She hadn’t been aware of much since seeing Jupiter impossibly reincarnated and sitting at her feet. She’d never fainted in her entire life. But all she remembered after seeing him were like brief snapshots. Being carried, tight against a well-muscled chest. Bright blue eyes crinkled in worry. The door into the big log-cabin style house. Inside had been all space and light. Modern furniture mixed with rustic decor. Then a dining room that could seat forty at a single long table and through to a kitchen big enough to feed them.
Now she was in an armchair at one side of the kitchen. There was a big stone fireplace, unlit, and a ring of comfortable leather chairs and sofas. It felt safe, but could she trust that? It had also felt safe to step from the helicopter onto good old American soil for the first time in far too long. Fort Bragg soil didn’t really count, but she’d thought Montana would be safe.
So not.
She looked around carefully. Listened.
No dog.
Working up some nerve, she checked around her feet and the other side of the chair. Still no. Should she be relieved that she was merely hallucinating? Or was that worse?
Surreptitiously, she rubbed her fingers over her belt. Yes, it was still Jupiter’s leash. Around her waist rather than attached to some hallucination turned far too real.
Close beside her sat the colonel’s wife, Captain Claudia Casperson, and another woman Lauren didn’t know who might have been Claudia’s twin sister—at least in some ways.
“Who are you?” It came out rude, but her nerves weren’t steady enough to fix anything.
“Emily. Mark’s my husband. Old friend of Michael as well.”
Michael? Oh. First name basis with Colonel Michael Gibson. He didn’t strike Lauren as a man who made many first-name friends.
“Do you feel up to talking about it?”
She shook her head, but Delta wasn’t about avoiding hard truths. A deep breath to gear up didn’t help at all. Lauren finally gave in and asked the question that was scaring her the most.
“Was there really a dog?” Though she didn’t know which answer she’d prefer.
Claudia nodded.
“A nearly pure black Belgian Malinois?”
This time Emily nodded. The two tall blondes shared straight, long hair cut neatly at their shoulders and piercing blue eyes. But after the first impression, they looked less and less alike. Claudia had a softer, Nordic face, but her soldier strength showed in powerful shoulders. Emily was pure Anglo-Saxon melting pot and look lean and fierce enough to take down a Russian T-14 Armata main battle tank—barehanded. Lauren liked that in a woman.
“Okay, that makes me feel a little better.” Not Jupiter reincarnated.
“Why did Rip surprise you so much?”
Rip, not Jupiter. She sipped her tea. That, too, seemed real. “How about a different topic?”
“Well, you certainly scared the daylights out of Patrick,” Emily looked amused.
“Hooks or klutz?”
“Hooks belong to former Navy SEAL Stan Corman. He was also an MWD handler, now a trainer.”
“TMI.” Way too much information. Lauren didn’t want to know anything about any military war dog handler. That was the last person she wanted to talk to or about. Jupiter was too recent. His eyes—
No dogs.
No. Way. Ever.
And there lay the yawning hole once again. She sighed, then clawed her way back out. Again. At least she was getting good at that.
“So Patrick is the klutz,” she confirmed.
“He’s actually a surprisingly good horseman, considering his background, but—”
“He fell off a stationary horse into the only mud puddle in the county.”
“He did,” Claudia confirmed and sipped her own tea. “Guess it’s hard to blame him.”
“Why?” Lauren could think of no one else at fault than the man himself.
Claudia and Emily shared a look that Lauren couldn’t interpret, then both turned back to her.
“What?”
Emily rose to her feet, crossed the kitchen to rinse her mug at the sink and toss it into the washer. The room was high and airy, filled with light from the big windows. Hardwood flooring, vast counters, and all the equipment necessary to feed a ranchful of guests. Close by the back door, a kitchen table of thick slab fir had a dozen chairs clustered around it. There was a hint of a recently finished breakfast on the air, but the room was immaculate.
“Your room is over there, just off the kitchen,” Emily pointed in the other direction where a small hallway passed between two monstrous silver-faced refrigerators. “That way you won’t have to deal with the ranch guests if you don’t want to. Stan, the guy with the hooks for a left hand, brought in your duffle.”
“Not the klutz?”
“Nope,” Emily confirmed. “Now I have to go find out why Michael showed up here unannounced since Claudia won’t tell me.”
“I would if I knew, Emily. He’s not even talking to me on this one.”
“Likely story. You’re the only person he’s ever talked to.” Emily left by the back door.
Lauren turned back to face Claudia. “Surely it wasn’t Colonel Gibson who carried me in?” She couldn’t imagine the humiliation of having him carry her in here. It was so bad to have collapsed in front of him that maybe she should just catch a night horse to New York right now so that she didn’t have to face him ever again. Easy to get lost and hide in the Big Apple—from anyone other than Colonel Gibson. He could track anyone anywhere. There’d been missions with him where she’d wondered why she and Jupiter were along at all. Fieldcraft wasn’t something he knew; it was something embedded in his DNA at birth, then honed like the finest knife.
“No, Michael didn’t carry you,” Claudia confirmed. “Nor Major Mark Henderson.”
Major? Major Mark Henderson? The ranch pilot had been a full major before retiring? That would have been almost as embarrassing as being carried by the colonel.
“Hold it.”
Claudia simply smiled at her before rising to rinse her own mug.
“The Major Mark Henderson?” Lauren twisted around to look at Claudia.
She nodded without turning and racked her mug.
“That means that was…” Lauren turned to face the chair. Finding it empty, she swung to look at the back door where Emily had exited. If the pilot had been Major Mark Henderson, then “Emily” was the legendary Major Emily Beale. The two best pilots that the Night Stalkers of the 160th SOAR had ever put at the controls of a Special Operations Forces helicopter. Both were retired, but they were the standard measure of everyone who followed in their flightpath—the standard no one ever matched.
It knocked the wind right out of her.
First name basis with Colonel Michael Gibson and his wife? Of course Major Beale would be. There were few better warriors in any military. Had she herself called Major Beale “Emily?” That would have been presumptuous and incredibly embarrassing, but she didn’t think so—she’d only been horridly rude in her first greeting. Strike One, Foster.
“She couldn’t be the—” But Lauren was alone in the kitchen. Claudia had gone as well.
She went to the sink herself and looked out the big picture window as she finished her own tea. To one side there were definitely horses. To the other was a hillside peppered with guest cabins tucked invitingly into pines and aspen. Some had people sitting on the porch, other folks were on the move toward whatever event was next.
The farthest cabin, the tiny one she’d picked out as the best from a tactical standpoint, peeked out between the trees. It looked nicely cozy. And out in the distance, towering mountains shot up out of the Plains with a suddenness so abrupt that it was like waking up in the midst of a freefall parachute jump.
Definitely Montana.
How in the world had she ended up here? Colonel Gibson still hadn’t explained the why either. He was such a “forthcoming” guy—never spoke two words where none would do. How had a man like that landed a wo
man like Captain Claudia Casperson? Simple, by being the very best there was. Truly exceptional would work for her as well—if she ever met one who was single. And her own age. And who never wanted to own a dog—ever. And…
Lauren had the answer to another question as she rinsed her own mug in the sink. One whole side of her clothes were lightly coated in drying mud as if she’d been cradled against someone’s chest—their muddy chest. On her jeans, a big dirt handprint curled around from the back of her thighs to confirm that she’d been held close by a man without hooks for his left hand.
The tall, lean klutz with the nice chest had carried her to the kitchen.
Patrick.
And alongside the handprint…a big paw print on her thigh.
Neither one would brush off when she tried.
It was such a warm day that Patrick just rinsed himself off at the horse trough. He dug a couple of hatfuls of water and sluiced them over himself. It did nothing to help cool him down.
Lauren had felt so fragile and helpless. She weighed almost nothing despite her height and it felt as if he could have carried her all day. Rip had been almost frantic with worry when she collapsed. He himself had jerked forward like a roped calf until he had her scooped up in his arms. By then Emily had appeared from her secure office in the barn and led the way to the house.
Her eyes had fluttered open a few times, but he didn’t think that she’d actually seen him.
When he’d tried to stay with her, Emily had shooed him—and everyone else—away like stray barn cats. As if. Of course, even Mark didn’t argue with Emily. The woman was a primal force.
Patrick had things to do. He knew he did.
“C’mon, Patrick, think,” he muttered to himself.
“Like that’s gonna happen any time soon,” Stan was watching him again. He had some kind of weird, built-in stealth mode despite being such a big guy. Probably came from being a Navy SEAL.
“That was my internal dialog, Stan. You’re barely in the cast, so you shouldn’t be able to hear it.”
“Film nerd,” Stan sneered, knowing Patrick’s obsession with movies. No point in arguing against the truth.
“Totally! But you’re not helping any more than my horse.” His bunkmate slouched against the fence where Minotaur was still grazing. Rip sat at his feet. “I see that your dog is back. Too bad he fell for another woman. Musta hurt.”
Stan grinned down at the dog. “Better her than some girly boy like you.”
Patrick couldn’t help but like the man. Stan had showed up on the ranch about the same time he had. Stan had technically arrived first, spending a Montana winter living in a remote fishing cabin for reasons he never explained. Of course, Patrick had never asked.
He himself had answered a ranch-hand job ad on a whim, trading in his aging Camaro on a used compact pickup to fit in better before driving across the country from Long Island. He’d been razzed endlessly about it by the other ranch hands. How was he supposed to know that his little Ford Ranger would be a reason for ridicule in the heart of Dodge Ram 1500 Crew Cab pickup country? Then there were the 3500s with rear duallies which made his truck look even more pitiful. He’d have been better off keeping the Camaro.
The timing of his and Stan’s arrival had made it natural for them to bunk together.
He’d never had a military friend before, never mind a retired SEAL. Yet somehow they’d hit it off—once Stan got over his role of being so taciturn that he rarely rose above a grunt. Even total guy-guys in film had more dialog and emotional range than Stan initially did in real life.
Rip, barely out of puppyhood, had liked Patrick right away and that had helped break down the walls. Good dog. Stan’s favorite dog, Bertram, had been slower on the uptake, but warmed to him over time.
Patrick had felt as if it was the beginning of one of those buddy movies: the Army vet and the man from the Big City.
“He did more than like that lady,” Patrick nodded down at Rip, looking for a way to redeem himself from Stan’s “girly boy” crack.
“Yeah. Weird, huh?” Stan folded his arms—always an odd sight as his left one was mechanical all the way up to his biceps. Stan had gone Terminator rather than cosmetic in any way. I yam what I yam said Popeye the Sailor Man. And Stan’s remaining arm was muscled enough to play the role without any CGI.
Together they inspected Rip, who wasn’t saying a thing about his own behavior.
“It’s not like she was wrapped up in explosives,” Patrick kept digging.
“I know. Have to check that out some,” Stan rubbed the dog’s head with his good hand.
“Hey, you’re the dog trainer. If you keep your eye on him, maybe you’ll figure it out.” The last thing Patrick wanted was Stan keeping an eye on the pretty brunette. She was the best thing to hit the ranch since Julie Larson had ridden in from her family cattle ranch across the road this spring. The fact that she was marrying Patrick’s older brother next weekend was just the worst kind of unfair.
“I don’t know,” Stan scratched at his short beard with the rounded tips of his hooks. “Might have to look pretty careful at what’s going on there.”
Patrick had never known Stan to go after a woman on the ranch. Sometimes he wondered if Stan’s arm wasn’t the only thing blown off in Afghanistan, but there were some questions you didn’t ask a guy who could bench press you one-handed. Stan might be only six one, but he was powerfully built and square-jawed in a way that Patrick knew women liked.
Stan burst out laughing. “You should see your face, bro. You should absolutely get a mirror. Have at her and good luck. Woman looked like she had brains, which puts you out of the running.” He double-clicked his hooks and Rip popped to his feet and hovered in the “heel” position at Stan’s left side.
“Jerk,” Patrick put a laugh rather than any heat behind it. He headed over to gather Minotaur’s reins; maybe the horse would remember what they’d been doing before the helo brought… Darn it! He didn’t even know her name.
“Want my guess?” Stan called back as he walked back toward the dog kennels where the rest of the pack would be waiting to start the day’s training.
“No!”
“Way out of your league, bro. Classy dame.”
“You sound like you’re in a 1930s noir film.”
“You’d know, bro.” And Stan moved out of earshot.
Of course he’d know. He’d graduated from NYU’s renowned film school. Even worked on a couple of indies that, sadly, no one outside of immediate friends would ever see. He’d thought they’d been pretty good, but the speed at which they were rejected by film festivals he’d submitted them to had been alarming.
Then, thinking that being a Montana cowboy for a summer would give him some good creative grist, he’d come west. An incredibly visual land. The ranch manager had worked him like a dog, and for some reason Patrick had loved the first hard work in his life. He’d stuck around after the season was over and the summer hands headed off to warmer pastures. Every single day working with the horses and fixing up the old ranch had felt more real than the thousands of hours he’d spent behind the camera or poring over some script.
Film school. Wow! Now that was a flash from the past. It felt like another Patrick entirely.
He swung into the saddle and looked up. The Big Sky shone—a brilliant blue bowl overhead stretching on forever. One side of it anchored by the infinite Great Plains and the other end skewered into place by the majestic Rockies. That sky had to be part of the reason to film here—it was like nothing he’d ever seen. He could feel himself settle more solidly into the saddle just by looking at the perfect, screen-test consistent blue.
“Hey, Pat.” Patrick looked down to see his older brother coming toward him.
“Hey, Nat.” Nathan had a pair of heavily loaded saddlebags slung over one of his broad shoulders.
“Got these for you.”
Patrick wasn’t sure why, but he helped Nathan set them over Minotaur’s hindquarters and secure them t
o the saddle.
“Looks like you’ve been swimming.”
“Looks like you’re a lovesick bull calf.” Howard Keel in Seven Brides for Seven Brothers. Now there was a good leading man’s role.
“Getting married to the most wonderful woman ever in seven days. That’s not lovesick, that’s lucky.”
“Turd,” was the best comeback he could find—not very Howard Keel at all.
Julie Larson, the hottest cowgirl in any parts, hadn’t even given him the time of day. Three weeks after meeting Nathan, they’d gotten engaged and been living together for almost six months up in one of the cabins. He liked those little cabins. Wasn’t hard to see himself in one with…somebody. As long as it wasn’t anytime soon.
“How did a lousy chef from New York land the leading lady of Montana? Can you explain that one?”
“Brains and personality, Pat. Brains and personality. And if you had any brains, you’d be getting your trail ride organized.”
“Trail ride?” Then he remembered. That’s where he’d been headed when the nameless woman had dropped out of the sky and into his arms. That’s what the saddlebags were filled with—lunch. Nathan had found his role as the ranch’s chef.
He spun Minotaur about, give him a light kick and a soft rein. His horse shifted from a standstill to a fast canter without any apparent transition—one of his tricks—almost leaving Patrick in the mud puddle once more.
His brother’s laugh followed him past the garage and most of the barn.
He rode into the corral just as Chelsea was helping the last of the ranch guests up onto their mounts. A quick glance. A dozen riders. Five obvious greenhorns (looking down in surprise at how far away the ground now appeared from atop their horses, even though they’d already done four days of corral riding), three overeager kids, and four who clearly thought they had it down now but didn’t know one thing about how to sit a saddle, much less hold the reins.
A beginner trail ride.
Big Sky, Loyal Heart Page 2
