Montana Red

CHAPTER FIVE

BEARS? That was all Clea could think about as she drove away. Real life, with bears in it.

Evidently, pickup truckloads of eccentric—not to mention prickly and insulting—trespassers and wrong houses and hours of moving and packing and unpacking and constant barn chores and kicks in the thigh from orphan foals weren’t enough for her orientation into real life.

Bears. Her breath caught. She’d better put Ariel in the barn every night for sure. But what about daytime? And what about all those stories about bears tearing their way into cabins? Maybe she should go sleep in the barn with the shotgun if there was word of bears around. But how would she ever hear those rumors? Her neighbor, Jake, certainly wouldn’t want to be responsible for keeping her informed.

The old guys would come see about her, though. She would bet on it. She’d had a terrible time just convincing them to stay home and let her move by herself.

But she wouldn’t let them, not now. Now she had to prove to Jake—in addition to Daddy and Brock—that she could take care of herself.

They weren’t her major focus, though. Mainly she had to prove it to herself. This whole morning had been pretty unsettling.

But she would think positive. Dealing with the foal had grounded her some and reminded her that she wasn’t a complete incompetent.

She would keep herself positive and learn how to be self-sufficient instead of worrying. She had a million things to do before the snow flew. Practice shooting, for one. Right now, if she shot at a bear, she’d probably hit Ariel. At least a bear would be a bigger target than a snake but it was also a much bigger danger. She could get away from the snake when she saw it, but she’d read somewhere that no human being can outrun a bear.

Clea straightened in the seat, took a long, deep breath and hit her fist on the steering wheel. So be it. She wasn’t running anyhow. She was here and she would survive.

By the time she got back to Jake’s place—without going by to see her own house because she was going to move into it no matter what it was—she’d locked bears away in their own compartment in her mind. Tonight, after she was all settled in the place where she was supposed to be, after the physical work of moving had taken the edge off her nerves, then she would go on the Internet and find out where to get the best information possible about how to share the neighborhood with bears.

She parked at the end of the driveway where she wouldn’t have to drive past Jake’s trailer again, hurried past the wrecked truck in the front yard without really looking at it because it was just too painful and, once inside, changed her shoes and went to work. Too bad Jake wasn’t there to see that now she was wearing shoes appropriate for moving.

For a man who acted as if he were on another planet, he certainly had noticed a lot of details about her. Her shoes, her vest, her rig.

As she worked, their conversation cycled through her mind. What was the deal with him, anyhow? What were his “way too many responsibilities”? He appeared to be single—Buck and Teddy had mentioned him moving in with them and, after all, she was in his house this minute and there was no evidence of a woman’s presence, or that of children.

He had extremely few possessions, also. Maybe he was divorced, with three or four children to support. Instinctively, though, she didn’t think so.

Had he been talking about the foal? But the old guys were doing most of its care, as far as she could see. He’d probably just said that to make his point.

For a man who basically was the strong, silent type, he could certainly put a person in her place. Using only a very few words, of course.

Smiling grimly at her own joke, she focused on getting out of his house as fast as possible. She took it room by room, starting in the kitchen where she packed up her favorite insulated travel mug and coffee, then fastened a note to the refrigerator with his tractor-shaped, feedstore magnet: I take responsibility for the food I ate. I’ll replace it.

In the bedroom, she stripped her sheets off the bed and put his back on it, slapping away random thoughts of how he might look lying in them and what he might or might not be wearing at the time. She was thinking as a photographer, that was all, but she no longer cared whether he’d pose for her or not. She didn’t want to spend that much time with him.

When she drove up to her new place, her spirits lifted. It was what the realtor had described to her of course and although it was newer and didn’t have the atmosphere that Jake’s old cabin had, it definitely had a glass-and-wood A-frame charm of its own. The four-stall barn was even newer than the house. It sat at the edge of an acre-or-so that was fenced with peeled logs, which would be a fine turn-out pen. She could use it to ride in, too, when she wanted to practice her jumps and flat work.

The tiny kitchen was stocked with the supplies she had ordered. The view was wonderful in every direction and the loft bedroom with its own balcony made her feel like an eagle in its aerie. It even had an almost-decent-size closet.

Clea skipped lunch to start her Montana life all over again. She kept her thoughts positive as she looked out at the vast space that lay between her and any other human being and wondered idly whether Buck or Teddy carried a cell phone. Or whether there were game rangers in the area who she could call, just in case.

Staying busy had always been her antidote to worry, so she worked from just after noon until nearly sundown unloading everything, taking her time arranging and rearranging the few personal decorative things she’d brought. The furniture wasn’t great but it wasn’t awful either, with a few old and battered mission-style pieces she really liked. Her burled wood bowl was perfect on the coffee table.

She spent most of her effort on the living room, which was basically the only room. It and the kitchen were all one great room, the loft was open to them, except for its tiny bathroom and the small room that held the washer and dryer in the back of the cabin.

It was by far the smallest house she’d ever lived in. It gave her the same cozy feeling she’d had in the dollhouse Daddy had paid the gardener to build for her when she was a little girl. Cozy and safely in charge of her world. It was the only place she’d ever felt that way.

Long after she outgrew the dollhouse, she remembered that feeling, and as a new bride moving into the McMansion that Brock had had custom built on the acreage he had bought for its resale value, she had longed to feel that way again. Maybe she would have if she’d married anyone else but Brock.

That really had been her very first lesson in real life.

She’d been in Frisco, shopping for hours on end as she did sometimes when Brock was out of town. Early on in the marriage, when she still thought she loved him and when she missed him terribly.

When he’d still treated her with the deference her daddy’s daughter deserved and pretended that he loved her, too.

The window of a new interior-design shop caught her attention because the eclectic blend of styles was such a homey-but-sophisticated, interesting-but-soothing creation that it pulled her to the window and held her there until the young fledgling designer came to the door and spoke to her. An hour later, Clea had hired the woman.

The two of them worked together for the ten days Brock was in Houston and she had had the den finished when he got home. For fifteen or twenty minutes, everything was wonderful.

She opened the door. He stepped inside, dropped his briefcase, swept her up in his arms and kissed her senseless. When he let her go, he still kept his arm around her waist to hold her against him.

But it fell away in a hurry when she led him into the den to show him his big surprise.

“You can’t be serious.” His voice held an edge that sliced away her happiness in a heartbeat. “This looks like crap, Clea. What the hell were you thinking?”

Her lips parted but no sound came out.

Which was fine. She didn’t need to say a word, and it wouldn’t have mattered if she did because Brock wouldn’t have heard it.

He kept talking as he walked around the room. He flicked a finger derisively against a lampshade, then picked up a hundred-year-old Navajo basket and sent it spinning across the room to land on the floor in front of the door.

“Don’t tell me you paid good money for this. Did you hire somebody to buy all this trash or did you pick it out? Either way, it stinks.”

“I like it.”

“You didn’t even ask me,” he said. “I thought you knew better, Clea. You’ve gotta run anything that costs more than…well, let’s say a couple thousand…by me. Don’t make that mistake again.”

That night had been the real end of her marriage. She’d wasted another four years of her life on it because she didn’t want to admit it was dead.

Because then what would she do? What could she do?

It had taken her four years to work up the courage to get the hell out.

Clea noticed she was breathing hard and getting a headache, so she pushed the memories away and headed for the barn. She had more than enough reason to keep her mind in the present and she was strong-minded enough to do that.

Brock was behind her, and by the time he found her again she’d be stronger still. By then, she’d know what to do.

When she had Ariel all settled in, she finally called it a day.

Starving and weary to the bone, she showered, dressed in sweats and went downstairs to make an omelet. Pretty soon she had to cook something besides eggs, but she really didn’t know how to make very many other dishes. That’d be another thing she could do if she were snowed in—she could learn to cook.

She grabbed a notepad to begin a list for her first trip to town, wrote cookbook, then crossed it out. There were, no doubt, a million recipes with directions on the Internet, free.

Think before you spend. Save the money. Pay for the damage to Jake’s truck. You can’t be free if you owe somebody.

Then she chopped tomato and onion, sliced ham and shredded cheese. She toasted bread in hot butter in another skillet while the eggs were cooking.

Feeling like a pioneer cowgirl who’d never heard the word calories, she put it all on a speckled tin plate and carried it with a mug of hot coffee out to the deck to watch the sunset. There was no table, no outdoor furniture at all, so she sat on the steps and leaned back against the banister post.

The air had begun to chill. It felt cool and crisp in her lungs and it smelled like pine and sage and many, many other scents she couldn’t name. As she ate, the sky burst into flame. The clouds burned. The mountains reflected the fire and threw purple mist into it while they drew it down, little by little, to extinguish it at last in the dark, mysterious shapes of the valleys.

Only when the sun had dropped completely out of sight and the light it left behind dwindled to one thin streak of the palest salmon color, did Clea come to herself. Her plate and cup sat empty on the floor of the deck and her arms and legs were covered with goose bumps underneath her sweats.

She pulled up her knees and wrapped her arms around them. Tears hovered behind her eyes but she wouldn’t let them fall. She wasn’t a crier. If she ever started, she might never stop. Besides, this truth went too deep for tears.

She couldn’t go back.

Forget that she wouldn’t go back to Texas because she wanted—needed—freedom and a new life. The operative word was couldn’t.

She had burned her bridges when she took Ariel. Not just with Brock, but with Daddy, too. No, she’d done it even earlier. When she’d “had the unmitigated gall and ingratitude” as Daddy had put it, to leave Brock and “rock the boat.”

And she’d put the cherry on top when she’d told Daddy she wasn’t going to let him take over her life again where Brock had left off.

She could not go back.

This truth wasn’t new, yet it was. She’d known it. She had known this since the minute the word divorce had left her mouth, but she hadn’t known it in the visceral way she knew it now.

Maybe Jake had been right. Maybe she’d followed him into the barn, not to see the foal but in an attempt to attach herself to him somehow. As a protector or something.

It didn’t matter. She would learn to protect herself.

She would learn to do everything for herself. Including think.

That silly stunt she’d pulled this morning would have to be her last. She could’ve wrecked both trailers for no reason except trying to one-up a man she should’ve listened to. She could have thrown away all the money she had instead of half—or whatever it would cost her to fix the truck. That had been nothing but selfish, petty behavior.

Which was a kind of luxury. One she could no longer afford any more than she could afford more fluffy bath towels or new shoes like the ones that had bothered Jake so much today.

She would learn to protect herself and to think and to survive. Because the other truth she’d seen written in flames on the Montana sky told her that she didn’t want to go back.

Her true heart was here. All she had to do was find it.

JAKE RODE up into Clea’s yard yelling, “Hello, the house! Clea, it’s Jake.”

The young horse he was on didn’t like yelling, so began gathering himself to buck.

Jake pulled his head up and started him going in a circle.

“Clea! It’s Jake Hawthorne!”

Still no answer. Damn. She was probably in there right now loading her shotgun.

He got the colt straightened out and went around to the back of the house. Maybe she was out on the deck.

As he rounded the corner, he heard a horse. Hooves thundering.

The big black mare. Coming around the far corner of the barn lot at a hard lope with Clea on her back. Then he saw the jumps set up—homemade ones made out of hay bales and barrels and some rickety-looking sawhorses with a pole set across them.

Clea was up on the balls of her feet in the stirrups, her neat butt a little bit off the saddle, leaning forward at the hip, getting ready for the first jump. Her face was what held his eye, though; she looked even farther gone in her concentration than she had been with the wild foal.

She had her head up, looking ahead, her whole body focused on what she was doing. The next instant she and the mare were rising into the air and flowing over the stack of bales like one huge bird. Beautiful. More than beautiful. His heart lifted with them. They landed, headed for the next jump.

The mare tried to veer then, her ears back, wanting to go off to one side, and Jake’s breath caught. Too late. They were already committed, going too fast to stop.

He couldn’t tell or even look to see what Clea did, but she held the mare to the course and leaned forward, ready for the jump. If the mare refused it, no way could Clea stay on and they were nearly there, nearly there and then they flowed upward again, over the barrels.

One more to go and the instant message in the air was that Clea was determined to jump it and the mare was not. She pinned her ears hard and switched her tail but Clea didn’t give her an inch of room. Straight, straight to the pole across the sawhorses and then up and over it.

Jake let out the breath he hadn’t realized he was holding. He rode on up to the fence. Clea passed him without giving any indication she knew he was there, rode around the jumps in one huge circle, headed for the first one and then put her horse over all of them again.

Pretty damned impressive. He would never have thought Clea had it in her.

This time, her blue eyes took him in as she loped—can-tered, he supposed—the mare around the pen once more. Then she trotted up to him, pulling off the helmet she wore, patting her horse’s neck while she smiled at Jake.

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