When she got home at five-fifteen there were two messages, but neither was from Justin.
She simply had to stop obsessing over this. He’d said he’d call and he would. Justin was an honest man.
That night she hosted the Historical Society meeting at her house. As she served up the coffee and cookies and listened to everyone bemoan the storm that had ruined their museum reception, and trade news on Ben Saunders’s rapidly improving health, she couldn’t help expecting the phone to ring.
It didn’t. Not that night, not Thursday morning, not during her prelunch hours at the library, either.
She met Addy for their usual Thursday lunch date at the Hitching Post. Addy mentioned that she thought Katie seemed distracted.
Katie met Addy’s eyes across the table and longed to tell her everything—of the magic time she’d known with Justin when they were marooned in the museum, of the shattering beauty of the one night she’d spent in his arms.
Of how she couldn’t stop longing, every second of the day, for his call.
But no. It was all too new. She didn’t want to share what she was feeling with anyone. Not yet. Not until…
Well, soon. But not now.
She reassured Addy that she was fine.
And then Justin didn’t call the rest of the day, or in the evening, either.
By Friday morning she was beginning to wonder if something really might have happened to him, if he’d had some kind of accident on the way home to Bozeman. Whatever had kept him from calling her, she prayed he was all right.
She pored over the special edition of the Thunder Canyon Nugget that had come out Wednesday. It was chock-full of great stories of how folks had weathered the big storm. Two storm-related accidents were reported. One had occurred after the roads were cleared, when a pickup going too fast rolled on Thunder Canyon Road. The other concerned a high-schooler who’d driven his snowmobile into a tree while the snow was still falling on Sunday afternoon. Injuries were surprisingly minor in both cases. She found no mention of any accident on the road to Bozeman, nothing about a black Escalade or an out-of-towner named Caldwell.
Before she left for the library, she called Bozeman information. His home phone wasn’t listed. But they did have a number for Red Rock Developers. She dialed it and a service picked up. The offices opened at nine. She could leave her number and Mr. Caldwell’s secretary would get back to her during business hours.
“Uh, no thanks. I’ll call later.”
She hung up and considered calling Caleb, asking him if maybe he had Justin’s home number. But she found herself hesitating to do that. Caleb would be curious. He’d tease her about her “groom,” and ask her why she thought she needed his number. And then Caleb would tell Adele that Katie was trying to get ahold of Justin—and Addy would tell Caleb how distracted Katie had been at lunch the day before…
Oh, not right now, she thought. She wanted to find out how Justin was, wanted to talk to him, wanted to be reassured that everything was all right, with him and between the two of them, before she said anything to Caleb or Addy.
She went to work and tried to keep her mind on her job, a difficult task when every thought kept tracking right back around to Justin. Where was he? Was he okay? Why hadn’t he called?
By lunchtime, after Lindy had asked her twice what was wrong with her and Emelda had expressed concern over whether she might be coming down with something, Katie realized she had to snap out of it.
Worrying about Justin wasn’t going to do anybody any good. She’d track him down that evening, one way or another. Until then, she was keeping her thoughts strictly on her work.
At four-fifteen, the kids started arriving for Emelda’s story hour, which started at four-thirty. They all gathered around the low round table in the center of the children’s section, where Emelda would keep them spellbound with fairy tales and stories by the best contemporary children’s authors—and sometimes true-life accounts from Montana history.
Cameron Stevenson, one of the two men Katie and Justin had found shoveling out the town hall parking lot on Tuesday, brought his seven-year-old, Erik, as always. Often the parents would leave their kids and come back at five-thirty to collect them.
Not Cam. The tall, athletic auburn-haired teacher was a single dad and he took fatherhood seriously. He stuck around, even though he coached at the high school and would have to rush back there the minute the story hour ended to get his team ready for the evening’s home game. As he waited, he read sports magazines from the periodicals section and browsed the fiction stacks.
After five, as Katie was wrapping things up for the day, Cam wandered over to her workstation at the central reference counter and he and Katie chatted about nothing in particular: how good the varsity basketball team was looking this year and how Cam and Erik had barely made it home Saturday before the snow shut them in.
Cam joked that he’d heard how she and her “groom” had been stuck at the museum alone for the duration. “Some honeymoon, huh?” he asked with an easy grin.
“It was…quite an experience,” she replied in a library-level whisper, mentally congratulating herself on how offhand she sounded. “Poor Buttercup.”
“That old mare of Caleb’s, you mean?”
She nodded. “The old sweetheart was stuck out in the shed all that time, no exercise and nothing but hay to…” She didn’t finish.
How could she? Her throat had clamped tight. Joy and relief went exploding through her.
Justin!
He must have just come in. He stood over by the check-out counter, wearing a sweater that matched his eyes and a gorgeous coffee-brown suede jacket. He was scanning the room.
He spotted her. Her heart froze in midbeat and then started galloping. Somehow, she managed to lift a hand and wave.
He headed toward her, long strides eating up the all-weather gray carpet under his boots. She was vaguely aware that Cam had turned to see what—or who—had stolen the words right out of her mouth.
“I had a feeling I might find you here,” Justin said.
Good gravy, he really was the best-looking man in the whole of Montana! She had to swallow to make her throat relax before she could speak. “Uh. Good guess. And, um, great to see you.”
It was the understatement of the decade.
She collected her scattered wits enough to introduce him to Cam. The two men exchanged greetings and then Cam left them alone.
The second the coach was out of earshot, Justin asked low, “When do you finish here?”
She ordered her crazy heart to stop racing. “Give me a minute. I’m almost ready to go.”
As they passed the check-out desk, Lindy called out, “Have a nice night.” Plump and pretty and very curious, the clerk gave them a big grin and wiggled her eyebrows at Katie.
Katie, getting the message, stopped to introduce them.
“Terrific to meet you!” Lindy enthused. Sheesh. She was practically drooling.
Then again, who could blame her?
Justin made a few cordial noises and at last they were out of there.
They walked down the library steps into a winter sunset. The cloudless sky was shades of salmon above the white-topped mountains and the melting snow at their feet sent rivulets trickling, down the steps, along the parking lot. A hundred miniature streams gleamed in the gathering dark.
She sent a quick glance toward the silent man at her side. He hadn’t touched her—hadn’t taken her arm. She longed to take his, but didn’t feel comfortable