by Linda Howard
She’d been living and working in Billings at the time; her job had been just an ordinary one, in the administrative office of a hospital, but it had paid her rent and she’d liked it okay. The thing was, she’d never had a great ambition to do anything in particular. All she wanted at the time was to support herself. So when her dad died, the logical thing had been to move back home and take over his guide business. After all, she’d often helped him before she moved away, so it wasn’t as if she was a novice and didn’t know how to conduct a guide trip. She was a decent tracker, and a decent shot. At the time, she hadn’t seen any reason why she couldn’t make a go of it, and she was kind of ready for a change anyway, so why not?
And then she’d found something she hadn’t expected to find: She loved it. She loved being out on the mountains, she loved being in charge of her own destiny. There was something special about stepping out of a tent into the pristine early morning and being overwhelmed by the solitude and beauty around her. How could she have gone so many years without realizing this was exactly what she wanted to do? Maybe she’d had to go away for a while in order to see how suited she was for this life. Not that she hadn’t enjoyed living in a city; she had. She’d liked the variety, the people, the friends she made; she’d even taken some cooking classes and thought about maybe doing some catering on the side. But she loved being a guide, and enjoyed living here way more now than she had when she’d been growing up.
She did wish she’d made some different decisions, such as selling the horses and keeping the four-wheelers, instead of doing the exact opposite. Hindsight was great, except it was so damn slow in coming. She hadn’t anticipated that the economy would bottom out and discretionary spending would almost disappear. She hadn’t known Dare Callahan would move back home and siphon away most of her business. Why couldn’t he have stayed in the military where he belonged, safely away from her little patch of Montana?
If only—
No. No if onlies. Never mind that she was thirty-two and he’d given her butterflies. She didn’t trust butterflies, didn’t let herself get carried away by emotions and hormones. Once had been enough. She’d made such a fool of herself that whenever she thought of her abbreviated marriage her stomach still curdled from an almost overwhelming sense of embarrassment. A strong desire to leave Billings, the scene of the debacle, had made her that much more eager to take over her dad’s guide business when he died.
No doubt about it, if she’d been happily married at the time she’d have sold off the business and stayed in Billings, simply because she’d built a life there. When her personal life fell apart, though, she’d withdrawn so much that her friends had almost given up on her in exasperation. After moving back here and getting her feet under her again she’d mended those relationships—a woman always needed other women—but by then she’d fallen so in love with her way of life that dynamite couldn’t have blown her back into an office setting.
Thinking that she needed to send some e-mails when she got home, just to keep in touch, she opened the truck door and was about to climb into the cab when she abruptly remembered that she needed some nails and staples to repair fencing, which she might as well get now while she was right here at the hardware store and save herself a trip later. She also wanted to catch up on the community gossip, such as it was, with Evelyn French, the chatty half of the husband and wife team who owned the hardware store. Their son, Patrick, had been the only other kid her age in their little community, and all during their school years the Frenches and her dad had swapped out driving them to school in the nearest real town, forty miles away. Patrick was a cop now, in Spokane, married, with two ankle-biters of his own. Evelyn was crazy about her grandchildren, two little boys ages four and two, and always had time to relate the latest tales of what they’d said and done. She seemed to relish their mischief, as if she thought Patrick deserved everything they did. Remembering some of the things Patrick had gotten up to when they were growing up, Angie had to agree.
She closed the door she’d opened and trudged across the parking lot, watching her step as she went around a deep pothole—and when she lifted her head she saw him, the big man, the devil, Dare Callahan himself, coming straight at her from the parking area on the other side of the store, where his big black truck loomed like a shining, sinister metal monster.
Seeing him was too much. Angie’s heart gave a sudden hard thump, and the bottom dropped out of her stomach. Her reaction was completely automatic. She didn’t stop to think, didn’t give herself a pep talk, didn’t consider how it looked; she simply turned around and headed back to her own truck, muttering under her breath. She’d pick up the nails and staples when she got back from the guide trip; she wouldn’t have any time to work on the fencing until then, anyway. Running was cowardly, but at the same time she couldn’t nod at him and be polite, couldn’t pretend she hadn’t just up-ended her world because of him. Damn it, figures she’d run into him at the hardware store immediately after putting her place up for sale, an action he’d forced her into taking. Sometimes coincidence really sucked.
“Hey!”
The deep bark, laden with anger, rolled across the space between them. Angie didn’t look back. She didn’t think he’d be talking to her—after all, for over two years she’d gone out of her way to avoid him if possible and barely grunt a hello if forced to acknowledge him—so she glanced around to see who he was talking to, because she hadn’t noticed anyone else nearby.
With a jolt she realized there wasn’t anyone else. He was talking to her.
Chapter Two
The fine gravel littering the pavement crunched under his boots as he strode toward her. Like his truck, his hat was black, and he wore it pulled low so the brim shadowed most of his face. Black hat equaled bad guy, right? She was good with that, because as far as she was concerned he was definitely the bad guy in her life—the bad guy who was coming at her like a steam locomotive. She grabbed for the door handle, then stopped, fighting her own impulses. She wasn’t afraid of him. She was uneasy around men, but it was her own faulty judgment she didn’t trust. Besides, just how cowardly could she let herself be before she lost all self-respect?
Evidently she’d just reached her own stopping point. Jumping in her truck and driving away was the best thing she could think of to do, especially if she flattened him on her way out of the parking lot, but, okay, she’d let him have his say about whatever had his shorts on fire. She might have lost their battle—hell, maybe even the whole damn war—but she could face him this one time, and afterward she’d never have to speak to him again, not even to be polite. Squaring her shoulders and lifting her chin, she released the handle and stepped away from the truck, her insides like Jell-O but her outside revealing nothing of that, her whole posture that of a gunfighter facing an enemy in the middle of the street.
He bulled right into her space, stopping only when he was so close that the brim of his hat knocked against hers as he glared down at her; so close that, when she looked up, she could see the white striations in his deep blue eyes. Angie took a quick, automatic breath, then wished she hadn’t because the very air she drew in seemed to be filled with him, the scents of leather and coffee and denim, heated by his skin. A primitive sense of danger made the back of her neck prickle, sent chills running down her spine. Instinct screamed at her to back away, get out of touching distance, reclaim her sense of inviolate self that his nearness somehow threatened, but backing away now was one retreat too many on this day of all days, when her pride had already taken too much of a beating because of him.
She clenched her teeth, straightened her spine, and held her ground. “What do you want?” she asked curtly, and, by God, even if nothing else about her was steady, her voice was.
“I want to know what the hell’s the matter with you,” he growled, his voice so rough she had to fight to keep from flinching, as if it had actually scratched her. The words were even more guttural than she remembered. Before she could help herself she glanced at h
is throat, at the pale scar that slashed at a slight diagonal across the muscled column. Was his voice deteriorating, or did he sound as if he’d eaten ground glass simply because he was so pissed about something? She hoped he was pissed, hoped she’d inadvertently done something to make him so angry he could barely speak; if she could find out what it was she’d done, she’d go out of her way to do it again.
“Nothing’s the matter with me,” she said, her teeth clenched so tightly her jaw ached. Now that she’d looked at the scar on his throat, she found herself staring at the other scars on his face: the gouge high on his right cheekbone, another beside his mouth that actually looked like a dimple if you didn’t know the scars were from shrapnel, and another sort of arrow-shaped scar on the bridge of his nose. None of the scars was disfiguring; they didn’t seem to bother him and they shouldn’t bother her, except seeing them made her chest hurt from something that felt inexplicably like sorrow.
She pushed that thought away; she couldn’t afford to feel personal sympathy for him. So he’d been hit by shrapnel in Iraq; he was alive, he wasn’t disfigured or disabled, and she could feel sympathy for him in the abstract, as a service member, without letting him elicit any other emotion from her.
She wished his breath stank, instead of smelling pleasantly like coffee … wished there was something, anything, about him that was physically distasteful. What kind of idiot was she that in some weak moments she’d find herself wistfully thinking about what might have happened if she’d actually gone out with him when he’d first returned to the area and asked her out, if anything would have come of it? Then doubts would set in, and she’d wonder if maybe he’d set out to deliberately destroy her business because she’d turned him down; if so, that made him a major jerk, and no good could have come from dating him. What gave her emotional whiplash was that she simply didn’t know, which meant she kept worrying at the different scenarios without any way of knowing which one was true. All she knew for sure was that she wasn’t good with men, and that Dare Callahan had ruined her business. She was rock solid on those two things.
With him standing so close and the truck right behind her she felt hemmed in, trapped. Damn it, enough was enough; she couldn’t stand it, not for another second. She edged sideways, farther from the truck, though her damn stubborn pride wouldn’t let her actually step back from him.
He adjusted his position, too, turning with her so they remained face-to-face.
“Then what makes you act as if you have a stick shoved up your ass every time I’m around?” he snapped. “Just now you turned and ran as soon as you saw me. I’m tired of it, damn it. If you have a beef with me, then tell me to my face what it is.”
“I didn’t run,” she snapped right back. Instinctively she slid another few inches to the side. “Maybe I thought of somewhere else I need to go.” She didn’t bother even trying to put any sincerity into her tone. Instead, her good sense seemed to have taken a hike, because she sounded as if she was taunting him. She didn’t want to wave a red flag at the bull, she didn’t want to escalate things into an all-out argument, she just wanted to get into her truck and leave. That was what she wanted, but instead she kept standing there, and things she hadn’t meant to say kept coming out of her mouth. “Maybe seeing you or speaking to you doesn’t rate very high on my list of things to do.”
Again he moved, keeping his position squared off with hers, and this time they both seemed to be caught in an unconscious momentum that kept them moving, slowly circling each other like angry combatants, each looking for the other’s weakness. She was vaguely aware that they looked like fools dancing a hostile tango in the parking lot, and hoped no one else saw them; everyone knew everyone else’s business around here, and she didn’t want to field any questions about what was going on between her and Dare Callahan. Lord, please don’t let Harlan look out his window right now, because he’d feel duty bound to come out and make sure everything was okay.
“Stand still,” he said, still growling, though with the damage to his larynx he’d sound growly even if he was trying to sing lullabies.
“Why should I? You’re the one who’s crowding me, not the other way around. If you want me to stand still, then back off.” She punctuated the last two words by putting the tip of one finger squarely in the middle of his chest and applying pressure; it was like pushing on a rock—a living, breathing rock, but still a rock. She wasn’t certain how easy it was to communicate with a rock, so just to make sure he understood, she repeated herself. “Back. Off.”
Under the brim of his hat, his brilliant blue eyes were narrow and angry. His head cocked a little, an arrogant, combative tilt of his chin, then he put his right forefinger in the middle of her chest, on her breastbone, duplicating her movement. “Make. Me.”
Furious heat surged under her skin. Make him? God, how she wished she could! Frustration and fury filled her chest, almost smothering her. She couldn’t budge him an inch, and they both knew it. Failing that, what she would most like to do was punch him in the jaw, but she wasn’t stupid. The best thing that could come of that would be that he’d have her arrested for assault, but she doubted that solution would even occur to him. No, he’d hand out the consequences himself, and even though she didn’t know what form that would take she was absolutely certain she wouldn’t like the result at all. Sometimes you just knew things about people, and she knew Dare Callahan was a stubborn jackass who would blow right past good manners if he had a point he wanted to make.
She also should have known he’d dig in his heels. Maybe he’d been a more even-tempered, congenial person when he was growing up, but since leaving the military and coming home he was known to be surly at best, and most times downright ill-tempered. Maybe he had reason to be a sorehead now, maybe he’d always been one. Either way, she had to deal with him as he was now, which was right in her face.
For a split second she weighed her choices as she stared up at him, torn between all those conflicting emotions, then abruptly something inside her heaved a tiny sigh and gave up. She could hold on to her pride and pretend she was leaving because she wanted to, but why try to put a good face on it? He’d won. Let him enjoy it.
She ground her teeth together, trying to get the words out. Damn, this was hard. She took a couple of breaths, digging deep for self-control, and finally was able to say, “It isn’t any of your business, but I just put my place up for sale.” She kept her voice low so if it wobbled, maybe he wouldn’t notice. “I’m sorry it hurts your feelings that I don’t feel like dealing with you right now, but I don’t feel like dealing with you right now. Got it?”
His expression went blank. He glanced up at Harlan’s office, then back at her. “You’re selling out?”
And there they went again, her back teeth locking together. Couldn’t he have used any term other than selling out? She did some more deep breathing, blowing air out through her nose like an angry bull. “I don’t have a choice. My business has gone downhill since you moved back and went into competition with me. I can either sell or go bankrupt.” There, that was bald enough. She hadn’t tried to protect her pride, but neither had she accused him of deliberately running her out of business. Maybe he had, maybe he hadn’t. He was definitely the cause, whether deliberate or not, and that was all the credit and a lot less of the blame she was inclined to give him. At this point, it didn’t matter, because the end result was the same.
His expression shifted, hardened. “And you blame me.”
“I don’t see anyone else around here starting up a guide business.”
He stared down at her, eyes narrowed, his mouth a grim line. “For the record, I didn’t go after any of your customers. If any of them were yours first, they came to me, not the other way around. And I’ll be damned if I’ll apologize because they preferred me.”
“I don’t believe I’ve asked you to apologize. In fact, I don’t believe I’ve asked a damn thing of you.” And she wouldn’t, not one tiny thing. “You asked what my beef is, I’ve to
ld you, now get your nose out of my business and leave me alone.” She broke away, stepping out of their little hostile circle, and once again reached for the truck’s door handle.
His hand shot out and he gripped her arm, holding her in place. “Wait.” Angie froze, her heartbeat abruptly thundering like a runaway horse as she looked down at the tanned, powerful hand that completely encircled her forearm. It was a lean, long-fingered hand, callused, and the back of it was marked by a two-inch-long white scar. His touch radiated a heat that burned through the thick double fabrics of her shirt and coat. “How much are you asking for your business?”
For a minute she couldn’t believe he was actually asking her that, then she went white with anger and jerked her arm away from his grip. “I’m not selling my business,” she snapped. “I’m selling my place, and getting the hell away from here, and away from you!”
She pulled the truck door open, tossed her tote bag inside, and climbed into the driver’s seat. She wanted to do something violent, hit him, kick him, but contented herself with slamming the door and shoving the key into the ignition as hard as she could. The motor turned over as soon as she turned the key, and roared to life. If she’d had a clutch, she’d have popped it, but she had to be satisfied with floor-boarding the gas pedal and fishtailing out of the parking lot, though it would have been a lot more satisfying if the lot had been gravel instead of asphalt and the wheels had thrown rocks against his legs.
Immediately she pictured the scars on his face, his hand, and her imagination violently rejected the very idea of peppering him with gravel. That was too much like shrapnel, and she couldn’t … well, she just couldn’t. She’d put this part of her life in the past and move on. The future had to be better; she’d made some miscalculations, some bad decisions, but she’d learn from her mistakes and things would get better. They would. They had to.
