Sweet Montana Secrets: Chapter Four

 

 

“I’ll bet I’m the last person you expected to see tonight.”

Hunter had almost missed the knock at his door as he headed for the bathroom to take a shower. She was right. The last person he’d expected to be at his door tonight was Julie.

He stared at her as the glow of the porch light spread around her, making her beautiful face look almost surreal. He’d just gotten home, having traveled out to one of the neighboring towns and spending the day shoeing horses for a client who had several daughters competing in a barrel racing competition this weekend. He hadn’t had time to shower much less eat since he’d had breakfast at the diner that morning.

“What are you doing here, Julie?”

Her smile faltered, but only for a second. “I was out driving. You know, trying to get familiar with the town again.”

She glanced around outside as if looking for someone or something in the parking lot of the apartment building.

He poked his head out of the doorway for a second to see what she might be looking at. There wasn’t anyone there.

“How did you know where I lived?” he asked.

“I saw Brody at the ranch. You know, I thought he looked familiar when I was talking to him last week. But I couldn’t place him. I didn’t realize that was Marie’s brother. Doug Mitchell’s girlfriend, right?”

He frowned. “That’s…for another day. You went out to the Lone Creek?”

“Sure. I saw Trip, too. I just wanted to say hi. I didn’t get a chance to do that the…last time I was there.”

“Oh.”

They stood in an awkward silence for a few seconds. They’d never met this way before. When they were younger, Julie would sneak out of her house and meet him somewhere in town. They’d drive around in the old truck he’d bought while on the rodeo circuit that had way too many miles on it. It had broken down one night and she’d been glad she lied to her parents and told them she was staying at Katie Dobbs’ house.

He’d managed to get the truck started after working all night on it by the side of the road. Julie had slept in the cab of the truck while he’d worked. Every so often when he walked back to the bed of his truck to rummage through his toolbox for another tool, he paused and watched her sleeping. He’d also remembered wishing the night had turned out different. They were supposed to make love for the first time that night. They hadn’t. Too many things had gone wrong.

“Aren’t you going to invite me in? I mean, you don’t have to if you don’t want to.”

There were a thousand reasons why he shouldn’t. Did she even know what seeing her did to him? He’d been a mess since seeing her at the post office. All day he’d been busy working. Even though he knew there was no reason he’d see Julie out on one of the ranches he was working on, he found himself dreaming of her and the way he’d seen her sitting on that bench under the tree at the Lone Creek Ranch.

He didn’t want to fight with her. And he didn’t want her to run away if he pushed her. So in a split second, he decided he wouldn’t. He’d just enjoy whatever moments he had with her for however long he had them. Maybe one day she’d bring up the past on her own and tell him what really happened.

But not tonight.

“Um, sure. Come in.”

He stepped aside and let Julie walk into his apartment. The opening of the door felt like an opening to his heart once again. Everything about her rushed back to the forefront of his mind and he felt ten years younger.

As she moved past him, Hunter caught a whiff of her scent that brought it all home. She wasn’t wearing heavy perfume but Julie smelled sweet and it ignited his senses. It only magnified when he shut the door behind them.

Julie took a moment to look around Hunter’s apartment. His home. Then she placed her hand on her cheek and said, “I shouldn’t have come here. I didn’t even think that maybe you…”

He glanced around to see what she might be seeing that he missed. “What?”

“Were busy or…maybe had…company.”

“There’s no one here but me,” Hunter said, wishing he’d had a few minutes before Julie had arrived to clean up. She might smell good, but he knew he still smelled of horse and Lord knows what he’d stepped in while in the last barn he’d been shoeing in. Not all barns were as clean as the Lone Creek Ranch.

Julie walked into his apartment and looked around again.

Suddenly feeling awkward, Hunter said, “It isn’t much.”

“It’s fine.”

“I don’t need much.”

“You don’t have to explain.”

He’d come far in his life. He was proud of how far. He knew some bull riders on the circuit who’d been caught up in drugs to help them work through injuries and they’d never made it. Either they were dead from their addiction, or they were in jail. But suddenly his meager existence seemed shameful.

The secondhand sofa he’d purchased when he’d first moved into the apartment looked different to him tonight. It wasn’t dirty but it was dingy in a way he hadn’t noticed until just then. Suddenly the stains from spilled beer or pizza from eating while watching television at the end of a hard day jumped out at him.

Julie stood there and continued to look around the room. It suddenly occurred to him that she was waiting for him.

“Do you want to sit down?”

“Sure.”

He hated the awkwardness between them. When he’d been involved with Julie when they were young, she’d been carefree, not closed up like she was now. He couldn’t remember ever seeing a frown on her beautiful face. She was always smiling or laughing at one of his stupid jokes. He wasn’t good at it, but she’d always laughed and that alone made it worth the effort to try.

He could tell she’d been crying tonight before she’d arrived. Her eyes were glassy and swollen and her nose was red.

“Can I get you something to drink? I don’t have much but…”

He quickly thought about what he had available. There were two beers still in the refrigerator left over from the six-pack he’d bought last weekend. There may be a little bit of milk left in the carton. Other than that, he had ice from the freezer and tap water to offer her. He wasn’t much of a host. He never needed to be.

“I’m fine.”

“Are you sure?”

She lifted her gaze to him and nodded slowly.

“I don’t believe you.”

Shrugging, she said, “That’s your prerogative.”

She looked so young and beautiful. He still saw the teenager who would flirt with him at the stable when he’d worked as a ranch hand at the Lone Creek Ranch. He’d fallen in love with Julie there. She’d changed his life, and then left him. She had no idea what loving him had done to him. For him.

It wasn’t supposed to be that way. He should have wanted to do better for himself. In time, he’d done just that. But in the beginning, Julie had been the one who drove him to come clean.

“You need help around here,” Julie said, a little smile playing on her lips for the first time since he’d opened the door and seen her standing on his porch.

“I live alone. I’m a guy. It’s goes with the territory I think.”

“Not exactly. I’ve known lots of guys who have clean apartments.”

Lots? His stomach dropped. Hunter didn’t really want to hear about the men that Julie might have known over the years. He didn’t want to think that any man had touched her in ways he had or looked into those amazing blue eyes and seen fire and excitement as he had.

It was as if she were reading his mind. She quickly added, “The men I’ve worked with talk about it all the time. Some of them are neat freaks. I know this because I work with them and seen how obsessive they are. But some of them have a maid who comes in and cleans up all the bachelor messes so they don’t look like they live in a pigsty.”

“Are you saying you think I live in a pigsty?”

She shook her head. “No. But you’re a guy. Like Caleb. Like the others. I’m just saying that maybe you could use a maid to...”

“What?”

She looked around again. “What is it with men and white curtains?”

He glanced at the curtains he’d purchased when he’d first moved into the apartment. “What’s wrong with them?”

“See? Guys don’t get it. Caleb didn’t get it either.”

He frowned as he stared at her and fought to figure out where she was going with this.

“Why does the color of my curtains matter? They’re curtains. They give me privacy.”

She bit her bottom lip. “I’ve offended you.”

“No, you didn’t.”

“I did,” she said, cocking her head to one side. “I didn’t mean to. It’s sort of a guy thing. As I said, I told Caleb the same thing when I moved into his apartment. I bought him new colorful curtains today.”

“You moved in? When?”

“Yeah. I figured it was easiest that way. At some point, he’s going to move into the chapel that he’s been renovating with Katie. He’s not going to need his apartment anymore so I’ll just save the landlord the trouble of finding a new tenant.”

He sat down on the other end of the sofa. “I didn’t realize you moved back to Sweet.”

“I did. Last week.”

“So you plan on staying here.”

“Yes.”

Hunter had a mixed sense of dread and relief flow through him. She was staying in town. She was here. And just like at the post office, they were bound to run into each other. He couldn’t help but think that maybe they had a chance to make things right again.

He wouldn’t push it. It had been his fault she’d run away in the first place. He didn’t know it then, but he could see that now.

“Curtains, huh?”

She smiled wide. “Guys never notice the little things, like dust on pictures or the TV. Caleb made sure that everything was washed and put away. He’s not a slob. But I wonder when the last time he washed the kitchen floor was.”

Hunter couldn’t help but chuckle. “Don’t ask. Just…don’t ask.”

“Gross.”

And then she laughed in that musical way she used to do when they’d been riding horses out on one of the trails at the Lone Creek Ranch. She’d throw her head back and laugh into the sky. They couldn’t see the sky now, but it was just as intoxicating to watch.

Hunter used to think that there were musical notes coming out of Julie’s mouth that flew up into that blue Montana sky. It was ridiculous. He wasn’t as young as she was at the time. But he was a whole lot younger than he was now. And he had been in love. It was hard to see a time since she’d left that he hadn’t been in love with Julie Samuel.

“Well, since you’re in the market for a maid for Caleb, maybe you can recommend someone for me. I wouldn’t mind having someone tidy up a bit so I don’t have to do it on my days off.”

“You just got home, huh?”

He nodded. “How can you tell?”

“Because you’re still wearing jeans that have manure on them.”

He glanced down at his jeans and sure enough he had a few dried spots that he knew probably didn’t smell so great. He’d become immune to it a long time ago and long since stopped being embarrassed. Everyone he knew who worked on a ranch took it in stride. If you worked with animals, you got dirty. At the end of a long day, you scrubbed it all off your skin and your clothes so you could start fresh the next day.

But he knew he smelled funky. She didn’t have to tell him that for him to know.

“I haven’t had a chance to take shower yet,” he said.

She nodded. “I’m keeping you from it. I should go.”

“Wait. I haven’t eaten anything since this morning either. Are you hungry?”

She thought a second. “I could make you dinner.”

“I don’t have much in the cupboards.”

Her shoulders dipped just a bit and she seemed to deflate in front of him.

“I see.”

“I was planning on getting some takeout. Are you interested in that?”

Her expression brightened. “I could call for pizza or some sandwiches.”

He couldn’t figure it out. Why was she here? And then it struck him that he really didn’t care what the reason was. She was here. With him. Even if she wasn’t with him in the way he remembered.

He’d thought about Julie so much over the last ten years that it seemed a bit surreal, and a bit like old times all rolled up into one to be sitting there talking to her now. And she wasn’t running away. She’d come to him. They’d have time to talk. About what he didn’t care. They’d sit together and talk here or at some restaurant in town.

He wanted to know the truth. He wanted to know what happened with the baby they’d made together. But he wouldn’t force the issue tonight. He’d wait and the answers would come later when she trusted him again.

The man she’d fled from was gone. Hunter wanted her to know the man he was today. She’d fallen for a cowboy who was young and stupid and full of imperfections. But he wasn’t that guy anymore. He wasn’t a rodeo man who had been injured and fallen into drugs because of pain.

Maybe Julie wouldn’t love the man Hunter was today. Maybe she wouldn’t even like him. People change. But he desperately wanted to show her that he was more than just the mess of a man she’d run away from ten years ago when she was scared and pregnant.

Of course, some messes never went away. His apartment did look a bit like a bachelor dump. How is it that he never noticed it before?

“I have some menus from a few of the local places in town. They’re in the kitchen drawer underneath the silverware tray. Choose whatever you’d like. I don’t care what we get. I get food from all of them because I don’t cook.”

Her smile grew wide with the invitation. “Okay.”

“I’m just going to take a quick shower. I won’t be long.”

 

* * *

 

Hunter disappeared into the bedroom. Julie didn’t see another door so she assumed the bathroom was located inside his bedroom.

She’d never been to his apartment before. When they’d been together, he’d lived in the bunkhouse at the Lone Creek Ranch. She hadn’t known what to expect when she’d gotten his address from Brody after stopping by the Lone Creek Ranch.

She looked around as she made her way to the kitchen. It looked a lot like her brother’s apartment. Small. Simple. Void of color. What was it about men and color? They put either white or blue in their apartments.

Caleb had told her earlier that Katie was thinking of going to design school. It’s funny that she’d forgotten that about Katie. The two of them had talked about fashion and decorating their rooms when they would ride. That and boys. They’d talked a lot about some of the guys they knew from school.

Hockey and rodeo was the thing back then. She was sure it still was. Caleb said there was still a group of guys they’d gone to high school with who got together and played hockey on one of the frozen ponds as they used to do when they were younger.

There was no hockey now during the summer months. This time of the year it was all rodeo. Hunter used to talk about it all the time. He’d loved it. And he’d missed it after he’d gotten a shoulder injury that had kept him from riding. He didn’t seem bothered by the injury now. Maybe he’d had therapy or surgery to correct it.

She rummaged through the kitchen drawers until she found the silverware drawer that held the restaurant menus. She wasn’t hungry. Not really. She just didn’t want to be alone.

No, that’s not it. Not entirely anyway. She’d been alone many times. She wanted to be with Hunter. That surprised her more than she wanted to admit because she’d spent the last ten years wanting to eradicate him from her mind. She wanted to forget the pain that had caused her to turn into herself and run away.

It had been an epic failure to even try and something Dr. Matthews admonished her for every time she didn’t want to talk about the past.

He had changed in all the ways that she’d imagined him to be when Julie had known Hunter years ago. She had been instantly attracted to him the moment she and Katie had gone to the Lone Creek Ranch for riding lessons with Trip Taggart. Hunter was a ruggedly handsome older man by nearly ten years, something that also attracted the wildness in her as a teenager. And he’d had plenty of stories of his time on the rodeo circuit.

Back then, Julie and a few of her friends loved to talk about the up-and-coming bull riders and bronc riders on the circuit. Hunter wasn’t in a position to win a championship, but he was good, he’d made some money, and he was starting to be noticed on the circuit. She’d been starry-eyed and young and had fallen for him instantly when she’d seen him haying the fields with one of the other ranch hands.

His shirt had been soaked with sweat and his hair and face were filled with hay clippings from picking up bales and tossing them into the flatbed truck. But when she’d seen him their eyes locked and he held her gaze as she’d rode past them on the horse trail she and Katie had been riding.

Of course, Julie and Katie had made it their mission to find out who these ranch hands were. She hadn’t known about Hunter’s shoulder injury or that he’d been fighting through the pain on the circuit after he couldn’t get any more pain medication for it. He hadn’t had health insurance so he couldn’t afford the physical therapy the doctor had ordered for him to take. Instead, he’d later told her he worked hard on the ranch. That was his therapy. But it hadn’t been enough. In hindsight, it had probably made things worse.

Julie hadn’t known then that that period of innocent romance was the beginning of the downfall for Hunter, and that he was in the spiral that caught her on his way down.

Recalling those days on the ranch, it seemed odd that Katie was now in love with Caleb. She knew by the way Caleb talked about Katie that he was head over heels in love with her. She hadn’t had to see them dancing in the parking lot to know it to be true. And if he didn’t utter a word, all Julie had to do was see the way her brother looked at Katie.

Her heart squeezed just thinking about it. It was the way Hunter used to look at her. She remembered that even though she’d spent many days trying to forget it.

They’d both done stupid things in their youth. She wasn’t a teenage girl anymore. Hunter was a grown man in his mid-thirties. Still rugged and handsome, and he still stole her breath away every time she looked at him. That hadn’t changed.

But he didn’t look at her the way he used to. Hunter hadn’t looked at her that way when he’d seen her last week at the Lone Creek Ranch, or at the post office. And he hadn’t looked at her that way when he’d opened the door and found her standing on his porch.

She missed it. She hated herself for it, but she did. And she instantly regretted coming to his apartment in search of something to fill a void that she knew was never going to be filled.

Hunter had grown into the man that she always knew he was deep down. She’d seen it in him even when she was a teenager. Julie had met many losers in her travels over the last ten years. It had gotten to the point where she’d felt like she was a magnet for them. She knew a good one when she saw one and that was Hunter.

She’d teased him about the apartment but the digs were nothing. It was window dressing that could be bought at a department store. Everything he was inside was what she craved.

After a few minutes, Julie realized she was just standing in the kitchen lost in the past. The silverware drawer was open and she hadn’t even looked underneath the tray to see if there were any restaurant menus in there. It wasn’t until she heard the shower shut off the she realized she’d just been lost in her thoughts. She quickly lifted the silverware tray and rummaged underneath it, pulling out the menus Hunter had tucked inside.

Leaning against the sink, she leafed through a few of them and realized it didn’t matter what she chose. So she opted for the sub shop up the street. It was close and sub sandwiches were quick and easy to make. She could run up there fast to pick them up.

Then she’d be able to turn around and go straight back to Caleb’s apartment. Maybe she could put this nonsense behind her. It wasn’t a bad thing to be alone. Hunter lived here alone. Okay, so she had given him a little bit of grief about living like a bachelor. But so what? Her brother was like that too. Now her brother was building and renovating an old chapel out on Lookout Ridge with a woman he loved.

God, she was so jealous and she hated herself for it. She should be happy. Part of her was. But a big part of her still felt that hole that she’d been trying for the last ten years to fill. Dr. Matthews insisted it would never be filled if she didn’t come home and face what she’d run from.

She heard footsteps in the bedroom and the door swung open. Hunter was standing in the doorway in a pair of clean jeans, barefoot and shirtless. He had a towel draped around his shoulders.

“Did you decide on anything?” he asked.

Her mouth went cotton dry. With a trembling hand, she grabbed the sub shop menu. “Don’t hate me, but I’m in the mood for a tuna grinder.”

He smiled. “You haven’t changed one bit in ten years.”

He didn’t know the half of it.