Nathan's Big Sky Read online

  Mac looked for a long moment. “You’ve good eyes, Julie. Notice detail. That’s important. No wonder Emily likes you so much.”

  “Emily doesn’t like me.”

  Mac simply smiled without quite facing her.

  “You’d better get a move on, old man, if you’re going to meet your son.”

  He nodded and rose to his feet, brushed himself off. Rather than teasing her back, he reached down and scrubbed the top of her hair to mess it up. “You’ll find him, Julie.”

  “Find who?” She flipped her hair back into place with a shake of her head. She’d thought they were talking about Emily.

  “Him. Trust me. You’re too good a girl not to.”

  He started down the path.

  “But I’m not looking for anyone,” she finally told the big sky long after Mac passed the lower cabins.

  Maybe his years in the Navy and then worrying about his son had made him some kind of a romantic.

  She was a practical kind of woman. Had a business to get going and that required solving the problem of Mac Henderson’s cabins. It was her company’s first big job. If it didn’t happen, then her company probably wasn’t going to happen. Slinking back into the cattle ranch life was not an option. Landing once more in the role of the daughter who should marry another strong farm hand into the family was absolutely not going to happen.

  But sometimes she would just watch Henderson Ranch like she was now, or ride Clarence to the remote corner of her family’s property where she could just see the main compound. She would sit and watch the comings and goings, or just listen to the meadowlarks as the cloud shadows slipped over the waving fields of hay. She never thought much about it, but just liked the way it looked.

  Stan working with training his dogs.

  Chelsea and the other three men tending the horses. Late in most afternoons of the spring through fall, Mac and Ama would take off riding. Their property ran almost twenty thousand acres and backed up against two million acres of the Flathead National Forest. They could ride a half dozen miles in a straight line west or south and not leave their property. Or plunge into the primitive area and not see a soul for weeks in any direction.

  Soon they’d hire in the summer help. The horses were foaling and the tourists were coming, the ranch would be more than this crew could handle alone. Mark and Emily would be welcome assistance, even if it was only sitting around evening campfires and telling stories. Though they were such active people, it was hard to imagine them coming to any sort of a stop.

  Julie looked at the storm rolling out of the north. It wouldn’t be here until evening, but she’d best take Clarence back before then. It would be hammering across Larson land before it reached the Hendersons.

  As she stood and began heading down the trail, someone came out of the back door of the main house. The kitchen was the closest part of the house to the barn buildings and the guest cabins—the working entrance to the big house.

  In a second she knew who it was—clown-car boy. He looked about him as if he’d never seen the sky before. Montana’s Big Sky did that to newcomers. Did it to her often enough and she’d grown up here.

  Then he looked down from the heavens and spotted her. He gave a cheery wave. She wasn’t close enough to see his easy smile, but knew it was there.

  She raised her notebook in a “Howdy” gesture. Then she cut off the path and over the meadow, down toward the horse barn where she’d left Clarence napping in a stall.

  His hand lowered uncertainly, making her feel bad.

  “How hard would it be to be polite?” she asked an early crocus shoot that had fought its way through the hard soil.

  She held her focus straight ahead.

  Apparently too hard.

  Chapter 3

  The crowd was so thick that Nathan retreated to the kitchen. Actually he hadn’t left it except for the occasional run at the sideboard groaning with food. The families and hands of all the ranches for miles around had come by. In addition to the monster roasts and dozen pies he and Ama had made, everyone brought a dish big enough to feed ten or more. They’d have excess food for days. Maybe that was the plan. Though his brief foray for seconds revealed that the crowd was able to inflict a serious amount of damage on the spread.

  He had no reference for this. New York wasn’t big on potlucks. Sometimes a group of chefs would go out together to try a new restaurant, then spend the evening confirming that it was no threat to any of their own, no matter how good it was. Other times they’d all gather in one chef or another’s kitchen where they’d cook outrageous creations and old favorites, and drink until they could no longer stand up.

  That was his circle of friends.

  Friends?

  Most of them would barely note that he was gone. “Did you hear about Nathan? Another one bites the dust.” The only message on his phone during the whole drive out was from Estevan, and Nathan hadn’t returned it because he had no idea what he’d say. When the nights were quiet and all that was left was the drinking, the two of them would talk about opening their own place together. Their menu, their way. Always a dream, never quite coming together.

  Didn’t seem to matter now.

  This Montana potluck was so completely different from any of that. It was busy with talk of weather and cattle. Some women wore nice dresses, but others were dressed in jeans and denim or flannel shirts like most of the men. No one seemed to care one way or the other. Cowboy boots outnumbered everything else combined, by a fair margin—enough that he was actually self-conscious of his sneakers whenever he ventured out of the kitchen.

  He hadn’t even met the guests of honor yet, though he’d seen their arrival…at the same time Julie Larson had given him the polite version of “Go drown yourself and do it quickly.” He’d known it was her the first instant—too far for any details, but he’d known.

  Normally he could gear up and be gregarious enough to join any crowd, but when out filling his first plate, he’d seen Julie Larson. Her back had been to him, but he’d known it was her in the first instant—and not only because the setting sun was dazzling through the window behind her. She glowed. It was as if she had made a special deal with Mother Nature to always have a solar backdrop.

  Apparently her idea of dressing up was changing her scuffed brown cowgirl boots to ones with pretty stitching around leather of red and gold. Her jeans were as worn as any high-fashion boutique could provide, a blue flannel shirt made her ramrod posture look soft, and her straight blond hair fell to the middle of her back like the smoothest fall of sunshine.

  A whole cluster of cowboys were gathered close about her.

  A glance around the room revealed that the redheaded Chelsea, just by her very nature, was also charming a whole circle of big ranch-hand types even as she was sitting beside her husband. Stan was nowhere to be found. Ama must be with her son…

  The kitchen was his exclusive domain and his retreat.

  It wasn’t like him to hide away, but the quiet was comfortable. And there wouldn’t be any uncomfortable questions about what he did for a living…nothing at the moment. Or what he was doing in Montana…he didn’t have a clue. He could hear the buzz of the crowd beyond the door and pretend that it was a crowded dining room—a world separate from the kitchen. All he lacked were a sous chef, a grillardin, and the half dozen others necessary to make a dinner service. Mix in a clattering dishwasher and a small flock of waiters and he’d feel right at home.

  Except he didn’t feel at home there anymore—one of the many reasons he’d bolted from the city.

  The echoing silence of the ranch kitchen was wrong as well. He shifted from the kitchen to the family dining table. And from there to one of the big wing-backed armchairs by the fire where he settled deep into the soft dark leather. Not being able to see the kitchen helped some. He wasn’t all that far from retreating right out the back door to freeze in yet another Montana night.

  Then he heard the door swing open and shut again followed by a deep sigh.<
br />
  “Dear Lord above. Spare me from such men.”

  Julie Larson. It was a voice that had ingrained itself in his soul the minute she’d rescued him from the demon beast.

  He should reveal himself, the wings of the big armchair blocked his view of the door, but after her brush-off of a simple friendly wave this afternoon, he remained hidden, hoping she’d leave quickly.

  Nathan traced the track of her footsteps as her boot heels paced over to one fridge, then the other. After a long pause, they tromped toward him.

  She plummeted into the next chair with a loud exclamation of, “Refuge. At long last.”

  “Perhaps I should go,” he said softly to not startle her.

  By Julie’s squawk of surprise, he’d totally failed. She nearly lost the plate that held a big sandwich apparently scavenged from the refrigerator. And if she hadn’t plunked the beer bottle down on the coffee table before she sat, she’d be wearing it.

  “Sorry,” he started to rise.

  “City boy! You scared half a life out of me.”

  “Where’s the other half?”

  “I’m like a cat. Nine lives, and I’m trying to conserve them.” It was a good thing she didn’t smile, she was already far too pretty without it. The blue flannel accented her blue eyes. Seeing her without a horse, a monstrous cow, or a barbed wire fence, he could appreciate why she might need refuge. Up close she was even more stunning than his memory of her.

  “I’m Nathan,” he had to do something to break his own desire to stare at her. She was like a breath of fresh air. Chilly Montana air, but still incredible.

  “Hi, Nathan. I’m Julie. You can stay as long as you promise not to act like you’re a white knight, a shining prince, or a rutting cowhand.”

  “So I can be one as long as I don’t act like it?”

  She eyed him as she took a sip out of her beer bottle. “Let’s see. I don’t think that a white knight or a shining prince would be so scared of a cow as gentle as Lucy that he’d wave his little jack handle in the air.”

  “Which leaves me the category of ‘rutting cowhand.’ I’ll pass.”

  “Good,” she bit deeply into her sandwich. “Or I’d whack you with something a lot bigger than a car jack,” she spoke around the mouthful.

  “No food out there?”

  “I couldn’t get near it without some hoot-n-hollerer saying, ‘Let me help you with that, Julie. I’ll set you up a plate just the way you’d like it.’ As you said—”

  “You’ll pass.” Nathan slouched deeper in his chair and considered the fire while trying to think of the next thing to say. “Only cows I’ve met before have already been butchered. Those I know what to do with.”

  She managed a garbled exclamation around her next bite, but it sounded disbelieving.

  “Very few unbutchered cows in Manhattan.”

  “Manhattan, like New York City? Why would you want to live there?”

  Nathan decided that if he slouched any lower he’d be on the floor and his feet would be in the fire, but he couldn’t find the energy to prop himself back up either. “Can we skip that question for now?”

  “Okay,” he could feel her looking at him. “I already know why you’re here, so that shoots down the next question.”

  “You do?” He turned back to her and she was studying him with those impossibly blue eyes. Even at night by firelight they spoke of the sky. “I sure don’t.”

  “You’re looking for something different. You told me so yourself, so I figure it must be true.”

  “I suppose.” He had said that. He returned to his former slouch.

  “New York and the Montana Front Range, couldn’t get much more different than that.”

  “The Arctic,” he mumbled just to be contrary.

  “Sure, though in winter the temperature here is about the same. Make sure you’re gone by September if you don’t like the cold.”

  He shrugged. He didn’t really expect to be here more than a few days to see Patrick. Though he didn’t care much one way or the other about the weather. If the city scorched in a heat wave or bogged down under a foot of chill slush, it never affected him one way or the other.

  “You’ve really never seen a cow?”

  “At a distance out of a car window, but never up close and personal. Their horns don’t look so big and dangerous when you’re doing seventy down the interstate.”

  “Lucy’s breed is called longhorns for a reason.”

  “Sure, for scaring chefs to death. I think you bolted extra-large horns on her when you saw me coming.”

  “Right,” that detail had slipped her mind. “I forgot Ama said you were a chef. You sure made a hit with your roast.”

  “Did you like it?”

  “Couldn’t get near the thing.” She’d grown up on a farm and could skin a cow or butcher a hog as well as the next man, but wielding a knife on a roast was clearly beyond her. It had been a close thing, not taking her own knife to the Olsson brothers.

  When he didn’t offer to go get her some, Julie actually appreciated it. “You’re not acting much like a city slicker.”

  “I’m not a city slicker. I’m a chef.”

  “You drive a fancy sports car.”

  “Not very. It’s Japanese, not a Porsche or a Ferrari or anything. It’s cheaper than a truck.”

  “Not mine.” Her business couldn’t afford a decent truck and there wasn’t a chance that she’d ask Dad for the use of one of the farm’s vehicles to get her business going. She’d scraped up enough for a 1959 Ford F-250, which was a whole lot of rust from being a classic. But it was all hers right down to the last worn ring and gasket leak. If she could just solve Henderson’s cabin problem, maybe she’d have enough cash to rebuild the engine. She only needed a couple hundred bucks in parts and a week of peace and quiet—though not a chance that was going to happen this side of winter.

  He shrugged again.

  “Why are you hiding in here?”

  “Tired I guess. I practically drove straight through to get here.”

  There was something more than that. Julie had no idea why she wanted to pry—she’d spent her whole evening trying to avoid men—but she was curious. Drove straight through? As if something had been after him.

  “Why—”

  “Sanctuary!” Someone cried out as she entered the kitchen.

  Julie leaned out of the chair far enough to see Emily Beale leaning with her back against the door as if she could bar anyone else from following. She had her newborn cradled in one arm, though there was no sign of her three-year-old girl.

  “Hey, Emily.” The woman unnerved her, but not enough to deny her an escape. “You’re safe enough in here. What are you escaping from?”

  Emily hit the fridge. “I would kill for a beer, but I don’t need a drunk newborn.” She came over carrying a ginger ale, but didn’t seem to know what to do with Belle. As if even her own child was too much to handle at the moment.

  Julie reached out and took her; she was fast asleep and too cute for words. Just a few months old, it was easy to see that she’d gotten her mother’s delicate features. Only time would tell if she’d take on her mother’s incredible strength of character as well.

  “Thanks,” Emily sighed as she dropped down on a couch.

  “Too many people! I know five and there must be a hundred out there. They all think that my sole value is that I’ve made two babies. And conversations! I haven’t had to talk that much in a year. Is he safe?” She nodded toward Nathan.

  “Not sure yet. Are you safe?” Julie couldn’t resist prodding him. She enjoyed babies, and this one was a sweetheart—at least while she was asleep. It would be a long time before she had any but if she did, she’d gladly take one like this.

  “Me?” Nathan looked back and forth between them. “Do you think I’m dumb enough to take on two dangerous blondes? Is the kid blond? That makes three. Ama told me you’re a warrior,” he nodded to Emily, then turned to her. “And I’ve already seen you rid
e down a longhorn demon-beast—”

  “He met Lucy on the road last night,” Julie filled in with a mock-panicked look that stung even more than an eye roll.

  “Not a chance I’m going to tangle with any of you,” Nathan concluded. “The kid could probably throw me down already since she’s yours.”

  “I’ve met Lucy,” Emily shuddered. “Never seen anything look so big in my life. Mark had taken me out to a fishing stream one of my first times on the ranch. I was sitting there not hurting a fly, just reading a book. Then this huge cow came out of nowhere and tried to eat my straw hat while I was still wearing it. My scream spooked Mark face-first into the stream—didn’t seem to bother Lucy a bit.”

  Julie laughed. “Hard to imagine anything scaring you.”

  “I’m not some superwoman. Just an Army pilot now retired. I grew up in Washington, DC. Very few giant cows except in the Capitol Building.”

  “Ask her what she hasn’t done,” Julie prompted him. “Go on. Ask her.”

  Nathan blinked at Julie, feeling no sharper than a cow. He was still trying to get over the two women sitting with him. Both were tall, blond, fit, and couldn’t be more different if they tried.

  Emily Beale looked the warrior. Narrow face, jewel-blue eyes, and her hair sliced sharply at her jawline. She wore a black turtleneck, a fleece vest, and khakis with sneakers. Julie’s hair was a lighter shade that fell well past her shoulders in a soft flow emphasizing her open face. The blue flannel shirt accented her sky-blue eyes and the worn jeans that he’d admired earlier were no less admirable up close. Her fancy-stitched cowboy boots really were nice work. It was the first time he’d ever seen cowboy boots that made sense—in New York they’d always looked incongruously ridiculous worn with skin-tight leggings by the city’s trenders.

  He didn’t know what to make of Julie cradling a baby. She made it look like the most natural thing, whereas he’d never really seen one from so close before. Patrons of high-end restaurants hired babysitters. A few of his staff had reproduced over the years, a very few, and the babies were rarely more than a briefly flashed photo on a phone’s screen that always seemed to blank to black the moment it reached him.