Nathan's Big Sky

by M. L. Buchman

  But the mad race back to the ranch had run into a major issue: Julie was nowhere to be found. Not even all of Emily’s military equipment could find her, probably because Julie was somewhere that didn’t have cell reception.

  While Nathan drove, Mark had flown his helicopter from the airport. Once it was determined Julie was gone, Mark had tracked Nils to the Larson’s calving barn and found out where she was headed. Emily called to report that Mark had taken off in the helicopter to chase Julie down at about the same moment Nathan turned off the highway at the big white cow barn. He’d almost run into the gun-shot stop sign.

  He didn’t know the roads well enough to chase after her on his own. If she came back, there was only one place he could be sure she’d eventually go, and that’s what drew him back to Aspen cabin.

  Nathan had raced the Miata along the highway, but the washboard roads from Choteau forced him to what felt like a painful crawl—no matter what the speedometer said otherwise. It was the longest thirty miles of his life.

  Now, at the cabin, holding his breath, all Nathan could do was wait.

  Emily had locked herself in her office and was probably doing marginally legal things to track Julie for Mark to intercept. Mark hadn’t called to report his success or failure. Chelsea had swung by with Doug to offer him a few words of hope that he’d barely been able to acknowledge. Nathan managed to wave back when Mac and Ama looked up toward him from the main house’s back door. He’d have to go far to find stauncher friends.

  Nathan spotted the returning helo first, a small white dot against the heavy gray clouds. He stood and watched, holding onto a porch post because he didn’t trust his knees.

  He felt as out of balance as that moment last night sitting with Mark outside Estevan’s restaurant when he realized his mistake.

  Being a New York restaurant burn-out had sent him scrambling to Montana in the first place. And in just two weeks of helping Estevan, he’d gotten sucked right back in like some sick drug addict. Didn’t even see what he’d done until Mark pulled the plug on him. Estevan’s restaurant was on its legs, the friendship debt was paid, and his job was over.

  At the next revelation he almost laughed—would have if he wasn’t so scared: if he never cooked in Paris or New York again, that would be fine with him.

  From Aspen’s porch, Nathan saw the helo land, shut down—but Mark was the only one to climb out. He was too far away to see clearly, but Emily came rushing out of the barn. She threw herself at him and he swept her tight into his arms.

  Nathan would take that as a good sign. Surprising, but good.

  An even better sign, he spotted the dust of a vehicle far out along the road that ran between Henderson and Larson land.

  In minutes the dust cloud resolved to reveal an ancient beater of a pickup racing toward the ranch. Unable to stand any longer, he sat down on the top step and waited. His hands ached with how tightly they were clasped, but he couldn’t seem to let go.

  Closer. Definitely Julie’s truck. It disappeared behind the bluff for an agonizing couple of minutes, then came racing up the main drive.

  It didn’t slow through the main yard, which sent Patrick skittering aside when he foolishly tried to cross the open expanse.

  Without a single hesitation she roared up the frontage road by the cabins, sliding to a barely controlled halt in front of him.

  He couldn’t stand.

  For a long minute she sat there, looking at him through the closed window, her hands clenched on the steering wheel.

  Unable to tolerate it any longer, he managed to rise and walk down the steps.

  She watched him as he stepped up to the truck’s door. Still held the steering wheel tightly.

  He opened the door as the first drops of rain pattered softly on the roof of her truck.

  She was covered head to toe in dirt.

  “Hey, cowgirl.” She looked incredible.

  “Hey.” No “city boy”. Bad sign? Definitely not good.

  “You’re all dirty again. What happened?”

  She shook her head. Not relevant. Right. Time to talk about what was important.

  “A friend called. He needed help opening a new restaurant.”

  “So you just…went?” Her fury sounded deep, but he could read the hurt behind it. Nathan had no idea how he’d ever done this to her. He could only shrug. However, pointing out that she’d told him to go wasn’t likely to help anything.

  Instead he tried to explain. “It was a dream he and I used to have long ago. I owed him. Even more, I owed the dream.”

  She watched him with those impossibly blue eyes.

  “I almost got lost in it again. So dangerously close. But one thing stopped me.”

  “Mark.”

  Nathan laughed and shook his head. “Not even close,” he reached out and tucked her hair behind her ear.

  She leaned into it a little, but didn’t let go of the steering wheel.

  “All Mark did was remind me that Emily can be wrong.”

  “What does Emily have to do with this?”

  “You said, ‘I do like you.’ You said that Emily got it wrong and that you do like me. Is that still true?”

  After a long moment she nodded.

  “The piece I didn’t connect was that I like you, too.”

  “Well, that’s convenient.”

  He laughed at her tone. He now knew a Julie Larson-tone when he heard one. He thought he’d figured out a way around that, but he wasn’t quite ready yet. It was the chef in him. A meal had an order: a build, a fullness, until the final validation at the end. In a meal it was called dessert. Here in Montana, beneath the roiling clouds of the Big Sky, it was called the rest of his life.

  “Will you come sit on the porch with me, Julie?”

  She eyed the porch over his shoulder, then nodded cautiously.

  It was hard, but she managed it. Nathan offered his hand, but that was asking too much. She flipped a tarp over her tools in the truck bed to protect them from the increasing rain and then climbed the porch steps beside him.

  Aspen cabin. It was so thick with memories, with feelings, with hope and despair. He was here, but she didn’t dare let the hope out. If she was wrong, she would never rebuild the walls holding her together.

  “How are you here?” How was as far as Julie dared go. She didn’t dare guess why. It was too risky.

  “Mark and I got drunk last night, very drunk.”

  “That explains the bloodshot eyes.”

  “Actually, we got drunk last night in New York. So I think that the bloodshot eyes is more from having a hangover during the flight back. Don’t ever do that. It sucks.”

  “Does this have a point?” Nathan was here. In Montana. Why was she complaining?

  “It does actually. Usually drunk equals stupid—sometimes really stupid. I lost a couple years’ worth of brain cells to being a stupid chef. Then I quit, cold turkey on my own, and became a slightly smarter chef. For some reason, last night, for once in my life when it really counted, drunk equaled smart.”

  “What were you smart about?”

  “Mark and I came up with an idea. It sounded beyond stupid at first, but we were just drunk enough to chase it around a bit. Once we had, it sounded smarter. Then a lot smarter. Mark called Emily to roust Mac and Ama out of bed because we were so excited about this crazy idea. It was past midnight here, but they said yes before we had it half explained. That’s when we got stupid and really drunk. Celebrating.”

  “Celebrating what? You draw this out much more, Nathan, and I’m going to have to commit more bodily harm on you than I already did on Mark.” The rain began pattering on the porch roof.

  “I’m sick to death of New York, Julie. It’s not just because of you. Actually that part isn’t you at all. I’m tired of the grind and the way it chews up good people until there’s nothing left of them but a palate and knife skills. I spent the last year having no life outside the kitchen—a whole year of my life. It’s not how I want to liv
e. Yet cooking for you, I was reminded how much I love to cook. Just as you reminded me every day what it looked like to be intensely alive.”

  “And…” she meant it as a growl, but she was too keyed up for it to come out that way. It explained so much, right down to the whisky he’d never quite finished at the Celtic Cowboy, proving to himself exactly who was in control.

  “Cooking classes.”

  “Cooking classes?” What did they have to do with anything?

  “Uh-huh. Cooking classes at Henderson Ranch. They have that magnificent kitchen. And there are bound to be guests who aren’t so hot on horses married to ones who are. Also Ama wants to cook less. So, Emily and I will step in there together. And I was thinking to rebuild that wagon we used for the yurt-raising party. You and I could fix that up as a classic chuck wagon. Then Red and I could deliver dinners to remote campsites. Set up someplace a couple hours’ ride away as a kids’ camp and serve them meals from a chuck wagon. Give their parents a little alone time in the cozy cabins. We can offer fully catered ranch weddings. We’ll get some great photos when a couple of Mark’s old firefighter friends get married out here this summer.”

  He kept spinning ideas as fast as Chelsea had, just…yesterday morning.

  “During the winter season, I’d get guest chefs out here and we’d do two-week pro-level master classes. During harvest we could—”

  “And you’d be happy doing this?” She cut him off before he completely overwhelmed her with his words.

  He nodded.

  “Here?” she felt the cabin behind her but couldn’t turn to look at it. She couldn’t manage more than a whisper, barely louder than the steady rain.

  “What’s with all the rain? I’ve never seen a drop since we got here except that first night’s bit of snow.”

  Julie hadn’t really focused on it. What about her question? Was he avoiding it? Her heart was feeling too jumbled to hold focus on that, so instead she answered his question. “It’s the first heavy spring rain. Everyone has been waiting for it. If it holds for a couple of days, it will be a good year along the Montana Front Range. Another major dump in August and it will be a great year.”

  Nathan rose and walked away from her to hold his hand out past the edge of the covered porch. “It’s warm.”

  “We call it the ‘Million-Dollar Rain’. It sets the crops, fills the reservoirs, and changes the prairie from struggling to lush. In a couple days, you’re going to see wildflowers like you never imagined in your life. The entire prairie blooms purple, red, and gold.”

  “I’d like to see that.” Then he turned back to face her, nodding toward Aspen’s cabin door showing that he hadn’t forgotten her question. “Yes, right here. One condition.”

  “What’s that?”

  “You said that you like me, cowgirl.”

  “I think we already covered that.”

  “But do you love me, Julie? I couldn’t go through that door ever again without you beside me.”

  She turned from Nathan and those dark eyes that looked at her with such sudden hope. She finally looked at the front door of the Aspen cabin.

  Could she live here? With Nathan? With their children?

  Looking out over this beautiful land?

  She finally faced Nathan once more but could only nod. The answer to every single one of those questions was yes.

  He knelt before her.

  “Then will you marry me, Julie? Because I can’t imagine life without you.”

  A nod was too little. Not nearly big enough to explain the protective walls around her heart that were crumbling to dust. Washed away by a million-dollar rain and the love of a chef. Then her freed heart found what to say.

  “Oh, city boy. Yes.”

  They were the happiest words she’d ever spoken in her life.

  Return to Eagle Cove (excerpt)

  If you enjoyed Nathan’s Big Sky, you might also enjoy this.

  Return to Eagle Cove (excerpt)

  a small town Oregon romance

  “Almost home, sweetie.”

  “Oh joy,” Jessica Baxter tried to clamp down on her sarcasm. It was a bad habit that worked fine in her social set back in Chicago, but sounded more petty with each mile they drove toward the Oregon Coast. She slumped down in the passenger seat of her mom’s baby-blue Toyota hybrid. It still had that new car smell. As much as she’d dreamed of owning a hot sports car some day, she knew that she was enough her mother’s daughter that this was probably the exact sort of eminently sensible car she would buy when her VW Beetle finally gave up the ghost.

  Just like her mom.

  Maybe she’d get it in red to be at least a little different.

  Jessica sighed again, keeping it to herself so that she wasn’t being overly offensive. Her mother was one of the many reasons that she’d gone as far away as possible for college and did her best to rarely return—she didn’t want to turn into her mother and it was too easy to imagine doing so if she’d stayed in the small town of Eagle Cove, Oregon.

  They were like twins separated by twenty-two years. The two of them had been able to trade clothes since Jessica hit puberty and had shot up to match her mother’s slender five-foot-ten. Other than a very brief mistake of dying her hair black as part of a tenth-grade dare, which had turned her fair complexion past goth and into bloodless vampire, they were both light blond.

  The one part of twin-dom that she couldn’t seem to pull off even though she wanted to was Mom’s casual-chic. Monica Baxter was always dressed one step above the world around her; not fancy, just really well put together. The closest Jessica ever managed was Bohemian-chic which wasn’t really the same thing, but she’d learned to make it her own. Of course, Bohemian was easier on the budget and often available in consignment stores which had only reinforced her chosen style.

  Jessica did her best to not regress as they drove up into the Coast Range that separated the beach towns from the rest of Oregon…and failed miserably at that as well. She felt as if she was rapidly descending back toward being a pouty, pre-pubescent twelve from her present urban and worldly thirty-two.

  Why did crossing the Oregon state line always take twenty years off her intelligence?

  Maybe it was only Coast County. Because of the landscape the Oregon Coast felt incredibly far from anywhere. The Coast Range topped out at a mere four thousand feet high, but only a half dozen passes made it through the three hundred mile range of rugged hills that separated the beaches from the broad farming and industrial realm of the Willamette Valley. The interior of the state might as well be in a whole other country for how little it had in common with where she’d grown up.

  “It’s so strange being back here,” Jessica rolled down the window and sniffed at the air. The scents were so rich and varied that they tickled. Bright with pine. Musty with undergrowth. Damp. A first hint of the sea.

  “Well, it has been four years, honey. That’s bound to make it seem a bit odd. But I’m so glad that you came.”

  “Me too, Mom.” Better. She managed to say it as if she meant it, however unlikely that might be. Chicago fit her like a…but it didn’t. The city was…something she was not going to give a single thought to for the next eight days. If she didn’t fit there and she didn’t want to fit in Eagle Cove, Oregon, then where did she belong?

  Jessica breathed in deeply this time, trying to clear her thoughts with the fresh air of the Coast Range and nearly choked herself on how green everything smelled. The harsh slap of the mountains was almost an affront. The two-lane road dove and twisted along narrow corridors sliced through towering spruce and Douglas fir trees. The babies were sixty feet high along the shoulder as the car twisted up toward the pass; the mother trees behind them were much, much bigger.

  And it wasn’t just the trees that were lush. As they wound deeper into the Coast Range, each branch became covered with mosses and lichens. It soothed her eyes, so used to towering concrete and glass, with a living tapestry of greens, golds, and silvers. Beneath the trees
grew an impenetrable tangle of salal and scrub alder. Old barns on the roadside didn’t have shingle roofs, they had moss ones; some of them were covered inches thick. Many RVs, left unattended in front yards for too long, had a sheen of green growth on their north side.

  “I really want to hate this,” the Coast Range had three times the rainfall of Chicago, often surpassing a hundred inches a year. She expected to feel the weight of all that biomass crashing down on her shoulders, but instead she noticed the start of a disconcerting lightness as if coming home was a good thing. Jessica did not like that encroachment of pending appreciation, perhaps even enjoyment, upon her true feelings. “But it smells so good. Like sunshine and new growth.”

  Her mother’s laugh was amused as they twisted along the two-lane road slowly climbing up a narrow valley.

  “I didn’t mean to say that out loud.”

  “But you said it anyway.”

  “Not helping, Mom.”

  Thankfully her mother’s laugh said that she had understood Jessica’s response as a tease. Which it mostly was, partly.

  Jessica didn’t want to like coming back to the coast. She didn’t have small-town dreams. That was the main reason she’d left Eagle Cove. She had big city dreams…which weren’t exactly coming together for her despite her efforts over the last fourteen years. But scurrying home wasn’t going to fix those. And the selection of men in such a tiny town was, to put it kindly, pitiful. Puffin High—

  Why they hadn’t called it Eagle High in Eagle Cove was a subject of heated debate by every single class.

  Puffin High’s problem was that she knew every male her age all too well. The only reason the town had its own high school was that it was too far away from everywhere else for busing to make sense. Her senior class had just thirty-four students. Grades seven through twelve numbered under two hundred. And she knew far too much about every single one of them.

  Even more obnoxiously invasive on her sense of right and wrong, instead of dumping rain, it was a perfect day. The sun sparkled down revealing a thousand shades of green in the living walls that lined the road. The air coming through the open window was thick with pine sap and the gentle tang of rotting undergrowth. There was so much oxygen in the air that it made her feel a little giddy.