Adventure For A Bride: A clean historical mail order bride romance (Montana Passion Book 3) Read Online Free PDF Page B

lady, or I’ll have O’Conner throw you in jail for the night. Do you hear me? You raise your voice to her or to any other woman one more time, and I’ll see to it that you learn a lesson it will take you months to forget.”
    Pryor turned to Millie and apologized for the cross words. “I think it would be best if we all went somewhere quiet and sat down to talk before even another minute passes.” He held out his arm toward the small diner Gretchen had opened adjacent to Jorgenson’s store. Wyatt turned and stomped off, not waiting on them to catch up to him. Pryor smiled grimly at Millie, his lips pressed together in a thin line as he envisioned the very real possibility that he’d take a horse whip to Flynn before sundown.
    The three of them had to duck their heads to enter the low building because, like the store next door, it had been dug out on the inside so that it dropped a few steps. The shape of the building allowed it to stay warm in the winter with the help of only a woodstove, but kept it from being blown about by the winds that drove down from the mountains during every storm. Only one other person sat at one of the three wooden tables inside, nursing a hot cup of chicory and staring at the tabletop. Gretchen recognized him as the younger man who had taken the stage coach with Millie, but didn’t want to intrude on his solitude.
    “Let’s sit here, shall we?” Pryor said, but truth be told, he wasn’t offering anyone a choice. He waited until Millie was seated, then shoved Wyatt down with a firm push on his shoulder before joining him on the bench facing the newcomer. Gretchen hovered nearby, unsure of whether or not she would be welcome in their conversation. Pryor caught her eye and nodded for her to come over so Millie would not feel uncomfortable.
    “Now, where do we start?” he asked, but his question was met with only silence. “Okay then, Wyatt, why don’t you tell Miss Carter why you’ve invited her out here?”
    “She knows why she’s here, apparently everyone thinks I need a wife!” he growled, not looking in Millie’s direction. She blinked in surprise before looking between Wyatt and Pryor several times.
    “And you don’t think you do, because you already have one?” she demanded in a saucy tone, rapping her knuckles against the table top to get him to look at her. Wyatt looked up sharply and frowned.
    “I told you I’m not talking about Anna Mae, Pryor,” he warned his friend in a hushed voice. Pryor held up his hands for quiet.
    “Well, because you didn’t see fit to be honest about the state of affairs, someone has to. You can’t have poor Miss Carter here wondering what she’s doing here.” He turned to Millie and opened his mouth to speak, but was stopped momentarily when Wyatt shoved back from the table and went to pace the length of the room some yards away.
    Pryor gave Millie as brief and respectful a rundown of the situation as he could. She watched his face as he spoke, a wide range of emotions playing across her features as she heard the sad tale. She looked ready to bolt for the door and run all the way to the next town to catch the train when she heard about the children. All the time he spoke, Wyatt paced back and forth like a captured animal, knowing that Millie deserved to hear the truth but wanting to punch MacAteer in the mouth for spreading his personal pain around.
    “I see,” Millie said quietly as she sat back against the ladder back chair, letting go of the breath she’d been holding. She looked down at her gloved hands in her lap, watching them twist her handkerchief of their own free will without even realizing she was doing it.
    “That’s it? That’s all you have to say?” Pryor asked, amazed. He was prepared to try to bar the door to keep her from running screaming through the wide street that dissected New Hope, but instead she was oddly quiet.
    “What else is there to say, Mr. MacAteer? Mr. Flynn has been through a horrible ordeal,