of us says something we’ll regret,” Chase said in a tone she’d never heard from him before. He was shutting her out. For good.
If he would only let her kiss him... She reached for him, thinking she could make him remember what they had together, but he pushed her back.
“Don’t.” He was shaking his head, looking at her as if horrified by her. There was anguish in his gaze. But there was also pity and disgust. That too she’d seen before. She felt a dark shell close around her heart.
“You’ll be sorry,” she said, feeling crushed but at the same time infused with a cold, murderous fury.
“I should have never have let this happen,” Chase was saying. “This is all my fault. I’m so sorry.”
Oh, he didn’t know sorry, but he would soon enough. He would rue this day. And if he thought he’d seen the last of her, he was in for a surprise. That Montana hayseed would have Chase over her dead body.
“I feel terrible that I didn’t warn you about Fiona,” his boss said on Chase’s last day of work. Rick had insisted on buying him a beer after quitting time.
Now in the cool dark of the bar, Chase looked at the man and said, “So she’s done this before?”
Rick sighed. “She gets attached if a man pays any attention to her in the least and can’t let go, but don’t worry, she’ll meet some other guy and get crazy over him. It’s a pattern with her. She and my wife went to high school together. Patty feels sorry for her and keeps hoping she’ll meet someone and settle down.”
Chase shook his head, remembering his first impression of the woman. Fiona had seemed so together, so...normal. She sold real estate, dressed like a polished professional and acted like one. She’d come up to him at a barbecue at Rick’s house. Chase hadn’t wanted to go, but his boss had insisted, saying it would do him good to get out more.
He’d just lost his mother. His mother, Muriel, had been sick for some time. It was one of the reasons he’d come to Arizona in the first place. The other was that he knew he could find work here as a carpenter. Muriel had made him promise that when she died, he would take her ashes back to Montana. He’d been with her at the end, hoping that she would finally tell him the one thing she’d kept from him all these years. But she hadn’t. She’d taken her secret to the grave and left him with more questions than answers—and an urn full of her ashes.
“You need to get out occasionally,” Rick had said when Chase left work to go pick up the urn from the mortuary. It was in a velvet bag. He’d stuffed it behind the seat of his pickup on the way to the barbecue.
“All you do is work, then hide out in your apartment not to be seen again until you do the same thing the next day,” Rick had argued. “You might just have fun and I cook damned good barbecue. Come on, it’s just a few friends.”
He’d gone, planning not to stay longer than it took to drink a couple of beers and have some barbecued ribs. He’d been on his second beer when he’d seen her. Fiona stood out among the working-class men and women at the party because she’d come straight from her job at a local real estate company.
She wore high heels that made her long legs look even longer. Her curvaceous body was molded into a dark suit with a white blouse and gold jewelry. Her long blond hair was pulled up, accentuating her tanned throat against the white of her blouse.
He’d become intensely aware of how long it had been since he’d felt anything but anguish over his breakup with Mary and his mother’s sickness, and the secret that she’d taken with her.
“Fiona Barkley,” she’d said, extending her hand.
Her hand had been cool and dry, her grip strong. “Chase Steele.”
She’d chuckled, her green eyes sparking with humor. “For real? A cowboy named Chase Steele?”
“My father was an extra in a bunch of Western movies,” he lied since he had no idea who his father had been.
She cocked a brow at him. “Really?”
He shook his head. “I grew up on a ranch in Montana.” He shrugged. “Cowboying is in my blood.”
Fiona had taken his almost empty beer can from him and handed him her untouched drink. “Try that. I can tell that you need it.” The drink had been strong and buzzed through his bloodstream.
Normally she wasn’t the type of woman he gravitated toward. But she was so different from Mary, and it had been so long since he’d even thought about another woman. The party atmosphere, the urn behind his pickup seat and the drinks Fiona kept plying him with added to his what-the-hell attitude that night.
“How long have you two been dating?” Rick asked now in the cool dark of the bar.
“We never dated. I told her that first night that I was in love with someone else. But I made the mistake of sleeping with her. Sleeping with anyone given the way I feel about the woman back home was a mistake.”
“So you told Fiona there was another woman.” His boss groaned. “That explains a lot. Fiona now sees it as a competition between her and the other woman. She won’t give up. She hates losing. It’s what makes her such a great Realtor.”
“Well, it’s all moot now since I’m leaving for Montana.”
Rick didn’t look convinced that it would be that easy. “Does she know?”
He nodded.
“Well, hopefully you’ll get out of town without any trouble.”
“Thanks a lot.”
“Sorry, but according to Patty, when Fiona feels the man pulling away... Well, it makes her a little...crazy.”
Chase shook his head. “This just keeps getting better and better.” He picked up his beer, drained it and got to his feet. “I’m going home to pack. The sooner I get out of town the better.”
“I wish I could talk you out of leaving,” Rick said. “You’re one of the best finish carpenters I’ve had in a long time. I hope you’re not leaving because of Fiona. Seriously, she’ll latch on to someone else. I wouldn’t worry about it. It’s just Fiona being Fiona. Unless you’re going back to this woman you’re in love with?”
He laughed. “If only it were that easy. She’s the one who broke it off with me.” He liked Rick. But the man hadn’t warned him about Fiona, and if Rick mentioned to Patty who mentioned to Fiona... He knew he was being overly cautious. Fiona wouldn’t follow him all the way to Montana. She had a job, a condo, a life here. But still, he found himself saying, “Not sure what I’m doing. Might stop off in Colorado for a while.”
“Well, good luck. And again, sorry about Fiona.”
As he left the bar, he thought about Mary and the letter he’d hidden in his sock drawer with her phone number. He’d thought about calling her to let her know he was headed home. He was also curious about the package she’d said a friend of his mother had left for him.
Since getting the letter, he’d thought about calling dozens of times. But what he had to say, he couldn’t in a phone call. He had to see Mary. Now that he was leaving, he couldn’t wait to hit the road.
* * *
MARY CARDWELL SAVAGE reined in her horse to look out at the canyon below her. The Gallatin River wound through rugged cliffs and stands of pines, the water running clear over the colored rocks as pale green aspen leaves winked from the shore. Beyond the river and the trees, she could make out the resort town that had sprouted up across the canyon. She breathed in the cool air rich with the scent of pine and the crisp cool air rising off the water.
Big Sky, Montana, had changed