Montana Sky

by Nora Roberts

  “Slept around?”

  “No, not exactly.” Hand me a shovel, he thought. I’m getting tired of digging this hole for myself with my bare hands. “You’re a good-looking woman,” he began, and winced, knowing he could have done better than that. Would have, too, if his tongue wasn’t so tangled up. “I just assumed that you’d had some experience in the area.”

  “Well, I haven’t.” Temper was clearing just enough to let in flickers of embarrassment. “And it’s up to me when and if I want to change that, and who I want to change it with.”

  “Absolutely. I wouldn’t have pushed if I’d realized . . .” He couldn’t take his eyes off her, the way she stood there all flushed and rumpled, with that sexy mouth swollen from his. “Or maybe I’d have pushed different. I’ve been thinking about you, that way, for a while.”

  Suspicion flickered in her eyes. “Why?”

  “Damned if I know. It just is. Now that I’ve had my hands on you, I’d have to say I’m going to be thinking more. You’ve got a nice feel to you, Willa.” The humor came back, curving his lips. “And you were doing a damn fine job of kissing me back, for an amateur.”

  “You’re not the first man I’ve kissed, and you won’t be the last.”

  “That doesn’t mean you can’t practice on me—when you get the urge.” He walked over to take his hat and jacket from the pegs by the door. If either of them noticed that he gave her a wide berth, neither commented. “What are friends for?”

  “I don’t have any trouble controlling my urges.”

  “You’re telling me,” he said, with feeling, and fit his hat on his head. “But I have a notion I’m about to have a hell of a time controlling mine where you’re concerned.”

  He opened the door, gave her one long last look. “You’ve got one hell of a mouth, Willa. One hell of a mouth.”

  He shut the door, shrugged into his jacket. As he circled around the house toward his rig, he let out a whistling breath. He’d thought a little nuzzling in the kitchen would take both of their minds off the trouble hanging over Mercy. It had done a hell of a lot more than that.

  He rubbed a hand over his belly, knowing the knots twisting inside would be there for quite a while yet. She’d gotten to him, and gotten to him hard. And the fact that she had no idea what they could do to each other in the dark only made it more terrifying.

  And arousing.

  He’d always chosen women who knew the ropes, who understood the pleasures, the rules and the responsibilities. Women, he admitted, who didn’t expect more than a good, healthy ride where nobody got hurt, nobody got hobbled.

  He glanced back at the house as he climbed behind the wheel, turned the key in the ignition. It wouldn’t be so simple with Willa, not when he’d be her first.

  He drove away from Mercy without a clue to what he would do about her. All he knew for certain was that Willa was going to have to accept that Ben McKinnon was going to be the one she’d change things with.

  He glanced toward the bunkhouse as he drove past and thought of everything she’d been through in the past few weeks. Enough, he thought, to break anyone to bits. Anyone but Willa.

  Letting out a long sigh, he headed for his own land. He’d be there for her, whether she liked it or not. And he’d take it slow in that certain area. He’d even try his hand at being gentle.

  But he’d be there.

  TEN

  S NOW CAME HARD AND FAST AND EARLY. IT BURIED THE pastures and had the drift fences groaning. Men worked day and night to see that the cattle—too stupid to dig through the snow to grass—were fed and tended.

  November proved to be a poor boundary against winter, and before the end of it, the valley was socked in.

  Skiers came, flocking to Big Sky and other resorts to schuss down slopes and drink brandy by roaring fires. Tess gave some thought to joining them for a day or two. Not that she’d ever been much on skiing, but the brandy sounded fine. In any case there would be people, conversations, perhaps flirtations, certainly civilization.

  It might be worth strapping herself to a couple of slats of wood and tumbling down a mountain.

  She talked to her agent constantly, using Ira more as a bridge to her life than a representative of her work. She wrote, making progress with a new screenplay and detailing daily life in her journal.

  Not that she considered the routine on the ranch much of a life.

  She continued to take charge of the chickens and was actually rather pleased that she had a handle on the job now and could slip an egg from under a broody hen without so much as a peck.

  She had a bad moment, very bad, one day when she strolled behind the coop and walked into Bess, quickly, competently, ruthlessly wringing the neck of one of Tess’s flock.

  There’d been a lot of squawking then—though not from the chickens. Two of them lay dead as Judas on the ground while the women shouted at each other over the corpses.

  Tess had skipped dinner that night—chicken pot pie—but it had taught her the error of assigning names to her beaked and feathered friends.

  Every evening she made use of the indoor pool with its curved-glass wall and southern exposure. And she’d decided there was something to be said for looking at snow while she lounged in her personal lake with steam rising around her.

  Yet every morning she rose, crossed her eyes at the view of snow out her window, and dreamed of palm trees and lunching at Morton’s.

  She kept up her horseback riding out of sheer stubbornness. It was true that she didn’t climb whimpering out of the saddle with muscles screaming now. And she’d developed a certain wary affection for Mazie, the mare Adam had assigned her. Still, riding out into the wind and the cold wasn’t her idea of high entertainment.

  “Jesus. Jesus Christ.” Tess stepped outside, hunched inside the thick wool jacket, and wished she’d pulled on two pairs of long underwear. “It’s like breathing broken glass. How does anyone stand this?”

  “Adam says it makes you appreciate spring more.”

  To ward off the wind, Lily wrapped her scarf more securely around her neck. Yet she appreciated the winter—the majestic, powerful sweep of it, the way the snow seemed to freeze the peaks into sharp relief against the sheer wall of sky. The dark belt of trees that clung to the rising foothills was so prettily draped with snow, and the silver of rock and ridge formed shadows and contrasts, like folds in a stunning blanket.

  “It’s so beautiful. Miles and miles of white. And the pines. The sky’s so blue it almost hurts your eyes.” She smiled at Tess. “It’s nothing like a city snow.”

  “I don’t have much experience with snow, but I’d say this is nothing like anything.” She flexed her fingers in her gloves as they walked toward the horse barn.

  At least the ranch yard was negotiable, Tess thought. Paths to and from paddocks and corrals had been plowed. And the roads had been scraped off as well with a blade attached to one of the four-wheelers. Young Billy had done that, she remembered. He’d appeared to be having the time of his life.

  She watched her breath plume out in front of her and was tempted to complain again. But it was beautiful, coldly beautiful. The sky was such a hard, brittle blue she expected it to crack at any moment, and the mountains that speared into it were so well defined in the clear air that they seemed to have been painted. Sunlight danced off the fields of snow in glittering sparks, and when the wind rushed, it lifted that snow and those dancing lights into the air in thin drifts.

  Palm trees, warm beaches, and mai tais seemed light-years away.

  “What’s she up to today?” Tess pulled out sunglasses and put them on.

  “Willa? She went out early in one of the pickups.”

  Tess’s mouth thinned. “Alone?”

  “She almost always goes alone.”

  “Asking for trouble,” Tess muttered, and stuck her hands in her pockets. “She must think she’s invincible. If whoever killed that man is still around . . .”

  “You don’t think that, do you?” Al
armed, Lily began to scan the fields as if a madman might rise up out of one of the drifts like a grinning gnome. “The police haven’t come up with anything. I thought it had to be someone camped in the hills. With this weather, he couldn’t still be here. And it’s been weeks since—since it happened.”

  “Sure, that’s right.” Though she was far from convinced, Tess saw no reason to set Lily’s nerves more on edge. “Nobody’d camp out in this cold, especially some itinerant maniac. I guess she just gets under my skin.” She narrowed her eyes at the rig heading toward the ranch from the west road. “Speak of the devil.”

  “Maybe if you—” Lily broke off, shook her head.

  “No, go ahead. Maybe if I what?”

  “Maybe if you didn’t try so hard to irritate her.”

  “Oh, it’s not so hard.” Tess’s lips curved in anticipation. “In fact, it’s effortless.” She changed directions as the rig pulled up. “Been out surveying the lower forty?” Tess asked, as Willa rolled down her window.

  “Are you still here? I thought you were going to Big Sky to soak in a Jacuzzi and hustle men.”

  “I’m thinking about it.”

  Willa shifted her attention to Lily. “If Adam’s taking you out, go soon and don’t stay long. Snow’s coming in.” She flicked her eyes toward the sky, the telltale clouds piling together in thick layers. “You may want to tell him I spotted a herd of mule deer northwest of here. About a mile and a half. You might like to see them.”

  “I would.” She patted her pocket. “I have my camera. Can you come with us? Bess sent plenty of coffee along.”

  “No, I’ve got things to do. And Nate’s coming by later.”

  “Oh?” Tess lifted an eyebrow, struggled to sound casual. “When?”

  Willa slid the gearshift into first. “Later,” she repeated, and drove away toward the house.

  She knew very well that Tess had her eye on Nate, and she didn’t intend to encourage it. As far as she was concerned, Nate would be completely out of his depth with a slick Hollywood piranha.

  And maybe he had his eye focused right back, but that was only because men always got dopey around beautiful, stacked women. Grabbing her thermos of coffee from the seat beside her, Willa climbed out of the rig. Tess was beautiful and stacked, she admitted, with just a quick twinge of envy. And confident and quick-tongued. So sure of herself and her control over her own femininity. And her power over men.

  Willa wondered if she’d be more like that if she’d had a mother to teach her the ropes. If she’d been raised in a different environment, where there were females giggling over hairdos and hemlines, over lipstick shades and perfume.

  Not that she wanted that, she assured herself, as she stepped inside and pulled off her gloves. She wasn’t interested in all that fussing and foolishness, but she was beginning to think those very things could add to a woman’s confidence around men.

  And she wasn’t feeling as confident as she wanted to. At least not around one man.

  She shucked her coat and hat, then carried the thermos with her to the office upstairs. She’d changed nothing inside it yet. It was still Jack Mercy’s domain with its trophy heads and whiskey decanters. And entering, walking over, seating herself at his desk always brought a quick twist to her gut.

  Grief? she wondered. Or fear. She just wasn’t sure any longer. But the office itself brought on a swarm of unpleasant and unhappy emotions, and memories.

  She had rarely come in there when he was alive. If he sent for her, ordered her to take a chair across from that desk, it was to criticize or to shuffle her duties.

  She could see him perfectly, sitting where she sat now. A cigar clamped between his fingers, and if it was evening and the workday finished, a glass of whiskey on the blotter.

  Girl, he’d called her. He’d rarely used her name. Girl, you fucked up good this time.

  Girl, you better start pulling weight around here.

  You’d better get yourself a husband, girl, and start having babies. You’re no use otherwise.

  Had there ever been kindness in this room? she asked herself, and rubbed hard at her temples. She wanted badly to remember even one moment, one incident when she came in here and found him sitting behind this desk and smiling. One time, only one time when he’d told her he was proud of what she’d done. Of anything she’d done.

  But she couldn’t. Smiles and kind words hadn’t been Jack Mercy’s style.

  And what would he say now? she wondered. If he walked in here and saw her, if he knew what had happened on the land, to one of his men, while she’d been in charge.

  You fucked up, girl.

  She rested her head in her hands a moment, wishing she had an answer for that. In her mind she knew she’d done nothing to cause a vicious murder. But in her heart, the responsibility weighed heavy.

  “Done and over,” she murmured. She opened a drawer, took out record books. She wanted to check them over, the careful detailing of number of head, of weight. The pasture rotations, the additives and grain. She’d make sure there was not one figure out of place before Nate came later today to look over her accounts.

  Burying her resentment that he, or anyone, had power over Mercy, she got to work.

  N EARLY TWO MILES FROM THE RANCH HOUSE. LILY happily snapped pictures of mule deer. It made her laugh to look at them with their shaggy winter coats and bored eyes. The prints would likely be out of focus—she knew she hadn’t inherited her mother’s skill with a camera—but they would please her.

  “I’m sorry.” She let the camera dangle from the strap around her neck. “I’m taking too long. I get caught up.”

  “We’ve got some time yet.” After a brief study of the clouds, Adam shifted in the saddle and turned to Tess. “You’re riding well. You learn.”

  “Self-defense,” she claimed, but felt a warm spurt of pride. “I never want to hurt the way I did those first couple of days. And I need the exercise.”

  “No, you’re enjoying it.”

  “All right, I’m enjoying it. But if it gets much colder than this, I won’t be enjoying it till spring.”

  “It’ll get colder than this. But your blood’ll be thicker. Your mind tougher.” He leaned down to stroke the neck of his mount. “And you’ll be hooked. Every day you don’t ride, you’ll feel deprived.”

  “Every day I can’t stroll down Sunset Boulevard I feel deprived. I manage.”

  He laughed. “When you get back to Sunset Boulevard, you’ll think of the sky here, and the hills. Then you’ll come back.”

  Intrigued, she tipped down her sunglasses, peered at him over the tops. “What is this? Indian mysticism and fortunetelling?”

  “Nope. Psychology one-oh-one. Can I use the camera, Lily? I’ll take a picture of you and Tess.”

  “All right. You don’t mind, do you?” she asked Tess.

  “I never turn away from a camera.” She walked her horse around Adam’s, turned her—rather smoothly, she thought—and came close to Lily’s right. “How’s this?”

  “It’s good.” He lifted the camera, focused. “Two beautiful women in one frame.” And snapped, twice. “When you look at these, you’ll see how much you share. The shape of the face, the coloring, even the way you sit in the saddle.”

  Automatically, Tess straightened her shoulders. She felt what she considered a mild affection for Lily, but she was far from ready for sisterhood. “Let’s have the camera, Adam. I’ll take the two of you. The Virginia Magnolia and the Noble Savage.”

  The minute it was out of her mouth, she winced. “Sorry. I tend to think of people as characters. No offense.”

  “None taken.” Adam passed her the camera. He liked her, the way she went after what she wanted, said what was on her mind. He doubted very much she’d appreciate being told those were two of his favorite qualities about Willa. “How do you think of yourself?”

  “Shallow Gal. That’s why my screenplays sell. Smile.”

  “I like your movies,” Lily said when Tess lowere
d the camera. “They’re exciting and entertaining.”

  “And play to the least common denominator. Nothing wrong with that.” She handed the camera back to Lily. “You write for the masses, you take off your brain and keep it simple.”

  “You’re not giving yourself or your audience enough credit.” Adam flicked his gaze toward the trees, scanned.

  “Maybe not, but . . .” Tess trailed off as a movement caught her eye. “There’s something back there in the trees. Something moved.”