Big Sky, Loyal Heart

by M. L. Buchman

  She finally buried her face against the base of Patrick’s neck and breathed him in.

  “I have to go,” but still he didn’t release her. Then one last squeeze and he rushed inside.

  Lauren ran her hand over his shirt and jacket that she still wore. In his suddenly frantic state, she wondered how long it would take him to notice where they were. She considered not telling him, waiting for him to discover their location and then make him take them off her. She knew it was a temptation that would lead them back to bed rather than toward the wedding, so she headed inside to strip them off and shower.

  She didn’t want to. She’d lose the smell of him, as rich and real as the newborn air filling the Montana ranch. But she knew that she’d never be able to wash the feel of Patrick Gallagher out of her—not how he felt and not how he made her feel.

  And she did need to get the mud off her behind.

  “Lamebrain! Where have you been?”

  “Heaven,” was the only reply Patrick could come up with.

  “Yeah, right.” Nathan was slicing strips off an enormous dark-red bear roast and feeding it into a meat grinder. Most of it would have been dressed, packaged, and frozen by now. But his brother was definitely in chef mode.

  “What, there wasn’t already enough food?” Nathan had been prepping the wedding feast for days even though there would only be a few dozen people on hand.

  “Sure. But this is for breakfast tomorrow. I have a great Italian bear sausage recipe that I’ve been meaning to try and we ran out of pork and beef sausage the other day.” He finished with the bear meat and began dumping black peppercorns and big seeds of coriander into the bowl of a KitchenAid mixer.

  Patrick sighed. His brother might think he had his act together, but he was completely wrong. Patrick fished out a spice grinder and poured the spices out of the wide mixing bowl before his brother could add anything else.

  Nathan barely noticed the swap out. Just started the grinder with an ear-shattering buzz. He held it on until Patrick reached over and pulled his brother’s hand off the switch. Past ground and right over into powdered.

  “You know you’re supposed to be getting ready for your wedding this afternoon?”

  “Don’t remind me,” Nathan tipped the grinder to dump the spices into the mixer bowl, then accidentally dropped in the grinder as well. Thankfully, neither machine was running. Patrick plucked it out of the mixer bowl and set it safely out of reach.

  “What’s next?” He was clearly going to have to lean into his brother’s mania and make sure that he didn’t accidentally poison the guests on his wedding day.

  “Then we live happily ever after, right?” Nathan grabbed a bottle of sesame oil and Patrick plucked it from his hands before he could do something disgusting with it.

  “Sure. You and the bear sausage.”

  When Nathan reached for a jar of pickled red peppers, Patrick grabbed him by the scruff of the neck. There were advantages to being several inches taller than his big brother. Patrick dragged him, protesting, over to the table. He was still clutching a jar of mayonnaise that Patrick hadn’t seen him get ahold of.

  He shoved Nathan down into a chair.

  And he popped back up like a jack-in-the-box toy.

  Patrick shoved him down again, managed to wrestle away the jar of mayonnaise, and set it well out of reach on the table before sitting to face his brother.

  “You gotta chill, Nat.”

  “I know. I know,” he clenched his hands together.

  Stan came in the back door. “Has he melted all the way down yet?”

  “Pretty much.”

  Stan fetched a cup of coffee.

  “I could use one of those.”

  “Uh-huh,” Stan acknowledged from the stove. Then he strode over and sat across the table…with just his own mug.

  “Jerk.”

  “Hey, I’m not the one who abandoned his brother to shack up with some hot dame.”

  “I didn’t!” Well, he had, but he wouldn’t think of it that way. Suspecting that Stan would be more than happy to keep messing with him, Patrick turned his attention back to his brother. “Nathan, don’t you want to marry Julie?”

  “Should warn you, Nathan,” Stan sipped his coffee, which smelled so good. Too bad Patrick didn’t dare leave his brother alone long enough to get a cup. “We’ll both beat you to a pulp if you don’t say yes darned quick.”

  “Of course I do!” Nathan’s scattered attention was finally focused a bit by the heat of his protest.

  “Then what’s the issue? She’s awesome and gorgeous.”

  “And loves you,” Stan tossed in.

  “And loves you for reasons that pass understanding,” Patrick acknowledged. Is that how Lauren felt? Would she even say if she did? Wait, if she did, then how did he feel? “Whoa!”

  “See?” Nathan was eying him sharply. “That feeling right there. Now multiply that times like a hundred thousand and you’ve got how it feels to be about to be married.”

  “What feeling?” Patrick barely managed to stutter it out.

  Stan just shook his head. “Bro. It was clear on your face from the moment that dame stepped off the whirly bird.”

  “Huh?”

  Nathan rapped his knuckles on the top of Patrick’s head—hard enough to really hurt. He hadn’t done that since they were kids. Not and gotten away with it. “It’s called being in love, lamebrain.”

  “What is?” Something wasn’t registering. Something about this moment. The moment when the hero realizes that there is only one woman in the world for him. He already knew that. But there was something more. Something he was missing.

  “Give him a few moments, Nathan,” Stan rumbled.

  Nathan stood, picked up his jar of mayonnaise, and returned to his bear sausage, but there was nothing Patrick could do to stop him.

  “No way,” Patrick just couldn’t keep up with what was happening.

  Stan smirked.

  Patrick turned to Nathan, who was looking at him slightly sad-eyed.

  “What?”

  “Just remembering, Pat. In about a minute, you’re going to feel like a colossal idiot for not realizing sooner that you loved her so much. Then you’re going to rethink everything you’ve done since the moment you met her, absolutely sure that you bungled every single choice. Don’t worry, you’ll get over that soon.”

  “Are you?”

  “Sure. Now I’m in the second-guessing phase of why someone as incredible as Julie would ever marry someone like me. You know what marriage is, Pat?”

  He could only shake his head.

  “It’s making a blind bet. A gamble in which the stakes are life-sized but you have no way to know the odds. It’s a wager that you can find a way to keep the most amazing woman you’ve ever met happy…for as long as you both shall live.” Nathan whooshed out a breath and leaned back against the counter. “You think falling in love is scary, just wait until you’re facing the vows.”

  “But I’m not…”

  But he was. There was never going to be another woman like Lauren Foster. Complex, funny, soldier-tough and, at times, only for him, impossibly tender as well.

  “But…”

  “Here it comes,” Stan declared, set his mug down, and interlaced his fingers with his hooks as if he still had ten of them.

  But Patrick did know.

  And it was the best feeling of his life. Except…

  “There’s a problem,” and it stole his breath away.

  “There it is,” Stan practically crowed with delight.

  “And Bam! there it is,” Nathan agreed. “What if she doesn’t love you back? Scary scenario, isn’t it?”

  Scary didn’t begin to cover it. Lauren certainly had New York on her mind. They hadn’t talked about it in the future tense—because they hadn’t talked about anything that way these last couple days—but it was definitely on her mind. New York was impossibly far from Montana, a journey back that he didn’t want to make.

 
; “That’s what’s messing with me today,” Nathan looked at his hand, which held an apple corer for no apparent reason. “It doesn’t matter how stupid it is. I know how Julie feels about me. But I’m going to be terrified until the moment she says, ‘I do.’ Until then…” he sighed. He dumped his half-finished preparations into plastic containers and began shoving them into the refrigerator. “Until then, I’d better leave well enough alone.”

  The door to the dining room and the rest of the house swung open.

  “How long until the wedding?” Mack came into the room, offering one of his cheery smiles. “Fifty-five years with my Nancy. That’s what you two boys have to look forward to. Best thing I ever did, getting that girl to take me on.”

  Patrick would be happier if Mack hadn’t used the plural.

  “Where’s the bride?” Seeing Patrick head into the kitchen, Lauren had followed Emily’s boot prints out to the barn. The rain, again on the increase, wasn’t quite torrential enough to immediately erase her tracks.

  “She’s out riding with Chelsea,” Emily fed a carrot to her horse Chesapeake, who began crunching on it loudly. “They’re both horse crazy and ride at every excuse no matter what the weather is. We have more sense than that, don’t we?” She addressed the last to her horse.

  Chesapeake’s snort might have been agreement, or frustration that there wasn’t another carrot somewhere.

  “Chelsea is maid of honor and all it took was a hint to her that part of her duties was to distract the bride from her nerves. Frankly they’re both being so intense and cheerful about it that they were getting on my nerves.”

  Lauren was glad it wasn’t her out there. She’d had her share of horrid weather during her military career and had learned not to be bothered by it, but she didn’t think she’d make it a part of her civilian persona to go out and actively seek discomfort.

  Leaning back against the open door of an empty stall, she watched Emily and her horse together. The blinding light of the legendary major had faded, but it hadn’t revealed a great deal of tarnish either. Emily still shone like highly polished metal—metal forged in the US military.

  That had Lauren looking at the upstairs secure office, the Tac Room, placed above the downstairs tack room filled with horse gear.

  Emily had turned and noticed the line of Lauren’s attention.

  “Not yet,” was all she said before changing the topic. “There’s coffee in Chelsea’s office. She usually has some yogurts and energy bars tucked away in there too.”

  Lauren crossed the wide center aisle and entered the neatly appointed office. It was part rustic ranch with a roll-top desk, comfortable chairs, and the recycled barn-wood walls covered in photos of happy guests with their horses. A large gun safe filled the corner, including a range of fine hunting bows.

  “Who uses those?”

  “Me, among others,” Emily answered from the doorway. “I don’t hunt, but I’ve always enjoyed the target work. Led the West Point team. Glad to teach you, if you’re interested.”

  So Major Emily Beale was also one of the military’s top archers—which sounded bizarre, but Lauren was past being surprised by anything Emily did.

  Chelsea’s office also had a high-tech aspect to it. A wall was covered with several large monitors acting as a single screen. They offered an easy view of the status and health of what Lauren could only assume was every horse on the property. How often they were ridden, diet, health issues, and a whole lot of things that she didn’t get. Two names were in yellow.

  Emily didn’t even have to look to see what had caught Lauren’s attention. “The yellow says that those two horses haven’t been ridden in too long. That was Chelsea’s ploy to get Julie to go on a ride with her. Truthfully, both horses were out on that ride with Patrick, but Julie couldn’t resist the bait. Then they’ll probably take their own mounts out for a short ride so that they don’t feel guilty about riding another horse. They are two very sweet women.”

  Lauren scavenged a cup of coffee with sugar and cream (an atypical luxury in forward operations), and grabbed a yogurt and a banana for breakfast before sitting on the couch.

  Emily selected a bottle of juice and turned the desk chair around to face Lauren before sitting in it.

  “Very sweet, especially compared with two women like us,” Lauren peeled back the lid on the yogurt.

  Emily gave a half nod of agreement. “They never had to face the kind of things we did. It makes me grateful every time I look at them. Not that everything has been easy for them, but there’s an unspoiled feeling about them.”

  “What doesn’t kill you…”

  “…makes you stronger,” Emily finished the truism. “You have to be careful about becoming too strong.”

  “I think Patrick has been giving me a lesson in that these last couple of days.” Each time she had unwound, even the least little bit, they’d somehow become closer, more intimate.

  “The right man will do that to you.”

  “The right man,” Lauren began eating her yogurt. “I’m not looking for the right man.”

  “Neither was I.”

  “Where is he now?” Because she certainly didn’t want to get into the whole “right man” issue at the moment.

  “Flying to Great Falls to pick up Nathan’s parents from the airport.”

  “Nathan’s parents,” Lauren almost choked on a yogurt-softened blueberry.

  “Yes,” Emily was again enjoying herself far too much and drawing out the pain.

  “That means they’re also Patrick’s parents.”

  “Yes. They are brothers, after all.” If Emily ever smirked, she’d be smirking. But Lauren suspected that at heart she was too nice a person. She certainly wasn’t the sort who’d tease a horse into a run to dump her man into an ice-cold stream.

  “Patrick is about to introduce me to his parents.”

  “Probably.”

  “I’m going to kill him. I’m going to take him back into the wilderness and stake him out. I’m gonna cover his privates with bear bait. So help me, I will.”

  “If it makes you feel any better, I doubt if he has connected those two facts yet: you and his parents.”

  “It doesn’t,” Lauren slouched lower on the couch and finished her yogurt. “Nothing ruins a good bit of revenge like an innocent truth. Cut it out, Emily.”

  Emily shrugged and drank some of her juice.

  Lauren unpeeled her banana. She could only marvel at their changing relationship. This was the great Major Emily Beale. And Lauren was talking to her like…like a friend who was teasing her for the fun of it.

  “I—”

  A sharp whinny of surprise sounded from the barn. Then two more getting closer. Just as a man began cursing in the distance, Rip came trotting into the office as if it was something he did every day. The Malinois sat at her feet and lolled out his tongue as he offered her a big doggie grin.

  “What do you want?”

  He looked down at her banana, then back up at her.

  Lauren broke off a piece and handed it over. He took it gently from her fingers, chomped on it twice, then swallowed and it was gone.

  “That’s all you get.”

  “Where is that dumb dog?” She heard someone grumbling out in the main part of the barn.

  “In here, Stan,” Emily called out.

  The big man filled the doorframe and glared down at Rip, then sighed. “Well, I can’t do a thing with him. The kennel is downwind of the barn at the moment. The instant I let him loose, he hightailed it in your direction. Maybe you can do something with him. He’ll certainly never be an explosives dog with an attention span like that.” Then, without giving her a chance to protest, he turned away and was gone.

  Rip had craned his neck to look at Stan, but now faced her again.

  It was hard, but you never disappointed the dog because it wouldn’t understand. She forced herself to reach out and brush a hand over his damp fur.

  Rip leaned into it and it felt good against
her palm. Real. Too real.

  “Down,” she whispered it softly.

  At her command, he lay down and curled at her feet with a happy sigh of contentment.

  She broke off another piece of banana and popped it in her mouth.

  “Ahh! Ick!”

  Rip’s head popped back up.

  She spit the banana back out into her palm. The piece of banana, and most of her palm, were covered in strands of wet dog fur.

  “I don’t need a dog,” she told Rip, who leaned against her calf and settled once more, appearing to go instantly to sleep.

  “Now you have two men,” Emily’s tone was remarkably dry on such a wet day.

  “That’s two more than I need.” But her opinion didn’t seem to be holding much weight at the moment.

  Patrick did his best to run into Lauren, but it wasn’t working.

  She hadn’t come to the kitchen for breakfast.

  He’d scooted up to the highest cabin. She’d made the bed, but there were no other signs that she’d even been there.

  As he came back down the hill, he saw Michael in shorts and a t-shirt, heading out on a run as if it was a sunny summer afternoon. He knew from experience that Michael wouldn’t be back for at least 10k and more likely twice that. No wonder the guy was in such amazing shape.

  When Patrick passed Stan out in the main yard and asked if he’d seen Lauren, all he’d gotten in answer was a SEAL-mean snarl. Man needed another cup of coffee or something.

  He might have waved his hooks in the direction of the barn. What could Lauren have possibly done to make him so angry? He was halfway there when he heard the ranch’s helicopter. In moments, Mark was swooping down onto the main yard and settling in front of the garage. It was a much gentler approach than when he’d arrived with Lauren and Michael. That had been…wow!…just a week ago.

  Patrick double-checked the area. He’d have to be careful; after yesterday’s storm, there were mud puddles everywhere. He’d had enough of that. He braced himself against the blast of the rotor-driven wind.