Big Sky Ever After: a Montana Romance Duet

by M. L. Buchman

She always, always drew horses, of all the goddamned subjects to choose, but she’d been as fixated on the equine even before her mother had died.

  Patrick peered over Lena’s shoulder at a plunging, rearing trio of steeds. Her childish composition bore an eerie echo of the sculpture of Laocoön and his sons being attacked by Athena’s serpents. Old Laocoön had tried to warn his people about the Greeks’ tricks: Equō nē crēdite, Teucrī…

  Don’t trust the horse, Trojans…

  Patrick sat on the bed next to Lena’s desk, knowing she’d draw until she was ready to talk. He’d been the same way, and Judith had had the patience to outlast his muse. Now the bottle called to him as strongly as a blank sheet of drawing paper ever had.

  And his sister ran a distillery. Athena—the goddess of wisdom—was still in the business of sending serpents to plague the unwary.

  “You drawing any particular horses?”

  Lena sat back, scowling at her creation. She had her mother’s eyebrows and nose. If a nose could be fierce, Judith’s nose had been fierce.

  “That one in the middle is Blitzen.”

  Blitzen was Luke’s preferred mount. A big, ornery gelding who could go all day without faltering. “What about the other two?”

  “Barley and Albert.”

  Bridget’s and Shamus’s horses, respectively, though neither in real life had a mean bone in their bodies. That was the trouble with horses. They didn’t have to be mean, stupid, badly trained, or ill to kill you.

  “They look pretty upset,” Patrick said.

  He was upset. He wanted to cuddle Lena in his lap as he’d done when she was small, wanted to assure her that come the weekend, they’d kidnap her mama and go for ice cream, and that would make everything all better.

  Death had kidnapped her mother, and not even Patrick’s soul would ransom Judith back.

  “They can’t find Da Vinci,” Lena said, erasing an extravagant length of mane, then shading it in again. “He ran away.”

  Da Vinci was Patrick’s horse, who’d been returned to the working string, the last Patrick knew.

  “Was Da Vinci a bad boy?” Patrick asked around a perpetual lump in his throat.

  “He colicked,” Lena said. “He wants to get down in the grass and roll, but that will only make it worse.”

  Colic could kill a horse, and it was an awful way to go. Lena was absolutely right that rolling around could turn a bellyache into a twisted bowel, in which case death was often a mercy.

  “You might try using colored pencils next time.”

  Lena gave him a look so like her mother that Patrick rose from the bed. “I have to do my homework now, Daddy.”

  “You get your smarts from your mama. I’ll leave you to it.”

  He brushed a kiss to the top of her head, patted her shoulder, and escaped. After the dustup at the kitchen table, and Bridget pitching a fit at their guest, Patrick could use a nip to take the edge off.

  He shouldn’t. The sun hadn’t set, it was Sunday, and his daughter was upset.

  But he would, because the alternative…

  “Where are you going?” Shamus asked, meeting Patrick in the hallway.

  “Straight to hell, not that it’s any of your danged business.”

  Shamus took him by the arm, which was plain down stupid in Patrick’s present mood. “We are not having this argument outside Lena’s bedroom door. Is she okay?”

  What little girl could be okay when her mama was dead? “She’s doing her homework.”

  “She does her homework on Friday nights, Patrick.”

  “Maybe she didn’t finish it.”

  They’d reached the top of the steps, and a weird urge crossed Patrick’s mind to toss himself over the railing. The French had a phrase for those kinds of thoughts, something about flirting with the abyss.

  “She always does her schoolwork,” Shamus said. “She asks me for help with the math, goes to Luke with history questions, and saves everything else for Bridget.”

  “But no questions for dear old dad, which is good, because I don’t have any answers.”

  “What do you have, Patrick?”

  Patrick sat on the steps, because that was safer than standing at the top of the staircase. If he tossed himself over the railing, the pain of landing might wake him up from the nightmare his life had become—but he could just as easily pitch Shamus over.

  “I have a powerful thirst that will not leave me alone,” Patrick said, “and a baby brother who takes after it.”

  Shamus sat beside him, something they’d done as kids when eavesdropping on the adults had been one of life’s imperative missions.

  “Maybe you should travel,” Shamus said. “You love all that cultural shit.”

  “If you need to get outta Dodge, Shamus, then go. I do not need to travel.” Of the entire family, Patrick was the only one who’d traveled. A year in Paris studying art, another year racketing around Europe, then the Caribbean, where he’d met Judith.

  And by Judith’s side, he would stay. Of that he was certain.

  “She died,” Shamus said. “You didn’t. Lena didn’t. I’m not saying to forget Judith, or disrespect her memory, but she’d be miserable seeing what you’ve become.”

  Shamus was trying to help. That’s what Shamus did. Luke was the leader, Shamus was the loyal follower, while Patrick was the…

  Problem.

  “I’ve become a widower, Shamus. It’s a miserable condition.” Even saying the word—widower—conjured rage, helplessness, and sorrow.

  “You’re still a father, a brother, part owner of a beautiful spread, and an artist. You throw all that away, and you’re not the man Judith thought you were.”

  Now there was a helpful truth. Patrick pushed to his feet using Shamus’s meaty shoulder as leverage.

  “I’ll check on Lena in a little bit,” Patrick said. “What was Bridget’s hissy fit at the front door about?” Give Shamus another problem to focus on, and he might leave off preaching for two goddamned minutes.

  “Bridget met up with Magnus Cromarty on Friday night. I gather he either neglected to tell her he would be staying here, or she neglected to tell him her family owned the Logan Bar guesthouse. Luke is stacking firewood for Cromarty.”

  Eavesdropping, then. Spying. Bridget had arrived to the ranch a fully formed little female at the age of eight, but Luke, Shamus, and Patrick had never really figured out how to be her brothers. Judith had pointed that out.

  “Will Cromarty buy the distillery?”

  “I hope so. Luke does too.”

  “Which might cost us Bridget. Heck of a note.”

  “We’ve already lost you and Judith, and Lena’s fading. What’s one more casualty for the sake of the great Logan Bar ranch?” Shamus was off down the stairs like a flushed rabbit, suggesting he hadn’t meant to be so honest.

  Honesty was overrated, particularly between family members. Patrick let that thought propel him into the study, where the antique glass-front liquor cabinet sat in one corner. He never drank his sister’s brew, because Bridget made the good stuff, too good for getting drunk.

  He twisted the cabinet handle, intending to pour a shot of Kentucky bourbon, but the handle didn’t give.

  Several moments of rattling and jiggling went by before Patrick realized that somebody had locked the dadgummed liquor cabinet. He felt along the top of the cabinet for the key, but no luck.

  “Bastards.”

  The solution was simple. He took the wrought-iron poker from the fireplace, tapped the glass, and broke through one pane. Easy enough to reach through and get what he needed, and to hell with people who thought they could tell a grown man what to do.

  He took the bottle with him to the door, but stopped when a vestige of artistic instinct prodded him to identify what was different about the room.

  In the early evening light, he scanned furnishings that hadn’t been moved for decades. Nobody messed with the study, except to dust and clean. This had become Shamus’s preserve, full o
f records, ledgers, and family diaries. Henry Logan II, founder of the Logan Bar, had built the fireplace with his own hands, and the gun cabinet…

  The gun cabinet was different. Not Henry’s sturdy old made-over grandfather clock, but a modern oak facsimile of an antique.

  No glass front, and Patrick would have bet his bottle of bourbon, half empty though it was, that the spiffy new gun cabinet was locked.

  Probably a good thing. There was a child in the house, after all, and glass broke all too easily.

  Chapter 5

  This distillery and the land it sits on are all I have left, Magnus.

  Bridget hadn’t meant to be that honest, because she couldn’t afford to trust H.R.M. Cromarty any farther than she could swing a whisky bottle.

  And yet, here she was, driving him up the canyon road not a day later, Patrick pale and quiet in the backseat of the ranch’s least ancient Durango. The sky was still a deceptive hurt-your-eyes blue, but the weather lady had raised tomorrow’s expected snowfall by four inches.

  “Don’t suppose you remembered to hydrate?” Bridget asked.

  “I had my usual three cups of tea.”

  Magnus was a stranger to her today. He was in jeans, flannel shirt, and boots, the same as he had been the first time she’d seen him. He probably wore the same Celtic knot belt buckle, but he’d also donned sunglasses—a necessity above the snow line in spring—and his demeanor was subtly cooler.

  He was a paying guest at the ranch, not a former lover. Certainly not a future lover either, which was what Bridget had asked for.

  “Three cups of tea isn’t hydrating, Magnus. We’ll be at seven thousand feet for much of the day, and if you hit the slopes, that number goes up.”Even Bridget felt the toll a day in the mountains took.

  “I’m not hitting the slopes. Not this trip.”

  Implying there would be other trips?

  “Then what the hell are we doing up here, mister?” Patrick asked. He hadn’t spoken for miles, though he’d at least shaved before joining this expedition.

  “I’m a purveyor of fine whiskies. I’m investigating a lucrative foreign market.”

  “Why did you drag me along?” Patrick preferred Kentucky bourbon, for breakfast, lunch, and dinner, lately.

  “Because I asked your brother Shamus, and he said for what I have in mind, you would be the better resource. He’s known to the staff and management at this resort and has been employed here as a ski instructor, ski patrol, snowboard instructor, and lift operator. Too many people know him on sight.”

  The mountain village came into view, though village was a stretch. An alpine lake—necessary at any facility that made snow—curved along one side of the road, and low-rise chalet condos flanked its shore. Behind the condos, four- and five-star hotels rose, and every amenity—every god’s-blessed amenity known to man, woman, couple, kid, or family dog—was available for a price.

  “I hate this place,” Patrick muttered.

  “It’s not exactly pristine wilderness, is it?” Magnus replied. “The resort must bring a good deal of money into the local economy, though.”

  “It’s wilderness.” Bridget pulled into a tidily plowed parking lot. “Not the kind of wilderness nature intended. Shamus used to spend half his year up here.” Now Shamus spent half his time locked in the study trying to make a nickel do the work of a dime.

  “So why are we here?” Patrick climbed out, and in the brilliant alpine sunshine, he looked like roadkill.

  “Ask Magnus.” The air was different at this altitude, colder of course and drier than hell, but also fresh as heaven. Lena claimed that even the air in Montana’s mountains felt big.

  “We’re scouting the territory,” Magnus said, tucking a purple plaid scarf around his neck. “Every restaurant, bar, casino, and coffee shop on the premises.”

  “The heck you say.” From Patrick.

  “All day won’t be long enough to get that done,” Bridget said.

  “Then we make as much progress as we can, and we’ll split up. Bridget, you’re to collect menus. Get the room-service menus if you can’t get anything else, but ask for a copy of everything that has to do with what’s being consumed here. Wine lists, dessert trays, bar food, anything.”

  That made an odd sort of sense. Just as a cowboy’s nature was arguably discernible from the state of his rig, tack, and ride, so a resort should leave some sort of fingerprints on what it served to whom, at what prices, and where.

  “I’ll be in the casino,” Patrick said.

  “Where the drinks are free?” Magnus asked, striding off in the direction of the nearest high-rise. “No, you will not. We have much to accomplish. Come along, laddie. Do cell phones work up here?”

  Most people wouldn’t have known to ask. “They do,” Bridget said.

  “Then we’ll meet in three hours at the location of your choice and compare notes. Patrick, you will see that I hydrate, or Bridget will be in a temper with us both.”

  Bridget was already halfway to a temper—so much more adult than a hissy fit—torn between wanting to protect Patrick from a stranger’s judgment—Patrick would not resist the booze offered from every direction—and envying Patrick time spent in Magnus’s company. Magnus on a mission was much like Magnus as a lover.

  Utterly focused, confident, competent, and magnificent to behold.

  “I have work to do,” she muttered.

  For a moment, though, she watched Magnus and Patrick stride along amid the towering snowbanks. Magnus was talking, and Patrick was listening.

  When was the last time Patrick had listened to anybody about anything?

  They disappeared amid a throng of people heading for the lifts—skiers, snowboarders, maybe some lifties—all decked out in brilliantly colorful, high-tech winter play clothes.

  That bunch was here to play. Bridget was here to work. Some things never changed.

  “Just the lady I’ve been longing to see,” Nathan Sturbridge murmured. “Funny we should meet up here.”

  Martina came to the Cowboy’s Cupcake almost every day for lunch, as did many people who enjoyed good food. The fare was fresh and well presented, and not too godawfully expensive. The Cupcake rode the line between being a local eatery and a tourist spot.

  For Nate, the Cupcake was one more place to pick up women, which would probably scandalize the pair of ladies who owned the place.

  “Hello, Nate.” Martina studied the chalkboard menu hanging behind the counter.

  The woman was purely beautiful. Flawless skin, true-blue eyes, features that even an airbrush couldn’t have improved upon. Her figure looked to deliver on the promise of her face, though Nate had never gotten close enough to see if the curves were real. For some women, the more gifts God gave them, the more they fretted about the one or two endowments that had been left off their list.

  “What are you having,” Nate asked, “and can I talk you into sharing a table with me?”

  She didn’t so much as turn her head. “What do you want?”

  “No need to be unfriendly. I have four rabid clients waiting to jump my handsome ass over at the courthouse, and if I take lunch back to the law office, my paralegal will expect me to answer eight phone calls before I even sit down. You’ll protect me from tourists deciding to share my table when all I want is a peaceful meal.”

  “Go away, Nate.”

  Martina had standards, which trait Nate had to admire. What exactly those standards might be, when she’d two-step and boot-scoot with a different guy every weekend, Nate did not know, but standards were a good thing.

  “C’mon, Martina, you know I worry about Bridget. The woman has a lot on her plate.” Most of which Nate had put there, and thus Bridget still needed constant surveillance.

  A pair of girls walked in wearing jeans, down vests, and fuzzy boots, the shop bell tinkling as the door closed behind them. Nate put them at junior-senior year, maybe taking an extra spring break.

  “Wind’s picking up,” Martina said. “Tempera
ture will be dropping before sunset.”

  “Thank you for the weather report. How is Bridget doing?”

  “You should ask her.”

  “We didn’t part on the best of terms, Martina, and I don’t entirely blame Bridget. She had the potential to be a damned fine lawyer.” Though she’d lacked confidence. Too bad about that.

  “While you have more confidence than brains.” Martina placed her order, some exotic bean-and-bacon-topped-with-fancy-flowers salad and a cheese scone.

  “Don’t be twitchy, Martina. I’m worried about somebody who was once my business associate. Bridget was sitting alone at the bar on Friday for longer than was decent, and then she went off with some stranger.”

  Harley Gummo had passed that much along, though Nate had the sense there was more that Harley wasn’t saying. If Bridget was turning into a drunk like her brother, she might start throwing around wild accusations about her former partner.

  A woman on the path to ruin would say just about anything, not that anybody would believe the poor little darlin’.

  Nate ordered a roast beef sandwich. This was Montana, for God’s sake. Eating beef and driving a pickup came under the heading of civic duty.

  Martina paid at the register. “Bridget didn’t give me the details, Nate, and they are nobody’s business but hers.”

  “I don’t like to think of a member of the bar comporting herself in a less than sensible manner,” Nate said, sparing a smile for the young lady behind the counter. “Bridget isn’t quite as all-fired in charge and on top of things as you might think.”

  Martina had been a cop in Helena. Five years of that had probably been enough for her, and truth be told, she was too damned pretty for the job anyway. She still had a good dead-eye stare, though.

  “You tell one more lie about a friend of mine, Nate Sturbridge, and I will put out the word that you have trouble getting it up.”

  The two girls in line behind him had gone silent.

  “I guess that means you’re not joining me for lunch.”

  Martina shot a look over Nate’s shoulder at the girls and collected her food. “Nobody with any sense should join you for lunch.”