How To Catch A Cowboy: A Small Town Montana Romance

by Joanna Bell

  "Let's just take the rest of this trip, OK?" Jack said, looking me in the eye. "Let's not allow ourselves to be consumed with what-ifs and worries and doubts, not yet. You're happy, I can see it there behind your eyes, almost like it's afraid to fully show itself."

  "It is."

  "Well stop it. I'm going to stop it, too. You're pregnant with my baby, Blaze, and that makes me so happy I'm barely containing myself from running across this bridge screaming it at the top of my lungs. I want to enjoy this moment – this day. And I want you to enjoy it, too."

  Jack was giving me permission, not in any oppressive way but instead more in the tender, caring way that characterized the way he dealt with me – to feel the things I was almost too afraid to feel. It worked, too. He slid his hand up under my jacket and caressed my belly and I laughed with the simple joy of it. Yes, he was right. I was going to enjoy it.

  Chapter Twenty-Three

  Jack

  On Christmas Eve, I took Blaze shopping for a dress without telling her what it was for. And when she emerged from the bathroom of our hotel room a couple of hours later, looking like a movie star, my mouth fell open.

  "Good God," I said, awed. "I think I just changed my mind about going out."

  "Does it look OK?" She asked anxiously, running her hands over her waist. "It's not too much?"

  "No, it's not too much. You look radiant."

  "You clean up good yourself," she grinned, appraising me in my suit. "Now where are we going? And what if I puke?"

  "We'll stop and get some more crackers on the way. And I'm not telling you."

  "Is it a fancy restaurant?" She cajoled. "Or a club?"

  I gave her a look. "What would I do in a club, Blaze?"

  Her laughter filled the room. "Good point."

  Just over an hour later, we were standing in church. Not just any church, but one of the oldest in Dublin, so old it lacked the soaring grandeur of the 'newer' churches – if 700 year old structures can be said to be 'new.' It was lit only with candles.

  "Church?" Blaze whispered as we took a spot on one of the crowded pews. "Jack I didn't think –"

  But she never got to finish her sentence because a choir of boys, standing at the front, began to sing 'O Come All Ye Faithful' and every single person who had been chatting in that church fell simultaneously silent. Before the first carol had finished I was already seeing glistening eyes. Blaze looked up at me as the voices, so perfectly melded into each other, both soft and all-encompassing at the same time, filled the church.

  Grandma Dottie used to play Christmas carols, when us kids were very young. She had an old record player, and some vinyl records she'd bought when her and Blackjack were first married. When the Christmas holidays had all of us underfoot at Sweetgrass Ranch she would put those records on, one after the other, and we – me, Bill, Jake, Connor and Emily – would be calmed in spite of ourselves, slowed down by the slow music, smiling and singing along as Grandma Dottie asked us to take the butter out of the fridge to soften, or fetch the chopped walnuts or to please, please, get out of the kitchen with those dirty shoes on.

  'O Come All Ye Faithful' was one of those songs. I closed my eyes and squeezed Blaze's hand, not bothering to even try suppressing the memories that flooded my mind. I'm not a regular churchgoer – Grandma Dottie tried, dragging her husband and as many children and grandchildren as she could as many times a year as possible, but after she died what had already been a fading tradition ceased entirely. But there was something about being in that church with Blaze on Christmas Eve that almost made me want to start going again.

  Between carols, Blaze kept glancing up at me, her eyes brimming with tears.

  "Is this what it's like, Jack?" She whispered at one point, between songs.

  "Is what how it's like?" I whispered back, kissing one of her flushed cheeks. I wasn't expecting the answer she gave me, and it hit me right in the gut.

  "To be happy? Is this what it's like to be happy?"

  I opened my mouth to respond but the choir had just launched into another carol – 'Away In A Manger' – and our conversation was going to have to wait.

  As I said, I was not a regular churchgoer at that point in my life. It had slipped away from me the way playing video games or pulling girls' ponytails had slipped away, and been confined to the same place in my psyche where things I had grown out of went. But I felt something in that ancient church that night. The trip to Dublin, and the few months leading up to it had been one of the most turbulent, confusing times of my life. And even as Blaze Wilson smiled bashfully up at me through her lush eyelashes and seemed by almost every measure to like me, everything was still uncertain and I knew it. What were the odds of a career girl like her dropping everything to move to the middle of nowhere? What were the odds of a girl like her not having a better option than an uneducated cowboy from the sticks? There were so many what-ifs, so many uncertainties.

  But listening to the carols being sung in that church, and knowing that people had been doing exactly that for hundreds, maybe even a thousand years in that very same spot, gave me a great sense of continuity and perspective. Life was going to be what it was going to be. Blaze Wilson had my heart and my happiness in her hands, whether she knew it or not, but life was going to go on, and people were going to keep seeking refuge in each other, in being together.

  When we left the church afterwards, everyone was glowing. We all felt it, religious or not – the peace of being together with nothing but good thoughts and hopeful wishes in our hearts.

  "That was beautiful," Blaze said, clutching my arm and not bothering to hide the emotion in her voice. "I've never experienced anything like that, Jack. I – I don't even know what to say. It was lovely."

  "It was," I agreed. "One of those front desk ladies recommended it. Apparently that church isn't even used as a church anymore, because it's too small. They just do the carols at Christmas and the rest of the year it's a community hall. I Googled it, though, and apparently it's been there – or some structure has been there – since pre-history. Just think about that. I mean, I know they weren't listening to the same songs but –"

  "But they were probably feeling the same things," Blaze finished my sentence for me.

  "Yeah. And now you have a memory, too."

  "What?" She asked, confused.

  "A memory – remember you said you were worried you were in too much shock to remember anything? Well I wanted you to have something to remember. To tell our child."

  "Well I will remember that," Blaze told me as we walked along the sidewalk arm in arm, half looking for a cab. "But I've changed my mind on not remembering the other things. I think I will, now. In fact I think this might be the memory of my life. You know, the thing a person thinks of most when they're old, the defining time and place in their lives."

  I looked down at her face, her serious expression.

  "What is it, Jack? Why are you looking at me like that?"

  "Because I think I love you, Blaze," I told her, my voice clear and steady. "I know I love you, actually."

  We stopped walking and stood there on the sidewalk gazing into each other's eyes. I could see her trying to figure out if I meant it or not, or if it was just something I'd been prompted to say by the carols and the atmosphere and the being in a faraway place. That was one thing I knew I couldn't just tell her. I couldn't just say look, Blaze, I'm not the type of man who just says things like that. I had to show her. I just had to be the type of man whose words mean something, and it had to be over a longer period of time than the relatively brief one in which we'd known each other.

  "You mean that, don't you?" She asked.

  "Yes, I do."

  "I love you, too, Jack. I –"

  "You don't have to say it back," I told her. "Really, you don't have –"

  "I know I don't have to say it back! That's not why I'm saying it. You think I just realized it five seconds ago? I didn't. I think I've known it for quite a long time, actually. That's what
I meant earlier in the church. About being happy – remember? It just struck me in there for some reason. And I don't know what to do about it, Jack. I don't know what to do about the fact that I love you."

  "You don't?" I could feel that the conversation was more serious than usual. I could feel Blaze's apprehension, her fear of being vulnerable, and I was willing her to hold her nerve.

  "Well, that's not entirely true. I know what I want to do. I just don't know if I should do it."

  "And what do you want to do?" I encouraged, pushing her hair off her face.

  "What do you want to do?"

  "I want to be with you," I replied straightforwardly – because really, she was pregnant with my baby, what was the point in being coy about our feelings at that point?

  "You want to be with me? Like, you want to live with me? You want to move to D.C.?"

  As soon as the words were out of her mouth I realized that the future I had been planning for us took place in Montana, not D.C. And I think she saw the realization on my face.

  "See, that's what I thought you meant. You want to be with me in Montana. At Sweetgrass Ranch. And if that's how it's going to be, it means I have to quit my job. Not just quit my job but become financially dependent on you. It means –"

  "Blaze," I cut in, eager to avoid a misunderstanding. "That isn't what I said. I didn't say you had to move to Montana. I admit that's what I was thinking in my mind but I'm not some goddamned caveman, OK? I'm not saying 'move to Montana or else' – it's nothing like that. All I want to do is talk about it. My mind is open."

  My mind was open. But I kept the part where I thought it seemed like kind of a crazy idea to choose to raise a child in the city when there was a place like Sweetgrass Ranch, with a beautiful house and acres of land to run around on, just waiting right there.

  "You know what I think?" She asked, as I hailed a cab that happened to be passing by. "I think we need more time to think about this – about all of it. You're going back to Montana, I'm going back to D.C., maybe that's a good thing? Just a little time apart to think about what we're going to do?"

  "Uh, yeah," I replied. "Sure, that's a good idea. Give us some time to get our heads straight."

  I wasn't lying, because Blaze was right. We did need some time. I just didn't see why it had to be alone. I mean, it did, because we both had things to take care of – she had her job and I had the whole epic hassle of getting Sweetgrass Ranch back – but Blaze just seemed oddly insistent on it. Especially for a girl who had just told me she loved me for the first time.

  That night, when we made love, it felt different. Deeper. Blaze was like a little wildcat, clawing desperately at my back and crying out my name so helplessly and so sweetly when I made her come once, and then again and again. She didn't seem distant that night, naked and hungry underneath me – quite the opposite.

  But when it came time to say goodbye at the airport – we were taking different flights back to the States – that strange feeling was there again, almost as if she were in a rush. Did she want to get away from me? That didn't make any sense at all.

  "Is something wrong?" I asked finally, seconds before she had to go. She looked down, refusing to meet my eyes. Something was wrong. "What the hell," I said, baffled. "Blaze, what's going on? What's –"

  "Nothing," she replied, and there was something desperate in her voice. "Nothing is wrong, Jack! It's – it isn't anything. I just need – like I said, I think we both just need some time to think."

  "Well that doesn't sound ominous at all," I replied sarcastically, annoyed that she hadn't thought to just tell me something was bothering her.

  "It's not, though, Jack. It's not. And if it is, it's ominous for me, not you."

  "Maybe. I mean, I don't even know what 'it' is, so I'll just have to –"

  A boarding announcement for her flight broke into my sentence and she suddenly looked up at me and grabbed my shoulders. "Jack, don't be upset. Please, please don't be upset with me! I promise this isn't anything – it's nothing bad about you. If anything it's the – I'm sorry, I have to go."

  "It's the what?" I asked, "Blaze, fuck, what were you going to say?"

  "Jack, I have to go!"

  She threw her arms around my neck and kissed me and then, before I'd even had enough time to kiss her back the way I wanted to, she was gone. I had three hours before my own flight, and I spent them doing everything I could to distract myself from the way Blaze had left.

  I contemplated sending her a text but knew that would probably just look desperate. Goddamnit. In the end I grabbed a chair in the departures lounge and wrote an e-mail to David McMillan, telling him I now had the money to pay off my debt in hand. Then I browsed the internet for carpenters and various other contractors near Little Falls. The house needed to be fixed up. Not just painted, either. It probably needed to be almost rebuilt from the ground up, and that was going to take a long time.

  It helped. A little. Nothing was really going to get my mind off Blaze. Or the visions I had of walking back up from the barn in the evening to spot her on the porch with a baby on her hip. I knew I shouldn't be thinking of things like that, because thinking of things like that is enough to make a man hope for things like that. And hope is dangerous.

  It was midwinter in Montana when I returned to the little motel in Little Falls, as cold and bleak as Ireland had been soft and green. David McMillan from the IRS, who was understandably suspicious and full of questions when I first told him about my sudden windfall, had come to the conclusion that I wasn't up to anything illegal or irregular. It took time and a stupid amount of paperwork but in the end he accepted that the IRS was getting its money, that he couldn't find anything nefarious about where I'd gotten it, and that it was time to mark the McMurtry file as closed.

  A few more meetings with lawyers and Sweetgrass Ranch was mine again. I called Blaze one night in mid-January – we Skyped three or four times a week while we were apart – and gave her the news.

  "Really?" She asked, sounding a lot more ambiguous than I'd been expecting.

  "Yes, really," I replied. "Why do you sound like I just told you I was opening a bawdy house in the basement?"

  "A bawdy house?" She giggled, perhaps thinking I hadn't noticed the avoidance of my question. "What's that – like, a brothel?"

  "Yeah, a brothel. Now. What's the deal? I thought you would be over the moon about me getting the Ranch back."

  "I am. I am, Jack."

  It was one of those conversations where everything the person you're talking to is saying seems more designed to obscure meaning than bring it into the open. It had been a long couple of weeks and I'd spent all day on the phone with contractors who were full of reasons why they couldn't do this or that or the other thing the way I wanted. My patience was short.

  "OK," I said, sighing heavily. "Blaze, if you want to play games, I have work to do here. I need to call –"

  "What?"

  I bit back a 'you heard me' and closed my eyes for a few seconds, trying to get a hold of my temper. "Look," I said. "Blaze, it's been a long day. You're acting strange and I don't know what you think – that I don't notice it? That it doesn't matter? Well, I do notice it. I'm trying to get to the bottom of it, and you don't seem interested in helping me do that. So if we're just going to keep dancing around each other and not talking about whatever the reason is that you sound positively underwhelmed about me getting Sweetgrass Ranch back, I'd rather do something else."

  Silence. When I refused to be the one to break it, Blaze finally spoke up. "I'm sorry, Jack. I just, um, I don't know, a lot has been on my mind lately, too."

  "I know that," I replied, softening immediately at the tone in her voice. "I know, Blaze. But please don't push me away."

  "I'm not – OK, that's not what I'm trying to do. I just – Jack, I told my parents."

  Blaze hadn't talked as much about her family as I had about mine, mostly because it seemed like her family was a lot less colorful than mine – which was a good t
hing in terms of being raised by them but not such a good thing when it came to conversations about the insane stuff that went down when you were a kid. I knew her parents were fairly well off, I knew they'd supported and nurtured their only child and I knew Blaze didn't doubt their love. She'd made a few cracks about them being controlling before, but it had just seemed like normal parent-child issues.

  "Oh," I said, aware that they probably weren't cracking open the bottles of champagne. Upper middle class parents tend not to approve of unplanned pregnancies. "And?"

  "And nothing, I e-mailed them because I was too chicken to tell them in person. Now my mom says she wants to talk to me and oh God, Jack, I really don't want to. All she's going to do is spend hours telling me I'm ruining my life and how could I do this to them after they put me through school and blah blah blah."

  "Well, you might as well get it over with. I mean, you knew they weren't going to be happy, right?"

  "Yeah, I did."

  "They probably just need some time to get used to the idea."

  "I know. I'm sorry, Jack. I'm feeling nauseous all the time now, but I'm hungry at the same time, so being hungry just makes me angry and then eating makes me sick."

  All I wanted to do was tell her to get her ass on a plane and let me take care of her. Let me deal with pregnancy moods and cravings and sickness. But I couldn't take her parents out of the equation – Blaze was going to have to deal with that herself. Unless...

  "Hey, Blaze?"

  "What?"

  "Feel free to shoot this idea down, but I could come with you if you want. I mean, I have the money to fly out there at the drop of a hat now – I could come with you to talk to your parents, if you think that would help?"

  "I don't know," she responded, too quickly to have really given it any thought. "I don't think so. I mean, you obviously have to meet them soon but I don't think this is the opportune moment, if you know what I mean. Not unless you enjoy being yelled at."