Montana Secrets Read online

  Not that he was ever inconsiderate or rude. His innate good manners made him the perfect guest. He arrived with books or candy for her and a bottle of fine whiskey or a box of hand-rolled cigars for her father. And unlike Marc and her dad, who considered the kitchen women’s territory, Ryan insisted on helping her with the washing up after meals.

  “You don’t have to do this,” she’d protested that first night when he’d entered the kitchen, picked up a dish towel and begun drying the skillet she’d just scrubbed. “Marc and Dad wouldn’t be caught dead in here.”

  “Everybody pitched in where I grew up,” Ryan had said with an easy grin. “Made the work go faster.”

  His hand grazed hers when she passed him a pan, and the unexpected contact had sent her teenage heart into a wild flutter. She pivoted quickly toward the sink to hide her blushing cheeks.

  Ryan chatted constantly as they worked, but always about the ranch. His curiosity about their way of life had seemed insatiable.

  “What’s a quarter horse?” he would ask, or, “How did your dad choose which breed of cattle to raise?” or, “How many head can your acreage support?”

  He’d posed plenty of questions about the ranch and Montana, all right, but never any about her. Cat had soon accepted that Ryan didn’t even think of her as a girl, much less a woman. When he wasn’t teasing her or helping out in the kitchen, he’d treated her as if she were a fence post. Which wasn’t surprising. Why should he notice her? A fence post was the ideal description of her feminine attributes. She’d never bothered with how she looked. And she’d been too tongue-tied with awe to converse wittily with their handsome visitor.

  Until the summer she’d turned twenty.

  Before Ryan and Marc arrived to spend their leave prior to their first overseas posting, she’d carefully planned her campaign and laid her trap like the best military strategist. Ryan hadn’t visited the ranch in over a year, and in that interval, Cat had learned to show off her best features. Choosing well-cut and properly fitted clothes instead of wearing Marc’s cast-offs made even her usual jeans and plaid shirts alluring.

  With an art close to magic, Madge Kennedy down at the Kut ’n Kurl in town had trimmed Cat’s untamed hair into an attractive shoulder-length style that showed off her heart-shaped face to best advantage. Adding subtle makeup, a killer sky-blue dress that emphasized her shapely figure and matched her eyes and sporting strappy heels that showed off long legs formerly hidden beneath denim and boots, Cat had paced nervously in her bedroom until Ryan’s arrival.

  She usually waited for her brother and Ryan on the front porch, then ran flying down the path into Marc’s arms for a bear hug upon their arrival, but that day she delayed, holding back until she heard them enter the spacious living room. Then she made her entrance.

  When Marc spotted her, his jaw dropped and his eyes widened. “Who are you, and what have you done with the Pest?” he demanded, circling her for a closer inspection and shaking his head in amazement.

  Her attention darted immediately to Ryan, who had dropped his bag, crossed his arms over his chest and leaned one shoulder against the doorjamb, his expression serious but his eyes shining. “Looks like your little sister is all grown up now, cowboy.”

  She reveled in the obvious approval in Ryan’s voice but said nothing, afraid she’d spoil the effect she’d worked so hard to create.

  “Man, oh, man.” Marc blinked in disbelief. “If I’d known you’d turned into such a hot number, Pest, I’d never have brought this ladykiller into the house.”

  “Ladykiller?” Cat experienced a moment of panic. Somehow she’d neglected to consider the possibility that Ryan already had a girlfriend. Marc had never mentioned one. Fixing her anxious gaze on Ryan, she was glad he couldn’t hear her heart pounding beneath the scooped neckline of her dress. He met her glance, but his expression remained inscrutable.

  “Yeah, the women are wild about him,” Marc explained with the fraternal grin that made her tingle with happiness to have her brother home again. “Everywhere we go, women are always throwing themselves at him. Many a time I’ve had to sacrifice and place myself between him and harm’s way.”

  “Sacrifice?” Ryan said with a wry laugh. “So that’s what you call it.”

  Marc shrugged. “You’ve never seemed interested in any of the female attention. I was just trying to save you the aggravation.”

  Ryan stared at Cat with a laser look that heated her from head to toe. “I think,” he said in a deliciously languid tone, “my interest has just been piqued.”

  Inwardly savoring the possibility of victory, Cat remained outwardly cool. “I’m sure plenty of girls will be happy to hear that at the dance tonight.”

  “What dance?” Marc asked.

  “You’ve been away too long, brother dear,” Cat said. “How could you forget the annual Territorial Celebration at the town hall?”

  Marc turned to Ryan. “The music’s kind of hokey, but the food’s always good. Want to go?”

  “If you guys are too tired,” Cat said quickly, “I have a casserole I can heat for your supper before I leave.”

  She held her breath, waiting for their reply. She’d dreamed for months of dancing with Ryan, wondering how his arms would feel around her, dying to talk with him alone without Marc claiming all his attention.

  “I don’t know about you, cowboy,” Ryan said, “but I think you’ll be taking a chance letting Cat go alone looking like that. She’ll need the Marines to keep the locals at bay.”

  “You could be right,” Marc agreed.

  Ryan nodded. “We’ll have to volunteer.”

  Yes!

  Cat called on every ounce of self-control to keep from pumping her fist in victory. Ryan had noticed her at last, but she’d have to take care not to appear too interested. If he guessed how strongly she felt about him, he’d hit the Libby highway running and never look back. The last thing she wanted was to scare him off by seeming too eager.

  “Do you have a date?” Ryan asked, catching her by surprise.

  Her earlier panic returned. Would he think nobody else found her interesting?

  Marc jumped to her rescue. “Nobody brings a date to the Territorial Celebration. Everyone just shows up and has a good time.”

  Less than an hour later, Cat was sandwiched between Marc and Ryan on the front seat of Marc’s truck, headed for town. She and Ryan each balanced one of her homemade huckleberry pies, her contribution toward the evening’s covered dish dinner, on their laps. Occasionally, when the road curved, she slid toward Ryan, grazing his thigh with her own, relishing the warmth of the contact and making her even more aware of his clean, rugged, masculine scent and the attractiveness of his profile.

  Telling stories of his and Marc’s adventures at the Defense Language Institute where they’d studied Arabic and other Middle Eastern languages in preparation for their posting to Kuwait, Ryan kept her laughing, but her thoughts constantly strayed to the dancing that would follow supper and her hopes for spending time alone with him.

  When they arrived, the town hall was bustling with people. In the adjacent tree-shaded park, tables had been erected from sawhorses and planks and covered with cloths, and tiny white lights had been strung through the trees. The tables were already loaded with food.

  Cat spied her father, Gabriel, among the men circling the smoking barbecue pit. He’d left the ranch with his side of beef and gallon of secret barbecue sauce long before Marc and Ryan had arrived and was helping with the cooking. The succulent odors drifting on the breeze made her mouth water, and she was surprised to discover she was hungry. She had expected to be too excited to eat, but being near Ryan seemed to activate all her senses, even her appetite.

  While Marc and Ryan crossed the park to greet her father, Cat peeked inside the open doors of the town hall, decorated with red, white and blue streamers, and watched the band setting up on the stage at the far end of the room that had been cleared for dancing. When the mayor rang the bell in the hall’s
squat tower, the signal for supper to begin, she returned to the park to join her family and Ryan.

  Ryan sat beside her at supper, but Marc and her father monopolized the conversation with talk of the ranch and the problems created by the dry spring they’d had. Later, however, when the band in the hall began playing their first slow song, Ryan asked her to dance. Feeling as if she were walking on clouds, she accompanied him into the building and slid happily into his arms.

  Even though he was dressed casually in jeans and a chambray shirt, Ryan carried himself with an unmistakable military bearing that turned the heads of every woman in the room. The charismatic confidence of a man accustomed to command blended with the fluid grace of a body trained and coordinated like a perfectly tuned machine, and he danced like a dream. Cat had to struggle to keep her mind off the delicious pressure of his hand at the small of her back. That, combined with the dangerous warmth in his eyes, made concentrating on their conversation difficult.

  “Marc tells me you graduate from college next June,” Ryan said. “What will you do then?”

  “Teach. I’ll be interning in the fall.”

  “Will you stay in Montana?”

  “I hope to get a job at the high school here in town.”

  “That’s a surprise.”

  “Why?” She drew back and gazed at him.

  “I figured you had the wanderlust, like Marc. The only reason he joined the Marines was to travel.”

  “But as soon as he’s seen the world,” Cat explained, “he’s heading back to help Dad run the ranch. For Marc, Montana will always be home.”

  “And you don’t want to travel?”

  “I’m a homebody. I have everything I need right here.”

  Except you, she thought.

  “What will you teach? Elementary school?”

  She shook her head, pleased at his interest. “High school history.”

  Ryan groaned. “I hated history in high school.”

  “Then you didn’t have the right teacher.”

  His killer grin returned. “If my teacher had looked anything like you, I’m sure I would have enjoyed the class a whole lot more.”

  Her cheeks heated at his compliment, a reaction she couldn’t control, one that she’d inherited from her mother and that caused her endless embarrassment.

  “My old history teacher made us memorize long lists of people, places and dates,” Ryan said. “Why did you choose such a boring subject?”

  “But it isn’t!”

  He cocked an eyebrow skeptically. “I’ll need evidence before I’ll believe that claim.”

  She studied his face, wondering if he’d reverted to teasing her, but his expression seemed serious.

  “History is much more than people, places and dates,” she said. “I think the most important lesson we can learn from history is how choices always have consequences, whether those choices are made by nations or individuals.”

  “The old ‘those who don’t remember history are doomed to repeat it’ theory?”

  “Something like that.” She glanced at him sharply, still concerned that he was making fun of her, but his eyes revealed nothing but interest. “Students need to understand the importance of cause and effect, to realize people have control over their lives, that history isn’t events that happened at random. It’s the result of previous decisions.”

  Ryan chuckled, and her heart sank. He was making fun of her.

  “What’s so funny?” she demanded.

  “Not funny. Amazing. All this time I thought you didn’t care about anything but horses. And here you are, a philosopher.”

  She scowled. “You make me sound ancient and stuffy.”

  He leaned back and considered her with a look that made her pulse race. His magnificent hazel eyes deepened to a hue more green than brown. “Not stuffy or ancient. Something much, much better.”

  Flustered by the innuendo in his words, she sought escape from his intense scrutiny. “Well, this room is definitely stuffy. Can we get some fresh air?”

  “Sure.”

  He twirled her slowly toward the door where a cool breeze entered and alleviated the stifling heat that smothered the dance floor. When he released her, she felt suddenly bereft, until he placed his hand at the small of her back again. He steered her through the crowd that edged the dance floor and out the wide front doors.

  The covered dishes had been cleared and the tables disassembled in the park, and the sun had set, leaving the area in darkness except for the faint twinkle from strings of tiny white lights.

  Ryan threaded his fingers through hers and led her to a park bench in the shadow of the trees. She sat on one end, and he settled beside her.

  Her plan for being alone with him had worked perfectly. She’d had her dance with Ryan, and she should be happy that they were together in this cozy, secluded spot, but all she could think of was his departure in a few days for the other side of the world.

  “Why did you join the Marines?” she asked.

  He leaned against the back of the bench and stretched his long legs in front of him. “I have no family. The Corps gave me a place to belong.”

  “No family, not even aunts or uncles?” She couldn’t imagine life without her brother and father, and she was only now adjusting to her mother’s death. Even though Ingrid had been gone for several years, Cat still missed her every day.

  Ryan shook his head. “No family that I know. I was abandoned on the steps of a Chicago church shortly after I was born. Father Ryan at Saint Christopher’s found me. That’s how I got my name.”

  He’d never talked about his childhood before, and his story fascinated her. “You were raised by a priest?”

  Ryan laughed, a pleasant, throaty sound that echoed in the emptiness of the park. “I’d probably have turned out better if I had been. I spent the first ten years of my life in an orphanage, then bounced from one foster home to another—when I wasn’t in juvenile detention.”

  Her heart went out to the child he’d been, orphaned, abandoned and alone. “Somehow I can’t picture you as a juvenile delinquent.”

  “I was one tough, angry little kid, and I took out my frustrations and unhappiness on everyone and everything around me.”

  “But you’re not like that now. What changed you?”

  “Margaret Sweeney.”

  Cat’s heart sank. There was another woman in his life after all. “How did she change you?”

  “When I was twelve and already had a rap sheet as long as my arm, I went along with some older boys when they stole a car. They wrecked the car, and the cops caught us. When I went before the juvenile judge, she gave me a choice. I could go to live with Margaret Sweeney as my foster mother or be sent to the strictest, most dreaded juvenile facility in Chicago.”

  Cat was relieved to learn the woman was no rival for her. “And you opted for Margaret Sweeney?”

  He nodded. “I’m a walking example of your choices-and-consequences theory. If I hadn’t made that choice, I’d either be a lifer or dead by now. Instead, I have my whole life and a great career ahead of me.”

  “What was so special about Margaret Sweeney?”

  Ryan laced his fingers behind his head and gazed into the darkness as if remembering. “She only took in the toughest cases, the boys and girls on the verge of ruining their lives forever.”

  “She must have been a very strong person.”

  Ryan grinned. “That’s the irony. She was a small, almost birdlike woman that a puff of wind could have blown away.”

  Cat frowned. “Then how did she handle such tough kids?”

  “She loved us and believed in us with her whole heart. Most of us would rather have died than disappoint her. I lived with her for the next six years, until I went away to college—on scholarship, thanks to her.”

  “She sounds like a wonderful woman. I guess you could consider her your family.”

  Ryan sighed, and when he spoke again, his voice was heavy with sadness. “If she were still ali
ve. She died of cancer the year before I graduated. I always wished she could have seen how I turned out. More than anything, I wanted Margaret Sweeney to be proud of me.”

  “I have a feeling she knows what you’ve done,” Cat said softly, “and she is proud.”

  Ryan draped his arm around her shoulder and drew her closer. “You’re a good listener. How come I’ve never noticed that before?”

  “You’ve never really talked to me like this before.” Cat’s breath caught in her throat as he dipped his head toward hers, and she closed her eyes in anticipation of his kiss.

  “There you are, Catherine Erickson,” a coarse, slurring voice called. “I been looking all over for you.”

  Startled, Cat opened her eyes. Ryan withdrew his arm and glanced at the tall figure gazing down at them. The long neck of an empty beer bottle dangled between his meaty fingers. Her heart sank when she recognized Snake Larson, an old classmate of Marc’s who had graduated from class bully to town menace. Tall, muscle-bound, with no neck, beady eyes and a constantly flickering tongue that had earned him his nickname, Snake was trouble personified.

  “Why were you looking for me?” Cat asked, unable to keep the irritation from her voice.

  “I was watching you inside,” Snake said with a leer that was evident even in the darkness. “For a skinny kid, you filled out good. Come back and dance with me.”

  “I’ve had enough dancing, thank you.” Cat hoped he’d take the hint and leave.

  “Not until you’ve danced with me.”

  “She said no.” Ryan’s voice was soft but deadly. Only a fool or a drunk would have missed the threat in his tone.

  Snake was both.

  “Oh, yeah?” Snake said with a snarl. “We’ll see about that.” He lunged toward Cat.

  With a move so rapid, if she’d blinked she’d have missed it, Ryan sprang off the bench and twisted Snake’s arm behind his back, effectively immobilizing him.

  The bully winced in pain. “Lemme go and I’ll beat your ass.”

  “You’re drunk.” Ryan released the big man and pushed him away. “Go home and sleep it off.”