High Country Baby

She couldn’t wait for him to slide that ring onto her finger. It was, of course, a very large stone set in platinum and purchased from Tiffany. It was bigger than she had wanted—more than she had needed—but the appearance of success had always been more important to Christopher than it had been to her. And she knew that her mom, who often didn’t approve of her choice in clothing or hairstyle, approved of Christopher, and she would definitely approve of the engagement ring.

In her mind, without vocalizing the word, she said, Okay.

She tugged on the rings, but her fingers were swollen and they wouldn’t budge.

Clint wanted to give Taylor her privacy—he wasn’t the sharpest crayon in the box at times, but even he could tell she was trying to have some sort of moment. When he saw her fighting to get the rings off her finger without any success, and wanting to begin the trek back to the ranch as soon as possible, he intervened.

“Put your hand in the water.”

That was a great idea. She had been so fixated on trying to pry the rings free, she hadn’t considered that simple and pretty obvious solution. After she submerged her hand in the frigid water for a few minutes, the rings slipped right off.

“Hey!” Taylor smiled spontaneously at Clint. “It worked.”

Clint was struck by that smile. Taylor’s face, which he had once dismissed as pretty-ish, was transformed when she smiled. She had charming dimples on each creamy, plump cheek, her teeth were white and straight, and the smile drew attention to the fullness of her light pink lips. Clint tipped his hat to her as a way of saying “you’re welcome.” She had married Christopher soon after graduate school, so she had worn these rings for most of her adult life. She had wondered if her finger would feel naked without them. It did.

Taylor gave the rings, cupped in the palm of her hand, one last look before she curled her fingers tightly around them, drew back her arm as if she was about to throw a baseball and prepared to hurl them as hard and as far as she could into the lake.

“Hey, now! Whoa, little lady!” she heard Clint exclaim as he grabbed her wrist to stop her. “I ain’t no jewelry expert, but those look like they could be worth a pretty penny.”

Taylor tugged her wrist out of his fingers with a frown. “My marriage is over, so they aren’t worth anything to me anymore.”

“If they’re real, they could be worth a whole heck of a lot to somebody,” the cowboy told her in a sharp voice. “There’s some folks who could live off them rings for a year or two, I bet.”

“Those rings...” Taylor muttered the correction to his English. She opened the palm of her hand and stared at the rings that she had worn with such pride for so many years. They only made her feel sad now and she wanted to be done with them. Yet, Clint was right—they were worth a lot of money. She was a spoiled woman, yes, that was true, but she had never been a wasteful one. Why couldn’t she pawn them and give the proceeds to charity?

Taylor stared for a second longer at the rings before she made her decision. Wordlessly, she tucked them into her pocket for safekeeping.

Taylor met Clint’s eyes. “I’m ready to go back.”

The cowboy squinted at her through a thin veil of white cigarette smoke. She waved the smoke away from her face as she walked by him. Out of the corner of her eye, she saw Clint put the partially smoked cigarette out on the bottom of his boot, and then clench the butt between his teeth.

Instead of taking the lead, as she expected, Clint followed her. It was ridiculous for vanity to rear its head on a rocky hike up a steep hill, but the entire time, she couldn’t stop fixating on the fact that her derriere, which had expanded considerably over the last year, was right at Clint’s eye level. He couldn’t avoid staring at it if he tried. Poor man.

“Careful, now.”

She hadn’t been concentrating on her foot placement.She stumbled, slipped backward, and the cowboy caught her with his hands on her rear end—one hand for each butt cheek.

Taylor brushed his hands away, jerked the tail of her shirt downward and pressed on.

“Sorry,” she said without looking at him.

Humiliating. She hated her middle-aged spread, especially the widening and dropping of her hind end. She had never been a stick-thin person, not even as a teen, but she had always liked her backside. Now—it looked so big and old.

The last part of the climb, the steepest part, where she had to climb with her hands supporting her weight, Clint took the lead. He bullied his way up the steep incline until he reached flat ground. He waited for her—he watched out for her. But he let her navigate the last part of the climb on her own terms. Right at the top, and right when she thought that she was about to beat the hill, she lost her footing again; she fell forward and started to slide downward as though she was on a kiddie slide. She felt Clint’s hand on her wrist. Their eyes met and she gave him the nod to let go so she could finish the climb on her own.

Once on safe footing, she looked back at the lake. She hadn’t thrown the rings into the lake with dramatic flare as she had envisioned, but it really felt like the divorce was final. Truthfully, Christopher had let her go long before the marriage had ended. And now, finally, she was moving on, too.

“If we start back right away, we can camp in the same spot.” Clint took his position on Honey’s right side to stop her from moving while Taylor used a boulder as a mounting block.

“I’m not going back to the ranch.”

Clint mounted his horse and took it upon himself, without her objection, to lead Easy. Once he was settled in the saddle, he rode up beside her. “No?”

“No.”

Clint rested his arm across the saddle horn, his mouth frowning. “Just how far are you planning on goin’?”

“Two weeks in, two weeks out.”

“A month.”

Honey danced to the side, away from his horse. Taylor circled back around so she could face him and finish the conversation.

“My uncle didn’t tell you.”

It took all of his self-control not to say something he would regret. Hank hadn’t bothered to tell him, and neither had his stepbrother. Just like Brock. Why had Clint thought that anything would be different between them after a five-year break? If he didn’t need the money so badly, he’d let Taylor have her way and send her packing on her own. But he was buried in debt, his truck needed an engine rebuild, creditors were hounding him and his cell phone was shut off. He couldn’t get back to the rodeo without money for the entry fees. He was flat broke and flat stuck.

“No matter.” Clint told her. “Let’s ride.”

Taylor’s pace for the rest of the day was slow and steady. It didn’t matter to Clint where they stopped for the night; it mattered to him that he wasn’t heading back to the ranch. He’d still been drunk from the night before when Brock gave him the order, but not drunk enough to have forgotten a major piece of information like the fact that he’d be babysitting for a month. No. Brock had left that little detail out. It was lucky that his stepfather, a full-time drunk and part-time rodeo clown, had managed to teach him how to survive in the wilderness with limited supplies. He hadn’t, however, managed to teach Clint how to survive without a steady supply of cigarettes and tequila.

That night, after they made camp, he taught Taylor to build a small mound fire. Admittedly, she had surprised him—she had actually researched riding the divide and had brought a fire blanket for building mound fires in order to have the least environmental impact. He loved this land and her desire to preserve it impressed him.

Taylor sat down near the fire to catch as much warmth from the low flames as she could. The temperature changed so quickly on the divide—one minute she was boiling in the sun and the next she was freezing at sundown. At least she was starting to adjust to the sore muscles and aching joints and the drastic change in her diet. She really wanted to drop some weight on this trip. It was time for her to shed the extra pounds and claim the next phase of her life with a renewed sense of vigor and excitement.

“You’re not much of a talker, are you, Clint?” Taylor broke the long silence.

“I’m in the business of mindin’ my own business.” Clint flicked his cigarette into the fire.

He reached into his saddlebag and pulled out the harmonica. She smiled a little—she had enjoyed listening to his playing the night before and hoped that he would play again. Taylor breathed in deeply, let it out slowly and tuned her ears to the notes streaming out from the little instrument. She hadn’t counted on company, but Clint’s role in her adventure had started to solidify in her mind. He was her protector. Her unwilling cowboy bodyguard.

“Who taught you to play?”

“David.”

He read the next question in her eyes and answered without her having to ask it.

“My stepfather.” After a moment, he added. “He adopted me when I was eight or nine—gave me his last name. That’s a heck of a lot more than I can say for my real father, that’s for damn sure.”

There wasn’t any emotion in Clint’s voice when he talked about his father—not negative, not positive. But after he answered her question Clint put away the harmonica, stood up and walked a few feet away from the fire. From the light given off by the fire, she could see the cowboy in silhouette and a flash of red as he lit a cigarette. She had unintentionally hit a nerve. His father was a topic she would avoid in the future—in her mind, Clint wasn’t a three-dimensional person. He was a cowboy, and he was hired to ensure her safe return to Bent Tree Ranch. She didn’t really need to know any more about him than that.

Taylor stood up, brushed the debris from the seat of her jeans.

“Well—good night.”

She thought that she saw him tip his hat to her, but she didn’t wait around to make sure. She quickly went through her nightly routine, changed into her cotton pajamas and crawled into her sleeping bag. Taylor swatted the flashlight overhead with her hand. She watched the light, letting it shine into her eyes for a brief moment as it passed over her face—up and back, up and back. She reached up and grabbed the flashlight, turned it off.

In the dark, she stared up at the ceiling of the tent. All night she had caught herself unconsciously rubbing her thumb over the unembellished skin of her left ring finger. Would there ever be a man who wanted to place a ring on that finger again? Did she want there to be? It was debatable. But children... Taylor moved her hands down to her abdomen. Oh, how she had wanted there to be children.

* * *

It was a week of lessons for Taylor. Clint seemed to resign himself to his chore of watching out for her and focused his energy on teaching her how to ride the divide. She learned how to spot fresh grizzly bear markings on nearby trees and create a high line to tether the horses so that the ropes didn’t cause ring damage to the trees. She now knew how to tie a trucker’s knot, stake a horse in a field and avoid stepping on rattlesnakes.

Now she knew why Uncle Hank had trusted Clint to be her bodyguard—the Continental Divide was home to this cowboy. He was a walking encyclopedia—there wasn’t an indigenous bird or wildflower or tree that he couldn’t name. She had actually started to make a game of testing his knowledge. Her first impression of Clint had been that he was uneducated and uncomplicated. He was neither. As far as she knew, he wasn’t formally educated past tenth grade, but he wasn’t ignorant. The wild Montana mountains had provided his education—and she had a feeling that her cowboy wasn’t uncomplicated, either.

“Everything here is...so beautiful.” Taylor admired a field of wildflowers that stretched as far as her eyes could see. The rolling hills were dotted with canary yellow and violet-blue purple.

“What are they?” she asked Clint once he reached her side.

“The blue flowers are Camassia Quamash—Blue Camas—edible. But not the yellow—those are Death Camas...”

“Let me guess...not edible.” Taylor smiled, her eyes drinking in the brightly colored field of flowers. “What do they taste like?”

“Sweet—local tribes have used them for generations as a sweetener.” Clint repositioned his hat on his head. “If you want to taste one, I’ll dig up a bulb for you.”

“No—that’s okay. Conservation.”

Clint dismounted. “One ain’t gonna make the difference.”

He returned to her side with a single Blue Camas bulb. He washed the dirt off the bulb before he handed it to her. She smelled it and then nibbled on the side.

The odd sweetness hit her tongue, and for some reason, it made her laugh.

“It’s sweet.” She held out the remainder of the bulb to him.

Clint ate the rest. He didn’t hesitate to put his mouth where hers had been. Christopher had never drunk after her or shared a straw—he’d always wiped off her fork if he used it after her and that had always bothered her. And here, a near stranger, a man she had only known for a few days, had eaten after her as if it were nothing. It was an intimacy that she hadn’t shared with her husband in all of their years of marriage.

“Is there a place where I could wash?”

She felt gritty from days of sponge bathing and dry shampoo. She had packed water purification pills and filters for found water, as well as some potable water to drink, and tried to use as little as possible of her supply on washing. She needed to submerge her body in water, no matter how cold, and rinse the grimy feeling off her skin.

“I’ve got a place in mind.” He swung into the saddle. “I’m tired of jerky. How ’bout fish for dinner?”

She was tired of instant soup and protein bars. Washing the grease out of her hair and chowing down on freshly caught fish seemed like luxuries now.

“I would love fish for dinner.”

“Let’s ride about another hour and a quarter.” Clint tugged on Easy’s rope. “We’ll make camp a little early tonight.”

The promise of a real dinner made the last hour in the saddle tolerable. But, even after a full week in the saddle, she was still raw and sore by the time she dismounted at the spot Clint selected for their campsite. They had fallen into a campsite routine—Clint had his duties and she had hers. Part of her job at the bank was putting together teams that could complete a project efficiently and effectively. She had a knack for putting two unlikely people together to create a winning team. It was like that with Clint—they were very different, but somehow they worked together to accomplish a common goal as if they had worked together for years.

“We’ve got some storm clouds formin’ quick.” Clint took his hat off, wiped his forehead on his sleeve. “You’d best wait on that bath.”

“Is dinner a no-go, too?”

“I gotta be quick.” Clint eyed the darkening sky in the distance. “You got the fire?”

“Absolutely.”

Clint headed off on foot toward the freshwater lake he had fished from over the years.

“Hey—Clint.”

He turned to look at his companion.

“What happens if it rains?”

It was an odd question.

“We get wet.”

Taylor laughed. “No. I mean—you don’t have a tent.”

“Don’t need one.” Clint shrugged off her concern. “Go on and get that fire started and I’ll cook you the best damn tastin’ fish you’ve ever had in your life.”

Chapter Four

Good as his word, Clint had caught, cleaned and cooked the best trout she had ever eaten. And, even though the menacing promise of the storm clouds cut their dinner short and canceled her plans to bath in the stream, she went to bed feeling completely full for the first time since she had started her journey up to the CDT.

When the rain started, she tried to convince Clint to join her in the tent, but he flat-out refused. She had peeked out of the tent while there was still a little light to see by and spotted him hunkered down away from the trees, covered by a small tarp. She didn’t ask him to join her a second time—she had made the offer once, and that was enough. Clint had grown up in high country and she could surmise that this wouldn’t be the last time he’d weather a Montana storm with his saddle as a pillow and a rain tarp as a shelter.

The next morning she awakened to a clear sky and the welcome scents of fire and coffee. She didn’t see Clint, but the first thing on her mind was taking a quick rinse-off in the stream. She slung a bag of supplies over her shoulder and walked through the small cluster of trees that led to the stream below the campsite. At the edge of the tree line she spotted Clint kneeling by the stream. He was stripped down to the waist; the word “Rodeo” was tattooed across his shoulders with a bull rider riding a bucking bull down the middle of his long back. There was a large, jagged scar that cut across his low back, just above the waist of his jeans.

Taylor stopped for a moment, not sure if she should return to camp or join him. Clint stood up, and she was sure he sensed that he was being watched because he turned his head a bit and caught sight of her. He waved her over.

“Good morning.” Taylor called to him.

The closer she came to the cowboy, the more her suspicion was confirmed that he’d had the same thought she’d had, to clean up before their next ride. His hair was slicked straight back from his forehead, his thickening beard was wet and the jeans were different. He was twisting the water from the shirt he had been wearing for the past several days, and a fresh T-shirt was slung over his shoulder.

“That was quite a storm,” she said to make conversation.

Standing next to a half-naked Clint was uncomfortable for her, even though he didn’t seem bothered. He wasn’t extraordinarily tall and he was on the thin side, but every muscle on his body was defined. The muscles were hard and long, and he had the type of veins that were close to the surface of the skin—you could trace each vein with a finger from the inside of his elbow down to his wrist. She tried to keep her eyes on his face, yet they were drawn time and again to the array of tattoos and scars that made the landscape of his naked torso inherently interesting to her.

“I was worried about you,” she added.

Clint shook out his shirt. “Don’t waste your time.”

He slipped on his clean shirt and brushed loose hairs back off his face before putting his cowboy hat on. “I’ll keep watch—make sure you have your privacy.”

“Thank you.” Taylor knelt down to feel the temperature of the water. It was icy cold.

Clint smoked a cigarette several yards away, his back turned to her. She didn’t question that he would keep his back turned—he’d had a rough life and his manners were not civilized at times, but he wasn’t a pervert. Wearing only underwear and a bra, a pair of rubber shower shoes to protect her feet, Taylor braved the frigid, clear water of the stream. As fast as she could, she waded to the deeper part of the stream. She couldn’t wait to try to acclimate to the temperature—that wasn’t a viable option. Instead, she took in a deep breath and forced herself to sit down.

“Cold, cold, cold...” She muttered the word over and over again.

She dunked her head back, scrubbed the roots of her hair with soap and stood up so she could quickly soap her body. She spent extra time on her armpits because the odor had been too tough even for her clinical-strength deodorant to combat, and then she sank back into the water, waist deep, and put her hand inside her underwear to clean thoroughly between her thighs.

It was one of the quickest baths she’d ever taken, and that was more than okay with her. She hurried to the shore and to her awaiting towel. Even as rapidly as she had gone through her routine, she was shivering from the cold, her arms and legs were covered with goose bumps and she was clenching her teeth to keep them from chattering. One swipe of the towel across her face and then the rest of her body was all she could stand. She had to get dressed. But she wasn’t about to change her underwear out in the open. Instead, she wrapped the towel around her body and raced up to where Clint was waiting.

Clint heard Taylor’s approach and turned to greet her. He wasn’t expecting her to be wrapped in a towel with her creamy, rounded shoulders and shapely legs exposed. She smelled like orange peels and honey, and even though she was noticeably cold, the way her wet hair framed her freshly scrubbed face held a sexy, natural appeal.

“Ready?” He knew he had been caught looking at the rounded tops of her breasts.

She nodded, not wanting to speak—only wanting to get back so she could get into dry clothing. Once inside her tent, she stripped out of her wet undergarments and slipped into her sleeping bag to warm her body. She closed her eyes and willed her body to warm up and quit shivering.

“Taylor?” Clint was outside of her tent. “Here’s coffee.”

She opened the flap enough to take the cup of hot coffee. With a word of thanks, Taylor wrapped her hands around the warm tin mug; the minute the hot liquid hit her stomach she started to feel warmer. It was the perfect remedy, and it touched her that Clint had been thinking of her in that way.

As soon as she could, she dressed and joined Clint in breaking camp. Packed up and mounted on her mare, Taylor didn’t like the look of the sky in their direct path.

“I’d rather not ride in the rain,” she told Clint.

He rode up beside her with Easy trailing behind him. “Your call.”

“How long do you estimate we have before the storm hits?”

“Two hours—three tops.”

They agreed to get two hours of riding in and make camp ahead of the looming storm. She had built in several nontraveling days to enjoy the scenery and give the animals a rest. Perhaps it was time to take an early break to let the weather front move through.

They made camp just before the rain came. She hadn’t expected it, but she managed to talk Clint into joining her in the tent under the guise of not wanting to be lonely. He didn’t know that she loved her alone time, and she didn’t intend to share that fact with him.

The inside of her tent seemed much smaller now that Clint had joined her. He had to hunch his shoulders forward so there was some room for the top of his head.

“Make yourself at home,” she teased him.

His hunched shoulders were tense, his legs were half bent, half stretched out, and he seemed to be completely uncomfortable in her little temporary world. He smiled at her and she actually thought that she saw a hint of teeth.

“You mind if I play?” He took his harmonica out of his pocket.

“No.” She lay back. “I like it.”

Clint played a soft, haunting tune while the rain tapped out a rhythm of its own on the canvas roof of her tent. She closed her eyes and unintentionally fell asleep.

When the rain stopped, Clint stopped playing the harmonica. Taylor was asleep—he didn’t see any reason to awaken her to help him finish setting up camp. He unzipped the tent flap and stepped out onto the wet ground. Before he zipped the flap shut, he stared at Taylor. She had slowly started to gain his respect; she had prepared herself for this trip, and other than attempting to make the trip alone, she was a woman who made smart decisions. He was a man—he glanced at the generous curve of her breasts beneath the material of her shirt before he closed the flap of the tent behind him.

* * *

Taylor rolled onto her back, her eyes opened slowly. It took her a little bit to get her bearings—she was alone in the tent and her bladder was full. When she emerged from the tent, she saw that Clint had already set up the rest of the camp, tended to the horses and Easy, built a fire.

“Sorry.” She joined him at the fire after relieving herself. “I fell asleep.”

Clint shook his head and handed her a plate with fish reheated from the night before.

He waited for her to finish before he smoked a cigarette.

“Do you mind?” She pointed to the tequila bottle next to his leg. He didn’t bother to hide his nightly routine of drinking a healthy portion of the alcohol.