpkin-colored taffeta she’d worn for Jenny’s aborted wedding was so depressing she decided she would go as she was.
One day soon she needed to put that dress in a box...or maybe sell it to a consignment clothing shop.
The drive to the Circle C was a long and beautiful one, winding along the valley that cut through the Gallatin Range to her right and the Absarokas to her left. Here there were miles and miles between neighbors. Most of the land was owned by just three families.
First were the MacCreadies, whose ranch house and outbuildings were about half-an-hour from Marietta. Mrs. MacCreadie was the sweetest woman, but she’d gone a little strange after the birth of her triplets—which had come just a year after her second child.
“You’d have to lock me away in a mental institution if that happened to me,” Sage remembered her mother saying. Now her parents had known how to use birth control. At least four years were between her and each of her sisters.
Tucked deeper into the valley, she knew, was the Douglas’s place. But tragedy had made that ranch a place she preferred not to think about. One of her sisters—she was pretty sure it had been Mattie—used to babysit for the Douglas’s. Before.
One of her favorite Lady Antebellum songs started to play and she turned up the volume on the radio.
Fifteen minutes farther she came to the Shanahan’s spread. Bill and his wife had had a boy to match every one of the Carrigan girls, but they’d had very little to do with one another in school. Water rights were what it was all about when you were a rancher and Bill and her father had an ongoing feud about the mountain fed stream that ran along the border of their properties. They both had the right to use that water, but over the years both Bill and her own father had been guilty of some surreptitious damning and diverting.
Sage didn’t know who had started it.
And she didn’t care.
She had something else against the Shanahans...secret number two.
* * *
Her dad was barbecuing hearty beef ribs on the back deck when she arrived. Hawksley Carrigan wasn’t the sort of father who took to hugging and kissing, so she patted his shoulder as she walked by. His hair was the usual gray tangle, but his face seemed to age every time she saw him lately. More deep grooves in the sun-baked skin. Fallen jowls and bushy eyebrows that made him seem even more forbidding than he had when he was younger.
“’bout time you got here.”
“The shop closes at six, Dad.” Of course, mentioning that was like barbecuing salmon during wasp season—looking to get stung. Her father could not understand why she’d gone into business making and selling hand-made chocolates. If Hawksley had his way, she’d still be living on the ranch and barrel-racing—despite her injured knee.
“Where’s Wes?” Mattie’s husband was usually out on the deck with her father. Not that the two men liked each other much. But when it came to barbecuing meat—the men knew where they belonged.
“Didn’t come.”
“Really?” Knowing better than to try and coax the reason for this from her father, she headed for the kitchen, the biggest room in the house, but also, paradoxically, the coziest.
Mattie was at the butcher block island, chopping veggies for a salad. Callan was pulling the nice dishes out from the glass-fronted, built-in maple cabinetry. And Dani—well, the brains of the family was drinking wine and supervising.
“Hey, sisters! I’m here!” She slipped her box of chocolates on the counter by the phone where they wouldn’t get in the way, then targeted her oldest sister with a kiss. “Mattie—where’s Wes?”
Mattie was petite and slim-waisted, with curves that seemed almost indecent on such a little woman. She had the same dark hair as all the Carrigans—all but Sage, who’d pulled the recessive red hair gene wild card.
Though Mattie was only thirty-eight, Sage could see signs of aging that hadn’t been present during their last visit. Fine lines bracketing Mattie’s lovely smile and a tired look in her milk chocolate eyes.
“Oh, Wes decided to compete in a rodeo down in Utah this weekend.”
That didn’t make sense. For as long as Wes and Mattie had been together, Wes had signed up for the Copper Mountain Rodeo. Usually they brought their twins with them. But the girls had left this fall for their first year of University.
After a warning look from Callan, who was also tiny like Mattie, only with a more boyish figure, Sage decided not to question her older sister any further. Instead she gave Dani a hug. “How is life in the ivory tow
er in Seattle?”
Dani, who’d recently been promoted to full professor in the psychology department of the University of Washington, dragged her gaze up from her Blackberry. “Very busy. Very exciting.” The second eldest sister, Dani was taller, like Sage. Not as fine-boned as the others. More average. Though she definitely carried more weight than Sage.
Office work, Sage supposed. Business dinners and travel. That sort of thing.
“How do you stay so slim?” Dani’s mind was on the same subject. Her gaze ran over Sage in her cropped pants and peach-colored top. “You make chocolates for a living. You should be rolly polly by now.”
“I make them. Then sell them. I would think a smart woman like you would understand the concept of profit.”
“You never sample?”
“Oh, I have minions for that.”
Everyone laughed, because if there was one thing Sage didn’t have, it was minions. Two part-time employees who helped cover sales during busy times and on weekends, that was it.
God this is good. Sage savored the moment, because it didn’t happen often that the four of them loosened up this way. Their father had raised them to keep their heads up. At any moment you could be chastised for doing the wrong thing or for not doing the right thing. Dani and Mattie had resented him bitterly. Only Callan seemed to be able to shrug off his comments, often giving as good as she got.
As for Sage, she thought she understood what was behind her father’s bitterness and anger, and so she made allowances. But then she knew things that her sisters didn’t.
”—and I told him I so wasn’t going out with him again. Then I left the restaurant and caught a ride home with a friend.” This was Callan, talking about her latest romantic escapade, Sage supposed. She’d tuned out for a bit. Callan always had fun stories to tell, whether they were about her love life—very active. Or about ranching trials and tribulations. There were lots of those, too.
“Sometimes I wish I hadn’t married so young.” Mattie, normally so pragmatic and solid, sounded atypically yearning. “I never had a chance to date and have fun like you, Cal.”