Sleepless in Montana (33 page)

Ben stared off into the Crazy Mountains to
that high moist meadow where he’d first met Willow digging camas
roots in the old Indian way. “I didn’t know how to deal with the
hole inside me, with losing the one piece of sunlight I’d had in my
lifetime. And there you stood, a reminder of Willow, and how I
should have done better by her.”

Hogan was startled by the deep emotion in his
father’s rough voice. In his lifetime, Hogan could not remember Ben
speaking as frankly about love. “Old Aaron must have liked that— an
Indian grandson. Black hair and black eyes in a blue-eyed, blond
family.”

Ben’s smile was wry. “Not much. You did stand
out in the crowd. A nice straight, tall strong boy— solid, good
judgment, and a heart that was kinder than old Aaron’s or mine.
Animals sensed that about you, even when you were a pup, and they’d
come to you. Made him mad as hell to see a foal tagging after you
when it wouldn’t come to him for an apple. But there wasn’t
anything he could do about it. He was already sick.... I think his
hatred of everything and everyone ate him to death. He needed me to
take care of him, and I’d have left if he’d made me choose between
my son and the Bar K.”

He paused and looked off again toward the
foothill clearing at Willow Creek. “Her name was Willow.... She’s
buried by the big pine she loved near the cabin. Our initials are
on the tree. She liked to draw.... I used to bring her pencils and
sketch pads,” Ben said softly. “I was married in my heart, and how
she looked that day, as my little bride when we gave our vows, and
when she gave me my son—”

His voice died, washed away by emotions as
though he’d spent all his energy on revealing something he’d kept
locked in his heart for too long. Ben’s usual hard expression
eased, and he suddenly looked old and worn— “When she laughed, it
was like sunshine. It filled me.”

Hogan rubbed his hands over his face. Ben
spoke tenderly of a woman Hogan had never known, a woman who had
been kept from him. He’d been missing a part of his life and now it
sliced through him, cutting at memories. He realized he knew how
Ben had felt, because Jemma had filled him.

He hadn’t expected to understand Ben and yet
he did. “Why tell me now?”

“Because it’s time you knew. Because you’ve
got a woman in your heart now—a good woman. They make a difference
in what a man understands. But most of all, you’re hard as rock,
Hogan. Maybe you needed that to survive. You’re cold inside like
me, and that was a gift I handed down to you from old Aaron. But
you’ve got more heart than my father or me, and you’ve got a chance
to be happy. And since I’m a selfish bastard, I want you for my
son, and I want to hold your babies in my arms.”

Hogan stared at the man he’d hated and loved
and respected and fought. He tucked the hot, fast bitter words
behind his lips. His heart was already sailing up the mountain to
the woman who was his mother— “I’m going.... You’ll see to
Carley?”

“He’ll have to go through us first, that’s
Aaron and Mitch and Dinah, too. Take your time. He’s not getting
Carley.” Ben watched his son stride to his horse and mount, riding
toward the mountain and his mother. “I love you, boy. God
bless.”

*** ***

In the clearing in the foothills, near Willow
Creek, the pine-tree bark had been stripped away, a lace of litchen
moss covering the scarred wood, the heart with B and W K..... Ben
and Willow Kodiak ...

Hogan went down to his knees, carefully
easing away the pine needles and twigs that covered his mother’s
grave. River rocks, worn smooth and round covered the small
rectangular area. Hogan looked up to the cathedral of tall
lodgepole pines and junipers to the blue sky beyond the branches.
Ben must have carried the rocks there, because there were no stones
matching their pink-and-gray color in Willow Creek.

“Hello, Mother. I’m your son,” he said
unevenly, his heart filling with emotions.

He studied the old heart. “Ben and Willow
Kodiak.” And heard Ben say quietly,“I was married in my heart, and
how she looked that day, as my little bride when we gave our vows,
and when she gave me my son—”

“B and W Kodiak.” In the spring air, Hogan’s
voice was distant, not a part of him. Hogan swallowed, blinded by
flashes of when Ben had brought him here to plant flower bulbs.
Hogan swept his open hand across the smooth stones. He sat back,
bent a knee, and placed his arm across it. Resting his chin on his
forearm, Hogan tried to see her in his mind.

Three hours later, he crouched by Willow
Creek, sipping water from his hands. “Aaron, you make enough noise
to scare all the game off the mountain. I’ve been watching you come
up the mountain. If Carley’s stalker wanted to pick you off, it
would be easy enough and make one less of us to protect her.”

Aaron crouched beside Hogan and drank from
his hands as Hogan had done. “Good water. Pure,” Aaron noted, and
turned to closely study his brother. “How goes it?”

When Hogan was silent, watching a curled,
golden willow leaf drift on the small stream, Aaron said, “Dad told
us. He said you’d be here, making your peace.”

“Peace?” Bitterness surged in Hogan, and he
stood abruptly, meeting Aaron’s guarded study. His brother was the
same height and build, Kodiak bones running beneath that fairer
skin, Aaron’s eyes as blue as the sky, as penetrating as Ben’s, a
perfect match to Hogan’s darker features.

“Do you hate me?” Aaron asked baldly.

“Not a bit. I changed your diapers,
remember?”

“The old man is holed up with a bottle. Just
like the old days when he lost that leg. If I were to make a guess,
I’d say he’s thinking that he deserved to lose that leg, and that
he doesn’t deserve Dinah.”

“Maybe.” Hogan couldn’t spare time thinking
about Ben now, not the man who had kept his birth mother in the
shadows. He’d felt like a bastard all of his life, an outsider to
the Kodiak blond, blue-eyed family, and now he was dealing with who
he was: Willow’s son. He walked to the cabin, broken and rotted,
the roof caved in by time and weather.

His hands were raw and torn, used roughly to
tear away the brush, to find what he could of his mother.

Aaron stood beside him, studying the remnants
of the small log cabin and then Hogan. “You look like hell, a dead
tie with Dad. He looks like the whole world fell on him.”

“Hadn’t you better be getting back?” Hogan
didn’t want his brother tangled in his pain, to see the dark fury
and hurt inside him.

“Hell, no.” Aaron walked to the packhorse,
and began to toss camping gear to the ground. “You’re not sending
me back into that pit of worked-up females, Mitch’s psychology
manure, and Ben’s black moods. When I left, Mom was threatening to
take an ax to the door Ben had locked and Jemma was brewing up
another jug of carrot juice. Carley was shivering in the shadows
and not listening to anything I had to say to comfort her.
Here—”

Aaron tossed an ax to Hogan, who caught it
easily. “I took that ax before Mom found it, because your sweet
self went to so much work to restore those doors. At the going
rates you charge as an artist, those fine masterpieces are probably
worth over twenty thousand a piece.”

Hogan was unable to say what was right to
Aaron: that Aaron remained his brother, and was in his heart.
Reacting to his emotions, wishing he could tear away the pain,
Hogan threw the ax in a rotation at a tree twenty feet away; the
blade sank solidly into the wood with an echoing whack.

“Good toss. I guess your pampered artist
hands aren’t that weak.” Aaron tossed Hogan leather gloves and a
rifle, then a gun belt and a revolver. “You forgot a few things you
might need up here.”

“Get away,” Hogan said quietly, needing to
sink into his thoughts, to deal with emotions he’d shielded all his
life.

“You sound like the old man. Act like him,
too. From the way you jumped Jemma, making certain you’d put your
brand on her, I’d say that matches exactly what I heard about Dad
shooing Mom down the wedding chute. She never knew what hit her,
but she’s a lot sweeter than Jemma.... I’ll leave when I’m ready,
bro,” Aaron returned evenly, meeting Hogan’s dark look.

Aaron watched a mule doe water at the stream.
“You stuck when the going was rough all those years ago. You were
there, taking it from Ben. You stuck by Mom, and Carley and me. We
depended on you and you were there....”

He tossed a rock into the stream, startling
the doe. He followed its leap to the other bank. “Lighten up,
Hogan. All I did was bring beer and food. No women, and you’d
better be grateful that I didn’t. They’re out to make us a lovely,
civilized family. Mitch has all those psychology degrees, and he
can handle it. In fact, I think Mitch is really into this female
bonding thing, studying the dynamics. Dad can handle himself, but
I’m defenseless as a baby. Let me enjoy my time away from the
house.”

Aaron’s discomfort was probably a ploy, but
for once Hogan didn’t state the obvious. He loved his brother
deeply, always had. Hogan almost smiled, remembering the time he
took Aaron into the woods to build a clubhouse far away from the
stormy Kodiak ranch house. Aaron had been torn between his battling
mother and father, and fighting pride and tears.

“Aaron, I want you to meet my mother,” Hogan
said. “She’s right over there.”

“They met in that camas field,” Aaron stated
softly, looking out into the small moist meadow, the camas stalks
promising blue flowers.

In his mind, Hogan saw his father, a
woman-shy, lanky cowboy, trying to talk with a black-haired girl in
the meadow. Hogan’s emotions trembled within him, the new knowledge
opening up visions he’d never expected. “He said she liked to draw,
to feel, to take things inside her. Willow was her name.”

Aaron nodded slowly, studying Hogan. “I’d
like to meet her.”

“He loved her.” Hogan inhaled the mountain
air and let peace fill him. “He loves Dinah, too.”

They stood apart, studying each other—boys
who had become men with love running between them. Suddenly, Aaron
asked, “You ever tell anyone you loved them, Hogan?”

“No one but Carley, and she needed to hear it
back then.”

“I’m thinking that if I have kids, I’m going
to tell them that every chance I get,” Aaron stated firmly. “Now
introduce me to your mother.”

*** ***

In the morning, Hogan’s head throbbed, and a
boot was prodding his backside. Aaron yelled, cursing as a bucket
of cold water splashed in his face. Hogan sucked in his breath as
the other half of the water in the bucket was dashed into his
face.

“I’m here and I’m ready to fish,” Jemma
announced cheerfully. “It’s already eight o’clock, and boy, are
they biting!”

Hogan stifled a groan and sat up on his
bedroll; his head threatened to roll back down to the bedroll, and
he held it tightly. Aaron was hopping and cursing, his bare feet
hitting rock and pinecones—the reflexology lesson last night had
required the use of his own feet. A radio blared rock music,
crashing through Hogan’s skull. Jemma turned up the volume. “Just
trying to find the fishing report.”

“Get the hell out of here! Men need peace and
quiet and not screaming women,” Aaron yelled, as Hogan struggled to
stand, bracing one hand against a tree. He had a distant memory of
Ben yelling the same thing at Dinah.

“This isn’t your old clubhouse marked Men
Only. This is a whole big mountain, and there aren’t any signs to
stay away,” Jemma shot back, her hands on her hips and fire in her
eyes.

“I’ll make one,” Hogan stated through his
parched throat. A strip of sunlight speared through the pine trees
and caught the back of his brain. He braced his other hand against
the tree and tried to glare at Jemma, who looked as though she’d
explode. “You’re not mad, are you, Red?”

She threw up her hands. “Oh, gee whiz, why
should I be mad? Can’t you take a little payback? I had a morning I
didn’t feel so good, either. But did you have mercy? Oh, no. Not
you. Stop calling me ‘Red.’ I don’t like it, and there’s a little
more volume I can get out of this radio.”

Despite his hangover, Hogan couldn’t help but
notice how fine she looked in a snit, wearing cut-off jeans, a
tight yellow tube band across her breasts covered by one of his
shirts, knotted at the waist. He took in those long, long legs and
stopped at the orange canvas shoes.

The bright colors hurt his eyes, jarred his
artist senses. Yellow and orange usually meant Jemma was on the
warpath and he’d experienced enough of her temper to know that the
gloves were off.

In contrast to the jangling warning bells in
his head, he wanted to hold her, to kiss her, and lay her down
beneath him. The thoughts weren’t sweet, just pure hunger unleashed
and devastating. He shifted, uncomfortable with his tight,
burgeoning body, his arousal thrusting at his jeans. “I don’t know.
Why are you mad? Did the modesty panel blouse-deal fall
through?”

Faced with an angry woman, a hangover, and a
cursing brother, Hogan took the safest path and walked to the creek
to soothe his parched throat. He drank, and Aaron lay facedown
beside him, cupping cold water onto his face. Hogan lifted a heavy,
aching lid and eyed Aaron. “You led her here.”

“Did not. But if she’s on this mountain, I
want off.”

Aaron stared down at the toothpaste and
toothbrush she’d flung at him. “Where’s the floss, Mother?”

“Go to hell.”

Hogan turned to look up at Jemma, no small
matter as she was outlined in the blinding sunlight.

“Will you go home?” he demanded, rather than
asked.

“I’m here to fish. You said you’d teach me.
I’ve got a schedule, you know—”

Jemma screamed as Hogan wrapped his hand
around her ankle and tumbled her into the creek. “Cool off.”

Aaron began laughing, then studied Jemma
tromping out of the creek.