“Would you want to do this the natural way?”

The look on his face when he asked that question was comical. Taylor started to laugh, even though Clint didn’t join her. They both had something the other needed, so it truly could be a win-win if they played their hands correctly.

“I’d prefer …” She couldn’t believe she was about to say this. “Natural.”

She was tired of shots and doctors and scheduling and waiting rooms. She just wanted a man to knock her up the old-fashioned way. Was that too much to ask for?

“Would you have any … objection to that?”

“No.” Clint’s response was direct. “I wanted to take you to bed the first time I saw you.”

High Country Baby
Joanna Sims

www.millsandboon.co.uk

JOANNA SIMS lives in Florida with her wonderful husband, Cory, and their three fabulous felines, Sebastian, Chester (aka Tubby) and Ranger. By day, Joanna works as a speech-language pathologist and a clinical educator for a large university. But her nights and weekends are reserved for writing contemporary romance for Mills & Boon. Joanna loves to hear from Mills & Boon readers and invites you to stop by her website for a visit, www.joannasimsromance.com.

Dedicated to my mentor and dear friend

Libby I love you.

Contents

Cover

Introduction

Title Page

About the Author

Dedication

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 Fourteen

Chapter Fifteen

Chapter Sixteen

Extract

Copyright

Chapter One

Clint McAllister heard the familiar click of a bullet being chambered. He’d slept just like a baby once he’d polished off a fifth of tequila, and he’d awakened with a well-deserved hangover. Groggy, irritated, with a massive headache, he’d stumbled over to the edge of the wooded area just beyond his campsite to relieve himself. The last thing he’d expected was to get caught with his pants unzipped, barefoot and without his revolver. Damn rotten luck.

“Put your hands up and turn around nice and slow.” Taylor Brand stood confident in the “ready” stance she had learned during concealed-weapon training. Like everything in her life, she had worked hard to be first in her class.

“Just calm down...” The cowboy lifted his left hand up but moved his right hand down to his zipper.

“Keep your hands where I can see them!” Taylor ordered, her voice clear, firm and calm. “Turn around...do it now!”

The stranger quickly lifted his right hand back up. “Look...unless you want a show, I’ve gotta zip it up before I face you. All right?”

“Do it quick.” Taylor told him. “Then turn around.”

The man tucked himself in and zipped up quickly, per the lady’s orders. His belt buckle still undone, his button-down shirt still completely unbuttoned, the cowboy raised his hands above his head and turned around slowly.

“Why are you following me?” Taylor demanded with her revolver aimed at the man’s chest.

“Boss’s orders.” The man told her, keeping his eye on the flat black barrel of her gun. “Your uncle told me to follow you, make sure you’re safe, and that’s what I’m doin’.”

Taylor stared hard at the unkempt cowboy with her hands steady on the gun. She was only one full day into her trek up to the Continental Divide. It was true that she had forgotten a lot about being in the wilderness over the years, but she had traveled all over the world for business and she had developed a heightened sense of awareness.

Once she was certain she was being followed, she had waited until the first light of morning, made a wide circle back and was able to sneak up on the cowboy much more easily than she had anticipated. The empty liquor bottle she had spotted near the cowboy’s gear most likely explained how simple it had been to ambush him—he was a drinker.

“You work at Bent Tree?” she asked him.

The cowboy gave a slight nod of his head. Now that she was getting a better look at him, he did look familiar. She remembered a cowboy who had tipped his hat to her the first day she had arrived at her uncle’s ranch. He’d been wearing a sweat-soaked chambray shirt, a black cowboy hat and boots caked with mud and manure. But just because she could place him at Bent Tree didn’t mean that he was following her on her uncle’s orders. Uncle Hank hadn’t mentioned one word of this to her before she had headed out.

“I’m lowerin’ my arms, lady. You got that?” the cowboy asked. For a man staring down the barrel of a gun, he seemed to have the mistaken impression that he was in charge of this encounter.

The man’s collar-length dark hair was unruly from the night; his face had been unshaven for several days. She wasn’t overly impressed with his height or the jailhouse tattoos on his exposed skin, but he was surprisingly fit from the look of his defined chest and shredded abs. His eyes were squinty and bloodshot, and he was obviously hungover. If he had been her employee, she would have fired him on the spot.

“And if you don’t plan on shootin’ me, you’d best holster that weapon,” the cowboy told her.

“I haven’t decided not to shoot you.” The man’s arrogance wasn’t unexpected—he was a cowboy.

Clint watched her through sore, narrowed eyes while he buttoned up his shirt. Getting caught with his pants down by Hank’s niece had sobered him up quick enough. And he didn’t like having that gun pointed at him.

“Lady—do you even know how to shoot that gun?” Clint unzipped his jeans a little so he could tuck his shirt in.

“I’m a crack shot.” she answered him. “Now, get your hands back where I can see them!”

Clint heard the slightest squeak in Taylor’s voice when she issued the command. She didn’t want him to know it, but she was rattled. And a rattled woman with a gun aimed at his chest didn’t sound like a good time.

“Look...” Clint tucked in his shirt. “You need to get on the horn to your uncle. Convince him that you don’t need me and you’ll be seein’ the hind end of my horse before you can say Gucci.”

Clint finished tucking in his shirt, zipped up his pants, buckled his belt buckle, and then pointed to the campsite.

“Now—I’m going over there...if you shoot me, you’d better do a good job. If you just graze me, you’re gonna regret it...”

“What’s your name?” she asked tersely. Clearly she had lost control over this situation. A phone call to her uncle was the next logical step.

“Clint.” The cowboy settled his hat on his head and adjusted the brim. “Clint McAllister.”

There was a bite in his tone and rigidness in his body she didn’t like at all. He was an ill-mannered man, too jagged around the edges for her taste.

“Just stay put until I talk to my uncle,” Taylor ordered when Clint started to walk over to where his horse was tethered, his saddle hoisted onto his narrow hip.

“Take it easy.” He shook his head in frustration.

This was a rotten beginning to an already lousy day.

“You take it easy.” Taylor snapped, but she holstered her weapon.

“Uncle Hank!” The connection was bad on her end. “It’s Taylor...can you hear me?”

“I can hear you...”

“I can barely hear you...but, listen... I’ve got some guy named Clint following me and he says he’s under orders from you...is that true, or should I shoot him?”

“I’d rather you not shoot him, Taylor.” Hank told her. “He’d be a hard one to replace.”

Taylor glanced quickly at Clint’s back—he wasn’t looking at her, but she knew he was listening to every word.

“Uncle Hank—I told you that I needed to make this trip on my own.”

She had taken a leave of absence from her job so she could ride the Continental Divide. Her plan was to ride a section of the divide alone; she’d never imagined it any other way.

“Negative,” Hank said in a brusque tone that she had heard many times in her life. Her uncle was a big man, physically as well as in the world of ranching, and he wasn’t fond of explaining his decisions.

Clint turned around and they locked eyes for the briefest moment before they both broke the connection.

Taylor lowered her voice. “Uncle Hank—I don’t want this. This wasn’t part of my plan.”

“Plans change.” Hank told her in a no-nonsense manner. “Take Clint with you or make a U-turn and come on back to the ranch.”

Taylor moved farther away from her cowboy bodyguard. “Did Dad call you? Is that it? Because if he did, let me assure you...”

“Your dad didn’t call me—my brother hasn’t bothered to call me in years, so I don’t expect him to start now.”

Hank was her father’s older brother. When their father, her grandfather, died, a disagreement about the validity of the will sparked a family feud that had lasted for most of her adult life.

“Uncle Hank.” She sounded like a child beseeching a parent. “Please. This is really important to me.”

“You are really important to me, Taylor. I was wrong to go along with your cockamamie idea in the first place. I’ve come to my senses now, and I’m not changing my mind. So, what’s it gonna be?”

“I have to do this,” she said quietly. “I can’t turn back now.”

“Come again?”

More loudly, she repeated. “I can’t turn back now.”

Not after she had come this far—farther than anyone in her life, including her, thought that she would go.

“It’s better this way,” her uncle reassured her.

It was pointless to disagree, so she didn’t bother to put her energy into a lost cause.

“And Taylor?”

“Yes?” She didn’t try to hide the disappointment.

“Clint knows the divide like the back of his hand—and I trust him.”

Clint didn’t have to hear the conversation to know that it wasn’t swinging in Taylor’s favor. Her body language—hunched, tense shoulders and lowered head—said it all. Which meant that he was still on the hook to babysit a woman who looked as if she’d be more comfortable getting pampered in a ritzy spa than riding the divide on horseback. She didn’t make sense to him, and he wasn’t keen on things that didn’t make sense.

“Everything squared away?” Clint asked as he swung his saddle onto the back of his sturdily built buckskin quarter horse.

“Looks like we’re stuck with each other.” Taylor swatted a fly away from her face. “I don’t know what possessed my uncle to change his mind at the eleventh hour—I don’t need a babysitter.”

Clint reached beneath his horse’s belly to grab the girth. “I ain’t no babysitter.”

Taylor cringed at the way in which Clint colorfully put a sentence together. She was an English major in college. Syntax was always her first love and double negatives made her nuts. Even though he’d managed to butcher the English language with a four-word sentence, she couldn’t deny one thing: the cowboy didn’t want to be here anymore than she wanted him. They were both in the same rotten boat. And by the looks of him, there was a chance he could be persuaded...

“You could wait here for me. No one has to know,” she suggested casually. Then, when she had his attention, she sweetened the pot. “I could pay you.”

The cowboy fished a pack of unfiltered cigarettes from his front pocket and knocked one out of the pack with his hand. “That’s not gonna happen, lady.”

He needed this job. He was trying to dig himself out of a mighty deep financial hole and he wasn’t about to bite the Hank Brand hand that was currently feeding him. If he took Taylor’s money, it would no doubt be short-term gain with long-term negative consequences.

Before he put the cigarette in his mouth to light it, he offered Taylor a suggestion of his own. “You could head on back to Bent Tree and save us the hassle.”

“I’m not going back.” Taylor was firm in her response. It was easy for her uncle and this cowboy-for-hire to toss this suggestion around as if it was nothing. To them it was nothing. They had no idea what she had gone through or how much she’d given up to get to this leg of her journey. And, to her, this trek to the Continental Divide had become everything.

Clint took a drag off of his cigarette. He shook his head and when he spoke, curls of white smoke streamed out of his nose and mouth.

“Well, then...it looks like we’re stuck with each other.”

She felt tears of frustration and anger well up behind her eyes. She didn’t typically cry when she was sad—she cried when she was mad as hell. She hated Clint for not being corruptible. She pushed the tears down; they were useless to her and she needed every ounce of her energy reserve to spend another day in the saddle.

“I’ll hang back.” Clint put his cigarette out on the tip of the bottom of his boot before he tossed it into the cold fire pit. “That’s the best I can do.”

Taylor stared at the wrangler for a moment longer. She had already burned too much daylight dealing with an issue that simply wasn’t going to resolve in her favor.

“I’m afraid that you’re best isn’t good enough, Mr. McAllister.”

She had been a vice president at a large bank for many years and knew when a negotiation was over. She didn’t have anything left to say to the cowboy, so she headed back up the hill to where she had stayed for the night and broke camp as quickly as she could.

Her uncle had provided her with a small, sure-footed mare named Honey and an experienced pack mule named Easy Does It. It didn’t take her long to break camp, pack up her belongings and get ready for the day’s ride.

Prior to leaving Chicago for Montana, she had moved all of the furniture in her formal living room out of the way so she could set up a practice campsite. She read, and then reread, all of the manuals that came with her new camping gear, and she had even slept inside of the tent for several weeks to get used to sleeping on the ground.

All of her practice and preparation had paid off—she could set up and break camp with relative ease. Her uncle had personally shown her how to pack Easy’s load properly and refreshed her memory on the correct way to tack a horse. All in all, she was pretty proud of her ability.

But there was one giant fly in her ointment: mounting her horse.

She was short, she had stubby legs and she certainly wasn’t as limber as she’d been in her teens. It was a major chore to get her foot into the stirrup, but once that was accomplished she didn’t have enough strength to get her bottom-heavy body into the saddle. The only way she could mount up was to find a log or a stump to stand on and even then it wasn’t a guarantee. She knew that this was a weakness that needed to be overcome, because if she couldn’t find a makeshift mounting block one day, she would be stuck on the ground. Not good.

She led Honey over to a fallen tree she had scoped out the night before, tightened the girth and lengthened the stirrup. Honey was surefooted, that couldn’t be denied, but she was also horrible to mount. The mare was frisky from the briskness of the morning air and she danced sideways away from the log right when Taylor had managed to leverage her foot into the stirrup.

“Whoa!” Her foot was caught in the stirrup and pulled her leg forward while she wobbled precariously on the log. She ended up in a half-split position, grabbing urgently to unhook her foot from the stirrup.

“Honey, whoa!” Taylor unhooked her foot just in time to stop herself from falling forward.

That could have ended in a serious injury, and she was lucky it hadn’t. The muscles on the inside of her right thigh, already tender from a day in the saddle, had been stretched beyond their limit during that failed attempt to mount her steed.

Taylor clutched the inside of her right thigh. “Ah!”

She rubbed the muscle to stop it from contracting. But the minute she let go of that part of her body, she noticed that her left hip joint was aching.

Honey was standing quietly, perfectly still, a few feet away.

“Woman to woman, Honey—give a sister a break, okay?”

Taylor walked Honey in a semicircle and halted her right next to the log. Three more attempts and three more semicircles later, Taylor was tempted to just start walking until she found a better place to mount. It was at that moment that Clint rode into the clearing, dismounted and silently stood on Honey’s right side to stop her from moving away from the log. The cowboy adjusted her reins so the right rein was shorter, showing Taylor, without verbalizing it, how to keep the horse from moving away from her.

Once she was in the saddle he checked the tightness of her girth and the length of her stirrups. When he was done with his inspection, he led the mule over to her and handed her the lead rope.

Their eyes met for the briefest of moments, for the second time that morning, but this time she could see that his eyes were the color of the blue Montana sky. Satisfied that she was squared away, he mounted his horse and disappeared into the trees beyond her campsite.

It pained her to admit it—it really did. Clint had just gone a long way to prove his value on this trek. She hadn’t said thank you, and he hadn’t expected it. He’d done what her uncle had told him to do—watch out for her. And, then, as good as his word, he’d disappeared into the thick wall of brush and trees.

With a cluck of her tongue and a tug on the lead rope that was hooked to the mule’s harness, Taylor started guiding the mare toward the trail. She was still on her uncle’s land—Bent Tree sprawled out across thousands of acres abutting the Continental Divide. She’d make it to one more designated campsite on this trail, a campsite used by the Brand family for generations, and then she’d finally reach the mouth of the Continental Divide trail. Would the moment be exactly as she had dreamed it so many times since she was a teenager? She could hardly wait to find out.

* * *

It was simply a fact that riding on horseback all day had been much easier, and much more romantic, in her imagination than in reality. The last time she had ridden, she had been in her twenties. Years later, and now that she was pushing forty, her body wasn’t as pliable or cooperative as it once been. She was chaffed in private places, her hip joints ached, her leg muscles ached, her back ached and for some reason, her neck was stiff, too.

She had used every psychological trick and pep talk she could think of to push through the pain, stay in the saddle and make it to the next campsite. When she finally reached a landmark, a steep hill on the trail, that let her know she was nearly there, Taylor tightened her grip on the lead rope and grabbed the saddle horn in order to stop herself from flying backward in the saddle when Honey galloped up the steep hill.

At the top was a grassy plateau perfect for camping. Grateful that she had accomplished her goal, she couldn’t stand to be in the saddle for one more minute. She groaned loudly as she swung her shaking leg over her horse’s rump. She unhooked her foot from the stirrup and slid, ungracefully, gratefully to solid ground. She winced as she walked—a new blister had formed over the old blister on the back of her right heel. But, she didn’t care. She had succeeded! She had triumphed!

Taylor limped her way through the quick camping routine she had established for herself, and then once she was satisfied with her situation she backtracked on foot to go find Clint. It was ridiculous to try to pretend she was alone when she wasn’t, in fact, alone. She had tried all day long and it hadn’t worked. She’d never been good at pretending.

“What’s up?” Clint was surprised, and not pleased, to see her come around the corner. He twisted the top back onto the glass bottle he had in his hand before he tucked it back into his saddlebag.

“We may as well make camp together.”

Clint hadn’t unpacked his gear or unsaddled his horse. “That’s what you want?”

It wasn’t. But it was practical. She had always been, until recently at least, a very practical woman.

“It’s practical,” she told him. “It’s hard for you to babysit me from way down here.”

Clint nodded his head after a bit and then fell in beside her on foot instead of remounting. The silence between them was uncomfortable for Taylor—and when she was uncomfortable, she tended to talk. It was a bad habit she’d never truly been able to break no matter how many times her ex-husband complained about it.

“You must have drawn the short straw to get this gig.”

No response.

“My entire family thinks I’ve gone off the deep end.”

“Have you?”

“Gone off the deep end?” Taylor asked with a labored breath. She had exchanged her gym membership for a frequent customer card at the local bakery over a year ago. She had packed on the pounds and her cardio was at an all-time low. This trip was either going to break her or help her snap the heck out of it!

Clint nodded. She could see by the look on his face that the question wasn’t sarcastic or rhetorical—he genuinely wanted to know if he was traveling with a loony bird.

Perhaps it wasn’t wise to be so forthcoming with the cowboy, but she was tired of living a dishonest life. She’d lived with lies in her marriage—always hiding who she really was in order to fit some impossible standard of the “perfect wife.” So she told Clint the truth.

“I’m not sure.” Taylor’s brow furrowed thoughtfully. “Maybe.”

Chapter Two

It was odd. They were strangers, but they worked well as a team. Clint chose a spot on one side of the permanent fire pit, while she found the perfect place on the opposite side to set up her tent.

While she worked, she sneaked quick glances at her cowboy bodyguard. He was unlike any man she had dealt with in her adult life—there was a sharp edge to this cowboy. He had the look of a man who’d fallen on hard times more than once in his life. Years, presumably tough years, were etched on his narrow face and around his deep-set eyes. Everything about the man seemed to be suffering from too much wear; from his cracked leather boots to the hat that had been faded from black to a muddy gray by the sun, everything had seen better days.

Clint went off in search of kindling to start the fire while Taylor focused on finding a spot in the flat open field for Honey and Easy to graze. After they were settled, she worked on settling herself. She unzipped the black bag containing her tent and pulled it out of the bag. After the olive-green tent was unrolled, she quickly lifted and snapped the four frame braces into place.

She had the tent assembled and staked into place by the time Clint reappeared. The cowboy had a mostly smoked cigarette clutched between his teeth and was carrying an armload of kindling. He dumped the wood into the pit and then knelt down, wincing. She had noticed that he had an odd stiffness in his legs when he walked—it reminded her of how her grandfather moved before he underwent knee replacement surgery.

“I need to hibernate for a minute.” Now that they had stopped for the day, the ache in all of her joints and muscles, the fatigue she felt all over her body and the foggy brain that she had been fighting for the last several hours overwhelmed her. She had to lie down.

Clint looked over at her and gave a quick nod to let her know that he heard her. The man wasn’t a talker and he seemed determined to stay out of her way. She could appreciate that about him. If she had to have company on this journey of self-discovery, at least her company would be quiet.

Taylor zipped herself into her small tent and stretched flat out on her back, palms upward, legs straight, eyes closed. She groaned, low and long, wishing that she could locate a place on her body that didn’t hurt. With effort, she pushed her torso upright and reached down for her boot. She had developed a donut belly over the past six months and it was a chore to reach her foot.

With fingers stiffened from holding the reins all day, Taylor tugged, eyes closed, biting her lip to distract her from the pain she was feeling as the heel of the boot scraped over her blister.

“Ahhhhh!” Taylor yanked the boot off the rest of the way.

Even the simple chore of removing her boots was made harder by the excess weight she had gained.

“Gosh darn it, you’re out of shape.” Taylor muttered as she pulled off the other boot.

She tossed the boots toward the tent flap; slowly, she peeled off her sweat-soaked socks. Her socks stank, her feet stank, and the bloody blister now covered the entirety of her right heel. Taylor wrinkled her nose while she gently prodded the blister—why hadn’t the stupid thing popped already?

After examining it, Taylor struggled out of her jeans, quickly took off her T-shirt and bra, and put on a clean T-shirt that covered a portion of her panties. Once inside of the sleeping bag built for one, she slipped on her standard eye mask to block out the light and sighed the sigh of a woman who had finally found a comfortable spot after a long day of discomfort. She wiggled farther down into the sleeping bag, the top edge tucked under her chin, and prayed for sleep. Ever since the divorce she hadn’t slept well. She was hopeful that on this journey, pushing her body to the limit, that exhaustion would force her to sleep.

“Please, God—please let me sleep.”

* * *

At first, Clint was grateful to have Taylor shut away in her tent. He didn’t want this grunt job that his stepbrother Brock, foreman of Bent Tree, had volunteered him for, but with a negative balance in his bank account and creditors trying to track him down, he didn’t have a choice. At least while she was in her tent he didn’t have to worry about her.

While Taylor was temporarily contained he built a fire, broke into the beef jerky he always took with him when he went on long camping trips, drank some cheap tequila and chain-smoked cigarettes while the sun slowly disappeared behind the taller mountains off in the distance. Dusk was his favorite time to be in the mountains—it was quiet. Peaceful. He’d had a shortage of peace in his life ever since he was a kid. Which made him appreciate moments like this one—a good fire, a full stomach and a little hair of the dog.

But, every once in a while he’d catch the tent out of the corner of his eye and it would remind him that his boss’s nutty niece hadn’t made an appearance. He couldn’t say that he was worried about her—he figured she had to still be breathing—but he was worried about his own neck. As foreman of Bent Tree ranch, Brock, who’d never really had much use for him, didn’t need an excuse to give him the boot. If he screwed up with Taylor, he’d be out of luck with Brock. No. He was responsible for Taylor now. He had to make sure she returned to the ranch unharmed. His neck was already on the chopping block, so by default, he had to be worried about her neck.

It was nighttime when Taylor awakened. After she pulled off her eye mask, it took her a couple of seconds to make sense of her surroundings. The minute she started to move the reality of her situation came sharply into focus. So very sore everywhere. With another low groan, she pushed herself upright and then toppled forward, her elbows on her thighs and her head in her hands. She stayed in that position, eyes closed, until she could face standing up and getting dressed. In the low light of the flashlight that was hanging from a cord at the highest point of the tent’s ceiling, Taylor got dressed. Instead of going through the trauma of getting back into her boots, she opted for rubber-soled slip-ons. Her stomach growled loudly at the same time she was unzipping the tent flap. When she stepped outside her eyes searched for, and found, Clint leaning back against his saddle next to a healthy fire.

Clint had been just about to get up and check on Taylor when he heard the tent flap being unzipped. He hadn’t really expected it, but he felt something that could be interpreted as relief when Hank’s niece reappeared. They stared at each other for a split second, neither of them speaking, before Taylor grabbed something out of a nearby bag and disappeared into the woods.

The yellow light of a flashlight confirmed what she was going to do—and yet, he found his entire focus turned to the dark edge of the woods. When he saw the light grow brighter, signaling Taylor’s return to the campsite, the muscles in his arms, legs and jawline relaxed simultaneously. It was at that exact moment that his body connected with his mind and he realized how important this stranger’s safety was to him. He didn’t want the job of protector—he had a reputation of putting his own hide above everyone else’s. A well-deserved reputation.

What were Brock and Hank thinking?

At the edge of the woods, Taylor considered her options. She could go back to the tent or she could join the cowboy. It seemed a little ridiculous to avoid him—for better or worse, they were joined together on this journey for the next several weeks. No time like the present to start making the best of it. Taylor walked slowly over to the campfire, allowing herself to take her time. Even in the slide-on shoes, every step was a miserable one. Once she reached the fire, she switched off the flashlight and carefully lowered her body to the ground. Beneath the brim of his black cowboy hat, Clint’s darkened eyes watched her.

“You’ve got a limp.” His voice was a little raspier now.

Yes, Captain Obvious! She stifled her sarcasm for a more congenial “Nasty blister.”

Clint stood up and tossed his cigarette into the fire. On his way upright Taylor noticed that he paused with a noticeable wince. The cowboy walked over to her side of the fire to kneel down beside her.

“Let me take a look.”

Caught off guard, Taylor pulled her foot back. “What?”

“Let me take a look—see how bad it is.”

“No, thank you.”

Clint grabbed her by the ankle, pulled her shoe off and bent her leg backward so he could get a closer look at her right heel in the firelight.

“Hey!” Taylor tugged against him. “Hey!”

“Hold still.” The cowboy issued an order.

Clint pulled a knife out of a small sheath on his belt. When Taylor caught a glimpse of the silver blade, she yanked her ankle out of Clint’s hand and pushed backward away from him.

“Don’t even think about it!” she snapped at him.

He had touched her smelly, sweaty foot! She didn’t like people touching her feet. She didn’t get pedicures because she didn’t want anyone touching her feet. She left her socks on during a massage because she didn’t want anyone touching her feet!

“It needs to be popped.” Clint waved the blade quickly over the flames of the fire.

“No it doesn’t. Everyone knows you aren’t supposed to pop a blister.”

“We need to pop this one.” Clint rested his forearm on his bended knee. “It looks like it’s on its way to being infected. We’ll pop it, drain it—I don’t doubt you’ve got all manner of first aid in that mountain of stuff you packed...” He nodded toward her supplies. “Pour a little alcohol on it, let it dry out overnight—you’ll feel a heck of a lot better.”

The man looked as though he’d spent most of his life healing something—she was inclined to believe him.

“Are you sure?” Taylor asked.

He nodded his response, so she said, “Go ahead then—but do it quick, please.”

“It’s done.” The cowboy wiped the blade of his knife onto the leg of his jeans.

Taylor opened her eyes and craned her neck to the side to get a look at her heel. “Huh—that didn’t even hurt.”

She told Clint where he could find her first-aid kit. Popping the blister hadn’t hurt, but draining it and then dousing it with alcohol hurt like all get-out. The cowboy was clinical and unsympathetic. He expected her to sit there, quietly—take it like a woman. It was a silent challenge that she decided to accept. She could only imagine what this man thought of her—a soft, socialite city girl without the faintest clue about how to make it in the Montana wilderness. She was a city girl, and proud of it, but she wasn’t soft.

The procedure was done and the cowboy returned to his side of the fire. He began to play a harmonica that he had retrieved from his saddlebag. He wasn’t just producing random sounds—he really knew how to play. He filled the cool night air with a slow string of pretty notes and those notes blended with the crackling of the fire and the sound of an owl in the distance.

It was at that moment when Taylor felt as if she had really arrived in Montana. No, she wasn’t alone on the journey. But it didn’t seem to matter anymore. The experience she was having now, sitting by a campfire, beneath a blackened sky dotted with a smattering of white stars, listening to a real cowboy play the harmonica, made her feel like woman of the wilderness. An adventurer in her own right.

Taylor stared into the fire, watching one particular piece of wood glow bright orange right before it broke apart and crumbled into smaller bits of red embers. She didn’t have the need to fill the silence with aimless talk as she normally would, which was helpful, because it took energy to talk and she didn’t have much of that to spare. Clint would take a break every now and again from playing the harmonica and she would catch the flash of something out of the corner of her eye. Curious, she glanced up to see Clint take a quick swig of something from a bottle. He was leaning down, his head turned away from her. He didn’t want her to see him drinking, but she already had.

“What’s in the bottle?”

Clint twisted the cap down and tucked the nearly empty bottle back into his saddlebag.

“Tequila,” he told her reluctantly.

“Enough to share?”

Those weren’t the next words he had expected to hear. Taylor Brand didn’t strike him as the type of woman who would drink anything straight from a bottle, much less cheap tequila. Clint tilted his chin up enough so he could see her face beneath the brim of his hat. In the firelight, the natural prettiness of Taylor’s oval face caught his attention for the first time. She wasn’t model pretty, but she had the kind of face that a man could look at for the rest of his life. And, he was a man, so he had noticed that Taylor had a curvy body, on the thicker side, with round hips, a smaller waist and larger than average breasts. He preferred women who looked as though they wouldn’t blow over in a windstorm. Other than the fact that she was as city as a person could be, Taylor Brand was his type of woman.

Clint pulled the bottle out of his saddlebag, twisted off the cap and stretched his arm to bridge the space between them. When Taylor took the bottle from his hand, he saw the flash of a large, round diamond and a platinum band on the ring finger of her left hand. Now, what was a married woman like Taylor doing trying to ride the Continental Divide by herself? When Brock had assigned him to this task, he’d been too angry and too hungover to think, much less consider anything from Taylor’s point of view. But even though there was part of him that was curious, he’d discovered early on in life that it was best to mind his own business.

Taylor moved the bottle farther away from her face, then a little closer, so she could read the label. She really needed to get her eyes checked when she got back to Chicago. She could read the larger letters on the bottle, but the smaller letters were a chore to decipher.

“Corazon Blanco...white heart.” She read the label aloud. Christopher had always insisted on using Gran Patron on the rare occasion they had hosted a margarita party together.

She enjoyed a frozen margarita, light on the alcohol, but she had never taken a shot before. All of her friends would be shocked to see her drinking straight tequila from the bottle. But wasn’t that exactly what this trip was about? Getting out of her rut?

Taylor used the tail of her shirt to thoroughly clean the outside and inside lip of the bottle. Then she brought it up to her lips and tried to pour the clear liquid into her mouth without touching the glass. She titled the bottle a bit too far and a large swig of the clear liquid spilled onto her tongue and slipped down her throat. Taylor started to cough and her body lurched forward, chin tucked, eyes watering as if she were crying. She waved the bottle at Clint so he would take it from her. Her tongue, her gums, her lips, her throat—they all burned. The bitter taste of the tequila made her want to gag. She wiped her eyes on her sleeve and shook her head several times after she managed to get the coughing under control.

“Yuck!” Taylor finally managed to get one word out.

Clint took a mouthful of the tequila, sat back and watched the show. Taylor’s face was scrunched up into a sourpuss and she was wiping her eyes every couple of seconds. The woman clearly could not handle her tequila. When she gave her critique of his drink of choice, it made him smile.

“I’m sorry. I don’t mean to be rude,” Taylor said apologetically in a raspy voice. “But that’s repulsive.”

Clint held the bottle up to the firelight so he could see how much of the tequila was left in the bottle. He swirled the liquid around for a moment before he decided that there wasn’t enough to leave for later. In one long tug on the bottle, he drank the rest of it as though it was water. He’d drunk tequila for most of his life—his father had given him his first taste when he was nine. It used to burn going down; these days he didn’t feel the burn until it hit his stomach. That burn in his stomach reminded him that he was alive and it was the sensation he craved. It was a sensation he’d grown to need.

“I admit—” the cowboy stuck the empty bottle into his saddlebag “—it takes some gettin’ used to...”

“I don’t know why anyone would want to get used to that.” Taylor wiped her tongue on her sleeve.

Clint smiled a quick smile before he went back to playing the harmonica.

“Well...” Taylor rolled to the side a bit in order to lever herself into a squatting position and then to a standing position. “I’m going to try to get some sleep. So...I’ll see you in the morning...”

Clint waited for Taylor to zip herself back into her tent before he exchanged the harmonica for a cigarette. He took his hat off, slid downward and used the seat of his saddle as a pillow. He stared up at the stars scattered across the blue-black night sky. They would reach the peak tomorrow. He wasn’t certain, but he imagined Taylor would see what she had come to see and then they’d head back to the ranch. He hadn’t packed enough tequila and cigarettes for a long trip. Tomorrow he needed to do what he should have done in the very beginning—find out the particulars of the trip. Better late than never, he supposed. Clint flicked his cigarette into the fire, closed his eyes and covered his face with his hat. Taylor was greener than he had originally thought. And he had a feeling that she could turn out to be a wild card. He was going to have to keep a real close eye on her, which meant he needed to sober up a bit. Damn rotten luck.

* * *

Taylor awakened with the feeling of a sharp rock digging into her right shoulder blade. She winced and let out a low groan when she sat upright. How was it possible that this was the sorest day thus far? Shouldn’t her body be acclimating? She forced herself to stand up without giving the pain too much thought and tended to the blister on her foot, glad to see that Clint had been right about draining it. She pulled on her jeans and boots, and then rolled up her sleeping bag tightly. When she emerged from her tent she was pleased to see that Clint was already awake and kneeling in front of a small fire.

“Is that coffee?” she asked hopefully. Taylor had decided not to pack coffee. She had only packed items that she had thought were essential in order to keep her load light for her journey. How could she have ever thought that coffee wasn’t an essential?

Clint had made enough coffee for both of them—he’d already had a cup laced with a small shot of tequila. Yes, he needed to sober up, but Rome wasn’t built in a day. Taylor grabbed her multipurpose cup and brought it over to the fire. Clint poured coffee into it.

“You’ll get some grounds,” he warned her.

She didn’t care. The piping hot liquid had already heated the thin tin of her cup and started to warm her cold hands. The smell of strong, black coffee filled her nose as she blew on it to cool it down enough to drink. When she took that first, grateful swallow, she ignored the bitter taste. Less than a month ago she would have turned her nose up at any coffee that wasn’t a custom blend—and it made her feel good that she could notice some change in herself, no matter how small.

Taylor took several more sips, warming her body from the inside out. She opened her eyes with a small smile.

“Thank you.”

The closer she got to the bottom of her cup, the more grounds she encountered. Oddly, it didn’t deter her. She simply picked the grounds off her tongue as they came along, and then kept on drinking until there wasn’t a drop left in the bottom of her cup. She gave herself a little extra time to enjoy the coffee—then she quickly ate a protein bar and started to break camp. It would have gone a lot faster if she had allowed the cowboy to help her. But she wanted to do it on her own. That was the whole point of this journey—to build self-reliance and self-confidence. And, to his credit, Clint didn’t interfere. He put out the fire and then smoked a cigarette downwind from her.

The entire time she was packing, she tried to figure out how she was going to get onto her horse. She looked all around the camp, but there wasn’t a good makeshift mounting block in sight. Maybe—just maybe—this would be the morning that she could manage it without standing on a large boulder or a fallen tree. She signaled to Clint that it was time to move out. He swung into his saddle with ease. She did not. After several valiant attempts at trying to get her foot in the stirrup while Honey walked in circles around her, Taylor wasn’t surprised when the cowboy appeared at her side.

Her noncompliant horse became obedient with Clint in charge—the sturdy mare stood stock-still, and the cowboy used his hands to create a step for her. She needed the help, so she took it. She put her foot into the cowboy’s hands and let him boost her up. Once she was situated in the saddle she turned to thank Clint, but he was already walking away from her toward his horse. For the second time, he swung into his saddle and waited for her to lead the way.

She steered her horse onto the narrow trail leading toward the junction where her uncle’s property met public land. There, she would finally reach the Continental Divide Trail.

Chapter Three

The morning light cast a gray hue across the dark-green needles of the tall fir trees lining the trail. White fog floated over the trail ahead and dimmed the vibrant yellow and purple of the wildflowers growing sporadically in the wild grass on either side of the narrow path. There was beauty everywhere she looked. And there was beauty in the sound of the horses’ hooves—one, two, three, four—hitting the gravel on the trail.

Why had she waited so many years to come? This was the peace that she had been missing. Would she ever be satisfied by her rat-race life after experiencing this? It was difficult for her to imagine.

Midmorning, around the time that the sun had burned away the last remnants of the white fog, they reached the section of the trail that took them above the tree line. Taylor felt her spirit swell at her first glimpse of the peaks of mountains in the distance. At this height the views were unobstructed, and she could see for miles ahead. A wave of emotion—a mixture of awe and joy and even sorrow that Christopher wasn’t here to share this moment with her—overwhelmed her. She didn’t stop moving forward, but there were tears streaming down her face when she first saw the white and black metal marker sign bolted to a post that let her know she had successfully reached the Continental Divide Trail.

“Will you take my picture?” Taylor asked Clint when he rode up beside her.

She dismounted and handed him her phone. The cowboy saw the tears, because she hadn’t wiped them from her cheeks, but he didn’t question them. How had she known that he wouldn’t?

“Please take a couple so I get one with my eyes open.” Taylor stood proudly next to the sign.

After the quick photo shoot, they decided to take a break on a knoll that had knee-high green grass for the horses to graze. Clint watched the horses and smoked a cigarette while she explored on foot. Reaching the CDT was one for the bucket list, but it wasn’t the finish line for her.

On the other side of the trail was a sharp drop and then a rocky slope; the slope led down to the banks of an aqua-blue lake, which was full of freshly melted snow from the winter season.

“That’s it.” Taylor stared down at the lake. “That’s the spot.”

She turned back, surprised at how far away from Clint and the horses she had walked. Winded, with her cheeks flushed from exertion and excitement, Taylor rounded a corner that would lead her to the spot where she had left her traveling companions. When the grassy knoll came into view, it felt as if she were stepping into a scene from a movie. Clint looked like a throwback from the old West standing in the tall grass with his cowboy hat, chaps and boots, with a revolver strapped to his hip. There was something about the man that seemed more suited for a rougher, less civilized era. He was a real cowboy. The genuine article.

“Ready?” The man certainly liked his one-word utterances.

She gathered her horse’s reins with a nod. “There’s a lake up ahead. That’s my next target.”

He didn’t ask her why, just quietly helped her mount, swung into his saddle and followed the packhorse as she once again led the way. Around the bend, the lake below came into view. From horseback, it seemed a much steeper descent to the edge of the lake.

“Tricky gettin’ back,” Clint told her.

At work, she was the queen of handling tricky deals. Montana, she was learning, wasn’t much different than back home. When it came to tricky spots, you needed a good strategy and determination.

“I’ll manage,” she said, not deterred.

They secured the horses in a place where they were still visible from below and then started the twisty, rocky trip down to the lake. She lost her footing several times, slipping on loose rocks. She had to break her fall with her hand on one occasion, so her wrist was throbbing and the palm of her hand was scraped, but reaching the edge of the pristine lake was worth the mild damage to her body.

Clint stood away from her, his thoughts a complete enigma behind the dark lenses of his sunglasses. Taylor stood at the lake’s edge, the ice-blue water lapping close to the toes of her barely used boots. She closed her eyes and listened. She listened to her own breath. She listened to a bird’s call in the distance. She listened to her heart. The day she had thought would never come had, indeed, arrived.

She opened her eyes to look down at the engagement ring and matching wedding band she still wore on her left ring finger. Christopher had planned such a romantic proposal the night he had given her this nearly flawless, colorless two-carat round stone. It had been everything a pragmatic, yet still romantic twenty-two-year-old could wish for in a proposal. He had arranged for private dining at her favorite restaurant. He’d had her serenaded by a classical guitarist. They danced and laughed and then he got down on one knee, took the shaking fingers of her left hand and asked her to marry him.

She couldn’t wait for him to slide that ring onto her finger. It was, of course, a very large stone set in platinum and purchased from Tiffany. It was bigger than she had wanted—more than she had needed—but the appearance of success had always been more important to Christopher than it had been to her. And she knew that her mom, who often didn’t approve of her choice in clothing or hairstyle, approved of Christopher, and she would definitely approve of the engagement ring.

In her mind, without vocalizing the word, she said, Okay.

She tugged on the rings, but her fingers were swollen and they wouldn’t budge.

Clint wanted to give Taylor her privacy—he wasn’t the sharpest crayon in the box at times, but even he could tell she was trying to have some sort of moment. When he saw her fighting to get the rings off her finger without any success, and wanting to begin the trek back to the ranch as soon as possible, he intervened.

“Put your hand in the water.”

That was a great idea. She had been so fixated on trying to pry the rings free, she hadn’t considered that simple and pretty obvious solution. After she submerged her hand in the frigid water for a few minutes, the rings slipped right off.

“Hey!” Taylor smiled spontaneously at Clint. “It worked.”

Clint was struck by that smile. Taylor’s face, which he had once dismissed as pretty-ish, was transformed when she smiled. She had charming dimples on each creamy, plump cheek, her teeth were white and straight, and the smile drew attention to the fullness of her light pink lips. Clint tipped his hat to her as a way of saying “you’re welcome.” She had married Christopher soon after graduate school, so she had worn these rings for most of her adult life. She had wondered if her finger would feel naked without them. It did.

Taylor gave the rings, cupped in the palm of her hand, one last look before she curled her fingers tightly around them, drew back her arm as if she was about to throw a baseball and prepared to hurl them as hard and as far as she could into the lake.

“Hey, now! Whoa, little lady!” she heard Clint exclaim as he grabbed her wrist to stop her. “I ain’t no jewelry expert, but those look like they could be worth a pretty penny.”

Taylor tugged her wrist out of his fingers with a frown. “My marriage is over, so they aren’t worth anything to me anymore.”

“If they’re real, they could be worth a whole heck of a lot to somebody,” the cowboy told her in a sharp voice. “There’s some folks who could live off them rings for a year or two, I bet.”

“Those rings...” Taylor muttered the correction to his English. She opened the palm of her hand and stared at the rings that she had worn with such pride for so many years. They only made her feel sad now and she wanted to be done with them. Yet, Clint was right—they were worth a lot of money. She was a spoiled woman, yes, that was true, but she had never been a wasteful one. Why couldn’t she pawn them and give the proceeds to charity?

Taylor stared for a second longer at the rings before she made her decision. Wordlessly, she tucked them into her pocket for safekeeping.

Taylor met Clint’s eyes. “I’m ready to go back.”

The cowboy squinted at her through a thin veil of white cigarette smoke. She waved the smoke away from her face as she walked by him. Out of the corner of her eye, she saw Clint put the partially smoked cigarette out on the bottom of his boot, and then clench the butt between his teeth.

Instead of taking the lead, as she expected, Clint followed her. It was ridiculous for vanity to rear its head on a rocky hike up a steep hill, but the entire time, she couldn’t stop fixating on the fact that her derriere, which had expanded considerably over the last year, was right at Clint’s eye level. He couldn’t avoid staring at it if he tried. Poor man.

“Careful, now.”

She hadn’t been concentrating on her foot placement.She stumbled, slipped backward, and the cowboy caught her with his hands on her rear end—one hand for each butt cheek.

Taylor brushed his hands away, jerked the tail of her shirt downward and pressed on.

“Sorry,” she said without looking at him.

Humiliating. She hated her middle-aged spread, especially the widening and dropping of her hind end. She had never been a stick-thin person, not even as a teen, but she had always liked her backside. Now—it looked so big and old.

The last part of the climb, the steepest part, where she had to climb with her hands supporting her weight, Clint took the lead. He bullied his way up the steep incline until he reached flat ground. He waited for her—he watched out for her. But he let her navigate the last part of the climb on her own terms. Right at the top, and right when she thought that she was about to beat the hill, she lost her footing again; she fell forward and started to slide downward as though she was on a kiddie slide. She felt Clint’s hand on her wrist. Their eyes met and she gave him the nod to let go so she could finish the climb on her own.

Once on safe footing, she looked back at the lake. She hadn’t thrown the rings into the lake with dramatic flare as she had envisioned, but it really felt like the divorce was final. Truthfully, Christopher had let her go long before the marriage had ended. And now, finally, she was moving on, too.

“If we start back right away, we can camp in the same spot.” Clint took his position on Honey’s right side to stop her from moving while Taylor used a boulder as a mounting block.

“I’m not going back to the ranch.”

Clint mounted his horse and took it upon himself, without her objection, to lead Easy. Once he was settled in the saddle, he rode up beside her. “No?”

“No.”

Clint rested his arm across the saddle horn, his mouth frowning. “Just how far are you planning on goin’?”

“Two weeks in, two weeks out.”

“A month.”

Honey danced to the side, away from his horse. Taylor circled back around so she could face him and finish the conversation.

“My uncle didn’t tell you.”

It took all of his self-control not to say something he would regret. Hank hadn’t bothered to tell him, and neither had his stepbrother. Just like Brock. Why had Clint thought that anything would be different between them after a five-year break? If he didn’t need the money so badly, he’d let Taylor have her way and send her packing on her own. But he was buried in debt, his truck needed an engine rebuild, creditors were hounding him and his cell phone was shut off. He couldn’t get back to the rodeo without money for the entry fees. He was flat broke and flat stuck.

“No matter.” Clint told her. “Let’s ride.”

Taylor’s pace for the rest of the day was slow and steady. It didn’t matter to Clint where they stopped for the night; it mattered to him that he wasn’t heading back to the ranch. He’d still been drunk from the night before when Brock gave him the order, but not drunk enough to have forgotten a major piece of information like the fact that he’d be babysitting for a month. No. Brock had left that little detail out. It was lucky that his stepfather, a full-time drunk and part-time rodeo clown, had managed to teach him how to survive in the wilderness with limited supplies. He hadn’t, however, managed to teach Clint how to survive without a steady supply of cigarettes and tequila.

That night, after they made camp, he taught Taylor to build a small mound fire. Admittedly, she had surprised him—she had actually researched riding the divide and had brought a fire blanket for building mound fires in order to have the least environmental impact. He loved this land and her desire to preserve it impressed him.

Taylor sat down near the fire to catch as much warmth from the low flames as she could. The temperature changed so quickly on the divide—one minute she was boiling in the sun and the next she was freezing at sundown. At least she was starting to adjust to the sore muscles and aching joints and the drastic change in her diet. She really wanted to drop some weight on this trip. It was time for her to shed the extra pounds and claim the next phase of her life with a renewed sense of vigor and excitement.

“You’re not much of a talker, are you, Clint?” Taylor broke the long silence.

“I’m in the business of mindin’ my own business.” Clint flicked his cigarette into the fire.

He reached into his saddlebag and pulled out the harmonica. She smiled a little—she had enjoyed listening to his playing the night before and hoped that he would play again. Taylor breathed in deeply, let it out slowly and tuned her ears to the notes streaming out from the little instrument. She hadn’t counted on company, but Clint’s role in her adventure had started to solidify in her mind. He was her protector. Her unwilling cowboy bodyguard.

“Who taught you to play?”

“David.”

He read the next question in her eyes and answered without her having to ask it.

“My stepfather.” After a moment, he added. “He adopted me when I was eight or nine—gave me his last name. That’s a heck of a lot more than I can say for my real father, that’s for damn sure.”

There wasn’t any emotion in Clint’s voice when he talked about his father—not negative, not positive. But after he answered her question Clint put away the harmonica, stood up and walked a few feet away from the fire. From the light given off by the fire, she could see the cowboy in silhouette and a flash of red as he lit a cigarette. She had unintentionally hit a nerve. His father was a topic she would avoid in the future—in her mind, Clint wasn’t a three-dimensional person. He was a cowboy, and he was hired to ensure her safe return to Bent Tree Ranch. She didn’t really need to know any more about him than that.

Taylor stood up, brushed the debris from the seat of her jeans.

“Well—good night.”

She thought that she saw him tip his hat to her, but she didn’t wait around to make sure. She quickly went through her nightly routine, changed into her cotton pajamas and crawled into her sleeping bag. Taylor swatted the flashlight overhead with her hand. She watched the light, letting it shine into her eyes for a brief moment as it passed over her face—up and back, up and back. She reached up and grabbed the flashlight, turned it off.

In the dark, she stared up at the ceiling of the tent. All night she had caught herself unconsciously rubbing her thumb over the unembellished skin of her left ring finger. Would there ever be a man who wanted to place a ring on that finger again? Did she want there to be? It was debatable. But children... Taylor moved her hands down to her abdomen. Oh, how she had wanted there to be children.

* * *

It was a week of lessons for Taylor. Clint seemed to resign himself to his chore of watching out for her and focused his energy on teaching her how to ride the divide. She learned how to spot fresh grizzly bear markings on nearby trees and create a high line to tether the horses so that the ropes didn’t cause ring damage to the trees. She now knew how to tie a trucker’s knot, stake a horse in a field and avoid stepping on rattlesnakes.

Now she knew why Uncle Hank had trusted Clint to be her bodyguard—the Continental Divide was home to this cowboy. He was a walking encyclopedia—there wasn’t an indigenous bird or wildflower or tree that he couldn’t name. She had actually started to make a game of testing his knowledge. Her first impression of Clint had been that he was uneducated and uncomplicated. He was neither. As far as she knew, he wasn’t formally educated past tenth grade, but he wasn’t ignorant. The wild Montana mountains had provided his education—and she had a feeling that her cowboy wasn’t uncomplicated, either.

“Everything here is...so beautiful.” Taylor admired a field of wildflowers that stretched as far as her eyes could see. The rolling hills were dotted with canary yellow and violet-blue purple.

“What are they?” she asked Clint once he reached her side.

“The blue flowers are Camassia Quamash—Blue Camas—edible. But not the yellow—those are Death Camas...”

“Let me guess...not edible.” Taylor smiled, her eyes drinking in the brightly colored field of flowers. “What do they taste like?”

“Sweet—local tribes have used them for generations as a sweetener.” Clint repositioned his hat on his head. “If you want to taste one, I’ll dig up a bulb for you.”

“No—that’s okay. Conservation.”

Clint dismounted. “One ain’t gonna make the difference.”

He returned to her side with a single Blue Camas bulb. He washed the dirt off the bulb before he handed it to her. She smelled it and then nibbled on the side.

The odd sweetness hit her tongue, and for some reason, it made her laugh.

“It’s sweet.” She held out the remainder of the bulb to him.

Clint ate the rest. He didn’t hesitate to put his mouth where hers had been. Christopher had never drunk after her or shared a straw—he’d always wiped off her fork if he used it after her and that had always bothered her. And here, a near stranger, a man she had only known for a few days, had eaten after her as if it were nothing. It was an intimacy that she hadn’t shared with her husband in all of their years of marriage.

“Is there a place where I could wash?”

She felt gritty from days of sponge bathing and dry shampoo. She had packed water purification pills and filters for found water, as well as some potable water to drink, and tried to use as little as possible of her supply on washing. She needed to submerge her body in water, no matter how cold, and rinse the grimy feeling off her skin.

“I’ve got a place in mind.” He swung into the saddle. “I’m tired of jerky. How ’bout fish for dinner?”

She was tired of instant soup and protein bars. Washing the grease out of her hair and chowing down on freshly caught fish seemed like luxuries now.

“I would love fish for dinner.”

“Let’s ride about another hour and a quarter.” Clint tugged on Easy’s rope. “We’ll make camp a little early tonight.”

The promise of a real dinner made the last hour in the saddle tolerable. But, even after a full week in the saddle, she was still raw and sore by the time she dismounted at the spot Clint selected for their campsite. They had fallen into a campsite routine—Clint had his duties and she had hers. Part of her job at the bank was putting together teams that could complete a project efficiently and effectively. She had a knack for putting two unlikely people together to create a winning team. It was like that with Clint—they were very different, but somehow they worked together to accomplish a common goal as if they had worked together for years.

“We’ve got some storm clouds formin’ quick.” Clint took his hat off, wiped his forehead on his sleeve. “You’d best wait on that bath.”

“Is dinner a no-go, too?”

“I gotta be quick.” Clint eyed the darkening sky in the distance. “You got the fire?”

“Absolutely.”

Clint headed off on foot toward the freshwater lake he had fished from over the years.

“Hey—Clint.”

He turned to look at his companion.

“What happens if it rains?”

It was an odd question.

“We get wet.”

Taylor laughed. “No. I mean—you don’t have a tent.”

“Don’t need one.” Clint shrugged off her concern. “Go on and get that fire started and I’ll cook you the best damn tastin’ fish you’ve ever had in your life.”

Chapter Four

Good as his word, Clint had caught, cleaned and cooked the best trout she had ever eaten. And, even though the menacing promise of the storm clouds cut their dinner short and canceled her plans to bath in the stream, she went to bed feeling completely full for the first time since she had started her journey up to the CDT.

When the rain started, she tried to convince Clint to join her in the tent, but he flat-out refused. She had peeked out of the tent while there was still a little light to see by and spotted him hunkered down away from the trees, covered by a small tarp. She didn’t ask him to join her a second time—she had made the offer once, and that was enough. Clint had grown up in high country and she could surmise that this wouldn’t be the last time he’d weather a Montana storm with his saddle as a pillow and a rain tarp as a shelter.

The next morning she awakened to a clear sky and the welcome scents of fire and coffee. She didn’t see Clint, but the first thing on her mind was taking a quick rinse-off in the stream. She slung a bag of supplies over her shoulder and walked through the small cluster of trees that led to the stream below the campsite. At the edge of the tree line she spotted Clint kneeling by the stream. He was stripped down to the waist; the word “Rodeo” was tattooed across his shoulders with a bull rider riding a bucking bull down the middle of his long back. There was a large, jagged scar that cut across his low back, just above the waist of his jeans.

Taylor stopped for a moment, not sure if she should return to camp or join him. Clint stood up, and she was sure he sensed that he was being watched because he turned his head a bit and caught sight of her. He waved her over.

“Good morning.” Taylor called to him.

The closer she came to the cowboy, the more her suspicion was confirmed that he’d had the same thought she’d had, to clean up before their next ride. His hair was slicked straight back from his forehead, his thickening beard was wet and the jeans were different. He was twisting the water from the shirt he had been wearing for the past several days, and a fresh T-shirt was slung over his shoulder.

“That was quite a storm,” she said to make conversation.

Standing next to a half-naked Clint was uncomfortable for her, even though he didn’t seem bothered. He wasn’t extraordinarily tall and he was on the thin side, but every muscle on his body was defined. The muscles were hard and long, and he had the type of veins that were close to the surface of the skin—you could trace each vein with a finger from the inside of his elbow down to his wrist. She tried to keep her eyes on his face, yet they were drawn time and again to the array of tattoos and scars that made the landscape of his naked torso inherently interesting to her.

“I was worried about you,” she added.

Clint shook out his shirt. “Don’t waste your time.”

He slipped on his clean shirt and brushed loose hairs back off his face before putting his cowboy hat on. “I’ll keep watch—make sure you have your privacy.”

“Thank you.” Taylor knelt down to feel the temperature of the water. It was icy cold.

Clint smoked a cigarette several yards away, his back turned to her. She didn’t question that he would keep his back turned—he’d had a rough life and his manners were not civilized at times, but he wasn’t a pervert. Wearing only underwear and a bra, a pair of rubber shower shoes to protect her feet, Taylor braved the frigid, clear water of the stream. As fast as she could, she waded to the deeper part of the stream. She couldn’t wait to try to acclimate to the temperature—that wasn’t a viable option. Instead, she took in a deep breath and forced herself to sit down.

“Cold, cold, cold...” She muttered the word over and over again.

She dunked her head back, scrubbed the roots of her hair with soap and stood up so she could quickly soap her body. She spent extra time on her armpits because the odor had been too tough even for her clinical-strength deodorant to combat, and then she sank back into the water, waist deep, and put her hand inside her underwear to clean thoroughly between her thighs.

It was one of the quickest baths she’d ever taken, and that was more than okay with her. She hurried to the shore and to her awaiting towel. Even as rapidly as she had gone through her routine, she was shivering from the cold, her arms and legs were covered with goose bumps and she was clenching her teeth to keep them from chattering. One swipe of the towel across her face and then the rest of her body was all she could stand. She had to get dressed. But she wasn’t about to change her underwear out in the open. Instead, she wrapped the towel around her body and raced up to where Clint was waiting.

Clint heard Taylor’s approach and turned to greet her. He wasn’t expecting her to be wrapped in a towel with her creamy, rounded shoulders and shapely legs exposed. She smelled like orange peels and honey, and even though she was noticeably cold, the way her wet hair framed her freshly scrubbed face held a sexy, natural appeal.

“Ready?” He knew he had been caught looking at the rounded tops of her breasts.

She nodded, not wanting to speak—only wanting to get back so she could get into dry clothing. Once inside her tent, she stripped out of her wet undergarments and slipped into her sleeping bag to warm her body. She closed her eyes and willed her body to warm up and quit shivering.

“Taylor?” Clint was outside of her tent. “Here’s coffee.”

She opened the flap enough to take the cup of hot coffee. With a word of thanks, Taylor wrapped her hands around the warm tin mug; the minute the hot liquid hit her stomach she started to feel warmer. It was the perfect remedy, and it touched her that Clint had been thinking of her in that way.

As soon as she could, she dressed and joined Clint in breaking camp. Packed up and mounted on her mare, Taylor didn’t like the look of the sky in their direct path.

“I’d rather not ride in the rain,” she told Clint.

He rode up beside her with Easy trailing behind him. “Your call.”

“How long do you estimate we have before the storm hits?”

“Two hours—three tops.”

They agreed to get two hours of riding in and make camp ahead of the looming storm. She had built in several nontraveling days to enjoy the scenery and give the animals a rest. Perhaps it was time to take an early break to let the weather front move through.

They made camp just before the rain came. She hadn’t expected it, but she managed to talk Clint into joining her in the tent under the guise of not wanting to be lonely. He didn’t know that she loved her alone time, and she didn’t intend to share that fact with him.

The inside of her tent seemed much smaller now that Clint had joined her. He had to hunch his shoulders forward so there was some room for the top of his head.

“Make yourself at home,” she teased him.

His hunched shoulders were tense, his legs were half bent, half stretched out, and he seemed to be completely uncomfortable in her little temporary world. He smiled at her and she actually thought that she saw a hint of teeth.

“You mind if I play?” He took his harmonica out of his pocket.

“No.” She lay back. “I like it.”

Clint played a soft, haunting tune while the rain tapped out a rhythm of its own on the canvas roof of her tent. She closed her eyes and unintentionally fell asleep.

When the rain stopped, Clint stopped playing the harmonica. Taylor was asleep—he didn’t see any reason to awaken her to help him finish setting up camp. He unzipped the tent flap and stepped out onto the wet ground. Before he zipped the flap shut, he stared at Taylor. She had slowly started to gain his respect; she had prepared herself for this trip, and other than attempting to make the trip alone, she was a woman who made smart decisions. He was a man—he glanced at the generous curve of her breasts beneath the material of her shirt before he closed the flap of the tent behind him.

* * *

Taylor rolled onto her back, her eyes opened slowly. It took her a little bit to get her bearings—she was alone in the tent and her bladder was full. When she emerged from the tent, she saw that Clint had already set up the rest of the camp, tended to the horses and Easy, built a fire.

“Sorry.” She joined him at the fire after relieving herself. “I fell asleep.”

Clint shook his head and handed her a plate with fish reheated from the night before.

He waited for her to finish before he smoked a cigarette.

“Do you mind?” She pointed to the tequila bottle next to his leg. He didn’t bother to hide his nightly routine of drinking a healthy portion of the alcohol.

He looked surprised but untwisted the cap and handed her the half-empty bottle. Taylor didn’t bother to wipe off the lip of the bottle before she took a swig, coughing in spite of her best attempts not to when the clear liquid burned her throat. He took the bottle back from her and she watched him, through watering eyes, take several consecutive swallows of the tequila.

“How do you do that?” she asked him thoughtlessly.

He put the bottle away. He was running low and he needed to conserve the rest. After one last draw on his cigarette he flicked the butt into the fire and blew smoke out of his nose.

“Practice.”

She laughed. The sound of her own laughter sounded good to her ears. There was a time that she loved to laugh—she used to laugh frequently. Years of trying to get pregnant without success, years of passing Christopher in the hallways of their childless house, years of meeting with attorneys and divorce proceedings and dividing property had taken a toll on her spirit—eroded her confidence.

“Do you mind a personal question?”

His hand moved upward in a gesture of consent.

“What happened to your back?”

His brow furrowed in thought, then it occurred to him that she was asking about his scar.

“I was gored by a bull in Boise, Idaho.”

He smiled a little at the shock that registered on her face.

“I’d been riding bulls since I was a kid, so I should’ve been able to get out of his way. But that one got the better of me.”

“How did you even survive something like that?”

“I almost bled out by the time they got me to the hospital,” Clint recounted. “I didn’t get back on a bull for six months.”

“Six months? I can’t believe you ever got back on one.” She shook her head in wonder. “Are you retired? Or just on a break?”

“I got some money things I gotta clear up first—then I’ll be back at it. I think my knees got a couple more goes left in ’em.”

“It must be nice to know exactly what you want to do,” she said aloud, even though she really meant to only speak the words in her head.

“I’d think someone like you had it all figured out.”

“Someone like me?” she scoffed. “On that note!” She stood up. “Do you think we’ll get more of the same tomorrow?”

“Naw.” Clint tipped his hat back on his head so she could see his eyes. “Should be blue skies.”

“Then we’ll make up some time. I had a spot picked out to spend a couple of days, but we’ll have to push it a little tomorrow to make it, I think.”

She had already figured out the little movements he used to respond. A slight nod of his head was a confirmation for her plan.

“Okay—good night, Clint.”

“Night, Taylor.”

There was a roughness in the way Clint said her name—it was unlike anything she had heard before. It was so compelling that she almost stopped and turned toward him to see the look on his face. The way he said it, like silk against sandpaper, made the hairs stand up on the back of her neck. She liked it—probably more than she should have.

* * *

Two days later, they reached the spot where she planned on staying for several days and truly taking in the beauty of the Rocky Mountains—the wildlife, the foliage, the majesty. She wanted to be able to take it all in without feeling as if she was on a schedule. Would she be able to find the answer for the next phase of her life hidden in the mountain peaks? She had resigned from her position at the bank, walked away from the only career she had known for over a decade. For the first time since she was a young woman, she was functioning without a net.

“I’m going for a hike.”

Taylor had awakened feeling refreshed and ready to explore the area surrounding their new campsite on foot.

Clint was checking his horse’s hoof. He let the horse’s leg go and gave the buckskin a pat on the haunches.

“You planning on goin’ off alone?”

“Yes.”

She had become accustomed to having Clint around. She had been able to embrace the good of having a man on the journey with her. But her increased comfort with the man didn’t change the fact that this journey was about rediscovering herself—self-reliance, rebuilding self-confidence. There had to be some time that the only person to rely on was the one she looked at in the mirror.

“Do you know how to use that gun or is it just for show?”

There was a decidedly chauvinistic tone in his question. The challenge had been issued.

“I’ll make you a wager that I’m a better shot than you.”

The look on Clint’s face was better than she could have predicted. He tipped the brim of his hat up so he could get a better look at her face. In his deeply set grayish-blue eyes, she saw a mixture of disbelief and admiration.

“Lady—I ain’t got nothin’ to bet but two cigarettes and my last bottle of liquor.”

“Loser—i.e., you cook dinner. I like how you cook freshly caught fish.”

Clint laughed—a deep, hearty laugh that made her smile in response. “You don’t have to give me nothin’ when you lose—I’m shootin’ for my honor.”

They set up targets.

“Ladies first.” Clint tipped his hat to her.

“Don’t mind if I do.”

Clint made a big show of backing away from her when she pulled her gun out of the holster.

“Worried?” She unlocked the safety with a small smile.

“Always, when a woman has a gun.”

Clint watched closely while Taylor took her shots. He was looking for comfort with the firearm, safety and skill. He had to admit that he saw all three. She might be a city, socialite kind of woman, but she knew her way around a revolver.

“Five out of five,” Taylor announced proudly.

“Not bad.”

“Not bad?” She reloaded her weapon, turned on the safety and holstered it. “Please.”

Clint took his turn and scored four out of five.

Taylor clapped her hands together and gave a little jump. “I won! Wait—did you lose on purpose?”

Clint holstered his gun. “I never lose on purpose.”

The cowboy took losing to her more graciously than she had expected.

“Looks like I’ll be catching that dinner I owe you while you go on your hike.”

It made her feel empowered. Underneath it all, Clint had been worried about her hiking alone and now that he’d seen her shoot, that he’d been beaten at his own game, he had confidence in her. And his confidence boosted her confidence in herself. It was a win-win.

* * *

“Wow!” Taylor put her hands on her full stomach. “You are an amazing cook! What did you cook the fish in?”

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