Married In Montana

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Then the tires squealed against the stones of the driveway and the truck disappeared into the night. Heedless of the damp chill, Thea stood there for a while, knocking her forehead against the edge of a door.

I can castrate calves, she mocked herself in a prissy voice, and deliver breech births and round up cows in a blizzard.

But she didn’t know jack when it came to men.

ROBERT MAXWELL WAITED to check on his son until the upstart deputy had left and Althea had gone back to her bed. Standing in the doorway of Bobby’s room, he shook his head at the sight of his boy, spread-eagled on top of the blanket. In the dim light, he looked so much like his mother…the same thick, wavy black hair, the same dark sloe eyes, the fair skin and curved lips. Helen had given beauty to all of their children, but especially to their son. If only she had lived to give them her good sense.

Instead, his three daughters seemed determined to flout his authority at every turn. Jolie, the eldest, now a doctor in California, had gone as far away from home as she could just as soon as she graduated high school. Cassie, their middle girl, had married the first wastrel she’d set eyes on and was now raising her seven-year-old son on her own. Althea, on the other hand, had turned down every man who looked her way—including the governor’s boy, a fiasco that had nearly quashed an important land deal requiring his dad’s approval. Damn, the girl was stubborn. Wouldn’t even agree to get the sale papers signed first, before she booted him out.

As for his son, his hope, his pride…the next generation of Maxwells and the future of Walking Stones Ranch depended on a boy who did everything he could think of to shirk the work, escape the responsibilities. Robert knew that time and trends were against the individual rancher these days—without constant and diligent work, without cunning and education and insight, a man’s property could be taken from him by one bad season, by an unexpected epidemic, by a few unlucky investments.

But Bobby didn’t give a tinker’s damn. One hundred fifty years of Maxwell sweat and blood stood in serious jeopardy, unless something changed the boy’s attitude and bound him to the land.

Only once in his life had Robert Maxwell failed to get what he wanted. He had not been able to save his wife’s life 15 years ago, not with prayers, or money, or even with the force of his will. He’d accepted that defeat as a circumstance beyond his control.

But as long as he lived, he would not tolerate the loss of even a square foot of Walking Stones land. The ranch would remain intact, no matter what it took in terms of time, cash and determination. This was the legacy Maxwell men labored under from birth until death, a legacy Bobby would come to understand. To embrace.

He simply had no other choice.

WHEN RAFE FINALLY reached the questionable shelter he’d been calling home for the past few weeks, Jed waited by the door. “Not even a dog should have to go out in this,” Rafe told him. But Jed just heaved a heavy bloodhound sigh and headed into the dark. By the time he got back, Rafe had changed his clothes down to the skin and started a fire. After he toweled the dog off, they both settled down near the blaze.

“You’d think I wouldn’t be so surprised,” Rafe commented after a swallow of beer. “I’ve seen folks like this before. The Maxwells own more of Montana than God. Which, at least in their opinion, puts them above the law.”

Jed thumped his tail twice. “Yeah, I know it’s bull, too. But they don’t. And it’s gonna get worse. Bobby’s a nice kid, I’m thinking, who’s got a serious problem with alcohol. If his family has a clue, they’re not doing anything about it.”

Rafe finished the beer and settled into the lumpy couch he was using as a bed until the moving company found his furniture. “Princess Althea almost had me fooled into thinking she was different. That smile of hers could keep a man warm through the worst Montana blizzard.”

He pictured her as she’d looked across the kitchen table—her greenish-blue eyes wide and friendly, her mouth deep pink and richly curved, the crisp layers of her shiny black hair begging to be played with. He’d admired her stamina, her patience with her little brother, the fact that she didn’t get flustered about sharing cookies with him at one in the morning in her pajamas. She was far and away the best part of Montana he’d come across yet.

Then, in a split second, the mask had crumbled, leaving him with just another Maxwell, arrogant and totally out of reach.

“Doesn’t matter.” Rafe punched the couch pillow and pulled the mothball-scented blanket over his shoulder. “This town—and the family that appears to own it—may not want a deputy who does his job.” The guys in the county office had warned him about his likely reception in advance. So far, the locals had lived up to expectations. Strangers of any kind were greeted with suspicion by the citizens of Paradise Corners. A deputy of the county sheriff automatically represented an attempt by somebody in faraway Big Timber, the county seat, to assert control over local affairs. And if that deputy hailed fron somewhere foreign—say, Los Angeles, California, as Rafe did—then he was guaranteed a hostile reception at best. “Unfortunately for Paradise Corners, I’m here and I’m planning to stay. The Maxwells and everyone else might as well get used to having me….”

Jed lifted his head and gave him a soulful, understanding stare.

Grinning, Rafe reached out and rubbed the wrinkled head of his best friend and only real family in the world. “The Maxwells had better get used to having both of us around.”

TWO SILENT MEN sat the breakfast table when Thea came into the kitchen the next morning. Her father glanced up and nodded, then returned to his eggs. Herman Peace, manager of Walking Stones, gave her his usual lopsided smile. “Lazybones.”

Thea returned the smile and stepped to the coffeemaker on the counter. “Guilty as charged.”

Déjà vu—pouring a mug of coffee brought back last night’s interlude with Rafe Rafferty. She’d regretted everything about those minutes—what she had said and what she hadn’t—through the remainder of a mostly sleepless night.

“’Morning, Thea.” Beth Peace, Herman’s sister, bustled in from the hallway leading to the pantry and laundry room. “I’ll have your plate ready in a flash. Your dad needed some more juice.” Standing beside his chair, she filled his half-empty glass to the brim.

“Thank you, ma’am.” Robert Maxwell’s smile was sweet when he chose to use it. Which was seldom outside of Beth’s kitchen.

“Take your time.” Thea shuddered as she swallowed her black coffee. She preferred sugar and cream, but with the day ahead, she figured she needed a straight shot. “I won’t starve.”

But Beth was already cracking eggs into the big iron frying pan with one hand, punching slices of bread into the toaster with the other. Never hurried or flustered, but always busy, she’d been running the household as long as Thea could remember, even before their mom died. Bobby had been four at the time—Beth was the only mother he really remembered.

“Did you wake up your brother?” Her dad set his plate in the sink. “We’re already late getting started.”

“I knocked on his door, and he said he was coming.” Not a lie, exactly—her dad didn’t want to hear what Bobby had actually said, or the vocabulary he’d used to say it. “His shower was running as I came down the hall.”

“Get him outside by six, with or without breakfast. You coming, Peace?” Opening the door to the mudroom, he asked the question without looking back for an answer.

“Right behind you.” The manager gulped down the last of his coffee. As the door shut behind Boss Maxwell, Herman cocked a thick gray eyebrow and grinned at Thea. “Man’s just a bundle of sunshine in the morning, ain’t he? Have a good one,” he told his sister, planting a kiss on the woman’s cheek. “I’m hoping for stew tonight.”

Beth pretended to push him away. “You’ll take what you get and be satisfied.” But she smiled and lifted her hand as he backed through the door. Then she dished up Thea’s eggs and bacon and toast, set the plate on the table, and poured another glass of juice.

“Thanks, Beth.” Thea sat down to her meal, hoping the housekeeper had something important to do besides ask questions.

No such luck. “The deputy sheriff brought Bobby home last night?” Mug in hand, Beth sat in the chair her brother had vacated. “Drunk?”

Chewing, Thea just nodded.

“Fighting?”

“Uh-huh.” She gulped down the orange juice.

“What are we going to do with that boy?” A worried frown creased Beth’s smooth, plump face. “He’s getting wilder every day. Your father should have let him go to California to college. Jolie would have looked out for him.”

“But Bobby would never have come back.” Thea had given up trying to figure out why. All her brother had to do was show some interest and he’d have Walking Stones and everything it stood for handed to him on a platter. While she, who would give her right arm for the privilege of tending the land…

She shoved the thought out of her mind. There was no time for bitterness this morning. Bobby had less than five minutes for breakfast. She scooted her chair back from the table. “I’d better go see if he’s on his feet.”

Beth nodded. “I’ll make him a sandwich to eat as he rides.”

The door to Bobby’s room was still shut. Thea knocked, got no answer, and turned the knob, dreading to see her brother still in bed. All hell would break loose if Bobby had gone back to sleep.

But the situation wasn’t quite that desperate. He was awake and dressed, more or less, though his shirttail hung outside his jeans and the cuffs were unbuttoned. He sat on the bed wearing one boot, with the other lying on the floor between his feet. Head propped in his hands, elbows on his knees, he didn’t look up when she stepped into the room.

“Dad said to have you outside by six. We’re pushing the deadline.”

Bobby drew a deep breath. “Tell him I’m sick.”

“Hangovers don’t count, you know that.”

“Tell him I’m dead.”

“I’m not sure even death would be an excuse for you not showing up for work this morning.”

That got her a ghost of a chuckle. “Damn, my head hurts.”

“Maybe you could remember that feeling before you start drinking?”

“Maybe.” With a sigh, he pushed his hands through his thick, wavy hair and reached for the other boot. “I must’ve been totally plowed last night. I don’t remember driving home.”

“You didn’t.” Thea kept her mind blank. “The deputy brought you.”

Bobby looked up, his sleepy eyes a little wider. “Yeah?” He thought a second. “Oh, yeah. He pulled me out of the truck and dumped me in the rain.”

“He what?” Being furious with Rafe Rafferty felt really good—like Christmas and the Fourth of July rolled into one. “That’s why you were so wet? I thought you’d just climbed out of the truck cab.” If she ever saw that deputy again—which she would avoid if at all possible—he would get a sharp piece of her mind about trying to drown teenage boys who’d had a little too much to drink.

“I wasn’t climbing anywhere if I could help it.” He jerked on the right boot, eased to his feet and tucked his shirt into his jeans. Tall, like their dad, narrow of hip and wide of shoulder, Bobby had the looks of a movie star. Or a model.

Good thing he’d never expressed any interest in being either. Thea didn’t want to think about Robert Maxwell’s reaction to those ambitions. “Ready to ride?”

Her brother just looked at her. “Are you a sadist?”

From the back of the house came a bellow Thea recognized as their dad calling Bobby’s name. She grabbed her brother’s arm and pulled him after her into the hallway. “You tempt me, boy. You really tempt me.”

RAIN-WASHED, Paradise Corners looked fresh and clean when Rafe started for the office on the morning after his visit to the Maxwell ranch. The business district covered a square of about twelve small city blocks—mostly independent merchants, a lawyer or two and the post office, plus the courthouse and four churches, one on each corner of the main intersection, which gave the town and the street their names.

Most residents lived south of Main Street, in tidy houses under old pine and cedar and oak trees. The Methodists, late arrivals to this part of Montana, had built their church to the south, in the lower foothills, rather than downtown with the Baptists, Mormons, Catholics, and Lutherans. Bars and gas stations clustered at the western end of Main, around the road heading toward the mountains. East of town, the north-south state highway ran toward the two-lane road leading the unwary out to Walking Stones Ranch. Rafe didn’t plan to make that trip again any time soon.

On the north side of town, rough lanes wound high into the foothills of the Crazy Mountains and the Gallatin National Forest, with isolated houses tucked into corners here and there. Rafe’s rented house sat north of Main Street, too, but closer in—a brisk three-block walk brought him to the bustle of Saturday morning in a ranching town. To his right stood Grizzly’s Diner, the only decent place to eat if you didn’t want to cook. Leaving Jed posted just outside the door, Rafe stepped into a wave of friendly chatter that suddenly lulled as customers reacted to his arrival.

In a couple of seconds the talk resumed, quieter than before, as if people didn’t want to be overheard. Sitting at the counter, Rafe fought to ignore the fact he was being stared at and studied the menu.

“Coffee, Deputy.” Mona Rangel, the owner, set a mug down at his right hand, already mixed with sugar and milk, the way he liked it. “Something to eat?”

Rafe grinned his appreciation. “Let’s try something really wild today—scrambled eggs instead of fried. Think we can stand the shock?”

Her gray eyes flickered with humor, but she didn’t break a smile. “Three scrambled with bacon and toast, coming up.” She turned toward the kitchen, cutting off his only friendly contact in the place.

Halfway through his second mug of coffee, somebody actually joined Rafe at the counter, on the very next stool, no less. He glanced to the left and caught the eye of Judge LeVay, his ostensible boss and the main representative of the law in Paradise Corners, besides himself.

“Good morning, sir.”

“Deputy.” LeVay nodded. He looked the part of a wise old western judge, from his thick white hair and mustache to the black suit and vest and string tie. “Just coffee,” he told Mona when she appeared.

The judge said nothing until the coffee arrived and had been sampled. Rafe endured the silence without comment—he had no illusions that this was a chance encounter. Or an invitation to join the local shooting club.

“Got a call early this morning,” LeVay said finally. His voice barely carried over the noise of the crowd.

Rafe didn’t comment.

“Robert Maxwell seems to think you exceeded your authority in dealing with an incident last night.”

“Mr. Maxwell’s perceptions are a little…skewed.”

One white eyebrow lifted. “The man is a close friend of mine. I believe what he says.”

“The drinking age in Montana was twenty-one, last time I checked.” The judge glanced over his shoulder, a clear warning for Rafe to keep his voice down. “And DUI carries some stiff penalties…at least on paper.”

LeVay drained his mug and wiped his mouth with a napkin plucked from the stainless-steel cube between them. “I appreciate your concern. I’m sure Mr. Maxwell does, too. However, I believe he can handle this…situation…without outside interference.”

Rafe dropped the oblique approach, but kept his voice quiet. “That boy’s going to hurt himself. Or somebody else. He’s out of control.”

For a second, the judge’s pale blue eyes met his, and Rafe knew they were in agreement on that fact. But then LeVay slid off the stool.

“Leave it alone,” he advised. “You’ve got enough trouble on your hands in this town without getting the Maxwells riled up.” With a nod of greeting to a couple of men in a nearby booth, the older man made his way to the door. Through the glass, Rafe saw him stoop to talk to Jed. The bloodhound squirmed gratefully as the judge scratched the sensitive spot on the back of his neck. If Jed liked the man, Rafe decided, he couldn’t be all bad.

But if Maxwell owned him, he couldn’t be completely trusted, either. Better not look for help from that quarter.

Rafe turned back to finish his eggs, and found Mona standing opposite him.

“Take the judge at his word,” she suggested, swapping his cold plate of food for a steaming hot portion. “Maxwell owns this town and most of the people in it, one way or the other. You land on his bad side, you won’t get an ounce of cooperation from anybody.” She smiled. “Except me. Maxwell doesn’t like me, either.”

“Why not?”

“I taught in the county school system for close to two decades. Bobby was one of my sixth-graders. Bright kid, spoiled rotten. He didn’t do a lick of work in my class all year. I wouldn’t promote him, no matter how many fits his daddy threw. Maxwell got me fired, but Bobby still had to repeat the sixth grade, and he didn’t pull the same stunt again. Graduated in the spring with pretty good grades, I heard.”

“And you’re working in the diner?”

Mona shrugged. “My husband built the place and ran it until he died last year. I figured keeping Grizzly’s open would give me something to do and pay my respects at the same time.” Her smile was rueful. “Anyway, watch your step. The Maxwells are about as safe to be around as timber rattlers. A little more predictable, maybe—you threaten them or theirs, you can be sure they’ll do their best to take you down.”

She moved away, and Rafe thought for a second about calling her back for one more question.

What about Thea Maxwell?

Did she take after her old man? Did she follow his orders straight down the line? Was she just one more piece of property her father owned?

Did it matter? Boss Maxwell had practically threatened him with bodily harm for interfering. The lady herself had brushed him off like yesterday’s dust. And there was little doubt that her brother would keep to the straight and narrow exactly as long as it took him to pick up his truck. Any more trouble with Bobby would put Rafe on the side of the devil, as far as all the Maxwells were concerned.

Didn’t he have enough trouble in this town already? Was his sense of self-preservation so weak?

With a silent sigh, Rafe acknowledged that the same two words answered both of those questions—plus one more…

Could he really be crazy enough to consider going after this woman?

Remembering Thea’s voice, her smile, the light in her eyes and the strange peace he’d felt when he first saw her, Rafe nodded and took a sip of coffee. Three simple questions, one simple answer.

You bet.