by Amie Denman
She was already there on the boardwalk, standing with her face turned to the ocean. She wore a loose white blouse that floated in the breeze and made her look like one of the many carefree tourists enjoying a summer’s day.
Laura turned and saw him, and her smile gave him a shot of encouragement. He made himself take long, slow steps instead of running. He wanted to scoop her into his arms, but he settled for standing only inches from her, one hand on the railing. They faced each other in silence for a moment.
“The whole town is talking about you,” he said, breaking the tension.
“I hope they’re talking about Charlie, too. He carried a woman out of a burning house.”
Tony laughed. “Who cares about Charlie? You pulled a baby out of your turnout coat. That’s solid gold in the realm of public opinion. And in my opinion.”
Laura smiled. “That’s not what I asked you here to talk about.”
“Good.”
“This has been quite a summer. When I got here, I didn’t want to go back to my old life, but I didn’t know what I wanted to do instead. That beach rescue my first week...” she paused and raised her eyes to meet his “...it led me straight to you.”
“I’m glad,” he said, resisting the urge to wrap his fingers over hers on the railing.
“I felt empowered again for the first time since Adam died. It was as if there was something I could do to move forward without always being hindered by that awful, senseless loss. The more I trained and learned, the stronger I felt.”
Tony listened with every nerve in his body, hoping the conversation was going where he wanted it to, needed it to.
“But there was something in my path. Someone, actually,” she said. “I refused to let my feelings for you get in my way.”
“Sorry,” Tony said.
“Don’t be. It wasn’t your fault I fell in love with you a little more every single day.”
“You did?” he said, hope taking flame inside him.
“But that was the problem. I couldn’t be with you and also be on the department, especially when you were acting like a big protective mama bear.”
“Let’s go with papa bear if you ever tell this story to anyone else.”
Laura laughed. “And I was also afraid of confusing my feelings about firefighting with my feelings for you.”
“And now?” he asked, taking her hand.
“Now I’m sure I love firefighting.”
“And?” Tony asked, feeling almost certain he knew where she was going.
“And I love you.”
Tony wrapped his arms around her and kissed her forehead.
“Not so fast,” she said, but she didn’t move away. Instead she looped her arms around his neck. “You haven’t heard my plan for staying in Cape Pursuit.”
“Fine,” he said. “I’ll demote myself and make you chief. I think everyone likes you better anyway, and you definitely have better press coverage.”
Laura laughed. “You don’t have to go that far. I’ve decided to enroll in fire school and become a professional firefighter.”
Tony held her close and took a deep breath of ocean air. “I’m not surprised, and I would never stand in your way. You can’t teach someone instinct and passion, and you have both.”
“I can’t promise I’ll work on the Cape Pursuit Department when I finish my classes,” she said. “There are other departments close by, though, so I hope I could stay in town.”
“I respect that,” he said, “but I may try to change your mind because I want to recruit the best firefighters for my crew.”
Laura kissed him, long and sweet as her fingers played through his hair. Tony never wanted to leave that boardwalk if he could keep her in his arms.
“I love you,” she said.
“And I love you.”
“There’s just one thing more that I need,” Laura said.
“Anything.”
“I need an excellent study partner for my classes.”
“I’m your man,” Tony said, holding her close and feeling a greater happiness than he’d ever known.
* * *
Keep reading for an excerpt from Montana Dad by Jeannie Watt.
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Montana Dad
by Jeannie Watt
CHAPTER ONE
ALEX RYAN CLIMBED out of her car and stretched the kinks out of her back before swinging the door shut with a satisfying slam. Two thousand miles, three nights on the road, four days of checking the rearview mirror for familiar-looking cars, and she was finally here.
And she was alone. She was sure of it.
She’d had the highway to herself as she left the Gavin, Montana, real-estate office where she’d picked up the keys to both the house and the gate closing off her isolated home from anyone who accidentally started down the road. The graveled lane leading from the highway to the ranch turnoff had been equally empty, and when she’d gotten out of the car to unlock the gate, the only sign of life had been a flock of geese flying toward a distant river.
Yes. Alone.
She let out a long breath and rolled her shoulders as she took stock of her purchase. The two-story house was smaller than she remembered. More run-down. The paint was flaking and one of the shutters hung at an odd angle. Behind the house, the garden shed was losing its roof, and the barn didn’t look as if it was in much better shape and the low hanging rainclouds made everything look just that much drearier. But it was home. Alex pulled the keys out of her raincoat pocket and crossed the weathered porch to the equally weathered front door. The house and her life had a lot in common. Both needed work.
The old bolt slid sideways, and Alex pushed open the door. A wave of musty air rolled over her and then a sharp gust of wind blew in from behind her and dissipated the nasty smell. She hunched her shoulders against the cool air and stepped inside, letting the door swing shut behind her.
The house was totally, utterly silent. The kind of silence that pressed in on the ears...the kind of silence Alex relished. She stood for a good minute, straining her ears to hear anything over the sound of the breeze lightly rattling the shutters.
Not so much as a creak inside the place. She didn’t know what she would have done had she heard a creak. Investigate? Dash for the door?
She was tired. And jumpy. A rotten combination and one she’d been living with for over two months. But a faint stirring of excitement began to bloom inside her as she stood in the center of the empty living room, wrinkling her nose against the musty smell that resurfaced now that the door was closed.
This was her house. A place to rebuild. A place to start a new life, far from the disaster that had been her old.
Nobody here would look sideways at her when she entered a store, or suddenly stop talking when she came into a room. No one would be caught creeping around her property. The encounter with the person in her living room a few days after she’d been cleared of criminal charges might have been unrelated to everything else that had gone down over the past several weeks, but she was taking no chances. She’d moved in with her mother after the break-in and endured almost three weeks of “I told you so” before closing the private deal on the house and heading across the country.
Alex walked through the living room and dining room to the smallish kitchen with its painted beadboard walls and limited counter space. There was work to be done here—painting, if nothing else. She tilted her chin up to study the grease-stained ceiling above the stove. A ventilation fan would be a wonderful addition to the room.
Funny that she didn’t remember the place being this small and...greasy.
There was no longer a table or a rolling cart—only about twenty-four inches of counter space on either side of the enameled cast-iron sink, which would be adequate space for Alex’s needs, because she didn’t see herself doing a lot of entertaining.
A choked laugh escaped her lips. Had she really given up her new apartment with the state-of-the-art kitchen that she’d loved so much for this?
Yes. And you are fortunate to have this place.
Agreed.
Things weren’t perfect, but buying this house from her aunt Juliet gave her a place to land far away from the drama she’d been facing at home. A place where she had a passing familiarity, yet no one knew her. But it almost hadn’t happened.
Less than a week before Alex contacted Juliet about buying the place, a neighbor had made an offer on the property, which Juliet had been in the process of accepting, pending loan approval. Alex had pleaded with her aunt to sell to her instead, digging deep into her savings to outbid the neighbor.
Juliet allowed herself to be swayed, and they’d closed the deal days later, signing a private contract. No mortgage. No paper trail. Juliet’s name was still on the deed, for the time being, and she carried the loan—which she could afford to do, having outlived three relatively wealthy husbands. The trick, she’d confided to Alex during their cookie making, was to marry a much older man. They appreciated younger women, expected less and gave more.
At the time the advice had seemed callous, but Alex had thought maybe she’d understand it better once she grew up. And now she did. Her aunt Juliet used people, but she’d also come to Alex’s rescue—for a price—so she wasn’t going to get all judgy.
The important thing was that she had the house, and here she would be Alex Ryan, newcomer, self-employed technical writer if anyone asked about her occupation, rather than Alex Ryan Evans, private investment firm accountant and embezzlement suspect. Technical writing seemed like a believable pretend occupation—one that didn’t invite awkward questions, because it wasn’t all that exciting.
She would have loved to have landed a job related to accounting or finance while living in Montana, but there was no way she’d make it through a background check without a sea of red flags popping up, thanks to Jason Stoddard, her former boss. She’d left behind a lot of things she loved, including a career, because of that man, who was now probably living the good life on a beach in Rio.
Alex tamped down yet another wave of impotent anger. It did her no good to mentally rail against Jason. The guy had played her and that was that. She was still suffering repercussions, but here in Montana, as long as she kept to herself, her past should stay where it belonged—in an upscale Virginia community.
She walked through the dining room to the staircase leading to the three upstairs bedrooms, and automatically went to the room that had been hers during her summer visit. She crossed to the window and looked out over the fields and river. This would be her office when she decided it was safe to resume her accounting career, but that time, she feared, might be a long way off. She had to be certain that all repercussions of the nightmare phase of her life were over and done. That no one was looking for her, believing that she knew more about Jason’s whereabouts than she did.
As she opened the closet and took in the unexpected stack of cardboard boxes and plastic storage bins, the distinctive sound of water hitting wood brought her up short.
No.
A quick look into the room that had once been her aunt’s crafting room told her yes. The roof had a leak. A persistent one, judging from the size of the stain on the ceiling.
She needed to find a towel and a container to catch the drips.
But if the biggest problem she had in her new life was a leaky roof, she could live with it. Such things were to be expected in an older house—especially one that had been bought sight unseen and hadn’t been inhabited for almost two years. The only thing that bothered her was that she’d really hoped to lay low for a few months. Assure herself that she hadn’t been followed. That the ski-mask-wearing guy who’d broken into her apartment and slammed her up against the wall hadn’t been one of the people Jason had screwed out of a fortune before taking off to parts unknown.
No one believed she was clueless as to his whereabouts, but there was no evidence that she was involved, either. Some of her former neighbors and the people associated with Stoddard Investments would probably take her disappearance as proof positive, but she couldn’t keep them from thinking that, so she wasn’t going to worry about it. She’d leave that to her mother, Cécile Ryan Evans.
Alex watched as another drip slowly built, the droplet growing so slowly that it would probably be several minutes until gravity took hold and pulled it from the ceiling. A slow leak. Which meant she would have time to find someone to fix it, as much as she hated having anyone on the property just yet. She was still too raw.
But leaks did tend to grow, so she was going to have to rein in her paranoia and seek out a handyman.
Not a problem. You’re in Montana. Thousands of miles away from the people who believed she knew more than she did. She controlled access to the ranch via a locked gate, and she was about to get a very big dog.
She was going to be okay hiring a roof-repair guy. But she was going to settle in, get her bearings first.
* * *
“DO YOU WANT me to come to the Dunlop ranch with you?”
Nick Callahan hadn’t told his sister, Katie, where he was going that morning, but she was pretty good at putting two and two together. “I can handle it,” he said dryly.
“Be tactful.”
As if he wouldn’t be tactful. He wasn’t exactly the laid-back guy he’d once been, but he could still finesse a situation. “Thanks for the suggestion.”
“Daddy!”
Nick’s youngest daughter, Bailey, came barreling out of the kitchen at a dead run. He swung her up in his arms.
“What’s up?”
“She thinks that you need to stay and make cookies with us,” Kendra said from behind him.
“I’ll be back to frost them,” he promised his five-year-old as his almost-three-year-old patted his face with her hands.
“More like to eat the frosting,” Katie murmured.
“I do my part.”
She rolled her eyes and reached for Bailey, masterfully transferring the toddler into her arms and then balancing her on one hip. Nick gave Bailey a quick kiss on top of her curly head as his grandmother Rosalie came out of the kitchen, wiping her hands on a towel.
“Are you going to the Dunlop ranch?”
Was every woman in his family a mind reader? “Yes.”
His grandmother nodded but had the good grace not to remind him to be tactful. “I have to head back to town as soon as the cookie dough is finished, but I want to know what happens.”
“I thought you were staying for the day.”
The ranch was now Rosalie’s home away from home. She’d lived there for most of her life, but after the death of her husband, she moved to town where she and her best friend, Gloria Gable, bought a house and started a gift and garden business.
“Gloria called a little while ago. We’re meeting with a local artisan this afternoon to see if her creations are a good fit for The Daisy Petal.”
“I’ll keep you in the loop,” Nick promised.
“Thank you.” Rosalie turned to the girls. “Who wants to turn on the electric mixer?”
“I do!” Kendra gave Nick a quick hug. “Hurry back, Daddy.” She followed Rosalie into the kitche
n as Katie hefted Bailey a little higher on her hip.
“Good luck. And remember, you catch more flies with, well, you know.”
“I will be tactful.”
Katie raised an eyebrow as if she didn’t fully believe him, and he couldn’t really blame her. Two weeks ago, when he’d discovered that his offer on the property next door—property his family needed for access to their ranch—had been rejected, he’d pretty much gone ballistic. He’d been outbid at the last minute and the seller hadn’t given him a chance to bid again. Juliet Dunlop simply told him the deal was off.
Since that time, he hadn’t managed to get much information on the new buyer, except that she’d paid cash and was from the East Coast. That smacked of entitlement, but he told himself not to jump to conclusions. He needed very much to get along with this woman.
“Hey. I used to be charming.”
Katie smiled a little. “Once again, good luck.”
Nick left the house to a chorus of “Bye, Daddy,” and got into his truck, drove over the cattle guard, then took the bumpy side road that led from the Callahan ranch to the old Dunlop place. The gate that separated the two properties was constructed of three strands of barbed wire connected to thin posts. He unhooked the latch and dragged the wire across the road, drove through and left the gate lying beside the road. He’d be back soon enough, and the cattle were on the river pasture, so they wouldn’t be straying through the gate.
Losing the bridge two months ago during a series of spring floods had hurt, and now the family had to jump through hoops to get it rebuilt. Permitting regulations had changed since the original bridge had been rebuilt in the 1960s, and the process was moving forward at a glacial pace thanks to a county commissioner who kept throwing roadblocks into the process and Nick suspected he knew why.
