by Cait London
Sleepless in Montana
by Cait London
Smashwords Edition
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Smashwords Edition, License Notes
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Copyright
Sleepless in Montana
Preferred Version Copyright by L.E. Kleinsasser
This book is a work of fiction. The names, characters, places, and incidents are products of the writer’s imagination or have been used fictitiously and are not to be construed as real. Any resemblance to persons, living or dead, actual events, locales or organizations is entirely coincidental.
All Rights Are Reserved. No part of this book may be used or reproduced in any manner whatsoever without written permission from the author.*
*This also pertains to uploading to free download sites, which is considered piracy and does not recognize the labor of this author or their livelihood from that work. Please discourage piracy and purchase works (other than those listed by the author or publisher as Free Books).
Publishing History: Avon Books, 11/99
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Table of Contents
Prologue
Chapter One
Chapter Two
Chapter Three
Chapter Four
Chapter Five
Chapter Six
Chapter Seven
Chapter Eight
Chapter Nine
Chapter Ten
Chapter Eleven
Chapter Twelve
Chapter Thirteen
Chapter Fourteen
Chapter Fifteen
Chapter Sixteen
Chapter Seventeen
Chapter Eighteen
Epilogue
Prologue
Life’s circle is broken
“The old man will blame me if you drink that.” Hogan noted the six-pack of beer that his teenage brother, Aaron, had just hauled in from the cold, snow-fed Montana stream.
After a hot August day of hauling hay, Aaron and an adopted brother, Mitch, were sprawled on the stream’s grassy bank. Under a rising, full moon, they were primed to split a fast-food bucket of fried chicken. The teens were ripe from a raging battle with Ben Kodiak, their father. They’d be talking big, about women— always women and sex— fast cars, and leaving the big Bar K Ranch.
At twenty-one, Hogan was leaving Sweet Grass County as soon as he tossed his battered suitcase into his old pickup. In the morning, he’d take off to study art and hopefully make a career in it. But he’d leave a part of his heart in Montana, and it would always beckon to him— Sweet Grass County. The Kodiak ranch— all twelve thousand acres, in alfalfa fields and natural grass— would always be in his heart. He’d already stayed overlong for his brothers’ sake, taking the edge off Ben’s rough handling.
Hogan turned away from land he loved and focused his attention on the six-pack of soda he was carrying. He tossed a can to Mitch and Aaron each and grinned as they scowled at him. Hogan understood the arrogance of teenagers resenting older brothers. “You’re under drinking age. You’ll catch hell from Ben, if he finds out. You really don’t want that. I know.”
He ripped off his leather gloves and thanked the wild horse he’d been breaking for trimming his anger. Hogan inhaled the musky scent of hay mixed with the heavy damp summer night. His dark coloring and black, straight hair proved he had Indian blood that hadn’t come from the fair-haired, blue-eyed Kodiaks.
Who was his mother? Even bastards had mothers— Who was she? His father had hoarded the secret of Hogan’s birth. But Hogan was his father’s son, after all, and cold clear through. He reached for a cold beer and settled down on the lush grass of the creek bank, dissecting the churning bitterness within him.
Ben had married once, and it wasn’t to Hogan’s mother. It was to Dinah, who had saved his life in a tractor mishap. He’d hated her for that trespass— because big, tough Ben Kodiak had lost one leg. And that accident, rather Ben’s pride, had torn the Kodiak family apart.
The canyon owl hooted in the distance, the eerie sound matching Hogan’s dark mood. Who was his mother? Hadn’t she wanted him? Why wouldn’t Ben talk about her? Ben’s silence said that he was ashamed of his half-blood son. Ben had given Aaron, his younger white son, his own father’s name— not Hogan.
Hogan Kodiak, the bastard, Hogan thought bitterly, though Ben had never used the word and had taken apart men who had.
He was only four when Ben took his white wife, and Hogan had felt like even more of an outcast when his blond brother and sister were born. His teen years had been spent in an uneasy relationship with Ben, and now it was time to leave.
“You look like the old man laid you out again,” Mitch stated.
“Snake” was Mitch Kazimierz Kodiak’s Chicago street name, before Ben Kodiak had hauled him out of a Chicago juvenile court and into Montana.
Adopted at thirteen, Mitch still reflected his harsh, neglected childhood, and more than once Hogan and Aaron had dragged him out of a brawl.
“I’m leaving, and you’re going to college,” Hogan stated, lifting his beer bottle in a toast to the Montana night and the worldly freedom that awaited him.
Mitch glared at him. “You didn’t go to college anyway. Why do we have to?”
“Because you’re smart, that’s why. And because I say so.” Hogan lifted his beer bottle in a toast. “To my ticket out of here— that art scholarship in France.”
Would his brothers and half sister, Carley, be all right without him? Or would Ben turn his bitterness toward them? “Make sure you call me. If you have trouble, I’ll get here somehow.”
“He’ll work us to death without you standing up to him.” At sixteen, Aaron was a blond replica of Ben Kodiak. He reached for the six-pack of beer and glared at Hogan, who had just firmly placed his boot on it.
Hogan rested his arm across his knee. In the morning, he’d be gone, driving his old pickup as far away as he could.
He smiled tightly; he’d probably starve— that’s what artists were supposed to do, but he wasn’t taking anything that wasn’t his from the ranch. Big Ben Kodiak wasn’t happy with Hogan’s artistic talent. “A man doesn’t paint pictures and draw all day. He makes a living.”
Hogan inhaled the damp, richly scented night air. He might fail, but he didn’t think so— he intended to put his stubborn Kodiak blood to good use.
“Sometimes I wonder what the old man was like before he lost that leg,” Aaron said, flopping on his back to look up into the starlit Montana night. “My mother had to see something in him. She should have stayed with him, stuck when the going got rough.”
“And you should have stayed with her in Seattle and not had to work your butt off for the old man, living up to his expectations,” Mitch said. “You could have it soft.”
Hogan knew that Aaron was enough like Ben not to take the easy road on anything, and Aaron loved the land, just as Ben did.
Bitterness churned inside Hogan. It wasn’t Aaron’s fault that Ben openly preferred his all-white son.
“How old were you when he lost that leg in that tractor accident Hogan? Can you remember what happened?”
“I was eight, or so. Carley was just one and you were three. Dinah tried to make it work for a year after the accident, and then she had to go. It wasn’t pretty then, with Ben slashing at her. He started yelling at he
r, and she tried to stay. It wasn’t her fault that Ben started drinking again. Then she packed up one day, tears streaming down her face, and left with you and Carley....”
Sweet Carley... She reminded Ben of Dinah too much and life wasn’t easy for her either.... “Take care of Carley. Ben is too rough on her.”
Hogan drew Montana’s familiar sounds and scents into him. “There’s that old owl up in the pines.... It’s time for me to leave.”
A cold trickle sped up his spine. “Old Joe Blue Sky says that when you hear an owl hoot like that, something bad is going to happen—”
Then a girl’s terrified scream pierced the sweet Montana night air.
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Chapter One
Eighteen years later
Hogan watched the headlights coming toward his ranch home, zigzagging and slicing through the Montana night. He held his breath— Jemma Delaney still drove like a kamikaze fighter, soaring over the creek’s narrow wooden bridge.
In the silence of his living room, he ran his hand down a large bronze eagle statue; it leaned toward the hunt, wings slightly spread, talons tight on a branch. His creation reflected his emotions at twenty-one— surging into the world and Paris, hungry and ready, inhaling life as if it were sweet cream. Beneath his fingertips, the metal was smooth, cool, and predictable— unlike his thoughts about Jemma Delaney.
She was his curse.
He remembered teenage Mitch’s dark comment about Jemma: “That skinny Seattle friend of Carley’s, Jemma, is nothing but trouble on skinny legs. She’s bossy, and I wish she wouldn’t come here in the summer. Man, she’s bad news.”
That was a perfect description for Jemma Delaney: Bad News.
Tonight, Hogan had no time for Jemma’s offbeat ideas to promote whatever venture she currently favored. A gypsy whirlwind who had been his sister’s best friend since they were eight, Jemma had always been a ragged, vivid tear in Hogan’s streamlined life. He regretted answering her telephone call and agreeing to her demand that he “stay put until I arrive.”
He’d come back to Sweet Grass County. In late March, the sprawling alfalfa, timothy and “needle and thread” grass fields were coming to life. Soon, fed by the snow water from the mountains, the irrigation ditches would fill, be dammed, and overflow onto the fields, a ritual necessary to rich grasslands.
In the night, the jutting, snow-covered Crazy Mountains and their haunting winds called to him. He listened to the ceiling fan, the crackle of box elder fire, and hunted for harmony. It wouldn’t come; his elements were not in alignment. Had they ever been?
Too restless to create, or to rest, he swirled the fine wine in his glass and studied the amber liquid. His emotions were like the eagle’s, hunting prey.
At thirty-nine, Hogan knew that he couldn’t go on until he resolved the unanswered questions in his life and had returned to Montana the previous November. He’d taken time from his growing business before to refresh his creative needs. But this time, was he burned out, the images and color gone? Or had he sold what was in him and there was nothing left?
He’d made a dive into the commercial designs that were certain to sell; he’d packaged himself along the way, developing a persona that drew attention. Now he was bone tired, stretched to the limits, and unhappy with his work. Hogan shrugged; he’d made a fortune. Did that cold hole eating at him really matter?
He was on edge, unable to sleep, prowling through the nights and the brittle memories of his home place. He’d bought land that had been Ben Kodiak’s. Was it out of revenge? Or the need to hold what was his birthright?
Did a bastard have birthrights?
When Hogan was just twelve, he’d once more worked up courage to question his father....“There’s no goddamn marriage certificate,” Ben had raged. “But you’re my son, and I got you. You’ve got my name— Kodiak. Remember it, that’s who you are— my son— and that’s all you have to know.”
Out of habit, Hogan fingered the scar on his cheek. He’d been just three, just after old Aaron had died. Seeking security in an uncertain world, he’d gone to Ben, who promptly shoved him away. He’d fallen, cutting his cheek badly, and Ben had told him not to cry, but to stand still. Ben cleansed, sewed the wound closed, and pressed yarrow— a natural herb to stop the bleeding— against Hogan’s cheek. After a moment of watching Hogan and making certain that he didn’t cry, Ben had nodded and gone back to work, breaking horses.
So much for tenderness. The adult Hogan knew that he wouldn’t qualify as a husband or father— he had that same cold streak inside him.
Hogan opened his hand on the ceiling-to-floor window overlooking his father’s land. Nearly twelve thousand acres and six hundred head of Hereford cows and their calves— white-face Angus, or “baldies”— from an Angus bull, spread in front of him. He could almost hear the winds whispering to him.
Some said an Indian or a white— whichever they preferred— went mad on the prairie and found a haven in the mountains; that madness was protection from Indians, who left him alone. Then those who believed in the Celestial Virgins said they ached for their homeland.
Across the rolling natural grass and alfalfa fields stood the house in which he’d grown up— stark, two-story, weathered, windows like the steel-patched holes in his heart— another monument.
He studied his reflection in the floor-to-ceiling windows, taking in the brutal stamp of the Kodiak family— his coloring was different from the fair, blue-eyed family, a reminder that he was not really one of them. He considered his dark, deep-set, haunted eyes, soaring black eyebrows, the blunt Kodiak nose, and harsh cheekbones. His cheeks were in shadow, laying bare the grim line of his mouth, the angular Kodiak jaw.
The dark warlord in the glass was a man incapable of softness and joy... or was he?
He studied his hands— large, long, artistic hands, but with broad flat palms that said he’d dug his share of postholes and shoveled his share of manure. He’d found a refuge in his talent, but who was he?
“You’re frozen in time, Hogan,” he murmured to himself. “You’re as unfeeling as your father.” His hand opened near the reflection, the glass as cool and smooth as his emotions.
His cool exterior— sophisticated, classy, charming when necessary, lacked— lacked what? He’d done what he’d set out to do, and yet he wasn’t at peace.
An image of a boy, dressed in worn jeans, running freely through the mountain meadows, lying lazily upon the grassy stream banks, fishing for trout, flashed across the glass— or was that a memory of the freedom he wanted in his soul?
Undefined need drew him back to Montana, to the clean air and rugged mountains, to the streams and forests he’d known and loved. After the fall frost, the buffalo berries along the stream would be sweet, and quaking aspens would turn fiery yellow. In the spring, serviceberry bushes would begin to bloom, bitterroot— once dug by the Indians— would bloom in pink and white. In the distance, the snow-capped Crazy Mountains with their lava upthrusts, rugged beauty, and haunting winds would always call to him.
Hogan frowned; the need in him was stronger than he’d suspected— deeper, more troubling. His need concerned him as a man, the essence of man, and it was elusive. Unable to sleep, his memories prowled through his mind and blocked his creative senses. Hogan had given himself to remodeling the house and to familiar ranch work, hoping to cleanse away whatever drove him—
He found his hand in a fist against the glass, a reflection of his turmoil. Or was it because he was his father’s son—hardened early, too cold, and too complete. But he wasn’t, was he? Complete? What was that aching dark hole within him? When would it fill?
Hogan ran a fingertip down the length of the eagle’s head, turned slightly at an angle, his eyes watchful.
He inhaled sharply, the only indication that his storms brewed tonight. He hadn’t expected or received an invitation to Ben’s Christmas dinner table, nor had Carley returned for the holidays. Hogan knew by her guarded telephone conversation at Christmas that
his sister was troubled.
She’d never been the same since that night and the attempted rape; once vibrant, she’d become frumpy, quiet, and guarded. Hogan frowned as he thought of his sister, rage swirling deep inside him.
She screamed that night, and it had torn through the sweet night air like a burning arrow, straight into his heart.
Mitch had been the first to find her. She’d been hiding in the bushes with Jemma. She and Jemma were set to play a prank on Carley’s brothers and had separated.
But someone had gotten to Carley, held her down, and had described vividly what he would do to her and called her his “Celestial Virgin.”
Those moments of horror had changed carefree Carley into an overweight, quiet shadow.
Carley’s plea later that night echoed in the firelit room as Hogan’s eyes flicked around the massive, stark room filled with his large paintings and sculptures. “Don’t tell Mom and Dad! Please don’t! Mom won’t let me come back to Montana. I’ve been coming here since they were divorced and she’ll blame Dad and they’ll fight— oh, please don’t—”
And no one ever told Ben, or Dinah.
Hogan inhaled sharply, Carley’s scream echoing around him, tearing at him....
He preferred working with metal and stones, because inevitably when he painted, he’d find an image of Carley’s sheet-white face, her eyes huge and filled with horror. Her attacker was never identified, and she’d been trapped in an unending nightmare without closure.
Closure. Hogan needed that now, more than he needed sleep— to finish whatever drove him back to Montana and Kodiak land. Miles from the Kodiak Bar K was a town named for the first Kodiak— Hogan wondered again why the land of his ancestors called to him.
The ranch he’d purchased was small and neat; the newly remodeled house contained an airy studio and a business center. He might get a few horses and beef cattle, because the sight of them grazing on the lush pastures seemed eternal, and pleased him visually. Although he had hated working for Ben, Hogan wanted to tend his own land and livestock— to replenish himself, rather than to profit.
