Big Sky Ever After: a Montana Romance Duet

by M. L. Buchman

  “Just a wee headache.” Magnus also had an empty belly and an all-over achy feeling.

  Bridget gave him a scowling inspection. “You didn’t hydrate. Darn it, Magnus. You were so busy being God’s gift to lonely waitresses you didn’t drink enough. Do you have any aspirin?”

  “Say yes,” Patrick suggested. “She’ll fuss you within an inch of your sorry life otherwise.”

  “I avoid falsehoods at all cost.” Besides, being fussed by Bridget was a lovely prospect.

  “You get in there and down at least two glasses of water,” Bridget said, jabbing a finger at the guesthouse. “I’ll bring you some over-the-counter painkillers, and you will take them.”

  “Tried to warn you,” Patrick muttered, boots crunching on the gravel as he headed for the main house. “Thanks for a fine day in the fresh air. Been nice knowing you, sorta.”

  Bridget watched him go, her expression troubled.

  “You have two more just like him,” Magnus said. “One wonders why you aren’t the one with the drinking problem.”

  “Don’t you dare insult my brothers, Magnus Cromarty. Patrick has been through a lot, and as much as you love and know your whisky, he’s better at art and design than you will ever be at anything. Go stick your nose in a horse trough, and don’t stop drinking until I bring you some aspirin.”

  The temperature had dropped to the point that any horse trough would be frozen over.

  “Yes, ma’am.”

  Magnus did drink two glasses of water—no ice, for God’s sake—and while he didn’t feel better, he’d been thirstier than he’d realized. Also more tired. When Bridget came through the front door on a gust of chilly air, he was lying flat out on the couch, boots off, mentally lecturing himself to get up and check his emails.

  “Altitude sickness does this,” Bridget said, unscrewing the cap of a small white bottle. “Knocks you on your ass. Smart people stay there for a good long while. Take these.”

  “Not on an empty stomach,” Magnus said, sitting up. “May I make you dinner?”

  She sat back on her heels, her gaze anything but friendly. “Why?”

  Magnus was tired, he was discouraged, and he felt like crap. He was fresh out of public-relations smiles and blather.

  “Whoever he was, Bridget, you need to toss him into the ditch. I’m offering to make dinner because I’m hungry, and my mother put a few manners on me. You spent the entire day humoring my agenda. Some reciprocity is called for.”

  Bridget rose. “Weather’s coming. You can feel it in your bones, the need to slink off somewhere cozy and safe until nature has had her tantrum. What’s on the menu?”

  What did the weather have to do with anything? “Fine dining, by bachelor standards. Salad, quiche, and brownies.”

  Bridget was in the kitchen, banging drawers and cupboards. “From the Cupcake’s bakery?”

  “I believe so.”

  “Don’t tell my brothers. They’ll come stampeding over here in search of leftovers before you’ve opened the box. Be still my heart, for I do declare this is arugula and avocado salad with pecan dressing.”

  She went on murmuring sweet raptures to various boxes from the fridge while Magnus sipped water, folded napkins, and set out plates.

  “Do you say grace?” Bridget asked, taking a seat at the kitchen table. “I do. We thank Thee for this food, and for Valrhona chocolate, which transcends the whole notion of food and approaches a level of sustenance so sublime I call dibs on the first brownie, amen, do you understand me, Magnus Cromarty?”

  He was beginning to. “Amen. I am duly warned. Of the establishments we visited today, which ones do you think are best suited to Logan Bar single malt?”

  The food was good, but not so good as to distract from the conversation. Bridget apparently hadn’t considered the venues in her own backyard as a source of revenue, beyond making a few casual inquiries.

  Magnus would change that.

  “You can sell the local resorts on your whisky,” he said, “not only on the basis of its quality and Montana heritage, but also on the basis of food miles. The less transport a product needs, the smaller its carbon footprint, the more responsible its consumption, and the cheaper its delivery price.”

  Bridget considered her last bite of spinach quiche. “Is that Scottish thinking, that food-miles business?”

  “It’s certainly European. We’ve been paying upwards of eight dollars per gallon of gas for years, and that’s on purpose, to discourage excessive consumption of nonrenewable energy sources.”

  “While you drill the heck out of the North Sea.”

  “One admits the contradiction. We also have smaller distances in many cases and superior public transportation. Are you interested in European markets?”

  Magnus was interested in Bridget’s willingness to correct him, in the relish with which she went after good food, and in the keen mind that had walked away from a career in law to focus on whisky-making instead.

  “Had to take some comparative government courses as an undergrad, and the European Union and Britain came under discussion. You planning to eat that crust?”

  Magnus passed her his plate. If he’d been sharing this meal with Celeste, she’d have chosen the wine, then spent half the meal analyzing it while Magnus admired her expertise.

  “What were you thinking of just now?” Bridget asked.

  “The past. Why do you ask?”

  “Because it made you sad. When I watched you charming all those young people up at the resort, you looked as if you were nothing but a good time with a fat trust fund and a cool accent.”

  “No trust fund, but the accent’s genuine.” He’d leave the “good time” assessment to the lady.

  Bridget set down her fork. “So tell me about the past.”

  “Let’s tidy up, shall we?” Magnus rose and took his dishes to the sink. Darkness had fallen, and his headache had receded thanks to Bridget’s little white pills, or maybe to the water she’d pushed on him all during the meal.

  “Tidy up all you want,” Bridget said, bringing her plate over. “But whoever she was, she left claw marks in private locations. I need some time to contemplate impending bliss before I tackle my brownie. Tea or coffee?”

  Impending bliss had to do with what was in the last white box sitting on the table, not with what lay behind the zipper of Magnus’s jeans. He liked this about Bridget, liked her focus and her self-possession.

  He’d also really, really liked making love with her. “Tea, please, decaf for me. Should we start a fire?”

  “Yes. If the wind picks up, you’ll be glad you did. Nothing keeps up with an Alberta Clipper like a well-stocked woodstove. You finish the dishes, and I’ll get after the stove.”

  She set about crumpling up newspapers, arranging kindling, and muttering to the woodstove much as she had to the dinner offerings. Magnus had a vision of Bridget as an old woman, talking to her pot still, sniffing the wort, checking thermostats, and holding a one-sided conversation with a batch of whisky she might not live long enough to consume.

  She would convince herself such a life was a happy one. Thousands of miles away, Magnus might be trying to convince himself of the very same thing.

  Perhaps altitude sickness affected the mind.

  The dishes took no time, and Bridget used the discarded food boxes to fuel the nascent fire. Magnus put together a tea tray and brought it to the coffee table.

  Desire intruded among thoughts growing melancholy. Not even a desire for sex, per se, but a desire for intimacy. He recognized the yearning because he’d felt it often during his marriage.

  “You domesticate well,” Bridget said, sitting cross-legged on the rug before the glass front of the woodstove. “Is that because you were married?”

  Magnus sat on the couch, the better to keep his perspective during what was bound to be a thorough cross-examination.

  “Or did I marry because my wife realized I’d be a good sort in the kitchen? Probably a bit of both. The idea o
f coming home at the end of the day to somebody who wants to talk to me, who will listen to me, had a lot of appeal. I’m an only child, and my father was gone before I turned twenty-five. My mother remarried a Hungarian, and I see her a couple of times a year.”

  Bridget nodded, as if he’d just confirmed her suspicions. “About this wife, Magnus. Was she part of the business?”

  Magnus poured himself a cup of tea, a fragrant Darjeeling, but being decaf, the taste wouldn’t deliver what the nose promised.

  “Celeste was to be my partner in all things. She grew up in a whisky-making family near Inverness, knows everybody, has charm oozing from her fingertips. When she decided to share all of her know-how and ability with me, I was nearly drunk with my good fortune. Shall I fix you some tea?”

  “I’m good. Drop the other boot. She screwed you over.”

  “Nobody has put it that bluntly, but yes. She screwed me over. Began colluding behind my back with a rival outfit.”

  “Is colluding polite talk for jumping the fence?”

  “Eventually. Celeste is an interesting woman. She can be your best friend, the confidante you never realized you longed for. Witty, trustworthy, loyal… but it’s not real. She hungers always for more, and I count myself fortunate she became bored with me as quickly as she did.”

  “A predator,” Bridget said, propping her chin on her knees. “She snacked on you, then left you for the buzzards.”

  Bridget’s metaphors were pure prairie, but oddly accurate when applied to a whisky princess. “She told me it was just business. I’ve come to hate that phrase.”

  “Marriage was just business?”

  “Or the divorce was. I kept the distillery, and thanks to family members on my board of directors, I hadn’t quite given Celeste the keys to my kingdom. I owe one cousin in particular a great deal.” Uncle Fergus still blamed Magnus for driving that bonnie lassie away.

  But then, Uncle Fergus was half daft.

  Bridget studied the fire. “I don’t have any cousins.”

  Magnus shifted to join her on the rug, though the floor was drafty. “They come in handy, when they aren’t trying to run your life.” And Magnus really should check his emails.

  “So you were rode hard and put away wet, and now you’re out to make your ex regret galloping into the sunset.”

  Magnus was out to save his distillery. “I admit to an element of wanting to prove myself, but it’s fading. I suspect Celeste’s second husband is about to be treated the same way I was.”

  Bridget took an absent sip from Magnus’s teacup. “A competent criminal doesn’t let patterns develop. They don’t leave any kind of fingerprints on their crimes.”

  “You were a good lawyer, I suspect. Why aren’t you practicing law?”

  How could the woodstove be burning away so brightly and the room be getting colder?

  Bridget rose and headed to the couch. “I didn’t care for it, but that’s not something you realize until you’ve spent three years preparing for the bar examination, and you’re sitting across from a juvenile shoplifter who was just trying to make sure his baby sister had a can of formula. You can’t solve the big problems with lawyers, judges, and social workers.”

  “You can’t solve them with whisky either.”

  “So why have you made whisky your life’s work? The floor’s cold, Magnus. Get up here and answer a few more questions for me.”

  Did he or did he not want one of those questions to be an invitation to share her bed? Magnus was surprised to realize he was leaning toward not.

  He’d promised himself he wouldn’t lie to Bridget, but he wasn’t being honest about the reasons for his trip either. Another shared night would only complicate matters. Nonetheless, he got off the floor and took the place right beside her.

  Watching Magnus at the resort had been a revelation, and not a little unnerving. He went after opportunity like a free climber scaling a rock face. Determined, relentless, unstoppable. Even when he was going sideways—teasing, flirting, making small talk—he was closing in on his objective.

  Which, apparently, was increasing sales for the Logan Bar distillery.

  He subsided onto the sofa with the careful movements of somebody who’d done too much and rested too little. Bridget pulled the log cabin star quilt from the back of the sofa and spread it over their legs.

  “You’ll hear the wind howling tonight,” she said. “Don’t let it bother you.”

  She’d used a double fat bat on this quilt and backed it with flannel. A warmer blanket would be hard to imagine. Shades of red, brown, and cream predominated, and the backing was chocolate.

  “We have wind in Scotland. What more did you want to ask me?”

  How could such a bright man have been so thoroughly taken in that he’d marry his enemy? If Magnus could explain that to her, maybe she could figure out why she’d gone into business with hers.

  “Tell me about Cromarty Distilleries, Magnus.”

  Predictably, he started with the founding of the business in the early decades of the nineteenth century and didn’t fall silent until he’d described the single malt already laid down that would be tapped to celebrate the business’s bicentennial year.

  “Now there’s another marketing idea I would never have come up with,” Bridget said. “Celebrating anniversaries for the distillery.”

  “Not all anniversaries are happy,” Magnus said. “My cousin Elias’s parents were killed in a plane accident, and when that time of year comes around, still—more than twenty years later—we don’t quite know what to do for him.”

  For Magnus Cromarty, not knowing what to do would be awful. Bridget didn’t fare much better with the same conundrum.

  The woodstove was roaring merrily, and Magnus was a comforting warmth along her side. She could turn the moment from friendly to fond to frolicking, and not much would have changed come morning.

  Bridget didn’t reach for Magnus’s hand under the blanket, didn’t curl down and rest her head on his thigh, though the temptation was a hard ache in her heart.

  Why had Magnus spent the entire day and much of his trip up from Denver increasing sales for a distillery he had no intention of buying?

  She pondered that question until the man beside her had fallen asleep. She rose, tucked the blanket around him, closed the dampers on the woodstove, and took herself out into a frigid, windy night.

  Magnus woke to an unrecognizable world. Everything beyond the window was white. No shapes were discernible, no light source organized the morning sky. Gravity alone provided orientation, though some considerate soul had set the coffeepot alarm.

  He extricated himself from the warm embrace of an old-fashioned patchwork quilt, knuckled sleep from his eyes, and tried to recall where Bridget’s aspirin was.

  For that matter, where was Bridget?

  A tour of the kitchen revealed that the hot pot had been primed with a stout, black breakfast tea. Magnus added cream and sugar and considered having a brownie for breakfast.

  One didn’t, though in the Western Isles of Scotland, some families still indulged in a wee dram of whisky as part of their morning routine.

  Somebody thumped on the door. Magnus opened it, and the air that hit him was cold enough to wake Uncle Fergus halfway through a board of directors’ meeting.

  “Morning,” Luke Logan said. “Bridget sent me over to make sure you don’t die of stupidity.”

  “A worthy errand.” Magnus closed the door as Luke stepped inside. “One probably has to be awake to die of stupidity though.”

  “Stay inside, or you’ll disprove that theory in less than an hour. Falling asleep is part of freezing to death. We’ve strung the ropes between buildings, but nothing short of Sasquatch asking to use your bathroom should send you outside until this weather blows over.”

  This was merely weather? “You hang ropes between the buildings?”

  “Getting lost in a whiteout is easier than ordering your third drink on a Saturday night. People have died six
feet from their own front door. You know how to work the woodstove?”

  A gust of wind rose to a moan—an actual moan. “Not in any detail.”

  “A fool.” Luke stripped off heavy sheepskin gloves. “But an honest fool. All you need to know is two things. A fire needs air and fuel. These are your dampers.” He spun cast-iron fittings and explained about adding enough wood, but not too much, and letting the fire breathe, but not too deeply.

  “You have about a week’s supply of wood on the porch, if you’re careful. Five-gallon jugs of water are under the sink and in the hall closet. Flashlight and batteries are on the table by the door, and when the power goes out, the generators are on a five-minute delay. If the power’s not up in five minutes, the generators will come on automatically, so don’t go screwing with the fuse box or panicking.”

  All of this information had been posted on tidy notecards in prominent locations about the premises. “Yes, Mother. Next you’ll be telling me where the deck of cards is.”

  Luke’s bootsteps thumped across the living room to the kitchen. “That is a box from the Cupcake’s bakery.”

  “That is my box, you heathen. What sort of host steals from his guest?”

  “One who can pitch you into the snow one-handed.” Luke peered inside the box as the scent of dark chocolate fragranced the air. “Baby Jeebus, deliver me, it’s an undefended batch of brownies found wandering in the wild.”

  Magnus took a peek. All present and accounted for. “You will bring one of those brownies to Bridget with my compliments.”

  Luke sniffed. “Are you nuts? There’s two brownies in there. One for me and one for you. I’ll let you have first pick because I’m a generous guy.”

  “Either of those brownies—which I bought and paid for—would put a family of four into a diabetic coma. I don’t care for sweets first thing in the day.” Though pancakes with Bridget had been lovely.

  Waking up wrapped around Bridget had been lovelier still, and making love with her…

  “A fool and his brownies are soon parted.” Luke closed the box. “You checked your email today? The internet sometimes goes down when the weather’s acting up.”