The Montana Way

* * *

WHEN JORDAN LEFT home to join the military, he’d told himself he wasn’t coming back—at least not as long as Miranda was in the picture—and the Subaru was doing its best to help him keep his promise. He’d ended up staying three nights in Miles City just after crossing the Montana border, waiting for yet another repair part. And even though he was in Montana and had a deep appreciation for the rolling hills in this part of the state, it wasn’t his part of the state. In some ways he felt as foreign here as he had in Virginia.

Maybe that was why he spent all of his time in the motel, leaving only to walk Clyde or to get a cheap meal. Or maybe he’d hidden out because he was still raw when it came to people staring at him, studying the burns and what remained of the fingers of his left hand. He’d never liked being the center of attention and now people couldn’t help but notice him.

He’d gone one night without taking a pill and had been slammed with another nightmare. After that he’d taken the pills every night. He had enough for three more weeks and he hoped that once he was at the High Camp, he’d be able to work his way past the dreams again...and past the cavernous emptiness that seemed to be enveloping him.

Was he ever going to get a grip?

Once upon a time he’d thought he was. The PTSD therapy had worked so well that Jordan had come to believe that his principal scars were the physical ones. Now he wasn’t so sure...and it scared him.

He’d put all that time and effort into therapy, gone through the accompanying emotional trauma, and what had it gotten him? A six-month reprieve. No—make that four months. For the last two he’d been fighting against the insidious backslide.

The thing that scared him most was that he had no idea what had triggered the backslide, the feelings of emptiness and uselessness. One day he was doing fine and the next...the next he felt overwhelmed. Trapped, yet at the same time drifting.

So now he was following his gut and doing therapy his way. He was going home.

* * *

DRIVING THE AUDI to the High Camp had been a mistake. It was a sturdy car, but parts of the road leading to the mountain ranch were rougher than Shae had anticipated. She carefully maneuvered her baby through a long stretch of six-inch-deep ruts, wincing at the sound of branches scraping the sides of the car, before easing back into the center of the track when the road once again smoothed out.

Shae let out a breath and loosened her death grip on the steering wheel. Scratches on the Audi were not the end of the world—she could afford to have them buffed out when she completed this contract.

A small smile played on her lips. This contract. She had a contract. Her impromptu proposal had worked. Almost as soon as Wallace ran her idea past Miranda, the ball had started rolling. Early Friday morning she’d been summoned back to the office to meet with Miranda herself.

Shae went into the meeting determined to prove herself and thirty minutes later the deal had been struck—a two-month contract at 70 percent of her former salary, instead of the 80 percent she’d suggested. At the end of that time, she was to have a complete proposal worked up, ready to put into place the next spring. If Miranda approved the proposal, then she’d oversee renovations and implement small-group beta test runs of all activities. After that...no promises.

Typical Miranda. But Shae had left feeling good—about the job ahead of her and about Miranda, who’d explained quite candidly why she’d let Shae go. Shae had to admit that given the same circumstances, she might have done the same thing. The job, whatever it might be, came first now, and, as Mel had pointed out when Shae called her with the good news, if she could get this project up and running, it would be gold on a résumé. She could see the presentation portfolio in her head—before and after pictures of the ranch she was about to rehabilitate on a shoestring budget. Smiling guests with big fish. A guy holding the horns of a trophy buck. A big campfire with manly men sitting around it laughing.

Good stuff.

But first she had to make it happen.

First she had to get there.

Shae rolled to a stop at the windfall tree across the road. Excellent. Getting out of the car, she walked to the tree, nudging it with the toe of her boot. Sturdy as a rock. There was no way she was going to move it.

She turned and looked at the road she’d just driven up. The trees had grown so close to the edge that it was going to be impossible to turn around, so she had two choices—drive the car in reverse down the road or walk on. It was the thought of backing around those ruts that convinced her. Not that backing around them would be any easier later in the day, but at least she would have completed the first step of her mission—to reconnoiter the abandoned ranch. As per Miranda’s suggestion, she planned to eventually live there during the renovation. It was, after all, almost forty miles from Missoula, and five of those miles were on unpaved roads—not exactly an easy day trip. She definitely needed to know what was necessary to live there comfortably and since she’d come this far, there was no sense turning back now.

* * *

THE SUBARU RATTLED as it bumped over the cattle guard at the bottom of High Camp road, the familiar sound something Jordan had never thought about missing until now. Home. He was almost home, close to a place where he could hole up and let the world go about its business and forget about him. He would return the favor.

“Almost there,” he said. Clyde bounced up to a sitting position, his tongue lolling out of his mouth as he watched the scenery roll slowly past. A rabbit darted across the road and the poodle practically hit the windshield in excitement.

Clyde was going to be a busy dog when they got to the ranch.

Jordan wondered what kind of shape the house was in. It’d been six years since he’d last seen the place; over a year since his father, who’d hayed the meadows and used the ranch as a hunting retreat for his buddies, had died. Jordan had no idea if his cousin Cole had done anything more than close the door.

Would it be full of mice?

Or just full of memories? He wasn’t certain which one would be worse. He figured he could check the place out, sleep in the Subaru one more night if necessary, then head to Missoula to get what he needed to make the place livable.

Less than a quarter mile up the road, the gravel thinned to bare dirt in places and he could see fresh tire tracks. Narrow car tracks rather than truck tracks. Who, other than him, would drive a car up this road? There was only one set of tracks—going in—so apparently he would soon find out.

Company. Great.

It had to be someone sightseeing or berry picking. People tended to explore the woods during the summer months—and apparently ignore the Private Road sign next to the cattle guard—so that made sense. Ironic that he came here to escape people and it appeared that the first thing he was going to have to do was kick someone off his property.

“I’ll be nice,” he muttered to the dog, who had edged closer to him as the road grew more rutted and the trees closed in, pressing his firm, warm body against Jordan’s side. Whoever had driven up the road hadn’t been deterred by the ever-deepening ruts. He was actually glad to see the ruts, since it meant that no one had been traveling the road regularly. It was his property, but he didn’t trust Miranda. He wasn’t even certain he could trust his cousin, Cole, who’d thrown in with his stepmother when she’d coerced his dad, Jordan’s uncle, to turn their ranch into a working dude ranch to make more money. Miranda did love money.

He rounded a sharp corner, then stopped. Ahead of him an expensive Audi was parked with its bumper practically touching the tree lying across the road. What the hell? An Audi? Really?

Jordan opened the car door and was instantly struck by the strong, familiar smell of pines and bracken and damp Montana earth. Something else he’d missed without even being aware of it.

“Stay here,” he said to the dog, who jumped back over the console to his side of the car at the command, obediently plopping his butt down in the passenger seat. Jordan closed the door, wondering not for the first time if the poodle understood English.

The Audi was locked and empty except for a leather briefcase and two map tubes in the backseat. Odd, to say the least. Jordan stepped away from the car, his eyes narrowing as he slowly surveyed his surroundings, looking for signs of movement in the brush or on the road past the tree. Nothing except for Clyde bouncing up and down in the Subaru.

Cool. Well, until he got a chain saw, this tree was staying where it was and there was nothing he could do except to walk on to the ranch. He went back to the car, found Clyde’s leash and settled his hat on his head, more than a little curious as to where the driver of the Audi was.

After crossing over the tree, Jordan put Clyde on the ground, where he raced around on the leash, sometimes getting jerked back if something particularly interesting caught his urban eye. And every now and again Jordan spotted footprints heading in the same direction as they were going—those of a smallish female wearing some kind of heeled boots. Not cowboy boots, but probably something along that line, which made him wonder if this person was part of Miranda’s crew, up here doing a monthly check or something.

That would be nice...but unlikely. Miranda didn’t like him enough to check on his property in his absence. Hell, she hadn’t even contacted him once while he’d been recovering in the burn unit. She’d probably hoped he’d die and then she’d have everything, instead of almost everything.

One last turn in the road and first the ancient barn, then the almost-as-ancient house, came into view. Jordan slowed down and then stopped. Damn. It looked the same as when he’d left—from a distance, anyway—but he was not overwhelmed by any kind of sense of at long last being home. In fact the scene struck him as being very much like an old photograph—a place he’d once loved, but could never go back to because it was lost to time.

Physically the ranch was still there, but while surveying the familiar scene Jordan instinctively knew that it would never feel the same as it had before he’d left. His dad was dead. Miranda lived on. All this ranch could be to him now was a sanctuary, a way to escape from the world and heal. The old times were gone, never to be recovered.

And he could live with that.

Hell, he had to live with that. He hadn’t exactly ingratiated himself to his superiors when he’d abruptly quit his job, so this was his future. Now all he had to do was figure out who was there horning in on his future.

As he got closer to the house, Clyde started pressing against his leg, as if sensing trouble ahead. The door to the house was wide-open and Jordan caught sight of movement inside.

Time for introductions and explanations.

He walked up onto the old porch, the thick boards echoing hollowly under his boots.

The woman he’d seen moving inside the house, oblivious to his approach, swung around at the sound of his footsteps, taking an immediate defensive stance as if she fully planned to take him out with a karate chop or something, her eyes wide.

Jordan stopped dead in his tracks at the sight of her.

No. Way.

The rodeo queen? Something else he’d held in his brain without realizing it: the memory of high-and-mighty Shae McArthur’s face—living proof that beauty was only skin-deep. There’d never been one thing about her that he’d liked during the years they’d been on the rodeo team together...except for maybe that time she’d come onto him. He’d enjoyed her utterly shocked expression when he’d turned her down cold. She’d needed to be knocked off her high horse and he’d been glad to do the job. Literally, in fact.

“What are you doing here?” he demanded.

Shae blinked as he spoke, letting her hands drop a few inches. He could see when recognition kicked in, followed almost immediately by a look of horror. Of course. Beauty and the Beast. Face-to-face. As he recalled, Shae wasn’t too fond of the imperfect. Nothing but the best for her.

“Good to see you, too, Jordan,” she said huskily.

He walked into the musty-smelling living room, stopping to rest his good hand, the one holding Clyde’s leash, on his hip. He purposely used his damaged left hand to rub his jaw, watching Shae’s eyes as she took in the stubs of fingers he’d lost to shrapnel before the flash had burned his back and face. “You’re working for Cedar Creek Ranch?”

She cleared her throat, but her voice was still husky when she said, “Yes.”

“But you’re here, not there.”

“I am,” she agreed. “Is Miranda expecting you?”

“Not unless she’s a mind reader.”

“You should have called her,” she said.

“Why?”

“Because if you plan to stay here, it isn’t going to work out.”

CHAPTER THREE

“LIKE HELL IT WON’T work out,” Jordan said through gritted teeth.

Shae tore her fascinated gaze away from his scars and met his eyes. This was bad in so many ways that she couldn’t begin to count them. Jordan, the long-lost stepson—the reason Miranda couldn’t sell the property in the first place as she’d wanted to—showed up now? Why? And where on earth had he been? Judging from his injuries, wherever it was, it hadn’t exactly been pleasant.

“What happened to you?” she asked in a low voice, figuring there was no reason to pretend he hadn’t changed since the last time she’d seen him.

She had a feeling he was going to say something smart-ass such as, “Cut myself shaving,” but instead he said simply, “Explosion.”

“Must have been bad.” Her gaze drifted back to the scarred part of his face and then on to his damaged ear.

“Worse than you can imagine.”

His emphasis led Shae to think she’d probably been insulted, but she didn’t much care. Scars aside, Shae had forgotten how fierce Jordan Bryan could look when crossed. She’d only crossed him once back when they’d been in rodeo, and that once had been enough. Flirtation had been wasted on the man. The one time she’d tried...well, she’d never bothered trying again.

“What are you doing here?” he repeated.

“I have a contract to work on the place.”

“Why would you be working on my place?”

“Your place?”

“Shit.” He rubbed his injured hand over his face again and Shae couldn’t help staring at it, her insides clenching at the sight of the twisted, shiny skin. She hoped no signs of disgust crossed her face, but she couldn’t be certain. At the moment she was having a difficult time processing everything—the man, the injuries, the possible consequences to her employment contract.

“She’s at the ranch?” he asked abruptly.

Shae swallowed and met his eyes. Deep blue eyes, filled with cold, cold anger. “Miranda? I don’t know.”

He turned without another word and walked out the door, the curly white dog trotting daintily behind him. An odd picture, but Shae was in no mood to reflect on why a guy like Jordan Bryan would be here with a poodle. She stayed where she was, next to the map tubes she’d placed on the dusty oak table, watching through the open door until she saw Jordan disappear down the road.

Once she was certain he was gone, Shae stepped out onto the porch, squeezing her forehead with one hand to stave off the headache that was starting to build. The prodigal had returned at the most inopportune moment and it appeared that Miranda was in for one hell of a rude awakening.

She couldn’t let that happen. Not if she wanted to keep her job.

Shae went back into the house and picked up her backpack, leaving the map tubes where they lay. There was no way she’d be able to reach her car before Jordan reached his, but she could follow a few miles behind him to the highway and call Miranda once she got into cell-phone range. She needed to warn her boss that trouble was coming.

* * *

BLOOD POUNDED IN Jordan’s temples as he stalked down the rutted road, barely aware of Clyde struggling to keep up with his long strides. The Subaru keys were in his hand, held so tightly that he was pretty damned certain there’d be a permanent imprint in his palm, but he didn’t relax his grip.

Miranda Bryan had just officially screwed with his life once too often and she was going to be one sorry woman when he caught up with her. He swallowed drily as he rounded the last corner before the windfall. Just a few more minutes to the car, then forty-five minutes to the ranch. Once there he knew exactly what he was going to do. He was going to throttle her.

Oh, damn, yeah. He was going to put his hands around her neck and— Jordan exhaled sharply, feeling his short nails dig even deeper into his palm —go to jail for assault, no doubt, once her henchmen pulled him off her.

That would solve everything—for her.

Shit. What was he doing, heading off half-cocked like this, blinded by rage? More than that, what was he thinking? Throttling Miranda wasn’t the answer. Nor was having a shouting match with her at the ranch, where she could have him arrested for trespassing.

Jordan forced himself to stop in the middle of the narrow road and release the death grip on the keys. Slowly his cramped fingers obeyed. And then he drew in a long breath and exhaled again as his head bent forward and he pressed his injured hand against his forehead.

Think. Think hard. Don’t let her gain control.

The ranch was his. Miranda hadn’t inherited her husband’s share of the common tenancy Jordan had shared with his father and he had the papers to prove it. He’d been the sole heir of the High Camp. So what the hell? Something was very wrong here.

Was she actively working on his ranch because she was so certain he was never coming back?

Was she that ballsy?

A definite yes to the latter, as he knew from personal experience, but Miranda was also careful, which concerned him.

No, it chilled him. Miranda did not leave i’s undotted and t’s uncrossed. If she was working on the High Camp, she felt safe doing so, and Jordan needed to find out why. And he had to be careful as to how he did it.

He crouched down and stroked the dog’s curly head, the corners of his mouth lifting in spite of himself as the poodle laid his chin on Jordan’s knee and stared up at him, his expression clearly indicating that he didn’t know what was going on, but whatever it was, he had Jordan’s back.

Jordan scooped the dog up and stood, holding the sturdy little animal to his chest, feeling better knowing he was not alone. Miranda was not taking over his property as she’d taken over everything else Jordan held dear. But before he did anything, he needed to find out what in the hell was going on. He could think of only one person who could help him—if the guy was still alive.

* * *

“IS MIRANDA AT THE RANCH?” Shae demanded the second time the guest-ranch receptionist, who’d identified herself as Ashley, tried to put her off. “Because this is an emergency and I need to talk to her.”

“What kind of emergency?” Ashley asked in an ultraefficient tone that made Shae want to shake her.

“The kind where you’ll get fired if you don’t let Miranda know I’m on the phone. Now!”

“I don’t know where she is,” the girl snapped. She abruptly stopped, as if hearing the tone she’d been taking, and when she spoke again, she was once more the picture of überefficiency. Miranda, unfortunately, trained her help well. “Her car is here,” Ashley said, “but she’s not in the house. Sometimes she goes riding with the guests.”

“Call her cell.”

“The trails are no-cell zones,” the girl said primly.

“Is there a manager? Someone I can talk to?”

“The housekeeper. Everyone else is out working.”

Shae glanced at her watch. She’d be there in half an hour. She figured Jordan was at least fifteen minutes ahead of her.

“Look. There’s a guy who might show up. Her stepson. And he’s not in a good mood. If I were you, I’d tell him that Miranda isn’t there. You got that? Miranda isn’t there.”

“But if he’s her stepson—”

“They don’t get along,” Shae said from between gritted teeth. “If you see Miranda before I get there, have her call me. Shae. And you might tell the manager or any other burly guys hanging around that there could be trouble. Understand?”

“Y-yes.”

Finally she’d gotten through. “Thank you.” Shae punched the end button and dropped the phone onto the console, pressing down on the accelerator, hoping she’d done the right thing. If Jordan showed up and was the picture of politeness, she was going to look stupid, but somehow she didn’t see that happening. Not if he was in the same temper he’d been in when he’d abruptly left the ranch house.

So what was she going to do once she arrived at the ranch?

As if she had a clear idea. It wasn’t that she particularly liked Miranda, but she didn’t want to see her ambushed.

And you don’t want the chance to get back your job screwed up.

Yeah. That, too.

So whatever was going down, she wanted to do what she could to salvage the situation. She just hoped she somehow got there before Jordan and didn’t walk in on a battle royal.

* * *

THE WEATHERED SHINGLE identifying Emery Anderson as an attorney-at-law still hung beneath the beat-up mailbox on Pole Line Road, five miles from the Cedar Creek Ranch. Jordan parked next to a late-model pickup truck and cracked the windows open so that Clyde could get some air while he talked with his father’s lawyer and friend.

Or at least he’d been a friend until Miranda entered the scene.

Miranda hadn’t liked Hank to spend too much time with people other than herself. Jordan’s mouth thinned as he opened the rear door and pulled out the small lockbox. He slammed the door shut and was heading toward the walk when the door opened and an older man stepped out onto the porch. Emery wasn’t dead, but his deeply lined face indicated that he’d lived every one of his seventy-nine years. His hair had thinned to practically nothing and he’d lost at least fifteen pounds since the last time Jordan had seen him, but his white handlebar mustache was as gloriously full and carefully groomed as always.

For a moment the two men simply stared at one another, and then Emery, his face screwed up into an expression of concern, said in his raspy voice, “You look like hell, Jordan.”

“Time has not been kind to you, either.”

A slow smile spread over the man’s face, almost but not quite masking the deep concern in his eyes. “Well, why are you standing there? Come on the hell into the house. I have cold beer.”

“I don’t drink anymore,” Jordan said as he tucked the lockbox under his arm and started for the gate. “Alcohol interacts with pain drugs, so I just quit.”

“Tea, then.”

Five minutes later Jordan had a jar of iced tea in front of him and was stirring sugar into the bitter brew. “Iced tea’s not supposed to be this strong,” he muttered as Emery read over the inheritance documents Jordan had given him, letting out an occasional snort.

“Don’t be a sissy,” Emery replied absently. He hadn’t asked about the accident, had barely acknowledged Jordan’s injuries other than telling him he looked like hell. And Jordan was thankful. He was tired of having the accident define him, tired of living the aftermath.

Emery gave one final snort and when he raised his eyes, Jordan instantly knew he’d been hosed. “How’d she do it and how bad is it?”

“It’s just a guess,” Emery said, scooting closer to Jordan so that he could point to a clause in the document. “But you see here where it says that while you’ve inherited Hank’s share of the common tenancy, all the leases will be honored?”

“That’s what it says?” He wasn’t stupid, but legalese was damned hard to follow, using twenty-five words to say what five could.

“Yeah. And my guess is that Miranda must have inherited Hank’s farm lease on the place.”