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

They shook out the pile of wool blankets and wrapped up in them. Justin pulled on his gloves and Josiah Green handed him the reins.

“Bless you, my children,” Green intoned, as if the marriage vows he’d just led them through had been for real.

“Thanks,” Justin muttered dryly. “Looks like we’ll need it.” He glanced at Katie. “Okay…” He had a you-got-us-into-this kind of look on his handsome face. “Where to?”

“If you want, I’ll be glad to take the reins.”

“I can handle it. Where to?”

Even if he didn’t know what he was doing, it should be all right, she thought. Buttercup was patient and docile as they come. “Straight ahead. Then you’ll turn right on Elk, about three blocks down.”

“What? I can’t hear you.”

She forced herself to raise her voice and repeated the instructions.

Justin shook the reins and clicked his tongue and Buttercup started walking. Her bridle, strung with bells, tinkled merrily as they set off, the beer-sodden townsfolk cheering them on.

The wind rose again, howling, and the snow came down harder.

A half block later, the thick, swirling flakes obscured the hall and the knot of cheering rowdies behind them. A minute or two after that, Katie couldn’t hear their voices. All at once, she and this stranger she’d just pretended to marry were alone in a whirling vortex of white.

Katie glanced over her shoulder. She saw nothing but swirling snow and the shadows of the buildings and cars on either side of Main.

The snow fell all the harder. It beat at them, borne by the hard-blowing wind. Katie huddled into the blankets, her cheekbones aching with the cold.

Buttercup plodded on, the snow so thick that when Katie squinted into it, she could barely see the horse’s sleek golden rump. She turned to the man beside her. He seemed to sense her gaze on him. He gave her a quick, forced kind of smile—his nose was Rudolphred, along with his cheeks and chin and ears—and then swiftly put his focus back on the wall of white in front of them.

For a split second, she spied a spot of red to the side—the fire hydrant at the corner of Elk and Main. Wasn’t it? “Turn right! Here!” Katie shouted it out good and loud that time. Justin tugged the reins and the horse turned the corner.

They passed close to the fire hydrant. Good. This was the right way. And as long as they were on Elk Avenue now, they’d literally run into the museum—a sprawling red clapboard building that had started out its existence as the Thunder Canyon School. It sat on a curve in the street, where Elk Avenue made a sharp turn due east.

The palomino mare slogged on into the white. By then, Katie couldn’t see a thing beyond the side rails of the buckboard and Buttercup’s behind.

Good Lord. Were they lost? It was beginning to look that way.

Hungry for reassurance, Katie shouted over the howling wind, “We are still on Elk Avenue, aren’t we?”

Justin shouted back, “I’m from out of town, remember? Hate to tell you, but I haven’t got a clue.”

Chapter Two

Just as Katie began to fear they’d somehow veered off into the open field on the west side of Elk Avenue, the rambling red clapboard building with its wide front porch loomed up to the left.

“We’re here!” she yelled, thrilled at the sight.

Justin tugged the reins and the horse turned into the parking lot. Ten or twelve feet from the front porch, the buckboard creaked to a stop—at which point it occurred to Katie that they couldn’t leave poor Buttercup out in this. “Go around the side! There’s a big shed out back.”

He frowned at her.

She shouted, “The horse. We need to put her around back—to the left.”

His frown deepened. She could see in those blue eyes that he thought Buttercup’s comfort was the least of their problems right then. But he didn’t argue. Shoulders hunched into his ugly old-fashioned coat, he flicked the reins and Buttercup started moving again.

When they got to the rear of the building, Katie signaled him on past a long, narrow breezeway and around to the far side of the tall, barnlike shed. “I’ll open up,” she yelled and pushed back the blankets to swing her legs over the side. She opened the gate that enclosed a small paddock northwest of the shed. Justin drove the buckboard through and she managed to shut the gate.

The snow was six or eight inches deep already. It dragged at her heavy skirts and instantly began soaking her delicate ankle-high lace-up shoes as she headed for the shed doors around back. How did women do it, way back when? She couldn’t help but wonder. There were some situations—this one, for instance—when a woman really needed to be wearing a sturdy pair of trousers and waterproof boots.

There was a deep porchlike extension running the length of the shed at the rear, sheltering the doors. She ducked under the cover, stomping her shoes on the frozen ground and shaking the snow off her hem. Even with gloves on, her hands were so stiff with cold, it took forever to get the combination padlock to snap open. But eventually, about the time she started thinking her nose would freeze and fall off, the shackle popped from the case. She locked it onto the hasp.

And then, though the wind fought her every step of the way, she pulled back one door and then the other, latching them both to hooks on the outside wall, so they wouldn’t blow shut again. She gestured Justin inside and he urged the old mare onward.

Katie followed the buckboard inside as Justin hooked the reins over the back of the seat and jumped to the hard-packed dirt floor. “Cold in here.” He rubbed his arms and stomped his feet, looking around, puzzled, as Buttercup shook her head and the bells tinkled merrily. “What is this?”

“Kind of a combination garage and barn. The Historical Society is planning on setting it up as a model of a blacksmith’s shop.” She indicated the heavy, rusting iron equipment against the walls and on the plank floor. “For right now, it’ll do to stable Buttercup ‘til this mess blows over.” There were several oblong bales of hay stacked under the window, waiting to be used for props in some of the museum displays. Buttercup whickered at them hopefully.

“Go on through there.” Katie indicated the door straight across from the ones she’d left open. It led to the breezeway and the museum. “It’s warm inside. And a couple of ladies from the Historical Society should be in there waiting, with the food and drinks.”

He looked at her sideways. “What about you?”

She was already trudging over to unhook Buttercup from the buckboard. “I learned to ride on this horse, I’ll have you know. I’m going to get her free of this rig and make her comfortable until someone from the ranch can come for her.”

“The ranch?”

“She’s Caleb’s, from out at the Lazy D.”

He stomped his feet some more, making a big show of rubbing his arms. “Can’t someone inside take care of the horse?”

“Anna Jacks and Tildy Matheson were supposed to set out the refreshments for the ‘wedding reception.’ They’re both at least eighty.”

“Maybe someone else has shown up by now.”

Doubtful, she thought. And even if they had, they’d most likely be drunk. “I’d rather just do it myself before I go in.”

He gave her an appraising kind of look and muttered, heavy on the irony, “And you seemed so shy, back there at the hall.”

She stiffened. Yes, okay. As a rule, she was a reserved sort of person. But when something needed doing, Katie Fenton didn’t shirk. She hitched up her chin and spoke in a carefully pleasant tone. “You can go on inside. I’ll be there as soon as I’m through here.”

He insisted on helping her. So she set him the task of searching for a box cutter in the drawers full of rusting tools on the west wall. When he found one, she had him cut the wire on a couple of the bales and spread the hay. Meanwhile, she unhitched Buttercup from the rig, cleaned off the icicles from around her muzzle and wiped her down with one of the blankets from the buckboard.

“Okay,” she said when the job was done. “Let’s go in.”

He headed for the still-open doors to the pasture. “I’ll just shut these.”

“No. Leave them open. The walls cut most of the wind, so it won’t be too cold in here. And Buttercup can move around a little, and have access to the snow when she gets thirsty.”

He shrugged and turned to follow her out—which was a problem as the door to the breezeway was locked from the outside. They ended up having to go out the big doors. Hunched into the wind, with the snow stinging their faces, they slogged through the deepening snow around the side of the shed and back through the gate that enclosed the paddock.

Once under the partial shelter of the breezeway, they raced for the back door, the wind biting at them, tearing at Katie’s heavy skirts.