Married In Montana

She shoved the thought out of her mind. There was no time for bitterness this morning. Bobby had less than five minutes for breakfast. She scooted her chair back from the table. “I’d better go see if he’s on his feet.”

Beth nodded. “I’ll make him a sandwich to eat as he rides.”

The door to Bobby’s room was still shut. Thea knocked, got no answer, and turned the knob, dreading to see her brother still in bed. All hell would break loose if Bobby had gone back to sleep.

But the situation wasn’t quite that desperate. He was awake and dressed, more or less, though his shirttail hung outside his jeans and the cuffs were unbuttoned. He sat on the bed wearing one boot, with the other lying on the floor between his feet. Head propped in his hands, elbows on his knees, he didn’t look up when she stepped into the room.

“Dad said to have you outside by six. We’re pushing the deadline.”

Bobby drew a deep breath. “Tell him I’m sick.”

“Hangovers don’t count, you know that.”

“Tell him I’m dead.”

“I’m not sure even death would be an excuse for you not showing up for work this morning.”

That got her a ghost of a chuckle. “Damn, my head hurts.”

“Maybe you could remember that feeling before you start drinking?”

“Maybe.” With a sigh, he pushed his hands through his thick, wavy hair and reached for the other boot. “I must’ve been totally plowed last night. I don’t remember driving home.”

“You didn’t.” Thea kept her mind blank. “The deputy brought you.”

Bobby looked up, his sleepy eyes a little wider. “Yeah?” He thought a second. “Oh, yeah. He pulled me out of the truck and dumped me in the rain.”

“He what?” Being furious with Rafe Rafferty felt really good—like Christmas and the Fourth of July rolled into one. “That’s why you were so wet? I thought you’d just climbed out of the truck cab.” If she ever saw that deputy again—which she would avoid if at all possible—he would get a sharp piece of her mind about trying to drown teenage boys who’d had a little too much to drink.

“I wasn’t climbing anywhere if I could help it.” He jerked on the right boot, eased to his feet and tucked his shirt into his jeans. Tall, like their dad, narrow of hip and wide of shoulder, Bobby had the looks of a movie star. Or a model.

Good thing he’d never expressed any interest in being either. Thea didn’t want to think about Robert Maxwell’s reaction to those ambitions. “Ready to ride?”

Her brother just looked at her. “Are you a sadist?”

From the back of the house came a bellow Thea recognized as their dad calling Bobby’s name. She grabbed her brother’s arm and pulled him after her into the hallway. “You tempt me, boy. You really tempt me.”

RAIN-WASHED, Paradise Corners looked fresh and clean when Rafe started for the office on the morning after his visit to the Maxwell ranch. The business district covered a square of about twelve small city blocks—mostly independent merchants, a lawyer or two and the post office, plus the courthouse and four churches, one on each corner of the main intersection, which gave the town and the street their names.

Most residents lived south of Main Street, in tidy houses under old pine and cedar and oak trees. The Methodists, late arrivals to this part of Montana, had built their church to the south, in the lower foothills, rather than downtown with the Baptists, Mormons, Catholics, and Lutherans. Bars and gas stations clustered at the western end of Main, around the road heading toward the mountains. East of town, the north-south state highway ran toward the two-lane road leading the unwary out to Walking Stones Ranch. Rafe didn’t plan to make that trip again any time soon.

On the north side of town, rough lanes wound high into the foothills of the Crazy Mountains and the Gallatin National Forest, with isolated houses tucked into corners here and there. Rafe’s rented house sat north of Main Street, too, but closer in—a brisk three-block walk brought him to the bustle of Saturday morning in a ranching town. To his right stood Grizzly’s Diner, the only decent place to eat if you didn’t want to cook. Leaving Jed posted just outside the door, Rafe stepped into a wave of friendly chatter that suddenly lulled as customers reacted to his arrival.

In a couple of seconds the talk resumed, quieter than before, as if people didn’t want to be overheard. Sitting at the counter, Rafe fought to ignore the fact he was being stared at and studied the menu.

“Coffee, Deputy.” Mona Rangel, the owner, set a mug down at his right hand, already mixed with sugar and milk, the way he liked it. “Something to eat?”

Rafe grinned his appreciation. “Let’s try something really wild today—scrambled eggs instead of fried. Think we can stand the shock?”

Her gray eyes flickered with humor, but she didn’t break a smile. “Three scrambled with bacon and toast, coming up.” She turned toward the kitchen, cutting off his only friendly contact in the place.

Halfway through his second mug of coffee, somebody actually joined Rafe at the counter, on the very next stool, no less. He glanced to the left and caught the eye of Judge LeVay, his ostensible boss and the main representative of the law in Paradise Corners, besides himself.

“Good morning, sir.”

“Deputy.” LeVay nodded. He looked the part of a wise old western judge, from his thick white hair and mustache to the black suit and vest and string tie. “Just coffee,” he told Mona when she appeared.

The judge said nothing until the coffee arrived and had been sampled. Rafe endured the silence without comment—he had no illusions that this was a chance encounter. Or an invitation to join the local shooting club.

“Got a call early this morning,” LeVay said finally. His voice barely carried over the noise of the crowd.

Rafe didn’t comment.

“Robert Maxwell seems to think you exceeded your authority in dealing with an incident last night.”

“Mr. Maxwell’s perceptions are a little…skewed.”

One white eyebrow lifted. “The man is a close friend of mine. I believe what he says.”

“The drinking age in Montana was twenty-one, last time I checked.” The judge glanced over his shoulder, a clear warning for Rafe to keep his voice down. “And DUI carries some stiff penalties…at least on paper.”

LeVay drained his mug and wiped his mouth with a napkin plucked from the stainless-steel cube between them. “I appreciate your concern. I’m sure Mr. Maxwell does, too. However, I believe he can handle this…situation…without outside interference.”

Rafe dropped the oblique approach, but kept his voice quiet. “That boy’s going to hurt himself. Or somebody else. He’s out of control.”

For a second, the judge’s pale blue eyes met his, and Rafe knew they were in agreement on that fact. But then LeVay slid off the stool.

“Leave it alone,” he advised. “You’ve got enough trouble on your hands in this town without getting the Maxwells riled up.” With a nod of greeting to a couple of men in a nearby booth, the older man made his way to the door. Through the glass, Rafe saw him stoop to talk to Jed. The bloodhound squirmed gratefully as the judge scratched the sensitive spot on the back of his neck. If Jed liked the man, Rafe decided, he couldn’t be all bad.

But if Maxwell owned him, he couldn’t be completely trusted, either. Better not look for help from that quarter.

Rafe turned back to finish his eggs, and found Mona standing opposite him.

“Take the judge at his word,” she suggested, swapping his cold plate of food for a steaming hot portion. “Maxwell owns this town and most of the people in it, one way or the other. You land on his bad side, you won’t get an ounce of cooperation from anybody.” She smiled. “Except me. Maxwell doesn’t like me, either.”

“Why not?”

“I taught in the county school system for close to two decades. Bobby was one of my sixth-graders. Bright kid, spoiled rotten. He didn’t do a lick of work in my class all year. I wouldn’t promote him, no matter how many fits his daddy threw. Maxwell got me fired, but Bobby still had to repeat the sixth grade, and he didn’t pull the same stunt again. Graduated in the spring with pretty good grades, I heard.”

“And you’re working in the diner?”

Mona shrugged. “My husband built the place and ran it until he died last year. I figured keeping Grizzly’s open would give me something to do and pay my respects at the same time.” Her smile was rueful. “Anyway, watch your step. The Maxwells are about as safe to be around as timber rattlers. A little more predictable, maybe—you threaten them or theirs, you can be sure they’ll do their best to take you down.”

She moved away, and Rafe thought for a second about calling her back for one more question.

What about Thea Maxwell?

Did she take after her old man? Did she follow his orders straight down the line? Was she just one more piece of property her father owned?

Did it matter? Boss Maxwell had practically threatened him with bodily harm for interfering. The lady herself had brushed him off like yesterday’s dust. And there was little doubt that her brother would keep to the straight and narrow exactly as long as it took him to pick up his truck. Any more trouble with Bobby would put Rafe on the side of the devil, as far as all the Maxwells were concerned.

Didn’t he have enough trouble in this town already? Was his sense of self-preservation so weak?

With a silent sigh, Rafe acknowledged that the same two words answered both of those questions—plus one more…

Could he really be crazy enough to consider going after this woman?

Remembering Thea’s voice, her smile, the light in her eyes and the strange peace he’d felt when he first saw her, Rafe nodded and took a sip of coffee. Three simple questions, one simple answer.

You bet.

CHAPTER TWO

ALL DAY SATURDAY—sunrise until sundown—Bobby worked on getting his big sister to drive him to town to pick up his truck. Successful, as usual, he now sat beside her in the front seat of her Land Rover, beating a tattoo on his knees in rhythm with the tune screaming from the CD player. They’d rolled the windows down, though the night air blew cold. Between the big starry sky and the miles adding up between him and the ranch, he was beginning to feel he could breathe again.

Thea pressed a control on the steering wheel and turned the volume down.

“Hey!” Bobby reached for the button on the console. “I like that song.”

This time she punched the music off. “We need to talk.”

Here we go again. “No, we don’t.”

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.

But she looked up just as he drove past. For a second she thought he had a woman in the passenger seat…and then realized that a dog sat straight and tall beside him, floppy ears blowing lightly in the breeze through the open window, sad and wrinkled face about as contented as a bloodhound ever could look.

Thea put her head back against the seat and groaned. Was anything ever more calculated to get and hold a woman’s attention than a gorgeous single man and his totally ugly, totally lovable dog?

That might, she decided on the quiet drive back to the ranch, be the point. A man as handsome, as polished, as Rafe Rafferty had no doubt sampled his share of girlfriends. Just last night, he’d shown how quickly he could turn to flirting. And if flirting didn’t work, a man that smart would no doubt determine the quickest, surest way to get what he wanted—including a girlfriend. A dog ranked up there with diamonds, as far as Thea was concerned. No…above diamonds. How could a cold stone compare to the unfailing love of your best friend?

But she didn’t intend to fall for the ploy. She’d learned from experience that men, especially flirtatious and handsome ones, made more trouble than they were worth. She had enough to do keeping Bobby in line—trying to keep Bobby in line—and doing her job to her dad’s satisfaction. So what if she was lonely sometimes, if her bed…her life…seemed cold?

Maybe she should just get herself a dog.

FOR FOUR GENERATIONS, the Maxwell family had occupied the same pew every Sunday in the First—and only—Methodist Church of Paradise Corners. This week was no exception.

Even though Bobby hadn’t come in until after three. Even though Thea had lain awake for the next hour, listening to her dad’s sharp reprimands and her brother’s sullen protests, cut off, in the end, by a slamming door.

They drove to town in the dark blue Cadillac Robert Maxwell had owned for almost twenty years now, with Thea in the front passenger seat and Bobby slumped in the back behind the driver. His eyes were closed, but he didn’t look as if he’d spent the night before drunk. His blue shirt, yellow tie and khaki slacks were practically an apology in themselves.

But no one said a word. Thea considered making conversation, but decided she didn’t have anything to say to either of the stubborn men she lived with. As far as she was concerned this morning, the entire male sex—including and especially Deputy Sheriff Rafferty—could kick itself into that deep gorge out behind the church’s cemetery and stay there. How much simpler her life would be then.

The fall morning was gorgeous, with the foliage nearing its peak of color. A small grove of aspens beside the white-sided church building quaked in the breeze, their gold leaves like little pieces of sunlight drifting to the ground. Thea stood for a minute, appreciating the view. As she resumed her progress to the door, a tall, broad-shouldered shadow fell onto the brick walk ahead of her. Her skin prickled and her breath shortened—she didn’t have to wonder whose shade she’d stepped into. Next thing she knew, Rafe Rafferty was walking beside her.

“Do you think,” he said without looking her way, “that if I kept to the weather and the scenery, we could possibly get through a whole conversation without some kind of insult?”

She barely held in her chuckle. “Depends on what you have to say about the scenery. I’m not making any guarantees ahead of time, if you’re planning on insulting Paradise Corners.”

He heaved a loud sigh. “I was just thinking how green Montana is. Even with the leaves turning, there’s some kind of green everywhere you look.”

“That’s the evergreens—white pine and lodgepole pine, the cedars and junipers and spruces. Even when the last leaves fall, there’s still color in the trees.” She watched him out of the sides of her eyes, noticed his nice-fitting chocolate-brown suede jacket and dark green corduroy slacks. She caught herself admiring him and administered a mental slap. Of course a Los Angeles playboy would have a sense of style. “I guess you don’t have as many trees in southern California.”

“Palms and eucalyptus, avocados and scrub junipers. They’re technically trees, technically green. But—” he gestured at the foothills “—not nearly this rich. The air here smells like Christmas every day.”

“Wait until summer. A lot of the time between last July and September all you could smell was smoke from the wildfires.”