The Man From Montana. Mary Forbes J.

the old man her full attention. Tom’s pupils pinpricked.

      “My grampa calls it the black hole,” her son piped up.

      “Hush, Charlie.”

      Tom zeroed in on the kid. “Why’s that, boy?”

      “Cuz a bunch of people went in it and never got out.”

      “Charlie,” Rachel whispered. Her gaze scooted from Tom to Ash like a creature trapped by wolves. “We’ll be getting back to town. It’s been a pleasure, Tom. Daisy.” She refused to look at Ash.

      Feeling’s mutual, lady. He reached for the door but his nose caught her perfume, a wisp of springtime.

      Oh, yeah. He wanted her gone.

      “Just a minute,” Tom said, halting them all. “I’ll make you a deal, Ms. Brant.” He looked at Daisy. Under grizzled gray brows, his eyes eased. “My granddaughter wants to know about the war for a school project. You help her write that story and I’ll do your interview.”

      Ash gaped. “Pops—”

      Tom held up a hand. “However, my son and I will read your work when it’s done, and you’ll fax it from this house so there’s no chance of changes.” His jaw was resolute, his eyes strict. “Ash can decide if he wants to rent the cottage.”

      “Thank you.” Relief washed over her face.

      Before Ash could interject, Tom spun his chair toward the kitchen, Daisy in tow.

      God almighty, Ash thought. Was the old man losing it? Less than a week ago, he’d been resolute about his secrets. Now this?

      Determined to dig out his father’s motives later, he waited by the door, watched Rachel help her son with his coat. The scene conjured up Susie with Daisy at seven and Daisy batting her mother’s hands, declaring, “I can put my coat on, Mom. I can do it.” Charlie held out his thin arms for his mother’s help.

      At the top of the porch steps, she faced Ash. Her brows were dark and sweeping. A swallow’s wings.

      He fisted his hands in the pockets of his jeans when the breeze caught a strand of her hair against that lilting mouth.

      “I’m sorry,” she said, “for upsetting your family.”

      If he pulled her against him, her head would rest against his collarbone. “Apology accepted.”

      “Well.” She pulled on her gloves. “Goodbye, Ash.”

      He could tell she didn’t expect to hear from him again.

      “See ya.”

      She walked through the snowfall to her car where Charlie petted Jinx and Pedro. A minute later, her Sunburst drove from the Flying Bar T and the dogs crept back under the porch.

      From the office window, Tom watched Ash stride across the snowy yard. The dogs rushed from their hole to tag his heels. He was a good man, his stepson. A devoted father, a dedicated rancher. A proud man.

      And upset with Tom’s decision about the interview.

      Why? Ash had asked once Rachel had driven back to Sweet Creek. Why, after all these years, would Tom spill his guts to a journalist? Why not simply write it down—if he wanted Daisy to know?

      What Ash didn’t understand, Tom mused, was that Rachel Brant held the key. She would unlock the past. Tom’s, Ash’s and, most of all, her own.

      Tom could take it all to the grave. But she’d come, she’d come and—God help him—he could not pass up the opportunity.

      Thirty-six years was long enough to live in silence. Hell, the five years following Susie was long enough.

      Ash hadn’t liked Tom’s saying they needed to move on. Sure, moving on from Susie was his son’s decision to make, like moving on from Hells Field was Tom’s, but sometimes a man had to give his kid a push. Tom didn’t want Ash boarding up the pain for decades, or having it fester the way it could.

      He hoped Ash rented the cottage to Rachel. For Daisy’s sake—and the boy’s—he hoped, even though Rachel’s questions would dredge up heartbreak like sludge out of a Texan oil well.

      The snow fell harder. Every day Ash cleaned the walkways so Tom could wheel to the barns, see the new calves. And, dammit, that held a pain all its own.

      He remembered a past he wanted to forget.

      He dreamed a past he wanted to forget.

      They had lived long enough in a house of mourning. Susie’s pictures everywhere collecting dust. The cottage sitting empty and cold. The summer trail riding business lying fallow.

      A half decade of walking around in silence, fearing that one word, one name would break a heart again and again.

      Silence couldn’t mend anguish. It couldn’t sew shattered legs and arms back onto a body. It couldn’t erase memory.

      Tom knew.

      Rachel Brant would change their lives and in doing so change her own. Ah, but she had her mother’s height, her eyes. And her father’s mouth and hair.

      Yes, Miss Brant would discover the truth with these interviews. They’d all come to understand the truth.

      Tom felt it in his gut.

      Like when the VC waited in the trees above their trail.

      The time had come.

      Chapter Three

      Oh, yeah, Ash thought. He got the old man’s meaning loud and clear. Tom’s past. Like the Flying Bar T was Tom’s ranch. And Ash, the stepson aka hired foreman. Stop being an ass. Tom was there when your mother didn’t have two nickels to her name.

      Ash had been two, his sister Meggie one, when their biological dad died in a chopper crash in some Vietnam swamp toward the end of the war. Six months later, their mother became Tom’s nurse. A soft-spoken woman with a broken heart that Ash couldn’t heal, no matter how hard he tried.

      Yes, Tom had given his name as well as his heart to Ash and his sister. He loved them as he’d loved their mother, God rest her soul.

      But not enough.

      Not enough to change the deed of the land into a partnership with Ash when he turned twenty, twenty-five, thirty. Not even on his last and thirty-seventh birthday.

      And now here was Tom again, deciding to give interviews to Rachel Brant, pushing Daisy into the “moving on” mix. Daisy was Ash’s daughter, not Tom’s.

      And what the hell was the old man up to prodding Ash to rent Susie’s cottage to Rachel Brant? Not that he hadn’t thought it over, but still. That guest cottage was his. His money, his time had gone into its construction.

      Tom might have final say in matters of the Flying Bar T, but not on the cottage. The thought rankled. Why, Pops? Why haven’t you changed the deed? Afraid I might cause a financial disaster with my nonexistent reading skills?

      In school, Ash had endured countless methods designed to interpret the printed word. A few strategies had helped somewhat, others caused more confusion, and later there had been an adult support group in Billings.

      In his midtwenties, because Susie had wheedled him to take a course, he’d worked daily with a tutor specializing in reading difficulties and learned a measured technique that, at the time, allowed him to decipher enough words for comprehension. A laborious and painful process which, over ten years, Ash let slide. Too damned difficult to fumble over on his own.

      “To hell with it,” he muttered.

      In the barn’s office, he grabbed the ear-tagging pliers and a sack of tags, then headed for the calving barn where his cows, his cows, were sheltered from snow, cold wind and frozen nights.

      Concentrate on the animals. They’re what matters.

      Rolling