Montana Refuge (6 page)

He caught up with her up by the cabins where the shadows of the trees threw wild shapes onto the ground. Grabbing her arm again, he spun her around and gripped her shoulders. “What’s going on?” he demanded.

“I’m...I’m in trouble,” she stammered, trembling now from a vast array of emotions too complicated to name. Her hair had come loose of the ponytail and blew around her face and she pushed it away.

“What kind of trouble?” His voice fell to a horrified whisper as he added, “You’re not pregnant, are you?”

“No, no, of course not. I...I shouldn’t have involved you. I just...I just didn’t know where else to turn. I’m afraid, Tyler. Someone is trying to kill me and I’m...I’m scared.”

His hands dropped. “Who’s trying to kill you?” he said at last.

“What do you care?” she managed to say.

It took him a long minute to respond, and when he did, his voice sounded almost resigned. “I just do,” he said, reaching out for her again, tugging on her sleeve, pulling her gently against his rock-solid chest. His hands holding her head, he whispered against her hair. “Heaven help me, Julie, I just do.”

* * *

H
E HADN’T BEEN IN CABIN
number eight for years. Many of the guests preferred staying at the lodge, although judging by the lights in the windows three or four cabins were currently populated.

When he and Julie had gotten married, they’d moved into the original old ranch house which was located closer to the river than the lodge was. He still hung his hat at the century house every night, still slept in the bed they’d once shared.

During the years they’d been together, she’d left the place much as it had always been, filled with his grandparents’ furniture and knickknacks which were now antiques. Given its historical designation of “century house,” the exterior couldn’t be changed, but after she’d left he’d wondered why Julie hadn’t made more of a mark on the interior space. If she was so determined to have a life she could call her own—one which, incidentally, did not include him—why hadn’t she started with her own home? The only conclusion he could reach was that it was because he lived there, too. What she’d wanted was to be free of him.

And now she was here sitting three feet away on the edge of a bed they would never share, hair everywhere, looking as young and frightened as a wild filly. He sat down on the only chair in the room, scooting it around so he faced her. He rested his forearms on his thighs and folded his hands together. “Tell me about it,” he said.

She wiped tears away with shaky fingers, casting him a wary glance as if to judge if she could really trust him. He figured she must have thought about that before now, though, or why else had she come back here? He got to his feet and walked to the window, tipping the blinds to look outside. The waxing moon had climbed high overhead.

With his back to her, she apparently felt comfortable enough to tell her story and she began talking. He heard about a job she’d been doing for the better part of a year, about the man she’d worked for, a well-respected professor. And then he heard about another man named Trill who approached her on a city bus and convinced her she should spy on her boss.

He wanted to turn around and ask if she was serious. It seemed absurd to him that she’d believed the phony federal agent.

He finally chanced eye contact when she got to the part about being shoved in front of a bus. “You’re sure you were pushed?”

She nodded. “And then I saw Trill at the police station,” she added. “He matched the description the woman behind me at the bus stop gave the officer who came to help.”

“So, they’d caught him?”

“No! He was a policeman.”

“What did he have to say when you asked why he misrepresented himself to you?”

She rubbed her eyes. “I didn’t talk to him. He tried to catch me. I...I ran away.”

“You didn’t ask him what the hell was going on?”

“No, I couldn’t. I was so startled to see him there. And he was furious. You should have seen the expression on his face when he saw me. He chased me. I barely got out of the station.”

“But that’s just the point. Why did you run? You were surrounded by cops. You should have talked to the guy.”

“Easy for you to say. He hadn’t just tried to kill you. And then I found out from my neighbor that—”

“Wait a second,” he interrupted. “You don’t know for sure that’s what happened. Didn’t you say the attending officer mentioned attempted thefts?”

She stood abruptly. “Just stop. Let me finish before you tear me apart.”

“I’m not tearing you apart,” he said, bracing his hands on the back of the chair.

“Yes, you are.”

“I just think it’s interesting that you ran away instead of facing Trill and asking him why he pretended to be someone he wasn’t. How would he have even known you knew about his deception?”

“I don’t know.”

“He would have had to tap your phone.”

“Maybe he did.”

“Why? You said your boss doesn’t know him. He didn’t recognize his name or his face, right?”

“Yes, but it’s obvious Trill is after something.”

“Exactly. And what about when this whole thing started. Why didn’t you go to your boss and ask if there was any truth to these accusations instead of going behind his back? Doesn’t it seem a little self-serving to you? Don’t you wonder if you’ve developed a certain, oh, I don’t know, pattern when it comes to men and rough spots?”

She stared hard at him for a moment as his last words lingered between them. Then she stood and slowly walked to the door and opened it. “I would sincerely appreciate it if you would leave,” she said, looking back at him. “Without an argument, without another word.”

He took a deep breath, pulled his hat on his head and did as she asked, stalking across the yard with his head down. He’d obviously hit her where it hurt and she just as obviously deserved it.

So why did he feel no sense of victory?

* * *

J
ULIE LAY IN BED
for what seemed like hours, living and reliving every moment between dinner and falling into bed, weary beyond endurance and yet unable to so much as close her eyes because every time she did she saw Tyler’s face and felt his lips and heard his voice....

He’d been talking about himself, she could see that. He was talking about the way she’d betrayed her marriage vows and run off even though she’d tried to talk to him a million times. He’d just never taken her seriously until it was too late for both of them.

And then there was that kiss and all the suppressed emotion it carried. As powerful as that had been, however, it was what came later when he pulled her into his arms and whispered against her hair that caused her throat to close now. The tenderness of his voice had been unbearable and so much more than she deserved from him.

Why did life have to be so hard?

And what did she do now? The only other people in the world she could retreat to were her parents and they were both sixty-three-year-old florists. She was a late-in-life only child and she’d always been absorbed into their lives, not the other way around. Marriage had been her way of setting herself free; that it had backfired was something her father never let her forget. So how did she slink home now and admit she’d made a mess of things? And if Roger Trill somehow followed her to Billings and found her behind the counter at The White Rose, how would she fend him off? Spritz him with flower preservative? Throw petals in his face?

Again she felt the pressure of a hand in the middle of her back followed by the smell of diesel and the sound of air brakes and the grinding of her skin against pavement....

She found she was standing and walked to the door, leaning against it and listening as though she could hear through the wooden panel. The room suddenly felt claustrophobic instead of safe, like a vault instead of a haven.

Two minutes later she’d pulled on her jeans and boots and let herself out into the night.

It was late enough that the ranch was dark and it didn’t seem anything was moving, not a branch, not a molecule of air, certainly no human. Living in a city for the last year, Julie had forgotten what this kind of stillness was like, this seeming suspension of activity as still as the moment between breaths.

Tomorrow the cowboys and wranglers and guests would take off to the camp by the river. The day after that, the trail would begin to get even more remote, the countryside increasingly wild. They would travel by crystal-clear rivers and skirt craggy, desertlike plains until at last reaching the high mountain pastures where the animals would spend the summer. The calves would grow like weeds until another cattle drive in the fall brought them all back to the ranch.

She suddenly wished she was going with them, but settled for heading out to the barn, where she went straight to Babylon’s stall. The horse met her at his gate with a snuffling sound of welcome and she fed him the apple she’d grabbed from the barrel.

“I’m leaving tomorrow,” she told him, whispering against his nose as she ran her hands along his sleek neck. “And I want you to know I wish I wasn’t in so many ways and that I’m sorry I can’t be here for you.”

“Then don’t go,” a male voice said.

Heart suddenly up in her throat, Julie jumped about a foot, turning as she did so. A tall, dark shape loomed in the deep shadows a few feet away. “Tyler?” she whispered.

“Yes,” he said, advancing. He stopped right in front of her, cupped her face with his warm hands and stared down. She could see no details of his face, just the glitter in his eyes as they caught what little moonlight stole through the slats of Babylon’s stable door.

“What are you doing out here?” she asked.

“Just sitting in the dark. Thinking,” he said.

“What were you thinking about?”

“What do you think I was thinking about?”

“Oh, Tyler.”

“I was wondering how things got to be like this, you know, between us.”

“You wanted to start a family,” she said, knowing it wouldn’t do either one of them any good to sugarcoat the facts.

“And you didn’t.”

“I just wasn’t ready.”

“I know. I would have waited a while—”

“It was more than that. Your desire for a baby was normal and wonderful, but I knew once I was a mother there would never be a chance for me to find out about myself. I knew I’d be stuck here forever. I tried to make you understand.”

He leaned closer and she felt his lips touch her forehead. “You wanted another life,” he said, kissing her.

“But I wanted you to be in it.”

“My life is here. You know that.”

“And that’s why I had to leave.”

“This place has been in my family for generations,” he added as though explaining himself to himself. “It’s in my blood, it’s the legacy for my children. It would fail if I left. I can’t let that happen.”

“And all that’s more important than I am,” she said, but this time, unlike a year before, she managed to say it without bitterness. It was a fact.

“Oh, Julie, it’s not that simple,” he said, his lips moving against her skin as he spoke. She turned her face upward and his lips captured hers.

This kiss wasn’t confrontational like the other, but it wasn’t sweet either. Julie felt like a raw wound, as vulnerable as she’d been when she hit the pavement a few days before, and as his tongue invaded her mouth, her heart seemed to explode, turning her inside out.

She ran her fingers through his hair, knocking off his hat in the process. His hands were all over her, inciting impulses that burned every pivotal place on her body from the tips of her breasts to between her legs to deep inside her groin.

He knew her. He knew how to drive her wild with his touch, just as she knew such secrets about him. He lifted her in his arms without losing contact with her mouth and carried her along in the dark, his right arm under her bent legs, his left hand wrapped around her torso, his fingers pressing into her clothes, into her skin. And still the kisses continued, stoking the fires within, making her dizzy and disorientated.

But that wasn’t true. She wasn’t disorientated; she knew exactly what was on Tyler’s mind, what he planned to do if she didn’t stop him. Trouble was, she didn’t know what she wanted.

When he knelt and laid her on a bed of clean straw and peered down at her, she reached up, grabbed the two sides of his open vest and pulled him down on top of her.

The kisses grew more and more heated as his lips traveled down her throat. She was wearing a T-shirt and he raised it, groaning when he realized she wore no bra. His mouth closed over her right nipple as his hand slipped under the waistband of her jeans, his fingers landing between her legs, his touch driving her frantic with desire.

She had to stop him. This wasn’t right. Going through with this would make everything harder than ever.

But oh, the sensations, the waves of pleasure and passion. She hadn’t experienced this in a year and she was overwhelmed with the desire for it to continue, to run its natural course, to be so caught up in the physicality of sex that the emotional quagmire of what it all meant would just go away.

She caught his wrist, her grip tight, and he stopped everything. Silence hung between them like a lead curtain until he said in her ear, “I want you, Julie. And you want me.” As he whispered these words, he sucked on her earlobe, his hand caressing her bottom.

“No,” she said, her voice so soft she could barely hear herself. “No, this isn’t what I want and it’s not really what you want either.”

He shifted his weight, the straw rustling as he collapsed beside her. She straightened her clothes and fought to reclaim her equilibrium.

“I’m sorry—” she began, but he cut her off.

“Just don’t, please. I got carried away. It won’t happen again. I thought you wanted—”

“I did,” she said. “But I don’t.”

“How do we keep screwing this up?” he added.

“I’m not sure. But I’ll be gone tomorrow.”

“I said you didn’t have to leave.”

“I know, but I think it’s better if I do.”

“Where will you go?”

“I’m not sure. The only thing I really know is it’s not your problem. I’m not your problem.”