Montana Sky

hard-packed dirt as men went about their chores in the ranch yard. No radio played tinny country this morning, nor was the winter silence broken by the voices of men at work. If glances were tossed toward the main house, the porch, the space beneath, no one commented.
    An engine gunned; a rig headed out. And the silence came back, a lingering guest at a party gone wrong.
    “You may have to push her a bit now,” Ben said at length. “It’s an angle we can’t afford to ignore. Not after this.”
    “I’ve already thought of that. I want her to get some rest first. Goddamn it.” The grain scoop Adam held snapped at the handle with the quick flex of his hands. “She should be safe here.”
    The temper he rarely acknowledged swirled up so fast, so huge it choked his words. He wanted to pound something, rip something to shreds. But he had nothing. Even his hands were empty now.
    “That was a child out there. How could someone do that to a child?”
    He whirled on them, his hands in fists, his eyes dark and burning with rage. “How close was he? Was he out there, looking through the windows? Or was he inside with us? Did the son of a bitch touch her, dance with her? If she’d walked outside to get a breath of air, would he have been there?”
    He looked down at his hands, opened them to stare at the palms. “I could kill him myself, and it would be easy.” His gaze shifted, skimmed both men. “It would be so easy.”
    “Adam.” Lily’s voice was hardly a whisper, quiet fear at the edge of his black rage. With her arms crossed, her fingers digging hard into her shoulders, she stepped closer.
    “You should be sleeping.” His muscles quivered with the effort to hold back the fury. “We’re nearly done here. Go on home to bed.”
    “I need to talk to you.” She’d heard enough, seen enough to know the time had come. “Alone, please.” She turned to Ben and Nate. “I’m sorry. I need to speak with Adam alone.”
    “Take her inside,” Nate suggested. “Ben and I can finish this. Take her in,” he repeated. “She’s cold.”
    “You shouldn’t have come out here.” Adam moved to her, careful not to touch. “Let’s go in, have some coffee.”
    “I put some on before I came out.” She noted that he stayed an arm’s length away, and it made her ashamed. “It should be ready now.”
    He walked her out the back, across the corral fence and to his rear door. From habit, he scraped his boots before going inside.
    The kitchen smelled cozily of coffee just brewed, but the light was thin and stingy, and it prompted him to flip the switch and fill the room with hard artificial light.
    “Sit down,” she began. “I’ll get it.”
    “No.” He stepped in front of her as she reached for the cupboard door. Still he didn’t touch her. “You sit.”
    “You’re angry.” She hated the tremor in her voice, hated the fact that anger from a man, even this man, could turn her knees to water. “I’m sorry.”
    “For what?” It snapped out of him before he could stop it. Even when she backed up a step, he couldn’t block it all. “What the hell have you got to apologize to me for?”
    “For everything I haven’t told you.”
    “You don’t owe me explanations.” The cupboard door slammed against the wall as he wrenched it open. And out of the corner of his eye he saw her jerk in reaction. “Don’t flinch from me.” He leveled his breathing, kept his eyes on the cups set neatly in rows on the shelves. “Don’t do that, Lily. I’d cut off my hands before I’d use them on you that way.”
    “I know.” Tears swam into her eyes and were blinked brutally back. “I know that, in my heart. It’s my head, Adam. And I do owe you.” She walked to the round kitchen table with its simple white bowl of glossy red apples. “More than explanations. You’ve been my friend. My anchor. You’ve been everything I’ve needed since I came here.”
    “You don’t pay someone back for friendship,” he said wearily.
    “You wanted me.” Her breath hitched once as he turned slowly to face her. “I thought it was just . . . just the usual.” Her nervous hands brushed at her hair, at the thighs of the jeans she’d pulled on before leaving the main house that morning. “But you never touched me that way, or pressured me, or made me feel obliged. You can’t know what it’s like to feel obliged to let someone have you just to keep peace. How degrading that is. I have things to tell you.”
    She