Big Sky, Loyal Heart E-Book

M. L. Buchman

• Herausgeber: Buchman Bookworks, Inc.
• Kategorie: Gesellschafts- und Liebesromane
• Sprache: Englisch
• Veröffentlichungsjahr: 2017

Beschreibung

-a Henderson’s Ranch romance- Major Emily Beale struggles to excel in her new role as both mother and wife. Colonel Michael Gibson’s career reaches a crisis, not that he’s talking about it. Trainee military war dog Rip naps—he was named for Rip van Winkle, after all—while awaiting inspiration. Film student turned cowboy Patrick Gallagher just keeps riding through life...until the woman of his dreams threatens to ride off into the sunset without him. Recently retired war dog handler for Delta Force, Lauren Foster sets herself a simple mission: forget about the Army, get back to New York City, and try to be a civilian. But first, Lauren must escape Montana before she gets caught by the Big Sky and a loyal heart.

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Big Sky, Loyal Heart

a Henderson’s Ranch romance

M. L. Buchman

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Chapter 1

The Montana Front Range was breaking upward, shattering the flatness of the plains.

When the helo pilot announced they were nearing the ranch, Lauren Foster stared down at the flat prairie. The whole transition happened in a matter of ten kilometers—or rather six miles as she was a freaking civilian again. In a matter of six miles the flatness of the Great Plains gave way to the abrupt jolt of the Rocky Mountains.

Henderson’s Ranch lay as a narrow band between the two of gentle hills, abrupt valleys emphasized by the low angle of the morning light, rich grasslands turning brown with the late summer heat, and patches of trees so dark and thick they could be the forest primeval. All the land features were jumbled together as if God had been playing a game of pick-up sticks.

Definitely not the Big Apple, girl.

After far too many deployments into Iraq, Afghanistan, Somalia, and every other hellhole that Delta Force inhabited, she’d been so ready for a dose of the best city in the world. New York was calling. She’d planned to start at Katz’s with a pastrami sandwich slathered with sharp mustard that bit the nose even harder than the tongue, and a root beer that tickled the throat. Every one of the stupid, touristy things that no local ever did, she wanted to do. Visit the top of the Empire State Building. Take a freaking Circle Line boat trip around Manhattan. Maybe she’d go around twice or three times, just sit with her feet propped on the rail and watch The City go by. Get off downtown to chow down some fresh dim sum with a cold Tsingtao at Jing Fong before she…

Instead, she was a hundred klicks—sixty freaking miles—into the Montana wilderness without flying over a single rinky-dink town since Great Podunk Falls. The grass was unending brown. The cows they were flying over were brown. The buildings were brown. None of the vibrant neon and shining glass of the big city.

It wasn’t as if Great Falls, Montana, was anything more than the closest airport. It was the same twenty-two square miles as Manhattan—and if she stacked twenty-seven Great Falls on top of each other, she’d get the same population density as the Big Apple but still a millionth the character. The Big Apple had started cooking its own unique blend of city in 1624 and no Montana-come-lately could ever hope to compare.

Also, nothing smelled right here.

The air from the helo’s vent system smelled fresh, filled with early September promise rather than pastrami on rye. Though it also didn’t smell like Dustbowl Afghanistan, stinking goat Iraq, desperation Somalia, or any other screwed-up desert she’d patrolled over the years, which was a relief. Even the helo itself smelled fresh-washed with a hint of leather seats—not splashes of Jet A fuel matched with the hard stench of burnt cordite and stinking soldiers who’d been too long in the field. No coppery after-hint of spilled blood either, another plus.

“This is all your fault, Colonel.”

Colonel Michael Gibson, seated beside her in the back of the helicopter, didn’t bother to respond. He rarely did, but he didn’t have to. When the best field operator in all of Delta Force said, “You’re with me,” you went. Even if she wasn’t in the military anymore, she went.

“I was within easy windage of a Nathan’s hot dog!” Coney Island Boardwalk was calling her, too—even now from two thousand miles in the wrong direction. She’d had a ticket home in her hand and a spot all picked out on her brother’s couch. She’d done her fifteen years and was out. Way out.

“Get a grip, Foster.” The colonel’s command was stated with the same calm he always used, whether in the briefing room or under heavy fire.

Get a grip? Yeah, my hands around your throat! But she kept the thought to herself. Besides, it would just piss off his wife sitting copilot. And Lauren liked Claudia Jean, even if she talked almost as rarely as the colonel. Kind, beautiful, blonde, a red-hot helicopter pilot with the Night Stalkers—what wasn’t to like. Her deep-bred warmth a sharp contrast to Gibson’s chill factor. No, that wasn’t right because the man wasn’t unkind, he was just…austere. Like looking up at the Empire State Building until your neck hurt from trying to see the top.

The pilot who’d picked them up in Great Falls was the poster boy for tall, handsome, and retired military right down to his mirrored shades and cheeky grin. Somebody Henderson. Her blood sugar had crashed along with missing a night’s sleep. She only remembered his last name because “Henderson’s Ranch” was plastered across the side of his little Bell JetRanger helicopter along with a painted team of running horses.

He flew like retired military as well. She wondered if he flew this way when he had a load of tourists aboard. She hoped so—especially if he had footage of their faces.

The number of things that civilians didn’t understand about the military, and about what women like her had to do to serve there, made her completely crazy. No matter how she tried to explain, they looked at her as if she was either a cold-blooded killer or a lunatic. The only person she wanted to kill in cold blood was still stationed who-knew-where. He was still on the inside and she was now on the outside, which was just fine with her. Having the civilian-military divide between them provided yet more distance—none of it comfortable. As to being a lunatic? Wouldn’t find her denying it.

Guess what, folks? Out there, life comes by a different measure. Which definitely was going to make her the crazy person in the ever-so-normal civvie world, rather than them being the strange ones so secure beneath their hard-won security blanket, double-shrouded in purposely-head-in-the-sand, ostrich-style naivete.

Thankfully, there wasn’t a person on this flight she had to explain shit to; not even why she’d left. Fifteen years in, eight of it attached to The Unit (as Delta Force called themselves) was enough wear and tear on anyone. The pointless loss of her military war dog had been one straw too many.

Even now she could feel Jupiter resting his head on her thigh. Instinctively she moved her hand to pet the Malinois and stroked…nothing but air.

Shit!

Two months and the reflexes weren’t going away.

Gibson saw it of course, the man missed nothing, but he was smart enough not to say anything.

For sanity, she brushed her fingertips over her pant’s belt and found a little peace there. She’d made it from Jupiter’s last leash.

“Welcome to my family’s ranch,” the pilot boomed out cheerfully over the intercom. “Our land runs from the Larson cattle ranch directly below us—”

And the helo’s vents offered solid proof that they were flying over a lot of cattle. Lauren had to sneeze to clear the smell.

“—right up to the two and a half million acres of the Flathead National Forest wilderness area. Don’t want to go riding into there without a guide I can tell you.”

Lauren scanned the ranch. How would she track across such land? Even the central compound? It was all spread out with no encircling protective wall, not even a gate that she could see. Any fool could just walk in.

Would she lead a patrol along the ridge where they were exposed and easy to see, or along the valley where they could be ambushed from above? And the big ranch layout would be a nightmare to secure. Three barns, multiple corrals, a monstrous main house in the I-was-a-log-cabin-as-a-little-girl style, outbuildings, cabins up among the trees…

A hundred places for a trap.

A million ways for the enemy to—

She recognized the pattern in herself and wrestled it back, fought it down with sheer willpower.

Lauren no longer led patrols. Jupiter, what she’d been able to find of him, was buried in Afghan hell and was never coming home. All of Delta Force had only nine dog-handler teams who could hit The Unit’s standards, and she and Jupiter had been the best. Until… Until they only had eight.

But there lay another, far deeper trap. There lay the fury that still ripped her apart every time.

She glared out the window of the helo as it circled and she leaned into the laser-like focus brought on by the rage.

The big house was a grand two-story timber lodge with a deep and welcoming wraparound porch. It sat slightly above the other main buildings of the compound; only the guest cabins up the hill ranged higher.

The main barn connected to several large corrals. Even now, seven horse-and-rider pairs were working their way through a jump course in one of them.

There was something odd about the roof of the barn. There was a single large skylight midway along the roof. Near it, where she expected a little cupola would normally be perched, stood a trio of high-gain satellite antennas. The helo circled low enough to see that they were military grade. On a ranch in Montana?

Closer to the ground, she again scanned for how she’d approach the area.

There! That’s where she’d start a scouting patrol.

She’d start at the back corner of the farthest cabin. It perched at the crest of the hill in a small wood, overlooking the entire ranch. No one could surprise her from there. She liked the safety of the position, even if it would be more exposed to the weather from the north. From there she’d range downslope and—

“Remember to breathe at some point.”

She hated that she’d been caught. Though nobody ever slipped anything by Colonel Gibson. Carefully, consciously, she took a breath. Two more before she turned to face him.

They weren’t coming in hard to a browned-out LZ in an armored Night Stalker Black Hawk. They were sitting in the back of a little Bell JetRanger, civilian version. Cushy seats. Even a small drink cooler at their feet, for crap’s sake.

“Why?” Breathing just meant another day of remembering the pain. And doing it without a Nathan’s hot dog or a plate of dim sum as an analgesic.

The colonel merely quirked a fleeting smile. So he could smile. That was news. She’d been on countless missions with him over the years and hadn’t known he had it in him. Then he looked down at the fast-approaching ranch and grimaced darkly.

Now that made her feel better.

There was something eating his behind as well.

Good!

Mark’s usual flight approaches never bothered Minotaur. The American Paint gelding was typically rock steady, even when Patrick Gallagher had been a total greenhorn—three years back as the ranch’s newest hand.

The horse had actually been named Minnie, but no self-respecting cowboy would ever ride a horse named Minnie, much less a male one. His splotchy coat was red-brown with white spots that could almost be a red polka dot dress. From the rear haunches down, he was as white as Minnie Mouse’s bloomers—the little hussy. And the same white from the withers up, to where more red-brown made a bow like Minnie’s on his face that masked both of his eyes. A few more polka dots there made the horse appear to be looking about with more than the usual two eyes.

Patrick supposed that the name had been inevitable, but he preferred Minotaur—the monster in the labyrinth, thankfully without the attitude. He’d changed the gelding’s name and no one had argued with him. Probably because Patrick had never really told anyone other than the horse and the dude ranch’s guests—the horse didn’t seem to care in the least and ranch guests were gullible enough that they believed anything you told them.

This time, however, Mark flew the helicopter like he was still some crazy military pilot. He swooped so low over the barn that he could have cleaned the gutters. He zipped close enough over the path between the paddock and the barn where Patrick was currently riding that he could taste the hot carbon of the exhaust. Mark pulled up hard at the last second to thump down on the dirt in front of the garage as if this was the team insertion scene from Black Hawk Down, not an ideal setting for The Horse Whisperer. Minotaur was not happy about it and reared up in protest. Patrick was no longer a greenhorn, but there were still a few tense moments before he managed to get secure in his seat.

Once Minotaur had returned to a standstill, the corner of the big garage blocked his view of the newcomers so he leaned sideways out of the saddle enough to see what tourist distractions Mark had been fetching in from Great Falls. Long legs exited the rear door of the JetRanger. Legs were followed by a sleekly lean frame in a leather bomber jacket, finally topped by a movie-star profile framed in light-brunette waves down to her shoulders. Not as tall as his own six three, but well on the way. Definitely worth checking out.

A tough-looking guy, maybe old enough to be her father, came out the other side. No problem. Patrick had plenty of practice cutting pretty young things out of the herd. He knew his slightly shaggy dark hair and bright blue eyes had power over female ranch guests seeking adventure. Cowboy strong—plus boots and hat—didn’t hurt either.

Just as she turned to face him, Minotaur took a sudden step sideways in the wrong direction.

There was a weightless, Wile E. Coyote moment before Patrick plummeted down to land face-first in the puddle made of last night’s brief rain and his pride. At least the morning sun had warmed it.

If the sleek woman laughed before she turned away, she hid it well.

Minotaur nuzzled at him in surprise.

“Some help you are.”

Minotaur puffed out a big, hay-flavored horse breath that knocked Patrick’s Stetson into the puddle for good measure before moving off to crop some grass.

“Little early for a swim,” Stan commented as he came out of the garage through a nearby door. He shifted some paperwork he’d been carrying between the parallel hooks of his missing left hand to his good right one, then offered his hooks for Patrick to grab.

“I was getting hot.” Patrick supposed the stainless steel hooks would be easier to clean than Stan’s other, flesh hand. Since the woman’s back was still turned, Patrick gratefully accepted the help.

“I saw,” Stan glanced over toward the helicopter. “Nice first impression.”

“Thanks. I try.” And usually it worked out just fine. He knew how to play his tall height and good looks to win, especially now that he was cowboy strong from three years of hard labor on the ranch.

“I was talking about her first impression. You should keep trying,” Stan chuckled, then snapped the fingers of his good hand. One of his dogs, who’d been busy marking a fence post, trotted over…and kept right on going. “Rip. Heel!”

They stood side by side, Patrick in the mud puddle and Stan on dry land, but Stan wore a look of total surprise on his face as if he was the one at sea.

“Rip!” Stan called out again.

But the dog kept going; nose first, he was on some scent. He trotted up close behind the tall brunette, then sat abruptly.

“I thought he only did that for explosives?” Patrick always enjoyed watching the former Navy SEAL dog handler training up a pack of hopeful military war dogs.

“Uh-huh,” was all the response Stan managed.

“Don’t the dogs usually look back at you after they sit? Doggie pride or some such thing you once said?”

“Every time. They want their toys as a reward for making the find.”

“He’s not turning,” and Patrick didn’t blame him. The view from behind was as nice as from the front on this tourist despite the battered leather jacket masking certain details. The war dog training was a separate part of the ranch operation from the dude ranch’s guests and rarely mixed.

Stan started walking over to see what was up with his dog. Patrick hesitated only long enough to flip Minotaur’s reins around a fence rail near a deep patch of grass and retrieve his hat from the puddle before following along. No way was he going to be cut out here.

Mark, climbing out of the pilot’s seat, saw him first and burst out laughing.

Okay, definitely not his best first impression.

The brunette very studiously didn’t turn, keeping her fists in her jacket pockets. The old guy looked over at him, then looked away as if he was of no consequence. A light blonde came around from the other side. She was absolutely majestic—just how a woman shouldmature.

Patrick liked his women young and frisky, though he’d outgrown coeds a number of years back, at least mostly, but the older blonde was well worth a second look. Up close, there was also more to the old guy than at first appearances—all wiry and hard muscle. His look clearly said, Do not meet me in a dark alley. Like Tom Berenger in Platoon. The guy must have seen some serious shit, but that would be in his younger days. Now he had some salt in his longish dark-brown hair. The light-blonde stepped up close to him, close enough to be a couple. Her smile at Patrick was amused and, perhaps, a little sympathetic for some weird reason.

Then the younger brunette with the long legs turned, the slightest hint of smile on her lips more cutting than a laugh at his expense. For the briefest moment, her unexpectedly light brown eyes regarded him—rich as the amber of red clover honey.

Then she glanced down at the patiently waiting Rip.

She screamed and dropped like she was about to be run over by a cattle stampede.

In a moment of shocked silence, everyone, including Rip, just looked down at her curled up on the dirt.

Then the old guy spoke softly, “Oh, shit!”

“I don’t know what happened.” Lauren was a little surprised to find herself sitting with a cup of hot tea cradled in her hands, hanging onto it for dear life despite the warm morning. She sniffed at it carefully. Peppermint with honey—she could deal with that.

She hadn’t been aware of much since seeing Jupiter impossibly reincarnated and sitting at her feet. She’d never fainted in her entire life. But all she remembered after seeing him were like brief snapshots. Being carried, tight against a well-muscled chest. Bright blue eyes crinkled in worry. The door into the big log-cabin style house. Inside had been all space and light. Modern furniture mixed with rustic decor. Then a dining room that could seat forty at a single long table and through to a kitchen big enough to feed them.

Now she was in an armchair at one side of the kitchen. There was a big stone fireplace, unlit, and a ring of comfortable leather chairs and sofas. It felt safe, but could she trust that? It had also felt safe to step from the helicopter onto good old American soil for the first time in far too long. Fort Bragg soil didn’t really count, but she’d thought Montana would be safe.

So not.

She looked around carefully. Listened.

No dog.

Working up some nerve, she checked around her feet and the other side of the chair. Still no. Should she be relieved that she was merely hallucinating? Or was that worse?

Surreptitiously, she rubbed her fingers over her belt. Yes, it was still Jupiter’s leash. Around her waist rather than attached to some hallucination turned far too real.

Close beside her sat the colonel’s wife, Captain Claudia Casperson, and another woman Lauren didn’t know who might have been Claudia’s twin sister—at least in some ways.

“Who are you?” It came out rude, but her nerves weren’t steady enough to fix anything.

“Emily. Mark’s my husband. Old friend of Michael as well.”

Michael? Oh. First name basis with Colonel Michael Gibson. He didn’t strike Lauren as a man who made many first-name friends.

“Do you feel up to talking about it?”

She shook her head, but Delta wasn’t about avoiding hard truths. A deep breath to gear up didn’t help at all. Lauren finally gave in and asked the question that was scaring her the most.

“Was there really a dog?” Though she didn’t know which answer she’d prefer.

Claudia nodded.

“A nearly pure black Belgian Malinois?”

This time Emily nodded. The two tall blondes shared straight, long hair cut neatly at their shoulders and piercing blue eyes. But after the first impression, they looked less and less alike. Claudia had a softer, Nordic face, but her soldier strength showed in powerful shoulders. Emily was pure Anglo-Saxon melting pot and look lean and fierce enough to take down a Russian T-14 Armata main battle tank—barehanded. Lauren liked that in a woman.

“Okay, that makes me feel a little better.” Not Jupiter reincarnated.

“Why did Rip surprise you so much?”

Rip, not Jupiter. She sipped her tea. That, too, seemed real. “How about a different topic?”

“Well, you certainly scared the daylights out of Patrick,” Emily looked amused.

“Hooks or klutz?”

“Hooks belong to former Navy SEAL Stan Corman. He was also an MWD handler, now a trainer.”

“TMI.” Way too much information. Lauren didn’t want to know anything about any military war dog handler. That was the last person she wanted to talk to or about. Jupiter was too recent. His eyes—

No dogs.

No. God. Damn…

And there lay the yawning hole once again. She sighed, then clawed her way back out. Again. At least she was getting good at that.

“So Patrick is the klutz,” she confirmed.

“He’s actually a surprisingly good horseman, considering his background, but—”

“He fell off a stationary horse into the only mud puddle in the county.”

“He did,” Claudia confirmed and sipped her own tea. “Guess it’s hard to blame him.”

“Why?” Lauren could think of no one else at fault than the man himself.

Claudia and Emily shared a look that Lauren couldn’t interpret, then both turned back to her.

“What?”

Emily rose to her feet, crossed the kitchen to rinse her mug at the sink and toss it into the washer. The room was high and airy, filled with light from the big windows. Hardwood flooring, vast counters, and all the equipment necessary to feed a ranchful of guests. Close by the back door, a kitchen table of thick slab fir had a dozen chairs clustered around it. There was a hint of a recently finished breakfast on the air, but the room was immaculate.

“Your room is over there, just off the kitchen,” Emily pointed in the other direction where a small hallway passed between two monstrous silver-faced refrigerators. “That way you won’t have to deal with the ranch guests if you don’t want to. Stan, the guy with the hooks for a left hand, brought in your duffle.”

“Not the klutz?”

“Nope,” Emily confirmed. “Now I have to go find out why Michael showed up here unannounced since Claudia won’t tell me.”

“I would if I knew, Emily. He’s not even talking to me on this one.”

“Likely story. You’re the only person he’s ever talked to.” Emily left by the back door.

Lauren turned back to face Claudia. “Surely it wasn’t Colonel Gibson who carried me in?” She couldn’t imagine the humiliation of having him carry her in here. It was so bad to have collapsed in front of him that maybe she should just catch a night horse to New York right now so that she didn’t have to face him ever again. Easy to get lost and hide in the Big Apple—from anyone other than Colonel Gibson. He could track anyone anywhere. There’d been missions with him where she’d wondered why she and Jupiter were along at all. Fieldcraft wasn’t something he knew; it was something embedded in his DNA at birth, then honed like the finest knife.

“No, Michael didn’t carry you,” Claudia confirmed. “Nor Major Mark Henderson.”

Major?Major Mark Henderson? The ranch pilot had been a full major before retiring? That would have been almost as embarrassing as being carried by the colonel.

“Hold it.”

Claudia simply smiled at her before rising to rinse her own mug.

“The Major Mark Henderson?” Lauren twisted around to look at Claudia.

She nodded without turning and racked her mug.

“That means that was…” Lauren turned to face the chair. Finding it empty, she swung to look at the back door where Emily had exited. If the pilot had been Major Mark Henderson, then “Emily” was the legendary Major Emily Beale. The two best pilots that the Night Stalkers of the 160th SOAR had ever put at the controls of a Special Operations Forces helicopter. Both were retired, but they were the standard measure of everyone who followed in their flightpath—the standard no one ever matched.

It knocked the wind right out of her.

First name basis with Colonel Michael Gibson and his wife? Of course Major Beale would be. There were few better warriors in any military. Had she herself called Major Beale “Emily?” That would have been presumptuous and incredibly embarrassing, but she didn’t think so—she’d only been horridly rude in her first greeting. Strike One, Foster.

“She couldn’t be the—” But Lauren was alone in the kitchen. Claudia had gone as well.

She went to the sink herself and looked out the big picture window as she finished her own tea. To one side there were definitely horses. To the other was a hillside peppered with guest cabins tucked invitingly into pines and aspen. Some had people sitting on the porch, other folks were on the move toward whatever event was next.

The farthest cabin, the tiny one she’d picked out as the best from a tactical standpoint, peeked out between the trees. It looked nicely cozy. And out in the distance, towering mountains shot up out of the Plains with a suddenness so abrupt that it was like waking up in the midst of a freefall parachute jump.

Definitely Montana.

How in the world had she ended up here? Colonel Gibson still hadn’t explained the why either. He was such a “forthcoming” guy—never spoke two words where none would do. How had a man like that landed a woman like Captain Claudia Casperson? Simple, by being the very best there was. Truly exceptional would work for her as well—if she ever met one who was single. And her own age. And who never wanted to own a dog—ever. And…

Lauren had the answer to another question as she rinsed her own mug in the sink. One whole side of her clothes were lightly coated in drying mud as if she’d been cradled against someone’s chest—their muddy chest. On her jeans, a big dirt handprint curled around from the back of her thighs to confirm that she’d been held close by a man without hooks for his left hand.

The tall, lean klutz with the nice chest had carried her to the kitchen.

Patrick.

And alongside the handprint…a big paw print on her thigh.

Neither one would brush off when she tried.

It was such a warm day that Patrick just rinsed himself off at the horse trough. He dug a couple of hatfuls of water and sluiced them over himself. It did nothing to help cool him down.

Lauren had felt so fragile and helpless. She weighed almost nothing despite her height and it felt as if he could have carried her all day. Rip had been almost frantic with worry when she collapsed. He himself had jerked forward like a roped calf until he had her scooped up in his arms. By then Emily had appeared from her secure office in the barn and led the way to the house.

Her eyes had fluttered open a few times, but he didn’t think that she’d actually seen him.

When he’d tried to stay with her, Emily had shooed him—and everyone else—away like stray barn cats. As if. Of course, even Mark didn’t argue with Emily. The woman was a primal force.

Patrick had things to do. He knew he did.

“C’mon, Patrick, think,” he muttered to himself.

“Like that’s gonna happen any time soon,” Stan was watching him again. He had some kind of weird, built-in stealth mode despite being such a big guy. Probably came from being a Navy SEAL.

“That was my internal dialog, Stan. You’re barely in the cast, so you shouldn’t be able to hear it.”

“Film nerd,” Stan sneered, knowing Patrick’s obsession with movies. No point in arguing against the truth.

“Totally! But you’re not helping any more than my horse.” His bunkmate slouched against the fence where Minotaur was still grazing. Rip sat at his feet. “I see that your dog is back. Too bad he fell for another woman. Musta hurt.”

Stan grinned down at the dog. “Better her than some girly boy like you.”

Patrick couldn’t help but like the man. Stan had showed up on the ranch about the same time he had. Stan had technically arrived first, spending a Montana winter living in a remote fishing cabin for reasons he never explained. Of course, Patrick had never asked.

He himself had answered a ranch-hand job ad on a whim, trading in his aging Camaro on a used compact pickup to fit in better before driving across the country from Long Island. He’d been razzed endlessly about it by the other ranch hands. How was he supposed to know that his little Ford Ranger would be a reason for ridicule in the heart of Dodge Ram 1500 Crew Cab pickup country? Then there were the 3500s with rear duallies which made his truck look even more pitiful. He’d have been better off keeping the Camaro.

The timing of his and Stan’s arrival had made it natural for them to bunk together.

He’d never had a military friend before, never mind a retired SEAL. Yet somehow they’d hit it off—once Stan got over his role of being so taciturn that he rarely rose above a grunt. Even total guy-guys in film had more dialog and emotional range than Stan initially did in real life.

Rip, barely out of puppyhood, had liked Patrick right away and that had helped break down the walls. Good dog. Stan’s favorite dog, Bertram, had been slower on the uptake, but warmed to him over time.

Patrick had felt as if it was the beginning of one of those buddy movies: the Army vet and the man from the Big City.

“He did more than like that lady,” Patrick nodded down at Rip, looking for a way to redeem himself from Stan’s “girly boy” crack.

“Yeah. Weird, huh?” Stan folded his arms—always an odd sight as his left one was mechanical all the way up to his biceps. Stan had gone Terminator rather than cosmetic in any way. I yam what I yam said Popeye the Sailor Man. And Stan’s remaining arm was muscled enough to play the role without any CGI.

Together they inspected Rip, who wasn’t saying a thing about his own behavior.

“It’s not like she was wrapped up in explosives,” Patrick kept digging.

“I know. Have to check that out some,” Stan rubbed the dog’s head with his good hand.

“Hey, you’re the dog trainer. If you keep your eye on him, maybe you’ll figure it out.” The last thing Patrick wanted was Stan keeping an eye on the pretty brunette. She was the best thing to hit the ranch since Julie Larson had ridden in from her family cattle ranch across the road this spring. The fact that she was marrying Patrick’s older brother next weekend was just the worst kind of unfair.

“I don’t know,” Stan scratched at his short beard with the rounded tips of his hooks. “Might have to look pretty careful at what’s going on there.”

Patrick had never known Stan to go after a woman on the ranch. Sometimes he wondered if Stan’s arm wasn’t the only thing blown off in Afghanistan, but there were some questions you didn’t ask a guy who could bench press you one-handed. Stan might be only six one, but he was powerfully built and square-jawed in a way that Patrick knew women liked.

Stan burst out laughing. “You should see your face, bro. You should absolutely get a mirror. Have at her and good luck. Woman looked like she had brains, which puts you out of the running.” He double-clicked his hooks and Rip popped to his feet and hovered in the “heel” position at Stan’s left side.

“Shithead,” Patrick put a laugh rather than any heat behind it. He headed over to gather Minotaur’s reins; maybe the horse would remember what they’d been doing before the helo brought… Damn it! He didn’t even know her name.

“Want my guess?” Stan called back as he walked back toward the dog kennels where the rest of the pack would be waiting to start the day’s training.

“No!”

“Way out of your league, bro. Classy dame. Damned classy.”

“You sound like you’re in a 1930s noir film.”

“You’d know, bro.” And Stan moved out of earshot.

Of course he’d know. He’d graduated from NYU’s renowned film school. Even worked on a couple of indies that, sadly, no one outside of immediate friends would ever see. He’d thought they’d been pretty good, but the speed at which they were rejected by film festivals he’d submitted them to had been alarming.

Then, thinking that being a Montana cowboy for a summer would give him some good creative grist, he’d come west. An incredibly visual land. The ranch manager had worked his ass off, and for some reason Patrick had loved the first hard work in his life. He’d stuck around after the season was over and the summer hands headed off to warmer pastures. Every single day working with the horses and fixing up the old ranch had felt more real than the thousands of hours he’d spent behind the camera or poring over some script.

Film school. Wow! Now that was a flash from the past. It felt like another Patrick entirely.

He swung into the saddle and looked up. The Big Sky shone—a brilliant blue bowl overhead stretching on forever. One side of it anchored by the infinite Great Plains and the other end skewered into place by the majestic Rockies. That sky had to be part of the reason to film here—it was like nothing he’d ever seen. He could feel himself settle more solidly into the saddle just by looking at the perfect, screen-test consistent blue.

“Hey, Pat.” Patrick looked down to see his older brother coming toward him.

“Hey, Nat.” Nathan had a pair of heavily loaded saddlebags slung over one of his broad shoulders.

“Got these for you.”

Patrick wasn’t sure why, but he helped Nathan set them over Minotaur’s hindquarters and secure them to the saddle.

“Looks like you’ve been swimming.”

“Looks like you’re a lovesick bull calf.” Howard Keel in Seven Brides for Seven Brothers. Now there was a good leading man’s role.

“Getting married to the most wonderful woman ever in seven days. That’s not lovesick, that’s lucky.”

“Turd,” was the best comeback he could find—not very Howard Keel at all.

Julie Larson, the hottest cowgirl in any parts, hadn’t even given him the time of day. Three weeks after meeting Nathan, they’d gotten engaged and been living together for almost six months up in one of the cabins. He liked those little cabins. Wasn’t hard to see himself in one with…somebody. As long as it wasn’t anytime soon.

“How did a lousy chef from New York land the leading lady of Montana? Can you explain that one?”

“Brains and personality, Pat. Brains and personality. And if you had any brains, you’d be getting your trail ride organized.”

“Trail ride?” Then he remembered. That’s where he’d been headed when the nameless woman had dropped out of the sky and into his arms. That’s what the saddlebags were filled with—lunch. Nathan had found his role as the ranch’s chef.

He spun Minotaur about, give him a light kick and a soft rein. His horse shifted from a standstill to a fast canter without any apparent transition—one of his tricks—almost leaving Patrick in the mud puddle once more.

His brother’s laugh followed him past the garage and most of the barn.

He rode into the corral just as Chelsea was helping the last of the ranch guests up onto their mounts. A quick glance. A dozen riders. Five obvious greenhorns (looking down in surprise at how far away the ground now appeared from atop their horses, even though they’d already done four days of corral riding), three overeager kids, and four who clearly thought they had it down now but didn’t know one thing about how to sit a saddle, much less hold the reins.

A beginner trail ride.

Worse, he remembered, an overnight one. Oh, man! No chance to see the brunette again.

“Hi, y’all!” He knew it was wrong as soon as he said it.

Chelsea smirked at him, piling her assessment of him on top of Stan’s sneer and Nathan’s smug superiority.

“You guys,” she corrected him in her typically cheery tone, “are in good hands now, even if Patrick showers with his clothes on.”

Patrick looked down. He was still damp from rinsing off the mud at the horse trough. A couple of the women were looking at him with particularly nice smiles. Maybe he should arrive wet a bit more often.

“Patrick knows some great places to ride. Remember, if you want to take a picture, be sure to stop your horse first and never completely let go of the reins. When you reach camp, the famous Henderson’s Ranch Chuck Wagon will be out to set up a real feed. Have a great time.”

Famous. The marketer in him thought it sounded ridiculous, but she wasn’t bragging. Big brother Nathan had been a top New York chef before bailing out. His chuck wagon had been written up in a half-dozen different foodie magazines—big ones with national circulation—further increasing the ranch’s reputation. Patrick was never disappointed with what Nathan sent out to trail ride camps. Which almost made him forgive his brother for snagging the hottest cowgirl in the entire Montana Front Range as his bride.

Patrick normally helped get everyone saddled, starting to know them in the process—when he wasn’t being distracted elsewhere.

“Thanks, Chelsea. Big hand for her!” He clapped his hands together. The others joined in, half of them dropping their reins on their horse’s withers to do so. The ranch hands had long since learned to tie the rein ends together for beginners for just that reason. Oh, this was going to be such a funride.

“Nice of you to show up,” she whispered merrily as she came over to check on the saddlebags that held the group’s trail lunch. He was just lucky that she didn’t have a mean bone in her body.

“Got delayed up ta the big house, little lady.”

“Your John Wayne is showing again,” she was always putting down his attempts to sound more Western.

“What’s a Long Island boy to do?”

“Embrace your inner Billy Joel?”

She’d teased him before with the song line about a boy from Long Island with a six-pack in his hand. And that’s about how naive he’d been when he first arrived here. He was a good rider now, but he still couldn’t get the Western accent down.

He’d wanted to be a film writer and director, not actor, but here he was, stage center in his own life. Weird. No mood lighting. No perfect romance on the horizon. Just a bunch of beginning riders and sun so bright he wondered what had happened to his shades—they’d been perched on top of his hat before, well, before he’d nosedived into a mud puddle. They were either in the mud puddle or at the bottom of the horse trough now.

He looked around, but it was definitely himself playing himself in this surprising role. Too bad. He’d much rather be Sam Shepard in The Right Stuff, about to race his horse through the desert after the laughing Barbara Hershey the night before breaking the sound barrier.

Chelsea waved the closer riders toward the gate.

He nudged Minotaur back a few steps and pointed the way so that the first of the riders would lead the way westward. A spunky thirteen-year-old black girl looked at him like she was going to be definite trouble. They still always seemed to like him and it often took some tactful work to keep the teen girls at bay without upsetting them.