Montana Rogue (Big Sky Mavericks Book 7)

by Debra Salonen

  Sweet. Yes. But also pliable, weak, and cowardly. He still couldn’t believe how easily Amanda had caved to her mother’s demands.

  “Unfortunately, Ona, Amanda’s mother is the exact opposite of sweet. Somehow this nasty piece of work wrangled legal control over Molly and her estate at a hearing today. It’s starting to look like Amanda was sent here as some kind of decoy. While Amanda was getting Molly situated in a temporary care facility and I was overseeing the remodeling of the house, Amanda’s parents were secretly working in the background lining up people to testify that Molly was unfit to live alone, so they could sell the place out from under us....I mean, her.”

  He’d heard from Flynn and a distraught Kat how they’d both been served subpoenas to relate what happened the morning Molly drove her motorized cart into a parked car. “I tried to explain that Molly’s confusion and lashing out might have been caused by an imbalance in her medication at the time, but that awful attorney cut me off,” Kat had shared, tearfully. “It’s breaking my heart that I might have contributed to Amanda’s mother getting Molly declared incompetent.”

  Flynn told him the whole SAR team felt as if they’d been played.

  “The property is going on the market in the next day or two,” Tucker said, trying to keep his mind on the ball. “I was ordered to be out by morning or she’d call the police.”

  “That hardly seems legal. Renters around here have more rights than owners from what I hear.”

  Tucker shrugged. “I haven’t paid rent. Amanda and I traded services.” And sexual favors? Was sex part of the deal? he wondered. “Since it’s not Amanda’s house, our agreement has no bearing on my status. Her mother called me a vagrant freeloader.”

  “For heaven’s sake. Did Amanda stand by and let her mother talk to you like that?”

  He pictured Amanda running toward the medical taxi in flip-flops—even less practical footwear than stilettos, he had to admit. “She wasn’t there at the time. She was more concerned about her grandmother, as she should be. I can take care of myself, Ona. My ankle’s nearly a hundred percent, and I’d planned to start living on site at the zip line once we were open.”

  “Where will Amanda go?”

  “Back with her parents.” Saying the words out loud left a bad taste in his mouth. He walked to the refrigerator and pulled out a beer. Tucking the phone between his ear and shoulder, he popped open the cap.

  “Poor Molly will be all alone again. She must be so sad and confused. You need to go see her, Tucker.”

  “I tried. The rehab center won’t let me in. New rule: family only.”

  Ona made a tsking sound that nearly broke his heart. She had great sympathy for the elder folk in their area and did whatever she could to help look after them. “That’s just not right. Something needs to be done.”

  “I agree. I’ve got a lawyer looking into it, but family law isn’t his strong suit and his sister who usually handles this sort of thing is on her honeymoon. Bad timing. Almost as if that witch planned it this way.”

  “I’ll light a candle and ask my friends to pray for Molly and Amanda...and you, too. Does this affect your big hoopla with the zipper?”

  “Don’t worry about that, Ona. I’ll figure it out. I just wanted you to know what was going on in case you called the landline and I didn’t pick up. Reception on the mountain is still a little sketchy, but we’re working on that.”

  They spoke a few minutes longer before bidding each other adieu.

  “I love you, Ona.”

  “I love you, too, Grandson. Sleep well.”

  Like that was going to happen. He was too tense, too keyed up, to sleep. Plus, he had a mile-long list of things to do. Number one? Talk to Amanda. But he couldn’t do that if she kept ignoring his calls and texts.

  Had she come here while he was getting booted from Molly’s care facility? He’d been so busy making calls he hadn’t thought to see if she’d been back to collect her clothes and personal items.

  He polished off his beer then walked to Amanda’s half of the house.

  The door to her room was open a crack. He flipped the switch and looked around. Neat and organized—the exact opposite of his casual messiness. Symbolic of how different our lives are? Probably. But for a while this summer they’d worked—on every level, except the one that counted most—their core values.

  How Amanda could give up without a fight left him gobsmacked.

  He picked up a scarf from her dresser and held it to his face. Her scent enveloped him and he had to fight the emotions that threatened to swamp him. Anger returned. “Damn you, Amanda. This sucks.”

  “You’re right. It does.”

  He turned so fast his sore ankle nearly buckled, but he fought through the twinge because the Amanda standing in the doorway was not the same woman he’d kissed good morning a mere eighteen hours earlier. The old Amanda had returned in her place. Cold. Austere. Self-possessed. Right down to her four-inch F-me pumps.

  Amanda watched Tucker’s easy-to-read face as his gaze swept down, up, and back down to stare at her shoes. Her mother’s shoes. They wore the same size and June had insisted they dress for dinner at the upscale Graff restaurant.

  After sobbing in the shower for ten minutes, Amanda had emerged to find the outfit she was wearing, along with the heels, laid out on the bed with a note: Meet me downstairs. We have a lot to talk about. Including whether or not your father ruins the ‘Trucker.’

  Blackmail, pure and simple. If Amanda agreed to drop her petition on Molly’s behalf—something she hadn’t given up demanding the entire time she and her mother had been together—and return to New York to resume the life she’d been “groomed for since birth,” June would prevail upon Amanda’s father to call off the legal eagles circling Montana, ready to pick off such vulnerable prey as Tucker Montgomery’s new business.

  “As your father said, all it takes is one frivolous law suit to cripple a new company’s cash flow. Andrew’s done this a hundred times over the years. There’s no faster way to eliminate the competition than to stir up a legal hornet’s nest,” June said over a dirty martini in the Graff’s lounge.

  Amanda knew the exact moment she threw in the towel.

  “It’s not my place to cast aspersions on how a person earns a living, but stripping in public for tips? Really Amanda? You found this...sexy?” June nearly choked on the word. “Did you know the company he performs for...with?...is currently for sale?”

  As threats went, it wasn’t the worst, but it made Amanda’s stomach revolt. The last thing Tucker needed or deserved was a dose of the Heller machine.

  “You truly are a piece of work, Mother.” Her voice had quivered with emotion—completely un-Heller-like. “What do you want to hear? The words: you win? Fine. You and Daddy—” She’d fairly spat the word. “—did what you set out to do. Molly is incarcerated for whatever remains of her life. I’ve been humiliated and chastised. I bow to your will because I care more about the people I’ve met here in Montana in the past two and a half months than I care about whatever you have in store for me. I brought the Heller menace to them. I owe them that much.”

  She owed Tucker Montgomery a hell of a lot more. He’d believed in her when she didn’t believe in herself. Mistakenly, of course. But by leaving, she might be able to make things right.

  She’d left the Graff knowing the entire bar was staring. Did she care? Hell no. She’d be on an airplane in the morning and she would never return to Marietta.

  But, first, she had to tell the man she loved good-bye. And there was only one way to do that.

  He took a step toward her, but she held out her arm stiffly. “Don’t.”

  “Don’t what?”

  “Don’t make this harder than it is.”

  He moved to the bed and sat, drawing his bare ankle to his lap massaging it. His sore ankle. He’d probably been pacing ever since he got home. She knew he’d tried to see Molly and been told to leave. “Your mother’s orders,” the woman at the front desk
of the care facility told Amanda when she stopped to kiss her grandmother goodnight.

  “Molly’s doctor prescribed a sleeping pill. She won’t know you’ve been here, but I’ll tell her in the morning.”

  Amanda didn’t trust anyone at the facility. Or Molly’s doctor, either. The man had told Amanda at every visit that Molly was getting stronger, her mood swings stabilized through better nutrition and rehabilitation, but he’d vacillated on the witness stand, saying he couldn’t honestly predict how Molly would do without the constant care and attention his team was providing.

  “How in the hell could I make what happened today any more difficult? Exactly what did happen today, Amanda?”

  “The Heller juggernaut hit. I’ve heard people talk about my father steamrolling the competition. I just never figured I’d be on the receiving end of it. Foolish naiveté. Won’t happen again,” she said, meaning it.

  Watching her grandmother break down in court—her daughter more embarrassed by her mother’s tears than sympathetic—had crystalized a shell over Amanda’s heart. Screw love. Screw family. Not that either of those words belonged in the same sentence with the name Heller.

  “So, you’re throwing in the towel? Rolling over to your parents’ every demand?”

  “You don’t know them, Tucker. You don’t know what my father is capable of. I do. I know when to cut my losses.”

  He gestured toward himself. “I’m one of those losses?”

  The biggest. Even bigger than Molly.

  “Let’s cut to the chase. We made an agreement. You upheld your part of the bargain. The house looks great. It should list for well over what the estate would have gotten if we hadn’t spruced it up. In return for your help, I agreed to handle your PR for your grand opening and design your website.”

  He crossed his arms, eyes narrowed as if waiting for the other shoe to fall. “Yeah, and now, you’re leaving with three more days of grand opening activities to go.”

  She stepped to the dresser to rest her hip against it. Her feet were throbbing and her calves screamed from standing in the heels she’d grown unaccustomed to wearing. But, as much as she wanted to kick them off and go barefoot, she didn’t dare get out of costume for fear he’d see through her performance.

  “As someone wisely pointed out when he tried to talk me into setting up my own business in Montana, I can do nearly every bit of the follow-up from anywhere in the world. In this case, I will be hands-on in New York, while you and your team make things happen on the ground. I will file a report tracking the online hits, referrals, and visits to your website. Your sales next week should reflect the word-of-mouth generated from Facebook and Twitter. And I’ve already engaged a dozen rollercoaster enthusiasts who have agreed to blog and tweet and share videos in return for a free ticket.”

  She tossed up her hands. “The rest is up to you. I’m positive Mountie’s Marvelous Montana Zip Line and Enduro Course will be a huge success.”

  He didn’t say anything for a couple of heartbeats.

  The pause gave her time to memorize his face. She thought she detected a couple of new worry lines across his brow. She’d seen behind his carefree Cajun boy mask. She knew how much he cared.

  “What happens to the cat?”

  “I spoke with the director of Molly’s care facility. If you take Peaches there in a carrier, they will help him acclimate to the change. Apparently, they do this all the time.”

  “They’ll probably drug him,” Tucker snapped.

  “True. But at least my grandmother will have one familiar face around for as long as she has memory to draw upon.”

  “And the piano?”

  “I told Mother I wanted you to have it because you paid to have it tuned, and she laughed at me.”

  Actually, June had spewed a sip of her fifteen-dollar martini. “What will a man who lives in a tent do with a baby grand?”

  The memory fueled the anger Amanda had been suppressing ever since she walked into the hearing room to find her mother and the newly hired Montana attorney waiting to brief her on the Heller plan. The only satisfaction Amanda had felt all day was the look on her mother’s face when she spotted Austen Zabrinski, the first lawyer Amanda had ever met who knew how to dress. Austen made her mother’s hired hack look like the “podunk guttersnipe” Molly had called him, loud enough for everyone in the family courtroom to hear.

  But even someone as savvy and politically connected as Austen couldn’t prevent the inevitable.

  Amanda pushed off from her roost and marched to the closet. Her giant suitcase sat right where she’d left it after her move from the Graff. She flung it on the bed, unzipped it with a quick, angry thrust that broke a nail. She popped her finger in her mouth to nibble down the uneven nail.

  Tucker’s body language changed. “Amanda, slow down. Let me help.”

  “No, you can’t help. Nobody can.”

  “What’s that supposed to mean? You’re not an indentured slave. This is still a free country. Nobody has a gun to your head, right?”

  More like an AK47 trained on the people I love.

  “You’re wrong. There might not be a gun to my head, but, believe me, you don’t say no to people like my father.” Not without horrible repercussions. “And, as my mother has pointed out numerous times in the past how many hours since she arrived here, I owe them my loyalty.”

  Tucker stood with the powerful grace she loved about him and walked to her side. “Amanda, you’re wrong about that. Loyalty is earned, not bought.”

  She turned, grabbed the thickest wad of hanging clothes she could embrace, and walked the armload to the open suitcase. “And they say I’m naive,” she muttered. “Grow up, Tucker. This isn’t a game. This is my life. My career. My future. If I don’t get back on the Heller express now, it’ll run over me.” Along with everyone I care most about.

  “Bullshit.”

  She pivoted, her heels digging into the carpet. “It’s over, Tucker. We had some fun. We both knew this wasn’t long-term. You’re going back to American Male, aren’t you? As soon as the zipping season ends?”

  He swallowed. “Yes, but that’s a couple of months off.”

  “So, what am I supposed to do in the meantime? Live in a tent on the mountain with you? Do I look like a tent-living mountain girl?”

  Say, yes. Please say, yes. She held her breath waiting for his answer.

  His gaze started at her shoes and worked upward, slowly. Finally, he searched her face. She wondered if the make-up she’d borrowed from her mother would successfully hide any trace of her tears.

  “No,” he said, shaking his head slowly from side-to-side. “You look like the other Amanda. The New York society girl.”

  His voice tripped over the words, revealing how much it hurt him to admit that she wasn’t the same woman he’d loved the past few weeks. Her already wounded heart couldn’t take another body blow so she threw up the walls she’d built over years and years of training.

  “Well, there you go. I’m headed back where I belong. But I truly wish only the b...best for you, Tucker. I mean that.”

  “You, too, Amanda,” he said, as he turned and walked to the door. “I’ll finish loading up my stuff and leave the keys on the table.”

  He closed the bedroom door behind him, softly, with far more self-control than one might expect from a man who did everything with such passion and fervor. A clue, she figured, to just how badly she’d hurt him.

  She closed her mind to the turbulence and pain, the regret and sense of loss she knew she’d mourn forever. She packed what she wanted. Left what she knew would only serve to remind her of Montana—her practical flats, the bandana she’d kept from Ryker and Mia’s wedding, her un-citified western outfits.

  As she lugged the suitcase to the trunk of her grandmother’s old car, she paused to listen.

  Piano music floated through the pure night air. Sad, furious, passionate notes that flew straight from one broken heart to another.

  Chapter Fourteen />
  Early December

  Amanda added the last of her things to the box the Human Resources folks at Bainbridge-Smythe, which she’d privately started calling BS, Inc., since her return last August, had provided when she turned in her resignation that morning. Security hovered a polite distance from her cubicle waiting to escort her to the parking garage. She’d called a service on her way to work.

  With the holidays fast approaching and her parents arguing about whether to rent a house in Kauai or return to the Amalfi Coast, her sense of self-preservation had finally kicked in. Or, maybe the trigger was the announcement she’d seen on The Full Mountie’s Facebook page that morning.

  “Don’t miss my farewell performance in St. Pete’s Beach. It’s time to move on, dear fans. As some of you know, an ankle injury sustained while working the fire line last summer has continued to plague me. If I can’t give my fans a hundred and ten percent, I won’t dance at all. You deserve the best because you are the best.”

  She’d smiled at the part of his work-related injury, but deep down she’d cringed, worried that his pain was real, his healing complicated by the physicality of his dance moves. Her first impulse had been to call him, but she didn’t. They hadn’t talked beyond discussing the numbers of his very successful grand opening. From what she could gather from Kat—her sole remaining contact with Marietta and Molly—the Zip Line continued to remain fully booked right up to its closing date in late October.

  She smiled, imagining Mother Nature’s benevolent nod to help him make up for the weeks he’d lost in the spring.

  Eventually, she discovered Tucker’s alter ego, The Full Mountie, had a Facebook fan page. She’d followed the official Great American Male Show around the globe for the last month or so online. Today’s announcement surprised her, but it also released her from her father’s implied threat to buy or bankrupt the dance company. She’d never been sure what he’d intended to do, if anything, only that he’d make sure Tucker Montgomery didn’t have a job.