Montana Rogue

by Jessica Douglass

  “Oh.” She swallowed. “Why not? Aren’t they protected now?”

  “It doesn’t matter. They can be legally shot for attacking livestock.” He set down his carving tool. “But you know as well as I do that a wolf doesn’t have to be within twenty miles of a steer for some tunnel-visioned rancher to drag out that time-honored Western motto—Shoot ‘em, shovel ‘em and shut up.”

  Courtney eased around the table to where he sat. Jack twisted on the stool so that she was now standing between his legs. “How could anyone kill anything so beautiful?” she whispered.

  “A man would have to be out of his mind.”

  “Uh-huh.” She laid a hand against his bandaged arm.

  “Out of his mind,” he rasped.

  This time his kiss was not about possession, not about a test of wills. Sweet, warm, gentle, his mouth moved over hers, and Courtney melted against him, her arms sweeping up to pull him close. Ten years fell away as nothing. They were back in his bedroom, storm raging, music playing, each of them oblivious to anything, everything, but the steadily increasing rhythm of each other’s hearts.

  “Courtney, Courtney...” His mouth trailed liquid fire down the slender column of her throat.

  She arched her neck to give him better access, then twined her fingers in his thick, dark hair. She wanted this, ached for it, even as every logical cell still functioning in her brain sounded a warning.

  With one hand, he eased open the buttons of her shirt. With the other, he brushed aside the flannel to knead the pliant flesh of her breasts, teasing her nipples until each was pebble hard beneath his touch.

  And then her shirt parted, and his mouth explored where his hands had been.

  Courtney’s knees threatened to buckle. Her whole body burned with need, need for this man and his touch.

  “No.” At first she didn’t even recognize that the word had come from her own lips. “Jack...please. No.”

  He drew back, his breathing ragged, his eyes still alight with blue fire. “What?”

  She had to shut her eyes to say the word again. “No.”

  His hands fell away, and somehow Courtney found the strength to back up a step or two. “I’m sorry,” she said weakly, fumbling with the buttons of her shirt.

  “It’s okay. You’re right.”

  “Jack, I...”

  “You don’t owe me any explanations.” His voice was tight, tense, but she had the feeling he was relieved, as well.

  “But I want...” She faltered. What did she want? To tell him how frightened she was of a relationship with a man, any man? But especially with Jack Sullivan, a man she’d once dared to love. Even if it was only for one night. “I’m sorry.” She picked up her coffee cup and fled back to the cabin’s main room.

  Jack followed. “We need more firewood. I think this is as good a time as any to get it.” He crossed to the door and shrugged into his jacket.

  “When will...” She felt suddenly foolish and unexpectedly bereft by the distance they were quite obviously trying to put between one another. “When do you think you’ll be able to take me back to Butte?” She wanted out of here. She was embarrassed and strangely hurt by how easily he seemed able to back off from their abortive tryst.

  “It’ll be another day or two at least.”

  “But why?”

  “Your ankle, for one thing.”

  “Then drag me on a sled or something.”

  “I doubt my arm would appreciate that.”

  “You’re about to chop wood with that same arm.”

  He had no answer to that. Instead, he stomped out the door.

  With a heavy sigh, Courtney sagged onto the bed. Damn him anyway. What was going on? She couldn’t have misread him that badly. He’d wanted her. But then what man wouldn’t want a willing woman? Especially when she was the only woman available for several dozen square miles.

  And she’d been willing. Oh, Lord, had she. Which was one of the reasons she wanted so badly to get out of here. More days and nights under the same roof with this man and she doubted she’d have it in her to say no again.

  * * *

  Jack spent four hours chopping wood. He came back into the cabin, sweating, exhausted, looking for all the world as if he were ready to drop.

  Courtney had been spending her time doing a little mending on the clothes she’d been wearing when the copter crashed. Jack had washed them out as promised. Her cream-colored bulky knit sweater was never going to make the cover of Cosmo again, but she was pleased when she could put it back on. She was tired of looking like Jack’s fraternal twin.

  “You hungry?” she asked.

  “No.”

  “Angry?”

  “No.” He flopped down on top of his sleeping bag.

  “How about tired?”

  “Bingo.” He closed his eyes.

  “Jack?”

  “Yeah?”

  “If you won’t take me out of here, will you at least take me to the copter crash? I want to check those guys for identification.”

  “I thought we went through that.”

  “You went through it. You said no. But I still want to do it. Maybe you’re used to spending whole days in this cabin without a whole lot to do, but I’m getting a bit stir-crazy. The copter crash is less than a mile. My ankle could handle that as long as I had a crutch.”

  “That’s not a bike path out there. It’s a mountain.”

  “I know what it is,” she snapped, her patience thinning. “Dammit, you get to work off your excess energy chopping up trees. I need to do something, too, okay?”

  He sat up, one arm slung carelessly over a raised-up knee. “Give it a day or two. I’ll think about it.”

  “No! Not one more minute!” She glared at him, all of her pent-up tension spilling free. “Maybe you’ve forgotten, but I didn’t exactly drop in by here of my own free will. I have kidnappers to find, a sick father to tend to and a career that’s vitally important to me.” She jammed her hands on her hips. “Maybe you don’t have a life, Sullivan, but I do!”

  He swore, clambering to his feet. “Is that another Hamilton judgment? If I’m not behind some corporate desk somewhere, my life has no assigned dollar value?”

  “That’s not what I meant at all! And you know it. Dammit, Jack, I have no idea why you’ve decided to turn your back on the world. And your reasons may be perfectly valid. God knows, if I’d had a cabin to run off to four years ago after Roger—” She stopped. “You’re getting me off the subject. I want to go to that helicopter.”

  “Wait a minute. Wait just one damned minute.” He was in her face, his eyes probing, seeming to see straight through her.

  And he did.

  She saw it the instant he made the connection.

  “Your job,” he said quietly, too quietly. “It isn’t some philanthropic pursuit, is it?”

  “I don’t know what—”

  “He beat you. Winthrop beat you, didn’t he?” His voice rose. “Didn’t he?”

  “That’s not your business.”

  His face twisted into a mask of anguish. “That low-life sack of—” He raked a hand through his shaggy hair. “As if I have a right to say anything. I’m the guy who sent you running back to him.”

  “No.” Her voice was firm, absolute. “I made my own choices. If I’ve learned one thing in ten years, Jack Sullivan, it’s not to hold other people accountable for what I do. Yes, that night with you hurt. It hurt badly. But it wasn’t the reason I married Roger. It’s a lot more complicated than that. My marriage was about feeling needed, about pleasing my father and, ultimately, about not feeling very good about me.”

  He didn’t look convinced.

  “Please, don’t put this on yourself, Jack. This is about my life. My decisions. My road back. As hellish as it was, and I know this will sound strange to you, I don’t regret it. I’ve learned a lot about myself. That I’m much stronger than I thought I was. That I can be alone and be okay. And that I have a lot to give to other women who are sti
ll caught in the same cycle of violence.” She flushed. “I’m sorry. I didn’t mean to get up on my soap box.”

  He came over to touch her face. “Maybe you don’t blame me, angel. But I sure as hell do.” He twisted away and paced to the window. “I should have killed the bastard. I should have just killed him.”

  “You could hardly murder him for grabbing me that night at the house.”

  “Not then,” he gritted. “Later.”

  She stared at him. “You saw Roger again?”

  “In Butte six years ago. I was back visiting my mother.” He blew out a long, slow breath. “She always kept me up-to-date on Butte happenings, even in L.A. She was forever sending me clippings. The Winthrop-Hamilton wedding made the front page.”

  “So did the divorce,” Courtney put in ruefully.

  “Pete Wilson and I went to the M & M Cafe for dinner one night, and who should come waltzing in, but Roger with a redhead on his arm.”

  Courtney’s mouth twisted in disgust, but she wasn’t surprised. “Roger had a lot of women. Most of them had my sympathy.”

  “Pete tried his best to talk me out of it, but I walked over to Winthrop’s table. He actually remembered who I was. I know, because he turned about six shades of yellow, then tried to explain away his ‘date.’

  “We exchanged a few words. I slugged him. He came at me with a wine bottle.” Unconsciously, he touched the scar on his forehead. “Then I knocked him cold.”

  Courtney had the feeling she was getting a heavily censored version of what had actually gone on, but she didn’t press for more details. “That must have been the time he told me he had a skiing accident. His nose was broken. He told me he ran into a tree.” She was very careful not to show how shaken she was by the knowledge that Jack had been her champion yet again with Roger.

  “When I get you back to Butte,” Jack said, his voice tight, “I’m going to find him and finish what I started in that restaurant.”

  “That isn’t your place, Jack. Besides, Roger’s in South America. Running W-H operations there.”

  “I’ll get a passport.”

  She was standing beside him, looking up into that handsome, tormented face. “Let it go, Jack,” she said softly. “I have. I took what I needed to learn, and I made a better life for myself. Living in the past doesn’t work.”

  Something flashed in those blue eyes that made her wonder if she’d cut just a little close to home with that one. “Tell me,” she murmured.

  “I can’t.” Her heart hurt at the despair in that voice.

  “We’re not the same people we were ten years ago, Jack. Maybe this is a second chance. A chance to do it right.”

  The agony in his eyes sent a chill skittering up her spine. Whatever he wasn’t telling her, hovered there between them like a living thing. But he did not speak. Instead, he marched back over to his sleeping bag and lay down. Shutting his eyes, he effectively shut her out.

  * * *

  Two days went by. Two days in which they spoke less and less to one another. Because each time they spoke, Courtney could feel Jack edge closer and closer to telling her what he very obviously did not want her to know. The cramped confines of the cabin made their attempt to live separate lives all the more maddening.

  Finally Courtney could bear it no longer. On a bright, sunny morning with the temperature inching toward forty degrees, she confronted Jack. “I can’t be in this place another minute,” she told him. “I’m losing my mind. I can’t concentrate on reading. You won’t talk to me. Hell, I can’t even call out for a pizza.”

  When he said nothing, she continued. “My ankle is much better. This crutch you made me—” she held up the forked branch “—works really well. I’ve gathered up the stuff you found for me—Pete’s boots, his parka, his gloves. Now—” she pointed “—I am going out that door, and I am going to find that helicopter.” Quickly she yanked on Pete’s things, grateful that the man had not had large feet.

  “You’re staying here.”

  “No, I’m not. Because digging up bodies is preferable to spending another day cooped up with you. And if you don’t like it, you can just—” She slapped herself in the side of the head. “Call out! Jack! Of course, why didn’t I think of it before?”

  “What?”

  “The helicopter! It had a radio. I remember the static. We could call for help!”

  “The radio doesn’t work. I tried it.”

  “We could try again. Maybe it just has a loose wire or something.”

  “Courtney, it doesn’t work.”

  She tromped over to the door. “You just don’t get it, do you? My father could by dying or dead. I have to get out of here. If you won’t help me, I’ll help myself.”

  Jack was at the door in two strides, his hand slamming against the rough panel. “You’re not going anywhere, princess.”

  The word was like a bullet.

  He must have realized it, too. Because his face changed, went a ghostly gray.

  Princess! What her dream had been trying to tell her. What Jack had called her the night they’d made love.

  And?

  Courtney staggered back. You’re in enough trouble, princess. What the pilot of the helicopter had called her!

  “It was you!” she cried out, horrified, disbelieving. “You were flying the helicopter. You were the pilot! You!” Betrayal, rage and a black hate such as she’d never known roared through her in a single heartbeat. “My God, the crash was deliberate, wasn’t it? To set up this whole fantasy. Your pervert friend in the back seat—”

  “Is dead,” Jack said tightly. “Just like you and I could’ve been. Do you really think I would’ve purposely jeopardized your life like that?”

  She managed a sick laugh. “They said they would do anything to get information out of me! Anything! God in heaven, did that include sleeping with me again, Jack?”

  “Courtney, please, just—”

  Wild, unthinking, she swung the crutch, catching him hard on the side of the head. Jack reeled back, collapsed. She thought she saw blood, but she took no time to look.

  This was what he had sunk to. This was what he had become, what he been hiding from her all this time! He was a felon. A hired gun. Without the slightest trace of morality or ethics or human decency.

  He had used her. Again.

  Made her all but love him. Again.

  Damn him! Damn him straight to hell!

  Crutch in hand, she bolted from the cabin and scrabbled painfully up the slope. The knee-deep snow weighed her down with each step she took. But she didn’t stop. The helicopter was her only chance now. And it was an almighty slim one. She stumbled on, offering up a fervent prayer that Jack telling her the copter’s radio didn’t work was just another one of his endless lies.

  Chapter 7

  Courtney sagged to her knees, gasping, her lungs feeling ready to burst. She’d been slogging her way through calf-deep snow for over an hour now. In some places, windblown drifts came up to her chest. A mile to the copter, Jack had said. She felt as though she’d already gone a thousand.

  Her ankle throbbed. Her cheeks burned. Despite the parka, the boots and the mittens, the effects of the thirty-plus temperature had taken its toll on her body heat. Her feet were numb. She wanted nothing more than to sink into the layering blanket of whiteness and disappear. Forever.

  Jack Sullivan had kidnapped her.

  Jack Sullivan had stalked her, attacked her, chloroformed her, bound and gagged her, and dragged her unconscious body on board a helicopter. And then he’d allowed his perverse confederate to put a gun to her head, allowed him to put his hands... She swallowed the bile that rose in her throat.

  So much pain. So much deceit. For what? For money? For some sick revenge against her father? She’d been closer to the truth than she’d realized earlier. But somehow he’d managed to finesse his way around her suspicions. Make himself seem yet again more protector than predator.

  Why? Why the charade? Why not just say, “Court
ney, tell your father to give me a million dollars?” He could easily have done so, especially when she still thought of him as the anonymous J.D. Instead, he’d allowed her to discover his identity—hardly a wise move while committing a felony.

  She supposed such deliberate carelessness could portend more sinister motives. That the witness wasn’t intended to survive. But despite her hurt and betrayal, she could not believe Jack capable of murder.

  Then why had he let her unmask him? Surely he hadn’t expected a happy reunion. That she would forgive and forget.

  Or had he just expected her to jump into his bed?

  Courtney shivered—this time not from the cold—at how close she had come to doing just that. If he hadn’t slipped up, called her princess...

  Damn him.

  Gritting her teeth, Courtney forced herself to her feet. This was no time for self-recrimination. She had to keep moving. One foot in front of the other; one foot in front of the other. In her mind she created a new image of Jack Sullivan—first on trial for her kidnapping, then being found guilty, then spending the rest of his life in prison paying for what he had done to her.

  The image kept her going.

  Another half hour passed before she again collapsed. The first nigglings of fear began to surface. A mile. How long should it have taken her to travel a mile, even in deep snow? Jack had said the wreck was north of the cabin. The sun’s position told her she was heading north. But had he meant due north? Or had he been speaking in generalities?

  Maybe she should have forgotten the copter. Tried to go down the mountain toward the nearest trailhead instead. But Jack had told her the nearest speck of civilization—a crude parking area—was at least two days hike from the cabin. She could hardly survive two days of this.

  She shivered. Would she even survive one?

  Enough. She would think about it later. Right now, she had plenty of daylight left and she intended to find that helicopter. How hard could it be? A hundred square miles of wilderness. One smashed helicopter buried under a new snowfall. Piece of cake.

  A piece of white cake on a white plate on a white tablecloth in a white room with white walls in a...

  It’s too soon to crack up, Courtney. When the sun goes down and you still haven’t found the copter, then you can go quietly nuts.