“Bad ammunition,” he reported tersely. “The whole box. I tried some shells in my rifle, and not one of them would fire. I’ve reloaded both rifles with my shells.”
Bad ammo. It happened. It had never happened to her before, but her dad had gotten a bad batch once. If Dare hadn’t
been there, if he’d been wounded so badly he hadn’t been able to toss his rifle to her … but he had. There was no point in thinking about what might have happened.
What mattered was that they were alive, they were together, and they were going home.
Of course they argued about who would ride and who would walk. Dare had been shot, and she was hobbled by a bum ankle. Dare wasn’t a lightweight and the chestnut wasn’t a big horse like Samson, so riding double wasn’t a really good option. In the end, he won the argument because even though he was woozy, he was still faster on his feet than she was. He ate two protein bars, drank two bottles of water, and pronounced himself good to go. She pronounced him too thick-headed to be anything other than half-Neanderthal, with maybe a little troglodyte thrown into the genetic mixture, then she’d completely humiliated herself by getting teary again and telling him that she loved him.
He just looked smug and said, “Yeah, I know.”
They made it to Ray Lattimore’s place in the nick of time, just as twilight was giving way to complete darkness. Not much got by Ray—he kept an eagle eye out, not just on his own property but on that of the people who parked their equipment there—and the porch lights came on before they were halfway up the driveway to his house. Ray came outside, flashlight in his hand. “Who’s there?”
“Dare Callahan and Angie Powell,” Dare called back.
“What the—?” The powerful flashlight beam went over them. They had to look the worse for wear after everything that had happened. After continued applied pressure had stopped Dare’s head wound from bleeding she’d wiped away as much of the blood as she could, but he still looked as if he’d escaped from a slaughterhouse. She wasn’t wounded, but she figured she looked like some wild woman who’d never seen electric lights before. “What the hell happened to you two?” Ray asked, coming down off the porch and heading toward them as fast as he could move, which was still pretty fast even at his age.
“Short story, one of Angie’s clients murdered the other, then a bear got him, and Angie got the bear,” Dare replied in his growly voice, condensing the events into fewer than twenty words. She stared at him, her mouth open.
“Not to mention Dare’s been
shot
!” she snapped. “But he’s too butt-stubborn to ride.”
“Angie sprained her ankle. We made better time with her riding instead of walking,” Dare returned, and damn if Ray didn’t nod his head in agreement. Dare clasped his hands around her waist and bodily lifted her off the horse, even though there was no reason why she couldn’t dismount on her own. He was taking care of her, and her throat clogged up. She might never get used to this feeling of being treasured, but damn if it didn’t get to her.
“You two come on in, let’s get you taken care of,” Ray said. “I’ll start making calls. You ran into a man-eater, huh? Gonna be a lot of questions about that.”
Ray’s wife, Janetta, came out on the porch just in time to hear what Ray said, and caught her breath when she saw them. “Angie! Dare! Oh, my lord,” she said, rushing down the steps. “A bear did this?”
“No, the bear didn’t get us,” Angie replied. “I sprained my ankle, is all, but Dare got shot.” She slanted him a gimlet look. “The stubborn ass needs taking care of,” she added with grim triumph,
because Janetta’s reputation for commando nursing was known all over the area. If you didn’t want a poultice, splint, stitches, or any number of other remedies applied to you, then it was best not to let her know about any ailment.
Dare shot her a quick look that promised retribution, then Janetta was on him, and he was swept up on the tide of orders she issued. Angie smiled in satisfaction. She’d come in for her own share of Janetta-style attention, eventually, but a sprained ankle was boring compared to a gunshot wound.
Things happened fast after that. Ray made his calls, and soon his place was swarming with law enforcement and wildlife management types, as well as medics. The medics didn’t have a lot to do, because by then Janetta had done a lot of cleaning and bandaging. Angie and Dare were both transported to Butte for medical attention. Her ankle was X-rayed, just to make sure she didn’t have a simple fracture, but Dare not only had to be stitched up; he was put on an IV round of heavy antibiotics, which meant he had to stay overnight, which massively pissed him off.
There was a mountain of absolutely necessary reports that had to be filed, and an endless supply of questions that had to be answered. Angie and Dare were kept separated, questioned separately, but though it was annoying she wasn’t alarmed, because when the authorities got up to the three kill sites they’d find exactly what they were told they’d find.
Word spread fast. The next day Dare was released from the hospital, without so much as even a low fever. A small group of friends gathered at Lattimore’s and went with the authorities up into the mountains to search for their missing horses. The group returned that afternoon with her three, which had been found fairly quickly—they’d pulled their reins free but remained together, which wasn’t all that surprising.
Angie almost burst into tears when she saw them; she had to get over this sudden inclination to let things make her teary-eyed, but the truth was it would take time for her emotions to settle
down. Samson nudged her, hard enough to almost knock her off her feet, as if he was admonishing her for not taking better care of them, and she briefly laid her head against his muscled neck. They were in pretty good shape—hungry, some scratches, but no damage other than that. Some of the tension drained away from her, now that she had them back and they were okay.
Dare’s buckskin wasn’t found for three more days, miles to the north. When the animal was finally trailered back to Dare’s barn, he called the horse every name in the book and then some, all the while gently patting its neck and calming down the nervous animal.
“My horses are evidently smarter than yours,” Angie told him, just to take a jab, because she’d been taking it easy on him—after all, he’d been shot—and enough was enough.
“He’s not much more than a baby,” Dare had countered. “Give him a couple more years, and he’ll be a damn good trail horse. I’m a patient man. I can wait.”
That about said it all, though she’d have described it more as stubborn than patient. He simply didn’t give up.
After about a week, they’d settled down to serious discussions. Somehow, by then, there hadn’t seemed any doubt in either of their minds that they’d be getting married, so much so that he never actually asked. They simply started talking about property and making wedding plans, and that was it.
They got married late in the spring, after the heavy winter snow had finally melted and the flowers were blooming. Angie would’ve been happy with a judge and a few friends, but Dare had insisted, in his words, “If we’re going to fucking do this, we’re doing it fucking right.” She hadn’t argued with him.
So here they were, in church on a bright Saturday afternoon. There were flowers and candles, well-dressed friends and neighbors who had gathered for the day. Her old friends from Billings
had even made the two-hundred-plus-mile drive to be there, and she wasn’t even embarrassed that they’d witnessed her first fiasco of a wedding. That was then, and this was, well, this was Dare. They had even celebrated with her—by e-mail, and completely without sarcasm—when she announced that she’d fallen in love with the man she’d previously referred to only as The Asshole. Only true friends would do that.
Dare hadn’t bought her property; she felt guilty about Harlan not getting the sales commission, but he didn’t seem to mind. Her property remained in her name, because taking out a new mortgage on it would just add more to their debt load, which didn’t make sense. With their guide businesses combined, financially they were in good shape; they could have afforded a bigger wedding, but that wasn’t anything either of them wanted.
She wore a white gown. It was nothing fancy, just a simple sheath dress. Her shoes were awesome. Normally she didn’t get all excited about shoes, but this was her wedding day and she wanted to be able to show her kids—there was a shocker, Dare wanted kids, and when she thought about it she wanted them, too, with a ferocity that surprised even herself—her sparkly and beautiful shoes, especially if one of those kids was a daughter. She wore her hair down, sleek and heavy, the way Dare liked it, and carried a bouquet of spring flowers. Harlan was going to give her away.
Dare had gotten more and more testy as their wedding date got closer, because the one thing she hadn’t done was move in with him, no matter how he argued and growled. Their little community was too small, the values too traditional. They seldom spent a night apart, either at his place or hers, but she insisted on keeping a separate household until they got married.
And that day was here, finally.
Angie held on to Harlan’s arm, her heartbeat hammering as her gaze roamed up and down the aisle of the small church. People had already turned to look at her, but the music hadn’t yet begun for her to begin the long walk. At the altar, the preacher
waited along with Dare. There was no best man, no bridal attendants, just Dare and her. There were familiar faces turned toward her, but all she could see was her soon-to-be husband—in a suit. Damn, he looked good, tall and hard and tough.
He
was the reason her heart was hammering, and those damn butterflies were swarming in her stomach.
Angie looked up at Harlan, broke into a grin, and abruptly forgot about bridal dignity; exuberantly she threw her arms around his neck and squeezed. “Thank you,” she whispered.
“Again?” Harlan huffed, obviously a little embarrassed even though he gave her an encompassing hug in return, rocking her back and forth. “You’ve thanked me probably once a week for the past six months.”
“Then you should be used to it by now.” Just because, she kissed him on the cheek, too. If he hadn’t sent Dare into the mountains to keep an eye on her, she might not be alive today. And just as important … she wouldn’t have found what she’d found with Dare: both love and a partner in all ways. And he’d been right under her stubborn nose the entire time; if it hadn’t been for Harlan, who knows what might have happened? Anything was possible, but she doubted she’d be as happy as she was at this moment.
“I thought you might be mad at me for, you know, worrying that you couldn’t handle things on your own,” Harlan confessed, as if he hadn’t already told her the same thing every time she thanked him.
“Some things aren’t supposed to be handled alone.” She resumed her dignified stance, with her head held high and her smile in place, her gaze locked on Dare. “You saved my life as surely as he did, and I won’t forget that. Not ever.”
Harlan pressed his lips together, lifted his chin. “Don’t you make me cry, young lady. This is an important duty, filling in for your father, and I won’t do it blubbering like an old man.”
The music changed, swelled. Wedding guests rose to their feet
and turned to watch her. There were wide smiles all along the aisle. The time had come, and Angie took her first step toward Dare.
It was all she could do not to run down the aisle into his arms.
Afterward, the reception was held in the church’s fellowship hall. It wasn’t big, but then neither was the community. The fellowship hall was roomy enough to accommodate damn near everyone in town, as well as the handful of out-of-town guests. Nothing and no one could turn it into a fancy place, but Dare didn’t care about fancy and neither did Angie. With flowers and candles and a big-ass cake, the fellowship hall sufficed.
Dare grinned like a jackass every time he looked at the ring on his finger, or the matching one on her hand. They were married. Six months ago he couldn’t get her to even go on a date with him, or look at him without pure fire shooting out of her dark eyes, and now here they were: married.
From now on she was going to do
all
the paperwork. And that wasn’t anywhere near the best benefit he was getting out of this deal.
There was music, food, and dancing. Dare wasn’t much of a dancer, but he could pull off a slow dance with his new wife. He’d made arrangements with a neighbor to look after their horses while he took her on a Caribbean cruise, where he planned to do nothing except eat and have the occasional adult beverage, lie around, and have sex. He still had some fantasies that hadn’t been fulfilled. Wasn’t that what honeymoons were for?
When the time came to cut the cake, he wondered if Angie was having flashbacks. She damn well better not be. On their wedding day she shouldn’t be thinking about any other man but him.
And she didn’t seem to be; her face was glowing, her eyes sparkling, as they stood at the table where the big-ass cake—four tiers tall, with cream and white roses all along the sides and a traditional
bride and groom on top—sat. Dare looked down at her and she looked up at him, her face both relaxed and radiant. There were no shadows at all in her expression, no hesitation or doubt or even what looked like a distant memory showing. That other wedding didn’t exist for her, not now.
All the guests had gathered around to watch, and he wondered for a split second if any of them had been at Angie’s other wedding and had witnessed her embarrassment. Yeah, sure, her friends from Billings had, but they didn’t seem to be thinking about that, either.
This was the only wedding that mattered.
She hadn’t asked him not to shove cake in her face, but she hadn’t had to. He knew what she wanted. More important, he knew what she didn’t want. Even though she hadn’t wasted her time hiring someone else to fix her hair and do her makeup—thank goodness because she looked damn good just as she was—he knew better.
He wasn’t a complete idiot.
They cut the cake together, his hand over hers. Then he dipped his finger into the fancy icing and lifted it to her lips, offering it to her. She smiled, her expression luminous, as she took the tip of his finger into her mouth and quickly licked the icing off, with her tongue dancing around his fingertip and her lips applying gentle suction.