Big Sky Ever After: a Montana Romance Duet

by M. L. Buchman

  “He met Lucy on the road last night,” Julie filled in with a mock-panicked look that stung even more than an eye roll.

  “Not a chance I’m going to tangle with any of you,” Nathan concluded. “The kid could probably throw me down already since she’s yours.”

  “I’ve met Lucy,” Emily shuddered. “Never seen anything look so big in my life. Mark had taken me out to a fishing stream one of my first times on the ranch. I was sitting there not hurting a fly, just reading a book. Then this huge cow came out of nowhere and tried to eat my straw hat while I was still wearing it. My scream spooked Mark face-first into the stream—didn’t seem to bother Lucy a bit.”

  Julie laughed. “Hard to imagine anything scaring you.”

  “I’m not some superwoman. Just an Army pilot now retired. I grew up in Washington, DC. Very few giant cows except in the Capitol Building.”

  “Ask her what she hasn’t done,” Julie prompted him. “Go on. Ask her.”

  Nathan blinked at Julie, feeling no sharper than a cow. He was still trying to get over the two women sitting with him. Both were tall, blond, fit, and couldn’t be more different if they tried.

  Emily Beale looked the warrior. Narrow face, jewel-blue eyes, and her hair sliced sharply at her jawline. She wore a black turtleneck, a fleece vest, and khakis with sneakers. Julie’s hair was a lighter shade that fell well past her shoulders in a soft flow emphasizing her open face. The blue flannel shirt accented her sky-blue eyes and the worn jeans that he’d admired earlier were no less admirable up close. Her fancy-stitched cowboy boots really were nice work. It was the first time he’d ever seen cowboy boots that made sense—in New York they’d always looked incongruously ridiculous worn with skin-tight leggings by the city’s trenders.

  He didn’t know what to make of Julie cradling a baby. She made it look like the most natural thing, whereas he’d never really seen one from so close before. Patrons of high-end restaurants hired babysitters. A few of his staff had reproduced over the years, a very few, and the babies were rarely more than a briefly flashed photo on a phone’s screen that always seemed to blank to black the moment it reached him.

  Again he was staring as he tried to puzzle her out. Had to stop that, at least the staring part, no matter how pretty she was.

  “Okay,” Nathan forced himself up straighter and faced Emily. “What haven’t you done?”

  Emily rolled her eyes as Julie answered for her.

  “She was a military helicopter pilot for some secret Special Operation types—the first woman ever. And a major, too, which is awfully high up. Then she led a fleet of the best heli-aviation firefighting helicopter pilots around. I know they’re the best because they stopped a monster wildfire from escaping the primitive area and overrunning all the ranches hereabouts. She has a gorgeous husband—”

  “I do,” Emily admitted finally.

  “—and two of the cutest girls you can imagine,” Julie actually cooed at the one sleeping in her arms. “She makes me feel inadequate just by walking into the room.”

  “I do?” That had Emily sitting up. “No I don’t.”

  Nathan didn’t know whether to mediate or to egg them on and see where it led.

  “You sure do,” Julie insisted.

  “This from a woman who can herd cattle, has won a string of state rodeo ribbons, drives a combine, and rebuilds tractors when they act up.”

  “That’s just ranch stuff,” Julie protested around the last of her sandwich.

  “Can’t do a one of them,” Emily tipped her soda in a salute.

  “I can cook,” Nathan put in his grand bid for fame, but couldn’t think of anything else to add.

  “That roast was you? What did you do to it?” Emily redirected her bottle toward the dining room.

  “Nothing fancy, just lending a hand.”

  He saw Julie eyeing the door, but he understood the issue. “I could use some more. Anyone else want something from the spread?”

  Julie eyed him now like she didn’t trust his motivations, which was a good bet. He didn’t want someone else snagging her attention. In addition to her beauty, she was also skilled and dryly funny. He had a weak spot for funny.

  He took her indifferent shrug as a yes.

  Most everyone had migrated out to the great room, leaving the dining room empty except for a couple of hands obviously going for fourths. No one paid him any mind as he loaded a platter with several slices of roast and a nice-looking beet salad. He filled another with three different slices of pie: rhubarb, apple, and one he wasn’t sure of, but the crust looked golden and flaky.

  The three of them ruled their corner of the kitchen until well into the night.

  It was the first thing in Nathan’s life that had made sense in months.

  Julie stood out on the porch, surveyed the empty driveway, and wondered who she needed to kill: Dad or her three brothers? Marooned.

  By the time the Henderson’s hands began bringing plates back into the kitchen, she’d learned a lot more about Emily and decided that maybe she could like her even though she became more daunting rather than less with each story.

  Nathan had continued to be surprisingly tolerable as a fireside companion. His depth of cluelessness about Montana was so awesome that she wondered how he’d survived the trip from the barn, never mind Choteau. It was like he’d found the fourth largest state in the nation by stubbing his toe on Wyoming and landing in Montana face-first.

  Beyond that he’d spoken plenty but said little. He was the one who had teased stories out of Emily and, now that she thought about it, out of her.

  It was only as she had followed Nathan to lend a hand with the cleanup that she realized she still knew little more than he was a New York chef and his little brother Patrick was a pain in the ass. She knew that herself. Patrick was a nice enough guy, but he was so full of himself—even more than most locals. And he was always trying to find a line on her.

  A New Yorker turned ranch hand was not what she wanted, no matter how painfully persistent. What did she want? That was a mystery that eluded her with even more skill than Lucy.

  Now, she was out on the porch. It was pitch dark. Well below freezing. And both of the family trucks were gone. The storm that had threatened this afternoon had passed through quickly and left a veneer of white snow on everything. Already the clouds were shredding enough to reveal the starry sky—the temperature would still be headed down. It would be a very slippery walk in leather soles unless she cut across the rough pastures in the dark.

  “Something wrong?” Nathan stepped out onto the porch behind her. He wore only a light turtleneck. He hadn’t lied about not caring about the cold; he didn’t even ram his hands into his pockets.

  He wasn’t startlingly handsome; she kept expecting that from him, but he wasn’t. He was average height and build, his brown hair seemed tousled by its very nature. His face would have been plain without the easy smile that reached his eyes most every time. The only really exceptional thing about him was his hands. She could see the chef in them whether he was offering her a choice of pie or picking up a beer bottle. They weren’t rancher weather-beaten, but they were strong and callused—even if it was in ways she didn’t recognize. They implied that he worked long and hard at his cooking.

  She’d never seen that before. Ma cooked. Ama did too. But that roast had been different somehow, as if she’d never really tasted beef before. There were cowhands and there were real, honest, born-to-the-saddle cowboys. There were cooks and there were…whatever Nathan was.

  “Thinking mighty hard on something, Julie,” Nathan’s comment brought her back to the present and the complete lack of any vehicles parked in the Henderson’s driveway.

  “I’m going to jail tomorrow for killing a family member. Nothing new,” she turned back to the night in order to not think about how nice Nathan looked. He looked…normal, in a way no ranch hand ever did. Not with some “get the gal” agenda. Not with an ego saying “look at how impressive I am.” He w
as just…Nathan.

  He looked out at the empty driveway, “No car.” He also wasn’t slow.

  “No truck actually, but same result. Going to be a long cold walk, and then I’m going to kill someone with my bare hands.” She flipping up the collar of her sheepskin jacket.

  “How far?”

  “Three miles by the road, two by the pasture.”

  He held up a finger telling her to wait and went inside. He was back a moment later in a heavy jacket and a woolen hat. “Ride or walk?” He held up both car keys and a flashlight.

  She almost called his bluff, then decided maybe it wasn’t. “Do you even know how to drive on snow, city boy?”

  “Sure, you take the subway. Easy-peasy.” He appeared to be serious, but his eyes gave him away.

  If she had her work boots, she’d walk and see if he was for real. Instead she looked around, “Don’t see a car either.”

  “It’s in the garage…” he tapered off as he looked about the farm. “At least that’s what Doug said. Any guesses on which building that is?”

  “That thing you said about not being a shining knight…”

  “Tell me about it,” Nathan sighed a big plume of cold air. “Actually don’t. I’ve known it for years.” He made it easy to share a smile.

  “The Hendersons have a couple of garages,” she led the way off the porch and into the darkness.

  The family garage had a couple of pickups, including Mark and Emily’s, which was robin’s egg blue. According to Emily, Mark had mounted a major campaign to repaint it black and, for that reason alone, Emily had said she was having none of it. “He thinks he’s still Mr. Macho Military, not the guy who agreed to be the fishing guide for his dad. I have to retrain him on that. Not much hope, but I do what I can.”

  When Nathan had asked why he wasn’t leading hunting parties, she’d said that they’d both seen enough blood to last a lifetime, which had silenced their conversation long enough for the fire to need tending. Julie had had to tell him how to do that as Belle was still asleep in her lap and Emily had no more of a clue than he did.

  Nathan’s sports car wasn’t in the equipment bay either. It was funny to watch his eyes bug out. The Hendersons weren’t farmers, except for a big kitchen garden, so mostly it was just a hay mower and rake, a baler, and several work trucks. He looked at them as if they were alien spacecraft. The ranch’s helicopter and a small cluster of ATVs were parked down at the end.

  She knew that Doug’s garage didn’t have space except for his own truck, which left her wondering if she was going to be walking home after all.

  “It seems unlikely, but let’s check,” she led him through a door into the main horse barn. “God but I love this smell.” It was hay and horse and leather. The Hendersons were doing some horse breeding, but most of it was lessons and guest rides.

  “Really?” Nathan rubbed at his nose with the back of a glove. “It smells…horsey.”

  “You thought pretty horses were going to stink like cattle?”

  “Cattle stink?”

  “You have no idea.” Actually, he probably didn’t. Most of the horses were asleep, but a few stuck their heads out over stall doors to inspect them as they walked by.

  Parked in the last stall at the end, complete with a rope halter fashioned around one of the tires, sat his little car.

  When Julie stopped laughing, she helped him get it out of the barn. Not wanting to pump exhaust into the horse’s faces, they pushed it out of the stall and back up the long central aisle of the barn. Now all of the horses were awake. They looked out of the stalls, nickering and snorting between themselves as if his car was the funniest thing they’d seen in a month of Sundays.

  “I’m guessing that my next move would be to pay Doug back somehow,” Nathan tapped on the brake when they reached the main door.

  “Absolutely pay him back,” Julie started laughing again.

  “Any suggestions?”

  “Pepper in his shorts? I’m sure Chelsea would be glad to help you out there.”

  “I’ll have to remember that you have a low sense of humor, Julie Larson.”

  “I’ll take that as a compliment.” She slid the main barn door sideways and he gave the car a final nudge out into the chill darkness of the barnyard.

  With the top up, they were suddenly very close together. The smell of horse lingered until the heater finally kicked in. Then a richer but gentler scent filled the car.

  “You smell like Montana.” Nathan knew that he should have kept his mouth shut, but he hadn’t been this close to her before. Practically shoulder to shoulder in the car, she seemed to fill the space.

  “I what?”

  “Fresh and, I don’t know, spring-like?”

  “Keep your nose to yourself, buster.”

  “Not much choice. It came attached as standard equipment at birth.”

  Julie glared at him for a moment—which seemed to be her standard expression for covering a laugh—then pointed down the driveway. “Left at the end.”

  Nathan eased down the driveway. There were a dozen sets of tire tracks through the snow. He’d heard the secret to driving on snow was no sudden moves, so he stayed in first gear.

  “Walking would be faster.”

  “I put the car in a ditch and you’ll get that option.” He’d been half hoping that she’d opt for the walk. It would be worth facing the cold to walk with her. Emily had led a fascinating life, but it was Julie’s stories that had really captivated him. She’d slowly painted a picture of a day-to-day life like none he’d ever imagined. She almost made him want to learn to ride a horse just by the way she described it.

  She didn’t say anything during the short drive. He gained enough confidence to shift up to second, which had him arriving at her front gate far too soon.

  “Double-L?” Nathan looked at the big arch over the driveway.

  “Founded by Lars Larson a hundred and fifty years ago. Thanks, Nathan. Here’s fine. I’ll just hop the gate and walk up to the house. Besides, it looks like Lucy escaped again and I don’t want to force you to face the ‘demon beast’.”

  In the glow of the headlights, he could see the cow watching him through the gate. She didn’t look one bit smaller than she had last night. He could only see the house beyond as a vague, dark outline against the starry sky.

  “Do you have your keys?”

  “My keys?”

  “To unlock the door?”

  Julie gave him a puzzled look. “Why would we lock the door out here?”

  Nathan didn’t have a good answer to that one. His apartment door in New York had had three locks—deadbolt, door handle, and jammer—and that was inside a secure building.

  “So you’re okay from here?”

  Julie looked at him for a long moment. He really could smell her, like the promise of spring.

  Then, without any words, she leaned toward him and kissed him lightly. “Don’t read anything into that. You’re just a good guy.” Then she was gone.

  He watched as she climbed over the gate rather than swing it open. Her long legs and fine physique were caught for only a moment in his headlights before she crossed over.

  Through the slats, he saw her pat Lucy the death cow on the flat spot between her eyes before heading toward the house. The last he saw of her was a quick wave and his headlights catching a flash of her bright blond hair.

  He drove back to the ranch just as slowly, not because of the snow, but because he wanted to imagine Julie still sitting beside him.

  Chapter 4

  Julie had the Douglas cabin fixed up by midday. The winter had been kind to this one and it would have to be a little warmer before she could paint. It was warm enough that last night’s snow had melted and she was able to work in a light jacket, but not a chance that paint would set up properly.

  She had the measurements for the new window for Larch called into town, which she would pick up over the weekend. Harvey promised to throw it in his pickup on Sunday, and she�
�d transfer it over at church.

  Aspen would be the last one she’d work on. It didn’t really need much, but she didn’t think that Mac would complain if she spent a day or two sprucing it up. She wanted to hold off on it as a treat to herself.

  Ponderosa. Just like the tree, this one was going to be a big problem. She spent a grim hour pulling out bathroom fixtures. The sink had a bad crack. The toilet definitely had to go. Yanking that revealed rotten flooring. The monstrous clawfoot tub had punched one leg down through another board because a hundred years ago no one had thought to place a support under where the heavy iron feet landed. It was not one of those charming old tubs that leant character. It was a big, ugly, heavy lump. Even in summer, no amount of hot water would make the cast iron comfortable to sit against.

  Mac had taken very little convincing to replace it, but now she had to get it out of here. She could either cut out the side wall, cut down a couple of trees that were in the way, leverage it onto her pickup, and turn it into a water trough somewhere, or she could bust it up in place and haul it to the landfill.

  “Sledgehammer, definitely.”

  In a minute she was back with a sledge, dust mask, goggles, and kitted up in heavy leather chaps and jacket. Busting up cast iron was nasty work.

  Julie raised her big twelve pounder and gave it a hard swing. It bounced off the side of the thick tub. On the fourth swing, it finally did what cast iron does—it didn’t crack, it shattered. A one-by-two-foot chunk broke free and slammed into the open door, missing her shins by inches and making a deep gouge in the doorframe she’d now have to fix as well. That would have hurt despite the leather.

  There was a yelp of surprise close behind her.

  She spun around to see Nathan Gallagher standing in the doorway, his eyes wide with shock as he inspected the chunk of tub mere inches from his toes.

  “What in the world are you doing?” He eyed the sledge that she’d swung up to rest on her shoulder.

  “Breaking up a bathtub.”

  “You look dangerous as all get out.”