Montana Passions: Stranded With the Groom / All He Ever Wanted / Prescription: Love

He grabbed two handfuls of it and eased it upward, over those warm, slim, waiting thighs.

Her panty hose stopped him. His fingers brushed them, and sheer as they were, the slight barrier of nylon reminded him.

He shouldn’t be doing this.

He had no damn right to do this.

It took every last ounce of determination he possessed, but he lifted his head. She tried, at first—raising her body to his, pleading sounds rising from her throat—to pull him back to her.

But no.

He couldn’t. He had no right to give in to her tender urging.

He lifted his head and her soft hands fell away.

Gently, he smoothed down her skirt as she looked at him, dazed, flushed and dreamy-eyed. “Justin?” She whispered his name on a yearning, slow breath.

He didn’t answer. Couldn’t answer. He took her by the waist and carefully turned her around, taking the loose ends of her bra straps and hooking them together again.

He smoothed the sweater back down.

Only then, when those tempting bare inches of skin were safely covered, did he guide her back around.

Lazily, she raised her arms and rested them on his shoulders. “Oh, my.” She let out a long, sweet sigh. “I think the chicken’s burning.”

He gritted his teeth to keep from taking her kiss-swollen mouth again. “Better see to it.”

“Yes.” She looked adorably regretful. “I suppose I’d better.”

He let go of her—yet another impossible task somehow accomplished—and she turned for the stove.

The wine was right there and his glass was empty. He needed more. A river of it, to wash the tempting taste of her from his mouth—to numb the reality of what he was here to do. He filled his glass and topped off hers, too.

I could…just drop the whole thing with Caleb, he found himself thinking as he stood a few feet behind her, sipping more wine, his gaze tracking the length of her. From her gleaming, thick brown hair that curled sweetly at her shoulders, down to her trim waist, and lower still, over the smooth swell of her hips, along the shape of her thighs outlined beneath the slim skirt, and lower, to the backs of her slim calves. She sent him a smile over her shoulder as she moved from the stove to the oven again. From there, she came closer and set to work finishing the salad.

He watched her hands, narrow and smooth, clear polish on her short-trimmed nails.

I could just never make my move, he thought. Let it all go ahead as Caleb believes it will. Give it up. At this point, no one would even have to know what I had meant to do.

But then what?

Try to make his dream of a life with Katie come true?

And if he tried for that—what? Tell her the truth about himself? That basic fact that he’d lied—a whopping lie—in the first place, could ruin it between them.

So if not the truth, then what?

To hold forever within himself the central lie of his very existence? Seeing Caleb and his wife and their son all the time, becoming, in a sense, a part of the family?

No.

It was impossible.

He had to remember his mother. Remember Ramona Lovett, who called herself Ramona Caldwell. Remember the life they’d had. Barely holding on too much of the time. He had to remember, all of it.

Like that night when he was twelve. The night she’d locked herself in the bathroom. Remember breaking down the door to find her limp in the bathtub, her forearms slit, bleeding out on the white tiles of the bathroom floor.

He’d slipped in her blood as he plowed through the medicine cabinet looking for something to staunch the flow.

After that, the Child Protective Services people had come sniffing around, so they’d moved. Again.

And then, always, he would have to live with the night she died.

She’d come to find him in Bozeman when she learned she wouldn’t make it, come and let him take care of her for those final months. Once or twice, in the last weeks, she’d remarked that it was strange—maybe even meant to be. That he’d ended up here, in Western Montana, when she’d never once so much as brought him here the whole time he was growing up.

“I thought I raised you to live anywhere but here. And look. Here you are. Must be fate. Oh, yeah. Must be fate. When I’m gone you’ll get your chance to make it all right.”

He would ask her what she was getting at. What did Montana have to do with anything? And she would turn her head away.

Until the last. Until the night she died in the hospital, where he’d taken her once she couldn’t get along without round-the-clock care.

“I know I never told you, who he was…your father. Maybe I should have.” Her skeletal hand, tubes running from the back of it, weakly clutched his fingers. “Caleb. That’s his name. Caleb Douglas. Wife, Adele. They had one son. All they could have. Riley. In Thunder Canyon.”

“Thunder Canyon. That’s right here. In Montana.”

She’d swallowed, sucked in another breath that wheezed like she was dragging it in through a flattened straw. Even the oxygen didn’t help her by then. Nothing helped. “Yes. Twenty miles from here. In Montana. Caleb…” she’d whispered, her eyes closing on a final sigh. “Caleb…”

And with that name on her lips, she was gone.

“Justin? Are you in there?” Katie laughed, a light, happy sound. A sound from another world, a world of possibilities he couldn’t let himself explore. “You should see your face. A million miles away.”

He shook himself. “Sorry.”

“Nothing to apologize for.” She handed him the big wooden salad bowl. “Put this on the table? We’ll just eat right here, in the breakfast nook, if that’s okay?” She handed him the salad tongs.

“Sounds good.” He carried the bowl and tongs to the table, then helped her set it for two.

A few minutes later, she took out the potatoes, spooned them into a bowl, and transferred the chicken to a serving platter.

They sat down to eat. He looked at the food, and wondered if he’d be able to get anything down, though the chicken was crispy-brown and the potatoes perfectly cooked. The salad was crisp and green.

No. It wasn’t the food.

It was the wrongness of being here, of holding her, of touching her soft body, kissing her lips, of drinking her wine and letting her cook for him.

Yeah. It was all wrong, to steal these last perfect moments with her, when in the end he could do nothing but continue on the course he’d set two years ago, on the day of his mother’s death. In the end, his choice wouldn’t change. He would get his payback—for Ramona Lovett Caldwell’s sake, above all.

And that meant he had no right to sit here with Katie, in her house, at her table, pretending that there was some hope for the two of them.