Big Sky Ever After: a Montana Romance Duet

by M. L. Buchman

  She went searching for a different topic—and spewed out pure stupid.

  “So what’s the course after dessert? Is this when you try to seduce me?” Talk about giving him an vast opening. Bad move. Very bad move.

  Nathan smacked his forehead with his open palm. “I knew there was something I was supposed to be doing next. I’ve got to run down to the main house and get some bedding. Could you check upstairs and see if the mattresses are musty? Probably should have scattered rose petals up the stairs and into the bedroom. You don’t have any rose petals handy do you? Crap!” He started patting his pockets as if he’d find them. For half a second she thought he was going to actually rush out for sheets and blankets and, god help her, rose petals.

  Then the joke caught up with her. “You run a crappy seduction, city boy.”

  “Special for you, cowgirl,” he dropped back in his chair as if exhausted by all of his momentary flurry. “Actually, I thought that maybe just getting to know you a bit might be fun. That, and find out if I can still cook.”

  “Put a big check in that last box, Nathan. It was truly amazing.”

  He was nodding to himself as if he wasn’t so sure.

  “Okay. Spit it out. Enough of this sad dog act.”

  “Spit what out?”

  But he didn’t deny the sad dog part of it.

  After a moment he raised both hands in resignation. “Not tonight, okay? Not over my food. Maybe over someone else’s.”

  “Well, don’t be looking at me. I can cook on a grill or a campfire well enough to not poison most folks, but I’m all thumbs in a kitchen.”

  “I’ll keep that in mind for the future. What are my survival odds? Fifty-fifty? Sixty-forty? Still might be worth the risk.”

  “Might end up accidentally knocking your cowboy hat into the fire,” she made it a threat.

  “Don’t have one of those either.”

  “Oh, city boy,” she sighed.

  She’d helped him clean up, which wasn’t much. Nathan always ran a clean kitchen: washing up as he went, reusing what he could. But they’d fallen into an easy synchronicity even over that simple task. With him washing and Julie drying and putting away, they’d cleaned up the Aspen kitchen in record time.

  He closed up the cabin and walked her to her truck by the moonlight shivering down out of the crystalline dark sky.

  “You really weren’t running a seduction on me, were you?” Julie hesitated with one hand on her truck’s door.

  “Seems to me, way too many guys have been trying to run that game on you just because you’re nice and you’re pretty.”

  “Most of them don’t care about the nice part,” the chagrin sounded as if it came from deep experience.

  “So, here’s my deal with you—seem to be making a lot of those. No games. I cooked for you because I wanted to. As a bonus, I enjoyed this evening even more than I expected to, which is saying something. You make a great dinner companion.”

  It was only a quarter moon, but it seemed so close here, much closer than in the city. There were more stars in the sky than at the Hayden Planetarium on the Upper West Side. The light caught her hair, though not her expression. Her breath into the chill air sparkled for a moment before dissipating.

  “Also, there’s a lot to like about you. The fact that you’re gorgeous is definitely on the list. But so is your competence, your quiet sense of humor, and your incredibly positive attitude.” He knew he was getting too serious. “Though your misplaced belief that you can teach me to ride a horse definitely makes your common sense suspect.”

  She looked up at him from under the brim of her hat for a long moment. “That’s a kinda long list from someone who claims he isn’t trying to seduce me.”

  “No games. No lies. I’ve had enough of both to last a lifetime.”

  “You’re walking a thin line there, Nathan.”

  “What line?”

  “You cook like a dream. You’re thoughtful. You think your brother is a better man than he is, and you just might prove you’re right and he’s wrong someday. You’ve got this sort of sad little corner that makes a girl think about taking you home and feeding you a bottle of warm milk like a sick calf.”

  “I could have done without that last image.” Being pitiable wasn’t exactly the trait he wanted to be known for by a beautiful woman.

  “It works on you.” Then she took her hand off the truck’s door handle and instead slipped her chilled fingers around his neck and kissed him. It wasn’t the hard smack of their last kiss. It was soft, warm, and slowly eased into full body contact.

  Even on this cold winter night in early April, she tasted of spring. Warm, lush, and welcoming. Neither of them hurried through it, nor did they cling afterward.

  Just as he’d thought of her since the first moment they’d met, Julie’s kiss was exactly what it was—a really amazing kiss. No promises of tomorrow. No offer to share her body. No teasing rub together hinting that there might be more if he did everything “just right.” It was simply and thoroughly a kiss.

  He managed not to ask if all Montana women kissed that way after she climbed into her truck and slammed the door shut herself.

  “’Night,” was all she said through her open window as she started the engine.

  “Goodnight,” was all he managed before she rolled away into the night.

  Chapter 7

  “Rise and shine, city boy.” Nathan jolted awake when Julie kicked his bed.

  Damn but he’d looked cute all curled asleep in his bed. Cute, hell, she was more than half tempted to wake him with a kiss and see if last night’s had been as real as she was remembering. While they’d kissed, he’d just held her. Not groped or even gone for a quick “accidental” feel. He’d just snugged his arms around her waist and held her tight. It had felt mighty good.

  He blinked at her in sleepy surprise and pulled the covers up tightly around his neck. By the neatly folded clothes on his chair, she could see that he didn’t even wear underwear to bed, unless he was a pajama man. He didn’t strike her as a pajama man.

  “Wha’?” he mumbled as he twisted to look toward the window—it was still pitch dark. Then his clock—the hour on it seemed to surprise him some.

  “Enough of you sleeping in ’til all East Coast kind of hours,” she gave it a good country drawl. “If you’re gonna be on a ranch, it’s about time you shift over to ranch time. Besides, now is the only time I’ve got. I’m busy the rest of the day. You’ve got five minutes. Meet me in the main barn. Dress warm and wear boots, if you’ve got any.”

  “I have boots.”

  “Wear ’em.”

  He nodded, but made no move to get out from under the covers while she was still in the room. Definitely not a pajama man.

  Julie turned on her heel and, after a brief stop for coffee, headed out to the barn.

  Nathan was there in close enough to five minutes, but he’d clearly skipped a lot of things to make it. His softly curling hair was more uncombed than usual and his night’s beard showed a stronger chin that one would expect of him at first glance. There was a little toothpaste caught at the corner of his mouth that she didn’t comment on but he eventually licked away. His boots looked like they’d come out of some New Yorker-in-the-snow movie—soft rubber with a furry lining. Something else they’d have to fix if he was going to stay in Montana for any length of time.

  She wasn’t going to think about her own reaction to that thought. Why should she care if he stayed or went? They’d shared a great meal and a spectacular kiss. That was all.

  “Let’s start with the basics,” she walked up to the stall Chelsea had set aside for Clarence. He popped his head out over the half-height door when she approached. “This is a horse.” She scrubbed a gloved hand between Clarence’s eyes.

  “Ha. Ha. Ha.”

  “Well, you thought Lucy was a savage animal. I figured I should start simple.”

  He didn’t bother to repeat himself, just stood there looking grumpy. He had
his fists jammed into his jacket pockets and his head still hung with being only partially awake.

  Julie took pity on him and handed over her half-finished coffee.

  “That helps some. Thanks.”

  She handed him a couple of sugar cubes.

  “No thanks, I don’t use it. Though some cream next time would be nice.”

  Julie sighed. “Starting with this is a horse maybe was the right place. The sugar isn’t for you, it’s for him.”

  Clarence was watching it with great interest.

  Julie showed Nathan how to hold palm and fingers flat so that Clarence didn’t accidentally chomp down on them.

  “That tickles,” Nathan smiled as Clarence lipped the cubes eagerly off his hand, then crunched them loudly. She wasn’t sure how she felt about her horse receiving Nathan’s first smile of the day rather than her. He finished her coffee and set the mug aside.

  Step by step she led him through all of the beginner stuff that she didn’t remember learning. There was more than she’d thought and it took some effort to unravel it for him. His instincts around animals were nonexistent—maybe Lucy had spooked him for real.

  No sudden moves, keep your toes well clear of the horse’s hooves, speak to him as you move, and so on.

  He laughed at how Clarence’s skin rippled wherever Nathan’s hand traveled. Julie had been trying to teach him how to let the horse always know where he was by trailing a hand over him, but Nathan’s touch was so tentative that Clarence’s nerves treated it like a fly and kept trying to flick it off.

  “No,” she clamped her hand down over his, pinning it against the warm, bristly surface of Clarence’s shoulder. “If you’re going to touch a horse, really touch them. Make your presence and confidence clear.”

  “I’m guessing just the opposite works with you,” he brushed a finger of his free hand so lightly down her cheek that it utterly took her breath away. She was suddenly aware that pinning his hand to Clarence’s shoulder also had them holding hands—at least hers holding his.

  “Don’t do that,” she managed on a whisper. She didn’t have the ability to twitch her skin like a horse to shoo him away. Julie also didn’t like what his gentle touch was doing to her knees. Her knees and her heartrate were not supposed to be connected to her cheek.

  “I’ve been thinking about last night’s kiss.”

  It had been an amazing kiss, though she kept that thought to herself. Nathan was a man who looked like a comfortable, average man, but under the surface had a startling intensity. She saw that now in the way he cooked, had felt it in the way he’d kissed. Now, he seemed to be trying to hypnotize her.

  It was working.

  She couldn’t shift a muscle as he leaned down to kiss her again. Just a brush of the lips. Just a taste of the possible. Just—

  Nathan jolted and yelped right in Julie’s face. He yanked his hand free and slapped it on the sharp pain in his ass as he turned to see who had attacked him.

  Clarence snorted in something that sounded very like a laugh.

  A sound that Julie clearly echoed from close behind him.

  “Well done, Clarence!” Chelsea was leaning on the stall’s half door. “High five, buddy.” She held up her hand and Clarence nosed forward enough to accept her affectionate pat.

  “What the hell just happened?”

  “Clarence doesn’t like you kissing his girl,” Chelsea explained. “Pity. It looked like it was gonna be a really good one.”

  “But—he’s a horse!”

  “Doesn’t mean you didn’t deserve a nip on the ass for manhandling Julie.”

  “I wasn’t—” he didn’t even know why he was trying. He checked his butt. No tear in his jeans and he didn’t feel any blood. “Do I need a shot or something?”

  “For what?”

  Julie was still laughing, her amusement sliding into a giggle that would have been charming under any other circumstances.

  “I’ve just been bitten. Am I going to get rabies or something?”

  “Hey,” Julie shoved against his shoulder to get between him and her horse, which was fine with him. “Clarence is a clean, healthy horse. Don’t you malign him.”

  “Malign him? Malign him!”

  Clarence eyed him warily.

  “He bit me!” The next biggest thing that had ever bitten him had been a mosquito. And his brother had then read aloud a whole website entry on the different diseases that a mosquito could carry and all the symptoms that Nathan now had to watch for. If a mosquito had all that, he couldn’t begin to imagine what something as big as a horse had.

  “It was just a nip,” Chelsea and Julie said together in a unified defense of the perpetrator.

  “Just a nip? Why I oughta—”

  Clarence raised one hoof and stomped it down hard. The stall’s floor was just dirt, but Nathan swore he could feel the ground-shock up through his boots.

  How low did a man have to go to have a horse get impatient with him?

  Pretty low he supposed. He rubbed his butt once more and decided that maybe—just maybe—it was merely a nip; the pain had mostly faded while he was busy ranting.

  “Pretty damn pleased with yourself, aren’t you?” he asked the horse.

  Clarence jerked his head up and down through a three-foot arc that was disconcertingly similar to a human nod.

  “He’s my guardian angel,” Julie confirmed as she leaned back against the horse’s shoulder and the perpetrator turned to snuffle at her. A great blast blew her hair aside. He’d been left the option of “rutting cowhand” and her damned horse got “guardian angel.”

  “Yeah,” Chelsea still leaned on the stall. “Next time you want to manhandle your woman like that, I wouldn’t do it near this horse.”

  “I wasn’t—” What was the point? Arguing with a redhead, a blonde, and her horse struck him as a losing proposition.

  “His what?” Julie’s shout had even Clarence stepping aside as much as the stall would allow. Without his shoulder supporting her, Julie almost went down on the straw bedding. “I’m nobody’s woman except Clarence’s.”

  “No secrets up in the big house, Julie,” Chelsea was enjoying this more than any of them. “Fancy dinner—at least the list of ingredients sounded fancy to me. Do you have any idea how long it takes to make puff pastry? I didn’t, but Emily filled me in. Then lights on up in the Aspen cabin until mighty late with your truck out front. Was it sweet or romantic? Did it get steamy? Oh, I really hope it got steamy; I love steamy. Give me the details, girlfriend.”

  “I’m not his woman,” Julie ground out the words.

  “Why not? A cute man who cooks and owns a hot sports car? That would be more than enough for me.”

  “Chelsea! You married a ranch foreman who owns a pickup and can barely fry an egg.”

  She nodded, “But there are other things he does so…very…well.” Her smile said exactly what some of those things were.

  “Enough!” Julie cried in defeat, pushed out of the stall, and she and Chelsea were gone in a moment.

  It took Nathan several heartbeats to realize that it was just him and Clarence alone in the horse stall. The horse was eyeing him suspiciously.

  “Her guardian angel, huh?” The horse did a headshake that flopped its mane neatly into place. It might have been a yes or a no…or maybe a “look out, bub.”

  “I guess if I’m going to go after your girl, I better be nice to you.” Was that what he was doing? To what end? Wasn’t he leaving soon?

  Clarence had no comment.

  There was only so long he could freeload off Mac and Ama. She’d ignored him when he tried to pay for the ingredients for last night’s dinner. Yes, he helped in the kitchen, but she didn’t really need him.

  “Well, there comes a time in every man’s life when he must…” but Nathan couldn’t remember the rest of the quote. “I guess…when he must take his life in his own hands and suck up to a horse.”

  Make your presence and confidence clear, he reminded
himself silently. That’s what Julie said was the secret to handling a horse.

  He stepped up to Clarence, gave him the best imitation Nathan could conjure of a manly thump on the shoulder, then stepped confidently—and quickly—out the stall door.

  There was a sharp clack of horse teeth close behind him, followed by a whinny that he was simply going to pretend he hadn’t heard.

  Julie’s protest that she “didn’t want to hear it” was about as effective on Chelsea as could be expected. Finally resigned to her fate, she followed Chelsea into the barn’s working office and closed the door.

  It was a good space. She’d helped Chelsea rearrange it last fall and Chelsea had made it her own since then. Like everything else in the barn, it was clad—floor, walls, and ceiling—with heavy lumber gone dark brown with age. A big roll-top desk sat up against one side wall. Out a big window in the back one, Chelsea had a sweeping view of the property up toward the ranch house and the cabins.

  All around the desk and on the other side walls were photos of happy families and couples up on their horses or camping up by the waterfalls on the far side of the Henderson property. There was also a big monitor hanging on the wall, which at the moment was showing the information on her laptop’s screen: every horse broken down into…

  Julie hadn’t seen a rating like this before, but once she figured it out, she couldn’t help but laugh.

  “I know, right?” Chelsea looked pleased.

  The columns headings weren’t: OK for beginner, intermediate, advanced rider only… They were: easy-going, opinionated, really opinionated, and downright ornery. There were only a couple of names in the last column, and Doug—the best rider on the ranch—was working with those. Julie wouldn’t mind doing some of that work herself, though it wasn’t as if she had the time.

  “I’d always thought Clarence was, like,” Chelsea tipped back in her chair and stared at the chart, “—easy-going. Something about Nathan really sets him off, right up into really, really opinionated.”