Snowed in With the Rancher Read online

  “I’m not sure, Dad. They’ll be on vacation and all. It might not be the best time to bother them with family concerns.”

  “It’s the perfect time!” Lucy burst out, her ebullient grin lighting up her face. “And since they are family, it’s their concern, too. I know you’d do the same for them if the tables were turned.”

  Tate wasn’t so sure he agreed. Ranching was a solitary endeavor. Granted, he had employees he talked things over with, but ultimately, it was all his responsibility. And if he was going to involve family, it would be his actual family, not step-in-law-cousin-whatevers.

  Just then, an obnoxious siren blasted from his phone where it sat on the other side of the room on the kitchen table.

  “Oh!” Lucy jumped in surprise.

  “Sounds like search and rescue calling,” Thomas said, putting down the finished lure to place a steadying hand on Lucy’s shoulder.

  “Yep. Gotta run,” Tate said, relieved for the easy out.

  “You stay safe out there, son,” Thomas instructed.

  “Thanks, Dad. I’ll talk to you later.”

  He tapped the red X on the screen and began moving across the room immediately. He reached the phone before the siren could blast a second time. Picking it up, he saw the emergency text.

  Three individuals missing near Tolson Cliffs. Adult female late twenties. Two female children under ten. Last seen at the following coordinates…

  “Damn,” Tate muttered. The impending storm was rolling in fast, and a mom was out there alone with young kids. He grabbed the keys to his ATV before picking up the emergency responder kit he kept by the back door. His jacket, gloves, and hat followed, and he was out the door climbing on the four-wheeler in less than a minute.

  Lobster was at his hip the entire time before clambering into the trailer hitched to the back and giving a sharp bark, then jumping out of the trailer and into the passenger seat of the ATV. He’d been going on rescues with Tate since his puppy days, and he knew the routine as well as any human.

  Tate picked up the radio that backed up their cell phones during rescues. “This is McConnell, responding to the call,” he said.

  “Roger that, Tate,” replied Marjory Andrews, the wife of the search and rescue team chief. Marjory served as the dispatcher when calls came in. “You might be the only one able to get there,” she continued. “Make sure to stay in close touch.”

  “Roger that,” Tate replied before putting the handheld back into its slot on the dash of the ATV. “You ready, old man?” he said to Lobster. The lab gave another enthusiastic bark before bathing Tate’s ear with his tongue. The ATV engine cranked over and Tate hit the accelerator, snow churning behind him as he headed toward the old trucking road to the east—and a mother with two kids who needed saving before the biggest storm of the season rolled in and put a halt to everything for a hundred miles.

  Two

  “It hurts, Mommy,” Jacqueline said from the log where she was sitting, amid a pile of snow at the bottom of the ravine she’d tumbled into.

  Olivia Wickham sighed as she rubbed the four-year-old’s ankle gently. “I know, hon. I need you to keep it elevated—up on this rock. Someone’s going to be back for us soon, and they’ll put you on a sled or something to take you back to the lodge.” She tried to smile convincingly. “It’s all going to be fine.”

  “I told her not to look over the edge,” Jackie’s twin sister Melissa said. “She doesn’t listen, and she’s a ‘rupter,” the other four-year-old in the party added with righteous indignation.

  “Well, she was curious,” Olivia said, looking at Melissa over her shoulder. Jackie’s twin stood, her arms crossed, on top of a small boulder that stuck up out of the snow. Above her, a huge pine tree threatened to dump a branch full of snow over the little girl, and beyond that, the sky was darkening quickly, big gray clouds churning angrily. Almost absently, she said, “You get curious sometimes, too.”

  “Huh!” Melissa’s jaw stiffened, and she glared at her sister.

  Olivia shook her head, wondering for the millionth time if Melissa’s stubbornness and recalcitrance came from her father.

  Unfortunately, Olivia had barely known the girls’ father and hadn’t seen him since a time not too long after their conception, so Melissa’s personality remained a mystery to her only real-life parent.

  Jackie was the twin who’d inherited Olivia’s personality. She understood her younger-by-five-minutes daughter as well as she understood herself, which wasn’t perfectly, but certainly better than she understood Melissa.

  “Mommy, I liked the snowshoeing part,” Jackie said, a tired look in her pretty caramel eyes. “But I’m cold now. I want to go home.” The last words threatened to turn into a whine.

  Olivia reached over to her backpack, resting against the tree trunk, and unzipped it. No mother of twin four-year-olds was ever without a prodigious number of supplies. She dug around before finding several instant glove warmer packets as well as a collection of energy bars and the small canteen she’d brought for the girls to share.

  “Here,” she said, maintaining a cheerful tone. “Give me your gloves, and we’ll put warmers in them.”

  Both girls handed over their ski gloves, and she massaged the warming packets to life before sliding them into the gloves and then helping the girls get them back on their hands.

  “Now, if Lissy will scoot over a touch, I can sit my big mommy booty on that rock with her, and then we can each have a bar while we wait.”

  Both girls giggled over Olivia’s booty joke, and before long, they were comparing mouths full of half-chewed energy bars. Olivia subtly pulled her cell phone from her jacket pocket. Still no signal. She glanced at the sky. The rapid onset of dark and cold was making her heart beat a little faster.

  The last few weeks had been a difficult for her and the girls. Olivia’s new job with Dreams for Disabilities—DFD—was something she’d been working toward since before the girls were born. She’d held virtually every job a nonprofit could offer while pursuing her master’s degree in public administration online and raising the twins by herself. When she’d seen the posting for the position of executive director of DFD, she’d known that she was finally going to get her chance. The pay raise was substantial, and the small-town location meant a healthy, safe environment to raise the girls in.

  The fact the job had been in Montana, the state the girls’ father was from, had been a secondary incentive and seemed like some sort of kismet. While she had no idea whether he still lived in the state or not, she remembered that he’d talked about having close ties to a family ranch. The odds that he was still here somewhere were better than not. Without knowing his last name, she’d never been able to look for him, but she figured being in the same state increased her odds at least somewhat.

  Of course, moving hadn’t been easy with two small children, and the girls missed their former preschool along with their friends. Olivia missed the group of single moms she’d had as a support system since shortly after the twins were born.

  And right now, Olivia missed the better judgment that would have prevented her from falling so far behind the other snowshoers. Once Jackie had slid down the embankment, ending with a shriek of pain, any remaining judgment on Olivia’s part had flown out the window. All she’d known was that she needed to get to her baby, and following the four-year-old down the hill had seemed like a small hitch in the afternoon. Of course, Melissa hadn’t waited at the top like her mother told her to do, but thankfully, Olivia had been able to catch her as she tumbled the last few feet down the slope.

  And then Olivia had realized that she couldn’t get the two girls back up to the trail by herself.

  She looked at the sky again as light snowflakes began to drift down. Surely they were going to send someone back soon, right?

  “Mommy,” Jackie said again, tears filling her eyes this time. “I’m really scared. I don’t want to live in Mondana anymore.”

  Melissa nodded her agreement, her b
row furrowed in a scowl.

  “Hey.” Olivia got up from the rock and went over to the log Jackie was perched on. She eased herself down on the log and pulled the tired child onto her lap. Then she put out her other arm and gestured to Melissa to join them. Melissa jumped down from the rock and trudged over with a resigned expression.

  “I know it’s cold and a little bit scary right now, but someone is going to come along very soon and take us back to the lodge, and then we can go home to our new beds.”

  “I want my old bed,” Melissa grumbled, bending her head to pick at her nails.

  “Me, too,” Jackie whined.

  “I’ll tell you what,” Olivia said brightly—much more brightly than she felt. “Let’s talk again about all the fun things we’re going to get to do here in Montana.”

  “Like snowshoeing and watching Jackie fall down a hill?” Melissa asked with a raised brow.

  “And then seeing Mommy and you slide down on your butts to help me?” Jackie asked with a giggle.

  “What about the puppy we’re going to get?” Olivia said. Okay, yes, she was desperate. She’d been holding out the promise of a puppy for weeks while they were packing up the apartment back in Spokane. And she knew taking on the care and training of a puppy when she was already the single mother of twins and a brand new director of a nonprofit wasn’t the best plan, but there had been days when that as-yet-to-materialize puppy was the only thing that got them all through.

  “I want a Goldendoodle!” Jackie said, bouncing up and down on Olivia’s lap.

  “No,” Melissa said sternly, “a Saint Bernard, so it can rescue us when we fall down hills in the snow.”

  Olivia had to smile at that one. If Melissa did take after her father, he’d obviously been a very insightful guy.

  Jackie was talking about names for the puppy when Olivia suddenly cocked her head, ears trained on the distant buzzing sound she heard.

  “Mommy! What’s that?” ever-vigilant and observant Melissa whispered.

  Olivia held up one finger to indicate the girls needed to be quiet. They both promptly went silent, although Olivia could feel Jackie pressing closer to her, probably ready to burst into tears again.

  The buzzing came closer. They heard it slow for a few moments, then pick back up. Slow. Quicken.

  “I think it’s someone coming to help us!” Olivia exclaimed. Both girls cheered, and Melissa jumped up and down, clapping her hands, uncharacteristically excited.

  Olivia stood and set Jackie on the rock before walking over to the bottom of the hill they’d all slid down. If it weren’t for the snow, she thought she could have climbed back up. But snow or not, she didn’t think she could have gotten Jackie and Melissa up that rugged slope. Her precipitous descent had been a stupid choice to make, but when she’d seen Jackie lying at the bottom, holding her ankle and crying, Olivia hadn’t even paused, she’d told Melissa to stay right there until she got back, and then she’d simply sat down and slid all the way to the bottom. She should have known Melissa would be close behind her.

  Now as the buzzing engine—probably an ATV of some sort—came closer and closer, she knew she had to find a way to alert whoever was driving it that they were here.

  She looked around at the rocks and pine trees, hoping for some sort of inspiration. Despite her intense concentration, nothing presented itself. She couldn’t see any fallen branches that would be long enough. She didn’t carry flares in her purse. All they had to work with was noise. That meant they needed to make some, and fast.

  “Start screaming, girls,” she instructed. “Use your very biggest, loudest outside voices, and don’t stop until I say!”

  “Okay, Mommy,” Melissa said with iron determination, and Jackie nodded to show her support.

  “Help! Help! Down here!” Olivia began to shout. Both girls followed suit, sometimes shouting words, other times simply screaming as only four-year-olds can—high-pitched, ear-splitting, blood-curdling screams.

  Suddenly, the engine stopped, and then she heard a dog barking.

  “Mommy!” Jackie shouted, eyes bright with hope. “It’s a puppy!”

  The barking got closer and closer, and then she heard a man’s voice. “Go get ‘em, Lobster!”

  The dog barked again, and Olivia yelled, “Down here! We’re down here!”

  Then a big black head with bright eyes and a silvery muzzle appeared over the top edge of the embankment. “Woof! Woof!” the lab barked.

  Both girls shrieked in excitement, and the dog stopped barking and whined at them, his silly tongue lolling out of his mouth as he whipped his head back and forth between them and whomever was up top.

  Footsteps came closer, and she heard a deep, husky voice say, “Good job, Lobster. There’s a good boy. I never would have heard them over the engine. You did good.”

  Olivia’s face broke out into a smile. A dog named Lobster. She was going to buy him a Porterhouse steak when they got out of this damn mess.

  Then a big boot appeared at the top edge of the embankment next to Lobster. Olivia’s gaze traveled up and up, passing over long legs encased in worn denim, a broad chest, and wide shoulders, and finally reaching a face that she could never forget.

  The face that had haunted her every day and every night for five long years.

  Three

  Tate stood looking down at the one face he’d never been able to forget. Even with her long hair partially covered by a stocking cap and her amazing body wrapped in a boatload of puffy layers, he instantly recognized Olivia’s eyes. Those big, beautiful hazel gems. Eyes that had stared into his in a moonlit ship’s cabin on a sultry summer night all those years ago. Eyes that had drifted closed as he’d kissed her and run his hands over her silky skin.

  Before she’d abandoned him, of course.

  “Are you going to rescue us?” a little voice asked. Tate blinked once, trying to regain his bearings.

  “It’s Tate, right?” Olivia called quietly up the slope.

  He gave her a stiff nod. “Olivia. It’s…well…let’s not worry about what you’re doing here—we need to get you all out. How does that sound?”

  She nodded. “Thank you. I was starting to get worried.”

  He looked at the little girls—her daughters, he guessed—then back at her. Hell yes, she should have been worried. A major storm about to hit, and someone like Olivia alone with two sweet little kids. It made his heart do a small skip when he only thought about all the things that might have happened. To cover his feelings, he reached down and patted Lobster on the head again. The dog might be old, but his ears were still better than any human’s.

  “I’m going to set up so I can help you all climb out of there.”

  “One of my daughters has a sprained ankle,” Olivia told him with a grimace.

  “That’s okay,” he reassured her. “I have a strong back, and I bet she can hold on just like a little monkey.” He winked at the girls and was rewarded when they both giggled.

  Fifteen minutes later, he had the rope secured to a nearby tree, and he and Olivia were coaching the uninjured girl—Lissa, Olivia called her—to start walking up the embankment. The rope tied around her waist would keep her from getting injured, and he could have simply pulled her up with it, but that wouldn’t be very comfortable for the climber. She was a healthy little kid, so he hoped she could get herself most of the way up the slope.

  He looked down at the child as she held onto the rope above her and kept stepping up the embankment. Her little face was screwed up in determination, her brows furrowed, mouth set. Something about the expression was so familiar, he couldn’t help a smile.

  “You’re doing great,” he told her from his perch above. “And if you get too tired, you just let me know.”

  She nodded and kept methodically stepping, pulling herself along hand over hand on the rope as he’d shown her. In a few more minutes, she had reached a point immediately below him.

  “Want a lift up the last two feet?” he asked with a smil
e.

  She shook her head, repositioned her hands, pushed with her feet, and hoisted herself the last bit until she was teetering on the edge on her tummy.

  Olivia and Jackie cheered from below while Tate reached under the girl’s arms and pulled her to stand safely on firm ground near—but not too near—the edge.

  She gazed at him with something akin to adoration. “I made it.”

  “You sure as heck did,” he said with a grin. “You’re a superstar.”

  She nodded, her expression still completely serious. “Are you going to get Jackie out now?”

  “Your mama first, then your sister. I promise. Now, let’s get you out of this rope.”

  As he loosened the slip knot and had Melissa step out of the loop, he turned and looked back down at Olivia.

  “You ready?” he asked.

  “Are you sure we can’t send her up first? I really don’t want to leave her down here alone.”

  He gave her an encouraging smile. “We need one able-bodied adult at each end of this rescue. I can’t come down there to take her up if you’re down there, too. I need you up here to help out. Trust me, it’s all going to be fine.” He lowered the rope. “Slip this on, and let’s get moving so we can get all of you warmed up.”

  Olivia nodded and reached to catch the end of the rope.

  Olivia’s ascent was faster than her daughter’s, but she got more help from Tate. He could see she wasn’t as confident as she might be in pulling herself up hand over hand, so he hoisted her at the same time, giving her more vertical pull with each step up the embankment.

  “Let me know if you feel like the rope’s going to cut you in half,” he joked. “I know it’s not the most comfortable thing in the world.” She gave him a quick smile and kept on climbing.