Montana Hearts

by Darlene Panzera

  “Jace knows we asked him here hoping he’ll give us an endorsement,” Delaney said, and smiled, remembering her wonderful evening at the Tanners’. “And I—­I think he’s having a really good time. He loves the cabins, the property, the river, the stable for Rio. He’s been happy learning photography and practicing archery.”

  “You haven’t let him go hunting, which everyone who has ever read an article about him knows is what he likes to do,” her father spat.

  Delaney winced. “You and Luke took him hunting.”

  “And thanks to you, he didn’t get anything,” her father said, waving his hands in the air. “You didn’t fool anyone by dumping out those clothes in the woods.”

  She gasped, realizing she’d been caught. “He doesn’t need to hunt. He’s been having a good time with me and you should see him with little Meghan. He gives her piggyback rides, and high fives, and plays with her, and—­”

  “I see the way you look at him,” Ma accused, her tone hard.

  “She fell for that lousy ex of hers fast, too,” her father added, as if she wasn’t in the room.

  Delaney swallowed hard. “I never loved Steve.”

  “And this guy, you do?” Ma asked, raising her brows.

  “Of course not, I’ve only known Jace a week and a half!”

  “You only knew Steve one day and you married him,” her father shouted.

  Delaney stared at him, her eyes burning, and remembered why she hadn’t wanted to come back. “You’re never going to forgive me for my past mistakes, are you?”

  Her father didn’t answer, and Bree said quickly, “What’s done is done. We can only move forward, right, Grandma?”

  “Right,” Grandma agreed. “With newfound wisdom and courage.”

  “Feel-­good quotes aren’t going to help us get that endorsement,” Ma argued. “And you’re wrong about Jace not needing to hunt, Delaney. Do you know where he went after he dropped you off tonight?”

  Delaney hesitated, alarmed by the tone of her mother’s voice, and with dread sinking like a stone in her stomach, she slowly shook her head.

  “He went over to Gavin McKinley’s,” her father barked. “Luke followed him.”

  Jace went to see Gavin?

  Delaney turned to sneak a look at Luke, not wanting to believe it, but her brother nodded, his expression solemn, and said, “It’s true.”

  JACE DIDN’T KNOW what he did wrong. During his stay he’d humored Delaney by taking the camera and letting her teach him some photography. He’d flirted with her while he taught her archery. And he’d repeatedly refused Gavin McKinley’s offer to hunt so he could spend more time with her. Geez, he’d even humbled himself to sing to her.

  Most women he knew would have been flattered. But today Delaney avoided him, and more than once, he caught her looking at him as if he were some kind of vile snake. He’d spent the day with Luke, who took him down to the river to fish. Is that why she was mad at him? Was she against fishing as much as she was against hunting?

  He wasn’t very good at fly-­fishing, but it did give him a chance to ask Luke why he used a cane and discover he’d torn his ACL in a motorcycle accident shortly after he’d gotten out of the military. However, that didn’t stop him from riding his horse or even catching fish. While Jace didn’t catch any, Luke caught three.

  Jace thought about his meeting with Gavin. The Collinses were worried he might endorse Fox Creek Outfitters instead of them. However, there was no chance that would ever happen.

  He’d already made up his mind to give the Collinses his endorsement, and honestly thought they did have better cabins, guest facilities, food, and pleasurable company than any other ranch he’d visited. Even so, he wasn’t about to give them their precious endorsement until his two-­week stay was up. He kind of liked having Delaney try to win it from him, and by waiting, he would have more time to try to win her. But at this rate, he might need more than two weeks.

  Alicia had come by again this morning to ask if he was interested in a ride up to the silver mine. He’d said no, but Delaney had seen her talking to him.

  Could she be jealous of Alicia? He’d smiled at Gavin’s head trail guide and acted friendly, but he would have done the same to anyone. Did the fact the woman had breasts the size of basketballs and platinum dyed Barbie doll hair even fairer than Delaney’s have anything to do with it? Women were often jealous of each other’s looks. No, that couldn’t be the problem. He’d already told Delaney he thought that she was beautiful. Honestly, he would prefer her slim, graceful figure and natural blond hair over Alicia’s any day.

  The one thing Alicia did have in her favor that might have intimidated Del was that she knew how to flirt. Did Delaney mistake his friendliness and think he’d flirted back with the other woman? Or was he totally off target and he had done something else to make Delaney mad at him?

  Unable to sleep that night, he tossed the blankets on his bed aside, sat up, redressed, and pulled on a pair of boots to go find out. But when he walked up the path toward the main house, he found most of the windows were dark. What if Delaney was already asleep? How would he get her attention without also waking Meghan?

  Despite his restlessness he was about to turn back when he caught a slight movement out of the corner of eye. He glanced up at the top of the stable thinking he’d seen a bat, but then identified the figure sitting up there in the moonlight to be human. Who would be up on the roof at this time of night? And why?

  The mysterious dark figure removed their cowboy hat and the moonlight illuminated a head of long, pale hair. Delaney?

  Intrigued, he changed course and headed straight into the building beneath her. Rio nickered a soft greeting and Jace ran a hand over the velvet end of his nose. Then he continued down the aisle and up the ladder to the hayloft. From there, an open window at the far end led him out onto a small balcony, from which he could finally make it up onto the roof.

  “I don’t want to startle you,” he said, keeping his voice low as he crept forward. “But I was wondering if you’d like some company?”

  She spun with a jolt and for a moment Jace feared she’d fall over the edge to her death. His heart raced and he couldn’t breathe. In fact, he almost slipped off the slanted shingles himself.

  “Careful,” she said, pointing. “There are a few loose boards, and if you don’t stay to the right, you might fall straight through and become stall mates with Rio.”

  Keeping left, he made his way toward her. “Thanks for the warning.”

  “What are you doing up here?” she asked, as if he were crazy for following her.

  The moonlight lit her face enough so he could look straight into her eyes. “I could ask you the same thing.”

  “I couldn’t sleep.”

  “Me neither.” He cleared his throat. “What did I do?”

  “Nothing.”

  He let out a soft chuckle. “Is that the problem? Did you want me to do something?”

  “What do you mean?”

  “Were you hoping for a kiss?” he prompted.

  “What?” She did a double take, gasped, then sputtered, “Whatever would give you that idea?”

  Oops. Guess his confidence had tripped him up once again. “I thought you might have been a little jealous when you saw Alicia this morning.”

  “Me? Jealous?” Delaney laughed and shook her head in disbelief. “To be jealous, that would mean that I would actually have to—­” She broke off and stared at him, then quickly glanced away.

  “It would mean you would actually have to like me,” Jace finished, and an uncomfortable weight pressed in against his chest. “I guess there’s no chance of that?”

  Her gaze dropped to his mouth and back up to meet his gaze. “I—­I don’t know.”

  He nodded, and looked up at the moon, so full, so bright, so far away from them. They sat there in sil
ence and he didn’t expect Delaney to say anything more. Then she let out a half sob and said, “Sorry I avoided you today.” Then she let out a sigh. “My family is going to kill me.”

  “Don’t worry,” he said, letting her off the hook. “I’ll still give you the endorsement.”

  A single tear fell down her cheek and she swiped it away with the back of her hand and asked, as if in shock, “You will?”

  “I’ll write an official statement before I leave,” he assured her.

  She continued to stare at him for several long seconds. Then she smiled.

  “You have no idea what kind of trouble our family has had over the last few months,” she said, her tone rising with more enthusiasm with every word. “I was living in San Diego, Bree in New York, and Luke in the Florida Keys. We’d each left home one by one after graduating high school because our father, well, you’ve met him. He’s got a gruff way about him and is always making us feel like we can never do anything right.

  “Then he hired this ­couple, Susan and Wade Randall, to help him out and he made them his ranch managers. He didn’t know it, but they’d been embezzling money, didn’t get the building permits or hire on the summer crew they were supposed to, and put special supplements in the horses’ grain so that my father’s horse would throw him. We think they wanted my parents to sell the ranch to them but they didn’t expect us kids to come home.”

  Jace had never heard her say so much at once in all the time he’d spent with her and didn’t want to stop her now. “Go on,” he encouraged.

  “My father ended up in the hospital after his horse reared and when it was clear the ranch wouldn’t survive without our help, Grandma agreed to divide the ownership of the ranch between us. She hasn’t filed the official paperwork yet, but each month I’ve been getting my own share of the profits. Which is good because Meghan’s father isn’t paying any child support.”

  “What?” Jace asked, thinking of his own mother and how she’d struggled. “You’re supporting her on your own?”

  “That’s right,” Delaney said with a nod. “That’s why I need my family’s ranch to succeed. I wanted to be a veterinarian and work at the San Diego Zoo, but the closest I ever got was shoveling poop out of the cages.”

  “You said you volunteer at an animal shelter?” he asked.

  “Yes, but what I really want is to open one of my own,” Delaney said, her voice soft.

  He nudged his shoulder against hers. “Like the one you’re hiding in the woods?”

  Delaney’s eyes widened. “You know about that?” She didn’t ask him how he knew, but continued. “I want one I don’t have to hide, but it’s the best I can do. My father thinks I should focus on the guests instead of the animals, but I have always found the animals more appreciative, and less judgmental.”

  “They offer unconditional love?”

  “Yes,” she admitted. “They do. Except I won’t even be able to keep my little hideaway shelter if this ranch fails to bring in more profits. Susan and Wade Randall ran off in the middle of the night when Bree started looking into the ranch’s financial books, but they still have all these other ­people who have been helping them to put us out of business. Maybe even the poachers who are trying to frame us. Bree hired a private investigator to track the Randalls, and he says it looks like Susan and Wade might be moving back into the area.”

  “Why would they do that?” Jace shook his head. “Wouldn’t they be afraid they’d be caught?”

  “My grandma thinks they’re a ­couple of half-­crazed vultures moving in for the kill.” She took his hand in hers and gazed at him with such intensity it rooted him to the roof so he couldn’t move. “So you see why we need this endorsement? Without it, my family will lose the ranch and I don’t know what will happen to us.”

  “You’ll need more than my endorsement,” Jace told her.

  She nodded. “You’re right. We’ll need a miracle to survive against two other local outfitters offering outdoor activities. But if you let us use your name, and give us the endorsement we need, it would certainly help.”

  “I’d love for you to use my name,” Jace said, and wondered how “Delaney Aldridge” would sound to her. He didn’t ask, but instead, raised her hand to his lips and gave it a light kiss. “No strings attached. No conditions. No judgments.”

  “I guess now you know why I couldn’t sleep,” Delaney said, and smiled again. “What’s your excuse?”

  “While growing up my mother always told my sister and me that we could never go to bed angry. All our fights and disagreements had to be resolved before sundown. I couldn’t sleep because I thought you were mad at me and I didn’t know why.”

  “Luke followed you last night to Gavin McKinley’s lodge,” Delaney informed him.

  “Del, I wasn’t looking to hunt,” he said, realizing that’s what she must have thought. He decided it was time to let her in on his own secret. “I promised a friend I’d look into the local outfitters to try to find out who’s been poaching.”

  Her somber expression changed to one of surprise. “Is Gavin a poacher?”

  “I’m not sure,” Jace admitted. “But he has grand dreams of future expansion and offered me half of Fox Creek Outfitters.”

  Delaney gasped. “What did you say?”

  “I told him that I started out hunting to provide meat for my family. Then I continued to hunt over the years to help thin out the population so the remaining deer wouldn’t starve to death from lack of food. I let him know that the media had blown my desire to hunt out of proportion and that I donated the meat of the fallen to the homeless shelters, so the ­people there could eat, too. But never have I hunted for sport or for the pleasure of obtaining a mounted trophy.”

  “You turned him down?” Delaney whispered.

  “Yes,” Jace said, and grinned. “I turned him down. Gavin wasn’t too happy about my decision.”

  “No, I bet he wasn’t,” Delaney said with a shake of her head. “But I am.”

  He gave her a rueful grin. “You’re not still mad?”

  “Not anymore. In fact,” she said, and smiled as she tilted her head toward him, “I might even like you.”

  “Whoa! Watch yourself,” he teased, wrapping his arm over her shoulders. “You almost sounded as if you were flirting.”

  She didn’t reply, but her smile widened, and as she continued to gaze at him in the glowing moonlight he had an incredibly good feeling their future might be just as bright.

  DELANEY WOKE UP smiling the next morning and made her way down the stairs with an extra bounce in her step. Her good mood must have been contagious because Meghan looked at her and giggled. Swooping her little girl up into her arms, Delaney danced into kitchen, spun around, and exclaimed, “I’ve got a good feeling about today, Grandma.”

  “That’s quite a turnaround from last night,” her grandma teased. “Any special reason?”

  “Yes, any special reason?” Jace asked, a glimmer of a smile lifting the corners of his mouth as he came out of the pantry stirring the contents of the bowl tucked in the crook of his arm with a wire whisk.

  “Are you cooking?” she asked, unable to keep the surprise from her voice.

  He grinned. “You’re a master at sidestepping other ­people’s questions, aren’t you?”

  She smiled. “Are you making pancakes?”

  “Sidestepping me again?” he teased. “You know, you’re not going to be able to sidestep me forever, Delaney.”

  She wasn’t sure she wanted to.

  Jace had almost kissed her after they descended from the roof of the stable and prepared to go their separate ways. He’d taken both her hands in his and leaned his head in close as he said good-­night, giving her heart a jolt. But a ­couple guests who Jace had befriended during archery practice had come up the moonlit path and called to him.

  “Tomorrow,” he�
��d promised a second before the men caught up to them.

  She’d smiled, not sure if she was relieved or disappointed, then slipped away.

  Afterward she’d lain in bed dreaming of what it might have been like to kiss the rodeo star. Or would kissing Jace be a mistake? After all, she had Meghan to think about. She didn’t go around casually kissing men but wasn’t sure she was ready for another relationship either. And the hunting issue still lay between them. Jace had claimed his reasons for hunting were noble, but he hadn’t said he’d stop hunting either. She wasn’t sure she could live with that.

  Beside her, Meghan sucked in her breath and exclaimed, “Jace, are you making me pancakes?”

  “I sure am, Megs,” he said with a grin, and tossed Delaney’s grandma a nod. “I have a good teacher, and I thought I’d make breakfast.”

  “For everyone?” Delaney asked, thinking of all the pancakes they’d need for their dozens of guests. Why, he’d be in the kitchen all morning, instead of spending time with her.

  “No,” he said, shaking his head. “Just for the three of us.”

  The three of us. Delaney smiled, and another one of her impossible dreams popped into her head. The dream of a family—­a loving, caring, unified family of her very own.

  Delaney could hear the sound of the front door opening, and a moment later Bree called out her name. “Come quick!” her sister shouted. “We’ve got a deer trapped in one of the cabins!”

  A deer? Trapped in a cabin?

  “Meghan, stay with Grandma,” Delaney instructed, and shot a worried glance at Jace, thinking it would be better if he stayed with her grandma, too.

  No such luck. As if reading her thoughts, Jace handed Grandma the bowl of pancake batter and said, “I’m coming with you.”

  They passed Loretta as they followed Bree to Cabin 26, the one farthest away from the main house. “It sounds like the deer is tearing the entire cabin apart,” she shrieked, her face full of panic. “I think we need your father to get his gun.”

  “I have one in my cabin,” Jace told her.