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Her Montana Man
Laurie Paige
She was back on his turf…pregnant!A mysterious death had brought Dr. Chelsea Kearns back to Rumor, Montana, an assignment the forensics expert hadn't been savoring. She would have to face Pierce Dalton. Successful businessman. Town mayor. Brother to her best friend. Former lover…Unable to resist, Chelsea found herself back in Pierce's passionate embrace, picking up where they left off years ago. To boot, she was now pregnant!Chelsea's life was about to get much more complicated. She tried to keep her news secret. But once the good mayor discovered the truth, he wasn't about to let his happily-ever-after get away from him–again–without a fight!
Stories of family and romance beneath the Big Sky!
“That is the skimpiest bathing suit I’ve ever seen,” Pierce told Chelsea as she rose out of the icy water of the lake.
She looked at her two-piece suit. It was cut high on the legs, as all of them were. “Surely not,” she said airily.
Uh-oh, wrong thing to say. He looked as if he would like to choke her.
“That outfit might be modest for the city, but around here, folks dress more circumspectly.”
Chelsea couldn’t help it. She burst out laughing. “I’m sorry. It’s just that you don’t sound at all like the Pierce Dalton who dared me to go skinny dipping in the pool at my apartment building at three o’clock on a January morning.”
“I’m not here to discuss the past,” he informed her. “If the guys working here see you like that, they’ll take it as an open invitation to visit. I won’t have them distracted by a siren from the city.”
Chelsea rubbed the end of the towel over her dripping hair. “You’d better watch yourself, too, Pierce. City sirens are hard to resist.”
Her Montana Man
Laurie Paige
www.millsandboon.co.uk (http://www.millsandboon.co.uk)
LAURIE PAIGE
“One of the nicest things about writing romances is researching locales, careers and ideas. In the interest of authenticity, most writers will try anything…once.” Along with her writing adventures, Laurie has been a NASA engineer, a past president of the Romance Writers of America, a mother and a grandmother. She was twice a RITA® Award finalist for Best Traditional Romance and has won awards from RT Book Reviews for Best Silhouette Special Edition and Best Silhouette, in addition to appearing on the USA TODAY bestseller list. Recently resettled in Northern California, Laurie is looking forward to whatever experiences her next novel brings.
To Bobby and Melba,
for all the adventures in Montana.
Contents
Chapter One
Chapter Two
Chapter Three
Chapter Four
Chapter Five
Chapter Six
Chapter Seven
Chapter Eight
Chapter Nine
Chapter Ten
Chapter Eleven
Chapter Twelve
Chapter Thirteen
Chapter One
Chelsea Kearns stripped the surgical gloves from her hands and tossed them in the Contaminated Waste Disposal bin. In the locker room she showered, then dressed in street clothing of khaki slacks and a cotton shirt of cool, mint green.
Once outside the hospital, which housed the county morgue, she breathed deeply several times before unlocking her car from the passenger side, opening both doors and letting the accumulated heat escape.
Here in the Beartooth Mountains of Montana just north of Yellowstone National Park, summers were usually pleasant—low eighties during the day, forties at night. The temperature on the digital display at the bank proclaimed the temperature to be ninety-three.
“This heat is terrible. It must be global warming,” a passerby said to her companion as they strolled past Chelsea. “The government should do something.”
“Maybe we’ll have a thundershower later this afternoon,” the companion said in a soothing voice.
The first woman grimaced. “Those only bring lightning and forest fires at this time of the year.”
Chelsea sympathized with the ill-humored woman. She felt out of sorts herself. The bank clock indicated it was well past the noon hour on Wednesday, July third.
She’d eaten a quick breakfast at five-thirty, but she wasn’t hungry. She never was after a morning spent in the morgue, doing her job as a medical examiner. The autopsy had disclosed information that was going to shock most people in the town of Rumor, located twenty miles from here.
Tossing her purse onto the passenger seat, she reluctantly followed it inside the hot car and started the engine. She turned the air conditioner on full blast and aimed the vents directly at her face.
Leaving Whitehorn, she followed the highway to the turnoff that would take her to Rumor, Montana, and the lakeside cottage where she would be staying for the next three weeks. This first week she had to work, but after that she had two solid weeks of vacation.
Ah, bliss.
However, before the fun began she had bad news to report to the deputy sheriff in charge of the investigation. The autopsy she’d performed indicated murder, not suicide; although, the perpetrator had tried to make it look that way.
The absence of powder burns precluded a self-inflicted shot, or else the victim would have had to have held the weapon with her toes in order to inflict a wound in her left temple at a sufficient distance. Besides all that, the angle of entry of the projectile was all wrong for suicide.
Chelsea sighed. This was going to be a tough case. She could feel it in her bones. The trial, assuming they caught the guy who did it, would be time consuming. She’d have to come down from Billings, an hour’s drive each way, and testify about her findings. The defense attorney would try to prove she didn’t know what she was talking about.
She sighed again. There was also the complication of Pierce Dalton—successful businessman, mayor of Rumor where the murder had been committed, brother to her best friend, Kelly, and…former lover.
Her life, which had seemed calm and sensible when she’d accepted the position as medical examiner in Billings, suddenly seemed complicated.
Maybe she should have stayed in Chicago. She’d been busy but lonely in the city, she admitted. And she’d missed the mountains. Had she also wanted to see Pierce again? She didn’t have an answer for that.
Arriving in town, she slowed to the requisite thirty-five miles per hour for the short drive down Main Street, then turned right onto Blue Spruce Road and right again onto the lane that took her to a modern cottage set among towering evergreen trees next to a jewel of a lake.
With a deck built out at the edge of a tiny cove, the place was as enchanting as a scene in a fairy tale.
Grabbing her purse, which held her recorder and the notes dictated that morning, she went in and changed to shorts, a comfortable T-shirt and flip-flops. On the deck, with a tall glass of iced tea and her handy laptop computer, she began her formal report.
Sometime later, the sound of tires on the gravel lane interrupted her concentration. She heard a car door slam, then silence. She waited until a knock sounded on the cabin door before calling out, “I’m on the deck.”
A male figure appeared at the corner of the cabin. Dressed in jeans and a polo shirt, his stride long and assured, the visitor exuded power and authority.
She instantly recognized the sandy-blond hair and six-two frame of her long-ago lover. Pierce was a man with a commanding presence. She hadn’t been surprised when Kelly had told her Pierce was now mayor of the town.
The jagged edge of remembered hurt plucked at her heart, a never-forgotten melody of love and wonder and, ultimately, rejection. Pierce had made it clear he was not a settling-down kind of man the last time she’d seen him.
“Hello, Pierce,” she managed to say in a quiet manner.
Two years older than she was, at thirty-six he looked trim and fit, a prime male specimen with his blue eyes and handsome, somewhat rugged features. He’d always reminded her of the mountains—strong and solid and inspiring.
It had been eight years since she’d last seen him. They’d parted one stormy April night, two months before she graduated medical school. So many dreams ago.
He ignored the three steps and leaped to the deck in a single, graceful bound. “Chelsea,” he said, acknowledging her greeting. He didn’t smile.
So what had she expected—that he would gaze soulfully into her eyes and declare he’d never gotten over his love for her and that she must marry him at once so they could live happily ever after?
Dream on, she thought, and would have laughed had it been the least funny.
“You have a wonderful place over there,” she said, indicating the resort, the lake and the idyllic setting.
He nodded, his mind obviously not on the scenery. “What did you find out?”
Blunt and to the point. She’d wondered how he would react to her being here—on his turf, so to speak—so now she knew. She could be all business, too.
“I’m preparing a report for the deputy,” she told him with a polite smile. “He’ll have it Friday morning.”
“I want it now.”
She started to make a smart remark, but, seeing the concern in his eyes, she refrained. This was his hometown and he was the mayor. Murder was serious business.
“You’d better have a seat,” she advised. “Would you like a glass of iced tea?” She’d finished her own glass while working on the report.
Impatience flickered over his face and was gone. He nodded and settled in the deck chair facing the lake.
She quickly prepared the refreshing drinks, then, after a struggle with herself about playing the polite hostess, arranged a tray of crackers, cheese, veggies and dip and carried them outside.
“Thanks,” he said, taking the glass she indicated and pulling a table between their two chairs so she could set the tray down.
When she was seated, he leaned forward, his blue eyes focused intently on her. It would have been exciting, except she knew he was interested only in her information.
“The victim died of a gunshot wound to the head,” she told him. “The bullet entered the left temple and ricocheted in the skull without exiting, inflicting severe brain damage and instant death.”
“I can’t believe she’d commit suicide.”
Chelsea gave him a level perusal. “She didn’t.”
“She didn’t?” he echoed, his eyes hot blue lasers as he glared at her.
“She was semiconscious from a blow to the back of the head. Prior to that, she’d been slapped hard enough to leave a bruise. From scrapes on her elbow and knees, she probably fell to the floor. She was then placed in a chair and shot from a distance of three or four feet. Panicking, the perp decided he’d better make it look like suicide.”
“Why panic and why a he?”
Chelsea considered the evidence before replying. “The victim was hit hard enough to knock her unconscious or nearly so—”
“Harriet,” he broke in. “Her name was Harriet Martel.”
Chelsea kept a bland expression. She’d learned during her five years of pathology training and three years on the job to keep an emotional distance from those who’d died by violence; otherwise, her job would become unbearable.
“From the deputy sheriff’s report, Miss Martel was knocked to the floor, then lifted, not dragged, to the chair. Both facts indicate strength. If you’re looking for a female perp, she’s strong as an ox.”
He gave a grunt that could have indicated agreement, skepticism or any number of things. “Why did he panic?”
“His anger cooled after he killed her. He realized he needed to make it look like suicide and that someone might have heard the shot. He wanted to get away, so he was hasty in setting up the scene. He wiped the gun, then pressed her fingers into position around it.”
Pierce frowned at her. “The gun was found on the floor beside the chair.”
“Planted to look as if she dropped it after the shot.”
Chelsea watched a couple push off from a dock across the lake. Cabins nestled among the trees over there. Pierce had started from scratch and made a huge fortune in real estate and recreational activities for tourists, so his sister had said. Good for him.
“However,” she continued, pulling her gaze from the happy couple, whose laughter she could hear drifting over the water like an echo from happier times in her own past, “he messed up. Suicide victims usually retain the gun in a death grip that’s almost impossible to break.”
Pierce was quick on the uptake. “Usually?”
“Yes. That’s the first thing you look for in a suspected suicide. But it doesn’t always happen, so I examined the weapon. From the fingerprint evidence, Miss Martel didn’t exert enough force on the gun to pull the trigger, much less hold it in place to kill herself. There were no powder burns, either.”
“So the gun had to be held at least a few feet from her,” he murmured, frowning as he considered this fact.
Chelsea nodded and lifted her glass. The tea was cold and tart from the generous squeeze of lemon she’d put in. She hadn’t added any lemon to his glass on the assumption he still liked it with one spoon of sugar and no lemon.
Eight years was a long time, she reflected. Perhaps his tastes had changed. However, he didn’t say anything as he took a long drink, then rubbed at the condensation on the glass while he thought.
She continued with her conclusions about the crime. “I think the killer didn’t decide to shoot her until he placed her in the chair. They’d been quarreling. Perhaps she’d hit him first. Now she was vulnerable, in his power. He needed to get rid of her, to keep her quiet—”
“Why?” Pierce demanded.
Chelsea met his gaze. “The victim…Miss Martel…was pregnant. About four months, I would say.”
“She couldn’t have been,” he said. “She was an old maid, the town librarian, for Pete’s sake. She didn’t date anyone.”
“Maybe not,” Chelsea said coolly. “But she was certainly having an affair. I’d look for a married man with a lot to lose if the scandal got out, someone in a prominent position in town, maybe someone on the city council.”
“Yeah, right,” Pierce said in a snarl, rising to his feet and looming over her. “The council is composed of a retired rancher, a high school coach at least fifteen years younger than Harriet, plus three women. That’s certainly a bunch of likely suspects.”
