Montana Refuge. Alice Sharpe

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      “I’ll just get started and, you know, let you two talk,” Lenny said, his voice lower.

      Tyler’s brow furrowed. “What do you mean? Let who talk?”

      Lenny looked back at his truck and made a little motion with his fingers. The passenger door squeaked open. The glare on the windshield had obscured the fact that Lenny had a passenger.

      “I ran across her in town,” Lenny said under his breath. “Because I was coming out here anyway—well, I’ll just go see about Ned.” He made a point of walking toward the horse barn without looking back.

      Tyler’s jaw literally dropped as a woman appeared.

      Julie?

      For what felt like a month, they just stared at each other, he frozen to the ground, she half in and half out of the truck. He took in her sheath of glossy black hair, her deep brown eyes, the elegant features of her face. A year had passed since he’d last seen her, but right that second, it seemed like a lifetime or maybe even someone else’s lifetime.

      “What do you want?” he finally managed to say in a voice he didn’t even recognize. It was hard to sound normal when there was a knife twisting in his heart.

      That unfroze her. “Well, hello to you, too.” She slammed the truck door and leaned back against it, arms held across her chest, chin up.

      She’d always been on the tall, slender side, but she was really thin now, too much so. She was also beat up on her face and what he could see of her arms, like she’d been in a fight. There was something else—a furtive look, a jumpiness he’d never witnessed in her before.

      Had she left him to get tangled up with some kind of vicious jerk? That was the exciting new life she’d dreamed about? The wonderful world of domestic abuse?

      “I need to talk to you,” she said with a defiant tone to her voice. Or maybe it wasn’t defiance. Maybe it was nerves.

      “I know I haven’t signed the divorce papers,” he told her. “I will, though. Been busy.”

      “It’s not about that.”

      He turned his back on her and returned to his truck. With one leap he was in the bed again, hefting sacks of grain, moving faster now, fired up with nerves.

      She followed him and then stopped. Standing a few feet away, she murmured, “It wasn’t easy coming back here, you know.”

      “Then why did you?”

      It took her a moment to answer and when she did, her voice shook. “Tyler, I’ve messed everything up.”

      He glanced at her, hoping the look in his eyes communicated the fact that he thought she was an expert at messing things up and he wasn’t interested in it anymore. When she started to continue, he cut her off.

      “Don’t tell me, Julie. I don’t care. Just leave.”

      Her response came quicker this time. “How do you suggest I do that? Lenny is my ride.”

      “Walk. Fly. You left once, you can do it again.”

      “Tyler, please listen to me. I need—”

      He threw the bag to the ground and cut her off with a single slice of his hand. “No, you listen to me.” He stopped and shook his head but didn’t add anything because he didn’t know what to add.

      Below him, Julie rubbed her temples. The action exaggerated the sharp angles of her shoulders. He hitched his hands on his waist and stared at his boots for a second, taking deep breaths.

      He had to stop acting like a hurt kid. Fact was, she couldn’t walk all the way back to town and he wasn’t about to be alone in a vehicle with her. He could get one of the many ranch hands to give her a ride, but looking around, he didn’t see a soul.

      “You can stay until Lenny leaves,” he finally said. “Try to keep out of the way. We’re leaving on a cattle drive in the morning and everyone is pretty damn busy.”

      “What about Rose?”

      “My mother? What about her?”

      “Maybe she could use some help.”

      “I doubt she wants your help,” he said. In truth, his mom liked Julie and would probably love to see her, but that would just up the pressure on him to be reasonable and accommodating, neither of which he felt inclined to be, not with Julie, not now.

      “I guess not,” Julie said. “That’s another bridge I burned, isn’t it? Rose probably hates me. I shouldn’t have come.”

      Was he curious what had brought her back? So what if he was? He’d live with not knowing. He lifted another sack and heard himself say, “Cabin eight is empty. It’s yours for the night.”

      The relief in her voice was genuine. “Thank you.” Then she added, “But Tyler, please, can’t we talk for a moment?”

      Bag atop his shoulder, he paused and looked down at her. “I’m very busy...”

      “It’ll only take a minute.”

      “Just stop,” he said with a sarcastic laugh and a sweeping glance. “I’m not falling for that. Look at you. You’re a mess. Something bad is going on. Man trouble? New boyfriend got a temper?”

      “You’re acting like a jerk,” she said.

      “There you go. I’m a jerk. No news flash there, right?” It went against every ingrained instinct of his to turn her away, but there came a time when a man had to look after himself.

      She turned with a flourish and stomped toward Lenny’s truck. Maybe she planned to sit in the front seat all night. Fine with him. As he kept at his job, he saw her retrieve a large paper bag and a purse from the front seat, then walk off toward the line of pine cabins south of the main house which doubled as a lodge. She was traveling kind of light.

      He looked away from her retreating form. When he heard a door close up at the cabins, he dropped the sack he held in his arms and sank onto the side of the truck bed, winded not with effort but something else, something deep inside his chest that felt as if it was sucking the breath out of his lungs.

      Julie was back. And just like that, everything felt different. He rubbed his eyes and swore under his breath.

      * * *

      AT FIRST J ULIE LOCKED the door, sat on the edge of the double bed and tried to pull herself together. Coming face-to-face with Tyler had been a lot rougher than she’d anticipated.

      For two days of an endless bus ride where every stop and every new person to board loomed as a potential threat, she’d been afraid to sleep and too frazzled to eat. Getting to the ranch had been her solitary goal.

      And now she was here and sure enough, just as she’d known in her heart of hearts, Tyler hated her. Couldn’t stand the sight of her. Winced when he looked at her.

      Damn.

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