Montana Secrets

“I don’t know about you, cowboy,” Ryan said, “but I think you’ll be taking a chance letting Cat go alone looking like that. She’ll need the Marines to keep the locals at bay.”

“You could be right,” Marc agreed.

Ryan nodded. “We’ll have to volunteer.”

Yes!

Cat called on every ounce of self-control to keep from pumping her fist in victory. Ryan had noticed her at last, but she’d have to take care not to appear too interested. If he guessed how strongly she felt about him, he’d hit the Libby highway running and never look back. The last thing she wanted was to scare him off by seeming too eager.

“Do you have a date?” Ryan asked, catching her by surprise.

Her earlier panic returned. Would he think nobody else found her interesting?

Marc jumped to her rescue. “Nobody brings a date to the Territorial Celebration. Everyone just shows up and has a good time.”

Less than an hour later, Cat was sandwiched between Marc and Ryan on the front seat of Marc’s truck, headed for town. She and Ryan each balanced one of her homemade huckleberry pies, her contribution toward the evening’s covered dish dinner, on their laps. Occasionally, when the road curved, she slid toward Ryan, grazing his thigh with her own, relishing the warmth of the contact and making her even more aware of his clean, rugged, masculine scent and the attractiveness of his profile.

Telling stories of his and Marc’s adventures at the Defense Language Institute where they’d studied Arabic and other Middle Eastern languages in preparation for their posting to Kuwait, Ryan kept her laughing, but her thoughts constantly strayed to the dancing that would follow supper and her hopes for spending time alone with him.

When they arrived, the town hall was bustling with people. In the adjacent tree-shaded park, tables had been erected from sawhorses and planks and covered with cloths, and tiny white lights had been strung through the trees. The tables were already loaded with food.

Cat spied her father, Gabriel, among the men circling the smoking barbecue pit. He’d left the ranch with his side of beef and gallon of secret barbecue sauce long before Marc and Ryan had arrived and was helping with the cooking. The succulent odors drifting on the breeze made her mouth water, and she was surprised to discover she was hungry. She had expected to be too excited to eat, but being near Ryan seemed to activate all her senses, even her appetite.

While Marc and Ryan crossed the park to greet her father, Cat peeked inside the open doors of the town hall, decorated with red, white and blue streamers, and watched the band setting up on the stage at the far end of the room that had been cleared for dancing. When the mayor rang the bell in the hall’s squat tower, the signal for supper to begin, she returned to the park to join her family and Ryan.

Ryan sat beside her at supper, but Marc and her father monopolized the conversation with talk of the ranch and the problems created by the dry spring they’d had. Later, however, when the band in the hall began playing their first slow song, Ryan asked her to dance. Feeling as if she were walking on clouds, she accompanied him into the building and slid happily into his arms.

Even though he was dressed casually in jeans and a chambray shirt, Ryan carried himself with an unmistakable military bearing that turned the heads of every woman in the room. The charismatic confidence of a man accustomed to command blended with the fluid grace of a body trained and coordinated like a perfectly tuned machine, and he danced like a dream. Cat had to struggle to keep her mind off the delicious pressure of his hand at the small of her back. That, combined with the dangerous warmth in his eyes, made concentrating on their conversation difficult.

“Marc tells me you graduate from college next June,” Ryan said. “What will you do then?”

“Teach. I’ll be interning in the fall.”

“Will you stay in Montana?”

“I hope to get a job at the high school here in town.”

“That’s a surprise.”

“Why?” She drew back and gazed at him.

“I figured you had the wanderlust, like Marc. The only reason he joined the Marines was to travel.”

“But as soon as he’s seen the world,” Cat explained, “he’s heading back to help Dad run the ranch. For Marc, Montana will always be home.”

“And you don’t want to travel?”

“I’m a homebody. I have everything I need right here.”

Except you, she thought.

“What will you teach? Elementary school?”

She shook her head, pleased at his interest. “High school history.”

Ryan groaned. “I hated history in high school.”

“Then you didn’t have the right teacher.”

His killer grin returned. “If my teacher had looked anything like you, I’m sure I would have enjoyed the class a whole lot more.”

Her cheeks heated at his compliment, a reaction she couldn’t control, one that she’d inherited from her mother and that caused her endless embarrassment.

“My old history teacher made us memorize long lists of people, places and dates,” Ryan said. “Why did you choose such a boring subject?”

“But it isn’t!”

He cocked an eyebrow skeptically. “I’ll need evidence before I’ll believe that claim.”

She studied his face, wondering if he’d reverted to teasing her, but his expression seemed serious.

“History is much more than people, places and dates,” she said. “I think the most important lesson we can learn from history is how choices always have consequences, whether those choices are made by nations or individuals.”

“The old ‘those who don’t remember history are doomed to repeat it’ theory?”

“Something like that.” She glanced at him sharply, still concerned that he was making fun of her, but his eyes revealed nothing but interest. “Students need to understand the importance of cause and effect, to realize people have control over their lives, that history isn’t events that happened at random. It’s the result of previous decisions.”

Ryan chuckled, and her heart sank. He was making fun of her.

“What’s so funny?” she demanded.

“Not funny. Amazing. All this time I thought you didn’t care about anything but horses. And here you are, a philosopher.”

She scowled. “You make me sound ancient and stuffy.”

He leaned back and considered her with a look that made her pulse race. His magnificent hazel eyes deepened to a hue more green than brown. “Not stuffy or ancient. Something much, much better.”

Flustered by the innuendo in his words, she sought escape from his intense scrutiny. “Well, this room is definitely stuffy. Can we get some fresh air?”

“Sure.”

He twirled her slowly toward the door where a cool breeze entered and alleviated the stifling heat that smothered the dance floor. When he released her, she felt suddenly bereft, until he placed his hand at the small of her back again. He steered her through the crowd that edged the dance floor and out the wide front doors.

The covered dishes had been cleared and the tables disassembled in the park, and the sun had set, leaving the area in darkness except for the faint twinkle from strings of tiny white lights.

Ryan threaded his fingers through hers and led her to a park bench in the shadow of the trees. She sat on one end, and he settled beside her.

Her plan for being alone with him had worked perfectly. She’d had her dance with Ryan, and she should be happy that they were together in this cozy, secluded spot, but all she could think of was his departure in a few days for the other side of the world.

“Why did you join the Marines?” she asked.

He leaned against the back of the bench and stretched his long legs in front of him. “I have no family. The Corps gave me a place to belong.”

“No family, not even aunts or uncles?” She couldn’t imagine life without her brother and father, and she was only now adjusting to her mother’s death. Even though Ingrid had been gone for several years, Cat still missed her every day.

Ryan shook his head. “No family that I know. I was abandoned on the steps of a Chicago church shortly after I was born. Father Ryan at Saint Christopher’s found me. That’s how I got my name.”

He’d never talked about his childhood before, and his story fascinated her. “You were raised by a priest?”

Ryan laughed, a pleasant, throaty sound that echoed in the emptiness of the park. “I’d probably have turned out better if I had been. I spent the first ten years of my life in an orphanage, then bounced from one foster home to another—when I wasn’t in juvenile detention.”

Her heart went out to the child he’d been, orphaned, abandoned and alone. “Somehow I can’t picture you as a juvenile delinquent.”

“I was one tough, angry little kid, and I took out my frustrations and unhappiness on everyone and everything around me.”

“But you’re not like that now. What changed you?”

“Margaret Sweeney.”

Cat’s heart sank. There was another woman in his life after all. “How did she change you?”

“When I was twelve and already had a rap sheet as long as my arm, I went along with some older boys when they stole a car. They wrecked the car, and the cops caught us. When I went before the juvenile judge, she gave me a choice. I could go to live with Margaret Sweeney as my foster mother or be sent to the strictest, most dreaded juvenile facility in Chicago.”

Cat was relieved to learn the woman was no rival for her. “And you opted for Margaret Sweeney?”

He nodded. “I’m a walking example of your choices-and-consequences theory. If I hadn’t made that choice, I’d either be a lifer or dead by now. Instead, I have my whole life and a great career ahead of me.”

“What was so special about Margaret Sweeney?”

Ryan laced his fingers behind his head and gazed into the darkness as if remembering. “She only took in the toughest cases, the boys and girls on the verge of ruining their lives forever.”

“She must have been a very strong person.”

Ryan grinned. “That’s the irony. She was a small, almost birdlike woman that a puff of wind could have blown away.”

Cat frowned. “Then how did she handle such tough kids?”

“She loved us and believed in us with her whole heart. Most of us would rather have died than disappoint her. I lived with her for the next six years, until I went away to college—on scholarship, thanks to her.”

“She sounds like a wonderful woman. I guess you could consider her your family.”

Ryan sighed, and when he spoke again, his voice was heavy with sadness. “If she were still alive. She died of cancer the year before I graduated. I always wished she could have seen how I turned out. More than anything, I wanted Margaret Sweeney to be proud of me.”

“I have a feeling she knows what you’ve done,” Cat said softly, “and she is proud.”

Ryan draped his arm around her shoulder and drew her closer. “You’re a good listener. How come I’ve never noticed that before?”

“You’ve never really talked to me like this before.” Cat’s breath caught in her throat as he dipped his head toward hers, and she closed her eyes in anticipation of his kiss.

“There you are, Catherine Erickson,” a coarse, slurring voice called. “I been looking all over for you.”

Startled, Cat opened her eyes. Ryan withdrew his arm and glanced at the tall figure gazing down at them. The long neck of an empty beer bottle dangled between his meaty fingers. Her heart sank when she recognized Snake Larson, an old classmate of Marc’s who had graduated from class bully to town menace. Tall, muscle-bound, with no neck, beady eyes and a constantly flickering tongue that had earned him his nickname, Snake was trouble personified.

“Why were you looking for me?” Cat asked, unable to keep the irritation from her voice.

“I was watching you inside,” Snake said with a leer that was evident even in the darkness. “For a skinny kid, you filled out good. Come back and dance with me.”

“I’ve had enough dancing, thank you.” Cat hoped he’d take the hint and leave.

“Not until you’ve danced with me.”

“She said no.” Ryan’s voice was soft but deadly. Only a fool or a drunk would have missed the threat in his tone.

Snake was both.

“Oh, yeah?” Snake said with a snarl. “We’ll see about that.” He lunged toward Cat.

With a move so rapid, if she’d blinked she’d have missed it, Ryan sprang off the bench and twisted Snake’s arm behind his back, effectively immobilizing him.

The bully winced in pain. “Lemme go and I’ll beat your ass.”

“You’re drunk.” Ryan released the big man and pushed him away. “Go home and sleep it off.”

“Nobody tells me what to do.” With a fierce swing, Snake shattered the beer bottle against the nearest tree and retained the jagged top as a weapon.

Cat stifled a scream and jumped to her feet. Her first instinct was to run for help, but Snake Larson stood between her and the town hall.

“Don’t worry, Cat.” Ryan’s voice was calm. “Stay out of the way. I’ll take care of this.”

Cat’s heart caught in her throat. Ryan was tall, but Snake towered several inches above him and outweighed him by almost a hundred pounds. From all accounts Cat remembered, Snake also fought dirty. Plenty of men in the area bore the scars of Snake’s wrath.

With a howl of rage, Snake charged Ryan. The Marine stepped deftly aside, and the bully plowed headfirst into the trunk of an ancient maple. He straightened for a moment, shook his head as if to clear it, then crumpled into a heap at the foot of the tree.

“We’d better call the paramedics,” Ryan said. “He probably gave himself a concussion.”

Ryan had won the fight without throwing a punch.

Cat moved to his side. While she was grateful for his physical prowess, she was sick with disappointment over the way the night had ended. She’d planned for every contingency.

Except Snake Larson.

Ryan seemed to know her thoughts. “Don’t let that drunk spoil your fun. I’ve had a great time.”

“Me, too.”

Before she realized what was happening, she had found herself in Ryan’s arms. His fleeting kiss had been swift and gentle but filled with promises of much more to come.

Before his leave was over, he’d made good on those promises. Later, when he’d returned from Kuwait, he’d asked her to marry him. She hadn’t hesitated to agree. And although Ryan hadn’t lived long enough to know it, during that last blissful leave, their daughter, Megan, had been conceived.

Cat closed her eyes and issued a silent prayer of thanks for her beautiful daughter, the unexpected blessing that had given Cat and her father a reason to endure after Ryan and Marc had died. More than a reason to endure, Cat thought. Megan was her whole life. Cat couldn’t think of anything she wouldn’t do for her daughter.

Ryan’s daughter.

Stiff from sitting so long on the porch, Cat set aside her cold coffee and tugged her jacket closer. She’d never forget those special weeks over five years ago that she and Ryan had spent together before he left for Tabari, especially the first time they’d made love—

The whine of an engine straining on a steep grade and the clash of changing gears jerked her from her recollections, and anger flashed through her. Besides Megan, memories of Ryan were all she had, and she resented anything that interrupted her reminiscence. Pushing to her feet, she watched the unfamiliar vehicle approach.

The battered pickup pulled to a stop before the front gate, and the driver stepped out. Even in the gloom of the gathering twilight, Cat immediately recognized the huge man’s threatening silhouette.

Snake Larson.

She shivered with the unearthly awareness that her trip down memory lane had conjured up the last person in the world she wanted to see.

“Hello, Snake,” she called as he swaggered toward the porch. “What are you doing back from Billings? I heard you’ve been working a construction job down there the last few years.”

He grinned, teeth gleaming yellow in the dim light. “Job’s finally finished. I’ve come home to work trails for the Forest Service this summer.”

At the bottom of the steps, he stopped and removed his hat. His eyes, small and unpleasant, at least looked clear. He didn’t act drunk, either, but with Snake, the difference between sobriety and inebriation was hard to discern. He was infamous for his volatile moods, unpredictable escapades and an amazing capacity for holding his liquor.

“Good to see you again, Cat.”

“If you’ve come to visit Dad, I’ll get him.” She started toward the door.

“Don’t bother,” Snake called. “It’s you I’m looking for.”

“Why?” A sudden chill enveloped her.

“It’s been five years since your fiancé was killed. Figured you might be ready to get out a bit.”

She suppressed a shudder. “I don’t think so.”

“We can drive over to Bonner’s Ferry. Have us some steaks and a few beers. Dance a bit. Kick up your heels. Surely you’re ready to quit moping by now. And your daddy can baby-sit that bastard brat of yours.”

His attitude was the same surly mix of arrogance, conceit and insensitivity for which he’d always been famous, and Cat struggled to rein in her flaring temper at the man’s deliberate crudeness.

She forced a smile. “You’ve made a wasted trip. I’ve had supper already, and I have to work tomorrow.”

Snake’s fleshy face twisted in a snarl, and his tongue flicked across his thick lips. “So, the rumors are true.”

“What rumors?”

“That you’re going to marry that weakling of a high school principal, Todd Brewster.”

“You shouldn’t believe everything you hear, Snake, nor half of what you see, as my daddy always told me.”

He started up the porch steps. “Well, if you’re not marrying Brewster, there’s no harm in your riding over to Bonner’s Ferry with me. We’ll skip the steaks and cut straight to the beers and dancing.”

In spite of her attempts to contain it, her anger ignited. “What part of no don’t you understand? I’m not going anywhere with you. I have classes to teach tomorrow and papers to grade tonight.”

“Damn, Cat, what’s the fun of being a teacher if you can’t break the rules?”

Snake lumbered across the porch toward her, and she was struck by two distinctly opposite reactions. The first was a sense of déjà vu so clear and indelible she expected Ryan to appear at any second, wrench Snake’s arm behind his back and send him flying headlong off the porch. The second was the terrible realization that this time she was on her own, with her back to the porch wall and Snake Larson bearing down on her like the Great Northern Express whose tracks ran through High Valley’s lower forty.

He was so close, she could smell his whiskey-laced breath. The man, unpredictable at best when sober, meaner than his deadliest namesake when drinking, apparently already had several shots under his belt. Claustrophobia closed in on her, clamping down on her lungs, making her struggle for air. She gauged her chances of making a break inside before he could grab her, and they weren’t good.

Suddenly, the screen door slammed. Snake glanced toward the noise, then stopped his advance and took a few awkward steps backward.

“Evening, Mr. Erickson,” Snake mumbled, with a look on his face like a kid who’d been caught with his hand in the cookie jar.

“Hello, Snake.”

Her father stood in front of the door, his Winchester rifle cradled casually in the crook of his arm. Gabe’s reputation for handling the weapon with extraordinary speed and accuracy was legendary throughout the county. From the suddenly respectful expression on Snake’s face, Cat knew her tormentor was aware of her father’s skill. Even though the tragic events of the past had left Gabriel sunken and prematurely aged, nothing had affected his proficiency with a gun.

“What do you want here, Snake?” Gabriel demanded.

Snake turned the brim of his hat in his hands, mangling its shape. “Came to ask Cat dancing.”

“And what did she say?”

“Said she can’t.”

“Guess you’ll be leaving then, won’t you?”

One-handed, Gabriel cocked the lever of the rifle and pointed it toward Snake.

Snake rammed on his battered Stetson, lifted his hands in a gesture of surrender and eased off the porch and down the steps. He took the path at a trot without a backward glance, but at the gate, either his courage or his liquor kicked in, because he turned and shouted, “You ain’t seen the last of me.”

“Get out of here, Snake,” her father warned, “before I fill your truck—and your worthless hide—full of holes.”

Muttering a string of foul curses, Snake wrenched open the door of his pickup, climbed inside and started the engine. Grinding the gears, he circled the truck in the road in front of the house, knocking a section of picket fence flat in the process. With his engine screaming in protest and his tires spewing dust, he gunned down the road toward town.

Cat couldn’t stop shaking, more from anger than from fright. Her father put his arm around her and led her inside.

“I made some fresh coffee,” he said. “How ’bout I pour us both a cup?”

“You think he meant it?” Cat asked, following her father into the kitchen.

“About coming back?” Gabriel shook his head. “We’re forty miles from town. Why would he waste his time?”

Pure, unadulterated meanness, Cat thought, but she kept her opinion to herself.

Under the bright lights of the kitchen, the heavy toll on Gabe of working the ranch alone the last five years was even more pronounced. His thick, golden hair had turned white soon after her mother died, but since the embassy bombing, her father had seemed to shrink and waste away before her eyes. The only times he laughed were when he played with his granddaughter. Cat didn’t want to cause him more worry by voicing her concerns about Snake Larson.

She had no doubt that Snake would make good on his promise to return, and she intended to stay ready and remain on guard. Marc had taught her to shoot years ago. Tomorrow, she’d start target practice again.

She couldn’t count on Ryan to protect her this time. A sob threatened to break loose from her throat. Ryan, unlike Snake Larson, would never be coming back to High Valley Ranch. The terrorist bomb in Tabari five years ago had made sure of that.

They hadn’t even found enough of Ryan to send home to bury.

Chapter Two

At the same time Cat Erickson was having coffee in the ranch kitchen with her father, halfway around the world an infuriated Ryan Christopher burst into Colonel Barker’s office at the reconstructed Tabarian embassy. He slammed the door behind him and stormed the commanding officer’s desk.

“Why the hell didn’t you tell me?” Ryan shouted.

Cool under fire, the colonel, every inch the military man with his buzz haircut, freshly pressed uniform, lean physique and unflappable calm, motioned his unexpected visitor toward a chair. “Have a seat, Trace, and calm down.”

Ryan gripped the front edge of the desk and leaned toward the colonel, eyes flashing, face flushed with rage. “My name’s not Trace, and you know it, dammit,” he yelled.

“Stand down, soldier,” Barker snapped with authority. “You’re way out of line.”

“You can’t give me orders.” The veins pulsed at Ryan’s temples, and his knuckles turned white where they clutched the desk. “My enlistment expired four years ago. I don’t have to answer to you or the Marines. But you damn well owe me an explanation.”

Barker stood and drew himself to his full height, still several inches shorter than Ryan, but what he lacked in stature, he made up for in severity. He riveted steely gray eyes on the younger man without blinking.

“Here’s the way it is,” he said with ruthless calm, one hand poised above the button on his intercom. “You can either sit down and talk this out quietly, or I’ll have you escorted to the brig. Which is it going to be?”

Ryan struggled for self-control. His entire world had been thrown off-kilter just moments before, and he hadn’t yet regained his balance. After what had just happened, he doubted he ever would. Taking a deep breath, he eased himself into the chair in front of Colonel Barker’s desk.