Montana Sky

by Nora Roberts

  “Honey, you’re a wonder. Not everybody can hit thin air six times out of six.” Nate cautiously took the gun, unloaded or not, out of her hand and gave her a hard kiss in consolation.

  Willa smirked. “Don’t forget to separate the whites, laundry girl. And pick up your spent shells.”

  Lily moved close as she and Tess gathered up shells. “I’ll help you,” she whispered.

  “The hell you will. A bet’s a bet.” Tess cocked her head. “But next time, we arm-wrestle.”

  “I’m heading into Ennis for some supplies.” Nate rocked back on his heels and tried, too obviously, not to stare at the denim straining over Tess’s butt as she picked up spent shells from the ground. “Thought I’d stop by and see if you needed anything.”

  Like hell, Willa thought, noting just where his eyes kept wandering. “Thanks, but Bess went in a couple days ago and stocked up.”

  Tess straightened. “Want some company on the ride?”

  “That’d be good.”

  Her eyes stayed on his as she dumped her handful of shells into Willa’s open palm. “I’ll just get my purse.” She tucked her arm through Nate’s and shot a sly look over her shoulder. “Tell Bess I won’t be back for dinner.”

  “Just be back for wash day,” Willa shouted after her. “She’s got a clamp on his balls all right.”

  “I think they’re nice together,” Lily said. “Handsome and easy. His smile just breaks out whenever he sees her.”

  “That’s because he knows his pants are going to end up around his ankles.” She laughed at Lily’s disapproving look. “Good for them. I just don’t get the sex thing, that’s all.”

  “Are you afraid of it?”

  The question was so unexpected, considering the source, Willa could only gape. “Huh?”

  “I was. Before Jesse, with him. After.” Automatically Lily walked over to stack the target cans. “I think it’s natural, before, you know. When you just can’t know how things will be, whether you’ll do something wrong or make a fool of yourself.”

  “It’s pretty basic stuff. What could you do wrong?”

  “A lot of things. I did a lot of things wrong. Or thought I did. But I wasn’t afraid with Adam. Not when I realized he cared for me. I wasn’t afraid at all with Adam.”

  “Who could be?”

  A smile played around Lily’s mouth, then she sobered. “You haven’t said anything about . . . I know that you know that I’m—with him.” She let out a breath, watched it fog in the chilly air, then disappear. “That I’m sleeping with him.”

  “Really?” Willa tucked her tongue in her cheek. “I thought he waited for you at the side door every night, then walked you back at dawn because you were holding a secret canasta tournament. You mean you’re having sex? I’m shocked.”

  The smile came back. “Adam said we wouldn’t fool anyone.”

  “Why would you want to?”

  “He . . . he asked me to move into his house, but I didn’t know how you’d feel about it. He’s your brother.”

  “You make him happy.”

  “I want to.” She hesitated, then slipped a chain from under her shirt, keeping her fingers closed around something that dangled from it. “He wants . . . He gave me this.”

  Stepping closer, Willa looked at what rested in Lily’s open palm. It was a simple ring, Black Hills gold etched with a diamond pattern. “It was my mother’s,” Willa whispered as her throat closed. “Adam’s father gave it to her when they were married.” She lifted her eyes to Lily.

  “Adam asked you to marry him.”

  “Yes.” He’d done so beautifully, Lily remembered, with simple words and quiet promises. “I couldn’t give him an answer yet. It didn’t feel right. I made such a mess of things before—” She broke off, cursed herself. “I was in such a mess before,” she corrected. “And I’ve only been here a few months. I felt I had to speak with you first.”

  “It has nothing to do with me. It doesn’t,” Willa insisted when Lily began to protest. “This is between you and Adam, completely. I only have the benefit of being tremendously happy. Take it off the chain, Lily, put it on, and go find him. No, don’t cry.” She leaned forward and kissed Lily’s cheek. “He’ll think something’s wrong.”

  “I love him.” Lily slipped the chain over her head, slid the ring off. “With everything I have, I love him. It fits,” she managed as she put the ring on her finger. “He said it would.”

  “It fits,” Willa agreed, “beautifully. Go on and tell him. I’ll finish up here.”

  • • •

  A S THEY BUMPED ALONG THE ACCESS ROAD. TESS stretched luxuriously.

  “You’re looking awfully smug for someone who just lost a shoot-out.”

  “I’m feeling smug. I don’t know why.” Lowering her arms, she scanned the scenery, the snow-covered mountains, the long lay of the land. “Life’s a mess. There’s a mad killer still at large and I haven’t had a manicure in two months. I’m actually thrilled with the prospect of going into some little bumfuck town and window-shopping. God help me.”

  “You like your sisters.” Nate shrugged at her arch look.

  “You’ve gone ahead and bonded despite yourselves. I watched the three of you out there, and I’m telling you, Tess, I saw a unit.”

  “A common goal, that’s all. We’re protecting ourselves, and our inheritance.”

  “Bull.”

  She scowled, folded her arms. “You’re going to wreck my fine mood, Nate.”

  “I saw the Mercy women. Teamwork, affection.”

  “The Mercy women.” She laughed carelessly, then pursed her lips. It has a ring, doesn’t it? she mused. “Maybe I don’t think Will’s quite as big a pain in the butt as I did. But that’s because she’s adjusting.”

  “And you’re not?”

  “Why would I have to? There was nothing wrong with me.” She trailed a finger up his thigh. “Was there?”

  “Other than being stuck-up, ornery, and hardheaded, not a thing.” He hissed through his teeth when her fingers streaked up, found his weakness, and pinched.

  “And you love it.” Inspired, she struggled out of her coat.

  “Too warm?” Automatically he reached down to adjust the heater.

  “It’s going to be,” she promised, and tugged her sweater over her head.

  “What are you doing?” Shock made him nearly run off the road. “Put that back on.”

  “Uh-uh. Pull over.” And she flicked the front hook of her bra so that her breasts spilled out like glory.

  “It’s a public road. It’s broad daylight.”

  She reached over, tugged down his zipper, and found him hard and ready. “And your point is?”

  “You’re out of your mind. Anybody could come along and . . . Christ Jesus, Tess,” he managed as she slid her head under his arm and clamped her mouth on him. “I’ll kill us.”

  “Pull over,” she repeated, but the teasing note had fled. Now there was hoarse and husky need as she tore open his shirt. “Oh, God, I want you inside me. All the way in. Hard, fast. Now.”

  The rig rocked, the wheels spun, but he managed to get to the shoulder of the road without flipping them over. He jerked on the brake, fought himself free of the seat belt. In one rough move he had her on her back, all but folded on the seat while he struggled with her jeans.

  “We’ll be arrested,” he panted.

  “I’ll risk it. Hurry.”

  “We—oh, God.” There was nothing under the denim but her. “You should have frozen.” Even as he said it he was dragging her hips free. “Why aren’t you wearing long johns?”

  “I must be psychic.” Right now she was simply desperate, and she arched up. Her moan was deep and throaty and melded with his as he rammed himself into her.

  Then there were only gasps and groans and pants. The windows steamed, the seat squeaked, and they came almost in unison in less than a dozen thrusts.

  “Good God.” He would have collapsed on her if there’d been room. �
�I must be crazy.”

  She opened her eyes, then started to laugh. Her ribs were aching before she could control it. “Nate, the respected attorney and salt of the earth, how the hell are you going to explain my bootprints on the ceiling of your truck?”

  He looked up, studied them, and sighed. “Pretty much the same way I’m going to explain the fact that I no longer have a single button on this shirt.”

  “I’ll buy you a new one.” She sat up, managed to locate her bra and snap it on. Giving her hair a quick shake, she boosted her hips to get her sweater. “Let’s go shopping.”

  SIXTEEN

  “Y OU GOT A MINUTE, WILL?”

  Willa looked up from the papers spread over the desk, pulled herself out of the figures. Christ, grass seed was dear, but if they were going to rebroadcast she wanted to start now. Birth and wean weights circled in her head as she closed a ledger.

  “Sorry. Sure, Ham. Problem?”

  “Not exactly.”

  He held his hat in his hands and eased himself into a chair. The winter had been hard on his bones. Age was hard on the bones, he corrected, and he was starting to feel the years more with every passing wind.

  “I went down to the feedlot like you wanted. Looks good. Ran into Beau Radley from over High Springs Ranch?”

  “Yes, I remember Beau.” She rose to put another log on the fire. She knew Ham’s bones as well as he did. “Lord, Ham, he must be eighty.”

  “Eighty-three this spring, so he tells me. When you can get a word in.” Ham set his hat on his lap, tapped his fingers on the arms of the chair.

  It was odd sitting there, where he’d sat so many times. Seeing Willa behind the desk, with coffee at her elbow, instead of the old man with a glass of whiskey in his hand.

  Jumping up Jesus, that man could drink.

  Willa struggled with impatience. Ham took his time, and everyone else’s, when he had a point to make. She often thought conversations with him were like watching a glacier move. Generations were born and died before you got to the end of it.

  “Beau Radley, Ham?”

  “Uh-huh. You know his young’un moved on down to Scottsdale, Arizona. Must be twenty, twenty-five years ago. That’d be Beau Junior.”

  Who would be, by Willa’s estimation, about sixty. “And?”

  “Well, Beau’s missus, that’s Heddy Radley. She makes those watermelon pickles that always take first prize at the county fair? Seems she’s got the arthritis pretty bad.”

  “I’m sorry to hear that.” If they got a break in the weather early, Willa thought as her mind wandered, she would see if Lily wanted to start a kitchen garden. A real one.

  “Winter’s been hard,” Ham commented. “Don’t seem to be letting up, and it’s coming to calf-pulling time.”

  “I know. I’m thinking about adding another pole barn.”

  “Might be an idea,” Ham said noncommittally, then took out his tobacco and began to meticulously roll a cigarette. “Beau’s selling out and moving down with his boy to Scottsdale.”

  “Is he?” Willa’s attention snapped back. High Springs had excellent pastureland.

  “Done made him a deal with one of those developers.” Ham laid his tongue over the paper, spat lightly. Whether it was a comment on developers or tobacco in his mouth, Willa couldn’t have said. “Going to break it up, put in some cussed dude ranch resort and raise frigging buffalo.”

  “The deal’s already made?”

  “Said it was, paid him three times what the land’s worth for ranching. Goddamn city jackals.”

  “Well, that’s that. We’d never match the price.” She blew out a breath, rubbed her hands over her face, then lowered them as another idea came to her. “What about his equipment, his cattle, horses?”

  “I’m getting to it.”

  Ham blew out smoke, watched it drift to the ceiling. Willa imagined cities being built, leveled, new stars being born, novas.

  “He’s got a new baler. Barely three seasons old. Wood sure would like to have it. Don’t think much of his string of horses, but he’s a good cattleman, Beau is.” He paused, smoked some more. Oaks grew from acorns. “Told him I thought you’d pay two-fifty a head for what he had on the feedlot. He didn’t seem insulted by it.”

  “How many head?”

  “About two hundred, good Hereford beef.”

  “All right. Make the deal.”

  “All right. There’s more.” Ham tapped his cigarette out, settled back. The fire was warm, the chair soft. “Beau’s got two hands. One’s a college boy he just signed on last year out of Bozeman. One of those animal husbandry fellas. Beau says he’s got highfalutin ideas but he’s smart as a whip. Knows to beat all about crossbreeding and embryo transplants. The other’s Ned Tucker, known him ten years easy. Good cowboy, steady worker.”

  “Hire them,” Willa said into the next pause. “At whatever wage they were getting at High Springs.”

  “Told Beau I figured that. He liked the idea. Feels warm toward Ned. Wants him to be settled at a good spread.” He started to rise, then settled back again. “I got something else to say.”

  Her brow raised. “So say it.”

  “Maybe you think I can’t handle my job no more.”

  Now it was shock, plain and simple, on her face. “Why would I think that? Why would you think that?”

  “Seems to me you’re doing your work and half of mine besides, with a little of everybody else’s tossed in. If you ain’t in here going over your papers, then you’re out riding fence, checking pasture, looking at the equipment, doctoring cows.”

  “I’m operator now, and you know damn well I couldn’t run this place without you.”

  “Maybe I do.” But it had been an opening and had gotten her full attention. “And maybe I been asking myself what the hell you’re trying to prove to a dead man.”

  She opened her mouth, closed it, swallowed. “I don’t know what you’re talking about.”

  “Hell you don’t.” Anger hastened his words and brought him out of the chair. “You think I don’t see, I don’t know. You think somebody who tanned your hide when you needed it and bandaged your hurts don’t know what’s inside your head? You listen to me, girl,’ cause you’re too big and mean for me to turn over my knee like I used to. You can beat yourself into the ground from here to the Second Coming and it don’t mean a damn to Jack Mercy.”

  “It’s my ranch now,” she said evenly. “Or a third of it is.”

  He nodded, pleased to hear the echo of resentment in her tone. “Yeah, and he slapped you with that too, just like he slapped you all your life. He didn’t do what was right for you, what was fitting. Now, maybe I think more of those two girls than I did when they first came around, but that ain’t the point. He did what he did to you ’cause he could, that’s all. And he brought in overseers from outside Mercy.”

  Even as her temper simmered to the surface, she realized something she’d overlooked. “It should have been you,” she said quietly. “I’m sorry, Ham. It never even occurred to me. It should have been you supervising the ranch through this year. I should have thought of that before, and realized how insulting it was.”

  Insulting it was, but insults—some insults—he could live with. “I ain’t asking you to think of it. And I ain’t particularly insulted. It was just like him.”

  “Yeah.” She sighed once. “It was just like him.”

  “I don’t have anything against Ben and Nate, they’re good men. Fair. And it would take a brainless moose not to see what Jack was up to, bringing Ben around here. Around you. But I ain’t talking about that.” He waved a hand at her as she scowled. “You got nothing to prove to Jack Mercy, and it’s time somebody said so to your face.” He nodded briskly. “So I am.”

  “I can’t just push it away. He was my father.”

  “We pump sperm out of a bull and stick it in a cow, that don’t make that bull a father.”