All the Wildflowers in Montana Read online

  Contents

  Content Notes

  Chapter 1

  Chapter 2

  Chapter 3

  Chapter 4

  Chapter 5

  Chapter 6

  Chapter 7

  Chapter 8

  Chapter 9

  Chapter 10

  Chapter 11

  Chapter 12

  Chapter 13

  Chapter 14

  Chapter 15

  Chapter 16

  Chapter 17

  Chapter 18

  Chapter 19

  Bad Medicine: Book 1 of the Wild Love Series

  Also by Red L Jameson

  About the Author

  Copyright

  Content Notes

  As you noticed from the blurb, breast cancer and cancer treatments will be discussed throughout this piece. Laney’s character had a rather brutal upbringing with a fanatical, evangelical preacher father and a mother who completes suicide. Domestic abuse is discussed as well.

  Joe’s character also suffers from a hard background with a family who was killed from a car accident. Joe also was a former military elite, as such PTSD is mentioned and group therapy too. Joe grapples with things he did for the military, so he references interrogation techniques that he thinks are immoral.

  Laney’s weight is mentioned because of cancer treatments since she has an accidental weight loss. There are a few discussions of racism too. There might be more triggers in this novel that I am not aware of, and if so, please reach out to let me know.

  Please be advised, dear reader, and take care.

  Chapter One

  “You are so getting me laid tonight.” Laney Jones smiled at her Charlotte Tilbury Red Carpet Red lipstick, then cringed.

  So, yes, she’d started to talk to lipstick while in her car at a biker bar parking lot. But it was beating back her nerves. That made it marginally acceptable. As long as she didn’t get caught, that is. Then the scarlet lipstick’s charm would be for naught. That and she couldn’t use words like naught while inside the bar.

  She glanced at the list on the small console of the ’69 Camaro. A little more than two weeks ago, she’d scribbled it quickly. It was almost undecipherable, except for the heading. “Bucket List: Things to do before…” She hadn’t been brave enough to finish the heading. The list itself had a few items on it. “- Get ride on a bike (one of those big motorcycles that’s loud) - Ride the biker of said bike. - See Paris. - Ride bareback on mustangs with friends in Pryor Mountains one more time. - Finish reading Ulysses so I can stop lying, saying that I did.”

  She had to clear her throat a few times then unfolded the sun visor to get a glimpse of the tiny vanity mirror in the Camaro she’d basically stolen for tonight. Stolen because her tiny Toyota would not be welcome in this parking lot. Steadying her hands, she applied the lipstick with the Montana hazy ochre spring sunset as her light. Okay, not stolen. But she’d never strong-armed another human being and felt terrible for doing it to Carl, a former student she’d tutored throughout his middle school years. She still wasn’t sure what she’d said to convince him to let her borrow the purring, yet skinned-in-primer ride, but she knew he felt guilty for never paying for the tutoring.

  Ah, fuck it. Fuck guilt. What had it ever done to help her?

  Glancing around the parking lot, making sure no one was around, she slid a hand along the side of her left breast. The biopsy stitches had come out a week ago. Through the bra and her blouse, no one could feel the scar. She hoped. And the biopsy took care of most of the lump. So she felt kind of normal. Kind of. Still, she wouldn’t take off her bra tonight.

  After putting the lipstick away, she blew out an exasperated sigh, looking at herself in the mirror.

  “You can do this.”

  Her image arched a blonde brow incredulously.

  She rolled her eyes. “Remember? You want this.”

  Her brows furrowed with anxiety.

  “It’s now or…” Again, she couldn’t finish.

  Not that she was dying. That might be a tad melodramatic, her team of doctors kept insisting. Stage-two breast cancer, N1, did not mean a fatal diagnosis. There are a growing number of effective treatments, her oncologist had said, then told her the list of things to come: surgery, radiation, new drugs, to look into alternative medicine because her docs thought it might help, emotional therapy and support groups if she wanted, etcetera, etcetera. Hence, the reason for this rushed one-night-stand plan. In two days, she would be in surgery, then…etcetera, etcetera.

  The rest of the list would have to wait until after the lumpectomy. She cleared her throat again.

  Nodding at her reflection, she pepped herself up by looking at all that crimson on her lips—beautiful red medicine, and turned the keys in the ignition, shutting down the purr, grabbing the list, folding it, and stuffing it into her skirt’s pocket. Then she got out of the car in a hurry. But she stood by the gray Camaro’s door, staring at the bar. It wasn’t a big place—cracked white paint on a squat square building, the neon signs dissected from bars on the windows. Not a nice place. Not for nice girls.

  Tonight she wasn’t going to be a nice girl.

  The bar was on a highway just outside of Harden, Montana—Crow country, most called it because they didn’t know how or didn’t care to say Apsáalooke. Although, there were Cheyenne and other Native Americans who lived on or near the reservation too. She’d driven by hundreds of times, had seen the motorcycles parked in a neat row. She knew nothing about bikers. Nice girls wouldn’t. She’d heard they were misogynistic dicks.

  What did that mean about her wanting one?

  She’d have her inner Freud run a psychological analysis later because right now all she wanted to think about was the leather jackets, the unkempt whiskers, the broad shoulders and rough good looks. Something warm centered at her core. Somehow, even though her left breast had been through hell lately, her nipples contracted. For whatever reason that gave her the needed confidence or craziness to make her way across the gravel lot, trying not to wince as her heels found unstable purchase with every step. Maybe stumbling about was a sign. She should turn around and go back to her house and never think about this again.

  Her legs kept propelling her forward.

  Two steps up to a narrow deck and she was so much closer to the bar than she’d expected. Her breathing was choppy. She wondered if she was sweating through her white button-up blouse. This was stupid, acting on a juvenile fantasy, the Bucket List having so much power over her. So stupid.

  She should run.

  The door opened. A tall man, dark and a little dusty with a full handlebar mustache filled the frame. His black eyes looked her up and down. Up and down. And once more up and especially down at her ridiculous white heels. Who wore white to this kind of bar? God, she was a desperate fool.

  His smile came slowly and only on one side of his face. He blocked the door, taking his time to look her up and down again.

  “You comin’ in, honey?”

  “I can’t if you’re in my way…honey.” A side effect of having cancer, for her, was this new moxie. Suddenly, she had a backbone. Made from adamantium-vibranium alloy, apparently. Yes, just like Captain America’s shield, and, yes, she read comics. It was a well-established medium and held its own literary merit as much as any novel from a Brontë sister in her esteem.

  The mustached man smiled fully, showing yellowed teeth under the bushy hair above his lip. He had a crumb of something orangish stuck in his mustache. Slowly, he moved aside, opening the door wider, waving her in.

  “Here you go, princess.”

  As she walked through, her shoulder a hairs width from him, she tried not to shudder as she
felt his eyes on her again. He was a tad creepy and not her type. What if no man in here was her type? Well, she wouldn’t force herself to have sex with a man she wasn’t attracted to. She’d give herself that out.

  The bar was filled with small tables and chairs askew and men, so many men. A sea of blurry men. She wanted to adjust her glasses because they were fogging up from masculine body heat. It was silly to wear glasses in here, but she hadn’t had time to order contacts. The cramped, too-hot, darkly lit room quieted for a moment, all eyes seeming to be on her. But that couldn’t be right. Lifting her chin, she ambled toward the bar, feeling more confident now that she wasn’t walking on gravel. Still, she never wore heels and worried her gait was stilted and instantly imagined John Wayne in stilettos. She almost snickered hysterically but held it in, hoping to God she didn’t look like that.

  There were two bartenders. An older man, who Laney approached, and a younger one who was eagerly sidling up to the gray-haired man behind the bar.

  “What can I get you?” both men asked.

  The gray-haired man scowled at the younger one, making him skulk away, rubbing a white dishrag on the polished if dented bar.

  She wasn’t going to ask for wine; although, that’s what she wanted. She did enjoy beer. But it looked like they only had domestic. And, of course, she was a beer snob. Great. She couldn’t even order a fucking beer. But she calmed, thinking of the rarely-said-out-loud f-word. Swear words were stored in a different part of the brain than any other part of language, making them more memorable. As memorable as life-altering events, like practicing saying fuckin’ A with her thirteen-year-old best friends while desperately trying to sound cool, wild horses grazing only a hundred feet away. All those sunshine-filled and gritty memories locked tight in a fold of her brain that would never forget.

  “You like huckleberries, miss?” a young woman said, somehow standing next to her.

  Laney hadn’t seen her approach. She had a tray and set it on the bar. She looked bone-tired, dark rings under her eyes, her hair tied in a messy, cockeyed ponytail. Her shoulders sloped under her white tank top as if someone had given her the worst news of her life.

  Laney wanted to hug her, ask if she was okay. But she kept that wanting-to-take-care-of-everyone side of herself at bay. Barely.

  “Give her that huckleberry ale we got,” the cocktail waitress said to the bartender, her voice gravelly. She looked at Laney again. “You’ll like that. It’s made by some local boys. Home-brewed stuff but real good.”

  Laney smiled wider. “Sounds great. Thank you.”

  The waitress shrugged and looked at her tray. “Y-you don’t recognize me, do you?”

  Laney blinked and inspected the woman more thoroughly.

  She glanced back up. “I’m Rachel. Rachel Zankowski. You taught me English in middle school. You said I was smart. You told me I should think about college after high school, but…you know, shit happens.” Her face hardened as tears glistened in the young woman’s eyes. “Nothing like the glamour of cocktail waitressing in a fine establishment like this.” She ruefully smiled, the look punched Laney in the heart.

  She remembered one of the very first classes she’d taught after graduate school, of a girl with braces who was a little heavier and wasn’t consumed with the weight of the world on her shoulders. She’d adored Romeo and one of those boy bands who had been popular back then. And the way Rachel had laughed—a deep throaty laugh for such a little girl. Laney wondered if Rachel still could chuckle like that, or if she even smiled any longer.

  “Honey,” Laney cut herself off from the endearment because it reminded her of the altercation at the door, of the woman who had moxie, while standing in front of her was a reminder of who she really was—the constant teacher and never-paid guidance counselor. “I’m sure your life is—Wait. Are you old enough to work here?”

  Rachel’s tired eyes widened. “I need this job. Don’t tell them my age—”

  “But you—”

  “Please, Miss Jones. They pay me under the table and more than I can make anywhere else. I got pregnant freshman year, and things have been…tough.”

  That was the untold, never-ending story of America—things being tough on a reservation, even if Rachel was a white girl. Laney knew the story well, could recite the verses by heart.

  She, Miss Jones—actually it was Dr. Jones, but she felt like a pompous ass if she reminded people of her English Lit PhD—inhaled, thinking, planning. Rachel needed help and Laney would give it. Right now. To hell with the juvenile wish for casual sex when there was someone in need. To hell with the list. It was a reminder of what she was trying desperately to forget anyway.

  Everyone talked about the balancing act of life—giving and taking. Well, Laney was good at giving. In fact, that was all she had in life. And if something might happen to her, then wouldn’t it be better that she gave her all before…not that her cancer was fatal, she tried to remind herself.

  “I won’t tell,” Laney whispered, making sure the bartenders were far away, “but we have to figure something else out for you, Rachel.”

  Rachel smiled ruefully. “Like what? Harvard Yard for my baby and me? Love you, Miss Jones. You’re just as fierce as I remember, but—”

  “No buts, Rachel. I will do everything in my power to get you to finish high school. Anything and everything, I will—”

  “I’m not a charity case.”

  “This isn’t charity, Rachel.” And it wasn’t. But Laney always, always reminded herself of little ol’ white ladies who had the “best of intentions” and had been the instigators of kidnapping American Indian children from their parents, placing them in boarding schools that shredded their language, religion, hair, and identity from them. She had to check her own little-ol’-white-lady intention, even though Laney was only thirty-three, then said, “I’m fucking pissed life has been tough on you, so I want to do something about it. Can I help?”

  Rachel’s eyes widened once more, probably not expecting profanity from her former teacher who used to quote Jane Austen too much. The young woman sighed. “I gotta work for the next couple days. Then we’ll talk.”

  Laney tried not to cringe. “I, ah, have a…medical thing in a couple days.” She glanced through her purse, wondering why she’d brought it in here. No woman who belonged in a biker bar would dare bring a purse—neatly organized with a small notebook in it, used mainly for a never finished graphic novel/poetry book—into a place like this. Extracting out a page from the notebook, she wrote all her phone numbers on it. “Can you call me tomorrow?”

  Rachel took the paper and scrunched it into her very short shorts’ pocket. “No, I gotta work.” She smiled when Laney gave her an exasperated frown. “I know you want me to quit, but I can’t. Not yet. But I am willing to talk to you. I swear.”

  “Then you can call me in four days?”

  Rachel shrugged and watched the bartenders. “I think so.”

  “Call as soon as you can, except, in two days, I have a stupid medic—”

  “Medical thing. Gotcha. ’Kay, I’ll call in like four days.”

  The bartender came back, placing the beer on the bar.

  “It’s on me,” Rachel said, glancing sheepishly at the man. “Can you take it out of my tips?”

  He nodded. Quiet man, and Laney usually liked that, but she wondered if he was the owner of the bar, and why anyone would be willing to employ a girl who was barely seventeen, if that, in a bar filled with men, misogynistic men.

  The place felt dirty to her now. She felt dirty. It had been childish and over-the-top to have such fantasies, a one-night stand. With a biker.

  Laney took the beer in hand, thinking of being polite, taking a sip, and leaving. She thanked Rachel as the young woman left to give a round of beers to a group of men in the back corner. Laney drank a little of the sweet ale. It was fantastic—saccharine berries mixed with sour malted wheat. She sipped more as she swept her fingers along the back of her neck, feeling as if there
was something there, something tickling her, something trying to get her attention.

  Then she saw him. Standing with the group of men Rachel served, all of them talking loudly, flirting with Rachel, trying to touch her—asshats. But not him. He stood slightly apart, staring at her. At Laney. At the perpetual teacher who wore white and carried a purse in a biker bar.

  She swallowed, not sure what to do, feeling pinned to the spot because of the way he stared. His dark gaze swung down her body, and she palpably felt it. Felt his brown eyes caress her hips, legs, feet, and stomach. That intense gaze returned to hers. She’d stopped breathing, but her heart started pounding. It hammered so hard she heard it in her ears, felt it behind her eyes, wondered if it was lodged somewhere in her throat. There was such an odd sensation buzzing inside her veins—part attraction, part feeling like prey.

  She wanted to put the beer down. Her hands were shaking too much to hold it. But she couldn’t move. Not while he stared at her, his dark eyes bearing into hers. Almost never wavering, except to notice things about her, and not in a creepy way like the guy at the door. He was just observing. Appreciating, maybe?

  There was another man behind him who clapped a hand on his shoulder, handing him a long-neck bottle of beer, breaking their eye contact. Finally, Laney could turn away, trying to catch her breath. Had she been holding it the whole time? Did the man even have a body or face? She hadn’t noticed. Just those eyes. So dark. Inscrutable. Full of secrets she would have been fascinated to discover.

  Placing the beer on the counter, she gathered money from her purse, not about to let Rachel pay with her tips. But with her hand stuck in her purse, she glanced over her shoulder at the man. He was big. Way too big. Tall and muscular, unlike any other man she’d been with. Kind of hulking. He was looking at the other man, his profile severe with a slightly crooked nose, cut jawline, broad forehead, narrowed eyes. The light grazed over him, into him, in such a way that his sunken cheek was shadowed. A vein stood out on his neck as well as the long, thick tendon.