Montana Homecoming

by Jeannie Watt

  “Exactly,” Cassie agreed.

  It was supposed to rain the next day, so rather than mow more hay, since it was disastrous to have the hay down during a rain, Will and Rosalie and Katie were going to help sort the barn junk, while Cassie and Travis went to the line shack and retrieved the wood before it was soaked.

  To get those special boards.

  Cassie shot a look in Katie’s direction, but her sister did not look back.

  Something was definitely up.

  CHAPTER FOURTEEN

  “WE’RE GOING TO have to work fast,” Will said as he nodded at the nearly cloudless sky.

  Travis wasn’t so sure. The weather apps indicated that the rain wasn’t due until the early evening hours, but Will did have a knack for sensing weather—a knack that Travis hadn’t inherited, so he relied on the weather services.

  “Bring back more boards than you think we’ll need.”

  “Will do.” The corners of Travis’s mouth twitched as he met Cassie’s eye. Will was taking great pleasure in lining out his crew.

  “I guess we should take off before the storms hit,” Cassie said. Sunlight glinted off her hair as she turned her head toward him, but Travis nodded solemnly in agreement.

  “Right.” Will pulled his gloves out of his back pocket and when no one moved he said to no one in particular, “What’s everyone waiting for?”

  “Nothing,” Travis said. He started for the flatbed truck and Cassie fell into step. They went to their respective sides of the vehicle, opened the doors and climbed in.

  “My grandfather is suffering from prewedding jitters. How’s Rosalie doing?”

  “My grandmother is positively serene. She’s sure about what she’s doing.” Cassie gave him a sharp look. “Is Will having second thoughts?”

  “Definitely not. He’s afraid of disappointing her.”

  Cassie gave a small laugh. “That’s kind of hard to believe. I was always kind of intimidated by him when I was a kid. He was so gruff and unsmiling.”

  “You? Intimidated.”

  She made a face at him. “So do you think your grandfather’s huge interest in having us get the special boards is to make my grandmother happy?”

  “Nope,” he said easily, shifting down as they approached a hill.

  “Then what?” she asked in a voice that made him think that she already knew the answer, but was hoping she was way off base.

  “I believe that these boards are very cool—” he shot her a look “—and that they’re being used as an excuse to give us more alone time together.”

  Cassie let her head drop back against the rear window, something she couldn’t do in a newer truck. It made a hollow thunk, but she didn’t seem to care. “I had the same feeling.”

  “It’s not so bad.”

  She gave him a sour smile. “I hope that he’s doing this in the name of solidifying our friendship.”

  “I’m sure that’s it.”

  “And nothing more.” She spoke to the windshield.

  He almost said, “Would that be so terrible?” Instead he reached out and took her hand, giving it a warm squeeze. She squeezed back and held on for a second longer than necessary, then slipped her fingers out from his.

  “Family,” she said on a note of mixed exasperation and amusement.

  “Exactly.”

  * * *

  CASSIE ONCE AGAIN leaned her head back against the rear window, then raised it again as the truck hit a bump. Enough head banging. “All we have to do is ride this out.” She spoke more to herself than to Travis.

  “Sure.” There was a note in his voice that caught her attention.

  “You do want to ride this out, right?”

  “Of course.” He spoke flatly, and she decided to believe him. They’d talked just yesterday about not letting circumstances get out of their control, essentially establishing a verbal contract, and she was going with that. If Travis had second thoughts, he could voice them plainly so that she could shoot them down.

  Travis slowed to a stop in front of the gate leading to the high pastures and Forest Service land and Cassie automatically reached for the door handle.

  “Careful with the door,” Travis said, and, sure enough, the wind caught it and tried to pull it out of her grip.

  “Your grandpa is a good weather predictor.”

  “Yeah. I should have believed him.”

  Cassie slid out of the truck, the wind whipping her hair as she opened the gate and then shut it again after Travis drove through. The dark clouds the wind was pushing were just visible over the tops of the mountains to the west, which meant they might be driving back in the rain.

  “How far to the line shack?” she asked as she got back into the truck, slamming the door against the wind.

  “Almost five miles.”

  “And why the chain saw?” Which was lashed to the flatbed railing with a strap.

  “Because there was a tree across the road the last time I came up to check cows.”

  “Does Will know about the tree?” As in, did he plan on them dealing with the task together, as they’d dealt with the barn?

  “I don’t think so. I don’t bug him with small details.”

  Cassie settled back in her seat. “I’m looking forward to the days when my grandchildren will protect me from the realities of life.”

  “I doubt that.”

  “You don’t think I’ll have kids and grandkids?”

  “I don’t think you can give up enough control to allow someone to protect you from reality,” he stated in a reasonable voice.

  “I could if I didn’t know it was happening,” she pointed out.

  “Somehow I can’t see you not being aware. And in control.” The track was narrowing in front of them and he slowed to drive around the end of a fallen tree. “Do you delegate at work? Or do you try to take care of everything on your own and your associates work around you?”

  The truck hit another bump and she automatically clutched the dash to steady herself.

  “Sorry about that,” Travis muttered.

  “The tactless question or the bump?”

  “The bump. I’m curious about the answer to the question.”

  “Of course I delegate.” But she did like to be kept up-to-date on everything.

  “Just asking.”

  “And my people like working for me.” Those in the immediate office, anyway, who knew her and occasionally saw her funny side. Like Anna Lee. Teachers and administrators on other sites...maybe not so much. But she was a fair boss and her performance reviews reflected that. So what if teachers jumped a mile when she walked into their classrooms unannounced?

  “How do you know?” he asked in a curious voice.

  “I get excellent reviews from my staff. And those reviews are anonymous.”

  “Cool. Any areas where you can improve?”

  She frowned at him. “Why do you want to know?”

  He had the audacity to smile at her. “I have some ideas. I want to know if I’m close to right.”

  Cassie let out a long breath. “Fine. I have areas to improve upon.”

  “Let me guess—”

  “I intimidate the staff. Sometimes,” she added. “Not all the time.”

  He shot her an amused look. “What are you doing to remedy that? Team-building activities? Stuff like that?”

  Cassie sucked air in through her teeth. “Being scary kind of helps me run things.” She couldn’t say she liked that about herself, but it did make her job easier.

  “Is that good?”

  “No. But it’s effective.” She shot him a look. “Could we maybe drop this subject? Because I’m done talking about it.”

  * * *

  CASSIE SAT STARING straight ahead, making no further effort at small talk as he followed the narrow track le
ading to the line shack. The occasional unavoidable bump had them both bouncing in their seats, but Cassie would silently right herself and continue studying the road ahead.

  He was fairly certain that she wasn’t angry with him because he’d asked about her weaknesses in her job reviews. She was preoccupied—but with what? His best guess was that she wasn’t thrilled at the idea of his grandfather pushing them together, but there wasn’t much they could do about that short of confronting Will. And that, Travis imagined, would make for an interesting conversation. It appeared that she was fine with the occasional kiss, but that anything more was out of the question.

  Why? Was it him? Her? Her job? His job?

  Was he up against impossible odds? Before she left, he wanted her to know how he felt. He didn’t expect it to change anything in the short term, but she’d have facts that may have a bearing on the long term.

  Or was he deluding himself?

  Lots of questions, no satisfactory answers. The one thing that was certain was that his gut twisted at the thought of Cassie walking out of his life.

  Cassie snapped back to the present as he slowed to stop in front of the big ponderosa pine that had fallen across the road during the winter storms. Earlier this year he’d ridden around it, but now he had to deal with it, or they would not be collecting old wood.

  Travis grabbed the ear protectors that hung on the gun rack, got out of the truck and grabbed the chain saw out of the bed as the wind tugged at his coat. “You might want to wait in the cab. Better for your ears.”

  Cassie didn’t argue. He wondered if he needed to worry about that.

  Once the truck door was shut, he fired up the chain saw and began limbing the tree prior to cutting it into manageable rounds. After he shut off the saw and set it down, Cassie got out of the truck.

  He cleared his throat. “Sorry I touched a nerve earlier.”

  She gave a noncommittal shrug. “It’s kind of what you do, right?”

  “With no plans to stop at any time in the near future.”

  “Thanks for the warning.”

  He hooked his thumbs in his front pockets. “Feel free to do the same.”

  “Do you have any nerves that can be touched?” She propped a foot on top of a round. “Any bad habits or dark secrets?”

  “I probably won’t be telling you if I do.”

  “I’ll see what I can ferret out,” she said as she once again started maneuvering the log round toward the side of the road. “And for the record, I’m not bothered by admitting that I have areas where I need to grow.” She gave him a quick sideways look. “But you’re the only person I’ve told about using my perceived scariness to my advantage.”

  “As long as you’re fair.”

  “I’m fair.” She pushed the last of the wood out of the way, then turned to face him.

  The wind continued to pick up as they cleared the road, lifting and swirling the sawdust around them. And sure enough, dark clouds were rolling over the mountains with astonishing speed.

  “It doesn’t bother you when people don’t like you?”

  “I can’t afford to let it.”

  “You’re tough, Cassie.”

  “I have to be.”

  He gave a nod of agreement, then headed to his side of the truck. He only hoped she wasn’t too tough, because they still had a few issues to iron out between them.

  * * *

  TRAVIS DIDN’T APPEAR one bit concerned about Cassie ferreting out a nerve to touch, which was a silent challenge if she’d ever seen one, and if she hadn’t been so preoccupied with convincing herself that things were cool between them, she would have put more effort into coming up with something to make him squirm a bit.

  They drove a couple more miles on the twisting road, winding between overgrown Douglas firs and tall lodgepole pines, before coming to another gate at the edge of the sweet little meadow. Beyond the gate was a newish wooden shed with a metal roof adjacent to a jumble of boards and debris that had probably been the original shack. A sturdy corral with a lodgepole loading chute stood behind the wrecked cabin along with a large metal water trough fed through a pipe connected to a spring on a distant bank with black plastic pipe. The cow camp.

  Cassie got out to man the gate, then waved Travis on after he drove through, preferring to walk the fifty or so yards. She breathed deeply as she walked, filling her lungs with the cool mountain air and staying in the truck tracks so she didn’t have to fight the deep grass. The rain was coming, as Will had predicted, and it was coming fast, but hopefully she and Travis would have their cache of boards loaded and be on the way home before it hit.

  Travis swung the truck in a circle in the meadow and backed close to the jumble of boards and roofing. She hoped he didn’t run over a nail, because the last thing she wanted was to help change a tire in the rain; although, perhaps that was part of Will’s master plan.

  Was her grandmother in on this scheme of Will’s?

  Cassie couldn’t see her live-and-let-live grandmother sanctioning such a thing.

  She hoped. Rosalie could be a force to be reckoned with.

  Travis got out of the truck and came around the hood to stand next to her.

  “Okay,” Cassie said as she picked up a broken board. “I concede. These are cool boards.” The long rough-cut planks that had made up the siding of the collapsed shack were weathered to a beautiful coppery gold with streaks of brown and black.

  “We’ve talked about collecting these for a long time, but you know how that goes.”

  She gave him an innocent look. “Kind of like cleaning out the barn?”

  “Exactly. Tomorrow is always a better day to start.”

  Cassie pulled her gloves out of her pocket and slipped them on. “Where shall we start?”

  “I’ll knock boards loose with a hammer and you can drag them out. I figure we want as many as we can get.”

  “Was this shack standing when you were a kid?”

  “Yeah, but a tree came down on it, so we logged the adjacent area and built again.”

  “Where’s the tree?”

  “Burned in the stove of the new shack. We dragged it off with the truck, cut it up.”

  “Excellent use of resources.”

  A blast of wind lifted Travis’s hat and he barely caught it. He pulled it lower on his forehead. “We’d better get moving.”

  Indeed, a charcoal-gray wall was coming at them over the not-so-distant mountains.

  Travis started lifting and untangling the jumble of boards, occasionally knocking one free from an upright while Cassie dragged anything that was unattached out of the pile and laid it parallel to the truck to load later.

  The wind was starting to get serious when the first drops of rain stung her face. She wiped her coat across her face and tugged at another board. Travis joined her and together they pulled three boards free before the rain began pelting them, hitting Cassie square in the face and then running down the front of her coat.

  “Let’s go,” Travis shouted.

  Cassie started for the truck, thinking they would wait out the storm in the cab, but Travis caught hold of her arm and led her to the shack, which was closed with a simple hasp and a combination lock that was hanging unlocked. He slipped the lock out of the hasp, then threw the door open. Cassie stumbled inside, pushed by the buffeting wind. Travis followed, pushing the door against the wind, which howled through the cracks until he managed to shove it into place.

  Cassie swept her wet hair back with both hands. “What is it about working with you where I end up soaking wet?”

  He shook the water off his hands. “I could ask the same, because I always end up being a lot wetter than you.” He pulled off his ball cap and hit it against his leg, then set it on the table. “This is more of a squall than a real storm. It should blow over pretty fast.”

  “I hope
Will gets his essentials into the barn in time.”

  “I’m sure he will. He was bossing his crew pretty well when we left.”

  Cassie took a turn around the one-room shack. “This is actually pretty nice.” It even had vinyl flooring to make it easier to sweep out the dirt.

  “When we built this shack, I took care to make it as rodent-proof as possible. So far so good.”

  “You spend the nights up here instead of going back home?”

  “Sometimes. I like it here.” He pulled an enamel teapot out of the small cupboard unit, then opened the lid and looked inside. “No spiders. Do you want some tea?”

  “Let me see that.” She put her hands over his as she peered down into the sparkling-clean pot, then she stepped back. “Tea would be nice.” It would take that chill off, maybe give them something to focus on besides each other.

  He opened the bottom unit and pulled out a gallon jug of water and filled the pot.

  “You really are equipped for an emergency stay.”

  “We’ve had hunters shelter here in storms.”

  “That’s why it isn’t padlocked.”

  “Exactly.”

  “Has the place ever been vandalized?”

  “Not so far. I hope that continues. Since the only road access is via the ranch, a person needs to be on foot to access from the other directions. Not that many hiker-vandals in the area.”

  “Nice.”

  Travis dropped a teabag into each cup as the rain began to hammer on metal sheeting above them. He glanced up as if worried that the roof might collapse under the weight of the pelting rain.

  “Some storm,” Cassie said from under her breath as he closed the metal container that held the teabags. “Will did a good job with this.”

  Travis gave her a half smile. “I don’t think Grandpa controls the weather. Not that he wouldn’t like to.” He gave her a look. “He’s a control freak, too, you know.”

  Cassie pressed a hand to her chest as if shocked at his statement. “Are you suggesting...?”

  “Uh-huh.”

  She made a dismissive noise as she leaned against the edge of the wobbly table, then thought better of it and once again stood upright, hugging her arms around her. “Do you guys work together well?”