Big Sky Ever After: a Montana Romance Duet

by M. L. Buchman

  “That’s hard to imagine, anyone being better than you.”

  “Ha!” But she didn’t raise her head and it was a bitter sound.

  He slipped his arms around her and brushed his hand down her smooth glory of hair and onto her back. “I’m serious.”

  “So am I,” she mumbled against his chest.

  He tipped her back until he could see the blue of her eyes. There were tears lurking there. Of frustration, of rage, of sadness? He didn’t know, but he didn’t like them.

  Brushing gently at them only made them start to flow. Crying woman. What to do with a crying woman?

  Nathan kissed her on the forehead and then on each salty eye.

  “Julie?”

  “Yep. Julie the mess here.” She didn’t even appear to be aware of the tears.

  “What the hell have the men of your past done to you?”

  “Screwed me and done,” the harsh edge in her voice cut at him. He knew men like that. Too many. Braggarts in the kitchen about what babe they’d scooped up at some bar. He figured that both sides got what they deserved out of those kinds of places—he’d done it more than a few times and could never seem to scrub off the feeling afterward. Not who he was anymore and definitely not who Julie was.

  “I want to make love with you.”

  “But you just said—” she blinked at him in confusion.

  “Do you want to make love, with me? Not some male, but with me?”

  “Oh!” She patted a hand on his chest a few times, the warmth of her fingers trickling over his skin just like the tears still sliding down her cheeks. “With you?”

  “Uh-huh.”

  She looked him in the eye, really looked at him for the first time since the horse stall three mornings ago. Apparently not trusting herself to speak, she finally nodded.

  He’d prefer the words, but didn’t want to push his luck. Besides, she was more of an actions-speak-louder-than-words gal.

  So, he scooped her in his arms—and almost dropped her on the floor when he stood. Sweeping a grown woman into bed always looked easier in the movies. Julie was giggling by the time he deposited her on the mattress.

  Not exactly the reaction he’d been hoping for.

  No one had ever carried Julie anywhere. No one except Nathan the White Knight. It was simply too funny that all of her childhood princess dreams were coming to life with a New York chef. That he wasn’t carrying her across the room to save her, but rather to ravage her willing body only made it all the funnier. White knight with a tinge of the rutting cowboy—which actually got him into the quarterfinals for prince charming, maybe the finals.

  He stood, looking down at her for a moment. Not cowboy-working man buff, just a good solid man. One whose dark eyes were watching her, asking permission one last time.

  In making it wholly her choice, even with both of them already half undressed, she knew what she had forgotten. She didn’t want a man—she wanted this man. The one who somehow already knew her well enough to understand that she’d lost that distinction. Well, with his help, she’d found it again and she knew the real answer.

  Taking his hand in hers, she tugged lightly. “Yes, Nathan. With you.”

  He huffed out a big breath like he’d just finished a cross-country cattle drive. “Well, that’s good news.” Then rather than lying down upon her or undressing her the rest of the way, he sat down on the edge of the bed. Men, Montana men, always seemed to know what they wanted and simply took it. Happily along for the ride, she’d almost always enjoyed herself. At least the act itself, though the aftermath was typically far less charming.

  Nathan instead brushed lightly at her hair, then trailed his curled fingers behind her ear and down her neck, watching his own hand. When he finally leaned down to kiss her, it was with that same impossible gentleness that he’d demonstrated before.

  “Nathan.”

  “Uh-huh?” he shifted his attention to her neck.

  “I already said yes.”

  “Uh-huh.” But he didn’t speed up any.

  She half feared he never would. Sex wasn’t supposed to put a girl to sleep. It was—

  Then he kissed more deeply. And then more. He built slowly from an arroyo trickle into a melt-out torrent. One strong arm about her waist, the other lifting her from the bed until she was as much in his lap as lying beside him.

  “It’s been a long time, Julie. I don’t want to scare you or mess this up.”

  “You couldn’t,” and in that moment she knew it was true. Both parts were.

  And he didn’t.

  Being made love to by Nathan wasn’t about to—it was all about with.

  It was impossible to ignore the joy he took from every caress he gave. His joy at every one he received was equal. It unleashed something inside her.

  She wasn’t some horse being ridden, no matter how expertly, by a cowhand.

  When it came to making love, Nathan made it as perfect as the best horse and the best rider flying along in unison. One moment he was the one in control, the next it was her, and there was no break of stride as it shifted back and forth between them.

  The lines and roles blurred so thoroughly that it was mere chance that she was one who landed astride him for the final race to a glorious finish. Together they rose and clung, gasped and moaned. Most importantly—absolutely the first time ever for her—they both gave.

  When Julie slowly fluttered down upon him as gently as a leaf caught in the lightest of breezes, Nathan wondered if now he was going to be the one to cry.

  How had he missed this? How had he gotten so far in his life and never had an experience like this one? Her body was a work of art: strong, lithe, and masterfully formed. Julie was painted in the fairest of shades except for the alarming intensity of those blue eyes that she didn’t close until the very final throes shook her. The woman within was both sweet and fierce, with a big dollop of impossibly dynamic—all at once. He’d never had so much fun having sex or been wracked by such a powerful release.

  Thinking that he knew who Julie Larson was, ranked as perhaps the most presumptuous thought of his life. She tasted of salt tears, warm skin, and—he buried his nose in the crook of her neck…and sneezed—dirt.

  She looked down at him curiously as he sniffled.

  “What? Are you allergic to me?”

  “No,” he couldn’t help sniffling again. “Just to the places you didn’t wash off in your hurry to scoot me out of your kitchen.”

  “You mean my hurry to rescue you from my family?”

  “Oh, absolutely. Life and limb at risk. Dead without you. Which actually may have been closer to the truth than I’d like to think about.”

  She held up an arm, which sported a ring of dirt where glove would have met sleeve. “Not exactly charming.”

  “Utterly charming.” It made him like her even more. Julie wasn’t the sort of woman who felt a need to primp. Again, she was just so absolutely herself.

  “I need a shower.”

  “I’ll help,” then that charming blush of hers lit her face. “Never showered with a man.”

  She shook her head, unleashing a cascade of hair over his face. “Skinny-dipped, but that’s different.”

  “Skinny-dipped. Like outdoors with no clothes on?” He pictured Julie instead of a long-legged moose stepping into a mountain lake. “I definitely have to give that a try.”

  “You’ve never done it?”

  “Well, the problem was we could never agree on where to go. The Jacqueline Kennedy Onassis Reservoir in the middle of Central Park seemed disrespectful, even discounting the thousand-odd member audience you’d have on any typical day. The Conservatory Water was always a possibility, but the model-boat sailors have rules about these things. There’s a very nice fountain at Lincoln Center, but would upset the opera patrons something awful. And in the East River or the Hudson you’ll just get run over by a Circle Line tour boat if you aren’t poisoned by whatever is floating down the river.”

  She propped
her chin on her palm to look down at him.

  “You have sharp elbows.”

  Julie didn’t apologize or move. “I don’t get you, city boy. How have you lived your whole life like that?”

  He shrugged, which only let her elbow dig in a little deeper. “Born and raised to it.”

  She shrugged as if it didn’t make any sense to her. Then she pushed off and rolled out of bed. The scenery in this hotel was really excellent.

  When he finally mustered the energy to follow her, he realized it was even better than he imagined. The shower was separated from the bath by floor-to-ceiling glass. He checked the slowly fogging mirror. Yes, it was definitely him in it. He looked back through the glass. There was definitely a drop-dead gorgeous, all-American blonde in there. He just couldn’t reconcile the two being in the same place.

  Once the mirror fogged out and he’d joined her, it was less hard to imagine.

  “That. Was. Spectacular!” Julie eased down into a back booth at the restaurant. Her body was still splendidly liquid. “I knew that chefs were good with their hands, but what you did in that shower, that was almost better than that meal you cooked me.”

  She could still feel the heat. The man-in-control that she hadn’t met in bed had definitely entered the shower. If she didn’t know him so well, he’d have looked dangerous as he stalked into the glass enclosure. Never once speaking, he’d manhandled her in the most incredible ways, making her body arch and shudder with just a washcloth, soap, and hot water. Her release hadn’t been as big as the wonder of having him inside her, but it was a good thing he had strong shoulders to hang on to or she’d have been down on the tile floor while she begged for mercy. Or begged for more. She couldn’t remember which she’d asked for.

  “I didn’t even know there were things like that to feel.”

  “Better than riding a horse?” Mr. Dark and Sexy hadn’t completely gone away yet.

  She threw up her hands. “Okay, you got me. That was at least as good as riding a horse. Even at a full gallop during a summer sunrise.”

  “I guess that’s as high as a mere man can aspire.”

  Julie laughed. She couldn’t seem to stop smiling around Nathan, even when he was being a little grumpy. No man had ever affected her that way. She hadn’t even paid any attention to where he led her.

  “Hey, this is nice.”

  “Welcome to the Celtic Cowboy. It’s what sold me on staying here. Nathan Gallagher and Julie Larson—umpteenth generation Irish and cowgirl. Seemed like a natural.”

  Julie was on the verge of commenting about how natural had nothing to do with the heat they’d generated between them, but the waitress arrived and she’d save those thoughts for later. Like when she had enough blood sugar to go another round with Nathan upstairs.

  She checked the unlikely name on the menu that the waitress—wearing cowboy boots and an Irish green polo shirt—delivered. The downstairs restaurant at the Hotel Arvon really was called the Celtic Cowboy; Nathan hadn’t been fibbing. A dark walnut twenty-stool bar commanded one side of the room. It had at least that many beer taps down its length, the wall of bottles behind were mostly whisky, and the four big screens were running basketball and rugby. Tables clustered beneath Western-style lights and a band was setting up in the far corner with a harp, fiddle, and a keyboard.

  It was early evening; they’d spent almost an entire afternoon in bed or the shower. A dozen or so patrons were scattered about the room and more trickled in from the fading day.

  “Can I start you with something to drink?”

  “A pint of Ivan the Terrible.”

  Nathan looked at her strangely, “Excuse me?”

  “Beer. Stout, a good one.”

  “You drink a beer called Ivan the Terrible? What the hell planet am I on?”

  “Montana,” the waitress glared at him in mock disgust.

  Julie tried to explain, “Big Sky Brewing Company. Great beer. Used to ride rodeo with the daughter of. They have beers like Pygmy Owl, Slow Elk…”

  The waitress added in, “They also have specialty beers like Olde Bluehair and Buckin’ Monk.”

  Nathan looked as if he was being cornered. “How about a whisky? Something Irish?”

  “Chicken,” the waitress laughed at him. “Sure you don’t want a glass of Moose Drool? It’s a very smooth brown ale.”

  “No, I’ve had enough to do with mooses to last me a good while.”

  “The plural of moose is meece or meeces,” Julie corrected him incorrectly. He’d told her the story of the Great Moose Encounter, and if the moose could mess with him, she didn’t see any reason not to do so herself.

  “I’ve got just the thing. And I’ve always used meeces for the plural,” the waitress said perfectly deadpan and was off without giving Nathan a chance to choose his liquor.

  “You do things differently here in Montana,” Nathan was watching the fine things that heeled cowboy boots and tight jeans did to the waitress’ retreating figure.

  “Hey!”

  “Like the way you make love, Julie Larson,” his dark eyes turned back to her and she wondered if he’d even been conscious of where his eyes had tracked. He now looked at her with an intensity that almost made her look away and definitely drove some heat to her cheeks. “Never experienced anything like it in my life.”

  Neither had she, but she couldn’t think of what to say to that. Talking about sex was another thing she had no experience with beyond, “That was good.” The nicer guys would eventually think to ask, “Was it good for you?” Though she doubted if they ever heard her reply.

  “Women usually…” he ground to a halt. “Shit! I’m sorry. I seem to say the clumsiest things around you.”

  The waitress was back with a beer and a whisky. She thumped them down on the table, then put her fists on her hips and looked down at Nathan. “Try that.”

  “Told you,” Nathan winked at Julie. “Montana is very strange.”

  “Ignore him,” Julie told the waitress. “He’s a city boy.”

  Nathan sipped his whisky, closed his eyes for a moment, then sighed happily. “Now that is a fine bit of Irish—even if I’m not familiar with it.”

  “That,” the waitress was beaming, “is Logan Bar twelve-year-old. Distilled by Bridget MacDeaver…right here in Montana.” She turned back to Julie. “Just flag me when his jaw stops flapping in the breeze and you’re ready to order,” then she sashayed off.

  Nathan sniffed at the glass again, shrugged, and then raised it toward her in a toast. “Seems there are several things to like about Montana.” He made it sound as if he was talking much more about her than the liquor.

  She tapped her glass of stout to his tumbler and looked down at the menu. Any other man saying that line would have been talking more about the whisky than the woman. Had her bar really been set so low that someone less than the wonderful Nathan Gallagher, from New York City (the good lord save her), could step over it? Sadly, past experience already answered that. Wasn’t going to ever happen again though.

  Nathan sipped the whisky. He rarely drank it anymore—it had been his poison as a young chef. But he’d learned a lot about them in his younger days and this was a fine one indeed.

  Montana. He didn’t know what he’d expected, but this certainly wasn’t it. A Celtic Cowboy bar, a truly fine single-malt, and Julie Larson.

  He had only begun to learn the curves that made up her body. They were enough to make a man go mad. It practically had. Women usually—Idiot! But it was true. All the women he’d ever been with, from high school to the Cordon Bleu to the hostess in the back booth at Vite had a studied beauty: plucked eyebrows, makeup, carefully stylish clothes. Even the sous chef he used to screw in the walk-in fridge wore a tailored blouse and lacy underwear while they worked together over the cook line.

  Through the glass of the hotel’s shower enclosure had stood Julie Larson—a woman who was nothing more (or less) than she appeared to be. She worked hard, got dirty, and had the incredible bo
dy to prove it.

  He’d bet his last bottle of Château Margaux Bordeaux 2005 that she’d actually meant it when she said she didn’t know what passive-aggressive games were. They were part of every interaction in the restaurant business. Piss someone off, and the fish arrived to the line overdone, forcing the whole table to be refired so that everyone could be served together. Break up with someone and you could find that your lockbox of truffles was “accidentally” put away in the freezer.

  Julie was as straightforward as she appeared. It had overtaken him as he moved to join her in the shower. Maybe he’d gone in hoping to prove that she hadn’t just negated the value of every single relationship in his past by shining such a bright light on the present. Instead, she’d responded with such an absolute honesty that he’d sought to do for her what she’d done for him—purge her past until it washed down the drain.

  How could the prior men in her life not see her for how incredible she was? How many men were like his fellow, bar-hopping chefs, or worse yet his little brother?

  Damn it! She deserved better than that and he’d done his very best to give it to her.

  Now, across the rim of a whisky glass, he studied her while she read the menu. Her pale blonde hair fell in a smooth cascade down either side of her face. She wore a flannel shirt that was just open enough to provide a splendid view of her collarbone. The curves below were lost in shadow and closed buttons. No coy games. No teasing cleavage.

  “What are you looking at, city boy?” she didn’t raise her head. “Because you sure aren’t looking at your menu.”

  “Prettiest woman who ever let me take her to bed.”

  “Skin deep, Nathan.”

  “On most women I can tell you that’s far more true than you think.” Even the nice ones. There was always a deeper layer with a hidden agenda. “You, I’m thinking your beauty goes all the way to the core.”

  “Pretty speech. If you’re trying to get me back into bed with you though, it’s not going to work.”

  “That’s not what I was say—”

  Then she looked up and grinned at him. “Not until I’ve had something to eat anyway. But keep trying, Nathan. I’m discovering that I like the way it sounds.”