Montana Hero Read Online Free PDF

lame ass ex-boss. She’d pushed the Bob Zabrinski connection out of her mind—or as far away as possible given the prominence of the Zabrinski name in Marietta. Did it cross her mind once in awhile that she might be related? Maybe. But she had no intention of pursuing the matter unless some sort of irrefutable evidence dropped out of the blue.
    For now, she had enough on her plate just taking care of Brady and dealing with a new boss.
    She checked her watch.
    Time.
    If I can survive Ken Morrison as my boss, I can handle anything . Shoulders set, courage firmly in place, she picked up the sheet of paper she’d filled in—front and back.
    Did her hand shake slightly when she reached for the door handle? Maybe. She’d never worked for someone as handsome and hunky as Flynn Bensen. But Kat definitely wasn’t in the market for a relationship outside of work.
    Think Brady. Just Brady.
    She crossed the room to knock on the glass panel of Flynn Bensen’s door. He’d removed the opaque shelf-liner Ken had used to cover the glass. Through the opened louvered blinds in the adjacent window, she spotted Flynn at his desk.
    “Come in.”
    He lifted his head and used one hand to make a quick swipe through his crown of thick and wavy brown hair. For a guy sporting a clean cut image—razor cut sides and neckline, the whimsy of the waves made her think “rebel-at-heart.”
    As she turned the knob, Kat happened to catch Janet staring with her miss-nothing eagle eyes. Kat gave a mock salute then stepped into the pint-size room, closing the door behind her as she’d seen the other team members do.
    She stepped to the desk, which held five neat stacks of personnel folders, a towering pile of old SAR bulletins, and God-only-knew what else. “Wow. You have your work cut out for you.”
    One corner of his nicely shaped mouth quirked upward to reveal a hint of dimple. A tingle her college roommate called the “loosy-goosies” blasted outward from her inner core to the tips of her fingers and toes.
    “The intensity of LGs is directly correlated to a guy’s YIW rating,” Emily, the biology major, had hypothesized.
    Y.I.W stood for “Yes, I Would” and originally included two more words, which Kat chose not to include. Less out of prudery, as Em believed, than fear of jinxing something magical.
    “Playing catch-up comes with the territory,” he said, rising out of his seat with old-world manners to gesture toward the chair opposite the desk. He waited until she was seated to sit, too. “This probably makes me sound a bit anal, but I like organizing stuff. My Hot Shot team used to call me Mr. Clean.”
    His deep, masculine chuckle touched off a new wave of LGs which would have blown up Emily’s chart.
    “I don’t think they meant it as a compliment,” he added.
    Kat’s throat went dry. NIW…N, she silently ordered. No. I. Will. Not.
    She faked a smile.
    The serious tilt of his eyebrows told her he wasn’t fooled. He picked up her completed questionnaire, probably checking to see what he’d missed.
    “Katherine Robinson,” he read aloud.
    “Kat.”
    He glanced up. “Why?”
    “Why what?”
    “Why Kat? You strike me as a Katherine.”
    I do? A voice she barely recognized silently crowed, “He got that in one.”
    Oh, God, I am so screwed.
    She couldn’t believe it when her mouth opened and she admitted, “I’d planned to be Dr. Katherine Hayward at one time. Ph.D., not M.D.”
    “What happened?”
    “Life,” she said, her voice cracking. She cleared her throat and added, “Now, I go by Kat.”
    To avoid the constant reminder of what could have been? The silent question came from a voice that sounded a lot like her mother’s pre-Alzheimer’s voice. “It’s easier.”
    He kept reading, but his broad shoulders gave a “so-what” shrug. Her son had already mastered the dismissive gesture. “Since when is life easy?”
    She sensed the rhetorical question had come out as unplanned as her admission of