Big Sky Ever After: a Montana Romance Duet

by M. L. Buchman

  “I didn’t peer in the windows, exactly. Or listen at the keyhole much.”

  Patrick tidied up the cards, cut the deck, and shuffled. “Of course you didn’t. Word of advice, though: Stop wasting time, Lucas. You and Willy want to tie the knot, then be about it. His horse steps in a gopher hole, a drunk driver gets in the wrong lane, or a bar fight goes south, and you’ll be out of time. If he makes you happy, and you make him happy, then go for it. Lena could use some cousins, and we know Shamus will take forever to lasso Martina.”

  Judith’s horse had stumbled, she’d gone flying, and broken her neck. She died before Patrick had been able to get her helmet unbuckled, much less dial 911. Full of life one minute, gone the next.

  Luke opened the fridge and stood with his back to Patrick. “Cousins.”

  “Never had any, but Cromarty speaks highly of the concept. Something to think about.”

  The door swung open. “Daddy, I’m ready!”

  Luke remained at the fridge, his shoulders suspiciously tight.

  “C’mon, princess,” Patrick said. “I’ll show you how to draw a tree that can do magic.”

  They were at the door when Luke called out, “You’d be my best man?”

  “Hell, yeah, and I’m sure Shamus would stand up for Willy, if Bridget didn’t wrestle him for the privilege.”

  “Swear jar, Daddy.”

  Patrick took Lena’s hand. “It’s time we got rid of that damned jar, because you’re a big girl, and from time to time, in the right company, under appropriate circumstances, your speech might get a little colorful. You’re a Logan, after all.”

  Lena dragged him to the door, her brows knit. She was working up to something, something her mother might have been able to anticipate but Patrick had to wait for, one hand on the doorknob.

  “What?” he asked.

  “Damned right, Daddy. No more swear jar. That’s for little kids.”

  Bridget helped Magnus dive into his clothes, while her mind spun frantically over what she knew about articles of incorporation, bylaws, and directors’ meetings.

  Precious damned little.

  “Elias,” Magnus muttered, “answer the damned—Elias. You haven’t heard from Shamus Logan?”

  “Not a text, not a phone call, not a damned fart in the wind.” Elias spoke softly, nearly growling.

  “Language, dear,” murmured an elderly female voice.

  “Give Aunt Hildy my love,” Magnus said, “and explain to her that Fergus’s head has been turned by a pretty traitor.”

  “Explain that to her yourself,” Elias said. “You have ten minutes, Magnus, and Celeste is carrying a briefcase that I’m sure is just full of plans to take over your company.”

  Bridget wrapped herself in a blanket and sat close enough to overhear this exchange. “Give me the phone, Magnus.”

  He passed over the phone without so much as blinking.

  “Elias, I’m Bridget MacDeaver, outside counsel for Magnus Cromarty. Your first action as chairman of the meeting is to exclude Celeste because her proxy is invalid.”

  “Magnus, are you there?” Elias asked.

  “Right here, and you are to trust Bridget with your life, also with my distillery.”

  Bridget wished he hadn’t said that, even though his words also warmed her from the inside as good whisky did.

  “Elias, listen fast,” Bridget said. “According to the boilerplate bylaws of any organization worth its salt, a proxy must be free of conflicts of interest, personal or professional, and free from the unresolved appearance of conflict. Celeste owns stock in a competing venture and is married to its primary shareholder. Boot her from the meeting.”

  Magnus kissed her, then whispered in her ear, “Does Shamus have a conflict?”

  Well... Bridget held the phone away. “We’re not rivals, Magnus. I will never, ever sell to you or to anybody else. I’ll close my business before I’ll do that.”

  He drew back as if she’d slapped him. “Then we’re not rivals, and Shamus has no conflict.”

  “Hello?” Elias barked. “Is there intelligent life in Montana? You want me to just announce that Celeste isn’t welcome and get on with business as usual?”

  “No,” Bridget said. “If Shamus isn’t there, you don’t have a quorum. You thank everybody for their time, apologize for their trouble, and reschedule the meeting for a time and date to be announced.”

  “If you think I’ll survive telling half a dozen elderly, cantankerous, Scottish curmudg—I’m getting a text. Hold on.”

  “Are you sure about the conflict-of-interest business?” Magnus asked.

  “Sure enough that Elias should be able to bluff it. The potential for the exact scenario Celeste has set up is too great—a disgruntled director, whose loyalty ought to be to the company, summons the devil in a weak moment, and all hell breaks loose.”

  “Is that Magnus on the phone?” the same elderly lady asked. “Fine thing, when a young man has time to frolic but not to attend his own board meetings. I could be home quilting instead of—who is this?”

  Shamus? Magnus mouthed.

  “He’s here,” Elias said. “Looks like he slept in the gutter, or possibly at Heathrow, but if Logan wears a cowboy hat and the boots to match, he’s here. I’ve a meeting to run and a rat to evict from your warehouse.”

  The call ended, and Magnus remained sitting beside Bridget, staring at a screen that used the blue and white Scottish saltire flag for wallpaper.

  “That was too close for comfort,” Magnus said. “Much too close. Celeste will follow up with emails or chatty little notes to every one of my directors, a copy of her takeover plan attached.”

  Bridget rose and reached from beneath her blanket to pluck her shirt from the pile on the desk. “At least in the United States, she’d be guilty of tortious interference with an advantageous business relationship.”

  “English, please, love.”

  Without dropping the blanket, Bridget sat back down and pulled her shirt over her head. “Where are my…?”

  Magnus swiped her panties from the arm of the couch, ran his fingers over them, and passed them to her.

  “When somebody has a business arrangement with you,” Bridget said, “such as a vendor agreement, contracted work for hire, or a fiduciary relationship, the whole marketplace benefits from the expectation that those situations will honk along on the terms negotiated. When the agreement has run its course, everybody is free to go on their merry way, forming other associations.”

  “Like a handfasting.”

  “Whatever that is. In any case, if you have such an agreement—and your directors absolutely had to sign agreements to serve on your board—then somebody who acts with intent to harm you by wrecking your done deal is liable for damages, at least here in the States. It’s a tort, meaning you have to prove damages, but I have to wonder about Celeste’s business acumen if she’d pull a stunt like this.”

  Magnus rose from the couch and passed Bridget her jeans—she was still wearing her wool socks.

  He tucked in his shirt tails and fastened the snap on his own jeans. “You’re suggesting Celeste is desperate?”

  “Desperate or not too keen on business in a businesslike manner. You would have sent meeting minutes to your lawyers, they would have taken a look at what Celeste got up to and told you after the fact that all of her motions, seconds, and submitted documents were invalid due to her lack of proper proxy status.”

  Even rumpled—especially rumpled—Magnus was an imposing figure. He propped his butt against the desk and did up his Celtic knot belt buckle.

  “My Uncle Zebedee has a bit of advice in situations like this: When your opponent is acting like a fool, apparently playing straight into your hands, assume you’re the fool and your opponent is brilliant. Rethink the situation from every possible angle before you make a move.”

  Putting jeans on under a blanket was an awkward undertaking, but Bridget wanted the layer of modesty.

  “Is Celeste bri
lliant?”

  “I don’t think so. Shrewd, driven, manipulative, but not brilliant.”

  “She dumped you. In my book, that takes brilliant off the table.”

  Magnus’s phone chimed again. He stared at the screen, then passed it to Bridget.

  Celeste evicted, round one to Cromartys. Hilda and Heidi promising to have a talk with Fergus he’ll not soon forget. You owe me forever.

  “Will there be a round two?” Bridget asked. “If there is, you should be in Scotland when that round goes down.”

  “Trying to get rid of me, Mary Bridget?”

  Well, yes, in a sense. “Let’s get through this week, then ask me again.”

  Magnus got his boots on, Bridget did likewise, and then it was time to leave. Before Bridget had fired up the truck and turned for the ranch, more freezing rain was falling.

  Magnus let Bridget focus on the messy roads during the short drive to the ranch house, while he thought through next steps. He wasn’t sure there was a next step for him and Bridget, at least not until Nathan Sturbridge had been dealt with.

  Magnus was also waiting for Bridget to come to a decision regarding the bicentennial whisky, and the passivity of waiting bothered him sorely.

  “Will you stay with me tonight?” he asked as Bridget backed the truck into a slot between two other vehicles in the ranch house driveway.

  She regarded him as if, rather than his whisky, he was the product that puzzled her. “I want to.”

  Then what in the hell is stopping you? Because something was, something other than Nathan Sturbridge.

  “Is there a but, Bridget?”

  “No.” She climbed out of the truck and walked beside Magnus to the guesthouse. “Do you still have a return flight for next week?”

  “I do. I can change it.” Ask me to. Smile, hint that you’d like to be in the seat beside me when I fly home.

  “Let’s see what happens tomorrow. I still don’t like this plan.”

  Martina didn’t like it, and she was law enforcement. Shamus, Luke, and Patrick loathed Magnus’s suggestion, but saw its usefulness. More significantly, they didn’t have anything to suggest in its place.

  “You still think I’m after your distillery.” Magnus spoke aloud, though he shouldn’t have. He pushed open the guesthouse door and waited for Bridget to precede him through.

  She remained on the porch, the wind whipping strands of her hair across her cheek. “If you think you can beg, borrow, steal, or otherwise convey to yourself any interest in my whisky operation, then you’ll be sleeping alone tonight, Magnus. Don’t lie to me about this.”

  A good dozen windows on the ranch house faced the guesthouse porch, and a brother or two might be watching from any one of them. Magnus gestured for Bridget to lead him inside, and she complied.

  He was hungry, tired, thirsty—now that some helpful soul had made him more aware of his own bodily needs—and he wanted to have a long talk with Elias about the day’s board meeting. More than that, he wanted Bridget to smile at him as she had the first night they’d met.

  He closed and locked the door. “Listen to me, Mary Bridget MacDeaver: You hold the fate of my distillery in your hands. You hold the security of much of my family, by blood and otherwise, in those same hands. If you think I’ll jeopardize my legacy and livelihood to take over your operation, then you don’t know me at all.”

  Magnus was ready for a rousing argument, provided that argument settled things between him and Bridget.

  She pulled off her gloves and stuffed them into her jacket pockets. “My own brothers brought you here with the intent to sell you my business. I’m still not over that.”

  “And Fergus gave his proxy to my enemy,” Magnus said. “What has that to do with us?”

  She draped her quilted jacket over the back of a chair at the kitchen table. “Maybe nothing, but I’m snakebit, Magnus. My law partner set me up for felony charges, my brothers tried to wheedle my business from me. Two weeks ago, I’d never laid eyes on you. Now one of those same brothers is in Scotland doing your bidding.”

  “Shamus is having a wee holiday, and Elias is probably getting him drunk right this minute, if my aunts Hilda and Heidi haven’t already. An hour ago, you were making passionate love with me.”

  That earned him a haunted smile, and frustrated desire gave way to a sinking pessimism.

  “My office will never be the same,” Bridget said. “What should we do about dinner?”

  The change of subject was a proper kick to Magnus’s balls—or to his heart. “I’m hungry for protein, and I want to hear your thoughts on my ruined whisky.”

  They threw together a salad, Bridget fired up the grill on the porch, and a half-dozen beef shish kebabs later, Magnus was feeling less pessimistic.

  “You asked about your whisky,” Bridget said when the dishes had been done. “I’ve been pondering possibilities, and I’d like another taste.”

  “You’re daft if you think it will improve with further acquaintance. I have nightmares about that whisky.”

  “There’s a way to fix it, Magnus. I just can’t see it yet.” She went off on a flight about phenols and esters, tannins and fat-soluble odor compounds. Magnus, as her professional peer, should have been able to follow the discussion, but she left him in the dust.

  “You’re dead on your feet,” Bridget said, snuggling closer. At some point between a diatribe on the effect of temperature on absorption rates and speculation regarding vertical versus horizontal barrel storage, she’d draped herself along Magnus’s side.

  He tucked the quilt over her shoulders. “I thought I was passionate about whisky, but I’m merely conscientious and enthusiastic compared to you. I should have heard from Elias by now.”

  “Not if he’s trying to get Shamus drunk. That could take all night. Did I overhear that one of your aunts is a quilter?”

  “Both Heidi and Hilda are quilters. They go to quilt shows, quilt festivals, quilt everythings. You’d get on well with them.”

  If you ever came to Scotland to meet them.

  “Ask your aunts why Celeste would be desperate enough to crash your board meeting. Quilters talk almost as much as they sew. If there’s anything to be learned on the extended family grapevine, those two will know it.”

  “Celeste hasn’t a domestic, much less a quilted, bone in her…”

  “What?”

  “Celeste has an aunt who knits. She’s chummy with Hilda.”

  “Bush telegraph, works every time. Call your cousin, and let me think about your whisky.”

  Bridget scooted down, laying her head in Magnus’s lap. His phone sat two feet way, but he made no move to reach for it. The hour in Scotland would be fiendishly late, while the moments with Bridget were too precious to waste.

  Magnus stroked her hair while she dozed and mulled over his whisky. His nightmares were entirely survivable—a bad batch of whisky was a serious, expensive problem and a mortifying embarrassment, but not a tragedy.

  Nathan Sturbridge had threatened Bridget with jail, disbarment, disgrace, and penury. For that, Magnus was determined that Sturbridge suffer a lifetime of nightmares, at least.

  Chapter 13

  The Bar None was a friendly place to do business. Nate had met clients over a drink, joined other lawyers for the occasional meal, and in years past, done his share of boot-scootin’ on the dance floor and in the parking lot. This was his turf, and if Bridget wanted to conduct their negotiation here, that was fine with him. Plenty of witnesses to keep her from getting all het up, and plenty of good rye whisky too.

  Bridget was the punctual sort, so Nate was early, the better to wet his whistle. Martina was trying to ignore him from a corner table—no Shamus Logan to dance attendance on a weeknight—and Preacher was at his usual post behind the bar.

  God was in his heaven, and all was about to come right in Nate’s world.

  At two minutes past the hour, Magnus Cromarty strutted into the Bar None, a kilt swinging around his knees.

>   “You know how to make an entrance, Cromarty,” Nate said, standing to offer his hand. “Bet it gets a little breezy in that getup come December. Don’t suppose you caught a ride to town with Bridget?”

  Cromarty wasn’t bad-looking, though the guy had a twitchy quality Nate associated with prosecuting attorneys.

  “Bridget won’t be coming. Seems her brothers know how to get into her email, and she thinks you had to reschedule this meeting again.”

  Cromarty looked like he wanted to smile, and Nate did smile. The Logan brothers had no interest in brewing whisky, that was common knowledge. Plain as day, Cromarty had come to talk a little business.

  “Have a seat, Mr. Cromarty. Drinks are on me.”

  “Generous of you.”

  Nate’s guest ordered twelve-year-old Logan Bar single malt, which wasn’t cheap. Preacher left the bottle on the table with the chips and salsa, the bastard, but Cromarty didn’t so much as sip his drink.

  “I’m here to discuss a commercial transaction with you, Mr. Sturbridge.” Cromarty took out a fancy phone and set it on the table. “I typically record business negotiations, because taking notes calls attention to the discussion when we both benefit from discretion, and relying strictly on recall introduces avoidable errors.”

  Somebody sure was anxious to cut a deal. Nate considered the agenda and considered his rye—the third of the evening, negotiations being a thirsty undertaking.

  “If you’re that forgetful, record any damned thing you please. We’ll be discussing hypotheticals for the most part, won’t we?”

  Nate would be. Lawyers excelled at discussing hypotheticals, though a cut of the revenue from a pipeline easement would be wonderfully real.

  Cromarty smiled at his drink. “I’m not a lawyer, Mr. Sturbridge, I’m a businessman. I prefer to discuss possibilities and facts. Bridget claims you approached her about a running a pipeline across her land.”

  Very likely, Cromarty had charmed that admission from Bridget between the sheets. “And if I did?”

  Cromarty held his drink up to the light. “I am in Montana as a result of extensive correspondence with the Logan brothers, who have no expertise with making whisky, poor lads. My family has been making whisky for more than two hundred years, and I am interested in the Logan Bar distillery. Very interested.”