Last Dance

Afraid? When had she not been afraid? Gwyneth tried to ignore the pounding of her heart and fought back to when she hadn’t been afraid—she hadn’t been afraid of Tanner and Leather was a man others feared, keeping her safe. Then just before the wedding, her life had changed. “I’m not afraid of anything,” she lied.

“Well, then, you won’t be afraid to invite me in for a neighborly chat, will you?”

“You’re nosing around here, just for the sheer nastiness of it. Anna wouldn’t have liked that.”

He looked down at her, and for a heartbeat, the hard line of his mouth softened. “Are you getting all steamed up to yell again, Gwynnie?”

“Anna wouldn’t have wanted you bothering me,” she restated firmly.

Don’t hide behind my mother. Don’t ever hide from me behind anyone again,” he said, reminding her of how she’d hovered behind Leather, afraid to talk with the husband she abandoned on their wedding night.

“I can handle you on my own,” she answered, lifting her chin to angle a hard stare up at him.

“Can you?” The question was too soft as Tanner reached out, grabbed the flannel shirt covering her T-shirt and hauled her up close to him. Fear ruling her, Gwyneth brought her boot down on his and there in the quiet layers of morning mist, with the meadowlark trilling on the old fence post and the roosters crowing, Tanner studied her face. “I’m wearing steel toe work boots, honey. I never felt a thing. Now that was an interesting move. You’ve had some self-defense training, too, haven’t you? Why?”

Her hands had sought an anchor as he’d lifted her to her tiptoes, and the warm muscles surging on his upper arms told her that Tanner had only gotten stronger. She met his dark look, forced her fingers to uncurl from his arms and pushed the trembling fear back in its hole.

“The Founding Mothers knew how to shoot well enough to protect themselves and others. Times haven’t changed that much, just a new twist on the methods,” she shot back and tore herself free of him. She breathed unsteadily, trying to recover her reality before Tanner began prying into her life, yet every breath took his scent into her.

“Not around here. That’s what the video training course was at my mother’s, wasn’t it? She was helping you. Why?”

She missed Anna terribly. “We were friends. I loved her. She helped me…we learned self-defense together. That’s all you need to know.”

“My mother? Sparring in the backyard?” he asked in disbelief.

His expression was dazed, almost comical and Gwyneth waded in to deepen the shock and shake his almighty arrogance. Apparently Tanner had the same view of women as Leather—that they needed big, strong men to protect them. “We used my barn hay and I was very, very careful not to hurt her, but she tossed me good once or twice. I was quick, but Anna was sure.”

Tanner ran his hand through his waves, tilting his head in that old way, his eyes shadowed by those gleaming lashes, as though he was trying to understand. He lifted his head to scan the Smith ranch yard and fields, the house with its missing shingles and boards nailed over her bedroom window. His gaze lingered there, reminding her of how he’d tossed a pebble at her window years ago; he’d given her a wildflower bouquet at midnight and told her he loved her. Now the sound of his hand sliding slowly across his unshaven jaw caused her to shiver. “Invite me in, Gwyneth. Let’s talk. I need answers.”

“Is that why you came? To push and pry and ruin my life again?”

“You’re hot-tempered too early in the morning—I wonder why? Is it because you know that I tried and you didn’t? How many times did I try to talk with you? How many times did I call? And how many times did Leather lie for you, enjoying taunting me?” His finger strolled down her taut jaw. “I came to get my mother’s two milk cows. You’ve got enough to do here without milking chores. But the yell sounded real interesting—I want answers, Gwyneth. Something is very wrong and it has been for years. You flinched when I touched you yesterday and again today. Haven’t you gotten over that yet? Do I repulse you that much?”

For just a beat of her heart, Tanner’s expression revealed that same quick shaft of confusion and pain. Then his look down at her was too mild, his half smile too practiced.

She swallowed, forcing moisture down her dry throat, for this man wasn’t young Tanner; dark rivers of emotions ran through him now, and the mist seemed to pulse with his storms.

“Everything is just peachy. Go away.” She wished she hadn’t seen the doily escaping his jeans pocket. He missed Anna, and the painful task of separating her household possessions still awaited him and his sisters.

“Sure,” he returned easily. “I knew you’d be too afraid to actually talk to me. Is that your studio, that addition onto the old house?”

He was a carpenter, learning from his father, a hand-craftsman and perfectionist. The addition she’d built was poor looking, but sturdy. She’d used old boards from a shack, read how to build a block foundation and set studs, but none of it could compare with the work Tanner could do. It was all hers, her safe place, where the potter’s wheel hummed and fear and worry spun away in the clay. She couldn’t let him into her life; she couldn’t. “I’ve got work to do—”

“Sure you do, Gwyneth.” His singsong taunt said he didn’t believe her, that he knew she was trying to escape him. “You can yell now. I hear it’s good therapy,” he said before turning and strolling toward Anna’s two milk cows.

Penny and Rolf followed at Tanner’s heels. “Deserters,” Gwyneth muttered darkly and tried not to notice how Tanner had become broader than the boy, his walk easy in the manner of a man who was proud, who knew who he was, and where he was going. As if he decided his fate. She resented that confidence, resented the hungry lingering of her gaze upon him. When Tanner reached to pet Sissy, she heard herself call, “You’re no farm boy, Tanner Bennett, and those cows need milking twice a day. Make sure you let me know when you turn them back into my pasture, and make yourself scarce in the meantime. And don’t you sell them to anyone but me. And don’t you sell Anna’s house until you let me—”

She hated swallowing the rest of the words. But the new well had cost too much and her mortgage to the bank wouldn’t allow the purchase of Anna’s home. Somehow she’d find a way, she always had, and she always paid her bills.

Tanner turned slowly, like a man who chose everything in his own time, not another’s; he studied her across the small distance of the field. Then he blew her a kiss that sailed across the morning air and knocked her back into the old barn and pushed her breath from her body. “Don’t you dare start up with me, Tanner Bennett,” she heard herself whisper shakily. “Just go somewhere I’m not.”

Late the next day, Tanner slapped his hand against the stack of new boards. Gwyneth drove herself too hard to keep the Smith ranch, doing enough work for two men. As a boy, Tanner had seen his mother too tired, pitting herself against work that was never done. He remembered the late nights when she made jams to sell, doing other people’s laundry, and then sitting down with a pad and pencil and her checkbook to see what was left. She’d cleaned houses and baby-sat, and never once complained. As soon as he could, he helped, sending money home—there was college tuition for Kylie and Miranda, but Anna wanted nothing for herself; she was happy with what she had, with the balance in her life. Anna had achieved what most sought and couldn’t find—peace.

But the frustration of seeing his mother work too hard, draining her body and mind to keep them together, to feed her growing family, had remained deep within Tanner. He’d been too young to help much, but he had, hiring out to ranchers for bailing, farm and cattle work. He’d hated the way his mother’s shoulders drooped back then, weary from work, the way her hands were too broad and callused for a woman’s, the way she’d made do with old clothes.

Now Gwyneth was doing the same thing, working too hard, trying to hold her land. Without looking at her hands, Tanner knew that Gwyneth’s were callused and competent. The defined yet feminine muscles of her shoulders, arms and legs said she’d tested her strength to the limit. He’d planned to collect Anna’s chickens, too, but Willa at the café had said that Gwyneth needed the egg-money, just like his mother had. He glanced at Koby Austin, who had come to help him build a new chicken house. Koby had lost a wife in childbirth and a son who never drew breath. Now his power saw tore across boards as fate had torn him apart. He glanced at Tanner and switched off the saw, lifting his safety glasses to his head. “This is like old times, isn’t it? You and me working together, like when you came to help my folks build that barn. You were just twelve, when your dad died, and you hitched a ride to the ranch, toting your father’s toolbox. My mother said you’d be a catch someday and that she was in love with you right then.”

Tanner tossed Koby a cola from the small cooler. “My dad taught me a skill that will always serve me. Teaching wasn’t for me and in the merchant marine, I made enough money to help Mom and my sisters. But I like the smell of new lumber, the feel of wood in my hands, waiting to come to life. I want this place in good shape—for Mom. I built the old chicken house when I was twelve and taking up where Dad had left off. It was my first project without him.”

“Some say you’ll sell, others say you Bennetts are like your mother, that Freedom Valley is where you’ll settle. That means you’ll be meeting Gwyneth upon occasion. Can you handle that? Or have you moved on since the last time you were moaning about how much you loved her?”

“Love can be evil and cold,” Tanner said, tilting his cola high. “It’s better to leave it behind.”

They sat on the stack of new lumber, facing the Smith ranch and sipped their colas in the shade of Anna’s biggest oak tree.

Tanner took a long, assessing look at his friend and Koby smirked knowingly. “Nope. Never thought about asking Gwyneth out. Rejection isn’t good for my psyche and besides that, it would seem incestuous, starting up with a good friend’s woman. But if we’re going to debate on the logic of women, we should do it in comfort—food, music and beer to ease the pain? In a righteous place where men come to understand the meaning of life and the intricacies of the female mind?”

Tanner lifted his eyebrow. “The Silver Dollar Tavern?”

Koby chugged the remainder of his cola and grinned. “I’ll make a few calls. The Women’s Council needs a little competition and we’ll have our own meeting. Now that you’re back, the rest of the pack will want in on this.”

Is the Women’s Council still shoving men around?” Tanner remembered all that his mother had said about the ten women who had come from all parts of the world to settle in Freedom Valley. They’d banded together for protection, setting the rules for potential suitors who had to pass standards before marriage.

“You betcha. My sister, Rita, wouldn’t have it any other way. She’s a widow now, with kids and a small farm, and she’s active in the Women’s Council. My brothers, Adam and Laird, scoff at the tradition and Rita jumps them. Those ten women in the 1880s may have needed protection by sticking together, but Freedom Valley’s women still have a fist hold on how a man treats a woman he wants. Our families are descended from those stubborn women who came to Montana and banded together, and times haven’t changed much.”

“So much for man’s country. Did you court your wife according to the Rules for Bride Courting?”

“I did, and so did any man around here who wanted to stay on the good side of the Women’s Council. You, my friend, did not. You rushed Gwyneth into marriage, and you’ve got a big red “Cull” marked on your backside. You may get a notice from the Women’s Council to appear before them, just to set you straight. They really enjoy defining the rules of a Cull to someone who’s been away. And you’re prime for their picking. I’m not coming to the funeral.”

Tanner took a long, deep breath filled with the scent of the newly mowed lawn. “Sometimes I wonder if things would have worked out—if I had followed the Rules for Bride Courting with Gwyneth… If I hadn’t pushed her into marrying me so quickly.”

Koby shrugged again, a man who had lost a wife and a baby. “You’ll figure it out. Every man has to come to terms with the past and the here and now.”

“You don’t intend to marry again, do you?” Tanner asked his friend.

“Nope. I had a good marriage. I was happy. That’s enough for me. It’s more than some people have in a lifetime. Your mother was like that—happy with what she had. You still have a football we could toss around later, old man?”

Tanner sat brooding, dawn filtering through the lace curtains of his mother’s quiet house. After the Bachelor Club’s impromptu reunion at the Silver Dollar, he’d picked up a few bruises in the late-night football game. He couldn’t sleep, his mind restless. He ran a finger over his mother’s journals, neatly stacked on the polished dining room table that had been passed down from Magda Claas, an ancestor on his mother’s side. Beside Anna’s journals was the prized English style teapot of a great-great grandmother on his father’s side. Lined across the antique buffet were small framed pictures of the Bennetts and their ancestors.

Memories circled the rooms, his sisters’ filled hope chests waiting upstairs in their rooms. Miranda and Kylie cared little for the tradition inherited from the Founding Mothers. His sisters had sprung into the outside world as he had done, only coming back to Freedom Valley to visit Anna. But his mother wanted them to have hope chests as she had had, and so for her, they embroidered hastily without really intending the use.

Young Gwyneth had fretted about her lack of a hope chest—old Leather hadn’t allowed her to spend “silly time embroidering and such.” Gwyneth had wanted to wait, to fill her hope chest as Tanner’s sisters were doing—but there wasn’t time and he’d pushed her….

Tanner ran his fingertip across the pineapple design of the table’s doily, his mother’s hook always flashing, a certain peace wrapped around her as she crocheted in the evenings, after the work was done. She’d learned from her mother and so on, the patterns handed down from Magda Claas. Kylie and Miranda never took time to learn, both of them too impatient.

He traced the frayed corners of the journals, letting his mother keep her secrets, her life, the thoughts that a woman would have at the end of the day. He’d seen her writing late at night, sometimes in bed. What gave her such strength to face raising her children, providing for them without a complaint?

Restless and unanswered questions prodding him, Tanner stood abruptly and scrubbed his hands across his unshaven jaw. Kylie and Miranda had promised to come back, to help sort their mother’s things, but right now, Tanner needed answers to the past. He stretched out his fingers, missing the boats that he loved to build, the smooth wood sliding beneath his touch. He placed his open hand on one journal, wishing his mother were here, alive and smiling, baking bread…

Was it his right to read his mother’s journals? Her private thoughts should remain her own and yet, he ached for his mother and wanted to hold her close.

He inhaled sharply and gently with one finger and the sense that he was prying, Tanner eased open one journal. He gently stroked the dried lavender stalk she’d pressed within the journal, the delicate fragrance wafting around him like memories. My Life his mother had written on the title page, the date just one year ago. “That night three years ago is stormy, just as my thoughts remain about the evil those men did to a sweet girl. I have never felt such anger in my life as when Gwyneth ran to me that night. The sight of her, torn and bleeding by those men’s rough hands, just three days before she was to marry my son haunts me,” she’d written in her precise, feminine hand. “I begged her to tell him before the wedding, and she couldn’t bear to hurt Tanner. She talked to me of it, how she tried to push herself, and knew she should tell Tanner. Yet she couldn’t. I kept my promise not to tell my son, but knew it was so wrong.”

Tanner frowned and with a sense that his mother had reached out to him, to help him understand, sat down to read.

Three

Men have dark sides, deep brooding creatures that they are, filled with arrogance and swaggering when they are proud of themselves. But if a woman can capture a good man, she can tame him with the softness of her heart. Men go in packs sometimes to protect themselves from being captured. They’re vulnerable creatures, needing petting and care, though they won’t admit it. The boy within the man wants to play, while the man has headier thoughts that can make a woman’s head spin.

—Anna Bennett

“Tanner Bennett, you are going to die,” Gwyneth muttered as she peered out her kitchen window into the stormy dawn. In the half-light, Tanner’s shaggy hair lifted in the wind and the powerful set of his broad shoulders stretched his T-shirt as he turned to set the plow’s tines into the earth. As if in rage, his metal tractor-monster tore by her ancient one, which had sputtered and died before finishing the new garden.

An experienced man from the country, Tanner knew how to tear away and open earth as though he were laying siege to her land…and this time there was no Leather to stand between Tanner and her. “I can deal with Tanner Bennett. And I will. I’ve dealt with everything else around here from mortgages to bad fences and dead tractors, and real-estate agents who wouldn’t take ‘no.’”

Gwyneth shook her head and ran her shaking fingers through her cropped hair, spiking it. One look in a mirror revealed her pale face and the circles beneath her eyes. All she needed after a draining night of bad dreams and hearing about last night’s reunion of the Bachelor Club was Tanner outside her window. Here he was, starting up with her and she had work to do and deliveries to make. She glanced at the mugs she’d been carefully wrapping in newspaper and easing into a cardboard box to take to a tourist store in another town. The various shaped mugs, each stamped on the bottom with her trademark, provided a steady income, easy for tourists to pack and transport. Larger bowls, speckled in earth tones, were for Willa’s Café, perfect for her soups. Gwyneth had built a steady clientele and by raising cattle and potting, she’d hauled herself out of all debt except the mortgage used to pay her father’s medical expenses. And all without the help of an interfering ex-husband. She slapped her ball cap on her head, jerked on her battered denim jacket against the chilly April morning and glared at Penny and Rolf, who were whining to be let out. “You run to Tanner, grinning and drooling all over him, and you’re going back to that cheap dog food for a week. And you’re not going with me to make the deliveries today.”

Undaunted by her threats, Penny and Rolf burst from the opened door, tails wagging on their way to Tanner.

She marched across the field, across a plowed strip and stood in front of his tractor, her hands on her hips. Wearing only a T-shirt against the morning chill, Tanner scowled at her, braked the tractor to a stop and clicked off the ignition. In one lithe jump, he was on the freshly plowed ground and tramping toward her. Gwyneth tried to ignore the angry shiver running through her and noted briefly that she’d never feared Tanner, except that night.

As he moved toward her, a tall powerful man she’d known all her life, his eyes flashing with anger, she shot at him, “You’re in a fine mood. So you played football on the high school field after the Silver Dollar closed. My phone has been ringing steadily—as if I’m responsible for you. Well, I’m not. I heard all your old chums were there, married and unmarried boys alike, waking up half the town with yells and turning on their headlights. Look at you…you’re bleary eyed, you’re wearing a beard and you look like you’d like to tangle with a bear. Nelda Waters wasn’t happy about Sam being invited to play at two o’clock in the morning, or about him having to drive their old tractor down to the high school ball field to sell to you. You could have waited until today. You’re not young anymore, Tanner, and you’ve given the town enough gossip fodder. Your mother would have—”

You’ve got a fast mouth on overdrive. You sound like someone’s wife—but you’re an ex-wife, aren’t you?” He stood over her now, his grim expression sliding into a dark, wary, penetrating search of her face as though seeing beneath the surface. “You should have told me.”