Montana Rogue (Big Sky Mavericks Book 7) Read online

  Montana Rogue

  A Big Sky Mavericks Romance

  Debra Salonen

  Montana Rogue

  Copyright © 2015 Debra Salonen

  The Tule Publishing Group, LLC

  ALL RIGHTS RESERVED

  No part of this book may be used or reproduced in any manner whatsoever without written permission except in the case of brief quotations embodied in critical articles and reviews.

  This is a work of fiction. Names, characters, places, and incidents are products of the author’s imagination or are used fictitiously. Any resemblance to actual events, locales, organizations, or persons, living or dead, is entirely coincidental.

  ISBN: 978-1-943963-32-4

  Table of Contents

  Title Page

  Copyright Page

  Keep Up with your Favorite Authors and their New Releases

  Prologue

  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

  Epilogue

  The Big Sky Mavericks Series

  An Exclusive Excerpt from Montana Miracle

  Brand New from Debra Salonen!

  A Book Girl’s Guide to Marietta

  Keep Up with your Favorite Authors and their New Releases

  About the Author

  Keep Up with your Favorite Authors and their New Releases

  For the latest news from Tule Publishing authors, sign up for our newsletter here or check out our website at TulePublishing.com

  Prologue

  February, Atlantic City, New Jersey

  She went alone. Caroline Mayhue, celebrated first chair with the New York Philharmonic, couldn’t ask any of her “friends”—that’s probably how you described people you’d known and who had known you all of your fifty-four years on the planet, even if you didn’t feel particularly close to any of them—to accompany her to a bawdy, burlesque revival billed as The Great American Male Show. Good God, no. Several would faint. At least one would speed dial her shrink and beg him to take on a new client.

  But Caroline wasn’t crazy. She wasn’t a middle-aged housewife in need of a naughty fix. She was going to see one dancer. Tucker “The Full Mountie” Montgomery. Her son. The child of her heart. Produced from pure love that may have had the power to transform Caroline into someone completely different from the person she was if...

  Yes, well, there’s always an if, isn’t there, she thought, as the line shuffled forward, slow and steady.

  The venue was one she’d attended before. She knew to leave her coat in the car with her driver when he dropped her at the hotel/casino’s portcullis. Even though she had no fear of being recognized by anyone in the crowd, she’d taken the time and effort to change her make-up, curl her still long, thick, mostly blond hair to which she added some chalk highlights. Blue. She liked blue.

  She’d dressed in black. That part she couldn’t change. She always wore black. Never gray—the color of her late husband’s eyes. Never green—the color of her son’s eyes.

  She tuned out the cacophony of casino sounds as her gaze spotted the first of several giant publicity photos of the individual performers scheduled to appear that evening. Bare chests. Rippled abs. Glistening tanned bodies belonging to men almost too handsome to be real.

  Caro’s heart rate sped up. She’d see him soon. It had been too long.

  “Seventy-five-fifty,” the disinterested twenty-something behind the ticket booth said, her expression bored and dismissive.

  Caroline handed over the price of admission. Far cheaper than a plane ticket to New Orleans where she’d have to rent a car that would sit in the parking garage unused while she tried to work up the nerve to go visit her child. Every year, the reasons for not visiting him got bigger, until she finally stopped tormenting herself with the travel. She’d simply fret and castigate herself at home—the result was still the same.

  She’d paid extra for a seat close to the action but far enough back that there’d be no eye contact. Not that Tucker would recognize her. Caroline supposed he could have checked her out on the Internet over the years. She had a public persona that drew attention in certain circles and her bio was on the Philharmonic’s website. Her son could have found her if he’d bothered.

  But she’d blown the one chance he’d given her fifteen years earlier when he’d invited her to his graduation performance. His class of gifted and talented students had won some sort of competition that paid their way to New York to perform for one night only at Carnegie Hall. Tucker—or possibly his grandmother, Ruby-Lee—sent Caro the invitation. Unfortunately, Caro had been pressured into performing in Russia that night and couldn’t get out of the commitment.

  A decision she still regretted.

  She settled into the lumpy theater seat and looked around. This was not the drinking, carousing audience with hands stuffed with one-dollar bills as she’d been led by certain movies to expect. True, the rows were filled with women, mostly, but single men were sprinkled about in groups, as well, laughing and talking.

  “Your first time?” a ravishing white blond in her late twenties asked.

  “No. Do I look nervous?”

  “A bit. My mom came with me last time these guys played here. She loved it. Unfortunately, she just had her gallbladder out. I promised I’d video her faves, even though that’s not allowed. You won’t tell, will you?”

  Caroline shook her head. “Who are her favorites?”

  “The cowboy. I can’t remember his name.” She fanned herself. “Oh, boy, talk about packaging the package.”

  Caro smiled, grasping her meaning immediately.

  “And Mom loves The Full Mountie.” She opened the program that cost five dollars extra and pointed out the half-naked photo of an extremely well-built guy in his late twenties. “Mom says he’s a mischievous little boy who needs a spanking.” She laughed and high-fived her neighbor. “I totally volunteer for that job.”

  Caro chuckled. “He does have a devilish gleam in his eyes, doesn’t he?”

  The girl nodded. “And he’s the best dancer by far.”

  Caro couldn’t stifle a rush of pride when the girl added, “I always get turned on by his routines. Which is your favorite?”

  I only come to see one, Caro didn’t say. Fortunately, her new seatmate didn’t seem to expect an answer. Instead, she flipped ahead in the program pointing to individual photos with the watermelon-colored tip of her bedazzled fingernail.

  “Hot, but gay,” the girl said with a sigh. “I don’t have a problem with that, it’s just disappointing when you’re drooling over him and he’s drooling over some guy in the audience.” Her shiny pink lips pouted in a way that probably made men flock to her side in a bar. “But, I swear, if I could go home with Mountie, I’d be one happy girl.”

  Me, too, Caroline thought wistfully.

  For very different reasons.

  Chapter One

  Mid-May, Marietta, Montana

  Tucker Montgomery had one thing on his mind and one thing only: sex.

  And it was all Amanda Heller’s fault.

  Despite his off-season job, which celebrated sexuality in the most obvious, in your face, hello G-string manner one step short of porn, his taste in women had become a bit too discriminating for his libido. So, naturally, every hi
p swishing, ultra-feminine gesture Amanda made reminded him that he hadn’t gotten laid in months. His new landlord slash boss slash annoying pain-in-the-butt was a distraction he couldn’t afford.

  Not to mention the fact Amanda Heller was a society girl with a capital S. A society girl who went slumming with a sexy dancer who caught her fancy only worked if he was in the city passing through on his way to somewhere else.

  Transitional, he thought, savoring the word. Just the way Tucker liked life—always moving, always on the go. Here today, jetting to Vegas, Atlantic City, or Paris tomorrow.

  He glared at the clumsy black walking cast attached to his right foot. “Make that my former life,” he muttered.

  The future had been looking pretty damn promising until he took a leap of faith and landed wrong, crucifying the tendons and connective tissue in his ankle and foot. Unfortunately, by then he owned a substantial hunk of mountain in Montana and was deep in debt trying to set up a zip line and adventure course.

  “A surprisingly enterprising thing to do,” Ona, his Cajun grandmother, had called it. He honestly didn’t know if his grandmother meant that as a compliment or not.

  But she’d been the first to invest in Mountie’s Marvelous Montana Zip Line and Enduro Course. Maybe he’d been dazzled by all the support he’d received when he announced his semi-retirement from American Male, Inc.—the company that produced The Great American Male Show, the bawdy male entertainment act he’d been with for most of his adult life. Stepping away from his summer job as a Hotshot Firefighter, hadn’t been as simple.

  “Get over yourself,” Justin “The Goat” Oberman told him. “We fight fires. It’s what we do. I’ve already signed you up to be a volunteer...once your ankle heals.”

  Goat had stepped in to oversee the construction of the zip line when Tucker’s orthopedic doctor ordered him to stay off the mountain for six weeks minimum. Six weeks Tucker couldn’t afford. The project had already been set back a month or more due to building permit issues. Even with Justin’s help, the zip line was going to lose half the summer tourist season.

  Tucker’s decision to open a zip line may have looked impulsive to most people because he hadn’t shared all the research he’d done on the subject over the past two years. Ever since his first, half-drunk zip in Puerto Vallarta, Mexico, Tucker had been researching the possibility of setting up his own business somewhere in the States.

  He’d tabled the idea during last summer’s horrific fire season that included a failed rescue that nearly cost Flynn Bensen his life and his sanity. Flynn and Justin were the brothers Tucker never had. When the two made up their minds to leave the Great Smoky Mountains and move west, Tucker recognized the opportunity as a turning point—the same way he sensed when a wildfire was poised to suddenly and for no apparent reason make an abrupt about-face.

  When forty acres of nearly inaccessible Montana mountainside with killer views and, more importantly, a heart-stopping elevation drop more or less fell into his lap, he wrote a check and never looked back.

  Until now.

  The front door of Molly O’Neal’s two-bedroom guesthouse opened, bringing a gust of fresh air and Molly’s granddaughter, who apparently could read him like a sidewalk menu at twenty paces: “Still pouting?”

  Amanda Heller—five-feet-ten-inches of legs, long hair and class—closed the door behind her and turned to face him.

  “I’m a man, not a baby. I prefer to call it sulking.”

  Her full, rose-red lips quivered with a smile that sometimes appeared despite her best effort to remain emotionally flatlined.

  She slipped off her leather jacket and hung it on the antique coat rack to the left of the door. Would the woman ever understand that leather only kept animals dry, not warm? Warmth required body fat, and she only possessed a teaspoonful...although what little she had was distributed in all the right places.

  Sitting at the oak drop-leaf table where he’d spread out the blueprints the project contractor, Paul Zabrinski, had dropped off a few minutes earlier, Tucker glared at the high-tech, molded plastic walking boot with strategically placed Velcro straps, resting on a chair to his right.

  “Felled by a f-ing pothole,” he mumbled, wiggling his toes inside the red wool sock that had slipped a good inch since he put it on and now waggled like a limp dick from the end of the open-toed boot. “Ten years on the fire line without an injury and then...this.”

  He fought the urge to cuss a blue streak. City Girl’s ears would surely burn. She had too much class to tolerate crap like his. “What are you up to today? Lunch in Soho?” he asked snottily as she walked past him, the heels of her ridiculously sexy knee-high boots tapping a come-have-your-way-with-me staccato that drove him nuts.

  She poured herself a cup of coffee from the French press she’d bought yesterday—along with a couple of hundred dollars worth of “necessities.”

  Had the woman ever not looked put together? Her ankle-length black slacks clung like wet silk skinny jeans to accentuate her thigh gap. The crisply ironed white blouse with three-quarter sleeves must have been laundered by the Graff’s minions in the still of the night and delivered at first light for a small fortune. Her sage and burgundy paisley print scarf should have looked pretentious but instead lent a polished flair.

  Are girls like her bred without the normal “bed head” gene?

  “Just called for take out from Ernie’s. Best vegan focaccia in the city,” she answered.

  He liked her snarky comeback, which he deserved.

  “You’re late.”

  She shrugged. “Tell Medicare. I was on the phone all morning.”

  Her way of saying, “Sorry for keeping you waiting, Tucker”?

  Doubtful. Women like Amanda didn’t apologize. City girls. Society women like—he cut off the thought. There was no comparison between Amanda and Caroline Mayhue, and nothing to be gained by thinking about the mother who abandoned her half-Cajun baby in New Orleans to pursue her dream in New York City.

  Sipping from her mug, Amanda strolled to the table. “Are these the final plans for next door?”

  “Yep. Pretty cut and dried. Paul will give us a final quote as soon as we green light the changes.”

  Unlike Tucker who’d moved into her grandmother’s guesthouse the instant the cleaners were out the door, Amanda had chosen to stay at the pricy Graff Hotel until phone service to the cottage was restored—along with Wi-Fi.

  Apparently, Daddy’s pockets were a lot deeper than Tucker’s. Not that Tucker was opposed to the occasional excess decadence, but when the pennies he was pinching belonged to someone he loved, he could do with a lot less. And the unpretentious two-bedroom house fit his needs perfectly. So far, he’d been able to communicate adequately with Justin and Paul Zabrinski, the contractor who would be working on the big house next door, by using his cell phone.

  He got up, gracelessly, of course.

  “Can I get you something?”

  He shook his head. “Just restless. Thanks. I’m not a sitter by nature. I’m a doer.”

  She stood across the table from him, head bent to study the pale blue lines and printed notations in the margins. Tucker had a similar set for the zip line—about thirty pages thicker—awaiting approval from some faceless board, committee or paper-pushing bureaucrat somewhere.

  Waiting. Tucker’s least favorite thing.

  “I got an email from my mother this morning,” Amanda said, not looking up.

  Something in her tone alerted him to what was coming. More changes.

  “What now?” He spread his hands flat and lowered his head to make her face him eye-to-eye.

  He hated—more than hated—he loathed being looked down at. This experience of being partially handicapped had opened his eyes to the world of the disabled. He’d already texted Justin to say they needed to make the place ADA friendly.

  “She wants heated floors.”

  “I beg your pardon?”

  “She asked if this technology exists in Montana.” />
  Tucker blinked and made a face he was certain conveyed his consternation. He didn’t know Amanda’s mother but his opinion of the woman vacillated between bored airhead to self-absorbed nutcase. “Of course the technology exists. This isn’t a third world country. But I guarantee the installation won’t be cheap. I thought your goal was to make this place safe for your grandmother’s twilight years then sell the home for a profit. Does your mother have any idea how much that would cost?”

  “No. Which is why I told her it would be a thousand dollars per lineal foot.”

  He blinked. “If we used gold pipes maybe.”

  She sipped her coffee trying to hide her self-satisfied smile.

  A feeling Tucker wasn’t expecting suddenly landed squarely in his middle chest—very close to his heart. A woman who surprised him. In a good way. How often did that happen?

  Rarely.

  Never.

  “Nicely played, Heller.”

  “I thought so.”

  She heaved a small sigh. Big enough to draw Tucker’s gaze to her beautifully sculpted bosom.

  “Unfortunately, this only buys us a little time. Once Mother feeds the numbers to my father, I’ll receive an irate text telling me to get him the correct numbers or I will be fired.”

  “Seriously?”

  She nodded. “Mother is bored. Traveling with my father, who spends most of his day in meetings or on the phone with work, can get old.”

  “Why doesn’t she come back?”

  “And leave Father exposed to temptations and interlopers who might steal away her precious provider? Never in a million years. Which is why she sent me to handle things with her mother in this god-awful state. Does it ever warm up?”

  City girl.

  “What are you talking about? I saw a robin this morning. That means spring is officially here,” he interjected before she could start another I-hate-Montana jag.

  She rolled her eyes. “And that last storm—the one that dumped a bunch of snow on the mountains and nearly took out Kat Robinson’s little boy—was just a Montana version of a spring shower?”