Free Montana Sky by Nora Roberts Page A

figured she could run and he wouldn’t catch her. Put the cops on his ass. She was going to pay for that.
    Jesse stared through the field glasses while little bubbles of fury burst in his blood. He wondered if the half-breed horse wrangler had already gotten Lily on her back. Well, the bastard would pay too. Lily was Jesse Cooke’s wife, and he was going to be reminding her of that soon enough.
    Stupid little cunt thought she was real clever hightailing it to Montana. But the day Jesse Cooke couldn’t outwit a woman was the day the sun didn’t rise in the east.
    He’d known she wouldn’t make a move without contacting her dear old mama. So he’d just camped himself within sight of the pretty house in Virginia. And every morning he’d gotten to the mail and checked through it for a letter from Lily.
    Persistence had paid off. The letter had come, as he’d known it would. He’d taken it back to the motel room, steamed it open. Oh, Jesse Cooke was nobody’s fool. He’d read it, seen where she was going, what she was up to.
    Going to cash in on an inheritance, he thought bitterly. And cut her own husband out of his share of the pie. Not in this lifetime, Jesse mused.
    The minute the letter had been resealed and put back in the box, he’d headed for Montana. And had gotten there, he thought now, two full days before his idiot wife. Long enough for a man as smart as Jesse Cooke to get the lay of the land and get himself a job on Three Rocks.
    A miserable fucking job, he thought now, keeping machines in repair. Well, he knew his way around engines, and there was always a rig that needed fine-tuning. When hewasn’t doing that, they had him out checking fences day and night.
    But that came in handy, damn handy, like now. A man out riding in a four-wheel to check fences could take a little detour and check out what else was going on.
    And he saw plenty.
    Jesse rubbed his fingers over the moustache he’d grown and dyed like his hair, medium brown. Just a precaution, he thought, just a temporary disguise, in case Lily blabbed about him. If she did, they’d have their eye out for a clean-shaven man with blond hair. He had let his hair grow too and would keep on letting it grow. Like a fucking pansy, he thought, resenting the necessity of giving up his severe Marine Corps crew cut.
    It would all be worth it in the end. When he had Lily back, when he reminded her who was boss. Who was in charge.
    Until that happy day he would stay close. And he would watch.
    “You have a good time, bitch,” Jesse muttered, his eyes narrowing behind the high-powered lenses as Lily walked her mount beside Adam’s. “Payback time’s coming.”
     
    M OST OF THE DAY HAD DIED OUT OF THE SKY BY THE time Willa got back to the ranch house. Dehorning and castrating cattle was a messy, miserable job, and a tedious one. She knew she was pushing herself, and knew she would continue to push. She wanted the men to see her at every angle, at every job. Shifting operators under the best of circumstances could be a rough transition. And these were far from the best of circumstances.
    Which is why she’d been on hand when a herd of elk had trampled through a fence, creating havoc. And why she’d personally headed the crew to chase them off again, to repair the fence.
    Now with the work done for the day and the hands settling down for supper and cards in the bunkhouse, she wanted nothing more than a hot bath and a hot meal. She was halfway up the steps to get the first when the knocksounded on the door. Knowing that Bess was likely in the kitchen, Willa stomped back down to answer.
    She greeted Ben with a scowl. “What do you want?”
    “A cold beer would go down good.”
    “This isn’t a saloon.” But she swung away from the door and into the living room to the cold box behind the bar. “Make it fast, Ben. I haven’t had my supper.”
    “Neither have I.” He took the bottle she handed him. “But I don’t expect I’m going to get an