Thankful For You
Joanna Sims
Is he a big-sky kind of guy?All Nick Brand wants to see of Montana is a For Sale sign on his family’s in-dispute land. That’s before the fast-track Chicago lawyer meets the ranch hand who’s been hired to help clean up the property. Dallas Dalton can rope a steer, ace a barrel racing competition . . . and lasso her way into one smitten bachelor’s heart.Raised on the rodeo circuit, Dallas lives to compete—while guarding against future heartbreak. Now she just wants to muss up Nick’s hair and show him how this western woman is won! The refined attorney is a world away from the rough-and-tumble cowboys Dallas knows. Yet deep down, she and Nick desire the same thing. Is he ready to trade his eastern view for the big sky with a cowgirl who’s through singing the blues?
Is He A Big-Sky Kind Of Guy?
All Nick Brand wants to see of Montana is a for-sale sign on his family’s in-dispute land. That’s before the fast-track Chicago lawyer meets the ranch hand who’s been hired to help clean up the property. Dallas Dalton can rope a steer, ace a barrel-racing competition...and lasso her way into one smitten bachelor’s heart.
Raised on the rodeo circuit, Dallas lives to compete—while guarding against future heartbreak. Now she just wants to muss up Nick’s hair and show him how this Western woman is won! The refined attorney is a world away from the rough-and-tumble cowboys Dallas knows. Yet deep down, she and Nick desire the same thing. Is he ready to trade his Eastern view for the big sky with a cowgirl who’s through singing the blues?
“I was hoping—” Nick sought out her eyes as he continued “—that you would have dinner with me tonight.”
She was so disarmed by his simple invitation, wrapped up in an incredible surprise visit at her rodeo and the little jump of her heart when she had first seen him.
“All right,” Dallas said with a nod of her head.
“All right?” He repeated her response as a question as if he didn’t believe her the first time.
This small sliver of insecurity in a man who always seemed perfectly secure made her smile at him. “I’d like to. Yes.”
The idea of sharing a meal with Nick instead of spending the night alone, mentally rewinding and reviewing her mistakes in her head, sounded like the best alternative option she’d had in a long, long while.
“We could eat here, if you have the kind of stomach that can handle the-greasier-the-better rodeo food.”
“I have a room at the Omni downtown.” Nick pushed away from the trailer and took a step toward her. “Their steak house is supposed to be one of the best in Fort Worth. How does that sound?”
A thick, juicy steak or the stale ham sandwich she had leftover from lunch?
“Like a good idea.”
* * *
The Brands of Montana:
Wrangling their own happily-ever-afters
Thankful for You
Joanna Sims
www.millsandboon.co.uk (http://www.millsandboon.co.uk)
JOANNA SIMS is proud to pen contemporary romance for Mills & Boon Cherish. Joanna’s series, The Brands of Montana, features hardworking characters with hometown values. You are cordially invited to join the Brands of Montana as they wrangle their own happily-ever-afters. And, as always, Joanna welcomes you to visit her at her website: www.joannasimsromance.com (http://joannasimsromance.com).
Dedicated to my sister from another mister…
Jacqueline
You are the best kind of friend and I love you.
Contents
Cover (#u2da9a438-bd56-5294-8efb-5766ead83243)
Back Cover Text (#u085a5fa3-96a6-592b-847b-3089e0444f03)
Introduction (#u3d557bdf-82fe-51e7-99b0-cef8de02b639)
Title Page (#u3f79f86d-64eb-5a83-bbb1-f9104ee09eee)
About the Author (#u7031e1de-3e15-547f-a489-832ce24d0452)
Dedication (#u93a48fbc-9e2c-5cab-8b6d-54067a9b688e)
Chapter One (#ua5d62a08-7c39-56e2-9dbb-2d0696b4f430)
Chapter Two (#u65a1663b-6e9d-5504-bb1a-4b6728576ac9)
Chapter Three (#u3fa169b4-51cc-513e-be3f-b35491177661)
Chapter Four (#u179d09f2-6022-5a3a-91b5-c48e65bc442f)
Chapter Five (#litres_trial_promo)
Chapter Six (#litres_trial_promo)
Chapter Seven (#litres_trial_promo)
Chapter Eight (#litres_trial_promo)
Chapter Nine (#litres_trial_promo)
Chapter Ten (#litres_trial_promo)
Chapter Eleven (#litres_trial_promo)
Chapter Twelve (#litres_trial_promo)
Chapter Thirteen (#litres_trial_promo)
Chapter Fourteen (#litres_trial_promo)
Chapter Fifteen (#litres_trial_promo)
Chapter Sixteen (#litres_trial_promo)
Extract (#litres_trial_promo)
Copyright (#litres_trial_promo)
Chapter One (#uaf8c1d78-9760-5724-92b3-140b87c16959)
“I’m looking for a Dallas Dalton.” Nick Brand stood in the doorway of one of the bunkhouses on Bent Tree Ranch reserved for wranglers.
“Hey, Dally!” one of the wranglers, who was only wearing cowboy boots and a towel wrapped around his waist, bellowed over the loud talking of his bunkmates. “Door!”
Nick took off his mirrored sunglasses and tucked them into the front pocket of his navy suit jacket. He looked out of place, walking around his aunt and uncle’s Montana ranch wearing his regular business clothes. He knew that. But he wasn’t in Montana on vacation from his Chicago law firm; he was here on business.
Another wrangler, a short, stocky young man dressed for ranch work, announced his arrival again.
“Dally!” The wrangler grabbed a hold of the edge of a top bunk and shook it hard.
“Christ on a crutch! What!” Dallas popped upright like a jack-in-the-box.
The wrangler pointed at Nick. “Stiff. Eleven o’clock.”
Dallas fought to get her wild brown hair out of her eyes; after letting out a grunt of frustration, she kicked off the covers, swung her legs over the edge of the bunk and then jumped down. Barefoot, but still wearing ripped jeans and a faded Johnny Cash T-shirt, she walked over to wear Nick was standing.
Confused, Nick said, “I’m looking for a Dallas Dalton.”
Dallas wiped the sleep out of her eyes and then yawned loudly before answering. “You found her.”
Nick stared at the woman’s black fingernail polish, confused. “You’re Dallas Dalton?”
Dallas squinted at the sun coming in the bunkhouse through the doorway. “Twenty-four-seven.”
Nick shook his head; he pulled his sunglasses out of his pocket and put them back on. “I think there’s been a mistake. I apologize for the interruption.”
Dallas yawned again with a nod. Nick turned to leave, but Dallas stopped him. “Hey—hold on—are you Nick?”
Nick turned back toward the disheveled woman. “I am.”
Dallas stretched her arms over her head, which drew Nick’s attention, for a brief moment, to the woman’s perky, braless bustline.
“You’re in the right place.” Dallas extended her hand. “Hank told me to expect you yesterday.”
Behind his mirrored sunglasses, Nick stared at Dallas’s face. Her handshake was as strong and as firm as any man’s handshake.
“I was delayed,” Nick offered. “I was expecting a man.”
“Yeah. You’re not the first,” Dallas said.
She pulled a ponytail holder out of the front pocket of her jeans, clenched it between her teeth, gathered up her unruly mass of mahogany curls and secured them into a thick ponytail. Several tendrils escaped the ponytail holder and snapped back into position around her oval face. Nick had to consciously resist the temptation to tuck those wayward tendrils behind Dallas’s ear.
“Let me grab my stuff and we’ll head out,” she said.
Nick waited for Dallas just outside the door of the bunkhouse. Dallas reappeared wearing a cream-colored straw cowboy hat and carrying a pair of brown boots that were caked with dried mud.
“You been in town long?” Dallas yanked on one boot and then the next.
“First day.”
Dallas stomped her sockless feet farther into the boots, knocking some of the mud off. Satisfied, she looked up at him. “Ready?”
Nick followed Dallas to an early-model brown and tan Ford Bronco.
“It’s unlocked.” Dallas nodded to the passenger door.
Nick had to pull hard on the stiff door to open it, and the hinges squeaked loudly when he pushed it open far enough for him to get into the passenger side.
“I haven’t seen one of these in years.” Nick slammed the door shut.
“Bessy and I’ve been together since I was fifteen.” Dallas grabbed a stack of papers on the bench seat and tossed them into the backseat. “She’s a classic.”
Dallas’s idea of a classic and his idea of a classic were completely different. While Dallas shifted into Reverse, Nick examined the inside of the Bronco. The interior had been stripped—there wasn’t a radio or air-conditioning system, part of the dashboard had been removed, exposing a tangle of wires that no longer served a purpose. Dallas obviously used the Bronco for more than driving, which was evidenced by the clothing, blanket and pillows strewn across the backseat.
Dallas used the crank handle to roll down her window. Nick followed suit and rolled down his window, as well. He rested his arm on the edge of the open window, glad for the fresh air.
“Did Hank fill you in?” he asked.
Dallas nodded and stepped on the gas. The cowgirl was not a cautious driver—she sped along the driveway, kicking up loose gravel and dust, the oversize wheels disconnecting with the ground as they took a series of bumps. Nick looked around for a seat belt but didn’t find one; instead, he gripped the window frame with his hand and hoped that she had more control of the old Bronco than it seemed. At the end of the driveway, Dallas slowed down but didn’t bother to come to a full stop before she pulled out onto the main road.
“Do you work for my uncle full-time?” Nick asked, glad that they were on paved road.
“Not me. I’m just workin’ here until I save up enough money to get back on the barrel racing circuit.” She patted the cracked dashboard. “I hope old Bessy here can make it for one more tour.”
A barrel racer. That made sense. She was independent, confident and tough enough to live with a bunkhouse full of cowboys.
“Professional?” he asked.
“Since I was seventeen.”
“Can you make a decent living doing that?”
“Some do. I don’t. Most of my winnings go right back into travel expenses and taking care of my horse. I’m lucky if I break even, but most years I’m in the hole.” Dallas laughed. “How ’bout you?”
“I passed the Illinois state bar exam last month. Once I’m done with my business here, I’ll start working at my father’s law firm.”
“Nepotism.” Dallas nodded. “I can dig it.”
The cowgirl continued, “I haven’t been back to Lightning Rock since my pop died. Not sure how it’s gonna feel goin’ back there now.”
“Davy Dalton was your father?”
When Dallas nodded, Nick continued, “I’m sorry I didn’t make the connection earlier.”
“Don’t worry about it. Not much of a family resemblance there.”
Nick looked over at his chauffer. The sun had bronzed her skin; her shoulders and arms were muscular, as were her thighs. She wasn’t overweight, but she was stocky. Her fingernails were clipped short and the only jewelry she wore was a small turquoise cross on a silver boxed chain around her neck. She didn’t necessarily look it, but Dallas came from rodeo royalty. Davy Dalton, a legendary bull rider, had been a longtime friend to his uncle Hank.
Nick was about to offer his condolences when Dallas made a sudden right-hand turn onto a heavily pitted dirt road. They immediately drove through a deep dip in the road and this time, Nick left his seat and had to put his hand on the roof of the Bronco in order to stop his head from smacking up against it.
“It’s a bit bumpy,” Dallas acknowledged, but didn’t slow down.
Nick wanted to ask her to ease up on the gas pedal, yet he couldn’t bring himself to do it. It seemed out of step for the man to ask the woman to take a rocky road more gently. If this cowgirl could take it, so could he. He simply hoped that the road to Lightning Rock was short. He had spent a couple of summers at Bent Tree when he was a kid; Bent Tree held thousands of acres, so there were many areas of the ranch he’d never seen. Lightning Rock, fifty acres of high ground, was new to him.
A couple of S curves later, Dallas stopped in front of a rickety fence with a gate that was half off its hinges.
“We’ll walk it from here.” Dallas turned off the engine. “We’ve been slammed by rain lately—Bessy’s too heavy. She’s bound to get stuck in the muck.”
Nick nodded his understanding. He hadn’t exactly planned to be walking around in the mud, but he could adapt. He took off his jacket and rolled up the long sleeves of his light blue shirt. Together, they walked through the narrow opening between the sagging gate and the rotted fence post. As far as the eye could see, grassy knolls abutted hills with craggy gray and white rock pinnacles, and farther still, majestic snowcapped mountain ranges. It felt as if he had stepped into paradise on earth.
“Look.” Dallas pointed to a flat expanse of land, knee-high with golden, willowy brush. A small group of moose was moving slowly through the grassland.
Nick spoke his thoughts. “I feel like I’ve just discovered heaven on earth.”
“You have.” Dallas continued on her way. “I can’t believe you’re gonna sell it.”
Nick didn’t answer immediately. After a minute, he said, “My father has a responsibility to do what’s best for my aunt’s trust.”
Dallas disagreed. “Selling off the crown jewel of Bent Tree can’t be what’s best.”
Nick heard her but didn’t continue with that topic. The fifty acres of pristine Montana land that was Lightning Rock had been heavily disputed by the Brand family since the untimely passing of his paternal grandfather. His uncle Hank had inherited the bulk of Bent Tree Ranch; any parcels of land he hadn’t inherited, he had purchased outright from his three siblings. Hope, his only aunt on his father’s side, who had died young from breast cancer, had inherited Lightning Rock. Upon her death, his father had become executor of her estate and trust, including managing control of the fate of Lightning Rock.
“There she is...” Dallas pointed to a tall cluster of rocks jutting out from the apex of a mound a short distance away. “Lightning Rock.”
“Do you want to head that way?” she asked.
Nick nodded. He had been curious about the namesake of this parcel of land. It was an anomaly—a cluster of rocks that had been struck by lightning so many times that the quartz veins that crisscrossed the surface of the rocks had been turned into petrified glass. As they approached the rock formation, Nick realized that the family of rocks was much larger than he had originally thought. Lightning Rock was as wide as a midsize car and at least twelve feet in height.
“There’s a perfect spot to sit down at the top.” Dallas put her foot into a foothold and started to climb Lightning Rock.
Nick, although he hadn’t really climbed anything since he was a teenager, followed her lead. At the top of Lightning Rock, there was an indentation that was an ideal place to sit and watch nature’s drama unfolding all around the landmark.
“Look at all of this fulgurite.” Dallas traced her fingers along the veins in the rock. “It’s everywhere.”
Every time lightning had struck the cluster of rocks, the silica, or quartz, had turned to glass. From the sheer amount of fulgurite that could be seen with the naked eye, Nick imagined that the rocks must have been struck by lightning hundreds of times. This oasis, tucked away in the middle of Bent Tree Ranch, had inexplicably drawn the wrath of lightning for generations. For a little bit longer, they sat together on top of Lightning Rock, and then Dallas took him to the small homestead that her father, Davy, had leased from the Brand family. The homestead, tucked away in a forest at the base of a mountain, included a barn, a small cabin, a single-wide mobile home, an old yellow school bus and several antique trucks that were in various stages of decay. Dallas took the key to the mobile home off her key ring and handed it to him.
“You can go in if you want. I’ll wait out here,” she said.
Davy Dalton had died in the mobile home, so Nick could understand why Dallas didn’t want to go in. He unlocked the door and entered the odd world of the rodeo legend. In that later part of his life, he had become a hermit of sorts. He didn’t have visitors and he only went in to town when supplies were too low to be ignored. The trailer was piled high to the ceiling with papers and magazines and tin coffee cans and rodeo trophies. There was a small path leading to the back of the trailer, but Nick didn’t explore past the foyer.
“Your father was quite the collector.” Nick pulled the door of the trailer shut behind him.
Dallas half laughed, half snorted. “That’s a nice way of puttin’ it.”
Nick slipped his sunglasses back on. “Is the cabin in the same shape?”
Dallas nodded. “And the barn and the bus and the shed. I don’t know what drove him to do it, but no matter how many times I badgered him into cleanin’ up the place, he’d just fill it up again. I finally just gave up and let him live his life how he wanted.”
Nick spent a little longer walking the homestead, assessing the expense of cleaning up the property. He didn’t know the whole story of Davy’s final years, but it was sad to think of a rodeo legend ending his life on such a sad note. The last stop Nick made was the three antique Chevy trucks embedded into the earth.
“These are real heartbreakers,” Nick said to Dallas when she joined him.
Dallas had her hands tucked into the back pockets of her jeans. “Pop always meant to get around to restoring one of these for me. He was going to fix up this middle one and use the other two for original parts.”
“What year are they?”
“Nineteen fifty,” Dallas said. “Nothing more than a heap a’ junk now.”
For Dallas, these trucks were almost her undoing. It was hard work not to let her sorrow show at being back at Lightning Rock now that her father was gone. Her stomach felt like it was jumbled up in a giant knot and tears of sorrow had been trying to push through ever since she first turned down that familiar dirt road. If she didn’t get out of here quick, she’d end up bawling in front of Nick Brand, and that didn’t suit her at all.
Dallas turned away from the trio of old trucks. “Ready to head back?”
She was relieved when Nick gave a slight nod of his head; she got the impression that he had seen enough to get a sense of the place: it was a mess.
On the way back to the Bronco, Nick said to her, “I was really expecting to deal with your brother. Won’t he want any of his father’s trophies?”
“You won’t see Brian within a hundred miles of this place,” Dallas said bluntly. “He hated Pop almost as much he hated life on the rodeo circuit. Blames Davy for all of his problems. Last I heard, he was working for Lowe’s in the garden department.”
Dallas smacked a bug that had landed on her arm, flicked it off, while she continued talking. “I always knew that I would be the one to tie up the loose ends of Davy’s life. I’m his daughter, and I loved him like crazy, so...that’s that...”
For the rest of the walk back to where they had parked, neither of them spoke. It wasn’t until they were back inside the Bronco that Nick asked, “What’s on your agenda for the rest of the afternoon?”
“Practice.” Dallas made a quick U-turn and stepped down on the gas. “You can watch if you want.”
* * *
He wasn’t the only man who wanted to watch Dallas practice barrel racing. A small group of cowboys were hanging on the fence or leaning on the fence, which surrounded the practice arena. Nick positioned himself on the opposite side of the fence and waited for Dallas to start.
“You Angus’s boy?”
Nick turned slightly to the left to see if the question had been posed to him. An older man with severely bowed legs, deep wrinkles carved into his face and a thick black mustache peppered with white stood next to him.
“I am.”
The cowboy offered his hand. “Tom Ketchum.”
“Nice to meet you.”
“Your father and I go way back.” Tom joined him at the fence. “You take after him.”
Nick caught a glimpse of Dallas walking out of one of the many Bent Tree barns leading a sleekly built blue roan gelding over to the arena. She swung into the saddle and started to work the mare to warm her muscles. Once Dallas started to ride in the arena, all eyes were on her.
“She draws a crowd,” Nick said to Tom.
“That she does.” Tom chuckled. “I’ve trained her off and on since she was a kid, and it’s always been that way.”
The more Nick watched Dallas ride, the more he wanted to watch. She had that “it” factor—that intangible quality that makes the world stop and take notice without ever really knowing why.
“One of those cowboys a boyfriend?”
Tom rested his boot on the bottom slat of the fence. “Dallas isn’t the kind to get pinned down. She’s never let anything interfere with barrel racin’.”
Dallas cantered by, and even though he knew that she saw him, her focus was entirely on her horse.
“She’s ready, Ketch.”
Tom pulled a stopwatch out of the pocket of his blue-and-white-checkered shirt.
“Watch this,” Tom said to Nick.
Dallas cantered out of the arena, made a small circle and then halted at the arena entrance to wait for Tom’s signal. Dallas’s horse pranced in place, anxious to race toward the first of the three barrels placed in a triangle pattern. Once Tom gave her the signal, the rowdy cowboys quieted while Dallas galloped full throttle toward the first barrel. As Dallas rounded the first barrel, Nick heard her yell “Ho” to the mare. Once around the first barrel, Dallas urged her swift-footed gelding to gallop the short distance to the second barrel.
“Ho!” Dallas’s voice was sharp and crisp and commanding.
“Now she’ll head for the money barrel,” Tom explained.
Once Dallas rounded the third barrel, all the cowboys started to cheer and wave their hats in the air. Tom stopped the stopwatch and looked at the time.
“I’ve seen her do better.” He shook his head before he gestured for Dallas to go again. “Give her more leg when you go around the last barrel, Dallas! You’re losing a ton of time letting her drift so much!”
Now Nick understood why Dallas drew a crowd—she was a dynamic, risky rider who was sexy as hell to watch.
“Can I give you a word of advice, son?” Tom asked without looking at him directly. “Never try to corner somethin’ that’s meaner than you.”
Chapter Two (#uaf8c1d78-9760-5724-92b3-140b87c16959)
Nick hadn’t been the only man to stay until Dallas was done with her barrel racing practice. In fact, most did stay. There was something magnetic about the cowgirl—she had that unexplainable “it” thing that made a man want to follow her with his eyes.
Later that night at his hotel room, Nick reflected on his odd fascination with the barrel racer. He had always been attracted to tall women—he hadn’t gotten his father’s height, so he tended to date women who were a little taller than he was. He liked his women leggy, with a healthy bust and a reasonable family pedigree so she would fit in easily at the country club. His parents had doted on him as the only boy, and he had been, for years, an unabashed playboy. After he barely squeaked out a diploma in business from Princeton, he’d spent the better half of his twenties yachting with his friends and spending time in Europe and Dubai.
He’d dated women from all over the world, but he couldn’t recall a woman like Dallas registering on his radar screen. She was the total opposite of what typically attracted his attention: she was short, stocky, flat chested and had a mass of untamed brunette hair. She was—unkempt. It made him wonder if the fascination would stick. Would Dallas Dalton still be as interesting to him tomorrow as she had been today? Only time would tell.
* * *
“Howdy-ho!” Dallas called out to him the next morning.
“Good morning.” Nick held up his hand in greeting.
The cowgirl walked toward him wearing a brown tank top, cutoff shorts that hit her midthigh and her cowboy boots.
“I decided just to bite the bullet and make camp here for a bit.” She hitched her thumb over her shoulder toward a rickety paddock where her horse was trying to reach a piece of grass located on the other side of the fence. “Unless you mind, I’m gonna bunk here until we’re done.”
She stopped when she reached him, and that was when he felt it again—that magnetic pull toward Dallas. He usually looked up to the women on his arm, even taller in their high heels, and it was nice that he could look Dallas right in the eye, that she was shorter than he was by a couple of inches, at least.
“I was thinking the same thing.” Nick surveyed the property with his eyes. The place seemed to be more of a mess than the day before. The trip back and forth from Helena to Bent Tree was going to get old quick.
“There’s plenty of room,” Dallas said. “But no luck with the trailer. It’s a long ways away from livable. I think the cabin is our best bet if you want to bunk out here too.”
They started walking toward the small cluster of buildings near the trailer where Dallas’s famous father had spent the last years of his life as an eccentric hermit. He didn’t want to offend Dallas, especially after she had just recently lost her father, but the legend of her father didn’t match the condition of his aunt’s property. It didn’t make sense that Davy Dalton could have ended up this way. Nick hadn’t said the words aloud, and neither had Dallas for that matter, but the famous rodeo personality had been hoarding for years.
With fresh eyes, Nick stated what might have already been the obvious to his companion. “This may take more time than I originally thought.”
Dallas nodded.
“I honestly don’t know where to begin.” He didn’t normally feel overwhelmed, but he did now.
“Pop always said...the only way to eat an elephant is one bite at a time.”
* * *
Dallas had worked side by side with men her whole life. Her earliest memories were traveling from town to town, chasing rodeo money with her dad. Her father had been one of the first of his generation of rodeo men to garner endorsements, so when Davy wasn’t riding a bull or roping a calf, he was posing for pictures at tack and feed stores. She’d only really known the nomadic life because of Davy; he’d raised her his way on his terms. The schools were always after him about the huge blocks of time she was out from school, but her father believed that she could learn a heck of a lot more about life out on the road with him than she could locked up in a school for eight hours a day.
She had loved her freedom growing up and often felt sorry for her peers who didn’t get to do as they pleased. Davy was too busy making a buck or losing that same buck gambling to regulate her every move—she made her own rules, set her own agenda. Could her father have done better by her? Sure, he could have. What parent was perfect? And yes, her childhood had left scars—some too deep and jagged and discolored to ever heal. But she was as tough as any man—she wasn’t afraid of much in life—and she was a survivor. She had Davy to thank for that.
“It’s hotter than the dickens in here.” Dallas lifted the bottom of her ribbed tank top up to her face and wiped the sweat off her face.
“Let’s take a break,” he suggested, and she agreed.
Although she had spent most of her life surrounded by men, none of them had been like Nick. In the short time she had spent with him, he had caught her attention in a way no man before ever really had. Nick was clean-cut, educated and a gentleman. And so handsome. Just like everyone else in his family, Nick had those shocking Brand-blue eyes, and she had found herself staring into them more than once. Yesterday during practice, she’d found it difficult to focus on her work with Nick watching her.
While most of her fellow barrel racers dreamed of marrying cowboys, Dallas had always wanted something different than what she’d known. She didn’t spend a whole lot of time imagining herself married, but when she did think of a husband, it was to someone like Nick.
“You need gloves.” Dallas fished a bottle of water out of her cooler and handed it to him.
Nick’s once-well-groomed fingernails were black—his hands gray from the dust and the old print off the newspapers.
Nick looked down at his free hand as if he were noticing how dirty it was for the first time. He stared at his hand for a long minute.
“I admit,” he said, “I didn’t know what I was getting myself into here.”
“No.” She finished her water and capped the bottle. “I bet not.”
Not only was Nick a handsome man, he was tougher than she had originally given him credit for. She had thought that the thick, stale, hot air, the dust and dirt, and the piles of decaying magazines and newspapers would send him packing pretty quick. But he had hung in there with her. She was impressed.
“I didn’t even think about food.” Nick squinted in the bright sunlight streaming in through the window.
“Your aunt packed a care package for me this morning. There’s more than enough to share.”
Barbara Brand, Nick’s aunt, was the matriarch of the Brand family and self-appointed caretaker of the disavowed and disenfranchised youth. Nick’s aunt had been looking after her, in one way or another, ever since she was a little girl.
They took turns scrubbing their hands in the cabin sink with a sliver of soap that had become cracked and chalky over the years. Then they turned a crate over in the yard for a makeshift table and salvaged a couple of creaky-legged wooden chairs out of the cabin; with the backdrop of the expansive, cloudless blue sky and mountain peaks in the distance, Nick joined her for lunch.
“Okay—let’s see what we’ve got here.” Dallas fished into her cooler for the care package.
“This looks to be smoked ham and Swiss on Barb’s homemade sourdough bread. And this one is...” She peeked inside the wrapping. “Roast beef and cheddar on sourdough.”
“I’ll take whichever one you don’t want.”
She wrinkled her brow at him with a shake of her head. She held out both sandwiches. “Pick.”
Nick pointed to the roast beef.
“Perfect.” She smiled at him. “I wanted the ham.”
For the first several big bites of their sandwiches, neither of them spoke. They were too hungry to try to talk and eat.
“Hmm.” Nick made a pleased sound after he had devoured the first half of the sandwich.
Dallas nodded her agreement, still chewing on a bigger-than-necessary bite. Barbara was known in the county for her cooking. If you were invited to Bent Tree to eat, you didn’t turn the invitation down. She loved to cook, she was great at it and she always made enough for plenty of leftovers.
“I appreciate you sharing your lunch with me.” Nick balled up the wrapper.
She nodded to say “you’re welcome.” “I think your aunt planned it this way. She’s always thinkin’ about everybody else.”
“You seem to know Aunt Barb pretty well.”
Dallas watched Nick stand up and stretch. He didn’t have the height of the Montana Brand men, but he had nice shoulders and a fit body. Nick’s sister, Taylor, was married to Dallas’s best friend, Clint McAllister. Nick didn’t much resemble his male cousins, but she could definitely see the family resemblance with his sister and she told him as much.
“I’ve heard that all my life.” Nick looked down at her with his lips turned up slightly into the smallest of smiles. “I got razzed pretty regularly about it by my friends. The worst days were when Taylor wore a dress.”
“Why?”
Nick crossed his arms in a relaxed, resting manner. “Oh, you know... I’d hear things like, ‘what happened to your pretty blue dress, Nicki?’ Stupid stuff like that.”
“Heck.” Dallas stood up and tossed her wrapping onto the trash heap. “I get worse than that from those cowpunchers I bunk with part of the year.”
“It does sound tamer than I remember,” Nick said with a laugh. She liked how he could laugh at himself so easily.
Dallas stood next to the Chicago native wishing that they had met under different circumstances. She wasn’t at her best right now—she was dirty and sweaty and smelly. She wanted Nick to see her as a woman, not as a work buddy.
“Are you ready for round two?” Dallas asked, half hoping he’d give up for the day.
“The sooner we start, the sooner we’re going to finish.”
They walked the short distance back to the cabin side by side.
“You must know Taylor from Bent Tree.”
“No.” She grabbed the pitchfork she had left leaning against the side of the cabin. “I know her ’cuz she’s married to my best friend.”
It must have taken Nick a minute to make the right connections in his mind, because they were back inside the cabin before he asked her, “Clint’s your best friend?”
“Yep.” Dallas stabbed a stack of papers with her pitchfork.
Out of the corner of her eye, she saw Nick lean on the handle of his shovel.
“You bunk with men and your best friend is a man? You lead an unusual life.”
Perhaps he didn’t mean it to sound condescending and judgmental, but that was how it sounded to her ears and that was how she took it. She didn’t much care what most people thought about her life, but for some reason, it stung when it seemed like Nick was joining her naysayers.
She grunted as she lifted the heavy pile of newspapers and dumped them into the empty cart between them.
“It might seem unusual to some.” Dallas turned away from him to stop him from seeing the hurt in her eyes. “But it’s normal for me.”
* * *
They spent the rest of the afternoon cleaning out the small cabin. Years of her father’s life were spent “collecting” these papers, something he could never explain to her, and she was shoveling those years into a trash pile to be burned. She didn’t feel sad too often—but this made her feel sad.
Dallas stood by the large pile of trash they had started, and she knew that this was just the beginning of what was going to be a painful journey of simultaneously discovering and discarding the secretive last years of her father’s life.
Nick wheeled another cart over to the pile and dumped it with an exhausted grunt.
“I think I’ve had enough for today,” he said to her. “How about you?”
More than enough.
“The cabin still’s got a long way ta go.” She expected Nick to suggest that they bring in a crew to clear off the land and just be done with it. She wouldn’t blame him, but she prayed that he wouldn’t. Her father still deserved his privacy. It made her heart hurt just thinking about strangers rummaging through his belongings, judging him.
“I’m not sure it’s ever going to get there,” he said.
She tucked her hands in her back pockets, glad that Nick was signaling that he was ready to leave.
“Well,” he said after she didn’t continue the conversation, “I’ll see you in the morning, then.”
“Yep.”
He started heading to where he had left his rental car. But then she saw him hesitate.
“Are you sure you’ll be okay out here by yourself?”
She didn’t have the heart to tell him that she was way more fit to rough it than he was. He was a Brand man, albeit a citified Brand man, and it was his nature to be a gentleman.
“Go on back to Helena and get some rest,” she tried to reassure him with a forced half smile. “We’ve got a full day ahead of us tomorrow.”
He hesitated for a moment longer; he gave her a quick nod to let her know that he’d gotten the message she was sending.
Once Nick was out of earshot, Dallas lowered herself onto her haunches, her arms folded tightly in front of her body, her hands pressed into her stomach. All of this was so much harder than she had thought it would be. One minute she thought she was okay and the next minute she felt like crying. And, other times, like now, she just needed to be alone.
“Oh, Pop.” Rare tears slipped onto her cheeks. “I miss you.”
* * *
Nick stood under the showerhead, letting the hot water beat down on his shoulders until the water started to run cold. He hadn’t ever worked that hard in his life. Not ever. And the only reason he had pushed himself as hard as he did was that Dallas was relentless and strong and he didn’t want to appear to be a soft city dweller in front of her.
Damn, but she was determined and strong. He’d never seen anything like her before.
“Ow...crap.”
His hamstring locked up when he stepped over the edge of the tub to get out of the shower. He half fell onto the bath mat, grabbed for his hamstring with one hand and the towel bar with the other.
After he got his hamstring to unlock, Nick hobbled, with stiff joints and an aching lower back, to the bed and flopped onto the mattress.
“Oh, man.” He carefully stretched out his legs, wincing at the pain in his knees as they straightened.
He’d never been a jock or a muscle head, and he had been slacking off on his workout routine for the past several years while he was buried up to his eyeballs in law books—but he’d never considered himself to be a lightweight before. He felt like a total lightweight now.
Eyes closed, Nick rested his hands on his stomach and tried to rest. The day after you exerted your body was always the worst; tomorrow he imagined he was going to feel awful. Instead of falling asleep as he’d hoped, he started to think of ways to make the cleanup of Lightning Rock quicker. But the only two options he could come up with included bringing a crew of men in to help clean out the buildings or bringing in a crew to just demolition the buildings and be done with it.
Whenever he thought through either of those options, his mind would conjure Dallas’s face. This was personal to her—these were her father’s belongings. And even though most of it was just moldy, decaying papers, every once in a while, Dallas would come upon something in the rubbish that she wanted to keep. How could he take that away from her? How could he tarnish the legacy of Davy Dalton?
The answer to both of those questions, no matter what angle he came at the problem from, was I can’t.
* * *
The next morning, Nick got a later start than he’d intended. He awakened stiffer than a starched shirt with an ache in his muscles, joints, neck and lower back that he’d never felt in his life. Even the palms of his hands hurt; they were red and rough from wielding that shovel all day. His hands had remained mostly callus free and he had been perfectly fine with that. Perhaps it had even been a badge of honor to be a part of the white-collar and blue-blood class. But after watching Dallas work like she could keep going until nightfall while he was sucking wind an hour into the cleanup, he’d decided some calluses on his hands were exactly what he needed. He could stand a little toughening up.
Nick packed his belongings, put them in the rental car and checked out of the hotel. If Dallas could rough it out at Lightning Rock, then so could he. He grabbed a fast-food breakfast on his way out of town, ordering an extra-black coffee for Dallas just in case.
When he drove long distances, he liked to take the time to think. Same when he was stuck in rush-hour traffic back home in Chicago. He didn’t listen to music or books on CD. He always thought about his next move, his next big goal. His future. All the way out to Lightning Rock, Nick thought about the property, and what he might say to his uncle Hank when it came time to discuss the sale of Lightning Rock. Intertwined with business was Dallas. On his first night in Montana, he’d wondered if his interest in her, his curiosity about her, was a passing fancy. By his second night in Montana, he had his answer: no. It wasn’t a passing fancy. She fascinated him. He was drawn to her. He wanted to know more about her—about what made her tick. He liked her.
And there was this one moment yesterday that he couldn’t stop thinking over again and again: the moment when Dallas lifted up the bottom of her tank top to wipe the sweat off her face. It wasn’t meant to be a tease—it was an innocent, practical move on her part. But that flash of pale skin on her toned stomach, so different than the reddish brown of the skin on her arms and neck, made his body stir and made his mind turn to sex.
* * *
“I was beginnin’ to wonder if you’d decided to get the heck outta Dodge,” Dallas said to him as she dumped the contents of her cart onto the trash pile.
“Don’t think I didn’t consider it.” He was working hard not to walk in a way that would show how much hurt he was feeling. “I wasn’t sure if you drink it, but I brought an extra coffee just in case.”
“Been drinkin’ it since I was ten.” Dallas dropped the cart and walked over to him. “More of that unusual life of mine.”
He caught her meaning and wanted to clear the air now that he had the chance.
“I think you have a great life, Dallas. Unusual isn’t a bad thing in my book.”
The cowgirl didn’t respond to his comment, but he could read in her eyes that his words had hit their intended mark.
“It’s black,” he said of the coffee.
“I drink it any way I can get it,” the cowgirl said to him as she took the cup of coffee from him. “Thank you for thinkin’ about me.”
She’d probably be worried if she had any idea of how much actual thinking he had done about her.
“I have somethin’ for you too.” The cowgirl pointed to his shovel resting against the porch banister of the cabin; a cowboy hat was hanging on the end of the shovel’s handle.
“It was Davy’s,” she added.
Surprised by her thoughtful gift, Nick walked over to the cabin and unhooked the hat from the shovel’s handle.
Nick hadn’t spent time following bull riding since he was a kid—his interest stopped around the time his father and uncle Hank had their falling-out over the will—but, before that, he wanted to be like his uncle Hank, and his uncle Hank loved bull riding.
“Davy Dalton’s hat.” Nick held the aged brown Stetson in his hands reverently.
“And his gloves,” Dallas added. “Flip it over.”
Nick turned the hat over and saw a pair of work gloves tucked inside the inner band of the hat.
“If they don’t fit, don’t worry,” the cowgirl said.
“I feel like these are things that you should keep,” Nick replied.
“Why?” Dallas shook off his comment with a shake of her head. “They’re too big for me, and Pop can’t use ’em anymore. He’d think it was right that one of Hank’s kin found some use for ’em.”
Nick decided to take Dallas at her word; she didn’t strike him as someone who spent much time talking around the truth. If she said it, she seemed to mean it.
He tried on the hat first and was pleased that it fit pretty well. Then he tried on the gloves. With a little stretching of the leather, they would suit him just fine.
“Thank you.” He smiled at the cowgirl.
Dallas, who was pulling the cart back to the cabin, paused when she looked at him. A flicker of some emotion flashed quick and ephemeral, like a shooting star across a black sky. He couldn’t read the emotion it passed so quick.
After a second, Dallas said, “Pop is pleased.” And then she got back to work.
Chapter Three (#uaf8c1d78-9760-5724-92b3-140b87c16959)
It took them three days of sweaty, backbreaking work to clean out the cabin and get it rehabbed enough for him to bunk there with relative comfort. It had running water and electricity in from the main part of the ranch. It was humble, but it was habitable. Dallas had taken a break from training long enough to get him in the cabin; today, the fourth day of cleanup, she insisted on taking a break to practice barrel racing.
“How are you gettin’ on?” Ketch asked him when he came back from giving Dallas some critiques on her technique.
Ketch was the only person Dallas had invited out to Lightning Rock. Nick had a feeling that Dallas didn’t trust many people, including him, but she trusted Tom Ketchum.
“She’s pretty quiet, most of the time.”
Ketch kept his focus on his student. “She’s been through a lot, that one.”
“I think everything we’ve been doing out at Lightning Rock,” Nick said about sifting through the remnants of Davy Dalton’s life, “would be sad for anyone.”
“Trouble is a private thing,” Ketch agreed, then went back to coaching Dallas.
Nick watched Dallas with unabashed fascination. She was in complete control of her horse; sometimes she careened around the barrels so fast and so low that it actually made him hold his breath thinking that the horse was going to tip over onto her leg and pin her on the ground. She was fearless, her hair flying loose down her back, her cowgirl hat worn square on the top of her head. He hadn’t thought she was beautiful when he first met her—cute, maybe. Now he had it in his head that she was one of the prettiest women he’d known. For sure, she was prettier on the inside than most he’d met. She was pretty on the inside like his sisters Taylor and Casey. That was the highest praise, as far as he was concerned.
“Woooo-weeee!” Dallas let out a loud whoop after her last barrel run. It felt great to be back in the saddle doing exactly what she loved to do. Blue’s coat looked a shade darker from the sweat and he had white foam dripping from his mouth.
Dallas gave Blue some big pats on the neck to praise him for a job well done. She slipped her feet out of the stirrups, dropped the reins so her horse could have his head loose and she kicked her legs forward.
“He did better with a couple days off, Ketch!”
“He’s lookin’ good. He’s gonna be ready to win big next time ye’re in it.”
Dallas picked up the reins to whoa her big blue roan gelding.
“He’s tight and fast,” Dallas said, her face flushed bright red from heat and exertion. “I can’t wait to get back out there. I can’t wait!”
“When you plannin’ on gettin’ back out there?” Ketch asked.
Nick, from her point of view, was paying particular attention to her answer to that question. The only thing she wouldn’t like about being back out on the road was the fact that she wouldn’t be spending time with Nick. They had been building a friendship, a genuine friendship, out there at Lightning Rock, and she was going to miss him. She truly was.
Dallas swung out of the saddle and landed on the ground easily. She slipped the reins over her horse’s head, loosened the girth and started walking over to the one spot where she could rinse the sweat off her horse’s neck and back.
“I think I’ve just about got enough stuffed under the mattress to make a go of it once I’m finished takin’ care of Pop’s business.”
Ketch stayed around to talk with them for a couple of minutes longer before he headed off to tend to the rest of his day. She finished rinsing off Blue before she turned him out with the rest of the horses. After such a great practice session, she really didn’t want to ruin her good mood by tackling more of the cleanup.
Back at Lightning Rock, she said to Nick, “I’m so greasy and grimy, and the water pressure in that ol’ outdoor shower Pop rigged up is as about as useless as tits on a bull. I swear I’ve got a week’s worth of dirt in my hair that I can’t get out. If I don’t take a quick minute to jump in the lake, you’ll be able to smell me from a mile away.”
He smiled at her. “Let’s avoid that.”
She stood there for a moment, just enjoying the way it felt to have Nick Brand smiling at her. So handsome, that man. She got butterflies in her stomach whenever he watched her practice—she never got nervous around anyone when she raced the barrels, but something about Nick was different. Something about Nick made her feel different.
* * *
While Dallas grabbed a bottle of shampoo, a bar of soap and a threadbare towel, Nick pondered on the way Dallas had looked at him just seconds before. She had stared into his eyes and although the moment was fleeting, he had wanted it to keep right on going. She was such a complicated woman that it was hard to figure her out. Maybe that was part of the attraction. She was a challenge.
“You can come, if you want. I’m wearing a bathin’ suit.” Dallas said, “I don’t suppose you brought anything to swim in?”
“No,” Nick said. And now, more than ever before in his life, he coveted his few pairs of clean, dry underwear. Besides, wet white underwear in front of Dallas? The family jewels looked much smaller after an exposure to cold water.
“Do you want to swim?”
“Now that you’ve put the idea in my head, I’d love to get in the water.”
“Go grab me one of your pairs of jeans, then.”
He returned with his last pair of clean jeans; he’d been avoiding wearing them because they were brand-new and too expensive to use for the kind of dirty work he’d found himself doing of late.
“Give me a minute,” Dallas said.
“Hey...what are you going to do with those?”
“Give me a minute,” she said again.
Good as her word, she was back in about a minute. “Here. Go put these on and let’s go.”
Nick took his jeans from the cowgirl. His expensive jeans were now shorts. He didn’t bother to ask her what she had done or why she had done it. That part was obvious.
“These were brand-new,” he said.
“They’re still new.”
The way she shrugged made him believe that she was completely naive to the price of the jeans she had just ruined.
“They’re just shorter. Go put ’em on.”
* * *
Dallas peeled off her sweaty T-shirt, balled it up and dropped it on the bank of the small, clear-water lake. She sat down to yank off her boots as quick as she could. So hot, sticky and gritty. She couldn’t wait to get into that cool lake water. Her luck and her curse were that she was focused to a fault. All she could think about after practice was cooling off in the lake.
“I’d thought that I’d been to all of the Bent Tree lakes when I was a kid,” the lawyer said to her.
“It’s always been my private spot.” Dallas unzipped her jeans, shoved them down over her hips and legs so she could step out of them.
Dallas had strategically worn her old Speedo bathing suit under her clothing so she could get into the lake anytime she wanted. Her feet were tough from years of walking barefoot, so the pebbles and broken brush along the side of the lake didn’t bother her.
“You much of a swimmer?” Dallas loved the feel of the earth, warmed by the sun, beneath her bare feet. She always had, ever since she was a little girl.
Nick joined her by the edge of the lake. She glanced over at him as he peeled off his shirt. It was a quick glance, but long enough to notice how light the skin on his stomach was compared to the golden color of his arms and neck. He was a fit man; not ripped and shredded like a bodybuilder, but toned as if he spent some of his time, at least, working out. She seemed to like looking at Nick whether he had a shirt on or not.
“I was captain of my high school swim team.”
His profile to her, Nick seemed to be taking stock of the clear-water lake.
“It’s deep enough to dive from that boulder over there.” She pointed a couple of feet away from where they were standing.
Not able to spend one more second in her grubby skin, Dallas tromped through the short brush, careful not to step on the Sweet William wildflowers that grew in brightly colored clumps along the bank of the lake.
The boulder was hot beneath her feet. To her, the burning was a challenge. The longer she could stand it, the tougher she was. And being tough, being able to handle her business alone in the world was a matter of survival. She didn’t have anyone to depend on. Now that Davy was gone, she didn’t feel like she had a family. The way her brother had treated Davy in his last years, like he was a pariah—that wound might scar over, but it would never truly be healed.
No. She was alone in this world.
Dallas stepped to the edge of the boulder, lifted her arms above her head and touched her fingers together like a steeple. With one strong vault, she arced into the air and cut the water with her hands with only the smallest of splashes. She knew this lake—had spent hundreds of hours in her youth swimming in this lake. This lake was her swimming pool; the banks of this lake were her playroom. At Lightning Rock, she was more at home than any other place on earth. She hadn’t known how attached she was to the place—she hadn’t realized how hard it was going to be to say goodbye to this beautiful slice of paradise—until she had begun to clear out her father’s belongings. How many times a day had she stopped herself from tearing up? Countless.
Dallas touched a rock lodged at the bottom of the lake before she somersaulted forward to push herself up to the surface with her feet. She broke through the surface of the water just in time to hear Nick’s warning.
“Incoming!”
Dallas was treading her legs so she could wipe the water off her face and out of her eyes. She opened her eyes just in time to see Nick performing a cannonball off the boulder. Nick landed a short distance away from her with a giant splash. Some of the water displaced by his cannonball hit her in the face. She sputtered a little bit, spitting out lake water and wiping the water out of her eyes for a second time.
“What score would you give me?” Nick asked after he swam over to her.
The man’s arm strokes had been clean, strong and confident. She had spent so much of her time around rodeo men who had a propensity for stretching the truth a bit, she had half doubted Nick’s claim to be captain of his high school swim team. But not anymore.
The cool, fresh water made her feel renewed. She smiled with a laugh and held up two fingers playfully. “I had a better cannonball when I was nine.”
“Oh, yeah?” Nick asked, treading water beside her. “You think you can do better? Show me.”
The competitive spirit in her made her swim to the edge of the lake and back to the boulder to at least match, if not surpass, Nick’s “city boy” cannonball. Without paying attention to the time, the two of them tried to one-up each other in the cannonball arena. They should have been heading back to the homestead and tackling the trailer, but instead, they frolicked together in the lake as if they had nothing better to do and all the time in the world. The early afternoon slipped away from them, and it wasn’t until Nick called a tie that Dallas decided to let the competition end. She shared her bar of soap and shampoo with Nick, and they both left the lake a heck of a lot cleaner than they had gone in.
Together, they sat on the boulder to dry off in the sun. Sitting next to Nick, at one of her favorite spots in the world, felt as natural as being on the back of a horse. It didn’t—couldn’t—escape her notice that Nick had been making it easy for her to let down her guard. He liked her, she could see that in his eyes when he looked at her—she could hear it in his voice when he spoke to her—but he’d always been respectful. He’d always been kind. She couldn’t remember the last time she felt so close to a man. Was she falling for Nick Brand? Her feelings were so mixed-up lately, she couldn’t be sure. But, the nervous excitement she felt in her stomach whenever he stared into her eyes made her think that she might be falling for the Chicago lawyer. Hard.
“My sinuses are clear, that’s for darn sure.” Nick pinched his nose with his fingers and shook his head a bit.
Dallas had grabbed her towel and had spread it out so they could both sit down without burning their butts and the backs of their legs.
“Mmm, I feel so good right now.” Dallas tilted her head back to let the sun shine down on her face. “There’s nothin’ I like better than spending an afternoon swimming in Sweet William. This takes me back. It really does. Way back.”
“Sweet William? That’s the name of this lake?”
“Not the official name.” Dallas kept her eyes closed. “But it’s what me and Pop call it.”
She opened her eyes and pointed to the flowers growing wild along the bank of the lake. “See all those flowers? Those are Sweet Williams. They love to drink up the sun and bloom in the summer. I love me some good ol’ American wildflowers, don’t you?”
* * *
An American wildflower. That’s what Dallas was. Much like the wildflowers she loved so well, Nick had finally found a way to think about the cowgirl in a way that made sense to his brain. She was just as pretty and wild and hearty as those Sweet Williams growing on the side of a secret lake in Montana.
Sitting next to Dallas on that boulder, so close that he could smell the sweet scent of the soap on her browned skin, he couldn’t think of a time in his life when he wanted to touch a woman as badly as he wanted to touch her. He wanted to kiss away the little droplets of water on her neck and her shoulders. He wanted to slip her modest bathing suit straps off her shoulders, just enough to kiss the water from between her modest breasts.
The cowgirl had been difficult to read, but the giant “hands off” sign she wore like a badge of honor was easy enough to decipher. If he tried to kiss her, which had been a thought in his head for a couple of days, she would freeze him out. They were friendly acquaintances now; if he made any sort of move that she interpreted as sexual, he’d lose that precious ground and then some.
Why did he care so much about preserving his budding friendship and trust building with Dallas? He wasn’t entirely sure. Yes, he was attracted to her. But he didn’t have any illusion of starting a lasting relationship with a wild-child barrel racer. His life plan and hers were at serious odds. He had tried to imagine Dallas in Chicago and had failed. So it had to be the challenge that Dallas offered to his ego. He hadn’t always been the best-looking guy in the room, or the tallest, but he was decent looking, had blue eyes that women often gushed about, and he always had access to money and lots of it. Rejection wasn’t something he’d had to deal with too often in his life. With Dallas, it seemed like a 100 percent certainty.
* * *
“I’d like to make a quick run back to the ranch for supplies. I didn’t realize how bare our cupboards are,” Dallas said as she came out of her horse trailer dressing room wearing a clean, ribbed tank top and pair of faded blue jeans. Her hair was still damp and blowing in curly wisps around her face.
His uncle Hank and aunt Barb had let Dallas “shop” at Bent Tree every week to stock up on supplies so they didn’t have to make the trip to town. Would the supplies have flown so freely if he was the only one camped out at Lightning Rock? No. He was certain of that. His uncle had refused to talk to him about the sale of Lightning Rock; his uncle had refused to discuss easement rights that would allow the new owner to travel across Bent Tree land to reach Lightning Rock. So far, he’d been happy to avoid that “come to Jesus” moment he needed to have with his uncle. There was still so much cleanup left to do. But he couldn’t let his uncle put this off indefinitely. Uncle Hank, who was known in his community as being levelheaded and fair, lost all of that levelheadedness and reason when the topic of rightful ownership of Lightning Rock came up.
“You comin’ or stayin’?” Dallas put her cowgirl hat on, which signaled to him that she was officially ready to go.
Normally, he would steer clear of the farmhouse in order to avoid any possible confrontation with his uncle. Today, now halfway through the cleanup efforts, Nick realized that time for avoidance was running out.
“I’ll come with you.”
If Dallas was surprised by his choice, she didn’t show it on her face. She was a woman who kept her cards held tightly to her chest. Dallas had to know that she was smack-dab in the middle of a family feud, yet she never asked him one probing question. She kept herself focused on tying up the loose ends of her father’s life and let him handle his own family business.
Dallas climbed behind the wheel of her early-model Bronco and cranked the engine. Nick had been subjected to the cowgirl’s driving enough to grab the handle above the window and hold on tight. She preferred to be the one in the driver’s seat—so did he. If they were in Chicago he would be driving, but he was on her turf now, and she had won that battle. On the rare occasion that they had to go somewhere together, she drove.
“You missin’ your life back East?” Dallas asked him. This was about as personal as she had ever gotten with him.
“I do,” he admitted to her.
He hadn’t wanted to pressure her to go through her father’s stockpile of possessions on a timer—this was part of her grieving process and he was trying his best to be respectful. He saw his friends having a good time on social media, he thought of all the work waiting for him at his new gig at his father’s law firm and it made him miss life in Chicago. He missed fine dining and yachting and a comfortable bed. He missed his new Jaguar.
“Yeah.” Dallas had one arm resting on the open window, her left leg bent so her boot was resting on the driver’s seat. “I miss my life.”
He’d already known that about her, so this admission was just confirmation. She had this restlessness about her. There was always a distance in her eyes, as if only half of her was really with him in Montana. There wasn’t a boyfriend out there pulling her away—it was her life. It was the road. It was the competition.
“Do you have a place you call home?” Nick tightened his grip as they flew over a couple of bumps in the road. “Other than here, I mean.”
Dallas gunned the gas, steering the loud Bronco onto the paved highway. “Not really.”
Okay. Let me rephrase that question. “Do you have a place in mind to land once you stop barrel racing?”
Dallas laughed and glanced at him like he had asked a very odd question. “I ain’t never gonna quit barrel racing.”
The next question he asked came out of nowhere for him, and afterward he was left wondering what had possessed him to even bring the subject up. “Do you want to get married? Have kids?”
“I haven’t really spent too much time givin’ it much thought.”
The conversation stopped abruptly with that last question, and Nick discovered just how easy it was to step on a land mine with this woman. Most women weren’t offended by the question of marriage and children even if they planned on building their career instead of building a family. Not so with Dallas Dalton. His asking her about her future status as wife and mother had seemed to touch a raw nerve.
“That’s Clint’s truck right there.” Dallas nodded toward one of the trucks parked near the main house at Bent Tree.
Damn.
If Clint was at Bent Tree, there was a good chance his older sister, Taylor, was with him. He loved his sister—they’d always been close. But they were on opposing sides of the Lightning Rock issue and he didn’t want to get into yet another battle of words with Taylor. He had stopped by his sister’s house in Helena when he first arrived in Montana to meet his niece and catch up, but the minute the conversation had turned to Lightning Rock, they had gotten into an argument. He couldn’t remember the last time he’d argued with Taylor.
“And that’s Brock’s truck right there.” Dallas shifted into Park and shut off the engine. “It looks to me like you’re in for a bit of a family reunion.”
Nick nodded in response.
Both of his sisters, one older and one younger, had married Montana men and settled within one day’s driving distance to Bent Tree Ranch. He had opted to not stay at Bent Tree to avoid conflict with Hank and he had begged off staying with Taylor or his younger sister, Casey, for the same reason. He’d been in Montana for the first time in years, and he’d spent most of his time there avoiding his own family. Maybe it was time to stop avoiding and start facing them. Maybe it was long past time.
Chapter Four (#uaf8c1d78-9760-5724-92b3-140b87c16959)
His sisters greeted him in the only way they ever had: with open arms. Yes, they disagreed about how to handle Lightning Rock, but that couldn’t stop them from greeting each other with love. They had grown up in a home that was almost the exact opposite of the warm, welcoming feel of the farmhouse at Bent Tree Ranch.
Their house in the wealthy area of Hyde Park was a mansion; his mother insisted on keeping a full staff around the clock. Aunt Barbara, who had grown up in Chicago and run in the same social circles as his mother, prided herself on her cooking. His mother prided herself on having the ability to hire a personal chef. Hank and his father, Angus, were the closest brothers in age, but they couldn’t be further apart in temperament. Angus was austere and withdrawn from the family; the more his marriage to Vivian fractured, the more time he spent at the office. Nick couldn’t remember the last time he saw his parents show real affection toward each other. There was always tension crackling in the air when they were together—Nick often wished that they would just get a divorce already. So, very early on in their lives, it had been Taylor, Nick and Casey against the world.
“Nick.” His sister Taylor used one arm to hug him while she held her daughter, Penelope, with her other arm. “I didn’t know you would be here today.”
“We’re just in for supplies.” Nick tweaked his little niece on the nose while his eyes shifted from one person to another until they landed on his uncle seated at the head of the long table in the center of the kitchen.
Taylor switched with their little sister, Casey, who stepped into his arms and hugged him as if she hadn’t seen him in a long time even though they had seen each other when he first arrived in Montana.
“How are you feeling?” Nick asked his redheaded sister.
“I’m okay.” Casey smiled up at him. There was something in that smile that he didn’t believe. Casey had been diagnosed with uterine cancer and had undergone a partial hysterectomy. His younger sister had never made it a secret that she wanted to bear her own children; the cancer had taken that away from her and the family was watching her closely to see how she would handle it long-term.
One by one he made contact with everyone in the room. He had his hand clasped with the hand of his cousin Luke, a retired marine, when he saw Dallas come in to the kitchen. She walked directly to Clint, her best friend and Taylor’s bull-riding husband; the cowgirl hugged Clint and her eyes were full of trust and happiness when she looked at the bull rider. Nick felt a twinge of jealousy at the closeness between Clint and Dallas—it made him wonder how Taylor, who was looking at Dallas a little warily, could handle her husband having a woman as a best friend.
Aunt Barbara interrupted his train of thought. “This couldn’t have worked out any better if I planned it myself. Why don’t the two of you go get yourselves washed up? We were just about to sit down to eat.”
It felt a little bit as if the universe had conspired against him, but he was happy to see his sisters and his aunt’s kitchen smelled amazing. There was no sense passing up the delicious-smelling pot roast in the oven. He couldn’t cook worth a damn and neither could Dallas.
“Go on.” Aunt Barb tried to herd him toward the foyer so he’d hook a sharp left and wash his hands in the downstairs bathroom.
“Let me just say hello to Uncle Hank first.”
A look of concern brushed over his aunt’s face, but she let him do things his way. His way was to talk to his uncle without ruining his aunt’s lovely dinner.
“Good to see you, Uncle Hank.” Nick held out his hand to him.
Hank Brand, a man who closely resembled his own father, half stood up, shook his hand firm and brief and then sat back down.
“Go wash up like your aunt wants,” his uncle said. “We’ll have time to hash over things later.”
Aunt Barb must’ve been working on her husband night and day—this was a huge change in his uncle’s position. The fact that his uncle was even willing to sit down and discuss the future of Lightning Rock was better than he’d been willing to do for over a decade.
“Thank you, Uncle Hank.” Nick gave him a nod. “I look forward to it.”
That wasn’t necessarily true. He wasn’t looking forward to “hashing” things out with his uncle; he had resented his father for shirking his own responsibility and putting it on his shoulders. Yes, his father’s caseload as a circuit court judge was jammed. But for once, Nick wished his father would “unjam” that caseload and put his family first.
Aunt Barbara orchestrated the seating and he took his seat between Clint and Luke.
“Dallas!” he heard his aunt holler above the din of the family talking among themselves, all voices mingling together in a loud cacophony. “Where are you going?”
Nick followed his aunt’s sight line to where Dallas was just about to disappear into the foyer. “I’ve got work to do.”
“You’ve got eating to do.” His aunt shook her hand and gestured for Dallas to sit down.
Nick thoroughly enjoyed watching Dallas actually get outbossed by his aunt. Dallas ruled her own roost, but Bent Tree was ruled by Barbara Brand. Period. End of story.
* * *
Dallas hadn’t planned on joining the Brand family for dinner, but she couldn’t deny that she was glad Barbara had invited her to stay. Ever since she had been a little girl, eating at the Brands’ had been a treat. This was the table where she learned what it was like to be a real family—with a mom and a dad who loved each other. And perhaps she would always felt a little bit like the girl with her nose pressed against the glass, even when the Brand family did everything they could to make her feel like she was an honorary family member. Either way, sitting down for a meal in the farmhouse was the closest thing to a typical American family she had ever experienced. Barbara’s kitchen was buzzing with activity—loud talking, occasional arguing and so much laughter. Dallas sat quietly, watching, enjoying and soaking every second in.
The food started to get passed around the table, and Dallas’s stomach started to churn with hunger and anticipation. Nick smiled at her happily as he filled his plate with heaping spoonfuls of mashed potatoes and smothered it with his aunt’s gravy made from the pan drippings, pot roast with homegrown carrots and onions. For the first part of the meal, she noticed that Nick didn’t talk—he just ate. Every now and again, Nick would make happy noises in between chewing and washing down the food with glass after glass of his aunt’s homemade root beer.
“This beats our dinner prospects out at Lightning Rock, hands down,” Nick said to her while he loaded some more food onto his plate.
It was Dallas’s pleasure to watch Nick interact with his family. She could see how close he was to his sisters, how much they adored him, and it spoke well of the kind of man he was. A decent man. A good man. A man to admire.
A man to love?
By the end of the meal, Dallas had landed on one certainty – having dinner with Nick and the rest of the Brand clan would be one of her favorite memories.
* * *
After his second full plate of food, Nick felt satisfied enough to slow down and actually enjoy the third plateful of food and the atmosphere of his first family meal at Bent Tree Ranch since he was a teenager. It had always felt homey and welcoming here at the ranch; his aunt had a big hand in that.
He’d found himself comparing his mother with his aunt, and wondering how two women from the same place, the same neighborhood, could turn out so radically different. But they did. Aunt Barb always had something good cooking in the kitchen. She was a homemaker, wife and mother, and proud of it. This was what he remembered: good food and good conversation. Laughter. Family. He’d missed this feeling and all those childhood memories he had pushed aside when the family fractured after the reading of his grandfather’s will bubbled to the surface. It had hurt to be separated from his aunt and his uncle. It had hurt not to be able to return to Bent Tree Ranch.
“Save room for dessert.” His aunt, who had leaned over him from behind to take his empty plate, stopped first to give him a little hug.
Nick groaned. He knew he would have double helpings of whatever his aunt would be offering for dessert. No doubt it would be homemade, chock-full of sugar and butter, super delicious, and fattening. He didn’t eat a lot of sweets even though he had a substantial sweet tooth. Law school required him to spend a lot of time sitting and studying—he didn’t want to develop a “dad bod” this early in his life. But with all the physical exertion he was putting out just to keep up with Dallas out at Lightning Rock, he could stand to eat a slice or two of whatever awesome dessert his aunt had baked.
His aunt stopped next by her husband’s side. She put her free hand on her husband’s shoulder—Nick remembered how affectionate his aunt and uncle were with each other and it was nice to see that, like many things at Bent Tree, that hadn’t changed either.
“Why don’t you and Nick go have a chat while I get things ready for dessert?” he heard his aunt suggest quietly.
The expression on Uncle Hank’s long face, a face that resembled Nick’s father’s in so many ways, shifted from satisfied to annoyed.
“I already had it in the works, woman. You don’t have ta keep remindin’ me like I’m Little Johnny who can’t tie his own shoes without help. You manage your business and I’ll handle mine.”
Aunt Barb didn’t appear the least bit bothered by her husband’s sharp comment. She just smiled, gave Hank a quick peck on the cheek and then took his plate over to the sink.
Nick could feel his uncle’s eyes on him; he had been trying to get Uncle Hank alone to discuss Lightning Rock, but Hank wasn’t interested in opening up a dialogue. He was reminded of the phrase “be careful what you wish for” because the idea of sitting down with his uncle was making him anxious in a way that he didn’t normally feel. But this was Uncle Hank—a man he’d idolized all his life—and he was talking about the one thing that his uncle loved only second to his family—Bent Tree Ranch.
His uncle balled up his napkin, dropped it on his plate, pushed back roughly from the table and stood up. Uncle Hank was a tall, slender man; the deep crevices around his eyes, on his forehead and around his mouth bespoke of a life lived in the sun. Even though he was eventually going to turn the operations of Bent Tree over to his middle son, Tyler, one day, Hank Brand appeared to be far from retirement.
Nick met his uncle Hank’s eyes; his uncle, without a word, gestured with his hand for Nick to get up and follow him. Nick wiped his mouth with his napkin before he stood up.
“Hey,” Taylor, always the mother of the siblings, said, “he’s dad’s brother – be respectful.”
Instead of addressing Taylor’s worry that he didn’t have full control of the temper he’d had since he was a teenager even as a full-grown man, Nick merely said to those still sitting at the table, “Save my spot.”
Nick followed his uncle into a small office off the kitchen. This was, as Nick remembered, Hank’s sanctuary. It was the one spot in the house that Aunt Barbara didn’t touch—no matter how disorganized or cluttered it became.
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