by Dawes, Casey
Bridget frowned, and Tom turned in the same direction she was looking.
A cruel smile crept over Lucy’s face. She said something to her date and marched to Bridget.
“How’s business, Bridget?” She turned to Tom. “Has she told you yet what a skank she is?”
Enough. This ended here and now.
The chair scraped hard as Bridget stood and faced her enemy.
“My business will be fine, no thanks to you. You need to stay away from me and out of my life, Lucy. Yeah, I did some stupid things, but I got help, and I’m a better person for it. You’re the same manipulating, selfish girl you were in high school, who had to pretend pregnancy in order to get a man to marry her. Who’s the real skank here?
“I’m home to stay, Lucy. You may as well get over it. I will succeed. I’ve done it before, and I’ll do again. Now run away to your little boy-toy and leave the adults alone.”
Lucy guppied, her mouth flapping like she was attempting to speak, but not a word came out. Finally, she turned, stalked to her date, and took him by the hand. “Let’s go to Livingston to eat, Drake. This place is a little too low-life for me.” She yanked Drake from the bar.
Bridget sat down and faced Tom. One down, one to go.
He looked at her and clapped his hands.
“Why are you clapping? Lucy’s right. I told you. I sank really low, Tom. You don’t want a woman like me.” She picked up her purse.
He put his hand on hers. “Where are you going? We haven’t had dinner.”
“You still want to have dinner?”
Megan plunked a beer and coke on the table. “Anna says these are on her.” She looked at Bridget with a smile. “Thanks for telling Lucy off. She’s the kind of girl who makes a waitress want to spit in her food, you know what I mean?”
Bridget tried not to imagine the scene as she nodded.
Megan turned to Tom. “What can I get you for dinner?”
“Two burgers. One with the works. One with American cheese, no onion, and extra ketchup for the lady. She’ll have hers medium rare, and I’ll take mine rare.” He placed the same order he had when they were kids going to the local teen hangout.
He remembered. He’d called her a lady.
Was there hope?
Once Anna left, he stroked her hand with his thumb. “I love you, Bri. I’ve always loved you. I just got lost for a while. Like you.”
Her lips trembled with the sweet relief of forgiveness.
“I heard the rumors, Bri. I cringed every time, knowing if it wasn’t for me, you wouldn’t have gone that deep down that hole. I betrayed you.” His eyes were steady as he looked at her. “You pulled yourself out of it. No one was there for you. You have incredible strength. I love you for that and a million other reasons. Please forgive me and let yourself love me again.”
“I do love you, Tom. I never stopped.”
He stood, walked around the table, pulled her up, and kissed her.
“Came to believe that a Power greater than ourselves could restore us to sanity.” Her heart soared with the knowledge the second step was true.
The rest of the bar cheered.
Word of her confrontation with Lucy spread fast. A repentant Mrs. Anderson called to reinstate her daughter’s lessons, and two new students signed up since her dinner with Tom the week before.
She’d finished rubbing Recovery down just as Tom sauntered into the barn. He pulled her from the stall and kissed her. She leaned into his body and savored the taste of his lips on hers. Excitement flooded her body. This was always how it was meant to be.
After he finally released her, they walked hand in hand to the porch. Bridget retrieved a beer from the fridge for him, and a soda pop for herself. They settled themselves into the Adirondack chairs and sat quietly for a few moments.
After he took a sip of his beer, he asked, “How’s Jessica doing on the fences?”
“She says she has them about ready. Just a few more lines up in the high country.” She stared at her land settling into evening’s gloaming. “They turned me down for the loan. Called this morning. I don’t have enough history, and the land’s worth about what I owe on it. They don’t consider the buildings much of an ‘improvement.’” She quoted the last word with her fingers.
He entwined his fingers with hers. “I’m sorry, Bri. I know how much this meant to you. I have a suggestion if you are open to it.” He leaned forward. “I’d like to invest in your ranch to have a place to raise my horses, and run a few head of cattle. Once the divorce was final, I started putting away every penny I could lay my hands on. It’s not much, but I think we could put in a small arena for starters if we did the work ourselves. Over time as I launch my breeding program, I can do more.”
She looked at their hands. “I can’t take your money, Tom. What if we don’t work out?”
“In the first place, it’s an investment, not charity.” He put an index finger under her chin and lifted it so she gazed into his eyes. “And we will work out, Bri. Have no doubt about that. Ever.”
He leaned forward and kissed her as the sun broke through the purple-dappled clouds over the Rockies.
She was home.
Love on Willow Creek
The Montana Ranch Series
Book 1
Casey Dawes
Chapter One
“Come on, Lightning. Faster,” Melody Bennett urged her chocolate-brown stallion, a large Rocky Mountain Horse that she’d trained since he was a colt. Melody tightened her grip on the reins as Lightning switched from a controlled three-beat canter to a fast four-beat gallop. She stroked her hand down the horse’s mane as he sped across a fertile pasture. “That’s my boy.”
The horse neighed as though he understood her praise and sprinted even faster.
The morning sun rose steadily in the clear August sky. The wind lifted Lightning’s thick, flaxen mane and loosened strands of Melody’s curly hair from her ponytail. Other horses trotted or grazed in the pasture while a few ranch hands cleaned metal troughs and pulled weeds. She cared, trained and provided for many of the horses on the ranch and she felt closer to those magnificent animals than she did most people. Granted, she had a few close friends in the small community of Willow Creek, Montana but she preferred to stay to herself.
Reserved by circumstance, not nature, the one person she loved more than her precious horses stole her foolish heart and crushed it to smithereens. Max Fortaine, a young drifter her father hired to tend the horses one summer after she turned seventeen, romanced her for almost a year and then abandoned her on the night they planned to run away together. Since then, she’d ruthlessly guarded her heart from the men she dated. She couldn’t love or trust them and those men eventually left. Now at twenty-eight, she’d kept her romantic life off the grid for the past year and focused solely on the well-being of the horses.
Melody estimated that Lightning galloped for almost a mile before she slowed the horse to an amble, the natural four-beat gait for the Rocky breed, and then directed him toward the far end of the pasture. She praised him for his smooth, lateral gait, the proper tilt of his head and the vertical rise of his nose. They neared a small shed at the edge of her father’s property and the horse stopped with her command. The three-sided run-in shed housed various tools and the horses occasionally used it for shelter if caught out in storms. Rich evergreen trees and a variety of plants spread for miles beyond the pasture. The dense trees formed the northern tip of the Gallatin Range that spread south into Wyoming.
She tugged on the reins and the horse turned around to face the way they’d come. Four generations of her family had worked, cared for and lived on Bennett Ranch. A white four rail fence encircled the forty-plus acres of low rolling hills, and divided the acreage into four separate pastures of ten acres each. Metal gates
opened into each section every few acres. The ranch hands that trained and provided for the horses constantly pushed the forest and harmful vegetation back from the fields. The family house, the dormitory-style house used by the workers, stable and paddock occupied the midway point of the vast property. Two pastures thrived behind the group of buildings while the two out in front recuperated. The horses grazed there last year and left the land barren. A long driveway cut between the front two pastures and opened onto the main road that led to town.
The Great Divide separated Willow Creek and the neighboring town of Livingston from Bozeman, the location of the nearest airport. The townsfolk in her beloved community relied on two churches, a post office, a general store and a bar for necessities, but they commuted to Livingston or across the mountain pass to Bozeman for everything else. Ranches dotted the landscape—her father’s ranch bigger than most—and cattle and horses outnumbered the human population five to one.
Melody sighed, swung her leg over the horse’s back and then landed gently on her feet. She inspected the fence and overall strength of the outer perimeter as Lightning grazed on thick, soil-enriched grass. Although a few of the workers rebuilt this section last month, she always checked the fences for weak spots and inspected the earth for holes or debris while her horse grazed. Her family’s livelihood depended on the horses’ health, temperament and happiness.
She removed a pair of old work gloves from her jacket pocket, stuck her hands through the soft but sturdy leather and then collected several branches she found strewn across the grass. She tossed the sticks as far over the fence as possible and then pulled weeds and long strands of prickly ivy that crept along the earth. She cleared almost a quarter of an acre before she tossed the hazardous vegetation in the same direction as the sticks.
A deep yawn crawled up her throat. Melody covered her mouth with her hands, even though she was alone, and cursed as she smudged dirt on her cheeks. She slapped her gloved hands together to shake off the dirt, stuffed the gloves back in her pocket and then cleaned her face with the sleeve of her khaki jacket.
She glanced at Lightning and her heart tightened. She wanted more than just animal companionship. Her friend Bridget, recently retired from the rodeo circuit, returned to town after an eight-year hiatus and reconnected with the man who once broke her heart. Bridget and Tom’s happiness gave Melody hope, but she didn’t expect a second chance with Max. She’d long ago forgiven him and thought back on their time together with fondness, not with anger and sorrow as she once did, but she had created a strict criterion for future boyfriends because of him—a list of standards no man had yet met.
Melody rubbed the bridge of her nose between her eyes. Her brothers, Dave and Steve, both married last year and now their wives were pregnant. Her mother, Karen, incessantly nagged Melody to settle down and give her more grandchildren. Only her father seemed to understand her need for independence and her cautious attitude toward men. After all, he only wanted the best for her, but she believed that she’d remain alone forever if she followed her criteria to the letter.
Damn, she hadn’t thought about Max this much in years. She blamed her mother for that. She’d cornered Melody after breakfast this morning to gush about Harvey Clausen. Melody dated him a few years ago but then she left his ass high and dry after she caught him in bed with another woman. Her mom either forgot or ignored that fact because of Harvey’s prosperous cattle farm. She bumped into him the day before in Livingston and she wanted Melody to give him another chance.
No way. She’d rather remain a spinster than date, let alone marry, a man who’d cheated on her.
Lightning nudged her shoulder and Melody’s wayward thoughts centered. She grasped the horse’s long, stout head in her palms and brushed her fingers over his short brown coat. The ten-year-old horse weighed in at over a thousand pounds and reached sixteen hands high, or approximately sixty-four inches. With a sweet disposition and a willingness to learn, Lightning was also the biggest stallion at Bennett Ranch.
Melody leapt back into the saddle and the horse ambled across the grassy field at her command. An hour passed before heat prickled her skin. Lightning headed toward the stables but she steered him toward a nearby open water trough instead. Melody slid from his back and then removed the saddle and bridle from around his neck. The horse drank freely from the clean water as she inspected his legs and hooves for possible injuries from the ride. Once she verified that he was fine, she hoisted the saddle in one arm, pressed a kiss to her faithful horse’s nose and then left him in the pasture. She tossed the heavy saddle and bridle over the fence that separated the rich pasture from the hard, sterile land that bordered it and then she climbed over the sturdy rails and heaved the items back into her arms. No one maintained the sacrifice area—the land that consisted of the stable, paddocks and two houses—like the pastures since the horses never grazed there. Her mother, however, planted flowers and rhododendrons around the main house and cared for them like a foal.
She bypassed the main door of the stables and headed to Lightning’s individual paddock—a rectangular-shaped, fenced-in pen that led to his stall in the stable—and pressed her free hand against the ground. The dirt and top layer of sand felt solid and hard as it should. She had shoveled manure out of Lightning’s paddock and disposed of the wet bedding in his stall early that morning, but she didn’t bother to check the ground then. The paddock bordered two others and she checked the ground in those as well.
The stable typically held ten horses, but currently housed only eight. She entered the stall through the Dutch door and blinked several times to adjust to the dim lights. Cool air enveloped her as a cooling and heating pump system operated high overhead through the lofty rafters of the ceiling. The insulated metal roof repelled heat during the summer and retained it during winter. She latched the door behind her and then stored the horse’s saddle and bridle on a shelf next to a few old blankets.
Melody left the stall through a sliding door and headed down the hallway toward the washroom which was no bigger than an eight-by-eight stall with a stand-up shower, sink and toilet. She locked the door and turned on the faucet in the sink. The water heated as she shrugged out of her jacket, rolled up the sleeves of her flannel shirt and then dusted the dirt from her jeans. She scrubbed her hands, arms and face with a bar of used soap until her skin felt raw and red. After she switched the hot water back to cold, Melody tilted her head sideways to drink from the faucet and savored every drop. Water dampened a few wayward curls that fell around her face but then she tightened her ponytail and twisted the curls behind her ears. She would shower later but, for now, she felt clean and presentable enough to go inside the main house.
She left the washroom as voices echoed from the canteen area across the hall. Someone said her name and a feeling of dread crept up her spine. She sometimes joined the ranch hands for snacks or a beer—she wanted them to consider her one of the guys as they did Dave and Steve—but they usually hushed up or tamed their raunchy mouths with the boss’s daughter around.
Melody paused outside the open doorway and listened in.
“I never thought Miss Melody would do somethin’ like that,” a man stated in a gruff tone. “She’s weird around men when it comes to datin’ ‘em.”
“That’s why,” another man said in a voice that Melody recognized. Angus had worked on the ranch for over twenty years and served as her father’s most trusted confidant. Near fifty, the tall, heavyset man oversaw productions on the ranch when Wayne Bennett traveled for work. “Her daddy kicked that drifter off the ranch after he caught the man and his daughter naked in an empty paddock, covered in hay.”
She pressed her hands against her warm cheeks and swallowed hard. She wanted to run off and hide, but she shouldn’t act ashamed. The gossip once embarrassed her but no one had spoken of it in years. Why would Angus spread the story of her foolish youth now? With a deep breath, she strode in
side the room and held her head at a regal angle. Two men jumped up from an old sofa but her gaze landed on a third man who straightened from his lean against the wall.
Melody crossed her arms. “You’ve seen Max?”
Angus nodded as his cheeks reddened. “Early this morning in Bozeman, ma’am. He entered the blacksmith’s shop just before I left. We talked for a bit and that was it.”
She fisted her hands behind her back and dug her nails deep into her skin. She wanted to yell and cry at the same time. He’d finally returned after ten damn years. She didn’t know what to do.
“What did you talk about?” She struggled to keep her voice calm and even. “Why is he here?”
“Now, Miss Melody, I really shouldn’t—”
She bristled every time the men called her ‘Miss’ or ‘ma’am’. “Angus, tell me. You probably would have told them if I hadn’t interrupted.” She held out her arm to indicate the other men who returned to their seats. “Come on, I’m more than happy to hear this gossip.”
He sighed. “All right. Max said that he bought the old Two-Step Ranch in Bozeman about six months ago. It needed a lot of repairs. He has two horses and he wants to open the ranch by next spring.”
Old hurt that she’d pushed to the back of her mind and heart tore free as though Angus had plunged his hand inside her chest and ripped out the thumping organ.
“He also said,” Angus continued, “that he plans to stop by Willow Creek sometime for some unfinished business. He didn’t say what kind.”
She bit her nails deeper into her palms. The pain kept her focused and her tears at bay. She wouldn’t break or cry in front of her coworkers. “Do my parents know about this?”
He tunneled a hand through his short, dark hair. “Nah, I don’t think so. Max seemed upset that I saw him. I got the feeling that he doesn’t want anyone from around here to know that he’s back.”
