Montana Rogue (Big Sky Mavericks Book 7)

by Debra Salonen

  The easy part. Good. He was ready for easy. Nothing about this gig had been simple or easy.

  Probably because he couldn’t get Amanda Heller out of his head. Watching her descend into her grandmother’s dark, creepy basement did something to his heart. Bravery got him every time—in the fire zone or in real life. He knew exactly what it took to face your deepest fears. Flynn had rescued his girlfriend’s son a few weeks back despite wrestling with gut-wrenching PTSD from trying to save a woman’s life in a fire and losing both the lady and one of her horses. Somehow Flynn had fought past his demons, the same way Amanda had this morning.

  He had no idea why she was afraid, but he’d almost been able to taste her fear when she took that first step downward. He’d heard the panic in her voice, saw the tremor in her hand when she tried to take a photograph of the plumbing. She’d toughed it out like a trouper. And she’d earned his respect.

  Since when was respect a prerequisite for sex? he asked himself.

  It wasn’t.

  Attraction? Yes.

  Availability? Absolutely.

  Independence? A total must.

  He didn’t do clingy, needy, or uber young—like the cutie massaging some kind of gel over his ankle and the tender top of his foot.

  Whoever said youth was wasted on the young knew what they were talking about. As much as he liked and could appreciate the sweet young technician’s smile and great breasts, the yes-factor that would take any attraction to the next level wasn’t there.

  Tucker hadn’t felt that familiar old zing since Amanda Heller walked into his life.

  He’d barely made that connection in his head when the pregnant technician wheeled Molly O’Neal into the whirlpool area. His heart rate went up. Sparring with the old woman had become a given. One he both looked forward to and dreaded because Molly made him miss Ona.

  “How are your knees today, Molly?” the tech asked.

  “Old.”

  “Do you think the TENS unit helped last time?”

  Molly’s bent shoulders lifted and fell.

  Tucker tried not to watch as the woman rolled up Molly’s loose-fitting sweatpants, exposing one skinny leg and a knobby knee that seemed unnaturally lopsided and swollen. She applied two dollops of gel before attaching two, post-it note size white units. Tucker had inquired about the machine the last time he’d seen it applied to Molly. The battery-operated unit delivered electronic impulses that stimulated the nerves in the arthritic area.

  After the technician set the frequency and duration, she walked away saying, “I’ll be right back.”

  Molly looked at him.

  “You’re a rogue, aren’t you?”

  He blinked. A rogue? “You’ll have to define that word for me, Molly.”

  Her eyes narrowed as if questioning his sincerity.

  He pulled his phone from his pocket and did a quick dictionary search. “Here we go. Rogue. There are several meanings. First, a bad person, a miscreant.”

  He looked at her. “Do you think I’m a bad person, Molly?”

  Molly shook her head, but she didn’t seem too sure.

  “The second definition is: an elephant on a rampage.”

  He pretended to make a trunk with his arms and gave a fairly awful trumpet.

  She chuckled. “Not that one.”

  He winked. “I didn’t think so. Let’s see...” He looked again. “Okay, number three is a playfully mischievous scamp.”

  Her eyes went wide and she nodded. “Yup. That one.”

  “Okay,” Tucker said, turning off the phone. “I can live with that. I’ve been called worse.”

  She made a so-what gesture with one withered hand. “People see what you want them to see.”

  The truth made him shift uncomfortably on the bench of the whirlpool. “Even a broken clock is right twice a day,” his granddad used to say.

  The technician returned with a plastic bottle of water for Molly. She offered one to Tucker but he shook his head. “Saving myself for a beer later.”

  Molly’s bushy gray eyebrow arched in a way that told him she didn’t believe a word he said.

  When the technician solicited feedback from Molly on her comfort level, Tucker focused on his own comfort level. He didn’t normally give a fig what anybody said about him or thought about him. He never read reviews or newspaper write-ups of the Great American Male performances. He always told people, “What you see is what you get.”

  But Molly saw more. How was that possible?

  A playfully mischievous scamp. He’d played that role almost from his earliest memories. Better to keep people from seeing the sad little boy under the cocky smile and court jester routine.

  When he looked again, Molly was studying him in a way that made gooseflesh run up his back. “Are you in my class? You don’t look familiar. Transfer student, huh? Get in trouble in your old school? We won’t have any of that nonsense here, young man.”

  He looked at the pregnant tech who stood a foot or so away. Her expression told him this sort of slip happened. “Just go with it,” she mouthed.

  “You don’t have to worry, Molly. I’m a good guy at heart. Ask anybody.”

  She snorted. “Bad boys don’t think they’re bad—just unlovable.”

  “Oh, I’m very lovable.” He laid it on thick...because that was part of his routine.

  She snorted. “Sex and love are not the same thing.”

  Zing. He glanced at the clock. Where was Bambi? Shouldn’t his session be over by now?

  “Didn’t your mother love you enough?”

  “What?” Tucker half-choked on the word.

  The question seemed to hang in the air like a neon sign pointing to the heart of his dysfunction. His face went hot. He grabbed the sides of the whirlpool to keep from jumping to his feet and hightailing it out of the place.

  Molly let out a huge sigh. “People always blame the mother.”

  For a reason, one part of his brain cried.

  Mothers were supposed to stick around. No questions asked. When your mother didn’t stick around, the questions never stopped. “Why’d Mommy leave, Ona?” “When’s Mommy coming back?” “Will Mom be at my recital tonight?” “Have you heard from Caroline lately, Ona?”

  The fireball in his belly might have consumed him if Molly hadn’t interrupted his stupid, pointless trip down memory lane.

  “Is my daughter here yet?” Molly asked, looking around. “She should be home from school by now.”

  Tucker faked a smile. “Your granddaughter will be here any minute, Molly,” he told her. “Amanda.”

  Molly appeared puzzled, but her attention shifted when the technician began to detach the two diodes from her knee. Good thing. He’d be damned if the old woman’s comments didn’t strike too close to home. Which was flat-out stupid. The woman suffered from dementia or something like it. So what if she pegged him as a rogue? He wasn’t perfect. Never claimed to be.

  So why did Molly’s words bother him? Because their conversation drove home the fact he wasn’t good enough for her granddaughter? That was a given. So what? It wasn’t as if he planned to get involved with Amanda.

  Luckily, Bambi bounced in to rescue him a moment later. She blocked his view of Molly as she dried his foot and ankle and applied the soothing lotion he’d begun to crave. He called on habit and years of practice to flirt with her unabashedly. By the time his removable cast was snugged up tight enough to satisfy his doctor, the girl would have followed him anywhere, done anything he asked. Too bad he had no intention of asking.

  She wasn’t the girl he wanted to fill the void Molly had pointed out.

  Unfortunately, the girl he wanted was off-limits. He needed what Amanda could do for his business, and he wasn’t about to risk messing up that long-term gain, which could mean the difference between him paying back his grandmother with interest or going bust, for some short-term sexual liaison.

  Molly was right about one thing. He was a rogue where women were concerned. He loved wo
men and then he left them.

  After all, he’d learned from the best.

  Chapter Four

  Amanda wasn’t sure when exactly she’d agreed to drive Tucker up the mountain to the zip line, but that’s where they were headed.

  After a morning on the phone with her mother, an afternoon waiting for her grandmother to have more blood work and physical therapy, all Amanda wanted to do was sink into a bubble bath at her hotel. Instead, here she was behind the wheel of her grandmother’s ridiculous gas hog. She felt certain people were looking at them everywhere they went.

  Tucker seemed to enjoy the attention. Amanda? Not so much.

  “What made you decide to slum it with me in the guesthouse?” Tucker asked.

  She’d told him as soon as she picked him up that tonight was her last at the Graff. An edict brought on when her father checked his credit card bill, apparently.

  “Just following orders,” she said, wishing she could forget the conversation she’d had with her father a few hours earlier.

  “Who do you think you are, a Saudi Sheik?” her father had yelled at her. “Your grandmother has a perfectly adequate guesthouse where you can stay for free, young lady. The plan was for you to move there as soon as it was habitable. If you want to laze around in the lap of luxury, the cost is coming out of your share of Molly’s estate.”

  “She’s not dead, yet,” Amanda had wanted to scream, but you don’t break twenty-nine years of conditioning in a couple of weeks. Nor did she understand why her father, who seemed capable of minting money, gave a fig about a few thousand dollars spent caring for his mother-in-law of nearly forty years.

  Was something broken in the Heller money machine? Did she care? Surprisingly, no. She just wanted to finish what she came to Montana to do, and then move on with her life. Whatever that meant.

  “I was waiting until the Wi-Fi got hooked up. Mother emails me fifty times a day with lists of things she wants me to buy or research for the remodel. I can’t do that without a reasonably fast modem. I’ll move to the guesthouse tomorrow,” she’d told him.

  She could hardly admit that she’d held off moving because the more she got to know Tucker the more she wasn’t sure she could trust herself to share the place without something happening between them.

  “So, what did you and Molly talk about when you were in the whirlpool together?” she asked.

  Tucker twisted in the passenger seat, one hand to his cheek in mock embarrassment. “Who told you? We’re having an affair. I have a thing for older women.”

  “Molly’s parting words to me were, ‘Ask that boy what we talked about today in school.’”

  His hand dropped. “Oh. Actually, it did feel like school,” he murmured, fiddling with the plastic bag resting on his lap. “Elephants.”

  “Elephants?”

  “Among other things.”

  She rolled her eyes. “How badly do you want to get to the zip line before the concrete starts flowing?”

  She could feel his gaze on her. “That’s blackmail.”

  “Just following orders. It’s what I do,” she added, mostly to herself.

  He didn’t reply, probably hoping she’d blurt out something else too personal and inappropriate. When she took her foot off the gas and let her grandmother’s boat of a car slow to a crawl, he groaned.

  “Okay. She called me a rogue. I asked her what that meant. Apparently, I’m a mischievous scamp who uses witty repartee to hide low self-esteem. Ridiculous, right? Do you know what I do for a living when I’m not fighting fires? Of course not. But it involves being on stage in front of a lot of people. Could someone with low self-esteem do that? I think not.”

  “I’ve been to your website, Tucker. I know about The Great American Male show. I saw a promo video from last year. The Full Mountie is one of its headliners.”

  She glanced to her right and saw his mouth hanging open. “You didn’t think I’d do an online search before I moved in with a stranger? I’m from New York. I don’t trust anybody.”

  “Well, good. I’m glad that’s out in the open. Mountie is my stage persona and I don’t flaunt that side of my life—especially in a more conservative environment. Don’t get me wrong. I’m not ashamed of what I do. I have a lot of fans who pay good money to watch me dance.”

  “That’s what I figured, so I didn’t mention it to my parents.” Plus, she wanted to be present to see the look on her father’s face when she broke the news that the man she’d hired to oversee the remodeling of her grandmother’s house was a male stripper. After the fact. She had no doubt Tucker would do an excellent job supervising the work on Molly’s house. She couldn’t say exactly why she believed that, but she did.

  “I’m sure you’ve answered this question a thousand times, but why Mountie? Isn’t the phrase supposed to be ‘The Full Monty’?” She couldn’t drive and make air quotes, but she knew he got her meaning.

  “The question has come up. No pun intended.” Ignoring her groan he went on. “My first gig was the classic Canadian Mountie to the rescue sort of thing. Max, our stage director at American Male thought I could pull it off. Again...”

  “No pun intended,” she supplied with a laughing groan. “Got it.”

  “American Male’s been good to me. I’ve traveled to fifteen countries and stayed in some of the best hotels in the world. And on top of everything, it’s fun.”

  “I’m not judging you. That’s my mother’s thing.”

  “I’m glad to hear it.”

  Something in his tone made her wonder if Molly’s comments today might have touched a sore nerve where his self-esteem was concerned.

  “You know, Tucker, Molly was a teacher, but according to Mother, Molly fancied herself an armchair psychiatrist.”

  “Mother had a thing for Freud. And Carl Jung. Oh, and don’t get me started on ‘nature versus nurture’,” her mother had ranted a few hours earlier when Amanda asked why Molly kept referring to June as “Patrick’s daughter”.

  Amanda shook her head. “Which seems pretty ironic given the fact nobody in my family talks to her, let alone asks for advice.”

  He made a sound she couldn’t place. Bafflement? Outrage? “Is that true? Your family’s washed its hands of Molly completely? Wow. How did that happen?”

  Amanda shrugged, glad for the diversion of an eighteen-wheeler loaded with cattle ahead of her on the road. She hated talking about her family. That reticence had been the first thing that attracted her to James. “Why talk about something you can never change?” he’d asked on their first date.

  “You and your sisters don’t call or visit Molly? Ever?”

  Okay, definite hint of judgmental in his voice.

  “Mother would be offended if we did. Sending me to Montana is the most involvement I’ve ever had with Molly.”

  “But she’s your grandmother.”

  “And Mother disowned her.”

  He shook his head. “I don’t think that’s how it works.”

  “Maybe not in your family. I was pretty young when Grandpa O’Neal passed away, but I remember being asleep in one of the bedrooms and hearing Mother and Molly arguing. The next morning, my father woke us up at the crack of dawn to pack so we could go to the airport. It took a day and a half to get home. He swore the only way any of us would ever go back to Montana was over Molly’s dead body.”

  “Wow. That’s harsh.”

  She shrugged. “I’m sure it seems that way to an outsider. Can we talk about something else?” She leaned to her left, watching for an opening. As soon as an oncoming car passed, she punched the accelerator. The engine roared to life and they flew past the large, smelly truck.

  “What are you putting in this time capsule you mentioned?” she asked, easing off the gas once they hit the open road.

  “It’s private.”

  “You’re going coy after the dirty sheets I just shared? I don’t think so. Give me a hint.”

  “No. It’s embarrassing.”

  “Are you
banking on it never being opened in your lifetime?”

  “Yes.”

  “Well, what if zip lines are a passing fancy and they go the way of Howard Johnson’s? Pet rocks? Mullets?”

  Grinning, he grabbed a micro-ponytail at his neckline. “I loved my mullet back in the eighties. The girls loved it, too.”

  “I’m sure. You were what? Five?”

  He tugged on a lock of his golden-streaked brown hair. “Ona refused to cut my curls. I think I was eight or nine before I had my first haircut.”

  “Wow. I can see you in a ponytail. Oh, my God, is that what’s in there? It is, isn’t it?”

  He threw back his head and let out a groan. “No. At least, I don’t think so. In all honesty, I don’t know what’s in the box. Ona sent it. She had it blessed, so I’m pretty sure there’s a vial of holy water, a candle and possibly a small statue of St. Joseph. Ona said if I looked, I’d ruin the juju.”

  He removed a small metal box from the sack. It wasn’t much bigger than a wallet. Welded to the top was an ornate cross. “It’s almost too pretty to hide in concrete.”

  “My grandfather was a jack-of-all-trades. He made hundreds of these little boxes. Ona called them treasure boxes. If someone in the family put their house on the market, Granddad would bring them a treasure box with a statue of St. Joseph in it to bury on the property. The key was putting the box in the ground cross up, so Joseph would be upside down.”

  “Why?”

  “People believe that makes a sale happen more quickly and all the paperwork go through smoothly.”

  “Did they pay your grandparents for these?”

  “No. But good luck came back to us. It always does when you help someone.”

  She didn’t know what to say to that. When was the last time she’d done something selfless and kind?

  Does driving Tucker to the mountain count?

  Maybe she’d have a chance to find out tomorrow night after she moved into the guest cottage. They both were young, single and had time on their hands. What was stopping them from passing the time with a little sex?