The Reluctant Bride (Montana Born Brides) Read Online Free PDF

couldn’t be.
    He wanted—needed to talk to her about Lane. And the overwhelming guilt that was riding him like a monkey every waking hour of the day. How, because of her, he’d come to the one place he’d hoped to avoid like it was a plague-infested hide-out. Didn’t want to see the guy who’d been standing right next to him and had lost his lower legs. Because Monty knew it could have been him.
    Why hadn ’t it been?
    He knew all about survivor ’s guilt. Had heard from the Marine Corps shrink that he couldn’t have done anything else. It had been the luck of the draw. Monty had been clearing the even IEDs and Lane the odd ones. It could just as easily have been him.
    But, all the same, his skin itched, and he wanted to make sure that he was living his life to the fullest. Taking the risks and the chances that Lane no longer could. And now he was dealing with pride and fear: two sides of the same sword and neither of them pretty.
    How was he going to ensure that he was marrying for the right reason? Not to save his pride, or to prove that he was whole and healthy and taking a bride because that was what men who had it all did.
    He shook his head but then opened the window as they flew down the dark Montana highway, letting the cold breeze whip through the cabin and push the thoughts and emotions from his mind. He kept the window open until he started to feel chilly. After so many years in the desert—he’d done a total of four tours there—he was ready for the cold.
    Ready for something different that would remind him he was alive.
    Something like that pretty little troublemaker who was driving way too fast in front of him in her sporty little convertible.
    She signaled and pulled into Samuel T Emerson ’s big ranch where the Barn Dance was being held. Wedding fever had spread like a wildfire through Marietta and romance was blooming everywhere. Lane’s brothers had been talking about how every woman in town was looking at the single men with bridal dreams in their eyes. But Monty doubted that.
    Women were just as reluctant as men to tie the knot. His mom had walked away from her marriage and Risa had run from her fiancé. God, was he just playing out a sick pantomime of his parents’ twisted relationship? One where he loved her more than she loved him? He put his window up as he rolled to a stop and found a parking spot for his truck.
    He needed a few moments to gather his thoughts. If he’d been this distracted in battle he would have been lucky to get any of his men back safely. And he always had. They might be beat up and a little worse for wear, but he’d gotten them back alive.
    There was a rap on the window and Monty glanced through it, to see Lane standing there with a black cowboy hat on his head.
    “Dude, you ready to meet your lady tonight?” Lane asked, as Monty opened the door and got out of the truck.
    The prosthetics that Lane wore put him at the same height he would have been if he hadn ’t lost his legs. And seeing him like this, well, a stranger wouldn’t even know that he’d been injured.
    But then most strangers didn ’t realize the toll that war took on any of them. Most of them were lucky enough not to wear their scars on the outside.
    “ Already met her,” Monty said. “She was broke down on the side of the road.”
    “ What’d she do when she saw you?”
    “ She didn’t run.” But he was coming to realize that Risa was unpredictable. He had no idea what move she’d make next. He still wasn’t entirely sure she wasn’t playing some sort of game with him.
    “ That’s good. What’d she say?”
    Monty leaned back against his truck. “She’s confused. Her parents died while we were deployed and then I was messed up because of…”
    Uh, yeah, he didn ’t want to talk to Lane about survivor’s guilt, because what could sound lamer to a guy who had lost his lower legs in an explosion than a guy who was screwed up because he hadn’t?
    “ Me.”
    “ Yeah, you,”