Big Sky Ever After: a Montana Romance Duet Read online

  “Usually people worry about the bull,” Mark checked for him. “Looks more like she’s just happy to be in a bath and away from Junior.” The young one was playing in the shallows, barely in the water up to its knobby knees.

  “An elk family,” Nathan sat up and shot a photo with his camera so that he could ask Julie when he saw her. If he saw her. If he didn’t just grow a pair of balls and climb in his car to go as soon as Mark flew them back. He took another, this time of the angler and the critters together. Actually, that one would make a great publicity shot; he’d even caught the nose of the helicopter in the frame. Even if he left, he’d send it to Ama for the Henderson Ranch website.

  “Or moose. I’m really not sure.”

  “Maybe it’s some kind of weird crossbreed that only happens in Montana. A melk?” He could picture it being a melk.

  Then with a flick of water, Mark’s line snapped tight. In moments it was racing off his fishing reel.

  “Grab the net!”

  “Don’t you have to land it first?” But he tossed the horse blanket back in the cargo hatch and dug around until he found a net.

  Mark was slowing the spool, but the line was still growing longer. Nathan didn’t like the angle.

  “It’s going straight for the moose, or elk. Don’t let it—”

  But it was too late, the racing fish had dragged the fishing line across one of the moose’s legs. The big bull levitated straight out of the water with a loud sound that was half bray and half honk.

  When it landed back in the water, it glared in their direction.

  “Uh-oh!” Nathan began edging back toward the helicopter. “I’ve had some experience with this. If Lucy had looked like that, not even Julie could have rescued me. Let’s go.”

  “But I’ve got a fish,” Mark’s voice was nearly a whine. But he too began backing away. As he did, it must have moved the line, this time the big bull didn’t levitate, he roared.

  “Mark. Forget the damned fish.” Nathan had reached the passenger side of the helo and tossed the net into the foot well.

  “Aren’t you supposed to face down wild animals?” But Mark didn’t sound so sure even as he said it.

  “Haven’t you ever seen the videos of moose crashing into each other with their antlers?”

  “Forgot about that.” Mark made some decision, then hurried up to him. “Take the pole. Don’t let go.” Then he raced around the other side and climbed in. Within moments, the helicopter’s engine whined to life and the rotors began turning slowly. Too slowly.

  Nathan climbed in on the passenger side, feeling like a complete idiot for still holding the pole out the open door.

  The moose twisted in their direction, bellowed again, and began clambering up toward the shore.

  “He’s coming this way, Mark. Get a move on.”

  When the calf tried to engage his dad in play, the bull nipped him sharply on the butt and the calf squeaked in pain and surprise.

  “I know how you feel, buddy.”

  By the time the bull reached the shore, Mark had the rotors going.

  There was some momentary slack in the line. Nathan prayed that the line had simply broken. He fooled around with the handle until he figured out how to wind in the line.

  As the rotors wound faster, so did he.

  The melk (eoose? whatever) also took that as his cue and moved more quickly along the shore in their direction. The closer it came, the bigger it looked. Its huge rack of antlers were massive curved plates big enough to serve a suckling pig on, with sharp points sticking out from them. Its bulbous nose pulled back over bared teeth as it bellowed out a warning that seemed to shake the hills.

  The line snapped taut and the pole bent, the sudden tension almost yanking it out of Nathan’s hands.

  “Let out line. Let it out! That button on the right. Press it!” Mark shouted over the blast of engine and rotor noise that was now beating on him.

  Or was it the noise of the moose’s pounding hooves as it shifted from a walk to a trot after it reached the grass?

  “Damn! That thing is huge! It’s coming our way. Get us out of here!”

  “Almost…” Mark was doing things to the controls, but none of them were getting them aloft. “Don’t touch the spinning reel with your bare hands, you’ll get a bad slice. Ease on the brake. Not hard or you’ll snap the line.”

  That last sounded like a good idea to Nathan, but he did as he was told.

  The moose went from trot to run. Then it lowered its head to ram them just as Mark got them aloft. The moose’s blow caught the skid squarely on Mark’s side and knocked them through the air toward the lake. The impact had Nathan whiplashing against Mark and then being almost ejected, along with the fishing pole, out the door on the other side. No time for a seat belt.

  Mark managed to get a little more height and turned the nose to face the angry bull. The second blow shattered the small window by Nathan’s feet when the moolk rose on its hind legs to pound home a final blow.

  Again they were pushed toward the lake.

  Mark finally was able to lift them out of the moose’s reach and get them out over the water.

  The bull stood at the lake shore looking big, dangerous, and triumphant—which it should, because it completely ruled the lakeshore. The cow had herded the calf off under the trees somewhere farther along the shore.

  “Do you still have it?” Mark shouted.

  “What? My heart? My life?”

  “No! My fish.”

  Nathan could only stare at him.

  “Reel in. See if you’ve still got it.”

  Nathan cranked on the reel until the line went tight again. “It’s still there.”

  “Good,” Mark looked at the tip of the pole and flew sideways in the direction it was pointing, easing along just ten feet above the icy water. “Keeping reeling it in.”

  “I can’t believe we’re doing this.”

  They crisscrossed back and forth above the lake, chasing the fish as Nathan kept shortening the line until finally the line was straight down into the water and he could see the fish struggling and splashing just below the surface. Then Mark descended as Nathan reeled until the helicopter’s skids were in the water.

  “Hey!” Lake water was splashing in through the shattered window and soaking Nathan’s sneakers.

  “Sorry, forgot about the window.” Mark eased up a few inches, which didn’t help much. “I need two hands to fly.”

  Nathan could barely hear him over the rotor’s roar. Neither of them had a free hand to pull on the headsets.

  “So pole in one hand, but don’t lose it. Grab the net with the other.”

  It took Nathan a couple of tries, but he finally snagged the fish in the net. It was big for a rainbow trout—longer than his elbow to his fingers. He’d never seen a live one. It was beautiful—nothing in common with the ones in the New York fish market. He finally understood why it had been named rainbow: color glistened down its side, especially an iridescent pink.

  For lack of anything better to do—at Marks’ instruction—he grabbed it by the tail and brained it against the edge of the door.

  “Dinner!” Mark sounded utterly delighted. Though Nathan suspected that he’d be the one who had to cook it. Maybe he’d do a simple white wine and thyme poach, let the gentle fish speak for itself. Though browned in clarified butter with a sage-mushroom-cream sauce, using wild mushrooms and farm fresh cream, also sounded good.

  Nathan tucked the pole, the net, and the dead fish back between the seats, then closed the door and pulled on both of their headsets and his own seatbelt. As the adrenaline drained away he realized that he was actually happy.

  Mark circled back up over the still-glowering moose, standing with its feet just into the lake as if ready to come after them at the least sign of weakness.

  “At least I know what a truly angry animal looks like now,” not that a soul back in New York would believe it. Then he started laughing.

  “What?” Mark w
as smiling.

  “I never knew why they call it fly fishing.”

  Mark guffawed as they turned back toward the ranch, the chill wind whistling through the shattered window and over Nathan’s soaking wet feet.

  “What the hell did they do to my bird?” Doug was scowling at the sky.

  Julie looked up just as the helicopter passed by low overhead. There was a big crease across the nose and one of the windows was broken out. Nathan waved cheerily from the passenger seat, but they were gone before she had a chance to respond.

  At least that explained where he’d been all morning.

  She didn’t know why she cared.

  No. She did know why she cared. Some terrified corner of her heart had feared that he’d gone. Over dinner last night she’d heard his love for New York City. He didn’t miss it, or he didn’t seem to, but he knew its terrain as intimately as she knew the Montana Front Range. It was a part of him.

  There hadn’t been time to hunt him down or his car—the hay loft had been her idea, but she didn’t know what the boys had done with it last night. So all morning she’d worried over it. There’d been no sign of him in the kitchen or crossing the yard. Not once had he appeared to scan around for what she was doing—something he’d done constantly, even when she wasn’t speaking to him.

  Preparing the holes for the yurt platforms’ concrete footings, ones that would be stout enough to support full cabins in the future, was a three-person job. And she had to take advantage of the help while she could get it rather than hunting for him.

  Mac was on his backhoe operating the big auger. It crunched through the last of the frozen ground like it was shaving ice at a county fair for snow cones, then quickly cut down into the rich soil.

  She and Doug concentrated on bending and wiring up the rebar internal framework, then placing them in the finished holes and slipping sixteen-inch cardboard Sonotubes over that to define the post for the concrete pour. She’d gotten everything pre-staked and run one of Mac’s flatbeds all the way into Great Falls to get the rebar and Sonotube she’d needed. Splicing in a temporary power pole, they had the juice they needed to run saws for slicing the tubes and cutting the rebar.

  At this rate they’d be ready for concrete in just a few more days. Then she could start on the yurt platforms.

  And what had Nathan been doing? It wasn’t that she expected him to be working. He was…she didn’t know what he was. He wasn’t on vacation. He was helping Ama with the cooking and had now gone somewhere with Mark. But he also wasn’t leaving.

  Doug held a freshly bent length of rebar in place and she wrapped a thin wire around to secure it.

  What was Nathan up to? With his fine food and his soft kisses. He wasn’t trying to bed her, or if he was, he was going slower than molasses in January.

  More to the point, what was she up to? She never let a man close unless she knew what she wanted from him. But she had no idea what she wanted from Nathan Gallagher. She—

  “Don’t need to strangle the poor thing,” Doug interrupted her thoughts. She’d wound the wire so tightly around the next rebar joint that it was never getting away.

  “Maybe it deserves it. Besides, I don’t want it going anywhere.” Though it definitely hadn’t needed the three extra wraps before she twisted it off.

  Doug bent and placed the next piece before speaking again, barely louder than the steady grind of the big auger chewing up the next snow cone layer before getting down to the dirt.

  “I’m maybe not the best person to speak to about these things, Julie. But I’m willing to try if it’ll help.”

  “What things?” Another piece of rebar cinched down within an inch of its life.

  Doug sighed, “And Chelsea wonders why I leave her to do the talking.”

  Julie was irritated with herself for any number of reasons, prime among those being caught thinking about a man when she should be thinking about work. After they dropped the rebar cage into one of the holes and slipped over the piece of Sonotube, she made a show of pausing, going to the cooler, and getting them each a bottle of water.

  Mac eased the auger to a stop and clambered down off the backhoe to stretch for a moment and drink some water with them.

  Suddenly she had an audience when she really didn’t want one.

  Down by the garage, she could see Mark and Nathan closing the equipment bay door after tucking away the helicopter. He waved with one hand and held up a dinner-sized trout with the other. She didn’t want to draw everyone’s attention down there, so she just gave a nod that she hoped he’d be able to see, then returned her attention to the project.

  “Making good progress,” Mac started the conversation.

  “Seem to be,” Doug agreed and emptied half of his bottle of water.

  “Slow but good.”

  “Uh-huh.”

  It wasn’t slow at all. They were well ahead of her planned schedule. To make sure, Julie began mentally counting number of footings to go in her head when she happened to look up and see that neither man was looking at the worksite progress. Doug was avoiding her gaze and Mac seemed fascinated by the two men and a fish that were headed into the house.

  “I’m talking about the foundations,” Julie kept her tone business-like.

  “Sure,” Mac agreed but she knew better than to trust that.

  “Seriously, that’s all I’m talking about.”

  Doug harrumphed.

  Mac looked down at the latest hole fully prepared for the concrete truck. “Well, then I’ll change ‘slow but good’ to ‘incredibly faster than expected’ but work isn’t what any of us are talking about.”

  “I am,” Julie tried, but knew it was lame. “Okay, I’m so not.” Some part of her was near to panicked over Nathan’s sudden disappearance and she didn’t like that one bit.

  “Now you’re talking,” Mac agreed.

  “No, she isn’t,” Doug idly kicked some dirt back in around the outside of the Sonotube. “Now she’s just feeling helpless. That one I know. Chelsea bowled me over in the first ten minutes.”

  “First two minutes,” Mac corrected him.

  “Maybe not even that long,” Doug agreed. “Damned if I knew what to do about it though.”

  When had she known?

  Julie swallowed hard and bent down to strangle a fresh piece of rebar with a tie-wire.

  She didn’t know anything. Because there wasn’t anything to know.

  Chapter 8

  It took them three hard days of labor to get the rest of the footings in place and Julie could feel the ache in every muscle.

  No morning horse trainings because that precious hour before sunrise was one of the few chances to calculate what other supplies were needed. No pleasant evenings over a fine meal, because that’s when she was able to work on Emily’s office. No time for Nathan—which sounded like a good thing, but didn’t feel that way at all.

  The midday temperature was up into the fifties, which reduced them all to shirt sleeves. Her hands throbbed from working the rebar despite the heavy gloves.

  For three days she’d worked like a mad woman and successfully avoided three things: the question of her attraction to Nathan, Nathan himself, and sleep. Her mind had become an endless churn of why Nathan hadn’t tried to seduce her after that dinner and what was she going to do about it.

  That night, she wouldn’t have gone with him even if he had tried. She was still fairly certain about that. But for three days now he hadn’t done a single thing except be friendly and make Ama’s ranch food—which had always been a treat—even better.

  If he were to ask right now, she just might go willingly. Perhaps even very willingly.

  There was a round of silent nods with her, Doug, and Mac after they finished the last footing prep. A careful scan of the hillside revealed six clusters of footings springing up through the grass and mud—five for the yurt platforms and one for the common bathroom. Not a single marker stake left, every single one had been augured, rebarred, and Sonotubed. />
  The three of them began cleaning up the site. Restacking extra supplies. Moving the heavier tools like the rebar bender and cutter, both of which they were done with for now, into the bucket of Mac’s backhoe so that he could drive them down to the barn.

  She paused to slam back half a bottle of water that did nothing to soothe her parched throat.

  And then it struck her: had Nathan been playing some kind of waiting game? Knowing that she was churning away inside and it was going to twist her up? But even as she thought it, she remembered his promise: No games. Besides, it didn’t sound like something Nathan would do.

  Let your hair down and kick it out a bit, Mac had told her. Maybe he was right.

  She looked down at the main ranch house and recalled how Nathan had looked that morning—three days and forever ago—sleepy and holding the covers tight about his neck. How could so much be packed into a single morning? A horse-interrupted kiss, the fear of him leaving, and her impossibly huge relief to see him flying by overhead.

  Only now did she admit to herself that she’d had an image of another way to wake him besides kicking the foot of his bed. For just a moment, less than a second, she’d had an image of sliding under those covers with him.

  Take that young man you’re so worried about and go play.

  What if she did? She had an errand down Great Falls way. She’d been planning to make a morning run—down and back in one shot. What if…

  “Go, Julie.”

  “What?” she looked at Doug but he wasn’t explaining himself.

  “Get yourself moving, girl. Doug and I’ve got this,” Mac gave her a small shove to get her moving. She barely managed to hand off the last spool of tying wire and the cutters before she headed down toward the house, still unsure of what she’d do when she got there.

  Nathan was slicing a loaf of fresh-baked sourdough, while the stew he’d made for lunch bubbled away, when Julie came striding through the back door of the kitchen. She wore her Ford baseball hat and was covered in dirt as usual. Heavy leather gloves clasped a half-finished water bottle like she could do war with it as her sole weapon.