High Country Baby. Joanna Sims

it mattered to him that he wasn’t heading back to the ranch. He’d still been drunk from the night before when Brock gave him the order, but not drunk enough to have forgotten a major piece of information like the fact that he’d be babysitting for a month. No. Brock had left that little detail out. It was lucky that his stepfather, a full-time drunk and part-time rodeo clown, had managed to teach him how to survive in the wilderness with limited supplies. He hadn’t, however, managed to teach Clint how to survive without a steady supply of cigarettes and tequila.

      That night, after they made camp, he taught Taylor to build a small mound fire. Admittedly, she had surprised him—she had actually researched riding the divide and had brought a fire blanket for building mound fires in order to have the least environmental impact. He loved this land and her desire to preserve it impressed him.

      Taylor sat down near the fire to catch as much warmth from the low flames as she could. The temperature changed so quickly on the divide—one minute she was boiling in the sun and the next she was freezing at sundown. At least she was starting to adjust to the sore muscles and aching joints and the drastic change in her diet. She really wanted to drop some weight on this trip. It was time for her to shed the extra pounds and claim the next phase of her life with a renewed sense of vigor and excitement.

      “You’re not much of a talker, are you, Clint?” Taylor broke the long silence.

      “I’m in the business of mindin’ my own business.” Clint flicked his cigarette into the fire.

      He reached into his saddlebag and pulled out the harmonica. She smiled a little—she had enjoyed listening to his playing the night before and hoped that he would play again. Taylor breathed in deeply, let it out slowly and tuned her ears to the notes streaming out from the little instrument. She hadn’t counted on company, but Clint’s role in her adventure had started to solidify in her mind. He was her protector. Her unwilling cowboy bodyguard.

      “Who taught you to play?”

      “David.”

      He read the next question in her eyes and answered without her having to ask it.

      “My stepfather.” After a moment, he added. “He adopted me when I was eight or nine—gave me his last name. That’s a heck of a lot more than I can say for my real father, that’s for damn sure.”

      There wasn’t any emotion in Clint’s voice when he talked about his father—not negative, not positive. But after he answered her question Clint put away the harmonica, stood up and walked a few feet away from the fire. From the light given off by the fire, she could see the cowboy in silhouette and a flash of red as he lit a cigarette. She had unintentionally hit a nerve. His father was a topic she would avoid in the future—in her mind, Clint wasn’t a three-dimensional person. He was a cowboy, and he was hired to ensure her safe return to Bent Tree Ranch. She didn’t really need to know any more about him than that.

      Taylor stood up, brushed the debris from the seat of her jeans.

      “Well—good night.”

      She thought that she saw him tip his hat to her, but she didn’t wait around to make sure. She quickly went through her nightly routine, changed into her cotton pajamas and crawled into her sleeping bag. Taylor swatted the flashlight overhead with her hand. She watched the light, letting it shine into her eyes for a brief moment as it passed over her face—up and back, up and back. She reached up and grabbed the flashlight, turned it off.

      In the dark, she stared up at the ceiling of the tent. All night she had caught herself unconsciously rubbing her thumb over the unembellished skin of her left ring finger. Would there ever be a man who wanted to place a ring on that finger again? Did she want there to be? It was debatable. But children... Taylor moved her hands down to her abdomen. Oh, how she had wanted there to be children.

      * * *

      It was a week of lessons for Taylor. Clint seemed to resign himself to his chore of watching out for her and focused his energy on teaching her how to ride the divide. She learned how to spot fresh grizzly bear markings on nearby trees and create a high line to tether the horses so that the ropes didn’t cause ring damage to the trees. She now knew how to tie a trucker’s knot, stake a horse in a field and avoid stepping on rattlesnakes.

      Now she knew why Uncle Hank had trusted Clint to be her bodyguard—the Continental Divide was home to this cowboy. He was a walking encyclopedia—there wasn’t an indigenous bird or wildflower or tree that he couldn’t name. She had actually started to make a game of testing his knowledge. Her first impression of Clint had been that he was uneducated and uncomplicated. He was neither. As far as she knew, he wasn’t formally educated past tenth grade, but he wasn’t ignorant. The wild Montana mountains had provided his education—and she had a feeling that her cowboy wasn’t uncomplicated, either.

      “Everything here is...so beautiful.” Taylor admired a field of wildflowers that stretched as far as her eyes could see. The rolling hills were dotted with canary yellow and violet-blue purple.

      “What are they?” she asked Clint once he reached her side.

      “The blue flowers are Camassia Quamash—Blue Camas—edible. But not the yellow—those are Death Camas...”

      “Let me guess...not edible.” Taylor smiled, her eyes drinking in the brightly colored field of flowers. “What do they taste like?”

      “Sweet—local tribes have used them for generations as a sweetener.” Clint repositioned his hat on his head. “If you want to taste one, I’ll dig up a bulb for you.”

      “No—that’s okay. Conservation.”

      Clint dismounted. “One ain’t gonna make the difference.”

      He returned to her side with a single Blue Camas bulb. He washed the dirt off the bulb before he handed it to her. She smelled it and then nibbled on the side.

      The odd sweetness hit her tongue, and for some reason, it made her laugh.

      “It’s sweet.” She held out the remainder of the bulb to him.

      Clint ate the rest. He didn’t hesitate to put his mouth where hers had been. Christopher had never drunk after her or shared a straw—he’d always wiped off her fork if he used it after her and that had always bothered her. And here, a near stranger, a man she had only known for a few days, had eaten after her as if it were nothing. It was an intimacy that she hadn’t shared with her husband in all of their years of marriage.

      “Is there a place where I could wash?”

      She felt gritty from days of sponge bathing and dry shampoo. She had packed water purification pills and filters for found water, as well as some potable water to drink, and tried to use as little as possible of her supply on washing. She needed to submerge her body in water, no matter how cold, and rinse the grimy feeling off her skin.

      “I’ve got a place in mind.” He swung into the saddle. “I’m tired of jerky. How ’bout fish for dinner?”

      She was tired of instant soup and protein bars. Washing the grease out of her hair and chowing down on freshly caught fish seemed like luxuries now.

      “I would love fish for dinner.”

      “Let’s ride about another hour and a quarter.” Clint tugged on Easy’s rope. “We’ll make camp a little early tonight.”

      The promise of a real dinner made the last hour in the saddle tolerable. But, even after a full week in the saddle, she was still raw and sore by the time she dismounted at the spot Clint selected for their campsite. They had fallen into a campsite routine—Clint had his duties and she had hers. Part of her job at the bank was putting together teams that could complete a project efficiently and effectively. She had a knack for putting two unlikely people together to create a winning team. It was like that with Clint—they were very different, but somehow they worked together to accomplish a common goal as if they had worked together for years.

      “We’ve got some storm clouds formin’ quick.” Clint took his hat