Big Sky Ever After: a Montana Romance Duet

by M. L. Buchman

  “I finished my homework and brushed my teeth and watered Mama’s violets, Daddy. Will you read me a story?”

  She held one of those books about rabbits and possums and old Mr. McGregor. They were stories for a child younger than eight, in Luke’s opinion.

  Patrick scrubbed a hand over his face. “Sure, Pumpkin. I’ll be up in a minute.”

  “You always say that.” Lena’s tone was hesitant rather than accusing. Everything about the girl had become hesitant, while her father’s approach to life had become aggressively heedless.

  “See the clock?” Luke asked. “I will keep track of the time, and when it has been five minutes, I will remind your daddy that he’s given you his word, and up the stairs he will go.” On the end of Luke’s boot, if necessary.

  “Thanks, Uncle Luke.” Lena scampered across the kitchen and gave him a good squeeze around the neck, bashing him in the ear with her book, then scampered out the door without even looking at her father.

  “Get back into counseling,” Luke said. “Find salvation, find another woman, take holy orders, or bay at the full moon, but you can’t go on the way you have been.”

  Patrick tossed the ketchup bottle in the air and caught it. “Yes, boss.”

  “You’d better be up those steps in four-and-a-half minutes, or you’ll have another apology to make.”

  Patrick rose and took a longneck out of the fridge. “What’s one more when I have so many? Leave me alone, Luke.”

  And leaving Patrick alone also wasn’t the right thing to do, but Luke apparently had a bedtime story to read—another story. At least for the damned rabbit, there would be a happy ending.

  “You were holding Miss Bridget a mite close,” the bartender said.

  “She was holding me just as closely,” Magnus replied, and that had felt better than it ought to have. By the end of the second dance, Bridget had been pliant and relaxed in his arms, following his lead instinctively, though he’d been doing little more than swaying to the beat and trying not to get too obvious an erection.

  Which had also felt better than it should have.

  The bartender braced both hands on the bar and leaned close. “Friendly warning. You mess with that little gal, and Harley will be the least of your troubles. She has three brothers who will swing first and ask questions when they’re done stompin’ on your Scottish ass.”

  Magnus would place Bridget closer to thirty than twenty-five and put her intelligence—emotional as well as academic—at well above average.

  “You disrespect the lady if you think I could impose on her and survive the encounter. She has a mind and will of her own, and those she calls friends ought to respect her judgment.”

  Gray eyes grew as cold as a Hebridean winter sky. Too late, Magnus recalled that America was saturated with guns by Scottish standards.

  Then a grin split the bartender’s face, and he extended a hand. “I’m Thaddeus Martin. Everybody calls me Preacher, ’cept Juanita. She calls me whatever she damned well pleases. Any friend of Bridget’s is a friend of ours.”

  Magnus shook, because making friends with bartenders was part of his job. At an establishment serving liquor, bookkeepers were also surprisingly influential when it came to what inventory was ordered and in what quantities, but bartenders actually dispensed the product and monitored those consuming it.

  Bridget emerged from the hallway leading to the facilities. She had a neat way of moving, neither timid nor bold. She was comfortable here, alert but not on guard, and she had no need to call attention to herself.

  Somewhere in the middle of that last dance, Magnus’s body had begun to notice her, and thus Magnus had begun to notice his body. He worked out, he played golf. He’d been dragged on his share of hill-walking dates and preferred not to die of an avoidable coronary, so he watched what he ate.

  Magnus had come of age regarding sexual attraction as a normal preoccupation for the male in his reproductive prime. Managing that preoccupation fell somewhere between a delight and an ongoing chore. Since turning thirty, the preoccupation had faded, and Magnus had told himself that was normal too.

  Maybe spending a pleasurable few hours with a friendly stranger when on holiday was also normal.

  “Shall we enjoy another dram?” Magnus had to bend close to Bridget to be heard over the crowd now stomping and whooping on the dance floor.

  “Your choice of single malt, and then let’s move to the lounge.”

  That was a yes. Magnus chose a lovely eighteen-year-old Speyside that never failed to impress. He paid the bar tab and the total for the group at Harley’s table, then followed Bridget from the bar. She led him down a plank-floored corridor lined with vintage rodeo posters, and the noise of the dance floor faded behind them.

  “Tell me about living in Montana,” Magnus said as they took a small table in a quiet corner. “I’ve never seen terrain like this before.”

  “I suspect life in Montana is like life in your Highlands. Self-sufficiency is prized, but we try to look after one another. Tons of scenery, and the weather does whatever the heck it pleases. This is a great whisky.”

  “This whisky is an old friend. You don’t speak of your home state with any great affection.” And that was sad.

  “Maybe I need to travel elsewhere to see what a bargain I have here. The standing joke is we have ten months of winter and two months of road construction—or relatives.”

  Bridget leaned her head against the cushioned upholstery, exposing a graceful line of shoulder, throat, and jaw.

  “You are tired.” Magnus was too, having driven beyond his scheduled itinerary. He’d run out of distilleries to visit and hadn’t been interested in starting on the breweries. Driving on the wrong side of the road and sitting on the wrong side of the car meant the whole undertaking was more nerve-racking than a holiday ought to be.

  “I’m weary to the bone,” Bridget replied, “but it’s always that way by the end of winter. The calving and lambing are brutally demanding, and just when you think spring has finally beaten winter into submission, one more blizzard—the third one more blizzard of the month—comes roaring down on an Alberta Clipper.” She took another sip of her drink. “I argued with my brothers at the supper table.”

  The location apparently exacerbated the offense. “I’m sorry. They upset you.”

  “They live to upset me, and I return the favor.”

  Magnus asked the question his father had taught him to pose when harm had been done among family members. “Can you make it right?”

  “No, I cannot. They want too much, and I’m saying no because I mean no.”

  That was a relief, actually. If Magnus offered his company for the night, Bridget would turn him down flat unless she was genuinely interested. No should mean no.

  “Maybe time will help. I nearly came to blows with my great-uncle recently. Fergus is eighty if he’s a day and speaks the Doric dialect with an aggressively unintelligible accent. He venerates the past and accuses me of venerating profit.”

  Elias had been the only other person present during that altercation. He’d made what peace he could between Magnus and a curmudgeon determined to turn a distillery into a monument to maudlin sentiment.

  Bridget brushed a glance over Magnus. “Are you ashamed of what you said?”

  A useful question. “No, but I might have said it more respectfully.”

  She patted his hand. “Don’t do that. If you’d been more polite, he would have steamrolled right over you. Some people don’t listen unless you shout, and I’ve begun to suspect that’s my fault too.”

  Magnus caught her hand and kept their fingers linked. “You shout out of habit, do you?”

  “I let them ignore me until ignoring me becomes a habit. I’ve trained them, the way a horse trains us to react when it paws in the crossties.”

  The moment called for flirtation, a kiss to her knuckles, a witty quip, a toast, but Magnus was too annoyed with her brothers to bother with any of that.

  �
��Untrain them, Bridget. Or perhaps this disagreement was the first step in that direction?”

  She smiled that big, beaming, happy smile. “You catch on fast, Magnus. Makes me wonder where else you might be a quick study.”

  “Are you flirting with me?”

  Her smile wavered. “If you have to ask, then it’s not very effective flirting, is it? Tell me some more about this whisky.”

  “For the first time in years, I’m not interested in talking about whisky.” Magnus wanted to know how she kissed and what her hair looked like when not all tucked up in that fancy braid. He wanted to learn the contours of her bare shoulders and how she best liked to cuddle.

  “What are you interested in, Magnus?”

  He was interested in her and being intimate with her, but why was this conversation so difficult? Magnus recalled the moves—they were hardly complicated—but Bridget was complicated. She wasn’t on the prowl, wasn’t trolling for a ride, wasn’t forgettable enough for a man who’d be back in Scotland a few weeks hence.

  “I’m interested in inviting you to my room,” Magnus said. “My hotel is two doors up.”

  Oh, that was smooth. Bridget looked at him as if he’d spoken in Uncle Fergus’s Doric dialect, which was barely related to English on Fergus’s most sober day.

  “Accompanying strange men to their hotel rooms is not my usual style.”

  Nor was inviting strange women to bed Magnus’s style. He’d done his share of rebounding in stupid directions, taking what was on offer, but Bridget wasn’t on offer in that sense, nor was she a stupid direction.

  Magnus wasn’t quite sure what Bridget was, but he liked what he knew of her, and attraction seemed to grow from that liking rather than the reverse.

  But the lady apparently wasn’t feeling the chemistry. Bollocks. “Then we will enjoy the rest of our drinks, and you will recommend the local sights to me. I’m not due at my next destination until the day after tomorrow, which puts me at loose ends.”

  He was ahead of schedule, which for a vacationing man was probably a form of failure.

  Bridget slid closer on the bench they shared, so she and Magnus were hip to hip. “I could use a distraction right about now, Magnus. I mean no disrespect, but you’re passing through and I’m plotting DEFCON 1 for my brothers. You would be nothing but a distraction, and then so long, cowboy. Happy trails and all that.”

  That had been Magnus’s public service announcement until five years ago, though he preferred sailing analogies to talk of cowboys.

  Magnus looped an arm around her shoulders. “I’ll be your distraction, Bridget, and you can be mine. Shall we order something to eat?”

  “Now that is a fine idea,” she said, settling against him. “I was too angry at dinner to do justice to the cooking, and I intend to be up tonight well past my bedtime.”

  Magnus passed her the menu and signaled the server.

  College for Bridget had been a blur of book learning stashed between doing her part for the ranch and figuring out from Grandpap MacDeaver how to run the distillery business—not simply how to make whisky, which education had begun before Bridget could read. Whisky-making was regulated by local, state, national, and even international bodies, though Logan Bar had yet to test the crowded and shark-infested whisky-export waters.

  Grandpap had favored staying in control to staying up with the times. Bridget had promised to honor that legacy. He’d gone so far as the let Mama change the name of the business upon her marriage—from MacDeaver’s to Logan Bar—but that had been his only concession to the passage of time.

  Running the business, as opposed to minding the still, took a level of know-how Bridget hadn’t gravitated to instinctively. Her strength was her nose, not a head for numbers. Law school had allowed her a semblance of a social life. She’d had the occasional hookup, friends with benefits, casual relationships, and a few near misses.

  “I’m not a prude,” she told her reflection in the mirror of Magnus’s hotel room. “I’m not Martina either.”

  Martina spent about eight seconds on each bronc, as it were, and made no apologies for enjoying variety—not that she should.

  Bridget hadn’t been in the saddle since… she couldn’t recall since when.

  She emerged from the bathroom to find Magnus sprawled in a wing chair. He was an attractive man, even when he was just checking messages, though Montana was full of handsome specimens.

  “Everyone okay back home?” Bridget asked, taking the second wing chair.

  “Everyone’s fast asleep,” Magnus said. “Or just about to wake up. Have you let somebody know where you are?”

  That was hookup safety rule number one, wasn’t it? “Have you?”

  “My cousin Elias. I hope I woke him up too, given all the times he’s sent me cheery little texts from Monaco or Budapest or Singapore.”

  Magnus surprised her. Guys didn’t observe the hookup safety protocol, but Magnus had. Even Harley’s friends didn’t try to talk him down from stupid decisions, but Magnus had. Guys didn’t linger over a shared dessert of huckleberry cheesecake when the rest of the evening had been agreed to, but Magnus had.

  He’d studied business law, with a side of land use—a big deal in Scotland, apparently—and had an undergrad in environmental science.

  “You ever been married, Magnus?”

  He put the phone down. “I am not married, Bridget, and neither are you. I also don’t have children or a dog, though I am permitted to share my quarters with a pair of geriatric cats. Having second thoughts?”

  “Having I-don’t-recall-the-tune, can-you-hum-a-few-bars thoughts.” The whisky glow had worn off, which also didn’t help a gal get her buckaroo on.

  Magnus rose from the chair, scooped her up, and resettled with her in his lap.

  Bridget was too surprised to fuss him for it.

  “Hum a few bars, she says to a man who’s notoriously tone deaf. I liked it when you sat next me, right next to me. I like how indignant you became when my fork ventured too close to your half of a forty-pound piece of cheesecake. I like that arguing with family doesn’t sit well with you, but I wish you could put that aside for a moment and kiss me.”

  She scooted around so she straddled his lap. “I can manage that last.”

  She’d brushed her teeth twice, and Magnus had found a moment to brush his as well. Another surprise, maybe the best one so far.

  Thank God, he wasn’t a pushy kisser. He let Bridget make the overtures, and she wasn’t in a hurry. Heaven knew when she’d find another dance partner, so she intended to savor the one she’d lassoed.

  Magnus apparently intended to savor her too.

  He slid his hands around her waist, then up her back, tracing bones, exploring muscles, and easing away tension. He threaded his fingers into her hair and cradled the back of her head as she took a taste of his mouth.

  They slow danced through their first kiss, and Bridget let go of worries she’d been clutching too close for too long. Things at home had hit the fan, but in this space, with this man, everything was easy and sweet.

  In another few minutes, Bridget was lying across Magnus’s lap, unbuttoning his shirt, and toeing off her flats. Her phone buzzed, but it took her a few moments to distinguish the sensation in her back pocket from all the pleasure gathering inside her.

  “Phone,” she muttered against Magnus’s mouth.

  He eased away, and Bridget scooted around to glower at her screen.

  Martina. Everything OK?

  Bridget texted back the hotel and room number. Going just fine. For a damned change.

  She got a smiley face in return, turned off the ringer, and set the phone beside Magnus’s on the end table.

  “You, sir, are wearing too many clothes.”

  He rose with Bridget in his arms. “I can fix that. Would you like to use the shower?”

  “I’m good.” Her hair was still damp in its braid, in fact, which would make it all ridiculous tomorrow—another reason to be unhappy with her br
others.

  Magnus set her down on a hundred-acre bed. “I’ll join you in five minutes. If you want to borrow one of my shirts, you’re welcome to rummage through my suitcase.”

  The offer was tempting. Bridget instead filled a glass of water at the kitchenette sink, set her pack of condoms on the night table, and shucked out of her clothes. The shower ran briefly, and doubts resurged.

  She was about to… there were a zillion words for what she was about to do. Shag, screw, do the nasty, slam the jam, win the pants-off dance-off, do the horizontal greased-weasel tango.

  Cowboys were a poetic lot.

  Mostly she was about to take a small, prosaic, unplanned risk. Beneath a frisson of trepidation and a lingering buzz of arousal was some pride. She climbed onto the bed and got under the covers. I am not married to that damned distillery, Lucas Logan, so there.

  Magnus strolled out of the bathroom wearing only a towel around his hips. “That is a pensive expression, madam.”

  He had just the right amount of chest hair—not a bear-skin rug, not a Ken-doll caricature of a masculine chest. He was well muscled and well proportioned, and as he threw the deadbolt and chain at the door, Bridget wished he’d lose the towel.

  But then, she was the one with the sheets tucked up under her arms.

  “Lights on or off?” Magnus asked.

  Considerate of him. “Up to you.”

  He killed the lights in the room, which left a single shaft spilling out of the bathroom. He stood in that beam of light and unwrapped the towel from his waist. Without the towel, well-built became a work of art. His body flowed from muscular legs to smooth flanks, to trim waist, tight butt, long back, and shoulders exactly the right breadth.

  He’d hold up well, which was the evolutionary objective of strong conformation.

  “Condoms are on the night table,” Bridget said, lest there by any misunderstanding on that entirely nonnegotiable point.

  “I have some as well,” he said, prowling across the room. “We’ll use yours, if you’d rather.”

  Whatever else was true about Magnus, he understood a woman’s need to be cautious and feel safe.