Big Sky Ever After: a Montana Romance Duet

by M. L. Buchman

  Emily nodded, “Good. There are some people who want to talk to you.”

  Some traitorous part of Julie lit a brief candle of hope—that she squashed as fast as she could.

  “No, not Nathan. I’m sorry.”

  “That’s okay,” Julie got her stone walls back in place around her heart. “Who? Certainly not Mark. He lit out of here like his hair was on fire.”

  “I sent him on a mission.”

  Julie eyed the darkened computer screens behind Emily.

  “Not that kind of mission. He’ll be happier once the tourists are here. He’s better with the kids than I am. Little children, fishing trips on horseback, the helicopter tours that Nathan thought up—”

  “That Nathan thought up?”

  Emily nodded, “We’re also going to start offering, for a fee of course, heli-transport from Great Falls International Airport to the ranch. It’s not a Black Hawk, but Mark will welcome the air time. I think I’ve probably flown enough for this lifetime. If it goes well, I might get him a bigger helo that can take more than four passengers. But then again, more trips will help keep him busier.”

  Julie was still pondering Nathan thinking up helicopter tours.

  “Are you ready?”

  Julie shrugged. “Since I don’t know what for, bring it on. Is it something else to fix?”

  Emily smiled, which Julie was learning to be a rare enough occurrence to be noteworthy. “In a way. Chelsea, you’re up.” Emily called out one of the inside windows after opening it.

  There was a very Chelsean cheer, and then the pounding of booted feet up the stairs. “You’re finally done?” She burst into the room with more energy than Julie would ever have again.

  Julie nodded. Most of her words had flown away with Nathan.

  “Yes!” Chelsea did a fist pump followed by a little clog dance around the room before plummeting into a chair. “Please say yes. Please. Please. Please! Please…PLEASE!”

  Julie almost laughed, another thing that— She chopped off the thought. “To what?”

  “I need an advanced rider.”

  “For what? A pony express run? Closest point of the old route is probably Big Sandy, Wyoming. That’s a ways off.”

  “Oh, wouldn’t that be so cool if the Pony Express had run through here. We could offer Pony Express rides and—”

  “Chelsea. Focus,” Emily not only smiled but might have been fighting a laugh.

  “Right. Sorry. We’re trying to draw an expert-level crowd. That’s a new market segment for us. The only person we really have to lead those kind of rides is Doug and he needs to be here to run the ranch. Mac said that I had to wait until you were done with the spring work because your brain might explode if we gave you another thing to think about, but now that you’re done can you think about it. Right?”

  Julie tried to absorb the strangeness of the request. “How often?”

  “One a week, probably three-four days each trip—right through the high season. You know this country better than anyone. Ama wants to do more riding, too. The two of you could scout together, maybe lead them together sometimes. When you’re here, well, Doug said he’s never seen anyone better at talking down the feistier horses and he wants you to work with them when you have time. Then there’s the breeding program we want to start up and— Oh crud! Doug wanted to talk to you about that later. But that’s in there too.”

  “I have a business…” though Julie couldn’t imagine anything she’d like to do more. Working with the horses was beyond a dream come true.

  “That’s my part of it,” Mac was leaning on the door frame.

  She hadn’t heard him come up the stairs behind her. Maybe she should have left a squeak or two in the staircase. Though Mac had been a Navy SEAL, so it might not have made any difference.

  “The management of Henderson Ranch,” Mac pointed at himself and then up toward the house, indicating Ama. “We’re thrilled with the work you did, but we can’t afford you full time.”

  “That was my point,” Julie hoped she could make one now that Mac’s presence seemed to have silenced Chelsea. “I need to go find some work. I’ve gotten a good taste of building and find that I like it. Though a less crazy schedule wouldn’t hurt me none.”

  Mac smiled. “Yep! This spring was a real stretcher that I don’t want to repeat either. What I meant to say is that we can’t afford you full-time as a building contractor alone. But if you wanted to mix that up with the trail rides and horse work,” he gave one of his eloquent shrugs. “I think we can make that work.”

  “Full-time? Here? At Henderson’s?”

  Mac nodded, “Got a place picked out for you, already know you like it.” He nodded up toward the cabins on the other side of the barn.

  Julie looked out the skylight window. She was glad it faced away from the cabins—away from Aspen where…

  He couldn’t mean that.

  If he did…

  No! Impossible! She never could.

  The skylight faced toward Larson land. And somewhere far to the east, a construction job on Vern’s ranch. He was a good man. His older son was married and Julie liked his wife well enough when they met at church socials or the county fair. The younger son wasn’t a complete troll either.

  “I—”

  “We’re going to clear out of your way,” Emily stood up and made shooing motions at the others.

  “You get the trim and such finished in here. And just think on it.”

  She really didn’t need to. What she needed was to be far away, but she nodded. Emily Beale wasn’t the sort of woman to argue with.

  Mac gave her a nod and a smile, then departed, probably assuming that of course she’d take the offer.

  Chelsea made praying motions and whispered, “Please, please, please,” another half dozen times as she backed out the door. Chelsea, at least, knew it wasn’t as sure a thing. Though Julie had rebuffed her attempts to talk about “things” several times since Nathan left, she would miss Chelsea.

  “Two nights, Julie,” Emily said when it was just the two of them. “I want you to sleep on it for two nights. Because I know that’s all it takes to change a person’s life.”

  When she was gone, Julie couldn’t find the energy to move.

  Two nights.

  Exactly the number of nights she and Nathan had had together.

  She’d wait because Emily had asked, but then she was gone.

  “What the hell, buddy?”

  Nathan startled up as the big voice boomed forth in the restaurant.

  All other conversation immediately died and the patrons were all staring at the big guy in a jeans jacket.

  “Mark?” Everyone in the restaurant wore upscale chic, even the tattering of some patron’s clothes had been done by a designer. Mark Henderson looked big, burly, and completely out of place in his ranch attire. “What are you doing in New York?”

  “Damned if I know,” Mark brushed by the hostess and the waiters. Somewhere along the way he acquired a beer. He plucked an empty stool from one of the high-top tables just as its occupant headed off toward the restroom. Mark carried it to the center of the servers’ station and dropped onto it.

  It was the exact busiest point of the entire restaurant. It was where the three different legs of the cook line came together in front of the expeditor—which was Estevan because they hadn’t found a good one that they could afford to steal yet. The expeditor finished the plating and made sure everything was perfect before sliding it across to the waiters. Sliding it to exactly where Mark had unknowingly parked himself.

  “Hey. Get out of the way,” Estevan flapped a hand at him. He couldn’t do more because every patron was staring into the open kitchen to see what happened next.

  Then Nathan recognized Mark’s look, the look of a man who had just been head-butted by a moose and still kept his wits about him regarding his precious fish.

  Mark knew exactly where he was sitting.

  Nathan tipped his head to come back into t
he kitchen.

  Mark sat through another long sip of his beer just to make Estevan crazy, then came around the side, still carrying his stool. He plunked it down just barely out of Nathan’s way.

  “What do you mean that you’re damned if you know why you’re in New York?” Nathan dropped three salmon fillets in butter with just a sprinkle of fresh-ground guajillo red pepper.

  “Emily told me to come. Not a chance I’m going to argue with that woman. One thing I’ve learned about her over the years, she has a habit of always being right. I don’t mess with that.”

  Nathan nodded as he spooned the butter up over the fish in fast little strokes to keep it moist. Too much liquid escaped from the first layer of the flesh if he didn’t. The goal was a perfectly seared finish on one side, and a consistently moist bite from top to bottom. The butter gave a more luscious mouthfeel than white wine. It also played better off the artichoke salsa served alongside it.

  Then he remembered Julie crowing with delight over proving Emily fallible.

  I do like you!

  He accidentally splashed a scoop of butter onto the burner rather than fish. Someone, probably him, was going to have to clean that up after the stove was cold. The butter smoked and tickled his nose as it burned off. Almost made him sneeze like that time with Julie when—

  “So what did Emily have to say?” Because he certainly wasn’t going to ask after Julie.

  “ ‘Get on a plane, go find Nathan, and fix this.’ I think those were her exact, and only, words. So what the hell am I fixing? And why did I have to fly two thousand miles—on a commercial jetliner, for cripe’s sake—and track you down to do that?”

  “How did you track me down?”

  “Emily did one of her things with your phone’s location from up in that room Julie built for her. Said you’ve barely been out of this building for two weeks.”

  Nathan cracked his neck. His shoulders hurt like hell, which they hadn’t since he’d quit and driven to Montana. Hunching over a hot cook line did that to a guy.

  “Where’s my fish?” Estevan managed to keep it below a shout.

  Nathan looked down. Scorched and dry. “In the crapper.” He began knocking pans into the waste bin so that he could refire the whole order. In the process, he accidentally grabbed a duck confit and knocked it into the trash as well, which was going to screw up a whole other table’s sequencing.

  “Basket case,” he called out. There were nights when a chef turned all thumbs. There were only two approaches that Nathan had ever found would work. One: plow mindlessly ahead while the disaster rippled through the service for an hour or more, all the way out to the tables, before it finally tapered off and resettled.

  Or two: cry “Basket case” and get the hell off the line.

  Estevan was muttering foul imprecations as he juggled the line in order to take over the position himself. “Get out of here, Nathan. And take this asshole with you.”

  “Sorry, man.”

  Estevan shrugged. It happened, just never to Nathan. He’d set up the system at Vite, but he’d never had to call it on himself.

  He returned the stool to the perplexed patron who had only just returned from the restroom.

  Nathan swiped a beer from the bar and led Mark out the front door. It wasn’t a warm enough evening for New Yorkers to use the outside sidewalk tables, but after Montana it seemed almost balmy.

  “Find me and fix this?”

  “That’s what she said,” Mark toasted him and drank. “Any idea what it means?”

  “Yeah,” Nathan sighed, then returned the gesture and drank himself. “Yeah, I think I do.”

  Chapter 16

  Julie hadn’t been able to stand it. There wasn’t a way she could stand waiting a whole second day.

  Dad had silently lent her a hand loading her truck. There wasn’t that much to load. She couldn’t take Clarence, not until she knew the lay of the land at Vern’s ranch, so it was just her work clothes and her tools. The old Ford cringed under the load, but stood staunchly by. She had the money in her pocket to rebuild the engine—Mac had paid her off yesterday afternoon—but she didn’t have the time.

  When everything was loaded, they stood awkwardly in the front yard close beside her truck.

  “Mac called me about the offer couple days back,” her father finally grumbled out. “Told him I hated to lose a hand as good as you, but it sounded like a better fit than this place will ever be. Or Vern’s. You sure you’re making the right decision in turning him down? He’s a good man. Good spread. I know your mama would like having you close to home.”

  Julie studied her father’s grim face. It was perhaps the longest speech she’d ever heard from him. And it was definitely the closest Nils Larson had ever come to saying he’d miss her.

  It touched her that he tried.

  “I’ll still see you and her at church, Dad, and the Choteau socials. First rodeo coming to Great Falls is but a handful of weeks off. Besides, I’m just sixty miles off.” Not New York or some other impossibly faraway place. “Have to come back and get Clarence at some point.”

  “You thinking of taking up racing again?”

  Julie shrugged. She’d liked barrel racing. It tested a horse and rider’s cooperation like no other rodeo event. The men’s event of bronc riding and tie-down roping was as much about raw nerve and real guts as anything else. Women’s barrel racing was about pure horsemanship.

  “You were good, Julie. I was sorry to see you quit after that third you took up in Calgary.”

  “The pro riders, Dad. The ones who don’t have to work for a living. Can’t go up against them.”

  “S’pose so,” he shrugged, but it was more like he was sorry she’d quit. “Well, you take care, Julie. You need anything, give a call.”

  “You too, Dad.”

  He wrapped his arms around her for a moment and patted her on the back.

  She breathed him in deep so that she could keep that memory close. As close as those memories she’d kept of Nathan. The problem was that after two long weeks and starting a third, those memories were already starting to fade.

  Julie was losing him and couldn’t bear it.

  Her Dad let her go.

  They exchanged nods, then she climbed in her truck and headed out. He opened the gate, where Lucy stood waiting to get back in.

  He shooed the cow into the yard, then closed the gate behind her after she pulled out.

  He didn’t wave.

  Julie was less than a dozen miles of dirt from Vern’s ranch when a helicopter came in low and fast from behind her.

  It swooped by so close above her truck that she ducked even though she was inside the cab.

  Then it soared upward until its nose was almost straight at the sky. The tail kicked around, and it dove to land not a hundred yards directly ahead of her.

  Julie slammed on the brakes to avoid ramming it before she recognized the crease in the nose. The passenger’s foot window had been replaced, but the moose’s dent in the nose definitely marked it as the Henderson’s helicopter. Which now completely blocked the dirt one-lane.

  She knew that Mac couldn’t fly anything like that.

  There was only one person aboard—though she didn’t know why she’d expected anything else. Emily or…

  Mark Henderson climbed out before the rotors had fully stopped. He stalked up to her truck window and rapped his knuckles on the glass.

  The window crank had fallen off while crossing all of the rough roads and gone somewhere under the seat, so she opened the door wide enough to be heard.

  “Go away, Mark.”

  “Not a chance. Turn this truck around.”

  “Not a chance.”

  He looked up at the sky and growled. Then he yanked the door open so abruptly that her hold on the inside handle almost tumbled her to the ground. Once she had her balance back, she reached back into her tools and grabbed the first thing that came to hand.

  A crowbar. God was definitely laughing her bu
tt off over this scenario.

  “Out of my way, Mark. I mean it,” she brandished it high, just the way Nathan had waved it at Lucy that first evening she’d met him.

  He sighed, then made a sudden move to grab it. But she’d out-maneuvered enough cows and fought off enough rutting cowhands to not be such easy bait.

  She dodged clear, but not before she whapped his butt a good one with the side of the bar.

  “I have had enough of this shit!” Mark shouted down the long stretch of empty road. Then he spun too quickly for her to follow.

  He swept her legs out from under her so fast that she had no way to recover. She landed hard, flat on her back. When she managed to open her eyes, she lay in a cloud of dust and Mark was tossing her crowbar back into the toolbox in the truck bed.

  Just for fair play, she spun around, hooked his ankles with hers, and sent him toppling as well.

  “What the—” Mark snarled from the dirt.

  “Three older brothers,” she sat up and rested her elbows on her knees. “You?”

  “A whole line of Army hand-to-hand combat instructors that I’m going to have a hard word or two with next time I see them.” He sat up opposite her and began dusting at his arms and legs. Even his sunglasses had a patina of dust on them.

  “I can’t go back, Mark. I just can’t face it. Your dad, with the best of intent, was going to offer me Aspen. I can’t go there. I can’t stay there, can’t even look at it. There were too many good things in that cabin.”

  “Yeah, a certain hospital bed comes to mind,” Mark smiled to himself.

  “A hospital bed. What was the other one?”

  “The other what?”

  “Emily said there were two nights that changed her life. Mine were a Great Falls hotel room and the Aspen cabin.”

  “She said that?” his smile looked awfully pleased. “Back of a Black Hawk helicopter would be the other.”

  “Should have guessed that one.” Julie shook her head. “But you two got the end of your story. How do I go back when the rest of my story isn’t there? I want that job. I want it so much. I love your ranch. And the people. The horses. It’s all so perfect and it’s all so ruined,” her throat cracked hard but she couldn’t stop it.