The Reluctant Bride (Montana Born Brides) Read Free

o’clock in the evening, it was starting to get dark.
    She had a penlight on the back of her iPhone. She sq uatted by the open door as ta pair of headlights appeared on the horizon. She immediately got back into the car and closed the door and locked it.
    She felt silly because it was Marietta and not Hendersonville, Nevada, and there wasn ’t a huge crime wave. But she was still a woman alone on the side of the road in the gathering dusk. Three complimentary lessons in Tae Kwon Do weren’t as helpful as she’d hoped, since all she could remember was a back kick that she’d used to break a piece of plywood.
    Every horror movie she ’d ever seen—granted there hadn’t been that many since she didn’t like to be scared—featured this type of scenario. Creepy music drifted through her mind.
    “ Stop it.”
    Monty? Doubtful he’d take a call from his runaway bride.
    Freaking herself out wasn ’t going to help at all. She should call for assistance.
    Who could she call?
    She hadn’t exactly been burning up the social ladder since she’d arrived. It didn’t help that she was naturally more at home with her nose in a book than chatting with strangers. She’d been eating lunch at the Diner every day for the last month to try to ‘get out’ more, but she always brought along her Kindle e-book device and sat there reading, feeling awfully exposed.
    Mentally she ran through the people she ’d met and the people she’d exchanged phone numbers with. The Venn diagram in her head was slim pickings. Jane Weiss.
    She sort of knew Jane from the Chamber of Commerce but they weren ’t friends. Plus she’d more likely be wondering where exactly Risa was.
    She ’d call the auto club. She hadn’t signed up for the service but Audi had one of those 24-hour road rescue services. In fact she should have done that in the first place. But her head wasn’t in the right place.
    Nothing had been easy since she ’d left Monty.
    She took a deep breath and leaned over to open the glove box to retrieve the book on the car. Another thing her dad had been a stickler about. Keeping the glove box neat and all the car papers in it.
    God, she missed him.
    If he and her mom were still here…she might be married. She might not be living alone in Marietta. But she and Monty hadn’t made it down the aisle. She’d gotten scared, overwhelmed and had run. End of story.
    A vehicle passed her and did a U-turn, before coming back to pull off the road behind her car. It was a big-ass, all-weather truck that looked like it belonged on a ranch. Totally fitting in where she didn’t.
    The door opened and from the interior light she saw the silhouette of a man as he grabbed a cowboy hat and donned it before walking toward her. There was something familiar about his shape. The way he moved with the careless grace of a predator, like one of the lions her parents had studied when she’d been little and they’d lived in Africa.
    He was sinewy grace. Really? She shook her head and debated what she was going to do. She couldn’t open the door to a stranger. That had dumb idea written all over it. Maybe he was one of the men from Marietta she’d met. Like Carson Scott, who was engaged to Annie, the waitress at the Diner.
    The man stopped next to her car and leaned down to peer into the window, and her breath caught in the back of her throat as his friendly smile disappeared.
    Monty.
    He reached for the door handle, but she ’d locked the car and he raised his eyebrows at her. There was no mistaking those grey-green eyes for anyone else. He stood at six-foot-two-inches tall and was solid muscle. His brownish-blond hair was worn longer on the top than at the back.
    “ Open the door, Risa.”
    A million responses ran through her mind. Play it cool. But playing it cool had never really been her style, and she knew she had to think of something.

    Monty knew that Risa was in Marietta. Had gotten the good news on his runaway bride from his best friend, Staff