Married In Montana

She ignored his protest. “What are you trying to prove with the drinking and the fighting and the stupid stunts? I have to tell you, nobody is impressed with your maturity and sense of responsibility.”

“I’m only nineteen years old, for God’s sake. I don’t have to be mature or responsible.”

“It would be nice if you were still alive when your twentieth birthday came around.”

He rolled his eyes. “Give me a break. The most life-threatening thing I do is show up for work every day, give the old man another chance to run me into the ground.”

“It’s your ranch…your life…we’re talking about here. Dad wants you to be prepared to take over when he retires.”

The words were out before he could stop them. “If he’d listen to me—just once—and realize I don’t want the damn ranch, we’d all be better off.”

Thea took her gaze off the road to stare at him. “Why not?”

Bobby dropped his head against the back of the seat and closed his eyes. His head still ached from last night. “When did I ever say I did?”

“You loved the place when you were little. We couldn’t convince you to come in for dinner some nights, at least not until it got too dark to work.”

“Yeah, well, I grew up.” He didn’t have the words to explain how the ranch, the old man…Thea herself…smothered him. And even if he could find the words…no way could he hurt Thea like that. She’d taken care of him since he was four years old.

“I’m not so sure.” She braked at the intersection of the ranch road with the main highway, then turned left toward town. “Adults acknowledge their responsibilities.”

He ground his back teeth. “Damn, I’m tired of that word.”

“Don’t swear at me.”

“Don’t tell me what I can and can’t do.” Now he sounded like a four-year-old even to himself.

They rode the thirty miles to Paradise Corners without saying anything else. Thea took the shortcut, which brought them to the Lone Wolf Bar without going through the main part of town. His truck sat right where he’d left it last night, reflecting the neon lights of the bar in its bright red finish.

Bobby pulled in a deep breath. “Thanks, Tee.” He used his childhood name for her to apologize. “I appreciate the ride.” He opened the door and dropped to the ground, then turned to give her a grin and a wave through the open window. The night was young, and there was a girl he knew…

Thea evidently had other ideas. “You’re going to follow me home, right?”

He stared at her in disbelief. “Uh…no, I hadn’t planned on going home yet.”

His sister could swear with the best of the cowboys, and she did it now as she slammed the door and strode around the Land Rover to face him. She was only a couple of inches shorter and ten years older than he. That made her a strong woman, even when she wasn’t spitting mad.

Like this. “You are not going to spend tonight carousing and fighting, buddy.” She jabbed a finger into his chest. “I’m not having you brought home by the deputy again. Or an ambulance. You get your butt in that truck. I’ll follow you.”

“Tee—” The problem was that he wanted to laugh. He never could get mad at his big sis. “It’s Saturday night. You don’t really want me sitting at home on Saturday night.”

“I believe we’ll all survive the experience.”

The urge to laugh faded. “Look, I promise I won’t get plowed again. I’ll stay sober as a judge.”

“You know as well as I do how much LeVay likes his scotch.” Her eyes had lost their fierceness. He was gonna win this one, too. “And you promised the same thing before you left home last night, as I recall.”

“Cross my heart.” He suited action to words. “Look, I told Megan we’d go over to Bozeman tonight. She’s supposed to get here about eight—” A beat-up Jeep rolled into the parking lot. “See, that’s her right there.”

Thea had all her antennae up now. “Does Mr. Wheeler know you’re taking Megan to Bozeman? Why didn’t you pick her up at her house?”

“Uh…sure, he knows.” He hated to lie, but he didn’t want to continue this fight in front of Megan. “I thought I’d be in town earlier than this, so she got her friend Racey to drop her off.”

The Jeep stopped right beside him, and Megan scooted out. “Thanks, Race. See ya’.” She straightened up and smiled at him. “Hey, Bobby.”

“Hey, honey.” Something about Megan’s smile, about the worship in her brown eyes and the pout of her full lower lip, glazed tonight with some kind of sparkly pink lipstick, simply took away his ability to think. “Ready for a night on the town? You look great.”

She blushed, and smoothed a hand over her short jean skirt. As if he hadn’t already noticed those long bare legs. “I’m ready.” She looked toward his sister and smiled. “Hey, Thea. How are you?”

“Just fine, thanks.” She shoved a hand through her hair and blew a breath off her lower lip. “Listen, can you get this rascal home at a reasonable hour tonight? He dragged in late and you can’t begin to imagine what kind of commotion that makes with Dad.”

Megan didn’t have it in her to lie. Bobby took her arm and stepped into the breach. “I promise, Ms. Watchdog. I’ll hit the door at midnight on my own two feet. Will that do?”

Thea drove her hands into the pockets of her jeans. “I guess it’ll have to. I didn’t bring along a rope to tie you down.”

“Great. See you later, then.” He walked Megan to the truck, thanking God that he’d bought the biggest pickup on the market, because he couldn’t wait one single minute more to kiss that pink frosting right off her sweet mouth.

In the shadow of the cab, out of Thea’s line of sight, he backed Megan against the door, braced his elbows and leaned his body into hers. She was a slender little thing, yet she fit him just right. “We didn’t get a chance to say hello properly out there. Want to try again?”

For an answer, she smiled, wrapped her arms around his neck and pulled his face down to hers.

FROM THE DRIVER’S SEAT of the Land Rover, Thea watched until Bobby got into his truck and headed east toward the highway. She didn’t wonder why it had taken him a good ten minutes to get Megan in on the passenger side. His eyes had glazed over the minute the girl set foot on the ground. He’d have stepped on his tongue if he’d tried to walk.

She smiled slightly and sighed at the same time. Her dad had been tough on Bobby all day—not just his usual silent observation, but heavy disapproval coupled with a level of expectation his children could never meet. Robert Maxwell didn’t suffer mistakes or fools. Thea had learned over the years how to avoid both. Most of the time.

But Bobby enjoyed courting disaster. He didn’t look ahead and he didn’t look behind, and he never seemed to notice what havoc his behavior wreaked in other lives. Her own, for example. She’d been his shield, his defender, for half her life. Jolie and Cassie had taken off, leaving her to fill the role of mother/daughter/sister/ranch hand. Sure, she loved the job. She worked hard every day to earn her dad’s respect, because she loved him, too. And, of course, she loved Bobby to distraction.

“So why am I sitting here whining?” She watched folks she knew heading into the bar, but couldn’t hunt up any enthusiasm for joining them. The stores in town closed down by six on Saturdays, so she couldn’t go shopping, not that there was anything she needed to buy. A drive back out to the ranch, a check on a couple of the cows she and her dad were worried about, and then that romance novel she’d gotten in the mail but hadn’t had time to open…

“Is this your night for trouble?”

The one voice she hadn’t wanted to hear came from just outside her window. Thea turned slowly. “Well, hello, Deputy. Somebody already started a fight in there?” He had not, unfortunately, grown hairy warts or developed a squint since last night. The man was inhumanly attractive.

And his grin could melt granite. “I’ll give it a couple more hours. Most of them have to be really tanked to start hitting. Speaking of which, I notice your brother picked up his truck.”

Thea clenched her teeth. “How observant of you.”

Hands on his hips, he stared at her a second, then shook his head and tipped his hat back slightly. “My fault. That comment was uncalled for and unfair. I apologize.”

Again unfortunately, Thea could tell he meant what he said. Something cold inside of her started to thaw. “That…that’s okay. Bobby’s hard to handle. But he’s not mean.”

“I guessed that. Makes it hard to stay firm with him, I bet.”

Damn his insight. She tried to be flippant, to hide an inclination to melt even further. “Easy enough to see, since we’ve obviously spoiled him rotten.”

Rafe Rafferty didn’t move, but he withdrew as completely as if he’d stepped back three paces. “You said it, not me.” With two fingers, he resettled his Stetson. “Have a good evening, Ms. Maxwell.”

Thea refused to watch him return to his nice silver truck—she didn’t want to know how he looked from behind or how he walked, with those long legs and narrow hips. She made a big production out of getting the Land Rover started and into gear.