Montana Sky (19 page)

 

S
OMEONE ELSE WOKE IN THAT SAME STINGY LIGHT WITH
those same images running like a river through his head.

But they made him smile.

F
ROM TESS
'
S JOURNAL
:

 

I'm beginning to like snow. Or I'm going slowly insane. Each morning when I look out my bedroom window, there it is, white and shiny. Miles of it. I can't say I care for the cold. Or the fucking wind. But the snow, particularly when I'm inside looking out, has a certain appeal. Or maybe I'm beginning to feel safe again.

It's a week before Christmas, and nothing has happened to interrupt the routine. No murdered men, no slaughtered wildlife. Just the eerie quiet of snow-smothered days. Maybe the cops were right after all, and whoever killed that poor bald guy was a psychotic hiker. We can only hope.

Lily is big into the holiday spirit. Funny, sweet woman. She's like a child about it, hustling bags into her bedroom, wrapping presents, baking cookies with Bess. Great cookies, which means I've been adding an extra fifteen minutes to my morning workouts.

We took a trip into Billings, for what it's worth, to do some Christmas shopping. Lily was easy enough. I found a
pretty brooch of a rearing horse, very delicate and feminine. Figured I had to come up with something for sour-face Bess, and settled on a cookbook. Lily approved it, so I suppose I'm safe. The cowgirl's another matter. I still haven't pinned her down.

Is this woman fearless or stupid?

She goes out every day, more often than not alone. She works her ass off, swaggers down to the old bunkhouse every evening to talk to her men. When she's in the house, she's often buried up to her eyeballs with ledgers and cow reports.

I'm afraid I'm starting to admire her, and I'm not sure I like it. I got her a cashmere sweater, I don't know why. She never wears anything but flannel. But it's screaming siren red, very soft and female. She'll probably end up tossing it on over her long underwear and castrating cows in it. Hell with it.

For Adam, because he appeals to me on a surprisingly fraternal level, I found a lovely little watercolor of the mountains. It reminded me of him.

After much debate with myself, I decided to spring for a token gift for both Ben and Nate, since they spend so much time around here. I picked up a video of Red River for Ben, kind of a gag that I hope will be taken in the proper spirit.

And after some subtle probing, I learned that Nate has a weakness for poetry. He's getting a volume of Keats. We'll see.

Between the shopping, the smells from the kitchen, and the decorating, I'm getting in the holiday mood myself. Just shipped off a ton of presents for Mom. With her, it's not the quality but the quantity, and I know she'll be happily ripping off shiny paper for hours.

The damnedest thing, I miss her.

Despite all the Santa Clausing, I'm antsy. Too many hours indoors, I think. I'm using this extra time—winter is chock-full of time around here since it's dark before five in the evening—to play with an idea for a book. Just for fun, just to pass the time during these incredibly long nights.

And speaking of long nights . . . Since all seems quiet
again, I'm taking one of the jeeps—I mean rigs—and driving over to Nate's to deliver my gift. Ham gave me directions to Nate's—what would I call it—spread, I suppose. I've been waiting weeks for an invitation to his house, and for him to make a move. I guess it's up to me to start the ball rolling.

I can't decide how subtle I should be about getting him into bed, and so will play it by ear. At the rate he's going, it could be spring before I get laid.

The hell with that, too.

 

“G
OING SOMEWHERE
?”
WILLA DEMANDED AS TESS GLIDED
downstairs.

“As a matter of fact.” She tilted her head, took in Willa's usual uniform of flannel and denim. “You?”

“I just got in. Some of us don't have time to primp in front of a mirror for an hour.” Willa's brow furrowed. “You're wearing a dress.”

“Am I?” Feigning surprise, Tess looked down at the simple, form-fitting blue wool that skimmed above her knees. “Well, how did that happen?” With a snicker, she came down the rest of the way and walked to the closet for her coat. “I have a Christmas present to deliver. You remember Christmas, don't you? Even with your busy schedule you must have heard of it.”

“There was a rumor.” Sexy dress, heels, fuck-me perfume, Willa mused, and narrowed her eyes. “Who's the present for?”

“I'm dropping in on Nate.” Tess swirled on her coat. “I hope he has some wassail handy.”

“Should have figured it,” Willa muttered. “You're going to break your neck getting to the rig in those ice picks.”

“I've got excellent balance.” With a careless wave, Tess glided out. “Don't wait up. Sis.”

“Yeah. Good balance,” Willa repeated, watching as Tess made her way gracefully to the rig. “I hope Nate's got good balance.”

She turned away, walked into the living room, and stretched out on the sofa. After one long look at the tall,
elaborately decorated tree framed in the front window, she buried her face in the leather.

Christmas had always been a miserable time of year for her. Her mother had died in December. Not that she remembered, but she knew it, and it had always put a cloud over the holidays. Bess had tried, God knew, to make up for it with decorations and cookies, with silly presents and carols. But there had never been family gathered around the piano, or family huddled under the tree opening gifts on Christmas morning.

She and Adam had exchanged theirs on Christmas Eve, always. After her father was rip-roaring drunk and snoring in his bed.

There had been presents under the tree with her name on them. Bess had seen to that, and for years had put Jack's name on them. But when Willa had turned sixteen, she'd stopped opening those. They were a lie after all, and after a couple of further attempts, Bess had given up the pretense.

Christmas morning had meant hangovers and bad temper, and on the one occasion she'd been brave enough to complain, a stinging backhand.

She'd stopped looking forward to the holidays a long time ago.

And now she was tired, so damn tired. The winter had come so soon, and so brutally. They'd lost more cows than she'd expected, and Wood was worried they hadn't gotten the winter wheat in soon enough. The market price per head had dipped—not enough for panic, but enough for worry.

And she found herself waiting, every day waiting, to find something, or someone, slaughtered on her doorstep again.

No one to talk to, she thought. So she kept her worries to herself. She didn't want Lily and Tess terrified every minute of the day, but neither could she relax and ignore it. She made certain that either she or Adam or Ham kept an eye on both of them when they were out of the house.

Now Tess was gone, driving off, and Willa hadn't had the energy or the wisdom to stop her.

Call Nate, she told herself. Get up and call Nate to tell him she's coming. He'll look out for her. But she didn't
move, just couldn't seem to swing her legs down and sit up. To sit up and face that brightly, pitifully cheerful tree with the pretty presents under it.

“If you're going to sleep, you should go to bed.”

She heard Ben's voice, resigned herself to it. “I'm not sleeping. I'm just resting a minute. Go away.”

“I don't know; when I come over here you don't tell me to leave again.” So he sat down, settling in the middle of the sofa. “You're wearing yourself out, Will.” Reaching down, he turned her face away from the back of the sofa. The tears on it made him drop his hand as if she'd burned him. “You're crying.”

“I am not.” Humiliated, she pressed her face into leather again. “I'm just tired. That's all.” Then her voice hitched, broke, and disgraced her. “Leave me alone. Leave me alone. I'm tired.”

“Come here, darling.” Though he had little experience with weeping females, he figured he could handle this one. As easily as if she'd been a child, he lifted her up, cradled her on his lap. “What's the matter?”

“Nothing. I'm just . . . Everything,” she managed, and let her head rest on his shoulder. “I don't know what's wrong with me. I'm not crying.”

“Okay.” Deciding they were both better off pretending she wasn't, he gathered her closer. “Let's just sit here awhile anyway. You're a comfortable armful for a bony woman.”

“I hate Christmas.”

“No, you don't.” He pressed his lips to the top of her head. “You're just worn out. You know what you should do, Will? You and your sisters should take a few days off and go to one of those fancy spas. Get yourself pampered and pummeled, take mud baths.”

She snorted, felt better. “Yeah, right. Me and the girls swapping gossip in the mud. That's my style, all right.”

“Better yet, you could go with me. We could get a room with one of those big bubble tubs, a heart-shaped bed with a mirror over it. That way you can see what's going on when we make love. You'll learn faster that way.”

It had a certain decadent, dizzying appeal, but she shrugged. “I'm not in any hurry.”

“I'm getting to be in one,” he muttered, then tilted her head back. “Haven't done this in a while.” And closed his mouth over hers.

She didn't pretend to resist or protest, not when it was exactly what she needed. The warmth, the steady hand, the skilled mouth. Instead, she slid her arms around his neck, turned into him, and let all those worries and doubts and bad memories fade away.

Here was comfort and, regardless of anything, someone who would listen, and perhaps even care. She sank into that, into the wanting of that as much as the wanting of him.

He felt the need he'd kept carefully reined strain at its tether. The unexpected sweetness of her, the surprising and arousing pliancy, the little licks of heat that hinted of passion simmering beneath innocence.

The combination came close to snapping that straining tether.

So it was he who drew back, she who protested. Struggling to temper instinct with sense, he shifted her again, settled her head once more in the curve of his shoulder. “Let's just sit here awhile.”

She felt his heart beat, fast, under her hand. Heard her own pound in her head. “You get me stirred up. I don't know why it's you who gets me stirred up, Ben. I just can't figure it.”

“Well, I feel heaps better now.” He sighed once, then rested his head against hers. “This isn't so bad.”

“No, I guess it isn't.” So she sat in his lap while her feelings settled again. She watched the twinkle of the lights on the tree, and the fall of light snow, just a whisper of white, through the window beyond. “Tess went over to Nate's,” she said at length.

He heard the tone, knew her well enough to interpret it. “You're worried about that?”

“Nate can handle himself. Probably.” She made a restless movement, then gave up and let her eyes drift closed.

“It's Tess you're worried about.”

“Maybe. Some. Yes. Nothing's happened for weeks now, but . . .” She exhaled. “I can't watch her every minute of the day and night.”

“No, you can't.”

“She thinks she knows all the answers. Miss Big City Girl with her self-defense courses and her snappy clothes. Shit. She's as lost out here as a mouse in a roomful of hungry she-cats. What if the rig breaks down, or she runs off the road?” She drew a deep breath and said what was most on her mind. “What if whoever killed Pickles is still around, watching?”

“Like you said, nothing's happened in weeks. Odds are he's long gone.”

“If you believe that, why are you here most every day, using every lame excuse in the book to drop by?”

“They aren't so lame,” he muttered, then shrugged. “There's you.” He didn't bother to scowl when she snorted. “There is you,” he repeated. “And there's the ranch. And yeah, I think about it.” He tilted her head up again and kissed her hard and quick. “Tell you what, I'll just ride by Nate's and make sure she got there.”

“Nobody's asking you to check up on my problems.”

“Nope, nobody is.” He lifted her, set her aside, then rose. “One day you might just ask me for something, Willa. You might just break down and ask. Meanwhile I'll do things my own way. Go on to bed,” he told her. “You need a decent night's sleep. I'll see to your sister.”

She frowned after him as he walked out, and wondered what he was waiting for her to ask.

 

T
ESS GOT THERE
.
SHE CONSIDERED IT A FINE ADVENTURE
to drive through the light snowfall in the deep country dark. She had the radio turned up to blast, and by some minor miracle she found a station that played downright rock. She wailed along with Rod Stewart as she approached the lights of Nate's ranch.