Jackie Merritt - Moon Over Montana

Tag had spoken to his daughter, but his eyes were saying a thousand other things to Linda. What was so unusual about this exchange was that she couldn’t seem to break eye contact with him, although, in all honesty, she wondered if she really wanted to. The air seemed electrically charged. With each breath she took, the stirring sensations in the pit of her stomach became more pronounced.

“Okay, Daddy.” Sammy smiled shyly at Linda, then turned and ran off to her sandbox.

“Tag, she’s wonderful,” Linda said in a voice made husky by emotion. “You’re very fortunate to have her.”

“I know.” The pupils of his eyes became darker. “You’re so beautiful you take my breath.”

She felt her face color. “Maybe…maybe we should…I mean, maybe you should show me your shop.”

“Did I embarrass you? That wasn’t my intention. You are beautiful, Linda. I thought so yesterday, and seeing you again….” Tag stopped and bit down on his lower lip for a second. There was a slight frown between his eyes. “I’m sorry. I’ve just never met anyone like you before. Probably because there is no one else like you.”

Linda studied his face, looking for a lie, searching for something that would scare her off. All she saw was intense admiration and the open, honest expression of a man saying what was in his heart. Her own feelings swelled and turned into words.

“I’ve never met anyone like you, either,” she whispered.

Tag looked into her eyes for a long, sexually charged moment then took her hand. “Let’s go to the shop.”

Linda felt dazed. His hand around hers was big and warm and felt like a connection to life itself, to all of the things she had never experienced. She was real and Tag was real, and what was happening between them was more real than the building they entered together.

Inside, virtually alone with him—although Sammy was only about twenty feet away from the opened door of the shop—she moistened her lips with the tip of her tongue and saw Tag watching the perfectly natural gesture with yearning eyes.

She gently disengaged her hand from his and began looking around. There were all sorts of tools and workbenches, and she saw a headboard on one of them and then a child’s play area in the far corner.

“For Samantha,” she said quietly. “You’re a protective father.”

“Comparable to a she-bear with cubs,” Tag said with a slight grin.

“It’s very clean in here. I think I expected sawdust…and… Oh, there’s the furniture you’ve finished.” She left him to walk over to an elegant dining table with a Sold sign on it. “You actually built this?” she asked in amazement.

Tag nodded. “Sure did.”

“You’re not just an ordinary carpenter, you’re a craftsman, an artist.” Linda moved to some chairs and then a coffee table. “Oh, these are all wonderful.”

“Glad you like them. What I like is you.”

Linda sucked in a startled breath.

Tag moved directly in front of her and put his hands on her waist. “I don’t need a year to decide on whether or not yesterday was a red-letter day, Linda. I knew it only minutes after meeting you. And I’ll tell you something else. I don’t say things like that to every woman I meet. You can ask anyone in this town and they’ll all inform you that I’m pretty much a loner. Once in a great while I go down to Joe’s Bar and have a beer or two. That’s about the extent of my social life.”

Linda probed the depths of his eyes. “Tag, you must have had women friends along the way,” she said softly. “You’ve been widowed for five years. Men don’t live without female companionship for that long a time.”

“I’ll tell you about every woman I ever knew if you want me to. Do you?”

She shook her head. “No, of course not.”

“I don’t want to hear about the men in your past, either.”

“But there weren’t any. Other than my husband.”

“Linda, Linda,” he whispered. “Do you realize what’s happening here?”

She knew he was going to kiss her. His face came closer to hers, and she almost felt his lips on hers.

But then they both heard Samantha calling. “Daddy? Where are you, Daddy?”

They quickly broke apart. “There you are,” Samantha said, and smiled when she saw her daddy.

Tag went to his daughter and picked her up. “Let’s go make those burgers, okay, sweetheart?”

“Okay, Daddy,” she replied happily.

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