His Montana Sweetheart

The mayor tipped the central microphone toward himself. “Jack, I’m speaking for the entire board when I say we’re grateful you took this on when Wes got sick.”

Wes Middleton, the previous chair of the Old-timers’ Committee, had unexpectedly needed bypass surgery. Jack met the mayor’s gaze frankly and replied, “I believe ‘railroaded’ by your youngest daughter would be a more apt term, sir. Seems the apple didn’t fall too far from the tree in this case.”

Mayor Shaw’s gaze glinted with humor and something else. Regret? Maybe. But the look disappeared before Jack was sure he read it correctly. “Her mother’s powers of persuasion, actually. You know how it is, Jack.”

He didn’t, not really, because he’d run cold and hard from anything to do with long-term relationships for years. Maybe he wasn’t meant to settle down, settle in. Maybe—

A glimpse of wavy, layered blond hair to his left put his heart in pause mode. He’d blown it once, the only relationship that mattered. He’d tossed her overboard in a groundswell of self-pity and anger. Like Scrooge in the famous Dickens story, he might have ruined his one and only chance at love eight years before, but he had his ranch. And his father. And—

The appreciation list cut short right there because he’d already summed things up and felt the lack to his core. He drew a breath and nodded to the mayor, raised the few sheets of loose-leaf paper he’d brought and swept the board a glance that included Rusty. “We’ll have it running smooth by game day.”

He ignored the bemused look Rusty aimed his way, because Rusty was the only person who knew how little he had really done. The board nodded and moved on to the next item as Jack turned to say goodbye to Olivia.

Gone.

He scanned the room quickly.

No Olivia.

He headed toward the backdoor quicker than necessary, and when he stepped through and saw her perched on the brick wall alongside the steps, his heart did a rapid thump of gratitude, a reaction he didn’t deserve and couldn’t pursue. But for that one instant, a decades-old feeling power-rushed him, the way it used to every time he saw her. When she shifted her attention his way at the sound of the door, however, her gaze bordered on polite and distant, and that realization settled his pulse in quick order. “I thought you left.”

“I am leaving, but I wanted to jot down a few names, and if I waited to do it at home I’d forget half.”

“With your brains?” He scoffed and moved closer. “Not gonna happen. Are you here to visit? And why are you writing down random names? Did you drive in?”

She closed the electronic tablet and stood as she addressed his questions in order. “I’m in town to help put together a biographical history as part of the centennial. If my research goes well, my information will be ready by the time they open the new Jasper Gulch historical museum in December. I came into town tonight because I thought some of the old-timers coming in for the game could help fill in some time-line gaps I’m seeing.” She didn’t add that she assumed Wes Middleton was in charge of the game, and that if she’d known Jack was involved, she’d have shied away, but her expression made that clear.

“The car question?” She turned her gaze toward a red compact angled into a parking slot up the road. “I figured it would be dark by the time the meeting was done, or at least by the time I made it home, and walking the two-lane at dusk is stupid.”

It was. Sun glare blurred the horizon and the road at dawn and dusk. She’d made a smart choice, but that was no big surprise. Her brilliance had earned her a prestigious scholarship to Stanford, while he’d been playing ball five hours south at UCLA. A long-distance relationship that worked until...

He cut that thought short by hooking a thumb south. “You got time to walk, Liv? Catch up? Somewhere that every citizen of Jasper Gulch isn’t watching?”

* * *

Oh, she had time, all right. Nothing but time. And he was right about the citizenry because she’d been fielding questions about her marital status and Jack’s single-guy life for the past seven days, as if one plus one should naturally equal two.

They didn’t, of course. Not all equations worked out in mathematical precision, especially with human quotients.

But did she have the moxie to maintain polite distance from Jack McGuire, her first love? She hesitated, knowing she was vulnerable, lost in the kicked-up dust of a three-year marriage gone bad the year before.

She’d wanted a family.

Her husband had wanted a divorce. Since the two were at distinct odds, he had hightailed it out of their marriage and into the arms of a woman he’d met eighteen months before, a woman he’d married and had a baby with not long after the ink dried on the divorce decree. Which meant for well over a year Billy Margulies had been living a lie. She wasn’t sure which hurt more—his lie or the fact that she fell for his act the entire time.

Jack tipped his gaze down, and that sweet expression, hinting question and tinged with humor, made her decision hard and easy. “Yes. I’ve got time for a walk. A quick one.”

He rocked back on his heels and dipped his chin, total cowboy. He didn’t reach for her hand as she slipped her iPad into the tooled-leather Western bag at her side, but he looked as if he wanted to hold her hand, and that evoked a wave of sweet memories best kept at bay.

Here in Jasper Gulch, where every storefront and street held a memory?

Keeping those thoughts in their place would be tough to do.

* * *

Tongue-tied.

Jack headed toward the old bridge, trudging the worn path with Olivia as he’d done so often in the past. But things were different now. Knowing that, understanding the ensuing years had gone downstream swift as minnows from the Big Timber fish hatchery, he knew nothing would negate the past, but he’d hurt this girl—woman, he corrected himself—and fate or God had put her in his path tonight. Maybe he could make amends.

“I hated you for a long time.”

Jack quickly downscaled amends to initial-apology status. Amends would take longer. Like maybe forever. Or never. He winced inside because talking wasn’t his strong point, and waded into the waters of repentance with “guilty as charged” stamped on his forehead. “You had reason to.”

She acknowledged that with a questioning look. “Yes and no.”

“My vote is yes because I threw a hissy fit about my injury, dumped you, chased off after a career I ended up not liking, then came back home with my tail tucked between my legs like a naughty pup.”

“Your mother’s illness brought you back,” she corrected him. “And you did the right thing. But was it the job you hated, or the city?” She asked the question without looking at him, skimming right over the whole part where he admitted to dumping her. Breaking her heart.

Unless he hadn’t broken her heart.

That thought rankled enough to have him clap a hand to the nape of his neck.

And then a surge of instant guilt sprouted because the idea she might not have been all that heartbroken irked him. What kind of man was he?

Shallow, self-absorbed, inwardly focused, take your pick, advised his conscience.

He preferred God-fearing, upright and responsible, but the past year had nudged his conscience into a more accurate appraisal. Ignoring the internal stab, he pondered her question as they approached the creek bank above the rapids. “Eventually I grew to hate both,” he admitted. “I actually didn’t mind the city at first. It was vibrant. Different. Full of life.”

“Chicago’s crazy fun,” Olivia offered, and the way she said it, as if she’d been there, stopped him in his tracks.

“How do you know that?”

“I completed my studies on East Fifty-ninth Street in the university’s Social Sciences Division.”

Irked spiraled to flat-out irritated in a heartbeat. “You did your grad work at the University of Chicago? And never contacted me?”

This time she faced him, and the look she gave him, a mix of resignation and old hurt, put him flat in his place, just where he belonged. “You didn’t want me, Jack. You made that clear. I wouldn’t have even known you were there except that my parents mentioned it. But that didn’t mean I shouldn’t pursue my master’s degree at one of the best schools in the country. So I did.”

The thought of Livvie in Chicago all that time, while he was slogging away in investment banking, made his head spin. She’d known where he was, had proximity to him and didn’t make contact.

You told her not to, scolded the internal voice again. Didn’t your mother tell you not to say things you didn’t mean?

She had, Jack knew. Back in kindergarten. He should have listened better.

“Because while the city was okay for a while, a means to an end,” Livvie continued in an easy voice, “I was glad to get out of there. Come back to Big Sky country.” She spread her hands out, leaned back and watched the encroaching night. “We used to count the stars at night, Jack. When they came out. Remember that?”

Oh, he remembered, all right. They’d look skyward and watch each star appear, summer, winter, spring and fall, each season offering its own array, a blend of favorites. Until they’d become distracted by other things. Sweet things.