Montana Sky

Because he could read her feelings on her face, he shook her gently. “You can’t look me in the eye and tell me you’re not in love with me, Tess. Every time you start to say you’re not, you look away and don’t say anything.”
    “I have to go. I’ll miss my plane.” She broke away, turned, and fled.
    She knew what she was doing. Exactly what she was doing. She rushed past gate after gate telling herself that. How was she supposed to live on a horse ranch in Montana? She had her career to think of. Her laptop bumped against her hip. She had a new screenplay to start, a novel to work on. She belonged in LA.
    Swearing, she spun around and ran back, pushing through other people who rushed in the opposite direction. “Nate!” She saw his hat, on the downward glide of the escalator, and doubled her pace. “Nate, wait a minute.”
    He was already at the bottom when she clambered her way down. Out of breath, she stood in front of him, a hand pressed to her speeding heart. She looked into his eyes. “I’m not in love with you,” she said without a blink, watched his eyes narrow. “See that, smart guy? I can look right at you and lie.”
    And with a laugh, she jumped into his arms. “Oh, what the hell. I can work anywhere.”
    He kissed her, set her on her feet again. “Okay. Let’s go home.”
    “My bags.”
    “They’ll come back.”
    She looked over her shoulder and said a spiritual good-bye to LA. “You don’t seem very surprised.”
    “I’m not.” He scooped her out the door, then up into his arms and into a wild circle. “I’m patient.”
     
    B EN FOUND WILLA RUNNING WIRE ALONG THE FENCE line that separated Three Rocks from Mercy. It made him realize he should have been doing the same. Still, hedismounted, strolled over to her. “Need a hand?”
    “No, I’ve got it.”
    “I was wondering how Ham was getting on.”
    “He’s cranky as a constipated bear. I’d say he’s coming along fine.”
    “Good. Let me do that for you.”
    “I know how to run fence.”
    “Just let me do it for you.” He yanked the wire from her.
    Stepping back, she set her hands on her hips. “You’ve been coming around here a lot, wanting to do things for me. It’s got to stop.”
    “Why?”
    “You’ve got your own land to worry about. I can run Mercy.”
    “Run every damn thing,” he muttered.
    “The term of the will’s done, Ben. You don’t have to check things over around here anymore.”
    His eyes weren’t friendly when they flickered under the brim of his hat. “You think that’s all there is to it?”
    “I don’t know. You haven’t been interested in much else lately.”
    “What’s that supposed to mean?”
    “What it says. You haven’t exactly been a regular visitor in my bed the last few weeks.”
    “I’ve been occupied.”
    “Well, now I’m occupied, so go run your own wire.”
    He braced his legs apart much as she’d braced her own and faced her between the fence posts. “This line’s as much mine as yours.”
    “Then you should’ve been checking it, same as me.”
    He tossed the wire down between them, like a boundary between them, between their land. “Okay, you want to know what’s going on with me, I’ll tell you.” He tugged two thin gold hoops out of his pocket and shoved them into her hand.
    “Oh.” She frowned down at them. “I’d forgotten about them.”
    “I haven’t.” He’d kept them—God knew why, whenevery time he looked at them he relived the night, the dark, the fear. And each time he looked at them he wondered if he’d have found her in time if she hadn’t been smart enough, strong enough, to leave a trail.
    “So, you found my earrings.” She tucked them in her own pocket.
    “Yeah, I found them. And I climbed up that ridge listening to him screaming at you. Saw him holding a knife to your throat. Watched a line of blood run down your skin where he nicked you.”
    Instinctively she pressed her hand to her throat. There were times when she could still feel it there, the keen point of the knife her father had put in a killer’s hand.
    “It’s done,” she told him. “I don’t much like going back there.”
    “I go back there plenty. I can see that flash of lightning, your eyes in that flash of lightning when you knew what I was going to do. When you trusted me to do it.”
    She hadn’t closed her eyes, he remembered. She’d kept them open, level, watching as he squeezed the trigger.
    “I put a bullet in a man about six inches