Last Year's Bride (Montana Born Brides) Read Online Free PDF Page A

His stomach turned a somersault.
    Lacey frowned, then glanced around, following the direction of his stare. “Someone you know?” she ventured. Then she raised a brow. “Someone you weren’t expecting?” she ventured.
    Cole nodded. He cleared his throat. “Yes.” Someone he knew. “No.” Someone he definitely wasn’t expecting.
    Eleanor Corbett. Nell.
    His wife.

Chapter Two

    “No!” The word came out of Nell’s mouth unbidden, voiced in astonishment, cloaked in disbelief.
    “ No?” Grant, Nell’s boss, frowned down at her curiously as she stopped in the middle of the dance floor. “What do you mean, no? I’m not that bad a dancer.” His mobile mouth tipped wryly. “Am I? You’re the one who needs to pick up her feet, for heaven’s sake! I thought all you cowgirls could dance.” He gave her his best flirtatious grin.
    Nell barely noticed. She wasn’t even aware of having spoken aloud. She simply stood, frozen to the spot, staring over Grant’s fine black wool-covered shoulder at Cole.
    Here. At the Valentine’s Ball. The last place she ever expected to see him. Nell sucked in a breath.
    What on earth was Cole doing at the Marietta Valentine ’s Ball?
    Stupid question. It was obvious what he was doing. He was dancing with the most gorgeous woman in the room—a tall slender redhead with enough self-confidence to let her carroty curls spring riotously all over her head. She could not possibly have got through school without someone nicknaming her after the famous pot-and-pan scrubbers. Yet, here she was, flaunting her hair, making it a conversation piece. Cole certainly seemed to like it well enough. He’d had his nose buried in it moments before!
    Nell ’s heart was slamming against the wall of her chest, and she was suddenly aware that she was strangling Grant’s hand. Abruptly, she let go, spinning away from him. “I need some air.”
    “ What?”
    But she didn ’t wait for Grant to follow. In fact she prayed he wouldn’t. She didn’t need a witness to what she was feeling now. But of course, Grant was on her heels before she left the ballroom and he’d caught up before she got halfway across the lobby. The narrow skirt of her ankle-length red sheath made running impossible. And he snagged her hand as she darted through the airlock and out the front doors, hanging on until they stood, staring at each other, breathing hard, in the middle of a swirling snowstorm.
    For a long moment, neither spoke. Then “Air?” Grant said and cocked his head, giving her a doubtful look. “Is that what you Montanans call this white stuff?”
    She knew he was trying to make her smile. It was what he did. Her producer boss, Grant Merrick, was a hard taskmaster, demanding and intense. “Attila the Hun on steroids,” Judy, his long-suffering production assistant, called him. But he was also incredibly sensitive to peoples’ moods. It was why he was so successful. He might run right over you ninety percent of the time, when you were capable of handling it. But when you weren’t—when you were rattled and not coping at all—Grant always picked up on the tells.
    And right now he was clearly aware that his normally easy-going, hard-working, unflappable director was a quaking, shivering mess. Nell knew she had been increasingly edgy since she’d proposed looking at Marietta’s Great Wedding Giveaway as a venue for two episodes she would be directing of the reality TV series, The Compatibility Game which Grant produced. She’d been even twitchier since he’d agreed.
    But she couldn ’t figure out how else to get back to Montana without announcing that, oh by the way, she’d been married for ten months and wanted to know why her husband was divorcing her so would Grant mind if she took a week off.
    Of course Grant would mind! The world revolved around his bloody reality TV shows, and for all that he thought Nell was terrific at her job, he wasn’t going to just let her go because she needed to. She knew