Montana Actually

by Fiona Lowe

  “I know you do.” She seemed to hesitate for a moment. “I’m just worried about what happened out east to bring you back. You know you can tell me if something’s bothering you.”

  Katrina toyed with the idea for a moment, but as much as she loved her mother, the story was sordid and unpalatable. She hadn’t planned on dumping her mess of a life and her bitter disappointments onto her mom before, and she certainly wasn’t going to now she was sick. Bonnie couldn’t change anything and Katrina wasn’t a teenager anymore. She made her own messes and she fixed them.

  “It’s all good, Mom.”

  “Well, I hope it is. Life’s often a winding road filled with blind bends, but keep driving because when you least expect it, a spectacular view opens up that takes your breath away.”

  Trying not to think of silver gray eyes, tousled brown hair and a chest she could stay cuddled up to for far too long, she kissed her mother and stood up. “I’m leaving Megan in charge and heading into town.”

  “Can you take the ‘thank you’ side of beef to Doctor Josh on your way into town?”

  “It’s on my list.”

  Bonnie picked up a card from her nightstand. “Here’s the card to go with.”

  She took it from her. “If he’s not home, I’ll leave it on the kitchen table with a note telling him there’s food in the refrigerator.”

  “Thank you. Oh, and Katrina?”

  “Yes?”

  “I think Beau said Ty’s playing guitar at Leroy’s tonight, so why not drop by after the errands?”

  “I’ll think about it.”

  “You do that. Go have some fun.”

  That’s the plan. “I’ll try my very best, Mom. I promise.”

  —

  SUMMER heat arrived like the blast of a furnace and the day had been boiling. Josh had planned to spend his Sunday afternoon at the community pool for a swim, but he’d been called into the ER for a couple of cases, including a kid who’d fallen off his bike and sustained the classic injury of a fractured clavicle. The twelve-year-old had been extremely disappointed when Josh had broken the news to him that not only would bike riding be off his list of summer activities, no plaster cast was going to be involved.

  “That totally blows.”

  “Sorry, dude. Maybe your mom could cover the cuff and collar sling with some superhero material.”

  “Thanks a lot for that suggestion, Doctor Stanton,” Loreen Ryder said grumpily. “I’ll add that to my already enormous to-do list, shall I?”

  He made a mental note to avoid giving helpful suggestions to tired and overwrought mothers at the end of long, hot vacation days.

  Half an hour later, after he’d said good-bye to the Ryders and finished completing the paperwork required by their insurance company and the hospital, he finally got away. He dropped the soft top of his car, enjoying the freedom that came when a job was over. As much as he’d been convinced Floyd was so very wrong about him needing to live out of the town, he’d grown to enjoy the drive. The distant Rockies were as enticing as ever, but down on the plains where he lived in the wind, he noticed that the waving native grasses were now dotted with tiny white flowers. Pastures where crops had been sown in the spring now appeared to be growing an inch a day. To his untrained eye it all looked good, but both the farmers and the ranchers had been grumbling about the lack of rain.

  At the intersection of the highway and his gravel road, the resident jackrabbit gave him his usual mocking stare, reminding him that even though he might feel slightly less of an outsider than he had when he’d first arrived, he still was one. As he rounded the final bend, he recognized Katrina’s ancient truck and smiled—a huge, wide thank you smile.

  She’d called him the day after Bonnie had been discharged from Great Falls and told him she’d send someone over to fix the toilet. He’d had to bite his tongue to prevent saying, “Please send yourself.” It appeared she’d done so anyway.

  Having adopted the local culture of not locking his car, he jogged into the house and quickly came to an abrupt halt. His greeting dried on his lips and his blood drained so fast to his groin that he saw silver spots behind his eyeballs.

  Katrina was leaning casually against his kitchen counter like she’d done a few times before, with her tool belt obscuring her shorts. Instead of an old shirt or tank top, she wore a one-shouldered, plain black bandeau bikini top. The functional neoprene strapped firmly against her like a wet suit, fitting perfectly to full breasts whose weight and contours he was intimate with.

  “Hi.” There was no hiding the rasp to his voice.

  “Hi.” She tilted her head and gave him a tentative smile. A smile that said last time we were together we were naked and is this going to be awkward? “I’ve fixed your toilet.”

  “Thanks.” His brain was lust-infused fudge and barely computed. Ask about Bonnie. “How’s your mom doing?”

  “It’s a week tomorrow since the surgery and she’s finding it hard doing nothing. Fortunately, if she tries to do too much, her sutures remind her pretty quick.” She moved toward the refrigerator. “My folks really appreciate all you’ve done for them.”

  He waved the thanks away. “It’s my job.”

  “It is, but there’s ways and means of doing that job. They know it was a lot to ask of you to allow Mom to have the chemotherapy here. They’ve sent over a card, some ranch-grown beef and a six-pack of beer.” Swinging open the refrigerator door, she bent over to indicate where she’d put the food.

  He almost choked on his tongue. Gone were the cutoff shorts and in their place she wore black high-cut bikini briefs that matched her top. They sat low below her hips, covering only half of her gloriously round buttocks.

  Sweat broke out on his forehead. Who fixed plumbing in a bikini?

  She tossed him a beer. “You look hot.”

  So do you. “Yeah.” He cracked open the can and took a long, cold slug of the brew to slake his dry throat and to stop himself from pulling her into his arms. He wasn’t doing that until he had a better read on her.

  He couldn’t shake the image of Ashley lying on their bed dressed in a black corset and come-hither high-heeled boots. It was one of many costumes she’d worn now and then, and the memory slashed him like the blade of a shiv. It had all been part of her plan to control him through sex. Get him hard and horny and then metaphysically knee him in the balls until she got what she wanted. He’d given in more than once and he still tasted his bitter regret. When he’d left Chicago, he’d vowed that no woman was going to control him again.

  Was Katrina using the fact he’d told her he found her tool belt sexy? He didn’t know her well enough to have worked out her games, but he knew he didn’t want to play any. “Exactly why are you wearing your bikini to fix my toilet?”

  She glanced down at the bandeau as if she’d forgotten about it. “The house was a hundred and ten degrees when I arrived.”

  “And that’s the only reason?”

  She gave him a look that said perhaps he was missing some brain cells before unclipping her tool belt. “Why? Do you have a no-bikini rule inside the house?”

  He thought about Ashley. “I have a straight-shooting policy.”

  She blinked. “Okay, then.” She pushed a cooler with her foot. “As I was about to say before you became the bikini police, there’s a lovely deep water hole in the bend of the creek, not far from here.” She licked her lips nervously. “I wondered if you . . . I thought it might be nice if we took a picnic supper and went for a swim.”

  Relief slid through him at her hesitant and guileless invitation, quickly banishing old memories. “So that’s why you’re wearing your bikini.”

  “It’s what I usually wear when I go swimming.” A slight frown marred her forehead. “It was just an idea, Josh. It’s fine if you don’t want to come.” She picked up her tool belt. “I’ll leave now and let you get on with your evening.”

  “No,” he said way too abruptly, not wanting her to leave. “A swim sounds perfect.” />
  A disbelieving look crossed her face. “Are you sure?”

  He set his beer on the counter, crossed the short distance between them and kissed her quickly on the cheek. “Absolutely.”

  She still wore an air of tentativeness. “So you really do want to go?”

  “I really do.” This time he gave her a long, deep kiss on the lips to reinforce his words. “I’ll go grab my swim shorts.”

  She wrapped her hand gently around his wrist. “No need.”

  This time it was his turn to frown. “I thought we were going swimming?”

  She glanced at her feet and then brought her gaze back to his face, her cheeks now pink. “Um, the water hole . . . it’s on private property and very secluded.”

  He grinned at her discomposure, enjoying her inexpert style. He put his hands on her waist and pulled her in against him, loving the way her curves fitted into his. “Are you suggesting impropriety to an upstanding member of the Bear Paw community?”

  “So you don’t want to go skinny-dipping?” She unbuttoned his business shirt, the backs of her fingers skating across his skin, making him want to lift her up and wrap her legs around his waist there and then.

  “I didn’t say that.” Using both hands, he stroked tendrils of hair back behind her ears. “I just want to be sure that you plan to part with that bikini when we get there. After all, a guy doesn’t want to feel used.”

  The teasing look in her emerald eyes suddenly got serious. “I thought that was exactly what this thing between us was all about. Using each other.”

  Spoken out loud, the words sounded harshly matter-of-fact, which struck him as being in stark contrast to the amazing sex they shared. “I like to think we’re enjoying each other’s company when we can.”

  She gave him a long, assessing look and then swung out of his arms and picked up the cooler. “And right now we have a window of opportunity, so are you in?”

  Fun streaked through him. “I’m so in.”

  A seductive smile lit up her face and she ran to the door. “Let’s go enjoy each other, then.”

  —

  JOSH couldn’t remember being this relaxed in a very long time. He sat on a large, flat river rock that had been worn smooth by the flowing action of a gazillion gallons of water over billions of years. Icy cold water ran over his feet, the sun warmed his back and Katrina had heated him from the inside out. He’d never had sex outdoors before, but he could now see its allure.

  He handed her a soda from the cooler. “This was a great idea, thank you.”

  Her mouth twitched up at the edges and her eyes crinkled as the smile reached them. “The picnic or the sex?”

  “Both.” Ravenously hungry, he bit into his third roll of pulled beef and coleslaw. “You know, this tastes as good as any sandwich from Mac’s, my favorite deli in Chicago.”

  “There’s no question it’s good, but I’m guessing you missed lunch today, so it tastes even sweeter.”

  “I did, but it was worth it.”

  “Dare I ask?”

  But underneath her teasing, he knew genuine interest lay and he appreciated it. Ashley had never shown much curiosity in his work, only in his future possible earnings. “I got an interesting case of renal colic come through the ER.”

  She gently bumped his shoulder. “Probably more excruciatingly painful than interesting for the patient.”

  “True enough, but I was generous with the narcotics.” He was struck by a thought. “I hope that doesn’t get out.”

  “This is Bear Paw, Josh. It’s hardly the number one destination for junkies. So how’s the guy now?”

  “He passed a sucker of a stone and he should sleep well tonight but he’s going to be sore tomorrow.” He suddenly reached for his pants. “That reminds me. I better check my service.”

  “You don’t need to hide behind your service, Josh,” she said sharply as her pretty features hardened like concrete. “This is casual and if you want to leave, just go.”

  “I don’t want to leave.” Her antagonism had come out of nowhere, perplexing him, and it didn’t make a lot of sense. As a nurse, she knew he needed to check in with his service, especially given he’d been deliciously distracted with her for the past hour. “What’s going on, Katrina?”

  “Nothing.” She looked away but her hands were pressed hard against the rock.

  He pressed a kiss into her shoulder. “It doesn’t feel like nothing.”

  Silently, she shrugged him away. At a loss as to what the hell was going on and not wanting to play any games, he rang his service. Given that the mention of it seemed to have sparked something, he put his phone on speaker. Everything in Bear Paw’s hospital and clinic was under control and he was not required. He cut the call.

  She immediately turned to him, her face filled with a mixture of contrition and something else that was less easy to read. “Sorry.”

  He was so tempted to say that’s okay and kiss her, but he needed to know what had just happened. “What for?”

  She sucked in her lips as if she didn’t want to tell him and then blew out a breath. “Flashbacks.”

  He stared at her, not understanding.

  She dropped her gaze. “Brent frequently called his service.”

  Brent? Her rigid posture and steely tone hinted at one thing only. “The bastard cardiac surgeon?”

  “That’s him.” She lay back on the rock and stared at the cloudless sky. “He was always checking his service. I thought he was the most conscientious doctor I’d ever met right up until I discovered he’d been calling his wife.”

  Red-hot fury whipped through him at the unknown man. “The wife you didn’t know he had?”

  She nodded. “That would be the one.”

  “How did you find out?”

  She sat up slowly and her fingers worried a tiny plant that grew in a crack in the rock. “He slipped up. Made a mistake.”

  “What sort of a mistake?”

  She sighed. “I’m really not proud of this period in my life, Josh.”

  He thought about his own stupidity and blindness with Ashley. “You’re not alone there, Katrina. We’ve all done things we regret.”

  She gave him an assessing look. “You’ve got a story that makes you look like a first-class fool?”

  “Maybe.”

  She pulled the small seedling out of the crevice. “Then you’ll understand why I haven’t told anyone.”

  One part of him was surprised, given she was so close to her family, but another part of him understood. Back when he’d worked out she’d been in a relationship with a married man, he remembered saying to her, how could you not know and her reply of don’t judge me. Not that he had any interest in psychiatry, but he did know that at some point bad stuff needed to be voiced. Katrina had been sitting on this for a few months.

  “You can tell me and I promise to keep it a secret. Even if Bethany gets wind of it and threatens me with her crutch, I’ll still be a vault.”

  She gave him a faint smile. “Okay, but I’m telling it fast.”

  “Like ripping a Band-Aid off a wound?”

  “Pretty much. Here goes.” She blew out a breath. “Brent was one of the cardiothoracic surgeons I worked with. He was great at his job, and his patients loved him because not only was he a talented surgeon, he had a special ability of making whoever he was talking to feel they were incredibly special.”

  Josh hated him already. “And he charmed you?”

  “He charmed everyone.” She pursed her mouth as if she’d just sucked on a sour lemon. “He’d ask you about your weekend, ask after people’s kids and pets, that sort of thing. And he’d remember stuff like birthdays and if your dog was sick. It wasn’t until much, much later, after I’d found out about his secret life, that I realized he did all of this to avoid revealing anything about himself. He was an expert at that.”

  She started shredding the leaves off of the plant. “The lab was often short staffed, and because my family was across the other side of
the country and I didn’t have any children, I often took the on-call weekend work. Most of the time, I never got called in, but there was this one weekend about six months after Brent joined the staff. It was crazy, maybe it was a full moon, I don’t know, but we had back-to-back emergencies. Every time we said good-bye, plugged in the security code and prepared to leave, we’d get another call.”

  “I know weekends like that.”

  “Yeah.” She got a faraway look in her eyes. “It was like being in a vacuum, totally separate from the rest of the world, and it was fun. Full of shared jokes.” She sighed. “Even now, after everything that’s gone down and his utter disregard for the moral glue that holds relationships together, there’s no denying Brent was great company.”

  “It’s my experience that most sociopaths are,” Josh said, his dislike for this guy rising every minute. “And that’s what makes them so hard to recognize.”

  “And I didn’t recognize that about him at all. That’s what burns so much, because I thought I was a good judge of people.” The stripped plant fell out of her hand.

  He thought about her reaction when they’d kissed at the clinic. “So things started that weekend at work?”

  “They did. In the on-call room, which should have been tacky but somehow it wasn’t. We started dating straightaway. Before Brent, I’d dated a practical cowboy, an accountant who lacked imagination and a cash-strapped intern, so when he started sending me expensive gifts, I fell for it.

  “He arranged our dates to fit in with our schedules, insisting that my schedule at the lab match his when he was there. It made sense, and if part of me thought it lacked a certain spontaneity, it was silenced by the times Brent stretched the rules, making everything exciting and fun. I guess that was a sign that I missed. Mostly we caught up midweek, but we got away for some weekends, and I went to Hawaii with him for a conference. When he suggested we keep things quiet because management frowned upon staff dating, I agreed for both our sakes.”

  He could see how a trusting, country-raised woman had no reason to suspect a thing. “How long did all this go on for?”