Montana Love: Multicultural Romance Read online

  Every once in a while, Dex would look up at her, curled sweetly up in the oversized chair. She was a beautiful woman; kind, thoughtful, and clearly smart. And the fact that his blood quickened every time he laid eyes on her could not be ignored.

  Beautiful. Exactly the kind of woman he’d like to have as his wife.

  Turning his attention back to Carson and the escaping chocolate puppy, Dexter reminded himself Cynthia was only in Cattlewood for a temporary visit, and then she’d be back to her life on the coast.

  Maybe he could change all that, he thought.

  Cynthia put her hand over her mouth and laughed out loud at the two of them trying to catch the wet puppy.

  Having so much fun, she was surprised when she realized she hadn’t even thought about logging on to check her email since yesterday evening.

  She also realized she hadn’t heard from Thelma, who hadn’t called to let her know they’d landed okay. She knew they had a lot of traveling. The first part of their trip ran from Billings to Portland. Then they had a quick layover in Portland before the connecting flight to Los Angeles for the night. Thelma had texted yesterday evening saying they’d arrived in LA just fine. She reminded her they had a red-eye from Los Angeles to the Republic of Fiji the next morning, so she wouldn’t call from California because it would be so early. But she had said she would try to call once they actually arrived at the main airport in Fiji. After, they would have to take a tiny commuter plane over to the island.

  Cynthia was a little worried because she hadn’t received the call letting her know they had ultimately arrived in Fiji.

  She tried to dismiss the thought, telling herself Thelma would call as soon as she got the chance. Cynthia focused her attention back on the two ‘men’ in the yard, both of whom had captured her heart in just a short period of time.

  ***

  After a little while, the puppy was clean, dry and fed, and Carson was rubbing his eyes.

  “Somebody’s tired,” Cynthia said as they climbed the steps to the house.

  “I sure am,” Dex exhaled before taking a seat in the chair next to her. “And exhausted is more like it.”

  “Not you silly,” Cynthia laughed, pointing at Carson. “Bud.”

  “I’m not tired,” Carson said, climbing up on Dex’s lap.

  “Oh yes you are,” Dex said. “It’s bath and bedtime for little boys.”

  “But I’m not tired,” Carson said, getting cranky.

  “Hey, what did I say?”

  “Bath … and bedtime,” the boy pouted.

  Dex eased Carson off his lap and stood up, getting ready to leave. The boy folded his arms and poked out his bottom lip.

  Dex gave him a stern look. “Be a good boy for Miss Cynthia,” he instructed. “You’re a little man, remember?”

  Carson tried to cry.

  “Carson?” Dex said. “Dry it up.”

  “I want mama.”

  “Carson, you’re a big boy, remember?”

  The boy sucked his breath and tried hard not to cry. “But I don’t want you to go.”

  “I’ll be back tomorrow,” Dex reached down to give him a pound.

  The child finally stuck put out his little fist to return the pound.

  Dex tousled his hair and winked. “That a boy,” he said.

  Cynthia knelt and dabbed at the crocodile tears getting ready to spill from his lids. “It’s alright, I’ll read you a story,” she said, rubbing his mass of brown hair as she stood up.

  She motioned to Dex that they would be okay. She understood what Carson was feeling because she didn’t want Dex to leave either, but for different reasons.

  “Thank you for a fine meal,” Dex said.

  “You cooked it,” Cynthia smiled.

  “Well, thank you for your hospitality, then,” he corrected looking over at Carson. The boy was fighting hard to hold back his tears.

  “Call me if you need me to come back over,” he whispered.

  “He’ll be okay,” she whispered back.

  “Good night, Cynthia,” he said.

  Goodnight,” she said, watching his hulking frame fill the doorway as he stepped out onto the porch.

  Carson sat on the stairs to the second landing just inside the screen door to wait for her.

  Dex turned back. “Do you want get out a little tomorrow?” He asked. “You know, see a little of the area?”

  She was doing it again. Cynthia blushed. “Sure, I’d like that. I’d like that a lot.”

  “Okay,” he said. “It’ll be after the work day. I’ll pick you both up at five thirty tomorrow evening?”

  “Sure, that’ll be just fine,” Carson said, suddenly clinging to Cynthia’s leg from behind. “Just fine.”

  They both laughed as Carson ran up the stairs to his bedroom, content now.

  “That’ll be just fine,” Cynthia echoed. “See you tomorrow.”

  Dex tipped his hat a little and headed down the porch stairs, a big smile on his face.

  Chapter 12

  After letting Carson play in the bathtub in a mountain of bubbles, Cynthia helped him into his pajamas and tucked him in his bed. She laid back next to him and read him two bedtime stories from the shelf of books in his room.

  As she was reading to him, her mind kept flitting back to the old Bel Air newspaper clippings that had fallen out of one of the children’s books tucked toward the back of the bookshelf.

  Mother of Accident Victim Suspected of Killing Son-In-Law

  Her eyes had scanned the article as Carson was flipping through the pages of one of his children’s books.

  Apparently, Thelma’s grandmother Laura, her mother’s mother, had been a suspect in Thelma’s father’s death. The newspaper article highlighted the fact that Thelma’s father had died in the same way as her mother had; a car accident, faulty wiring. The article also reiterated that Theodore Thaxton, III had also been a suspect in his wife’s death years ago, but no charges were ever filed.

  Cynthia thought back to the disdain she remembered seeing on Thelma’s face on the rare occasions when she spoke of her father back in undergraduate school.

  She also found it odd that her friend wanted nothing to do with going to her father’s funeral after he was killed several years later. It was even more peculiar that Thelma wanted nothing to do with her father’s money -- until after he was dead.

  Like a boomerang, the conversation they’d had walking from the campus library all those years ago came to mind: “I don’t want anything from him, at least not while he’s still alive and kicking,” Thelma had said. “What I wanted he took from me a long time ago.”

  Cynthia had dismissed it back then, but she remembered the coldness in Thelma’s eyes for a long time. Something wasn’t right. Maybe her Grandmother Laura had killed him; to avenge her own daughter’s death. Thelma did seem to have a surreal closeness to her grandmother. Cynthia remembered that very well, because she used to speak of her Grandmother Laura as if she were her mother, and not her grandmother.

  ***

  Before she could finish reading the last bedtime story, Carson was fast asleep. Cynthia gently kissed him on the cheek and lay back next to him.

  Without meaning to, she dozed off too, waking in the middle of the night to the sound of crickets in the woods.

  Slipping off the bed, she planted another soft kiss on the child’s head and eased out of the room.

  After a quick shower, she slipped into a soft, cotton short-set nightie and sauntered into the living room. Her mind flitted to the old newspaper clippings and then to Thelma and Martin. After reaching for her cellphone on the chunky wooden coffee table, she was surprised to see there was no missed call. She pressed the button to call Thelma’s cell.

  No answer.

  Scrolling up to Martin’s number, her call yielded an odd, sporadic beeping tone.

  Cynthia immediately crossed the room and sat down at the desk in the corner. She hit the start button on Thelma’s desktop. It asked for a password and
Cynthia instinctively typed in CARSON. Nope. She typed in their old password from college. StanDebate1. She was in. After double-clicking the Google Chrome icon, she keyed in FIJIAIRWAYS.COM and began scrolling through the website until she reached the area where she could check to see if their flight had landed on time.

  Her heart sank a little as she began reading:

  FLIGHT STATUS: UPDATING.

  TIME OF LAST UPDATE: 8:23 PM.

  Her eyes zoomed to the clock in the right hand corner of the computer. It was 10:54 PM.

  The scrolling marquee under TIME OF LAST UPDATE flashed, “URGENT. PLEASE CALL AIRLINE FOR MORE DETAILS.”

  Cynthia frantically dialed the 800 number flashing across the screen.

  Chapter 13

  After getting off the phone with the airline, Cynthia sank into the sofa in Martin and Thelma’s living room. Her hands and body were visibly shaking.

  She couldn’t believe what she’d just heard.

  The plane had taken a detour. It was trying to take an alternate route to avoid the barreling thunderstorm that had intensified with lightning speed just ahead of them.

  After doing a little online research, Cynthia found out there were 332 Fijian islands, and some of the waters surrounding many of them plummeted to almost ten thousand feet deep. The aircraft had ultimately gone down over the Koro Sea and authorities had not been able to locate it yet. That was all the news available to family members for the time being.

  A knock on the door startled her.

  Getting her bearings, she hurried over to the door and opened it without thought.

  It was Dex.

  “Where’s Carson?” he asked, worry clouding his eyes.

  “Asleep,” she said in a loud whisper, still in shock as she beckoned him in.

  “Have you turned on the news?”

  “No,” she said. “I fell asleep, I--just found out--the plane--“

  “I know,” Dex said. “There’s been a crash. It’s all over CNN International. They are hopeful, but it doesn’t look good.”

  Cynthia looked at him in disbelief.”

  “Oh my God,” she said, realization setting in. Tears filled her eyes and her body began to tremble.

  Dex pulled her into his arms. “It’s going to be okay,” he said. “Shh, it’s going to be okay.”

  Chapter 14

  Dex and Cynthia sat up most of the night. He was flicking back and forth from CNN to the local news, which thankfully had not picked up on the story.

  Cynthia was on her cell phone and the internet trying to find out something, anything more, that would give them some hope. She floated from being teary-eyed, to frustrated at the airline’s lack of information. And she could help but notice each time she began to type in PLANE CRASH in Google, PLAN HUSBAND’S DEATH populated the search engine box.

  She finally cleared the cache because whatever that was all about, she didn’t want to know; not now anyway.

  “How can a plane just disappear from the face of the earth?” she asked in a loud, agitated whisper at one point.

  “I don’t know,” Dex said, from the couch, flicking between news channels. “It’s peculiar. But they’ll find them,” he tried to reassure her.

  He came over to her at the computer. They’d been up for hours.

  “Time to get off,” he said, realizing she was frustrated.

  “But--“

  But nothing,” Dex said in a firm voice. “If there’s anything to report, the airline has your number as the emergency contact, and they will call.”

  “I guess you’re right,” she said.

  “Go on up to bed,” he ordered. “I’ll keep an eye on the news down here.”

  “You don’t have to…”

  Dexter interrupted her. “That little boy up there,” he said. “I love him like a son. I’ll be right here until we know something.”

  “Thank you, Dexter,” she sighed, instinctively reaching up to kiss him on the lips. “I’m sorry,” she said. “I--“

  Before she could say anything more, Dex had folded her into his arms and kissed her tenderly on the mouth.

  “I’m not,” he said, staring at her lovingly. “Now up to bed.”

  Cynthia pressed her fingers on her lips where he’d returned her kiss and turned to go upstairs. She turned back. “I’ll bring you some covers.”

  Dex was already lifting the coffee table trunk. “I have plenty right here,” he said. “It’s best you go on up.”

  He couldn’t ignore the rising between his strong thighs after feeling her soft body pressed up against his.

  “Good night,” she said.

  He pulled a blanket from the trunk, purposely not turning his body to face her. Nodding a good night, he lay back on the couch with the remote in his hand, not daring to glance up at her enticing body scaling the stairs.

  Chapter 15

  The next morning she woke to the smell of coffee and bacon permeating her nostrils. Carson was staring down at her in his bed.

  “You sleep long,” he said, a twinkle in his eye.

  She smiled up at him. “What time is it?” she wondered out loud.

  “8:29 AM,” he said pointing to the digital clock next to his bed.

  “Thank you,” she said. “I guess I do sleep long.” She tickled at his belly as he scooted off the bed.

  “I cooked and made you coffee,” he announced, a big wooden spoon in his hand from the kitchen drawer.

  “You did, did you?” Cynthia already knew it had to be Dex in the kitchen.

  “Yes, come on,” Carson said. “Rise and shine!” He grabbed her by the hand and tugged for her to come downstairs.

  Cynthia rounded the corner of the kitchen.

  “Good morning,” Dex said, his eyes landing on hers.

  “Good morning,” she blushed, remembering their kiss.

  “Hungry?” he asked.

  She wasn’t really. Her mind was on the crash. All she wanted to do was catch the news.

  “Yes,” she said, peering down at Carson who was clearly pleased at the pancake and bacon breakfast he’d helped prepare.

  Dex told Carson to get some napkins from the pantry off the kitchen.

  “No new news,” he leaned in and whispered as Cynthia sat down.

  She sighed, worried.

  After breakfast, Cynthia and Carson cleaned up the dishes while Dex went out to the barn. The horses had to be groomed and fed and then he had to ride over to his place to get some work done. Dex instructed Carson to come out to help him spread the hay in the corral when he was done helping out in the kitchen. He knew Cynthia wanted to get back on the computer and the phone to try and find something out.

  Throughout the morning, Carson was running back and forth into the house, into the refrigerator, and up and down the stairs to get this or that toy.

  Cynthia heard her mother’s voice coming out of her own as she slipped into mother mode.

  “Carson Hagen, if you come into this house one more time, you’re going to have to stay. Now stay in or out.”

  “Yes, ma’am,” he sighed as if he’d heard it a thousand times before from his own mother.

  After a little while, Dexter took him over to his ranch.

  At the end of the day, they came back home. Dexter was filthy from working all day, and Carson was filthy from playing. Cynthia held her nose and directed them both upstairs for a bath.

  After a little while, they came back downstairs, fresh. They all prepared to sit down for the dinner of pot roast, vegetables, corn bread and potatoes she’d had simmering all day.

  Dexter gave a curious glance; one that did not escape her.

  “Yes, Mr. Callahan. I can cook,” she said.

  He gave an approving nod and pulled the chair out for her to take a seat.

  Before they dug in, Dex reached for her hand and Carson’s as he led them in prayer. Cynthia knew his moment of silence at the end was filled with her same prayer: a safe return for Thelma and Martin.

  After op
ening their eyes, they looked at each other as Carson looked back and forth between the two of them.