“See? Right there is the reason why my PhD comes in so handy. You’d never know these things if I didn’t verify them for you,” he replied. “I can sort fact from fiction online.”
She laughed, then lost herself to the music. She’d danced with a lot of men, the majority of them professionals, and yet dancing with Luke, and having to trust him so completely, was a different experience entirely. He knew every inch of her body. He caught every falter before it occurred.
The song ended too soon. He’d maneuvered her to the far edge of the crowd, close to, but not quite into, the shadows beyond the sparkling shower of overhead lights. A fine spattering of raindrops speckled her bare shoulders, cooling her skin.
“Let me take you home tonight,” Luke said, carefully keeping his voice low so their neighbors couldn’t hear.
The request brought her back to earth. Nothing was settled.
Another song struck up, this one by Lynyrd Skynyrd.
“I don’t think so,” Mara said. “It’s—”
Dan tapped Luke on the shoulder. “Thanks for showing me how it’s done,” he said, a spark of humor warming his eyes. “Mind if I cut in?”
Luke’s face was too easy to read. He was frustrated by the interruption, and about to say yes, he did mind, and Mara didn’t want him starting something he might later regret. Dan wasn’t competition, and deep down, Luke knew it. Also, if she recalled correctly, Dan and Zack McGregor were good friends.
But maybe avoiding Luke wasn’t the right approach to be taking. He was a private man who rarely discussed what was troubling him, and not unlike Finn, he had a lot of pent-up, pressure-cooker emotions that required a release. She’d offered him no-strings-attached, casual sex, which had taken the edge off, but that had blown up in their faces because it was difficult for either one of them to make smart choices when sex clouded their reasoning.
She had a much better idea.
“I’d love to dance,” she said to Dan. She touched Luke’s arm as she brushed past him. “I’ll talk to you later.”
*
It was the Saturday morning after the dance.
A burst of rain had ended Grand’s summer drought and the grass had bounced back, thick and healthy. The prime market for hay was for horses and the drought had driven the prices sky high. The Wagging Tongue Ranch had to make the cut, let it dry for a day or so in the heat, and then bale it, all while the weather was good.
Because Mac had soccer practice which Jake refused to miss, Luke and Zack had drawn tractor duty. Luke was cutting today. Zack was running the baler in one of the fields that had already been cut.
Since Luke couldn’t take Finn to dance class, he’d resorted to bribery. At five, Finn rarely got to ride on the tractors and he’d thrown dance over without hesitation. Luke lifted him into the cab of the tractor and buckled him in. He loaded a blanket and a cooler filled with snacks next.
Luke loved the new tractor. The ranch had bought it in the spring before his dad passed away. It had air conditioning, an extra seat for small passengers, and best of all, an automatic tracking guidance system that allowed him to plot how the fields should be cut. The trick would be to keep Finn’s little fingers off the touch screen.
He’d stowed the .338 Winchester Magnum rifle behind the driver’s seat. The bear Jake had been hunting was still on the loose and the ranches in the area had been losing too many cattle. Trying to capture and relocate it would simply make it somebody else’s problem, so the ranch hands had been ordered to shoot it on sight.
Luke started the engine and maneuvered the tractor out of the yard. Finn chattered away beside him, requiring nothing more than the occasional acknowledgement that Luke was listening—which he wasn’t—allowing Luke’s thoughts to wander.
He was still out of sorts over the dance. Not angry, exactly, because he had no reason to be, and not necessarily jealous, because he had no real right, but definitely not in his happy place. Mara wouldn’t let him take her home. Then, watching Dan do his best to help her dance, and worse, succeeding, had inspired all sorts of resentment, so he’d chosen to leave rather than end up making a fool out of himself and embarrassing her.
But she hadn’t called or texted so they could talk, as she’d promised. He didn’t know what to make of that, or what he should do about it.
And then there was Denise. He’d called every day, trying to find out how she was feeling and when her next doctor’s appointment was, and if she’d like him to be there for it—this was his baby, too—but as soon as he’d said he couldn’t stay because work on the ranch wouldn’t wait, she’d shut him out, too.
Women. Right now his PhD was worth crap.
He shifted the tractor’s gears with a bit too much force.
His route took him toward Camelback Butte and the Badlands. An irrigation system cut through the Wagging Tongue Ranch and ran toward craggy hills dotted with ponderosa, and the butte beyond, but the irrigation feeding off the Tongue River was intended for watering the livestock. The ranch practiced crop rotation with its fields, allowing them to lie fallow for a season. Cattle grazed on that land.
The range, with plenty of low, rolling hills, wasn’t flat, but visibility was good and Luke could see for miles. The size of the wake of turkey vultures far off in the distance, their enormous wings flapping as they skipped around whatever carcass they fed on, tipped him off that the ranch had another cow down. Whether or not the bear was the reason remained to be seen.
He considered investigating. He had Finn with him, however, and Finn, who didn’t have an understanding of death, had just lost his parents and grandparents, so Luke decided against it. The vultures would be picking the carcass clean and it wasn’t the nicest sight.
He’d let Jake know about it, instead.
A lone rider cut out from behind a stand of juniper that crested a knoll, headed on an intersection course with the tractor. Luke sighed when he saw who it was. He cut the engine and rolled down the window on the cab door.
“You boys are hard to pin down,” Weldon Scott remarked.
Dust flecked the hat shading his eyes. His horse’s ears flicked a few times and its tail swished. Something had made it nervous. Probably a bear. The butt of a rifle jutted out of the scabbard attached to his saddle. Jake said Weldon had been hunting it, too.
“It’s a busy time of year,” Luke replied.
Finn, naturally inquisitive, craned his neck, anxious to be part of the conversation. “Hi.”
Weldon grinned at him. “Well, well. Hello. If it isn’t little Fun.”
“Finn,” the boy corrected him.
“Really?” Weldon pretended surprise. “I could have sworn someone told me you were Fun.”
“I am,” Finn said.
“It’s nice to meet you, Fun.”
Finn, who was smart, caught on that he was being teased and made a face, but it was obvious that he enjoyed it. Which, Luke decided, earned Weldon a hearing. Having grandchildren had mellowed the old man.
“I’d like to get together and talk business someday real soon,” Weldon said, getting straight to the point Luke was expecting. “I have a proposition for you.”
“You should talk to Jake, then. The business is his.”
Luke had given up on the dream of keeping his share of the ranch the instant he’d learned he was about to become a father. He’d be moving back to Seattle in February for good. He had no other choice. Until then, he’d fly back once a month to check on Denise and give her what support he could—both financial and moral. He’d prove he could step up.
Obstinateness stitched Weldon’s gray brows into a single straight seam across his forehead under the brim of his hat. “I want to talk to all three of you.”
Luke could be stubborn, too. “Sorry, Weldon. You’ll have to arrange it with Jake.”
“You boys are so much like your father.” The older man sighed. “There was no reasoning with him either.”
The dig at his father crossed a line and Luke couldn’t take i
t. He started the engine and Weldon’s horse backed away a few steps.
“Happy hunting,” he said.
Luke cut hay for a few hours, the tractor bouncing over the ground, until Finn became too restless to sit still. It was time for a break. He stopped the tractor, turned off the engine, and settled Finn on the blanket in the tractor’s shade with the cooler of sandwiches. He dug out a juice box for Finn and a cold bottle of cola for himself.
“What’s this?” Finn asked, plucking a small plant and holding it out for Luke’s inspection. It had a long head with pink-tipped lobes instead of petals.
“Clover,” Luke said, although what kind, he couldn’t say.
“And this?”
It had a blue, multi-headed blossom and a long stem. Luke searched his memory. His mother had loved field flowers. So had Liz. “Triteleia, I think.”
Finn tucked it into his pocket. “I’m going to save it for Mommy.”
“Uh…” Luke said, not sure where to begin. “Your mom would love that you’d do that for her, but she can’t come back to get it, so you might want to give it to Posey, instead.”
“She can too come back.” Finn sounded pretty definite about it. “I heard her talking to Uncle Jake.”
“You must have been dreaming,” Luke said, as gently as possible. This was so hard.
“No, I wasn’t. She was out on the front doorstep one night with Uncle Jake,” Finn insisted. “I heard her. But she thought I was sleeping so she didn’t come tuck me in.”
Lacey must be visiting Jake when Luke and Zack were out, after the kids were in bed.
On the one hand, Luke was relieved. He’d worried Jake might completely blow things with her, especially after he’d seen her at the Town Days dance, alone. On the other hand, however, it wasn’t good for Finn to keep these fantasies alive in his head. Luke was about to explain to Finn that he’d heard someone else when a movement in the distance caught his attention.
A large black blob was headed toward them, approaching at a faster clip than Luke liked. Seconds later, he could tell what it was—although he’d already known. The bear must have been hanging close to its kill and smelled the sandwiches in their picnic cooler.
“Get in the cab,” Luke said to Finn, scooping his nephew up by the underarms and dumping him in the tractor. “Stay right there, bud. Don’t you dare move.”
He slammed the door shut and jogged around to the driver’s side. He grabbed the rifle from behind the seat and the ammunition from under it, then loaded the rifle as fast as he could. He checked on Finn. He had his face pressed to the door of the cab but showed no signs of attempting to get out.
The bear, enormous, barreled toward Luke at full speed. Damn, it was fast. It had smelled humans in its territory for long enough now that it no longer had any fear. Luke braced the rifle against his shoulder and his feet firm on the ground, prepared for the kickback. He’d loaded a high-caliber bullet and it packed quite a wallop.
He was a good shot and he aimed for the lungs. The first bullet caught the bear high on the shoulder, stopping its forward projection, but only for a few seconds. The wound would enrage it. Besides, Luke couldn’t allow it to live. It had been killing cattle.
He chambered another bullet and walked toward it, keeping his sight on its chest, searching for the right angle to shoot for the heart. The bear snorted, rolled, and scrambled to its feet, then reared on its hind legs. Luke squeezed the trigger. The recoil snapped his shoulder back, which brought the barrel of the rifle up, but he’d compensated for that. The bear dropped to the ground, motionless.
Luke’s ears rang a little. He waited to make sure the bear wasn’t planning to move. He couldn’t bring himself to put another bullet into the animal as a guarantee.
Instead, he checked to make sure Finn was where he had left him, which he was, then he set the rifle on the ground at his feet so he could grab it fast if he had to, and took out his phone. He’d need a few more people to bring a wagon to help get the bear carcass back to the ranch. He couldn’t lift that much dead weight by himself.
Sound gradually returned as he scrolled through his contacts, searching for one of the teenaged ranch hands. The shots had spooked a ring-necked pheasant. It flopped around, faking an injury while it decided the level of danger Luke posed for its harem, then scurried into the long grass and disappeared.
Luke picked up the rifle, still uneasy about turning his back on the animal even though that shot to the heart would have been instantly fatal, but Finn was a bigger concern now.
The boy, wide-eyed and excited, the sun catching the red of his hair when he bent his head, reached to open the door of the cab when he saw his uncle walking toward him. He caught the stern warning on Luke’s face, however, and wisely withdrew his hand.
Luke stowed the rifle behind the seat and put the ammunition away, taking his time so he could think about what to do and say next. He wished Jake were here, because Luke was going to have to finish that chat with Finn about death, and Jake was so much better at it.
He opened the door and lifted Finn to the ground.
“Can I touch it?” Finn shouted, his eyes on the bear. The kid was so overcharged that his whole body quivered.
Luke’s adrenaline hadn’t yet worn off, either. There was nothing like facing down a charging bear while he had an unpredictable, excitable little boy out of his line of vision to drive home the meaning of danger.
“Not until Devon and Pete get here with the wagon,” he said. “While we’re waiting, you and I need to talk about what being dead means.”
Then he was going to have a talk with Mara about the meaning of life and how it could be snatched away in an instant. Maybe about what she meant to him, too. And he was doing it in person. The day he’d met her had been the luckiest of his life, despite the unfortunate circumstances that brought him back to Montana. He wasn’t giving up on her.
She didn’t get to give up on him, either.
*
He’d had to wait until Tuesday before contacting her. Getting the bear butchered for meat—they weren’t about to let it go to waste—had set the haying back half a day, and he’d been on a tractor for sixteen hours straight, three days in a row.
Rather than exhausted, however, which was what he should be, right now he was antsy as hell. Before heading out, he’d sent her a text. “It’s later. I’ll be there in an hour.”
She’d texted him back. “Wear something you don’t mind getting dirty, Dr. Pretty.”
What was that supposed to mean?
He was about to find out. He punched the doorbell, again regretting the loss of his key.
She had her purse over her shoulder and her car keys in her hand when she came to the door. A pink, stretchy halter top fastened around her neck by a narrow band of fabric. It bared her belly and shoulders, and the way it hugged her breasts made his fingers itch. The color really was better suited to girls—at least, from what he’d seen to date—so Jake was getting a pass for Lyddie’s pink walls. Tight jeans molded her hips and she had sneakers on. He’d never seen her wear those, before. Her go-tos for footwear tended to be sandals and ballet flats.
“Going somewhere?” he inquired, then belatedly, remembered how she’d schooled him about proper greetings. “I mean, hello. You look beautiful.” He’d been so anxious to see her that he’d forgotten flowers completely. The ranch had a whole garden filled with blossoms gradually going to waste and he’d meant to pick some for her.
“Thank you,” Mara replied. “And yes, I am going somewhere. So are you.”
Disappointment stung his heart. She wasn’t letting him into her space. He knew how protective she was of it, and it seemed she now viewed him as a threat.
“I was hoping we could talk here. Just talk,” he added hastily, in case she thought he’d expect something more.
“We can talk later.”
He followed her down the cracked walk, across the street to the parking lot, and to her car. Her long ponytail held steady betw
een her shoulders above the mesmerizing, elegant, dancer sway of her hips.
“We can take my car,” he offered. “I’ll drive.”
“Or, we can take mine and I’ll drive.” She pushed the button on her key fob and popped the locks on her vehicle. “Get in, Dr. Pretty.”
“Yes, ma’am.” He’d do whatever she wanted. Whatever it took.
He crammed into the passenger side, sliding the seat back to accommodate his long legs. The last passenger she’d had in her car must have been either a child or a woman—which didn’t mean a damn thing, other than to put him more at ease. “Where are we going?”
“You’ll see.”
They didn’t go far. Just before they hit the highway heading out of Grand, she turned down a side street. At the end of the street, on a corner, was a six-unit, one-level strip mall. She selected a parking spot in front of the business at the farthest end of the strip.
“The Rage Room?” Luke asked, quirking a brow in suspicion. What was this all about? What message was she trying to send?
Mara shouldered her door open and swung her legs out. She cast a look back, a bright spark of challenge in her blue eyes.
“Come on, Dr. Pretty,” she said. “Let’s see what you’ve got.” She smiled at him, stealing his breath. “And if you’ve got more than I do.”
Chapter Thirteen
The Rage Room was owned by one of Mara’s dance mothers. Her clients were mostly women, or so she’d claimed when they’d commiserated over the pitfalls of small business ownership, so a last-minute, Tuesday night booking hadn’t been a problem for her.
Luke pried himself out of the car, unfurling his body until he returned to full height. He rested his forearms on the car’s roof. She stared at his hands. They’d lost their desk-job, pristine smoothness, instead displaying callouses and slight staining around the nail beds. Biceps bulged under the rolled cuffs of his denim shirt sleeves. He retained the overall look of a professor, but in the way a Rottweiler resembled a Doberman. He was no longer anything close to pretty, she suddenly realized. Luke had gone native.
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