Montana Mistletoe Baby. Patricia Johns

this.”

      Curtis smiled ruefully. Yeah, well, he’d always thought hearing it would sting more. But fifteen years had a way of evening the scales, it seemed. She used to be the one with all the cards, and now he was getting his turn at being the one with the leverage. Still, tilling her under hadn’t been the plan...

      “You worked with Palmer before,” Curtis said. “Would it be so terrible if you ended up working together again? You’ve got some loyal clients—”

      “I worked too hard to get my own practice to just cave in like that,” she interrupted. “And no offense, Curtis, but I don’t need you to solve this for me.”

      “Just trying to help,” he said. Which really felt like the least he could do considering that he was selling the building to her direct rival.

      “Well, don’t. I’ll figure it out.”

      The same old Barrie—single-minded, stubborn as all get-out and perfectly capable of sorting out her own life. That’s what their married life had been—her way. And if you just looked at what she’d done with herself in the last fifteen years, it could be argued that the best thing he’d ever done for her was to get out of her way. He’d never been a part of her success—and she hadn’t been a part of his. From this side of things, it looked like a life with him had only slowed her down.

      The truck rumbled over the snowy road, tires following the tracks from that morning. Fresh snow drifted against the fence posts and capped them with leaning towers of snow. Beyond the barbed wire, the snow-laden hills rolled out toward the mountains, the peaks disappearing into cloud cover. He’d learned to love this land those few years he’d stayed with his aunt, and having Barrie by his side as he drove out this way was frustrating. Curtis might be a constant irritation to Barrie—even now, he was realizing—but he wasn’t useless, either. So if he and Barrie were only going to butt heads, he might as well focus on the work ahead of them.

      “We’re almost there,” he said. “Around this next corner.”

      Barrie sat up a little straighter, her attention out the window.

      “I left the cow with some feed and a blanket—you know, just in case. I wasn’t sure how sick it was, so—”

      “That was a good call,” she said, glancing around. “How far out into the field is it?”

      “A few yards,” he said. “Not too far. I found it when I was filling feeders this morning.”

      He pulled up to the gate that allowed trucks access to feeders in the field, and got out to open it. The cows looked up at him in mild curiosity—an older calf ambling over as if interested in some freedom beyond the fence.

      “Hya!” he said, and the calf veered off. Curtis jumped back into the cab and drove into the pasture, then hopped out again to close the gate behind them. By the time the gate was locked and he’d come back to the truck, Barrie was standing in the snow, her bag held in front of her belly almost protectively. Her hair ruffled around her face in the icy wind, and her breath clouded as she scanned the cattle that were present, her practiced gaze moving over them slowly. She was irritatingly beautiful—that was the first thing he remembered thinking when he’d met her in senior year. She was the kind of gorgeous that didn’t need what he had to offer, but he couldn’t help offering it anyway.

      “The cow’s over—” he began, but Barrie was already walking in the direction of the cow about twenty yards away now. The cow had shaken off the blanket, and the rumpled material lay in the snow another few yards off.

      “I see her,” Barrie said over her shoulder.

      Once—just once—couldn’t Barrie be a step behind him? But whatever. They were here for a cow, and not their complex history. If she wanted to know why he needed a new start so badly, here was a prime example.

      “Lead the way,” he muttered. It’s what she’d always done, anyway.

      * * *

      THE COW WAS definitely ill; she could tell by the way the animal stood. As she got closer, she could make out nasal discharge, the bovine equivalent of a runny nose. The snow was deep, and she had to raise her feet high to get through it, something that was harder now that she was pregnant. Her breath was coming in gasps by the time she approached the cow. She had to pause to catch her breath, and she glanced back to see Curtis’s tall form close behind.

      It felt odd to have Curtis in town, and something had been nagging at her since she’d seen him in the barn last night—how come this was the first she’d seen of him in fifteen years? Betty was in Hope, and she’d been like a second mother to him. He’d walked out of town and come back only once—to finalize their divorce. Did he hate Barrie that much by the end of their marriage?

      She looked around the snowy field, gauging the cow’s flight path. When handling cattle, it was important to make sure they had a free escape route, or the cow might panic, and two thousand pounds of scared bovine could be incredibly dangerous. She couldn’t allow herself to be distracted.

      “You never visited Hope,” she said as he stopped at her side.

      “Sure I did.”

      She looked over in surprise. “When? I never saw you.”

      “A few Christmases. I didn’t call friends or anything. I just had a day or two with Betty and headed on out again.”

      “I didn’t realize that.” She licked her lips. “Why the secrecy?”

      “It wasn’t a secret visit, just streamlined. I didn’t really keep up with people from high school. I came to see Betty.”

      She eyed him speculatively. “You weren’t avoiding me, were you?”

      His lips turned up into a wry smile. “Why would I avoid you?”

      Barrie sighed and turned back to the cow. She felt the cow’s belly. It hadn’t been eating much—like the calf—but the belly wasn’t completely empty, either. The cow shifted its weight from side to side, and she took a step back.

      “Maybe the same reason you left in the first place,” she replied, her voice low.

      “You really wanted me dropping in on your family Christmases?” he asked.

      “No.” She sighed. She wasn’t sure what she wanted—absolution, maybe. She hadn’t been the wife she’d tried to be back then, but now, as a mature woman, she wasn’t sure that her image of perfection had been realistic. It certainly hadn’t included the fights they used to have...

      Barrie liked the challenge of taming a wild spirit when it came to horses and cattle, but she resented that same wild spirit when it came to her husband. Marriage meant hearth and home to her, but to Curtis, it had been a beat-up trailer parked wherever he was bull riding.

      But he’d come back for Christmas with Betty a few times, and somehow that stung.

      “I meant well, you know,” she added. “I only ever tried to make a home for you.”

      “I was a bull rider,” he replied. “You knew all of that before you married me.”

      “Most men settle down when they get married,” she countered. “A wife should change something.”

      “Not my identity. You wanted me to act like a different man.”

      “I wanted you to act like a married man!”

      The old irritation flooded back, and she hated that. She’d come a long way in the last fifteen years, and it felt petty to slide back into those old arguments. She wasn’t the same person anymore, either.

      “I never cheated on you,” Curtis countered.

      “There is more to marriage than monogamy,” she said. “You had a home with me, Curtis. You treated it more like a hotel room.”

      “In all the best ways.” He shot her a teasing look, and she rolled