The Man From Montana

Alcohol at three in the afternoon.

Alcohol affecting her competence.

No seat belt. Busted windshield. Busted brain.

God help him, but Susie’s disregard was his secret. Not Tom’s, and never, never Daisy’s.

His pain. His business. Like Tom with Nam.

Ash pushed away from the counter. Patting the old man’s shoulder, he said, “I’ll tell Daiz to wash up.”

At her computer in the cramped newsroom of the Rocky Times, Rachel put her face into her hands and took a long, deep breath. Yesterday she had gone about it wrong, driving out to the Flying Bar T, trying to get past Ash McKee and his warhorse.

God, when she thought of the rancher and that animal… They exuded a beauty and authority that kept her enthralled for twenty-four hours. McKee’s pole-erect back, his muscular thighs controlling the animal whose charcoal forelock shrouded its eyes. The man himself blocking the sunlit sky with his mountain-wide shoulders, his Stetson.

She rose and went to the window beside her desk, drew up the dusty blinds, welcoming the sunlight. Shaw had swept the sidewalk clear of snow. On this last day of January, the sky promoted a bank of gray snow clouds to the north, which meant that before midnight February would be whistling its way over the landscape.

Several pickups drove down Cardinal Avenue, their wheels churning the previous night’s snowfall into a crusted brown blend. Across the street, a two-tone green crew-cab angle-parked in front of Toole’s Ranch Supplies.

Ash McKee stepped down into the crystalized mush. As he closed the door of his vehicle, his gaze collided with hers across the street. Rachel drew a sharp breath. Again, she saw him on that sweat-flanked horse, smelled the steamy hide of animal, the leather of the saddle as the rancher leaned down toward her….

He turned and disappeared inside Toole’s.

Ash. Here in town. Tom, alone on the ranch.

Rachel snatched up the phone on her desk. In the face of what she wanted, Ash McKee was a massive problem. Local lore, gleaned at Old Joe’s Bakery and Darby’s coffee shop down the street, said he was not a man to take lightly. And when did that stop you, Rachel? You’ve met men far more daunting than this one. Case in point, your father and Floyd Stephens.

This was her chance. Phone Tom while his son was twenty miles away, talk to the old soldier about the guesthouse first, give him a reason to speak with her. Later, she could bring up the story.

“At all costs, get the story.” Her father’s mantra.

Nerves and guilt lifted the hair on her nape. Don’t think. Do. Her fingers shook, but she punched the number without stumbling. At the other end the phone rang twice, three times, six times.

“Come on, pick up or at least get an answering machine.”

Eight rings… “’Lo.”

“Mr. McKee?”

“Yeah?”

“My name is Rachel Brant.” She glanced toward the window. No Ash. “I was out your way yesterday to see you, but—” she couldn’t stop the edgy chuckle “—your cattle were in the way, so I wasn’t able to—”

“You the reporter?”

“I, uh—yes, that’s right. I work at the Rocky Times.”

Silence.

“I’d like to talk to you, sir, if you have a moment.”

“You’re looking to rent the cottage.”

So Ash had relayed the information. “If possible.”

“Ain’t my deal. It’s Ash’s. Convince him and you’ll have a place to hang your hat.”

“I thought you owned the ranch.”

“I do. But the cottage is his venture.”

“Actually, I’d like to talk to you, too.”

“Like I said the cottage is—”

“I know, Ash’s business. But I’d like to talk to you about something else.”

Pause. “This got to do with some damned story?”

“In a way, yes, it does. I—”

Dial tone. He’d hung up. Damn. Now what? Should she phone back? Go out anyway while Ash was in town? No, she couldn’t trust how long he’d be. The last thing she needed was to get caught out in the boonies with a fire-breathing dragon on her heels.

She should have left it with renting the guesthouse, waited until she was out there to talk to Tom face-to-face.

She sat and fumed at her desk. Almost two weeks of planning gone down the drain. Two weeks of schmoozing with the townsfolk, getting to know them on a first-name basis, cracking smiles she didn’t feel, pushing her little boy into yet another school with strange kids. Living in a moth-eaten motel.

All for what? Fame and glory?

So her father—an editor with the Washington Post—would recognize she was as capable of meritorious reporting as her mother had been? Qualified to make the big leagues, to one day write her way to a possible Pulitzer?

Worth loving just a little?

The thought left a barb. Bill Brant had loved no one but his long-dead wife, Grace. Times like these, Rachel wished, wished her mother still lived. But she had died of cancer twenty-four years ago, on Rachel’s eighth birthday. A day branded in her mind. Not only had she lost her mother forever, but her daddy had set the blame at his daughter’s feet. Stupid, Rachel knew. But still.

She had to try. Had to. For her own sake as well as her father’s.

But, oh, she was tired. Of the lying, the pushing, the shoving. Of living in seven different backwater towns in seven states, soliciting local newspapers for a job—just so she could have the time to gain the trust of their wary resident Hells Field veteran. God, what she wouldn’t give to find her own niche and have Bill Brant be happy for her. Just once.

“You don’t give up, do you?”

She jerked around. Ashford McKee stood five feet away, big and tough as the land he owned. A pine and forest man.

Hands buried in a sheepskin jacket, Stetson pulled low as always, he stared down at her with dark, unfriendly eyes. Slowly he removed a cell phone from his pocket and lifted one smooth black brow. “We McKee’s keep in touch.”

She should have known. A fly speck couldn’t get past him without that speck becoming a mountain.

Rachel rose. At five-ten, she was no slouch, but beside him she felt gnome short. “I’m sorry,” she said, “but as I mentioned yesterday my issue is with your father—who I understand owns the Flying Bar T?”