Montana Darling (Big Sky Mavericks Book 3) (2 page)

Her settlement provided enough to start over in style—until cancer kicked her ass and she’d needed her family’s help simply to make it through the day.

“Mom,” a perturbed voice called from the top of the stairs. “We need to leave, now. I texted you twice.”

Mia flopped over in a forward bend, her fingers brushing the ugly commercial carpet. She hated basements. As soon as she had her mobility and endurance back, she planned to check out the new Martial Arts studio that had opened up in the strip mall just outside of town, but no stranger was going to see her in this shape.

“Coming.”

She grabbed the towel she’d set on the old rocking chair that her mother had tried to palm off on her fourteen years ago when Emilee was born. Mia trotted up the stairs, still breathing hard, to find her daughter standing, arms crossed and toe tapping impatiently.

“You do this on purpose, don’t you? You get a kick out of making me late so I have to walk into First Period when everyone else is in their seats.”

Mia wiped the sweat out of her eyes. “Annoy Emilee is the first thing on my to-do list every morning. How am I doing?”

Em made a face of pure disgust and stomped out the door of the attached garage. Mia’s Escalade no longer had a pristine heated garage to call home. The beautiful white gas hog sat outside because her parents were home for another month. Normally, they headed to their winter habitat once school started. But, lucky for everyone, Mia’s younger brother, Paul, was getting married the first weekend in October.

Mia stifled a sigh as she grabbed her purse. “Hunter, we’re leaving.”

Her eleven-year-old son blew through the mudroom with a grunt that probably meant “Good morning” in pre-teen boy vernacular.

“Good morning to you, too, my only son.”

He tugged his Rockies ball cap to the top of his thick black brows and shouldered the backpack that probably weighed half as much as he did—ninety pounds at his recent school physical.

Both kids were in the back when she climbed behind the wheel. She tossed her purse on the passenger seat and started the engine.

“No elevator music,” Emilee ordered.

Mia looked in the rearview mirror and shot her a my-car-my-music look. Then she touched a title on the console’s mini computer for a song she’d downloaded from her future sister-in-law’s playlist. As much as she hated to admit it, Mia liked Bailey Jenkins. They’d had practically no contact when Bailey and Paul dated in high school. By then, Mia was in college, living with Edward, making babies together.

The beat pulsed with a hint of African rhythms. She tapped the steering wheel as she drove, ignoring the death rays shooting from her daughter’s pretty green eyes. Mia deserved her children’s anger. She’d given up on her marriage long before Ed started sleeping with his fave barista. She’d been too focused on her work for years, spending extra hours when her babies were sleeping and working on cases that would help build her reputation as a hard-ass prosecutor. She paid a nanny to do the car-pool thing, to take them to play dates and dance lessons, although Mia almost never missed a recital or performance. Not any more than Edward did, at least.

But Ed dodged the kids’ fury by taking off. Their children hated him, too, but since he was five hundred miles away basking in the glow of babyhood with his twenty-eight-year old wife, what did he care?

Mia cared. Lately, she’d awakened with tearstains on her cheeks and a persistent cough. She’d even made her doctor take an X-ray of her lungs last week to be sure the cancer hadn’t spread. “You’re sleeping in a basement, Mia. Move upstairs, for God’s sake,” he’d ordered.

She intended to. Her parents would be taking off for their annual Snow Bird migration to Arizona in a few weeks. She’d move into the master bedroom the day after Paul and Bailey’s wedding.

Mom and Dad had convinced Mia to “housesit” for them this winter. She didn’t delude herself that she was actually doing them a favor. Since retiring and buying a giant travel trailer, they’d closed up the family home every winter without issue. But having a place to live for the winter meant she and the kids would be able to move into their new home in the spring, if her contractor could get started on the foundation of her new place right away. She’d received the ten-acre riverside lot she and Ed bought for retirement in the divorce. Since she owned it outright, she felt comfortable getting a building loan to construct a modest, three-bedroom, two-bath house on the site.

“Did I tell you I got the name of a contractor from Uncle Paul? If we can decide on a plan, he might be able to get the foundation in before the ground gets too hard.” She’d hoped to keep the job in the family, but Paul’s crew at Big Z Hardware and Lumber stayed busy with handyman jobs and left ground-up construction to the pros at Heath McGregor’s company.

“Like we’ll have any say it,” Emilee muttered. “You’ll build what you want and we’ll just have to like it. Huh, Hunter?”

Mia stretched to see her son in the rearview mirror.

Hunter made a face. “As long as it has fast WiFi, I don’t care where we live.”

Emilee fisted her hand to slug him, but Mia called out, “We’re here” in time to save him.

She flicked the blinker and turned into the drop-off line.

“Brat,” Emilee muttered, jumping from the car before Mia came to a complete stop.

“Emilee…”

Mia’s stomach clenched, and the sick feeling she associated with first trimester childbirth made her chest hurt. She fought back tears as she put the car in park and loosened her seat belt so she could kiss her son goodbye. “Have a good day, sweetheart.”

“I will.” He started to scoot across the seat but stopped and looked at her. “It’s not so bad here, Mom. Em just doesn’t want it to be good because that would mean you were right to move us here.”

Eleven, going on forty-five.

“Thanks, honey. I love you.”

He nodded his reply. When had love words become verboten, she wondered? When he hit double digits? She couldn’t remember.

Mia watched her children melt into the crowd until a polite toot urged her to keep the line moving. She drove slowly, her gaze taking in the morning hubbub. Parents walking their little ones to the elementary school doors. Kids on bikes. Big orange busses parked to one side. She’d missed out on so much of the childrearing experience. Despite Emilee’s vehement protest about moving to Marietta, Mia was hopeful she’d made the right decision. “It’s too small, Mom. And backward. They won’t have an arts program. I’ll hate it.”

The school hadn’t changed much since Mia and Austen attended it. Some programs had been cut, including art. But to Mia’s surprise, Austen’s girlfriend, Serena James, had started Twisted, a fiber arts program using the fleece from her herd of alpacas. Emilee—along with her cousin, Chloe—had found an outlet for their creative energies.

Mia figured Serena’s program bought her a couple of months of relative peace. Time Mia could devote to getting her new life in order. In addition to finding a contractor, picking a house plan and going deeply into debt, she needed to pull Austen down to earth from Cloud Nine so they could set up their partnership.

She thought about their recent conversation as she headed out of town to check on her land. Austen had been disappointed when she told him she’d decided to table the idea of running for public office. “Maybe in four years. The kids will be older and I’ll have my feet on the ground.”

“But with your experience, you’d make a great D.A.,” Austen had argued.

“Thanks for the vote of support. Unfortunately, we both know I don’t have the fire in the belly necessary to mount a campaign.” Despite what her kids thought, their well-being was number one on her list of priorities. “Besides, at the moment, the only thing I have going for me is the Zabrinski name. People know Paul and you and our folks, but they don’t know me. That’s where you come in, brother dear. Are we going to hang out a shingle together or not?”

“We are. You’re going to take on the sticky wicket family law cases and I’m going to handle boring estate matters.” He’d pretended to frame a sign in the air. “How does the Law Offices of Zabrinski and Zabrinski sound? I’ll even give you top billing.”

“Wow. Thanks,” she’d said with a dry chuckle. Even at the lowest point of her treatment, Austen had been able to make her laugh.

“I’ll call a realtor and start looking for a place as soon as I get back from Helena. Or you could ask Paul. He’s got his ear to the Marietta market.”

That was yesterday. This morning Austen planned to fly the family plane to Helena to finalize the sale of his townhouse and move his furniture into the small apartment he’d rented near the Capitol. After a great deal of discussion with Mia, their parents and Serena, Austen had agreed he’d miss the stimulation and sense of accomplishment he got from working in the political arena if he gave up politics completely to become a rancher.

Serena had suggested a compromise. Half the month he’d work at home on the Flying Z or at Serena’s alpaca ranch next door and the other half he’d don a suit and lend his experience to causes he believed in as a political consultant. Since some glad-handing/deal-making could only be done in person, he’d fly to Helena whenever he was needed. Hence, the need for an apartment in town.

Mia was happy to see her twin’s life falling into place. And as tempting as it was to let their old competitiveness drive her career decision, she couldn’t do that this time. Her kids needed a mother who could be there for them. A regular, nine-to-five practice would give her that stability. While Mia never pictured herself as a family practice lawyer, her divorce opened her eyes to challenges facing those brave, compassionate gladiators who stepped into the messy, emotionally crucifying battlefield that came with breaking a marriage into two distinct and very separate entities.

She knew law. She knew how to win cases. She didn’t kid herself that family law was going to be easy. And, while no one had ever called her altruistic, she’d always secretly harbored a desire to get out of the high profile circus in the DA’s office and do some good on a humbler, more case-by-case level. When she and Ed bought the lot by the river to build their retirement getaway, she’d even floated the idea of doing volunteer work. “I could help fellow seniors avoid scam artists and greedy family members. You could help them figure out estate matters.”

“Or we could sit with our feet up on the deck railing and drink wine,” Ed had countered. “That’s what retirement is supposed to be, Mia. Retiring.”

As she slowed to turn on East River to head toward her land, she let out a deep, bottom-of-her-soul sigh. Two people as different as she and Ed had no business being married. She’d fallen for Ed the moment Austen introduced them, but in hindsight she couldn’t say what triggered their instant—and mutual—lust. By the time she understood lust wasn’t enough to sustain a relationship, they had two kids, a Labradoodle and a gigantic mortgage.

“Never again,” she murmured under her breath.

She was free for the first time in fourteen years. She was in charge of her life. And her first order of business was evicting the vagrant who was camping on her land. She’d spotted a tent near the water’s edge a few weeks ago, but she’d been so busy during the move the matter had slipped through the cheesecloth in her chemo brain. She wasn’t current on land use laws in Montana, but she’d heard horror stories from Edward about clients who couldn’t evict renters because they’d acquired rights simply by squatting on the rightful owner’s property.

Mia didn’t know anything about this guy. She’d heard rumors he was a nature photographer just passing through. Someone else told her he spoke French. Her future sister-in-law’s mother called him a lost soul.

Mia didn’t give a flying fig about this stranger’s soul—lost or otherwise. She just wanted him off her land. She was soooo done with men taking things from her.

“Look out, Mr. Squatter,” she murmured, stepping on the gas. “Here comes your worst nightmare.”

*

Dew. Dirt. River
sounds.

Mornings don’t get much better this, Ryker Bensen thought, enjoying a few last seconds of peace before opening his eyes. Everything would pretty much go downhill from this point on, so why not savor every blessed second?

And every second he was alive was a gift. He knew that, now, and didn’t take anything for granted. One minute you could be riding a bike on a country road in rural France, your pregnant girlfriend a few yards ahead of you, laughing and flirting, not a care in the world, and the next you could be holding her head, pleading with her not to die. “Stay, Colette. Stay. For me. Please. Please, baby, stay.”

But the car that hit her was going too fast. The young driver too preoccupied with her own life to care that she’d just killed the most perfect woman in the world.

In Ryker’s world, anyway.

So, Ryker said, “Fuck it. I’m done.”

At twenty-nine, he quit. Canceled all his upcoming photography assignments. Backed out of the house he and Colette were in the process of buying. Since he had no legal claim on his beautiful, not-quite bride—she hadn’t wanted to walk down the aisle pregnant so they’d postponed the wedding until after the baby was born, he’d had no say in her burial. Her family had descended—a language barrier and cultural chasm too broad for even love to bridge. They took Colette and he took off. He’d lost money on the house. A lot of money, but he didn’t care. Money was the least of his worries.