Montana Sky

’ T UNTIL WILLA WAS BACK AT MERCY AND unpacking that she realized that through the last twenty-four hours of her stay at the spa, she hadn’t thought of the ranch, of her troubles, her responsibilities at all. And now that she did realize it, there was a quick wash of guilt that it should have been so easy to leave it all behind, to immerse herself in the pampering and pleasure.
    Like walking into an alternate reality, she supposed, and grimaced as she tumbled pretty gold boxes onto her bed. Which might explain why she’d barely put up a struggle when Tess and Lily had urged her to buy creams, lotions, scents, shampoo.
    Christ Almighty, hundreds of dollars’ worth of female foolishness that she was unlikely to remember to use.
    So she’d give the lot of them to Bess, she decided, to go with the fancy perfumed soaps and bubble bath she’d bought her.
    In any case, it was good to be getting back into jeans, she thought, tugging them on. It was better to have Adam tell her there’d been no whisper of trouble over the weekend. The men were starting to relax again, though the round-the-clock guard remained in effect. Calf-pulling season was winding down, and the calendar insisted that spring was on the way.
    You wouldn’t know it, she mused, trailing her shirt from her fingers as she walked to the window. The air swooping down from Canada was as bitter as an old woman with gout. There was no snow in the sky, and for that she was grateful. Still, Willa knew the vagaries of March—and April, for that matter. The reality of spring remained as distant as the moon.
    And she longed for it.
    That surprised her as well. Normally she was content in any season. Winter was work, certainly, but it also offered, even demanded, periods of rest. For the land, for the people on it.
    Spring might be a time of rebirth and rejoicing, but it was also a time of mud, of drought or impossible driving rain, of aching muscles, fields to be planted, cattle to be separated and led to range.
    But she longed for it, longed to see even one single bud bloom—the flower of the bitterroot, triumphing out of the mud; a laurel, springing up miraculously in the thickening forest; wild columbine teasing a mountain ridge.
    Amazed at herself, she shook her head and stepped back from the window. Since when had she started dreaming of flowers?
    It was Tess’s doing, she imagined. All that talk about romance and sex and men. Just a natural segue into spring, flowers—and mating season.
    Chuckling, she studied the scatter of gold boxes over the simple quilt on her bed. And what were those, she admitted, but expensive mating lures?
    At the sound of footsteps she called out and began to gather the boxes up. “Bess? Got a minute? I’ve some other things in here you might want. I don’t know why I—”
    She broke off as Ben, not Bess, stepped into the room.
    “What the hell are you doing here? Don’t you knock?”
    “Did. Bess let me in.” His brows went up, and the eyes under them lit with appreciation. “Well, hell, Willa, look at you.”
    She was grateful she’d pulled on jeans at least and also very aware she was shirtless but for the thin, clinging silkof her thermal undershirt. Her nipples hardened traitorously even as she snatched up the flannel shirt she’d tossed aside.
    “I’m not back an hour,” she complained as she punched her arms through shirtsleeves, “and you’re in my face. I don’t have time to chat or go over reports. I’ve already lost a whole weekend.”
    “Doesn’t appear you lost a thing.” He was understandably disappointed when she buttoned up the plaid shirt but intrigued by the busy, businesslike way her fingers executed the task. Eventually he’d like to see them go in reverse.
    “You look fine.” He came closer. “Rested. Pretty.” And lifted a hand to the spiraling curls raining over her shoulders. “Sexy. I had a couple of bad moments when Nate told me about the place you were going. Figured you might come back with your face all tarted up and your hair chopped off like one of those New York models trying to look like a teenage boy. Why do you suppose they want to do that?”
    “I couldn’t say.”
    “How’d they get all that hair of yours into those corkscrews?”
    “You hand those people enough money, they’ll do anything.” She tossed back the curls, faintly embarrassed by them. “What do you want, Ben, to stand here and talk about salon treatments?”
    “Hmm?” It was the damnedest