Montana Sky

couldn’t take his eyes off her, the way she stood there all flushed and rumpled, with that sexy mouth swollen from his. “Or maybe I’d have pushed different. I’ve been thinking about you, that way, for a while.”
    Suspicion flickered in her eyes. “Why?”
    “Damned if I know. It just is. Now that I’ve had my hands on you, I’d have to say I’m going to be thinking more. You’ve got a nice feel to you, Willa.” The humor cameback, curving his lips. “And you were doing a damn fine job of kissing me back, for an amateur.”
    “You’re not the first man I’ve kissed, and you won’t be the last.”
    “That doesn’t mean you can’t practice on me—when you get the urge.” He walked over to take his hat and jacket from the pegs by the door. If either of them noticed that he gave her a wide berth, neither commented. “What are friends for?”
    “I don’t have any trouble controlling my urges.”
    “You’re telling me,” he said, with feeling, and fit his hat on his head. “But I have a notion I’m about to have a hell of a time controlling mine where you’re concerned.”
    He opened the door, gave her one long last look. “You’ve got one hell of a mouth, Willa. One hell of a mouth.”
    He shut the door, shrugged into his jacket. As he circled around the house toward his rig, he let out a whistling breath. He’d thought a little nuzzling in the kitchen would take both of their minds off the trouble hanging over Mercy. It had done a hell of a lot more than that.
    He rubbed a hand over his belly, knowing the knots twisting inside would be there for quite a while yet. She’d gotten to him, and gotten to him hard. And the fact that she had no idea what they could do to each other in the dark only made it more terrifying.
    And arousing.
    He’d always chosen women who knew the ropes, who understood the pleasures, the rules and the responsibilities. Women, he admitted, who didn’t expect more than a good, healthy ride where nobody got hurt, nobody got hobbled.
    He glanced back at the house as he climbed behind the wheel, turned the key in the ignition. It wouldn’t be so simple with Willa, not when he’d be her first.
    He drove away from Mercy without a clue to what he would do about her. All he knew for certain was that Willa was going to have to accept that Ben McKinnon was going to be the one she’d change things with.
    He glanced toward the bunkhouse as he drove past and thought of everything she’d been through in the past fewweeks. Enough, he thought, to break anyone to bits. Anyone but Willa.
    Letting out a long sigh, he headed for his own land. He’d be there for her, whether she liked it or not. And he’d take it slow in that certain area. He’d even try his hand at being gentle.
    But he’d be there.

TEN
    S NOW CAME HARD AND FAST AND EARLY . IT BURIED THE pastures and had the drift fences groaning. Men worked day and night to see that the cattle—too stupid to dig through the snow to grass—were fed and tended.
    November proved to be a poor boundary against winter, and before the end of it, the valley was socked in.
    Skiers came, flocking to Big Sky and other resorts to schuss down slopes and drink brandy by roaring fires. Tess gave some thought to joining them for a day or two. Not that she’d ever been much on skiing, but the brandy sounded fine. In any case there would be people, conversations, perhaps flirtations, certainly civilization.
    It might be worth strapping herself to a couple of slats of wood and tumbling down a mountain.
    She talked to her agent constantly, using Ira more as a bridge to her life than a representative of her work. She wrote, making progress with a new screenplay and detailing daily life in her journal.
    Not that she considered the routine on the ranch much of a life.
    She continued to take charge of the chickens and was actually rather pleased that she had a handle on the job now and could slip an egg from under a broody hen without so much as a peck.
    She had a bad moment, very bad, one day when she strolled behind the coop and walked into Bess, quickly, competently, ruthlessly wringing the neck of one of Tess’s flock.
    There’d been a lot of squawking then—though not from the chickens. Two of them lay dead as Judas on the ground while the women shouted at each other over the corpses.
    Tess had skipped dinner that night—chicken pot pie—but it had taught her the error of assigning names to her beaked and feathered friends.
    Every