Nadia Nichols - Montana Dreaming

Guthrie sighed and laid down his spoon. “Say it. I was stifling you. I was jealous and possessive and all I wanted was for you to be barefoot, pregnant and in the kitchen.”

Jessie flushed. “That’s all true.”

Guthrie pushed aside his bowl…sat very still for a few moments, as if gauging her outburst. He stood. “I was hoping things might’ve changed between us, but I guess they haven’t. I’m sorry you feel the way you do. I’m sorry you believe I ever meant to stand in your way.” And he moved to leave. “I’ll be back to help in the morning.”

“I don’t need your help,” Jessie said. “You ran off to Alaska at the first sign of trouble, didn’t you?”

“You were the one who told me to go, Jess. Remember?” He strode out the door, closing it quietly behind him.

She wanted to cry, but she couldn’t. The cataclysmic events of the past year had hollowed her out, emptied her of the ability to feel anything remotely soft or vulnerable.

Anger. Of late, it was the only thing she could feel. Terrible pent-up anger about everything. That her father had gotten ill. That the medical bills had skyrocketed. That the insurance company had raked him over the coals. That the only way she could save the land she so fiercely loved was to give it to someone else.

Worst of all, she felt a terrible anger at Guthrie Sloane for abandoning her when she needed him most….

Dear Reader,

On a recent business trip to Montana I snuck away from the structured activities and spent a memorable afternoon riding into the high country with a surly old wrangler who was searching for some stray horses. Once he got used to being saddled with a greenhorn from Maine, he filled the afternoon with wonderful stories about the land and its history. On the ride back to the ranch (driving eight horses ahead of us at a dead gallop—over rough country for the last mile!) the threads of all those stories wove themselves firmly into my imagination.

By the time we reached the corrals, several strong characters and the different dreams they shared in this last great place were already coming to life. This is their story.

Nadia Nichols

www.millsandboon.co.uk

For my mother and father,

for encouraging me to follow my dreams

CHAPTER ONE

CHAPTER TWO

CHAPTER THREE

CHAPTER FOUR

CHAPTER FIVE

CHAPTER SIX

CHAPTER SEVEN

CHAPTER EIGHT

CHAPTER NINE

CHAPTER TEN

CHAPTER ELEVEN

CHAPTER TWELVE

CHAPTER THIRTEEN

CHAPTER FOURTEEN

CHAPTER FIFTEEN

CHAPTER SIXTEEN

CHAPTER SEVENTEEN

CHAPTER EIGHTEEN

CHAPTER NINETEEN

CHAPTER TWENTY

What is life?

It is the flash of a firefly in the night, the breath of the buffalo in the wintertime.

It is the little shadow which runs across the grass and loses itself in the Sunset.

—Crowfoot

IT WAS TEN MILES to town, eight of them on the old dirt track that ran alongside the creek—the same road that her father’s grandfather had ridden back when the Crow Indians still lived in and hunted this valley. Ten miles of gentle descent that curved with the lay of the land and the bend of the creek. Ten miles that traced the path of her childhood and were as familiar to her after twenty-six years of traveling them as were the worn porch steps of the weather-beaten ranch house that sat at the end of that road.

Ten miles on horseback in a late-October rain. A cold rain, too, that might’ve been snow had the wind quartered out of the north. She couldn’t begrudge the rain. The only rain they’d had all summer hadn’t amounted to two kicks, as her old friend Badger was so fond of saying: “Two kicks and you’re down to dust.”

She rode a bay gelding called Billy Budd, which she’d raised herself and ridden for the past fourteen years. He was a good cow horse, not fast or flashy, but Billy could always be counted on when the chips were down.

Today, the chips were down. Her truck wouldn’t start—a chronic fuel-pump problem she’d put off fixing—and she was late for the signing at the real estate office. Her phone had been disconnected months ago due to nonpayment of bills. But it was no matter that she couldn’t call. She knew they’d be waiting for her when she finally arrived. They’d wait all night for her if need be.

Ten miles by truck took a mere twenty minutes. Ten miles on horseback took a good deal longer. By the time the small cluster of buildings came into view through the sheets of cold rain she was nearly an hour late.

Katy Junction sat at a crossroads that connected five outlying ranches with the main road to Emmigrant. It had four buildings: a garage with gas pumps, a general store, a feed store and a tall narrow building that shouldered between the general store and the feed store, and housed the Longhorn Café downstairs and a combination real estate–lawyer’s office up. There were still hitch rails in place fronting the boardwalk, recalling an era when horsepower had nothing to do with a mechanical engine. In fact, not much had changed in Katy Junction for a very long time, but Jessie Weaver was about to alter all that.

She tied Billy off to the hitch rail, parking him between a battered pickup and a sleek silver Mercedes. On the far side of the Mercedes she spotted the familiar dark-green Jeep Wagoneer and felt an irrational surge of relief that its owner would be at the meeting. She loosened the saddle cinch, removed her oilskin slicker and draped it over the gelding’s flanks. He was hot, and she didn’t like leaving him standing in the cold rain.

“I won’t be long, Billy,” she said. “This won’t take but two shakes.”

The stairs to the office ran up the outside of the building. When she burst into the room she was slightly out of breath. “Sorry I’m late,” she said as she entered. “My truck’s broke and I had to come a’horseback. My fault. I should’ve fixed the truck when I got the new fuel pump, but I kept putting it off.”

Three people stood in the cramped room, grouped around a small round table. The real estate agent, who was also her lawyer, Allen Arden, nodded to her. “That isn’t all that’s broken, by the looks of you. What happened to your arm?”

“Tangled myself in a lasso two days ago,” she said, giving the cast, which stretched left wrist to elbow, a scowl.

“That’s hard luck, Jessie,” Arden said.

“Could’ve been worse. Could’ve been my signing hand. At any rate, it won’t slow me up. I’ll still round up my mares in time to be off the ranch when we agreed.”

Arden nodded again, hearing the bite in her words and shifting his eyes. “Jessie, you already know Caleb McCutcheon and his attorney, Steven Brown.”

Jessie stepped toward McCutcheon. She was so rattled that she felt this was the first time she’d laid eyes on the man, though she’d met him several months earlier. His handshake was firm, his eyes keen and blue and framed with crow’s-feet, his body long and lean, his features as rugged and tanned as if he’d spent his entire life out-of-doors. There was hardly a hint of gray in his sandy hair. She had come to like him more than she expected she would in the brief time they had known each other.

“Hi,” she said shortly. She turned and acknowledged Steven Brown but didn’t offer her hand. She didn’t want him to feel how it trembled, yet she was enormously grateful for his calm, solid presence. Although he was McCutcheon’s lawyer, he had helped her tremendously through all these proceedings. He looked somber and handsome in his dark three-piece suit, his shoulder-length glossy black hair pulled neatly back. He nodded to her in return, predictably stoic.