Excerpt

A CONVENIENT PROPOSITION

Chapter One

A winter sky hung heavy over the Shadow range, spitting dime-sized snowflakes like a white blanket shedding lint. As the rattletrap of a pickup slowly approached Sundown, Montana, Shallie Malone stared through the passenger side windshield, wishing she could shake the notion that maybe this snowstorm was an omen. Maybe coming back to Sundown was a huge mistake.

Imagine that. Her making another mistake. So what else was new?

She expelled a weary sigh as the old truck bounced along the snow-packed road. She’d made a lot of mistakes in her twenty-seven years. She hadn’t wanted her return to Sundown to be one of them, though. She’d wanted it to be – well, she’d wanted it to feel like home again, not like another misstep on the very rocky road of life.

Face it, she thought, as a jagged line of mountain peaks disappeared behind a heavy clot of clouds; mistake or not, it wasn’t like she’d really had many other choices.

She focused on forest beyond the windshield as the wipers shoved wet flakes off the glass. The pine boughs bent like old shoulders under the weight of winter. She, too, felt very old today. And weighted down. The elderly rancher who’d been kind enough to give her a lift from the bus station in

A name on a mailbox at the end of what she knew was a long curving lane leading deep into the forest and half way up the mountain caught her eye as they drove by.

She cranked her head around to catch another glimpse of black lettering partly covered with snow. "Did that say Brett McDonald?"

"Hum? Oh, yeah." Concentrating on keeping the truck from slipping off the slick road, Bob Coleman squinted through his bifocals after a cursory glance at his rear view mirror. "The boy bought the old

Whoa. Mac? Her childhood buddy, Brett ‘Mac’ MacDonald, now owned the

"Beats all, don’t it?" Bob grimaced beneath the brim of a worn gray Stetson. "Never thought I’d see the day when Nadine and Chet would hang it up but I guess they got a hankering to do some traveling and Mac had the cash to make it happen."

The Dusk to Dawn was Sundown, Montana’s local watering hole for the community and the ranchers surrounding town. It was bar, restaurant, coffee shop and mini-mart all wrapped up in one well-used, well-loved establishment. If someone got married, the reception was held at the Dusk to Dawn. If someone died, it was where the family had the wake. Birthday parties, graduations, and regular Saturday night party hardy crowds had gathered under the green tin roof for as long as Sundown had been Sundown.

And for as long as Shallie had known Sundown, the Haskins had run the Dusk to Dawn.

Finding out that they were no longer there – a major change to something so stable – made her a little sad. She’d been a long time coming home. She hadn’t wanted to see changes. She’d wanted everything to be the same as when she’d left. There was security in the status quo and that’s what she needed most right now.

Foolish, yeah. But it had been comforting to think that in a world in constant evolution, Sundown with its slow pace and plain, honest folk would always remain pretty much what it had been.

"Seems Mac made quite a business for himself in

Brett McDonald, or Mac to anyone who knew him, was a hometown boy. Thinking of him running, as Bob Coleman put it, a fancy Italian restaurant, made Shallie grin.

Wild. Lord, had that boy been wild. Not mean wild. Devilish, fun-loving wild. What mischief he and John Tyler couldn’t think of to stir up when they were kids wasn’t worth talking about. More often than not, she’d been in on making some of that trouble with them.

Shallie sobered. Trouble. Imagine that. Didn’t take long to come back around to the point that she was in trouble again.

She placed a hand protectively over her flat tummy and the budding new life sleeping there. Assured herself that coming back was a good thing. The right thing. And when the truck rounded the ridge and the tiny hamlet of Sundown came into view, the little shiver of unease shifted to anticipation and told her, yes. Yes, this was right.

How many times had she driven this road and seen Sundown from this vantage point, nestled in the valley like a multi-colored and well-worn skirt at the base of the Shadow range? That skirt was now blanketed in white. Chimney smoke spiraled up in wispy drifts, like steam rising from a bubbling kettle. How many times had she taken this simple beauty for granted?

Way too many.

Well, she wouldn’t make that particular mistake again.

She was almost home. At least she was as close to home as she’d ever been. She might be coming back with her head held low in shame, but she wouldn’t let her decision to return turn into another mistake. More to the point, she wasn’t going to make the same mistakes her own mother had made.

Okay, she amended, absently touching her tummy again. She wasn’t going to make all of the same mistakes. Joyce Malone had let down everyone who’d ever counted on her – including, Shallie figured, herself.

They’d no sooner rounded a switchback on a steep downhill grade when a sleek black pickup came roaring up the road and snapped her out of her thoughts. The club cab fishtailed on the slick skiff of new snow glazing road’s the surface and headed straight toward them.

"Tarnation," Bob muttered.

He jerked the steering wheel hard right to avoid getting clipped by the big truck. "Hang on," he said, his jaw tight, his hands white on the wheel as he slammed on the breaks.

When Shallie saw the size of the tree directly ahead of them, she braced a hand against the dash and clamped her jaw together to keep from screaming.

Not that it worked. The sound that came out of her mouth was just this side of ear-splitting. And the pain that knifed through her wrist when the truck crashed to a stop in a drift made her physically ill.

* * *

Swearing under his breath, Brett McDonald brought his truck to a skidding stop on the shoulder of the road. Damn. He hadn’t seen that patch of ice. But he had seen Bob Coleman’s pick-up – and just in the nick of time. He’d risked rolling his truck to miss it. Thank God he had missed it - just barely.

Jamming the gearshift into park, he set the emergency brake and shoved open the door. Heart hammering like a piston, he jumped to the ground. Engine exhaust rose in white clouds as he sprinted toward Bob’s truck, scared to death the old man had gotten hurt when he’d swerved to miss him.

The good news: the old Ford had stopped in a snow bank just short of a head-on with a huge white pine. Not a scratch on it. The bad news: the truck was sitting sideways on the narrow road; the front bumper buried deep into the drift the plow had left along the shoulder.

"You okay, Bob?" Mac yelled through the rancher’s closed window.

"Yeah, I believe I’m of a piece." Bob turned his head toward the passenger seat. "What about you, Shallie? You okay over there?"

Shallie?

He ducked his head so he could see across the cab. My God. His heart hit him a couple of good one as old memories and old feelings tussled with the shock of seeing her.

Shallie. His Shallie Malone. He hadn’t seen her since high school when she’d lit out of Sundown like her tail was on fire. But he’d recognize those big brown eyes and that tangle of short brown curls anywhere.

And he’d recognize the mad scramble of his heartbeat and the catch in his breath as the reaction he’d always had around this woman. Okay. She’d been a girl last time he’d seen her. That hadn’t made his feelings for her any less real. She didn’t know it – he’d been too proud to ever spill his guts about how he felt about her – but Shallie Malone had been the one. The one that got away.

He scrambled around to the passenger side, waded through the knee deep snow and jerked the door open, knowing he was grinning like a goon. Shallie was back – and unless she was married, engaged or otherwise taken, she wasn’t getting away this time.

"Shallie! Darlin’. If you aren’t a sight for sore eyes."

She’d been one fine looking girl. She was beyond fine as a woman. His grin faded, though, when he searched her face and saw the unmistakable strain of pain in her eyes.

"Oh, damn." His heart sank as concern tangled with self-disgust. "You’re hurt."

She shot him a valiant smile. "Leave it to you, McDonald. I travel almost two thousand miles without a scratch then I’m one mile from home and you manage to break my wrist."