“Did you just growl at me?” she asked, laughing.
“You’d growl too after a week and a half of sitting on your butt. The condo isn’t that far. It’s up by Red Lodge Mountain. Satisfied?”
“That’s only an hour or so away.”
“I thought that would be a good thing. It makes it easy for me to get away for a few days. I didn’t buy it to get away from Sweet. I got it so I could occasionally have some fun. I’ve…been a bit of a workaholic these last few years.”
“Which explains why you’re getting cranky sitting on the couch.”
“Wouldn’t you be?”
“I’m sorry.”
“One more sorry and I’m going to take you over my knee.”
Her eyebrows stretched high on her forehead. “You wouldn’t dare.”
“Try me.”
And the thought of that, having Katie close to him, was more intoxicating than he imagined it would be. And he had imagined it.
“Let’s get out of here,” he said. “If we stay, I’m going to eat that whole pan of huckleberry coffee cake.”
* * *
“I always miss fresh huckleberry over the winter,” Caleb said as they drove by the sign of a closed bakery advertising huckleberry jam.
“There’s huckleberry everywhere,” Katie said, laughing.
“I know. My mom used to make huckleberry jams and preserves. We used to have it all year. But there is just something about huckleberry in June.”
She glanced at him momentarily and then brought her eyes back to the road in front of her. “Maybe we should skip the lodge and go to the casino.”
Caleb frowned. “Where’d that come from? You’re knee-deep in expenses for the chapel, and now legal bills, and you want to blow some money at a casino?”
“It might be fun.” She shrugged. “I know it’s a big deal around here. I knew a few people who’d gotten in over their heads.”
“It’s easy to do. Not such a great idea when you don’t have money to burn.”
“Which I don’t.”
“Which you don’t.”
“You mean to tell me you never think of just taking a hundred dollars and seeing if you could double it triple it or hit the jackpot?”
“I wouldn’t say that exactly. I’ve spent a few nights at the table for a good time with some friends. But it’s just not something that floats my boat.”
She took her eyes off the road for a second again to look at him and then chuckled as she glanced back at the road. “Well, we wouldn’t want your boat not to float.”
They passed a sign that mentioned good bison burgers and good music.
“Hey, are you up for seeing a band?”
“What? No hot tub? What about your neck?”
“While I’d love to see you in a bathing suit—”
“I didn’t pack one.”
“I know. Which puts me at a disadvantage. So plan B. I am hungry, and most of these honkytonks have good food to go with good music.”
“Are you sure it won’t be—”
“Stop.”
“What?”
“Treating me like damaged goods.”
“I’m not. I just don’t want you to hurt yourself.”
“For the past week you’ve been coming to my house checking on me. I had a concussion. My head had a gash in it. But the rest of me is just fine. I’ll tell you what I want, Katie. I want to be with you on a date like real people do instead of being hovered over. I don’t want to talk to you about the chapel or the accident or anything else other than you and me. And I want to hold you in my arms on the dance floor. You know, up close and personal, just you and me. Can we do that?”
She glanced at him with her mouth agape from his outburst.
“Sure.”
“Okay. Let’s dance.”
Sweet Home Montana: Chapter Six
Fifteen minutes later, they pulled into the restaurants/honky-tonk that had a parking lot full of trucks. Caleb reasoned that it must have good food or good whiskey if so many people were there. Katie reminded him that it might be the only place that was actually open and so it didn’t matter how good the food was as long as there was whiskey.
She was enjoying the simple back and forth conversation. Caleb had always been easy to get along with. He seemed so genuine, something she wasn’t used to after ten years of living with a man who’d artfully deceived her.
And he wanted to dance with her. He’d practically had to hit her over the head to get her to see that he wanted to hold her on the dance floor. Hold her. Like a real date.
For God’s sake, Katie wasn’t a virgin. She’d been married for nearly ten years, not that it meant much now. For all the years she’d been married, she and Bruce had spent more time living apart than together even though they’d lived under the same roof. Work and school schedules had seen to that. She couldn’t remember a time when they’d ever gone dancing or even had a date.
Katie had never been like some of the girls she knew who’d fawn over men. She wasn’t part of the local hockey bunny team, the girls who’d hang out at all the hockey games the boys in town played. Or like the rodeo bunnies that hung on all the men who would go on a weekend rodeo run and come back bandaged and broken from a fall from a bull or a bronc.
She knew too many girls she’d graduated high school with who’d ended up following a man like that. Those guys had big dreams of winning on the rodeo circuit and then became bitter when injury and lack of earnings forced them to quit. Sure, there were plenty of them who did well and she did like rodeo. She’d even promised to go to a few with Tabby when the rodeo season started again.
And she did love it. But she had dreamed of something more in her life. More than just a Saturday night in a honky-tonk or riding from rodeo
