Chapter Four
“Y ou’ve been distracted ever since you got back from New York,” Liam’s older sister, Shay said to him as he washed up one afternoon in the kitchen sink three weeks after his return. “I keep seeing you staring off into space when you’re usually so focused. And generally, there’s a frown on your face as you’re doing it. Is everything okay?”
Surprised that he’d been that transparent, he said, “Yeah. I’m fine.” He hadn’t told anyone about his encounter in New York City, because he was pretty sure nothing would ever come of it. His family, as much as he loved them all, could be relentless.
“Hmm.” She handed him a towel and tucked her long, reddish-brown hair behind her ear. “Because I spoke with Jess Brody the other day on the phone. He called while you were off feeding cattle.”
A little red flag started waving in his brain. “You didn’t tell me he called.”
“He just wanted our address for a thank-you card. But… while I had him on the phone, we were just shooting the breeze—as we do—and he did mention a certain woman named Emily that—”
Liam jerked a look at her. “He did? What about her? Is she… is she okay?”
“Ah- hah ! That was not the reaction I was expecting. Or maybe it was. And why wouldn’t she be okay?”
He opened and closed his mouth, then with a frown, pulled a chair out from the table and pushed it back. “No reason.”
“Uh-huh.”
“She’s just someone I met.” One look at Shay told him that answer would not suffice. “It was only twenty-four hours.”
“Which can feel like a lifetime, depending on how you play it. And during which you both apparently played hooky from the christening reception somewhere on the streets of New York.”
“He told you that?”
She nodded. “Also, that you eventually showed up, looking… bemused.”
“ Bemused? ”
“That’s the word he used.”
“That’s an exaggeration.”
“Which possibly explains the frowns and the thousand-yard stares. So, fill me in. Who is she and what’s going on with you?”
“You know.” He sighed, tossing the damp towel on the counter. “I hate it when you go fishing.”
“Only for information, baby brother. And look, no one’s around. You can tell me.”
But at that moment, Shay’s fifteen-year-old son, Ryan, burst through the kitchen door, along with an arctic blast of cold air.
Yanking off his outerwear as he moved into the room, he toed off his grime-coated Tacova boots with a shiver. “It’s freezing out there. I blanketed up all the horses I could catch. Of course, Nahkòhe wouldn’t have any of that. So stubborn, that gelding. But it looks like it’s gonna storm again later.”
Ryan read the look on both their faces. “What?”
“Um…” Shay slid a look at Liam. “Uncle Liam was just telling me… what a good job you’ve been doing with the horses.”
“That’s right,” Liam said. “You have.”
“Oh. Thanks.” He settled down on a chair by the island, looking like he wanted in on the conversation.
“And,” Shay said, “I was wondering if you wanted to help me make dinner. I’ve got all these potatoes to peel and—”
He jumped up. “Oh, well, I’ve got a ton of homework, so… can’t.” He headed in the direction of the stairs. “Sorry.”
“No worries, darling,” Shay called after him and they listened to him climb the stairs to his room. “So predictable.”
Liam grabbed a potato. “I’ll peel them.”
“Okay, now I know something is off. You’ve never in your life peeled a potato before.”
“I have.” He hefted the black-handled peeler in his hand and began peeling awkwardly backwards. “Once or twice.”
Shay guided him in the other direction which, admittedly, worked better. He sent her an annoyed look. “Her name is Emily Quinn. And she’s… British.”
“British!? From England?”
“London. But she works in finance in New York. So. Yeah. It was a thing for a minute, but she’s there. I’m here.”
Shay chose another potato and started peeling it. “And?”
“And… what?”
“You like her? Wanna date her? Be in the same city as her?”
He tossed the peeled potato in the pot of water. “What’s your point? She was… yeah, I like her and if she lived here, I’d be taking her out.”
“And that’s it?”
“I mean, we’ve texted and talked a few times. But she’s going through some things back there and I’m here, doing the ranch, and the likelihood of anything happening between us is—”
“But she texts you back?”
He tossed another potato in the pot, pinning her with a look. “I suppose you’ll want to read the text threads next.”
“ Oooh , can I?”
“No!”
Shay laughed. “Okay. Okay. But I’m glad you told me. Now you don’t have to keep it all fizzling inside, all alone and by yourself. Tell me what I can do.”
“Nothing. That’s why I didn’t tell you. There’s nothing to do. I’m working on her. Trying to convince her to come out here and see Montana. But she lost her job in New York, and she’s trying to find another one. And once she does, it’ll be game over. For me anyway.”
“Maybe you should go there again. Convince her.”
“Even if I did, leaving a big-city life like she has…”
“Izzy left Dallas for Will,” she pointed out. “She loves it here.”
Liam smiled at the mention of his newest sister-in-law and his big brother Will, Shay’s twin. After years away from Montana, playing football first in college, then in the NFL, Will had brought Izzy—a big-city girl—back to Montana to settle here and the pair had never been happier. Will’s return had marked the beginning of the ranch’s reinvention, and his brother had helped finance the project. But it wasn’t just the money. It was the heart both he and Izzy had put into the family and the ranch that had seemed to pull the entire family back together after their father’s death.
So, Shay was right about Izzy. But Emily Quinn was another matter altogether. Where would she find a finance job like the one she had in New York in small-town Montana? Nowhere. That was where.
“It’s not the same for Emily. Besides, we hardly know each other, really,” he said finally. “She’s good at what she does, and she can cook like nobody’s business. She’s got this whole social supper club thing going on in the city and all her people are there.”
“Right,” Shay said. “Obviously impossible. I suppose you should just give up on her. There’s no hope of anything working out. Clearly.” She side-eyed him.
“Did I say I was giving up? Again, this is why I didn’t tell you about her.”
“That’s better.” At his look of annoyance, she said, “You know Cooper and I never stood a chance, right? I mean, technically, our chances were zero. And now look. After everything that stood in our way, we made it. I’m not saying I know what’s best for you, but if she’s still on your mind and in your heart three weeks later and you can’t get her out, then there’s something there. And don’t let your worry about trivial matters like geography get in the way.”
His worries weren’t trivial, nor were Emily’s. But Shay had a point. He couldn’t get her out of his mind and that meant something. And he couldn’t let his pessimism about the possibility of her overtake him.
Their mom, Sarah, walked into the kitchen just then, carrying an armload of laundry, her shoulder-length dark-blonde hair tucked into a messy bun. She looked younger today than she had a few years ago when ranch troubles and Liam’s father’s death had pressed down on her. But that was thanks, in part, to Ray Lane reappearing in her life and the relationship that was still blossoming between them. She seemed happy in a way he’d never really seen her before.
“Am I interrupting?” she asked, stopping at the doorway when the two of them clammed up.
“Nope,” they both said at once as Shay’s gaze met Liam’s.
“Oh, good. Is everyone staying for supper tonight?”
“Almost. I’m pretty sure Gus is out on a vet call, though,” Shay told her. “But Cami said she’d save him a plate.”
Sarah eyed Liam. “You’ve been awfully moody lately. Everything okay?”
“Why is everyone asking me that? I’m not moody. I’ve never been moody.”
Shay snorted, then bit her lip. “Didn’t you say you… uh, had to send someone a text… or something?”
He scowled at the two of them as he plopped the third potato in the pot of water. “Yeah. I did as a matter of fact. So, if ya’ll will excuse me?”
Shay gestured grandly at the doorway to the living room. He sent her a withering smile.
“Text,” she mouthed with a wink and a thumbs-up.
“You’re ridiculous,” he mouthed back.
“I know.” She grinned like she’d just beaten him at Battleship or something equally inane. “But you know you love me anyway.”
He did. He absolutely did.
*
Three weeks later, Emily sat in the outer office of Carruthers, Steele, and Baker waiting for her meeting with the junior partner who’d called her in. She was wearing a killer navy Dolce and Gabbana suit, and the three-inch heel of her left foot was involuntarily beating out a staccato rhythm on the polished marble floor. She pressed her hand to her knee to stop it and took a deep breath, smoothing out her pencil skirt.
Stephen Swanker, said junior partner, had been with the firm going on ten years and had hiring power of lowly, entry-level employees when the partners were otherwise occupied. That wasn’t her. However, she was hoping he could intercede for her in a meeting with the higher-ups.
They’d met two years earlier at a conference and they’d hit it off, platonically speaking—he was there with his boyfriend—and now, two and a half months after her firm fell off a cliff and she fell into the proverbial land of the unemployed, she was desperate enough to try to hit Swanker up for a favor.
Her phone dinged and she dug it out of her purse. It was a text. From Liam.
A small smile lifted her mouth. He was in the strange habit of texting her exactly when she needed to hear from him. It was never long. A few words. Or a photograph. That’s what it was now. A sunrise. Against an incredibly beautiful, craggy mountain and, hidden in the center of the photo, two wild-looking pure white goats clinging to the side of the mountain on a rocky cliff.
Was that even a real photograph? Was it AI? Or did places like that really exist where he was? While England was beautiful and green most of the year outside of London, with rolling hillsides and diminutive stone walls etching the countryside, there was nothing like… like this there. She’d never even seen such a thing in person. Not even the rolling, ancient Adirondacks could compare.
Her phone dinged again, and his text came up again.
Him: “Morning. Hope you’re having a goat day.”
Emily snorted out loud, then clapped a hand to her mouth. The receptionist, ever serious, frowned in her direction.
Emily pulled a straight face and pointed her phone at her left foot, snapping a photo of her new red heels, attached it to a text and typed, “It’s a bit of this situation just now.”
She hit send.
Him: “Stop it.”
He added a smoke coming out of his ears emoji. She had trained him in emojis.
That was so like him to make her laugh when she desperately needed one. He’d been sending her little bits like this for the past two months since they said goodbye. Not every day. Just now and then. She’d sent him some, too. A battle of the two locales in photographs. Her last one was an odd angle of the statue at the ice-skating rink at Rockefeller Center, taken at dusk. She was quite proud of it, to be honest. Their back and forth had actually inspired her to look at the city anew, and to get her phone’s camera out as she walked.
And she’d think about him as she did. About that one kiss in front of her place. She’d wonder if he meant it the way she remembered it. Or if it had been a simple goodbye. But then he’d called her. He’d said he was rounding up cattle before a storm and she could hear them mooing in the background. He’d said he just wanted to say hello. So, not goodbye. Hello. They’d talked until he got them all to the barn and then he had to go. For a long time after, as she walked along Columbus Avenue, she wondered what that call meant.
They’d talked several times since then. Often at night when she was making herself dinner or curled up on her couch, and he was putting either the cows or himself to bed where he was. Once they’d talked for hours like that, seemingly about nothing. But neither of them wanted to be the first to hang up. Maybe they just had a long-distance friendship going. Which would be fine if her stomach didn’t take a tumble whenever she talked to him or thought about him. Of his beautiful eyes and the feel of his lips on hers. No, she was interested in more than friendship with him. But maybe her memory was playing tricks.
“Ms. Quinn?” the receptionist called, indicating Swanker standing at the open door of his smallish office.
He smiled broadly and gestured to her to come in. “Emily. How good to see you again.”
“Hello, Stephen. Thanks for seeing me.”
A slight man, though tall, Swanker’s wispy blond hair barely covered the balding pate at the back of his head, evident when he turned to take a seat behind his desk. He had a woman’s graceful hands: thin, long fingered, and delicate. But she knew he was ambitious as hell and had worked hard to get where he was in the company. Appearances could be deceiving.
“Of course, of course. When was the last time? Chicago, was it?”
“I think so, yes. It’s been a while.”
“So…” he hedged. “I assume I know what brings you here today. Am I correct?”
“If you think I’m looking for work, then you would be correct. Yes. We might as well dispense with the small talk. You know what my company went through. And through no fault of my own or anyone else but—”
“Let me stop you right there, Emily.”
She blushed furiously, sure she knew what was coming. She’d heard the same thing all over town.
“I like you. I’ve even talked to my bosses about you. Talked you up. Everyone knows your talent. But this business… it’s about trust. Without trust, we have nothing. We are nothing. William Bledsoe broke that trust, big-time. And I think you know it’s not about what’s true or accurate. It’s about what it looks like.”
“I’ve heard that before, too,” she said. “But surely once they prove it was all him…”
“That,” he said, “could take years.”
“I don’t have years. I’m here in the US on a work visa. Which will expire soon if I don’t find a job. I’m willing to start small if I have to, Stephen. I can build that trust. I promise you, if I—”
“If it were up to me, I’d hire you. But… the partners have already vetoed it. Vetoed you . Anyone from your firm, in fact. In a few years, it’s possible things may loosen up. Or not. People in New York have long memories about this kind of thing. What about London?”
She swallowed hard. London. She would have to go crawling back home, a failure. Ruined. And her overachiever brother would quietly gloat forever about that. Her father… well, she didn’t want to imagine his disappointment or how that would play out between them. All her years of hard work, for nothing.
Her eyes stung. Ruthlessly, she shoved the tears back and got to her feet. She wouldn’t beg. She’d figure something out. She had to. She had less than two weeks in this country before they made her leave.
“Thank you for your time, though, Stephen. I hope we meet again someday.”
“You, too, Emily. I’m sorry I wasn’t able to help you.”
She hurried out of the building and into the sunny, April morning, holding back tears. She wouldn’t cry. What was the point anyway? It wouldn’t change anything. William Bledsoe’s criminality had cost all of them—including his poor clients—dearly. And now they just had to face the consequences. She was getting used to this kind of rejection.
Perhaps she needed to rethink her entire life. Perhaps she needed a fresh tack.
When she was a girl, her father would take her and her brother sailing off the coast. The waters were always choppy and rough and the wind, ever changing. Managing a smallish sailboat was tricky at best, but the one thing she learned was that when the wind changed, it required you to change with it. And if you didn’t, you would sink. Simple as that. Tacking the sails became a life lesson, as did most things with her father. Not fun. But still useful.
That was what she needed to do now. Rethink, shift the sails, turn the boat into the waves.
She stopped in the middle of the sidewalk, staring at nothing.
Maybe you need to get out of town for a while. See things fresh. Come to Montana , he’d said. Maybe that was exactly what she needed.
*
They’d been through at least a half-dozen cooks, chefs, and wannabe chefs in the last month, interviewing for the position at the Hard Eight starting this spring. Shay was in charge, but Liam sat in on a few of them. They were looking for a high-end chef who would build a reputation for the guest ranch as an A-plus destination, aside from everything else they would be supplying. But finding one was proving more difficult than they’d expected. Excellent food here at the guest ranch was a critical element and they’d had to narrow down what they wanted as their list of applicants’ experience was varied and unique—and few.
Babe Pratt, one of their early applicants, was a local chuckwagon cook who’d worked on several spreads in the area and trail drives Liam himself had organized. Babe’s specialty was grilling beef—and more beef—over an open fire pit. Some grilled potatoes and beans likely found their way onto the plate as well. When pressed, coleslaw was a possibility.
“We were looking for a menu with a little more diversity,” Shay told him gently.
“Diversity? I do a mean chuck roast, a rib eye, my beef stew is always ate up. Then there’s my ground rib-eye burgers with sautéed red onion, cooked down and smothered with ketchup and some dill pickles. None of my cowboys ever complained over my cookin’,” he argued with a twang that belonged in the Montana high country. “I can do chicken, too.” He argued. “If I have to, but all them chichi vegetables? Little tiny portions are for the birds, and they ain’t gonna see you through a hot summer cattle drive down from the mountains. No siree.”
Since they wouldn’t be doing any of those with their clientele, they thanked Babe and moved on.
They were excited to meet Jacque DeBris, an actual trained chef from Vancouver, Canada, who came prepared to cook them some food, which they had to admit was excellent, but a background check explained that he’d left at least five jobs in the last year because of the toxic environment he created wherever he went. His unfriendly reaction to that question proved his former employers’ point. They moved on.
Over the course of the next week, they’d met a few more cooks, some just plain home cooks looking to do something different. But none of them were up to their standards. It was beginning to look like the job might fall to Liam’s mother, Sarah, who had already told them she had no intention of filling that position. They resorted to another round of ads in nearby regional papers.
Then came Petra Schwarzig, a home-trained Austrian cook who’d been cooking her way across the USA to gather up new recipes . She did, in fact, bring a great variety to her repertoire including some lovely Austrian dishes, low-country Louisiana food, and Midwestern BBQ. “There is only one demand I have,” she announced in her brusque Austrian accent as they tasted her schnitzel. “I must have music while I cook. I cannot waver on this requirement, ya ? You vill love it, ya?” She pressed the button on her portable CD player which blasted polka music until the pups in the next room howled.
They thanked her for coming and said they’d be in touch.
After, Shay poured them both another cup of coffee. “Why is this so hard?”
Liam shrugged. “It’s chemistry as much as the food. If we choose the wrong person, it throws the whole operation off.” He couldn’t help but think of Emily and that night around her table back in New York. The food, the comradery… It had all seemed so easy for her. She’d even made it feel easy for him… no easy task after spending most of his life interacting with cattle. But Emily was a rare commodity, that he knew for sure. And that became even more obvious as they met and rejected chef prospects for their operation.
“Maybe we should go to a cooking school and find someone looking to make a name for him or herself? Or take a trip to Seattle to try to steal a chef!” Shay said.
“Nobody is going to give up a good position at a top restaurant to come here to this untried place in the middle of nowhere when we haven’t even opened yet. We’ve got to find someone who’s in transition. Or… unhappy where they are. Then again, I suppose polka music is still an option.”
“ Noooo! ” Shay said with a moan. They both laughed.
Sarah and Ray came through the kitchen door just then, back from the grocery store in town.
“What are you two cackling about in here?” she asked. “I hope it’s not about the sound my truck’s making, whose muffler just went kaput driving down our driveway.”
Liam and Shay pulled themselves together and tried to look serious. “Your muffler went bad?” he said. “What happened to it?”
“It was the weirdest thing. We were just coming home, and we passed this car with… with polka music blasting out of it and just like that, the muffler blew up.”
He and Shay cracked up again.
“What?” Sarah said, confused.
Shay patted Liam’s arm. “Let’s just say the dogs and we are sympathetic to your muffler.”
Outside, another car pulled up, a Range Rover that looked more than a couple of years old, but nice. Out stepped a diminutive man in his forties, who tucked his chef’s knife roll under his arm and headed to their door.
Shay rolled her eyes. “Maybe I have PTSD, but I am not hopeful.”
“Give him a chance. This must be that guy from Missoula. He’s the last one on our list for the week.”
“Gary Nevers,” the man said, extending his hand to Liam once inside.
He reminded Liam of Sean Astin in a weird way and not just because of his dark hair and eyes. There was a cockiness to him that kind of preceded him.
“Nice to meet you,” Gary went on. “I’m a Michelin chef—only one star, but still. Here’s my resume.” He handed over a piece of paper to Liam. “I think you’ll find it more than adequate for your needs.”
“Please, come in,” Shay said, sitting him down at the table. She sent Liam a quick eyebrow lift as she looked over his resume.
“Mr. Nevers,” Liam began. “That’s impressive, that Michelin ranking. Earning any stars at all is quite an achievement.”
“That is true. They aren’t given out lightly. Though I would have liked two.”
“We’re not looking for anything too out there for our menus here at the Hard Eight. But we do like down-to-earth innovation and creativity,” Shay told him. “But this is a family operation, and we hope to attract both families and couples here looking for good food and a ranching adventure.”
“Perfect,” Nevers said, folding his hands atop the table, directing his answers to Liam. “I’m looking for that myself. After working in high-pressure kitchens around the world, I’m wanting to return to the art of cooking and not the pursuit of yet another star. Do you understand?”
“Makes sense,” he said. “We do weddings on this property as well, which call for bigger receptions and more extensive catering. Often, people will bring in their own caterer, but in case they don’t, we want to provide that service as well. Is that something you’d be comfortable with?”
“Of course. With my eyes closed,” he said with confidence. “But I don’t expect you to hire me without tasting my food. I can arrange to cook a tasting for you if you’d like. What are your facilities?”
Shay and Liam exchanged looks. “We’ve just completed our new kitchen, which is housed in that small building just off the main house.”
“May I see it?” Nevers asked. “One must see where one might be working.”
“Of course.” Shay led the way and Nevers inspected everything from the gas stove to the water pressure in the sinks.
“This will do,” he said, setting down his knives as a kind of possessive punctuation mark to their interview. “Though the placement of the dishwashing facility… I would have moved it to that side. At any rate, when shall we schedule a tasting?”
“Would two days from now be too soon?”
“I can do tomorrow if you’d like.”
They agreed to do the tasting but, despite his buttoned-up attitude, neither had a doubt that Nevers was the one.
The next day proved them right. His food was delicious, if a bit pretentious for their ranch. But they felt sure he would soon align with their recommendations and provide their guests with great meals.
None as great as Emily’s was in Liam’s memory, but… there was no help for that.
But it was the woman herself that he couldn’t seem to get out of his mind. Their frequent texts and occasional late-night phone calls triggered some optimistic reflex in him that was—to say the least—rare for him. He simply couldn’t work out how they could resolve the geography between them to even give themselves a fair shot at something good. Why did the one woman who made him think about a future have to be the one woman out of his reach? Or maybe, as his father used to repeatedly tell him, he only wanted the things he couldn’t have. Maybe that was their allure.
But that thought only made him angry, and he pushed his late father’s voice out of his mind.
At the round pen, Ryan and Cooper, Shay’s fiancé, were working with a new BLM three-year-old gelding that seemed to have the potential for adoption. Though they’d only been at it for a week, the roan Appaloosa was already haltered and allowing Ryan to touch him, and just now, took a treat from the boy’s hand.
“See there?” Ryan said to Cooper. “Told you so.”
“You called it, Ry,” Cooper answered standing back away from the horse and boy, who already stood nearly six-feet tall and looked older than his fifteen years. Cooper leaned against the rail as Liam approached. “Maybe we should consider keeping this one,” he said to him. “If I’m not mistaken, he’s got potential.”
“Your call.” Liam watched the kid put the gelding through his paces around the pen, flicking the long whip behind him. “He’s a beauty for sure.”
“How goes the cook search?”
“Finished. We found our chef. He seems pretty sure of himself, and his food is delicious. I think we’re good.”
Cooper nodded, staring off toward the clouds moving in over the mountains. “I’m ready for spring. Not another snow flurry.”
Liam felt the same. “We have another wedding at the round barn next weekend. I know they’re hoping for good weather.”
“After years being in Texas, I do still miss the long springs there.”
Liam had never known anything but long winters, being a native here. But he wondered about them. He wondered about New York City and England, too. And Maine or Kentucky and what summers elsewhere would be like. He loved this place, so maybe it was just his own restlessness showing. Or it was him, once again feeling tethered to this place when there was a whole world out there that beckoned.
“You okay?” Cooper asked, watching him now with a frown.
“Yeah. Sure,” he lied. “I’d better be getting up to the cabin we’re finishing up today. Tick off all the bits on my punch list.”
“I was up there yesterday. It’s looking great.”
“It is. Now let’s just hope we can get it booked up for summer.”
“I have a good feeling,” Cooper said, turning back to watch the gelding. “Shay’s got the furnishings coming any day now. She’s excited to see it all done up. You should be, too. Look what you’ve accomplished in such a short time.”
“ We. What we’ve accomplished. Couldn’t have done it without you.”
Before Cooper could argue with him—and he always did—Liam walked toward the cabins to the west of the main house. There were three of them fully up and furnished and this fourth one nearly done. Three were small, built for four to six people and the last was a large house designed for between eight and ten people, for families that wanted to travel together.
The smaller cabins had been booked for months now starting in late May through summer. The big cabin was more of a risk and the most expensive of the lot. Then there were the glamping tents, four of them, dotted around the property, surrounded by pastureland they’d re-dedicated to the guest ranch. All in all, Cooper was right to be optimistic. But Liam was having trouble focusing on what was to come when he couldn’t get his mind off what he’d left behind.
He was halfway through his inspection when his cell phone rang. He glanced down at the caller ID and wondered honestly if he’d conjured Emily with his thoughts. His throat tightened as he answered.
“Emily?”
“Hi.”
“ Hi. I was just… just thinking about you.” He could almost hear her smile.
“Ah… You probably say that to all the girls…”
“Yeah.” Leaving the finish carpenter on the stairway, he walked out onto the porch. “If you mean all the local cattle mamas I converse with daily. I do tell them that, but it’s not a lie. They all think I play favorites, and I don’t want ’em to get jealous.”
He enjoyed the sound of Emily chuckling as he took in the April sun that had broken through the usual wintery sky, despite the oncoming storm. He could hear her breathlessness, as if she was walking somewhere. “How’d your interview go the other day?”
She made an indecipherable sound. “Let’s just say… it went predictably.”
That didn’t sound good. “I’m sorry?”
“Yes. Well. No surprise. But I did appreciate the goat photo. And the pun.”
“A little corny, huh?” It totally was.
“It quite made me smile, despite the circumstances.”
“Well then it was worth the corn,” he said, imagining her walking in the park or some such place as they had together that day. “The press still bothering you?”
“Only when they can find me. It’s not just me. We’re all targets.”
“You’ve all been cleared though.”
“But the story… it’s too big to let go. Everyone wants to know how. How it happened and don’t we feel responsible somehow for all of it? And some find it hard to imagine he was alone in it. Which is why no one will hire me here.”
“Come out,” he said. Just two words that made her go silent for a long beat.
“Excuse me?”
“Come here for a week or two. Get out of that place, away from them. Come here and forget all that for a while. Breathe some clean Montana air and slow everything down. Figure out what you want.”
He could almost hear what she was thinking.
But she said, “Honestly, I’d love to, but… is it a good idea?”
“You mean… for us? For you and me?”
“Exactly. I… don’t want to mess up our—what is it we have? Our friendship.”
He knew exactly what she meant. “Nothing is going to happen that you don’t want to happen,” he told her. “Do I want to see you again? Yeah. Get to know you better? Absolutely. Do I wish geography wasn’t standing in the way of all that? Hell, yeah. But do I expect anything more if you come out to figure out your next steps? No. You’re safe with me, Em. I promise you that.”
He knew that her trust meter had apparently been badly broken lately, but he wanted her to believe him. His offer wasn’t a proposition. He had no expectations. Hopes, maybe, but no expectations. And to her, he understood clearly that the ground rules were important. She needed to know them before she agreed to go.
And really. Even if she did come out, what could happen? Nothing beyond what they were. Friends. His life and hers could never merge.
“There’s something else I haven’t told you,” she said.
He didn’t like the sound of that. “What’s that?”
“My visa is expiring. I’ve applied for an extension, but things are moving like molasses in that office and I’m not hopeful. I’ve already begun packing. I’m afraid I’ve got to go by the end of the month.”
“Go where?”
“Home. Back to London.”
“London?” Damn. In all his ruminations about her, he hadn’t considered that she wasn’t actually free to be here and that her whole life here in the US depended on her being gainfully employed. “I-I didn’t realize…”
“But I do want to come to Montana. To see you. So, maybe for a few days?”
Disappointed, he shoved down the feelings of unfairness in the whole mess. “A week? We’ll put you up in one of our cabins. And if you’re here next weekend, you’ll be here for a wedding. A first with our new chef. Say you’ll come.”
“Oh, I don’t want to be in the way. Maybe this isn’t a good time, then—”
“It’s the perfect time. Please. Just tell me when and I’ll pick you up at the airport in Billings.”
“Okay,” she said, and he could hear the smile back in her voice. “Okay.”