her—a gloved hand to his forehead. She mimicked the gesture. And then he was backing out, turning to get the right angle, and rolling forward. She watched as the big, black SUV disappeared around the side of the town hall, her heart pounding hard and heavy as lead beneath her breastbone.
She knew he would call her. Hadn’t he just told her he would? Still, she had the strangest, scariest feeling right then that she would never see him again.
Chapter Ten
Dinner at the Lazy D was a festive affair. Adele had the cook prepare a juicy prime rib and Tess Littlehawk, the ranch’s longtime housekeeper, set the long table in the formal dining room with the best china and crystal.
Riley, who’d been out earlier checking the stock, came in from his own place a half a mile from the main house to join them, his dark hair slicked back, wet from the shower he must have just taken.
“I was the lucky one,” he said, smoothing his linen napkin on his lap and sparing a wink of greeting for Katie. “Safe and sound at my place before things got too rough.”
Sy Goodwin, a feed-store owner and family man who’d decided to stay the night before heading back to his wife and four kids in Billings, laughed with Caleb and Adele over their shared “ordeal” in the hall—especially Sunday morning, when most of the others were suffering from an excess of beer the day before.
“A number of extremely discouraging words were exchanged,” Goodwin reported, his expression jokingly solemn, a definite gleam in his eye.
The creases in Caleb’s nut-brown face etched all the deeper as he let out his big, boisterous laugh. “I tell you, Katie, a bottle of aspirin that first day was worth its weight in gold.”
Sy laughed, too. “And anyone with a box of Alka-Seltzer could have gotten a fortune for it.”
Adele and Caleb agreed that Sy wasn’t exaggerating.
Caleb asked, a little too meaningfully as far as Katie was concerned, “And what about you and Justin? Stuck there in that musty old museum with nothing but mining equipment and Indian artifacts for company.”
Adele was shaking her head. “What did you do for all that time?”
We kissed, Katie thought. Forever. We spooned. All night. And I dropped in at State Street Drugs this afternoon and bought myself a box of condoms. Mr. Dodson hadn’t even batted an eye when she plunked it down on the counter.
She said, offhand as she could make it, “Oh, we found some books and board games in the storage room. We managed to occupy ourselves.”
Addy clucked her tongue and sent Katie a sly look. “A handsome guy, that Justin.”
Katie put on her sweetest smile. “Yes. He is. Very.”
Adele added, “I do wish he’d been able to stay and join us tonight.”
“He had to get back,” Katie said. “Business, you know.”
“Yeah,” Caleb agreed. “That man’s a real go-getter. Started from nothing and now he’s the biggest developer in western Montana—and not even thirty-five yet.” Those devilish green eyes of his were twinkling. “And our Katie’s gone and married him.”
Addy and Riley shared a glance and Sy Goodwin looked confused.
Adele had to explain to him about the mail-order bride reenactment they’d missed when they went down to the ski resort office.
“We heard after we got back to the hall that it was quite an event, that marriage of yours,” said Caleb. “Heard some old character named Green stepped up to play the preacher. Got right into the part. Even called himself ‘Reverend.’”
“Yep,” Katie agreed, keeping it light, but thinking of Justin. Of his low, teasing voice through the darkness that night they’d talked and talked. Of his kiss. Of his hands on her body. She should have gotten his number. But no. He’d said he’d call. And of course he would. “That ‘wedding’ was…really something.”
Maybe tonight, she thought. At least by tomorrow.…
The talk moved on to other subjects. After coffee and dessert, Caleb and Addy urged her to stay. They didn’t want her driving home on the icy roads in the dark.
She said she really had to get back. The roads to town had been cleared and salted and the snow hadn’t started up again. She’d be just fine.
It was after eleven when she let herself into her two-story farmhouse-style Victorian on Cedar Street.
She’d been home earlier, after Justin left her in the town hall parking lot, and she’d turned up the thermostat then, so the house was cozy-warm and welcoming. Switching on lamps as she went, she headed for the phone in the kitchen in back, where she found the message light on her machine glowing a steady red.
No one had called.
He didn’t call Wednesday morning, either. Katie went to the library at nine and jumped every time the phone rang, though there was really no reason he’d call her at work when all he had to do was look up her home number in the book.
Still, whenever the phone rang, her heart would race and the clerk would answer.
And it wouldn’t be him.
Emelda, who put in a lot of volunteer hours at the library, arrived at two. “It’s going to be fifty degrees today, can you believe it?” she marveled as she peeled off her muffler and hung up her heavy coat. “Snow’s already melting. It’ll be gone in no time if this keeps up.” She clucked her tongue and got to work shelving some new novels Katie had waiting.
At three, Emelda took over the check-out desk so the clerk, Lindy Peters, could have a break. The phone rang just as Lindy left the desk. Katie raced over and grabbed it on the second ring, though Emelda was moving down the counter toward it.
“Thunder Canyon Public Library,” Katie answered, absurdly breathless. “May I help you?”
It was only someone wanting the library hours for the week. Katie repeated them and said goodbye.
Emelda shook her silver-gray head. “I swear you are jumpy as a frog on a hot rock today. I would have gotten that.”
Katie hardly heard her. Her mind was full of Justin. What was he doing now? Had he gotten back to Bozeman safely? Well, of course he had. And it had barely been twenty-four hours since he left her at the town hall—well, okay, twenty-six hours, thirty-plus minutes, to be more exact. Not that long, not really. No doubt he had a mountain of work to catch up on. He probably wouldn’t be able to get away to see her until the weekend. He’d be calling—soon—to set something up.
“Katie? Did you hear a single word I said?”
“Oh. Emelda. Sorry, I…” She was saved from having to make some lame excuse for her distracted behavior when a little girl with a towering stack of picture books, her mother right behind her, stepped up to the counter.
After that, Katie managed to keep herself from rushing to grab the phone every time it rang.
Besides, by then she was feeling more and more certain that Justin would be calling her house, not the library. There was probably a message waiting for her at home right now.
When she got home at five-fifteen there were two messages, but neither was from Justin.
She simply had to stop obsessing over this. He’d said he’d call and he would. Justin was an honest man.
That night she hosted the Historical Society meeting at her house. As she served up the coffee and cookies and listened to everyone bemoan the storm that had ruined their museum reception, and trade news on Ben Saunders’s rapidly improving health, she couldn’t help expecting the phone to ring.
It didn’t. Not that night, not Thursday morning, not during her prelunch hours at the library, either.
She