Chapter Seven
“D on’t run. Do not scream. Give me the fish,” Liam told her quietly, pulling her toward him by the wrist. “It’s okay. Give me the fish.” He pulled the hook out of the fish’s mouth and held it in his hand as they backed away. “Now. We’re just going to move away from her cub. Right up that way.” He pointed behind them. “We’re going to leave all this gear behind and move right up there.” He pulled her along the bank of the river, keeping his eye on the mother bear who was suddenly standing up on her back legs as her cub ran back to her.
“Nice bear,” Liam said softly. “Good bear. Your river. We’re leaving. See?”
The mother bear dropped to all fours and started toward them with a low growl.
Liam yelled, “ Hah! Get back! ” which momentarily stopped her. He tossed his creel half-full of fish onto the ground to the left of them. He and Emily edged up the riverbank, but the bear followed in a halting, angry prowl.
“No. No. Here you go. Here’s a big, juicy one for you.” Liam tossed Emily’s trout toward her. The fish flipped and flopped on the grassy bank drawing the bear’s attention.
“Don’t turn around,” he told Emily. “Back up away. Keep going. I’m right behind you.” He pulled a can of bear spray from his belt. “I’ll use this if I have to.”
“Liam—” she whisper-screamed.
“Go!”
She did as he said and backed up the bank, keeping her eye on the bear. She was huge. Bigger than Emily could have even imagined a real bear to be. Her claws looked four inches long. Emily had heard stories about grizzlies killing people in the wild—wasn’t that in Montana?—though she wasn’t sure if this bear was one of those man-eating kind of bears. She didn’t much care at this point. All she could think about was how close that animal was getting to Liam.
The cub ran to explore the willow creel he’d thrown, and the mother bear bounced on her front feet with a final warning growl at them, before turning her attention to their fresh catch. At which point, Liam made his way up to Emily and the two of them backed away from the best fishing spot on the Yellowstone, relinquishing it to its proper owner.
Once out of sight of the bears, they breathed a sigh of relief and hurried fast up the hill toward Deke’s home, with an eye behind them to be sure the bear wasn’t following them. Just as they reached the edge of his property, two huge birds flushed out of the tree near Deke’s porch and flapped heavily toward them, checking them out, before climbing toward the trees by the river.
Her scare meter tilted again.
Out from behind the house came Deke and Jake with concerned looks. “Was that a bear down at the river?” Jake asked. “Emily, you okay? You’re pale as a ghost.”
Deke’s dogs and Monday crowded around them, wagging their tails.
“Um… well… I believe so, yes.” Her voice was shaky.
“It was a griz,” Liam told them, holding Emily’s arm. “I think we better get her inside. I’m sorry, Em. That wasn’t exactly the fishing trip I’d planned.”
But she shook her head. “I’m okay. Really. When I saw that baby bear and then the mother bear, I thought… well, quite frankly, I thought we were goners.” She gripped his hand a little too tightly. “But thanks to you, we’re still here. Alive. My God. You’re not going to see anything like that in New York City. Or London. Who knew bears were that enormous?”
The men all looked at one another like, Yeah, we did.
“Throwing her the fish was brilliant. W-wait until I tell Muriel what… what happened…”
Her breath was coming hard and fast and, suddenly, she threw her arms around him and her breath came in shaky sobs. “Thank you.”
*
Liam held her against him. Her body was quaking. Like him, the spike of adrenaline brought on by that encounter was crashing. There was a buzzing in his ears. Probably because his own blood pressure had skyrocketed down by that river. In all these years in Montana, that was the closest he’d come, ever, to buying it by a bear. The fish was simply a last resort effort to distract the sow. Emily was properly scared, but they’d come closer than he’d wanted to admit to disaster. If anything had happened to her…
“Lucky you didn’t need to use your gun,” Jake said as they walked onto the deck of the house. “You do have a gun?”
He brushed Emily’s hair out of her eyes as she released him. “You mean the pistol that’s still in the bag down by the river? That gun?”
Jake and Deke exchanged looks.
“I don’t go anywhere here without one.” Liam ran a hand down his face. “But I didn’t want to get it wet if I had to go in the river. Lesson learned.”
“Well, at least you had bear spray,” Jake said.
“Yeah. Didn’t have to use it,” he said, not wanting to make matters worse for Emily by admitting that sometimes bear spray worked and sometimes it simply enraged an attacking bear.
And the last thing he wanted to do was spray a bear with a cub for simply being in the wrong place at the wrong time. He cursed himself for being unprepared because things could have gone much differently.
Deke explained to Emily, “This is the time of year bears are emerging from their dens, hungry from a long winter and dangerous as hell when their cubs are with them. Lucky for you, hunger won out and you had the trout to give them, which was no doubt why they were heading to the river in the first place. But glad for the heads-up. We just sent the girls out for a little exercise. And we were going to see if you were catching any fish.”
“The girls?” Color was finally returning to her cheeks, but she was still clinging to Liam’s arm.
“The falcons,” Jake said. “If not for you two showing up, we probably would have interrupted that very grizzly and her cub, fishing for her lunch.”
“Glad to be of service.” Liam led Emily inside as Deke blew a high-pitched whistle for the falcons.
“You okay?” Liam asked her quietly once they were in the living room that overlooked the valley through a huge picture window.
She nodded. “Thank you.”
“Thank you for not panicking.”
“Oh, I was panicking, all right. I’ve just learned to hide it well.”
He smiled. “Could’ve fooled me.”
She turned to face him with a grin. “What you did out there? I must say, aside from the sheer terror of it?” She pulled a finger down his shirtfront. “I must admit it turned me on a little.”
He couldn’t help the smile that curved his lips. “Yeah?”
“Mm-hm. You were rather hot fighting off that bear.”
He liked this flirty side of her. This playful, flirty side. And despite what had happened, it gave him hope that maybe this day wouldn’t be a complete bust after all. “And here I was, regretting exposing you to the Montana wilds.”
“Regret, I find, is an awful waste of time. Besides, how else would I have the full wild west experience? Or the story to take back to my oh-so-tame city-dwelling friends whose most dangerous outing is walking through midtown at night? But really. Today has been amazing. I learned to fly fish, and I even caught one! The bear got it, but still…”
“There’s your fish story.”
“Quite.”
Deke was holding the falcons when he and Jake walked in. Emily stared at the birds in awe. “Ah. They’re magnificent. They come when you call?”
“They’re pets now,” he told Emily. “Both of them were injured when I found them, and I nursed them back to health. But they both have issues still. Kind of ruined them for being in the wild. But we have a symbiotic relationship. They hunt rabbits and squirrels and bring them back home. We share the bounty. They come when they’re called and don’t miss a meal. It’s a win-win for them and company for me.”
She blinked. “You eat… squirrel?”
“No. I let them fight over the squirrel. To be honest, aside from a rabbit or two, I grow most of what I eat here. Can I interest you in a little early lunch?”
Jake leaned in. “You two will hit it off. Deke’s a gourmet cook.”
“Are you then?”
“My cooking is pretty basic, and I only have to please myself most of the time. But good food made with care is essential, don’t you think?”
“Absolutely. I’d love to see your kitchen.”
Deke beamed at that. “Let me put the girls in the aviary and I’ll show you around.”
The pair walked off together and, even after spending the morning with her, Liam couldn’t take his eyes off her.
“I’ve seen that look before,” Jake mused aloud. “Just never on you.”
Liam chuckled. “Yeah. She’s something. Meeting her in New York was like… it was like getting hit with a thunderbolt. Knocked me sideways.”
“We talking the real deal?”
“Maybe. If it were up to me,” Liam said. “But she’s a city girl and she’s heading back there after this short trip.”
“You sure about that?”
Liam found the leather sofa and slouched down into it. “Pretty sure. That’s the ground rules anyway.”
“My mind, rules are meant to be broken.” He sat down across from Liam. “Livvy took her sweet time letting go of some of her past to see clear to marry me. But I knew long before she did. I knew when we were just kids.”
Liam nodded. “Just now, when that bear came at us, the thought that I could’ve gotten her killed today just about broke me. She’s a city girl, like I said. She doesn’t have a clue about things like bears and wildcats.”
Jake ran a hand through his hair and leaned back. “She doesn’t look like a wallflower to me. She handled it all pretty well, for a city girl. And even city girls can learn to love the country. And cowboys who’ve been hit by a thunderbolt should be ready for the storm, but never underestimate their need for the rain.”
*
Emily and Deke ended up making lunch together, and he filled her in on the fascinating sci-tech work he was researching alone here in the mountains, from solar road technology to advanced aviation technology that had been inspired by his birds. By the time they’d all eaten lunch in his beautiful glass-surrounded atrium, she was in awe of him and wishing she could get to know him better.
She’d shaken off the scare with the bear, but Liam was strangely quiet during the meal. Now and then, he’d meet her eye and the distance in his stare would narrow in on her. She wondered if it was the bear he was still thinking about and how close they’d come to disaster. But, to her, this day had turned out to be practically perfect. A fully exciting, out-of-the-box kind of day, which was exactly what she’d had in mind in coming to Montana. Well, perhaps not the bear, but even that, with Liam acting all take-charge, protecting her, keeping her calm? That was all incredibly attractive and at the same time, confusing. Not because she hadn’t expected him to do just that, but perhaps, because that was exactly who he was. She’d just never met anyone quite like him.
And most likely never would again.
After they retrieved the things they’d left down by the river once the bears had gone, they said goodbye to Deke and flew back home. Jake’s dog, Monday, who had played relentlessly with Deke’s dogs, moped in the back seat with Liam, unhappy to leave his best doggie friends, but ended up on Liam’s lap, staring out the window.
The ride home took on a different tone though as each of them seemed lost in thought about the day’s happenings. For her part, Emily watched the beautiful landscape slide by, realizing that all the firsts she’d experienced today were also, no doubt, lasts . She’d be leaving Montana all too soon and once she returned to London, would likely never be back. Never see this incredible countryside again. Never get close enough to a bear to meet its eye. Never feel Liam’s strong hand, holding hers. Protecting her.
But that was how things were, and she had to accept them. Time was ticking away on her visa and, all too soon, she would be back in her father’s world again, an even smaller fish in a pond that was quite out of her depth.
Stop now. Don’t focus on what will happen. Focus on the now. If it all has to end, enjoy it while you can.
Those words resonated and she repeated them like an affirmation. She would enjoy this time, despite what loomed ahead. She’d come to leave all that behind her and to savor this moment in time with Liam—a man she hardly knew yet felt closer to than men she’d known for years. How was that possible? She’d only experienced that kind of connection in her life with women, insta-friends who’d become friends for life. But men? Never. Not until him.
He stopped at her cabin, getting out to open her door. She wasn’t ready to part with him but knew he had taken a big chunk of his day to entertain her, and she’d have to let him go.
They walked up the pathway to her cabin, and she pressed herself playfully at his side, smiling at him. “As choose your own adventures go, today was one I’ll never forget. Your Montana cool being at the top of the list of things I’m grateful for.”
“I’m grateful we came out of it alive.”
“You are not giving yourself enough credit for getting us out of there in one piece.”
He shook his head. “It sure as hell wasn’t the picture I wanted to paint for you of Montana our first day out. All I could think was I might get you killed.”
They reached her door, and she opened it, leaning against the doorjamb facing him. “If you think that spoiled the day for me, you still don’t know me. Have I not mentioned my years of swimming with sharks on Wall Street? A daily exercise in survival and, dare I say, constant terror? That bear was scary, yes, but you knew exactly how to handle her. And here we are. At the doorway of my adorable cabin on your beautiful ranch. Nothing is spoiled. As I said, it’s given me stories to tell for years to come.”
He leaned a hand above her on the jamb. “You… constantly surprise me, Emily Quinn.”
She took the front of his shirt in her hands. “Well… I’ve always been underestimated.” She pulled him close and kissed him.
He smiled against her mouth, and she suddenly knew she wanted more than just a kiss. She wanted all of him. There was no disguising the fact that he wanted the same as he deepened the kiss, dragging her hard up against him and taking things to a whole other level.
But then he stepped back, taking off the hat she’d knocked out of place and taking a deep breath.
Her own breath came in small gasps, as well. Lord, he could kiss.
“You’re right,” she said. “We should… we should slow it down.”
“That’s not what I was thinking,” he said, his voice gravelly with desire.
She searched his eyes. “What were you thinking?”
With a twinkle in his eye, he said, “I was thinking… you’d better watch out. Between the way you kiss and your chocolate cake, I might never let you go. I might just have to marry you.”
Marry me? Despite the twinkle in his eye, the way he was looking at her made her heart race.
“Ha-ha,” she said, “you jest. Better save your enthusiasm for my second attempt at that cake. I might disappoint you.”
She could almost see him editing his response to that. “Doubtful.” Then, he pressed his lips to the top of her forehead. “Hey, you like to dance?”
The change of subject made her head spin. “Dance? Like dance, dance?”
“Like… line dance.”
“I-I’ve… never done it.”
“So, add it to your bucket list ’cause tonight you’re gonna get the chance. Right now, I’ve got a bunch of chores to catch up on, but tonight I’m taking you to dinner at Grey’s Saloon. On Wednesday nights there’ll be dancing. If you don’t know how to line dance, they’ll teach you.”
“A saloon? How very John Wayne sounding. I love it.” Liam was full of surprises today.
“Pick you up at six then?”
“It’s a date.”
*
Will and Liam finished the last of the fencing repairs they’d found on their rounds on horseback through the north pasture and headed back toward the house. The weather this week was a glorious break from the dreary winter that had socked-in the ranch with bad weather for the past few months and gave them hope that spring and summer would be equally beautiful.
Liam was quiet—conspicuously quiet—for most of the afternoon, thinking about his conversation—and that kiss—with Emily. Thinking about the events of the morning and the ever-slimming chances that things might work out for them. Oh, he knew her intentions. She was heading back overseas and couldn’t really see anything stopping that. And maybe she was right to keep her distance. To keep things from getting serious. The government kept tabs on things like work visas and foreigners overstaying their time here.
But when he’d blurted out that idiotic thing about marrying her, he could see that scared her. And he cursed himself for saying it. He’d only meant it partly in jest as she’d said, but partly on the square, too. Because he could see himself marrying her. Living a life with her. And he’d never thought that about any woman before.
But could someone like her ever be happy in a place like this? Without the hustle and bustle of the city, and Wall Street and her career there? That look in her eye said no.
“She picked a good week to come,” Will said as they were riding back, broaching the topic that had been rolling around in Liam’s head all day. The one he’d been avoiding with his brother all afternoon. “We got good weather for her first time here.”
“Yup.”
“She seems nice.”
“Uh-huh.”
“And apparently handled the bear situation pretty well.”
Liam burned a look at him.
“ What? ” Will said, all innocence.
“You obviously have something to say.”
“Just making conversation.” He shrugged. “About Emily.”
Liam reined in his horse. “Go on, then. Ask.”
“Ask… what?”
“What everyone wants to know. Apparently.”
“You mean if it’s serious between you two? I’d never ask that. That’s none of my business.” Will straightened as if to deflect any blame.
“That’s true.”
“I mean, is it? Serious?”
Liam groaned and pulled up his horse. “There, you see? You just asked.”
“Okay, but all of us are just looking out for you,” Will said, pulling up beside him.
“Thanks, but I can look out for myself. And what does serious even mean? Do I like her? Yeah. Maybe like her a lot? Yeah. But she’ll be here for a minute then she’s moving back to London. How serious can it be?”
“Oh, I don’t know. Pretty damn serious from the way you look at her, I’d say.”
Liam nudged his horse forward. “Yeah. Well… I almost got her killed today.”
Will followed. “That’s ridiculous. You know that. That could’ve happened to anyone.”
“Could it? Bring a city girl out here to the middle of nowhere and she has no idea what’s here. How dangerous it could be? What could happen? Put a grizzly bear ten feet from her face and—”
“But you handled it.”
“We were lucky.”
“Because you handled it. And, on the subject of dangerous, exactly how dangerous do you think it is just walking around a big city like New York or… or London? Muggings. Robberies. And I mean… the traffic alone—”
“What’s your point?”
Will sighed and stared off at the mountains in the distance. The sun was lowering in the sky. Days were still relatively short, but they were all looking forward to summer.
“Do you remember that conversation we had when I first came home? The one about you wanting a life? The one where I thought you might break your hand on my face?”
“I remember. I believe it was about wanting a real life, not one just tied to feeding cows all day long, isolated from the world. Anyway. I believe I apologized for that. Deserved or not.” He slid Will a brotherly grin. “And now I have a life. I’ve got this place, the guest ranch ready to go. More people around… a little more freedom. A life.”
“Right.”
Liam frowned at him. “What?”
“You know the old saying, you can fool all of the people some of the time and some of the people all of the time but—”
“Meaning?”
“Meaning, I do not fall into the all-of-the-time category. You think I don’t know—that I’m not aware—that all of us, everyone in this family has paired off in the last year and a half except—”
“Me. I know. But thanks for pointing it out.”
“And did you think that invitation to the Brody’s kid’s baptism in New York City fell out of the sky?”
Now he turned to Will in shock. “ What? ”
“No, I mean you were out driving cattle or something that day when I happened to talk to Jess when he called the house and he wanted you to come to the baptism, but he didn’t imagine you could drag yourself away from the ranch. I told him, yes, you could. And you’d love to come.”
“Wait. You got me invited?”
“No. Not at all. But we all wanted you to get outta here. Out from under all the work you’ve been putting in. See what’s out there. Outside of this place. And look what happened.”
He burned a look at his brother. “Next you’re gonna tell me meeting her was a setup.”
“No, no. That was… a total—what do they call it? A kismet thing. But taking you to that dinner at her house was Jess’s wife’s idea. She adores Emily and thought… why not?”
Either way, it seemed the universe—and his family—had conspired for them to meet. His head was spinning.
“All I’m saying,” Will went on, “is don’t put imaginary roadblocks in front of you and her. Like what might have happened this morning, or her not being country enough for this place.”
“An expiring visa is not imaginary.”
“Minutia. That could be overcome with a job.”
“A job she can’t get here. And you’re one to talk about roadblocks, after you and Izzy nearly broke up over the roadblock you put in front of her, lying to us about your real relationship.”
Will sent him a grin. “This is one of those big brother ‘do as I say not as I do’ moments. Or maybe it’s a learn what I had to learn the hard way. But you and Emily… I say keep open to what’s possible. And if you want her, little brother, fight for her.”
*
“Don’t hate me,” was the first thing out of Emily’s sister, Muriel’s mouth when Emily answered her cell phone after saying goodbye to Liam. “It wasn’t exactly my fault.”
Emily’s heart sank, imagining the worst. “You’ve flooded the apartment?”
“Um… no?”
“Set fire to it?”
“Not that either.”
She didn’t like the sound of this. “Don’t make me guess. What have you done, Muriel?”
“Do you want the really bad news or the qualified good news first?”
“Let me have it. Bad first.”
She heaved a sigh. “I… may have mentioned to Malcolm that you might have… possibly fallen in love with a… a cowboy. And that you’ve gone to Montana to find your happily ever after.”
Emily clutched her forehead. “Oh, Muriel—”
“I know. I know. But in my defense, he goaded me into it. And I got carried away by the romance of your whole adventure. Because Mal was ragging on you to me as usual, and I was trying to defend you and… oh, it really was an accident.”
“An accident ? For God’s sake, Muri…” Both of them knew full well that Malcolm, with the smallest bit of information, was like a sidewinder snake who sniffed prey in the desert.
Mostly because he had their father’s ear. And once that story reached Lord Quinn… well—
“You know how Mal is,” Muriel went on. “He’ll wheedle things out of you and before you know it…”
She knew exactly how Malcolm could be, and Muriel—being the baby of the family and the peacemaker—was particularly vulnerable to his methods of manipulation.
“I’m so sorry,” her sister said. “Please don’t hate me.”
“Shhh,” Emily shushed. “I don’t hate you. What did he say?” She could only imagine the gears clicking in her brother’s pointed little head at the thought of passing along this delicious bit of gossip.
“He laughed. He actually laughed and said—” She stopped and silence stretched on the line.
“He said what ?”
“He said he was hardly surprised after you ruined your reputation with that firm in New York that you would slink off with someone as… as unreputable as a… a cowhand —”
She shot to her feet. Unreputable? Cowhand? The words almost made her laugh out loud. Liam Hardesty was ten times the man Malcolm would ever be, in every possible way. As for cowhand , pph-hffft ! She’d like to see Malcolm’s reaction to what Liam had built here. And what Malcolm would have done in the face of that grizzly bear this morning. Now that was a hilarious thought! Or imagine him ever kissing a girl until her toes curled the way Liam had. Or made her feel like she was the best thing that had happened to him in years.
The thought nearly made her gasp. Was she falling in love with Liam? Could she possibly be falling in love with a man who was so objectively wrong for her? Or maybe the truth was, he was objectively absolutely right .
Muriel’s next words forced her to tune back in to what she was saying. “And that our father would certainly have something to say about this. And he was right.”
She wanted to scream. “He called you? Father has literally nothing to say about my life. I’ve been gone all these years, and he still thinks he can control me?”
“He’s aware of your visa issues, of course.”
“And that I’m moving in with you?”
“I didn’t tell him that. But, Emily, this is the qualified good news. He’s privately arranged for a position for you with Garrett Falkner, who works at Footsie. It’s above your last position and working directly for him. It’s truly your dream job.”
Emily swallowed her shock. Footsie, the informal name for the FTSE 100 Index, the UK’s best known stock market index. She, of course, knew of Garrett Falkner, a legend in the UK stock exchange and a billionaire fund manager who’d become one of the primary leaders in Footsie four years ago. Of course she knew him. Everyone did. But the idea that he could be considering her for a position after all that’d happened—
“That’s impossible,” she told Muriel, and began pacing around the house like a madwoman.
“Apparently, it’s not. I checked with our newest stepmother. Tabitha was positively giddy at the prospect of your coming home to London for good to work for Garrett. She said, ‘It will make Owen so proud of her.’”
And there it was. Her father’s conditional approval, love, pride. The thing she’d sought her whole life without even understanding what a Sisyphean task that was.
Suddenly, the whole idea of London sat like a sour pill at the back of her throat. True, a job like that only came around once in a lifetime. But taking it would make her beholden to her father. Just one more string attached to their tenuous relationship.
She shook her head and sat down hard on the sofa in the living room. It was a dream job. Not in New York, but still. And certainly, nowhere near Liam or Montana. But she’d known all along she’d be forced to leave this beautiful country and move home. That didn’t make what she was starting to feel for him any less complicated.
Her head felt like the center of a hummingbird battle and all of it was a blur. “Muri—I… I can’t think about this now. I’m on vacation. The first vacation I’ve had in years. I’m having fun, and I’m enjoying my time with Liam. I won’t let Father or Mal ruin it for me. So, let’s pretend you did not tell me this and I know nothing about it. I’m turning off my phone after this. And if Father asks, tell him that I’m unreachable. All right?”
“All right. But about the job… what if it goes away?”
“Then it does. I’m here. I want to be here now.”
“Hmmm. That sounds suspiciously like a seventies’ self-help book title.”
“Yes, well I’m trying to help myself, aren’t I?”
Muriel sighed. “I do hope you know what you’re doing.”
Emily certainly did not. And she had no inkling when she would.