How To Catch A Cowboy: A Small Town Montana Romance

by Joanna Bell

  How To Catch A Cowboy

  A Small Town Montana Romance

  Joanna Bell

  Copyright © 2017 Joanna Bell

  All Rights Reserved.

  This book or any portion thereof may not be reproduced or used in any manner whatsoever without the express permission of the publisher except for the use of brief quotations in a book review.

  This book is a work of fiction. Any resemblance to persons, living or dead, or places, events or locations is purely coincidental. The characters are all productions of the author’s imagination.

  Please note that this work is intended only for adults over the age of 18 and all characters represented as 18 or over.

  Contents

  Chapter 1

  Chapter 2

  Chapter 3

  Chapter 4

  Chapter 5

  Chapter 6

  Chapter 7

  Chapter 8

  Chapter 9

  Chapter 10

  Chapter 11

  Chapter 12

  Chapter 13

  Chapter 14

  Chapter 15

  Chapter 16

  Chapter 17

  Chapter 18

  Chapter 19

  Chapter 20

  Chapter 21

  Chapter 22

  Chapter 23

  Chapter 24

  Chapter 25

  Chapter 26

  Chapter 27

  Epilogue

  Grandma Dottie's Famous Mashed Potatoes

  About the Author

  Sign Up

  Chapter One

  Jack

  She showed up on my front porch on the hottest day of the summer, wearing a dark blue pantsuit and looking prettily sweaty the way some lucky women just do.

  "You lost?" I asked when I opened the door, because there was no fathomable reason for a woman like her to be at Sweetgrass Ranch. Sweetly flushed cheeks or no, I had chores to get back to.

  She glanced down at the iPhone in her hand and pushed a lock of damp, chestnut-colored hair off her face. She was appealing, in that overly-polished way that city girls often are. "Is this Sweetgrass Ranch?"

  A whisper of suspicion crawled up the back of my neck. "Who wants to know?"

  Instead of answering, she continued on as if I hadn't just asked her a question. "I'm looking for Jack McMurtry. Of Sweetgrass Ranch. Is that you?" She looked down at her phone again. "No, sorry, it can't be you. Jack McMurtry was born in 1933. Is he here?"

  Annoyed by the condescending way the woman had ignored my question, I simply responded in kind, leaning against the wooden doorframe and raising one eyebrow, waiting for her to crack. She did, but not before a minor staring contest had ensued – a staring contest she lost.

  "I'm sorry Sir –"

  "Sir? Ha!" I laughed.

  "I'm sorry, Sir," she repeated herself, and I found my annoyance intensifying, "but I'm looking for Jack McMurtry. It's important that I speak with him as soon as possible."

  "Yeah, I heard you," I responded. "I'm not so sure you heard me, is all."

  "Oh?"

  There it was. That ever so slightly snippy tone women get when they've decided they're going to humor you. I wasn't having any of it.

  "Yeah," I said, catching her eye. "I asked you who you were. I don't know why you think it's appropriate to just show up on some stranger's front porch and start demanding to see this person or that person without telling anyone who you –"

  "Oh. Right, of course. I'm Blaze Wilson."

  She reached into her bag and pulled out what appeared to be a leather wallet, which she flipped open to reveal a gold badge. Across the top of the badge were the words 'Department Of The Treasury' and then, at the bottom 'Special Agent.' Opposite the badge was a printed ID card with the name 'Blaze Wilson,' an address in Washington, D.C., and a number.

  "That's a horse's name, you know," I told her, still irritated by her officiousness.

  "What?" She replied, flustered, which pleased me more than it should have.

  "Blaze. With a zee. That's a horse's name. Not a person's."

  Blaze-with-a-zee barely held back the eye-roll I could see she was itching to commit to. "OK, thank you for the tip, Sir. Now. Is Jack McMurtry here?"

  I slapped at a horsefly that happened to land on my forearm at that exact second, pausing to take it between my forefinger and thumb and crush it before it could take a chunk out of me. Blaze blanched.

  "Horsefly," I told her.

  "I'm not going to be intimidated by you," she said suddenly – and unexpectedly. "You can squish all the flies you want, but I still need to see Jack –"

  "It's not a fly," I said, allowing a certain note of condescension to creep into my own voice. "It's a horsefly. They bite. They're also a pain in the ass to kill. I wasn't trying to intimidate you. Believe me, lady, if I wanted to intimidate you I'd think of something better than crushing horseflies."

  Blaze Wilson from the Department of The Treasury thought I was a hayseed, I could see it in her eyes. "Be that as it may, Sir, I need to speak to Jack McMurtry. Is he here?"

  I cocked my head to the side, unsure as to why I was taking time out of my busy day to engage in a verbal sparring match with the stranger on my doorstep, but somehow unable to stop. "Yeah, you could say that, I guess. In a sense."

  That must have been some kind of breaking point, because the eye-roll after that comment was not held back. Nor was the sigh, of the variety you direct towards a child trying your patience. "Well can I speak to him, then? This is important, Sir."

  "My name is Jack," I informed her, so she could drop the ridiculous 'sir' business. "Jack McMurtry."

  Blaze paused and checked her phone again. "Er – wait. You're Jack Mc–"

  "The Third. I'm Jack McMurtry the Third. You're looking for my granddaddy and unfortunately you're out of luck on that count."

  "But you just said he was here?"

  Blaze Wilson's cheeks were getting redder. If she hadn't been so damned patronizing I might have felt sorry for her out in the heat in those dark, heavy clothes.

  "Aye, I did say that. And he is here, he's just not in any fit state to be answering questions. If you know what I mean."

  She didn't know what I meant. I knew it. And she knew that I knew it. It's possible I pushed it a little too far.

  "Damnit! Mr. McMurtry, this is actually a very serious matter. It really is imperative that I speak to your grandfather."

  "Sure," I shrugged, grinning because making Blaze lose her temper was something of a victory for me and we both understood it. "It's just that he's dead, you see. Six feet under. Up in the meadow behind the house, buried next to his sister, Gretchen. She died in 1994, trampled to death by a cow. I bet you didn't realize people could get trampled to death by –"

  "I'm from the IRS, Mr. McMurtry, and I need to speak to the owner of Sweetgrass Ranch. Today."

  In the time it took her to get out those four words – 'I'm from the IRS' – all the fun leeched right out of the conversation.

  "But your badge," I protested. "It said, uh, it said something about the Treasury. I –"

  Before I could finish, Blaze took out her badge again. That time, I examined it more closely and sure enough, there were the words 'Internal Revenue Service' wrapped around a circular seal right smack in the middle of the thing. My mind buzzed and I took a deep breath, determined not to show just how shaken I suddenly felt. The IRS? What the hell was the IRS doing at Sweetgrass Ranch? There had been some trouble years ago, a decade or more, but nothing since then. I cleared my throat.

  "Oh. The IRS. What's this about?"

  Blaze
shook her head impatiently. "I can only discuss this with the legal owner of Sweetgrass Ranch, Mr. McMurtry."

  My previously somewhat amused annoyance had quickly transformed into the real thing. Blaze Wilson's insistence on addressing me in that stiff, formal manner was pissing me off, too.

  "It's Jack," I snapped. "And I'm the owner. Now I think it's time for you to tell me just what exactly this is about, or I'm going to have to ask you to leave the property."

  A tight-lipped little smile briefly animated the IRS agent's face. It wasn't right that she was so pretty – IRS agents should all be as ugly as goblins, so we can spot them coming. "Of course. If I could just come inside for –"

  "No."

  "That's fine," she replied calmly, "but I've brought quite a lot of paperwork with me and I'm going to have to go over some of it with you."

  "You know what?" I said, looking away as some part of my brain took in the way her pink cheeks almost made it look like she was aroused. "I don't have time for this. You can't just roll up and expect me to drop everything. I've got cattle out on the range to check on, and a broken fence to repair. How about you make an arrangement next time, before showing up out of the blue and making demands?"

  Blaze shrugged, as if it was the most inconsequential thing in the world to her, and I knew she was getting back at me for my blasé attitude earlier in our interaction. "OK then, when would be good for you? I'm staying in town – Little Falls, that is – for three days. When can I come back?"

  Three days? There surely weren't any other people in Little Falls who warranted the personal attentions of an IRS agent. None of it sounded good. Not that I was going to let on how worried I actually was.

  "How about tomorrow, eight o'clock?"

  "In the morning?"

  "Naw, I'm busy in the mornings. Evening. Eight in the evening."

  "That works perfectly Mr. McMurtry. And if you don't mind, could you make sure you have the deed to Sweetgrass Ranch to hand, as well as any other legal and tax documentation from the past ten years?"

  "No problem," I answered, too quickly. I didn't have a single clue where any of that stuff was. Sweetgrass Ranch was supposed to go to my father, Jack McMurtry Jr. Problem with that was no one had seen hide nor hair of the man since sometime in the late 1990s and it was only in the last few months of his life that Old Blackjack – the man Blaze Wilson had come looking for – decided to change his will and sign the place over to his grandson – me.

  "Sir?"

  I turned back to Blaze Wilson, realizing I'd zoned out. "Uh, yeah. Tomorrow at eight. And again, it's Jack."

  She nodded and turned on one heel, stepping carefully down the rickety wooden steps that led off the porch and doing a pretty good job of pretending she wasn't about to faint from the heat. I retreated back into the house and closed the screen door, leaning up against it and watching as she walked back down the long driveway towards one of those enormous, ridiculously-sprung American cars that Blackjack himself had favored before he got too blind to drive.

  "The IRS," I muttered, thinking of my grandpa. "One final fuck-you from beyond the grave, Blackjack?"

  I kept watching until the car was out of sight, leaving only a thick cloud of dust in its wake. It was the third – and worst – year of a drought that the old timers insisted was the harshest they'd ever seen. Even old Blackjack, the man who was impressed with nothing and no one, had seen fit to remark on it the summer before he died, reckoning out loud to me one night that if it lasted longer than two more years, we'd lose Sweetgrass Ranch.

  Now it looked like we – well, I – might be losing it anyway. Ms. Wilson hadn't given me any details, but even I knew that the IRS probably didn't send their Special Agents on three day trips out west over small matters.

  Chapter Two

  Blaze

  The second I was back in the car I cranked the air conditioning as high as it would go, whimpering when instead of an icy blast, all I got was a face full of yet more hot air. I leaned forward in my seat, yanking off my jacket and pushing my blouse sleeves up to my elbows, desperate to cool off. The internal temperature sensor in the car read 107 degrees.

  When the AC failed to cool down fast enough I opened the driver's side window and took off back towards Little Falls and the depressing little motel where I was booked for the next 3 nights, hoping maybe the wind on my face would deliver some relief.

  Halfway back into town my phone buzzed. Agent Pender – my partner. I took the call.

  "Pender."

  "Wilson. How's it going out there in the sticks – you manage to track down the old man yet?"

  "Nah, but I did track down his grandson. Apparently the old man is dead."

  "Did you see a death certificate?"

  I bit my tongue, aware that Pender was trying to be helpful at the same time as I knew he probably wouldn't have asked any of the other – male – agents in the office if they'd taken such a basic step.

  "Going over to the Ranch tomorrow evening, I'll check it out then. How's the baby? And Anne?"

  Pender's wife had given birth less than a week before our scheduled trip, and there had been a few complications – hence my solitary presence in Montana.

  "Oh, they're great. Everything's fine – I'm about to head back up to the hospital right now, actually, but I just wanted to check in with you and see if you were OK. He didn't give you any trouble, did he? The grandson?"

  I chuckled, leaning into the now nicely chilly air-conditioning. "Well no one's ever happy to see an IRS agent on their doorstop but he's nothing I can't handle. You should have seen the look on his face when he realized who he was dealing with."

  "Oh yeah?"

  "Yeah," I replied, grinning at the memory. "He pulled the whole smart-ass act at first, but that ended as soon as I showed him my ID badge. Well, showed it to him again. He didn't even notice the 'Internal Revenue Service' part at first. I don't think these country folk are too bright."

  There was an odd pause before Pender responded. "You OK, Wilson?"

  "What?" I asked, confused. "I'm fine – why?"

  "I don't know. You just sound kind of... effusive. That grandson wasn't some kind of major hottie, was he?"

  I cringed. Pender was about ten years older than me, and every now and again he used slang that was just too 'down with the kids' to respond to with a straight face. "I don't even know," I lied through my teeth. "It was too damned hot to think about anything like that."

  "Well, OK," Pender teased. "If you say so. Listen, give me a call after the meeting tomorrow, will you? I can get into the office if you need me to access any records or anything. Alright?"

  "Sure. Say hi to Anne for me. And the baby!"

  We hung up and I pulled into the deserted motel parking lot, wondering what the hell I was going to do with the rest of the day. After checking out information on Little Falls on my phone, I found a single 'restaurant' in town – a pizza joint that appeared to be run out of a mobile home with a one-star rating. That wasn't going to fly. I lay down on the bed, squeamish about cleanliness but too tired and overheated to really care. What the hell had Pender even been talking about, anyway? Effusive? He thought I sounded effusive?

  Jack McMurtry III was hot, though, that much was undeniable. Sandy-haired (blonds have never been my thing, maybe the heat was getting to me?), blue-eyed and sporting the kind of broad, beefy muscularity that men who do actual physical work for a living often do. I'd noticed a dimple in his left cheek when he smiled, too. I lay my head back on the pillow and laughed at myself. Try not to fall in love, Wilson, you're probably going to have to seize this guy's property.

  I woke up disoriented, the way one often is after a nap at an unusual time of day, and grabbed my phone to check the time. Half past eight. My stomach growled and, after a brief conversation with the front desk clerk I found myself in a grocery store, blinking under the bright fluorescent lights. It felt like a different world. Maybe not a different world, but a different time. There was no hot bar, n
o freshly prepared salads full of exotic greens and superfoods, just a rather sparse selection of staples and canned goods. I grabbed some random cans of soup, a box of crackers and an orange juice and made my way to the single till that was still open.

  And who was unloading a shopping cart in front of me, the only other person I'd seen in the store apart from the employees? Jack McMurtry.

  He didn't see me right away, busy as he with his groceries. I leaned forward, peeking at what he was buying, but before I could get beyond the dish-soap and the unfeasibly large bag of potatoes, he suddenly turned around and faced me.

  "Ah, Blaze Wilson. Didn't feel like indulging in pizza?"

  I pretended I didn't know about the pizza place, eager not to insult the locals or come across like the spoiled city jerk I was. It's always awkward running into people you only know through work in a non-work setting. I suspect it's even more awkward for people like me, who work for unloved organizations like the IRS.

  "Nope, just getting some groceries," I replied stiffly. Jack McMurtry was wearing a white t-shirt that did nothing to hide his muscular shoulders. Every time he reached down to take another item out of his cart I noticed the way his tanned bicep flexed. In the end I had to look away before my ogling became obvious.

  "See you tomorrow evening then," he said, nodding at me before he left. I nodded back, saying nothing, and then scuttled back to my motel room worried that I'd been too obvious, that he'd noticed me checking him out. Before I could get too far into self-recrimination mode, though, my phone chimed with a text. I snatched it up, grateful for the distraction. Matt. My ex. A single word: