Big Sky, Loyal Heart

by M. L. Buchman

  “And Emily. She’s ready to go all mama bear for you, which, I can tell you from experience, isn’t like her. She takes care of the women around her, but she clearly thinks you’re something special.”

  Through the next long silence, he could feel her shoulders finally let go and she slumped against him. He tightened his arms so that she didn’t just slide bonelessly to the ground.

  “Just so happens I think you’re pretty special, too.”

  “More like you just want to romp.”

  “With you? Don’t need to ask this boy twice. But that doesn’t begin to cover what I think is special about you.”

  Lauren considered asking Patrick if he’d lost his mind.

  “Sure. Because I’m so attractive at the moment.” She was snotty, shaky, and thankful for the dark because she was probably red-eyed as well if the burning sensation was anything to go by.

  “You don’t know the half of it,” Patrick kissed her atop the head.

  “You’re nuts!” She was a through-and-through mess on a grand scale.

  “You don’t know the half of that either,” he agreed with an easy laugh. A laugh that made her smile against his shoulder in the dark despite how awful she was feeling.

  How was she supposed to face the others after her outburst? How was she supposed to face Patrick? She didn’t even dare unbury her face from his shoulder for fear of what he’d think of her the moment that she surfaced.

  Maybe she’d simply stay here. Not in Montana, of course, but just hiding against a strong chest, wrapped in a man’s arms.

  He leaned back against the rough tree bark and let her simply lie against him. It was a very nice place to be.

  “Violet is Level Six,” he whispered.

  “Uh-huh… Wait. What?” She raised her head just enough to see the hint of his face where the moonlight hunted its way down through the trees. A bat fluttered by. There was a distant laugh slipping through the woods from the campfire. Mack’s.

  “It’s on a friend’s refrigerator back in Manhattan. We were…never mind. She had a big sign taped to her fridge that said ‘Violet is Level Six—Start Where You Stand.’ Never really meant anything to me, but I get it now.”

  “Well, I don’t.” He ran his hands slowly up and down her back and she could feel herself being soothed by the simple action. Feeling better with each moment. She wasn’t some stupid dog who wanted to be petted, but neither did she want him to stop.

  “Violet is Level Six. It’s completely meaningless. She kept saying that and I kept trying to read some meaning into it anyway. But now I can see that she meant it even if I didn’t understand it. The whole point is that Level One through Five are meaningless. ‘Start where you stand.’ You can’t change the past, so the past doesn’t count. It’s actually meaningless. Only how you react, only what you do about the future matters.”

  “And your future is so clear? Because mine sure as heck isn’t.”

  “Kind of,” Patrick leaned his cheek against her hair and rubbed it there the way a dog would. Except Patrick Gallagher was a deliciously strong cowboy, not some four-legged fur beast. “Clearer than it’s ever been before.”

  “What is it?”

  “I don’t have much of it yet.”

  She could feel his sudden discomfort, but couldn’t find the energy to pull away from his warmth and surety. “Give me what you have.”

  He rubbed his cheek against her hair a few more times. If he kept that up much longer, she was going to forget her question and have her first action in far too long right here in the forest up against a tree.

  “I—”

  She could hear and feel Patrick’s frustrated growl. She’d wager that it wasn’t a sound he often made. She breathed him in. Horse and pine forest, yes. Honest sweat, too. But also a depth. A realness so wide and vast that it filled every one of her senses with him.

  “I love this land. I’m just figuring this out today, though lord alone knows why. Slow learner, I guess. I’ve been out here most of four years and I can’t imagine ever going back to the concrete jungle of failed dreams.” His hands went still, one on her waist and the other wrapped around her shoulders. “Another lame movie analogy, but there it is.”

  An unaccountable sadness came over her. Patrick was absolutely right. He belonged here. It was easy to see in every gesture, every motion, even the way he walked and rode. And she belonged…nowhere. Would New York fit her any better than Fort Bragg or Afghanistan? She suspected not and that thought scared her to death…

  “But there’s more… And I didn’t just say that.”

  “You’re on a roll, cowboy. Don’t stop now.” Because if he did stop, she might have to start thinking and she knew she wouldn’t like the answers she’d be coming up with.

  “Kiss me.”

  “I knew that was your secret agenda all along,” she teased. “But don’t think this gets you out of answering.”

  He leaned down and brushed his lips across hers.

  Like last night’s kiss, there was an unaccountable heat that rushed into her.

  Of their own accord, her hands dug into his hair, his neck, his chest.

  When her breath wrenched out of her, he breathed it in, consuming all that she was.

  His hands—those big, wonderfully strong cowboy hands that had carried her so easily—were holding her so tightly she almost felt as if she belonged.

  As hot as he started, he suddenly went cold.

  “We can’t,” he gasped out. “It would satisfy our bodies, but tomorrow… For the first time, maybe ever, I’m more interested in tomorrow with a woman.”

  “Spoilsport.” He was freaking her out a bit, because she never thought about tomorrow with a man. But she could feel it too.

  He slowly eased her back.

  With great reluctance, she let him.

  Before she could completely step away, he turned her lightly around and pulled her once more against his chest.

  Lauren lay in the cradle of his arms and watched the night as her body buzzed with a need she’d never felt for any man. Stars shone brilliantly through small gaps in the trees. Some night bird called happily from high in a nearby tree: chirr-woop. An answering chirr-woop and fast wingbeats answered back.

  She sighed and relaxed back against Patrick. The heat wasn’t going away. The need wasn’t dissipating simply because they’d stopped. But lying in his arms was a very nice place to be as well.

  Patrick’s hands ached for her. To touch, hold, caress. He’d watched all the good steamy scenes as often as any hormonal student of film. The porns had never grabbed him, but whether it was Kelly McGillis in Top Gun or Malin Akerman in Watchmen, he’d certainly enjoyed watching the lovemaking scenes.

  Now that he was in that true fantasy moment, a beautiful woman leaning back against him in the deep Montana wilderness, he again understood the problem.

  He’d spent his life seeking the movie moment. The instant when the unreachable actress tumbled helplessly into his arms.

  Except Lauren wasn’t some fantasy or, worse, a disappointing fellow classmate wrapped up in her own angst. She was a beautiful, impossibly real woman who had been on the verge of giving everything to him.

  Patrick leaned down to bury his face at her neck as he rested his hands on her soldier-flat stomach. A woman with six-pack abs. Strong, amazing. Imagining her as a soldier in battle was an awesome image—the woman never lost in the soldier.

  “I’ll follow you anywhere, Lauren.” For he had never held a woman like her.

  “Uh-huh. Wait. What?”

  Lauren tried to pull away, even though her body was not hers to command at the moment. She could lean back in Patrick’s arms all night and not get enough of it.

  He had slipped past her defenses and found places that she’d lost. Places she hadn’t even known about. What he made her feel was incredible.

  To be cradled. Held. To be made more important than those around her was not something she’d ever experienced in her life.
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br />   “No.” She was protesting something, but couldn’t remember what. How often had she wished for one good purge. Some thought, some act, some magic elixir (that always turned out to be just one too many shots of bourbon) that would let her mind rest for even a moment. That would let her feel clean of her past. She almost found that in the simplest touch with Patrick.

  “No.” She still didn’t remember.

  “No what?” Patrick’s voice whispered against her ear.

  “I don’t remember. How am I supposed to remember with how you make me feel.”

  “You’re not exactly hurting my ego.”

  “I’ll take care of that later,” when she could do more than remain leaning back against him.

  “It’s a nice ego and I’ve become rather attached to it. Don’t stomp on it too hard.”

  Teasing. He was actually teasing her. Without that hard edge of a fellow soldier asking the underlying questions: How much can you take? Are you up to real standards? You are a woman after all. Not really Spec Ops.

  But Patrick was teasing her about…how strong she was. Which was totally backward. But it wasn’t. That, too, felt good. As good as the happy buzz of her body.

  “You said something.” Her mind was clearing.

  “I did? I say a lot of things.” He wrapped his hands once more about her waist and shoulders, keeping them close rather than done and ready to leave.

  “About belonging here.”

  “Maybe,” Patrick conceded and she could hear his smile in the darkness.

  “And…” she almost had it. “And… No!” This time she exploded from his arms and turned to face him in the night. The sliver of moon that had hinted at his features earlier was gone. He was now a dim outline against the dark bole of the tree.

  “You said you would follow me anywhere.”

  “I did.”

  “Why don’t you sound the least bit perturbed by that?”

  “Because it’s true.”

  “Patrick…” Lauren could feel her teeth grinding together.

  “Would you prefer I lied?”

  “About that? Yes.”

  “Tough!” He laughed. Now he was laughing.

  “We barely know each other.”

  “Okay. What’s your favorite color?”

  “What?”

  “Should I ask if you were into dolls or stuffed animals instead? I was a big fan of Hot Wheels myself. You know. The little cars.”

  “Yes. I know the little cars.” And there wasn’t a chance she was admitting to her Barbie- and Ken-filled past. Soldiers weren’t like that. “What are you doing?”

  “Look, Lauren,” he reached out and somehow found her hands in the darkness. “I don’t know how this works. I just know that my life became a thousand times better the moment you stepped off that chopper.”

  “It’s a helicopter or a helo—sometimes an airplane even though it’s rotor based. A chopper is a motorcycle. Don’t…never mind. Just…it’s not a chopper.” Why she was trying to explain herself, now, she had no idea. “Besides, you fell into a mud puddle. That was supposed to impress me?”

  “Yep! I don’t do that for just any gal.”

  Lauren wished she could see him. Could think of something to say. Could understand…but she couldn’t.

  Violet wasn’t Level Six, it was just a stupid color.

  She hadn’t spoken a word as they made their way back to camp. In silent gestures, once they reached the outer edges of the firelight, Patrick tried to help her get put back together: tucked-in shirt, finger-combed hair, and such. She still looked deliciously rumpled but he was too dazzled to be able to see how to fix it.

  So many things about Lauren were impossible, but that was fine with him. He was a Long Island film student turned Montana cowboy. And he had just made love to a topflight soldier, even if she hadn’t exactly made love back. Anything was possible.

  Gibson afforded Lauren just a single glance, then turned his baleful gaze on him. Patrick wondered if Gibson had been trained by Cyclops from the X-men and could melt the flesh off Patrick’s bones with just his stare. It sure felt as if he could.

  Mack offered him a cheeky wink, so obvious that no one could miss it.

  Emily simply scooted sideways on the log she’d been sitting on and Lauren dropped down to sit beside her. Nothing more. No friendly arm around the shoulder. No murmur of question or commiseration. Just a place to sit and…

  Darn it!

  A place to sit where Patrick had no reasonable way to sit beside her. Lauren now sat between Emily and the boulder. Emily’s move had closed the gap between her and Mack where Patrick had initially sat. That left only the space between Mack and Michael Gibson.

  He handed Mack back his rifle—half wondering if he should keep it in case he needed to ward off the colonel. Would a .30-06 be big enough? Sure, it could bring down an elk, but at the moment Gibson looked to be made of much tougher stuff than he had at first.

  “Crazy rifle, old man,” he spoke to Mack to have something to say. “I’d never get off a second shot.”

  Mack hefted it. “We’re gonna have to fix that, Pat, my boy. Can’t have you go through life shooting the wrong way round.”

  “I don’t. I shoot right-handed like most civilized folks.” Mack’s Winchester Model 70 was set up with a very rare left-handed bolt. If shot from the right shoulder, it would be very awkward to work the bolt handle mounted on the wrong side. And it would have a tendency to eject hot metal directly into the shooter’s face.

  “May I?” Lauren spoke for the first time since deep in the woods.

  Mack handed it over.

  She rested it on her left shoulder. By how smoothly her hands moved about the stock and barrel, it was clear that she, too, was a southpaw. Well, now he knew something else new about her. He’d count that as a good day.

  Chapter 7

  The next morning, Lauren had been a long time getting over the discomfort of leading the track. She knew nothing about tracking wildlife. Hunting explosives or a human was different. The habits of a Taliban gunner or an al-Qaeda bomb maker were second nature.

  “Don’t look at me,” Emily had protested. “I grew up in D.C. and made my living in a helicopter.”

  Michael had settled into some speechless state that was only a little more silent than his normal state of being. Since the man was completely unreadable at any time, it wasn’t that much of a change.

  “My knees are getting too old for skulking along, girl. You show us how it’s done.” And Mack had settled back into following and doing some harmless flirting with Emily.

  Patrick came to her side cautiously, unsure of his welcome. Which wasn’t fair after his incredible kindness in the woods. She’d signaled him forward, but while he gave her pointers, he, too, proved unwilling to take the lead.

  They passed by an elk cow and calf. It was clearly a late-season birth. The calf would need a mother’s guidance to survive the winter. She let them continue on their way.

  By the end of the long morning, she was second-guessing that decision. They’d left the horses back at the camp and covered several miles of very rough terrain on foot. She’d turned their track an hour ago to make a big loop that would eventually lead back to the camp.

  “See the break in the land,” suddenly Mack was beside her, pointing at a feature close to a mile away. “That roll there to the west? They’ll like the combination of sun, water, and refuge. Smell that bit of sulfur? Hot springs. Elk are partial to hot springs. Wind is from the north so you’ll want to circle us around wide.”

  Around wide. Lauren looked up at the fierce peaks of the Flathead Wilderness. It was hard, steep country. Trees clung tenaciously, seeking a hold that could survive rockfalls and winter avalanches. To swing wide would take them over a sharp saddle that rose at least a thousand feet above their present position.

  After a break for a quick lunch, it took her two hours to lead them there. Finding a good route over the terrain was hard enough. Then there was
a wind shift, which would have sent them in a new direction except for the pile of still-warm scat she found nearly as big as her boot.

  The ground was hard here, so it took her a few minutes to find a clean paw print.

  “Black bear,” Mack told her. “Big one, but he’s a black. See how the toes make an arc around the pad? A grizzly’s toes go straight across in a line.”

  “Well, I don’t want to be chasing along behind a bear: grizzly, brown, or black.”

  “Me either,” Mack agreed. After a little debate—it was hard to read the terrain from the thick forest—she struck off in a new direction to avoid bears but stay downwind of the hot springs.

  Once they arrived, it showed Mack’s guess hadn’t been a guess at all. Instead, it was just as a skilled tracker would have expected.

  They settled around the base of a group of larch trees close above a small pool, steaming slightly in the cool air. From their hideaway beneath its drooping branches, they had a clear view of the surrounding mountain slopes. Fall was already here in the Rockies—the season of change. Quaking aspen were disco balls of golden leaves shining in the sun. Maples were hinting toward the darker reds. Even the larch were a startling yellow among the dark green of Douglas fir.

  Close below them, wisps of steam from the hot springs rose into the cool, early afternoon air. It was odd, after all of the years she’d spent tracking and scouting, to learn something new. She felt a spark of joy she’d always taken from the mental challenge: spotting and understanding all of the signs. She’d never have spotted this place from their prior position, yet Mack had and she could now see how and why.

  Maybe she and Patrick could come back here alone someday and make slow love in the warm pools. She’d slept last night like the dead despite the rough ground. Her emotions even more spent than her body. But she had very nice memories of just quite how her body had felt.

  The five of them sat in companionable silence, occasionally whispering back and forth, but mostly just enjoying the passing day. By the map in her head, they were actually less than a mile from the camp where they’d left their horses. A much easier path, once they didn’t have to worry about remaining downwind from their quarry.