Montana Actually Read Free

he’d left behind, Katrina was convinced the previous landlord wrote the glowing report just to get rid of him.
    The fact that her tenant had broken the lease was timely, because as much as she loved her family, she’d lived alone too long to go back to living in the ranch house. Coming home for short visits was one thing, but there was something about moving into her childhood room that turned back the clock. She ceased being Katrina McCade, independent career woman, and became Katrina—dutiful daughter, sibling mediator and general go-to person. It was all wrapped up with a distinct lack of privacy and it was wearing her out.
    The moment the paint fumes had vaporized, she was moving in, and she’d repair the other damage that had been inflicted on the house. She’d even use some of her savings to renovate the kitchen. After that, she might go to Ecuador and be useful or she might head to California or . . . She had no clue. All she knew was that her plans were open-ended.
    You’ve never done fluid.
Her mind went straight to the very scheduled life she’d shared with Brent over the past eight months. She immediately hauled it back. She could do fluid. She could try and go with the flow with one exception. Lesson learned—no matter how much she enjoyed being in a relationship, she was not getting involved with another man anytime soon.
    She pulled a screwdriver out of the tool belt around her waist and levered open the paint can containing the lavender paint for her bedroom. She suddenly smiled. At least Bear Paw didn’t have a surgeon with devastating charm, or for that matter a physician under sixty. She was totally safe on that front, and for that small mercy, she was truly grateful.
    —
    JOSH drove down a long gravel road seriously doubting the directions the hospital administrator had e-mailed him. Surely, the house that came with the job would be in the town and close by the hospital? Only he’d passed the hospital, two miles back, where he’d be reporting tomorrow morning at eight. Now Main Street, with its mixture of flat-fronted brick and clapboard shops, was well behind him, too. He appeared to be heading for Canada.
    He hit a pothole and his front fender scraped the road.
Shit.
He slowed his speed and zigzagged his way around another four potholes before he pulled over to face the intensive stare of a jackrabbit, whose large ears mocked him. This was ludicrous. It was one thing for his student loans to have mortgaged his life, bringing him to a small town in the middle of nowhere, but surely the hospital wouldn’t have rented him a house way out here. He must have missed the turn back in town.
    At least he now had one bar of service on his phone. He plugged the GPS coordinates of the house into the app. The melon-colored exclamation point magically appeared one-quarter mile away from his current blue location dot. He looked to his left. He needed to turn onto a driveway that had never seen blacktop or gravel.
    “You’ve got to be kidding me,” he muttered as he threw the gear stick into first. No wonder the hospital administrator had said the house would be open and not to worry about a key. It was in the middle of damn-well-nowhere.
    Five bone-shuddering minutes later, he pulled up outside a house or a cottage—he wasn’t sure which, and he wasn’t certain the builder had known, either. It was a mishmash of design and was neither attic cottage nor log cabin. One section was cladding and the other logs, and he thought he glimpsed some exposed house wrap between the two. The eaves extended over a door that was offset, in fact the whole side of the house he was facing looked as if it had been tacked on as an afterthought. A small satellite dish clung precariously to the roof, and Josh was surprised it hadn’t been blown away and taken the house with it.
    The property screamed first homeowner’s dream, renovator’s delight or student housing. It had been a very long time since he’d been a