Montana Ranch Series: Love on Willow Creek, Lightning over Bennett Ranch, One Touch at Cob's Bar and Grill, Last Chance for Love, Love Under an Open Sky

by Dawes, Casey

  “Do you think he’s hiding something? Or hiding from something?”

  Shelle’s voice shook when she answered. “I don’t care, Jess. Maybe he’s a fugitive on America’s Most Wanted, or maybe he’s just crazy.”

  Jess shook her head. “I don’t think so. I get the feeling he’s a good guy, plus, my father trusts him. He wouldn’t trust anyone that wasn’t okay.”

  “Great,” Shelle answered dryly and stood to let Jessica have the seat.

  “There’s just something about him that makes me wonder who he really is. Get to know his story.”

  “He’s the guy who better keep that predator he calls a pet, far away from me, that’s for sure. Now, are you finished? I’m freezing.”

  Jessica nodded. Shelle opened the door and they picked their way back to the small cabin.

  By the time they returned, the blankets they’d been wrapped in were once more on the full-sized bed. Another set of covers took up a spot on the wood floor in front of the fireplace where Junction lay curled on top.

  “Thank you again, Mr. Laughlin,” Jessica said as her friend snuggled into the covers and scooted close to the wall.

  “Gage.”

  “Gage,” she repeated. The name rolled off her tongue like a waterfall over a cliff. Although she’d heard her father tell stories about Ol’ man Laughlin’s bravery and honor as a man—rare in this day and age—she couldn’t help but feel uneasy when he stared at her with his bright blue eyes. His intense gaze made her want to squirm as she slid into the bed next to Shelle and sat up to lean against the simple wooden headboard. He no doubt studied her actions and judged her accordingly. She gave in and fidgeted in her seat on the soft mattress. “I know you said you don’t know how long this storm will be, but can you tell me how long

  snowstorms usually last up here?”

  “Days. A week maybe,” he answered as he patted the wolf’s head.

  “Do you think this one will last that long?”

  He shrugged.

  “Well, goodnight. And really, thanks.” She wiggled down to lay next to her friend, and turned to watch the warm flames lick the charred confines of the fireplace.

  Gage moved to the corner, drawing her attention once more. She yanked the covers up to her chin and relaxed against a pillow that smelled of pine trees and musky man.

  He yanked his shirt off and tossed it into a nearby plastic bin before he settled into his makeshift bed. Not an ounce of fat marred his chiseled physique, although a light dusting of brown hair speckled his chest and stomach. His skin glowed in the orange light, each muscle highlighted by shadows. While his beard was a little longer than she liked, at least he didn’t look as though he lived in the days of Jesus. He was definitely not the man she’d envisioned on the many occasions her father spoke of the recluse who lived alone on the mountaintop. This knowledge shed a whole new light on the man her father called ‘Ol’ man Laughlin.’

  Chapter Two

  “Oh my God,” Shelle breathed as she stared into the box Gage kept in the corner of the barn. Tears filled her eyes and her voice grew shaky. “There’s a hand in here.”

  “What?” Jessica finished tossing a flake of hay over her horse’s stall and ran to where Shelle stood, shaking. Two days passed in uncomfortable silence since they found their way to Gage’s cabin, and this was the first day the snow slowed enough for them to leave the cabin for more than a few minutes.

  “A hand. A human hand. There’s a person in there.” Her friend backed away quickly and leaned on the wall for support. “I was right. We’re going to die. We have to get out of here!”

  Shelle ran into the tack room, and quickly returned with her saddle while Jessica examined the bones. Her heart began to pound at what looked like the bones of an adult size arm and hand. She’d only taken one semester of anatomy in college, but these bones did indeed look human.

  Almost.

  “These can’t be from a person. I’m sure there’s an explanation.”

  “Yeah, like he chops people up and eats them. We can ride home, Jess.” Michelle tossed her saddle over a rail and turned back to the tack room when a whinny outside the open doors filled the barn. “Screw the snow. I’ll chance it.” Her friend’s face turned white and her chest stopped rising and falling with breaths. “Oh my God. He’s back.”

  “Calm down, Shelle. It’s not human.” I hope.

  Shelle ran as fast as she could out the side door as Gage entered through the front.

  “Is the pass clear?” Jessica asked, hopefully. She knew Gage wasn’t a murderer like her friend thought, but the hand in the box was a bit frightening.

  “No,” was all Gage said as he led his mare to her stall in the corner.

  “Can we at least get through to our truck?”

  Gage shook his head. “There was an avalanche.”

  “Holly crap.” She clutched the base of her throat. “Are you okay? I mean, obviously you’re okay, but did you come out alive? That didn’t make sense. Was there…was there any casualties? I’m just going to shut up now.”

  Gage shook his head with a smile, and unsaddled his horse. “The snow slide happened last night. Few people come up this far so casualties are doubtful.”

  “So we’re stuck up here?”

  Gage nodded and tossed his saddle over the stall’s half door. “It’s not the first landslide this year, and it won’t be the last.”

  “Is that the pass that triggers a slide every year?”

  He nodded and guided the mare through the gate. Once the latch was in place, he went to the box and took out the hand. Tossing the phalanges into the wastebasket in the corner, he gently handed the arm bone to Junction, who snapped his sharp teeth around it and took off outside. “I can dig you out, but it will take a few weeks, maybe even a month.”

  He turned around to face her.

  “What was that?” she sang out in a dramatic Broadway voice, and nodded to the trashcan in the corner.

  “Black bear.”

  “Black bear?” Jessica asked with a sigh of relief. “Just a lazy ol’ bear.”

  “The small bones choke Junction so I toss the paw or use them for bait.”

  “Where are the claws?”

  “I trade them with the pelts. The bones go in the box for Junction or I use them in my traps.”

  “Shelle will be glad to hear that. She thought they were human.”

  Gage raised his head only a fraction of an inch, but his eyes twinkled with humor for a split second.

  “They’re so similar,” she continued once she was certain he didn’t plan to comment. “How do you tell the difference?”

  “The first phalanx. On a human, it’s smooth, while the black bear has a deep grove.”

  “Meet the phalange family. Phalanx, Meta, Carpal, and Tunnel,” she said in her Costello voice, and then shook her head in shame. “Sorry. I do that sometimes, but in my defense you make me nervous.”

  He gave a chuckle so quiet she almost missed it, except for the subtle rise of his chest.

  An old dried up horse turd caught her attention and she kicked it into the empty stall to her right. In a serious tone, she continued, “I can help dig a path through the snow from the avalanche—unless there’s another way out of here.”

  “No.”

  Jessica sighed. The muscles in her shoulders and neck began to ache. This whole conversation made her more tense than she’d ever felt. Why did he make her so edgy?

  Gage disappeared into the small room in the corner and the rumble of him rummaging through tack swept through the whole barn.

  “What are you doing?” Jessica asked as she stepped under the doorframe and leaned against the jamb to watch him yank out a pair of snowshoes and a weather-worn pack.

  “There’s a Forest Servic
e cabin ten miles up the old gold miners trail. They have a radio.”

  “I want to come.” Jessica hurried to her saddle and began to check on the supplies she always carried in the saddlebag.

  “It’s too dangerous.” He dropped a gray wool blanket down onto the pile of gear. “I might have to stay the night.”

  “I’m coming.” She stopped and faced Gage, silently daring him to argue. “I know how to handle myself in the mountains and on a horse. I’m coming.”

  “Your friend—” he left the end hanging as if that were a sufficient argument.

  “She’s adventurous. I’m sure she’ll want to come along too.”

  She tried to read his expression to find any indication of whether or not he would give in. His face didn’t twitch. No answer showed in his eyes. He was good at masking his emotions.

  “I’m coming,” she reiterated, hoping it would work.

  “Do you have a gun?”

  “A .308.”

  He nodded. “That’ll do.”

  “Why?”

  “The cabin is just south of Twin Peaks. It’s not an easy ride.”

  “I’ve been riding the mountains since I was a year old. I can handle it.”

  “It’s a hot spot for bear dens. With the early snowfall, the bears will be desperate for any last minute meals before hibernation.”

  “I’ll bring my gun.”

  He nodded.

  “I’ll go talk to Shelle.” She ran out of the barn and located her friend by the chicken coop. She gave a quick explanation of the plan only to see Shelle’s face fall in desperation.

  “I’m not going deeper into the forest with that man.” She looked around and lowered her voice. “Not after the body.”

  Jessica waved off her concern. “That was a bear paw.”

  “That was no bear paw, Jess. It didn’t have any claws, just fingers.”

  Jessica told her what she found out from Gage concerning the hand, but it didn’t seem to convince her determined friend.

  “Oh that’s convenient.” Shelle shooed away a chicken pecking at the ground near her boot. “I’m not going. I’ll stay here. By myself.”

  “Come on, Shelle. An avalanche blocked the path to the truck. I need to send a message to my dad and this is the only way.”

  “You go with him then, but if he shows up without you I’ll leave on my own. I’ll risk the stability of the roadway or triggering another avalanche. I’ll ride home like a cowboy if I have too. I’ll tell the whole town he murdered you and buried your body in the wilderness.”

  “Either he’s a cannibal or a murderer who buries his prey, Shelle. You can’t have it both ways.”

  “Fine.” She gave Jessica a stern look. “I’ll tell them he lured you to the forest to eat you so I couldn’t help you get free, and then he came back for me but I escaped.”

  “If I don’t return then go ahead and tell the town. I will come back, though, so don’t take off down the mountain without me.”

  “I would never leave without you. I practically lived at your house growing up. You’re like a sister to me.”

  “Oh, but you’ll let me go alone to the forest with a man you believe to be a killer?”

  Shelle shrugged. “You’re the one who wants to go.”

  Jessica folded her arms and raised her eyebrows.

  Shelle rolled her eyes. “Okay, okay, he’s probably not a murderer, but there is something off about him.”

  “Not malicious, though, so maybe you should start to be a bit more grateful to him for taking us in.”

  Shelle opened her mouth to respond when the clop of hooves reached the small patch of snow-covered ground where they stood. Gage trudged through the shin deep snow leading two sturdy, shaggy-haired horses. “Got your gun?”

  “Not yet. I’ll get it from my saddle.”

  It took only a few moments for her to run into the barn and collect her belongings. When she returned, Gage was telling Shelle where to find food and water if needed, but Shelle stood rigid and stared, fear evident in her eyes.

  Excitement filled Jessica’s gut at having the opportunity to get to know him better, as well as figure out when they would get off this mountain and back to her job at the Bar-L. If she waited any longer up here, she could just find herself jobless. Bridget Lawson, the owner of the Bar-L, couldn’t go long without someone to help out, and the longer Jessica stayed up there the less likely a job awaited her at home. She desperately needed to get back.

  Chapter Three

  “Are we going to the place where that nut reporter was mauled to death and died? The one who thought bears were just misunderstood and wanted to write a story about them?”

  Gage nodded as he adjusted the reins in his hand.

  “I don’t get people. I mean, for Pete’s sake, an apex predator will always eat you if they have too.”

  Gage simply stared at the trail ahead.

  Small puffs of air, like miniature clouds, floated in front of her with each breath. The white snow glittered with a serenity that belied the dangers of the rugged wilderness, while the jagged cliffs of a far-off mountain peak mimicked a bear’s tooth—a sight frightening enough to give even the toughest cowboy pause.

  “Why were you two up here during the blizzard?” Gage interrupted the shimmering winter silence.

  “We were elk hunting, and I wanted to take another look for any of the Bar-L strays, so we circled around and come down to our rangeland.”

  “You didn’t get anything on your hunt?”

  Jessica shook her head. “We didn’t find any strays either. Poor Bridget Lawson only has a few head of cattle, so any loss is felt hard. The elk was to supplement meat for us this winter.”

  “I saw a herd about five miles east of the cabin a few weeks back.”

  “Cool.” Is he offering to take me or simply rubbing it in? He was shaping up to be the one man she’d met she couldn’t read. With his vague responses and silent answers, she couldn’t pin him down. Well, he’s not going to get away with being all mysterious and crap. “Why do you live up here all by yourself? I mean, I know it’s beautiful and all, but you’ve got to be lonely.”

  Gage slowed his horse and firmed his jaw. Her heart beat so hard and long she swore it echoed from the trees just off the rough trail they rode.

  “I’ve got Junction,” he answered after the long, uncomfortable silence. The wolf leapt over a snow mound and ran toward Gage’s horse at the mention of his name.

  “Yeah but he can’t replace the companionship of a human. Don’t you miss that?”

  Gage’s eyes flared with a fire sure to melt the snow he stared at on the trail before him. “A person will just as soon stab you in the back, as buy you a beer.”

  “Not all people. I’m not like that. In high school I was voted ‘most likely to travel to Africa with the Peace Corps.’”

  Gage gave a sardonic chuckle. “I got, ‘most likely to save lives.’ High school’s a joke.”

  “I sense you have a lot of secrets within you,” she imitated a fortuneteller. “You should confide in a girl with raven hair and cornstarch eyes.”

  “Cornstarch eyes?” His chest vibrated with a deep chuckle.

  “Cornflower.” She laughed in return.

  “Do you always ping-pong from charming humor to serious so quickly?” He asked.

  “When I’m nervous I do—or scared.”

  “Which one are you with me?”

  Jessica stood in her stirrups and leaned back as her horse began to descend a steep trail. “I haven’t figured that out yet. You could maybe answer some questions of mine and help me decide.”

  Gage nodded and sat back in his saddle as his horse leveled out at the bottom of the trail. He angled his mare to pick her way through
an untraveled ravine.

  “Let’s start with where you’re from.”

  He gave a quick sideways glance in her direction. “You don’t know?”

  “Should I?”

  “Let’s just say we met a few years back.”

  “No way. I’d have remembered you.”

  “I must not have made an impression.”

  “I’ve got a good eye for detail. You can’t hide those eyes. They are such an odd shade of blue.”

  “You can if they are swollen shut.”

  She gave a look of confusion to Gage. When had they met? She silently cataloged as many encounters with boys she could think of since elementary school, but nothing came to mind.

  She shook her head, and he laughed. “I’ll give you a while to think about it. You’ll get it, eventually.”

  “You’re a very cryptic person.”

  He gave a one-shouldered shrug. “It’s safer this way.”

  “If you don’t let people too close, then they can’t hurt you, is that it?”

  He settled deeper into his saddle and his shoulders dropped as he turned and stared at the rough trail ahead. “Something like that.”

  “We’ll, I don’t buy it. If you never let people in, then you can’t experience love.”

  “Love is for people who don’t mind getting hurt. I mind.”

  “I assume you’re talking about hurt inside, because you look like the sort of man who can take a beating.”

  Gage let out a laugh that sent a nearby eagle flying from its perch high in the treetop.

  “Wow. You can go zero to sixty in the blink of an eye,” she observed.

  He shook his head and smiled in her direction. “You really don’t remember.”

  “I’m starting to think that I should.”

  “I haven’t had a good laugh since…” his mood sobered once more and his voice grew gruff and melancholy when he continued. “In a while.”

  She could see whatever had happened in his life to send him into self-induced isolation cut deep. He was a genius at changing his moods at a moment’s notice, but he’d opened up. That was something, anyway.