Last Year's Bride (Montana Born Brides) by Anne McAllister Read Free Book Online Page A

all the things she asked him. Over the course of the evening and much of the night, she learned about his dad and his grandmother and his teenage sister, about the brother who’d gone out east and never returned. He told her about the cattle who needed feeding and moving and doctoring and the horses that needed shoeing. He talked about the roof on the house needing mending, and the work that had to be done on the original homestead cabin that had been his grandparents’ and was now his.
    She had asked, “Who does all that?”
    And he ’d said, “Me.”
    Who else was there? he had said with a shrug. Then he had gone on to explain. His dad was determined to do everything he could. But his dad had a bad heart and no desire to undergo the knife to get it fixed. His grandmother, nearly eighty, was in good shape, but not for herding cattle. His sister was still in high school.
    “ Sadie’s smart. Real smart,” Cole had said. “She needs to go to college. Get out of Marietta.”
    Nell could tell he intended to see that it happened. She could tell that first night that Cole thought it was his job to take care of them all.
    Nothing had changed, except while she and Cole had been getting married in Reno last April, his dad had had the heart attack they ’d all been worrying about. Cole hadn’t found out until he got home. Then his plan to tell the family about his spur of the moment marriage had been shelved.
    “ I can’t tell ‘em now,” he’d told Nell in a phone call from the hospital. “The doc says no stress. I’ll do it later, when the time is right.”
    “ Of course. I understand,” Nell had agreed at once. But months had passed. Ten of them. And the time had never been right.
    And now Nell wondered how much of a driving factor his father’s heart attack had been, and how much of Cole’s decision was motivated by the realization when he’d got home that marrying her had been a mistake because he didn’t really love her at all.
    The thought made Nell ’s stomach knot. She looked at him, wishing she could see his mind, discern what he felt as easily as she could see his rumpled dark hair, his smooth shaven chin and strong hard jaw.
    “ Talkin’ won’t do any good, Nell,” he said roughly. “It was a nice idea at the time, but—” he shrugged “—in the long run, it won’t work.”
    “ So you’re just going to walk away.” Her eyes challenged him and for a moment she thought she saw the fire of combat in them.
    But then the fire went out of them. They went opaque and unreadable and Cole nodded. “Yep.”
    Nell ’s fingers curled tightly, her nails biting into her palms. “Because you don’t love me.”
    Pain flickered across his features. “I didn’t say that.”
    “ You don’t have to.” She stood, never letting go of his gaze, vowing that she wouldn’t be the first to look away.
    Cole ’s mouth twisted. “It’s not like that.”
    “ No? What’s it like then?”
    His eyes shuttered for a moment. His jaw tightened. He seemed to be engaged in an internal battle. And then as if he couldn’t help himself—though whether he won or lost, Nell didn’t know— Cole moved. He reached to touch her cheek.
    Instinctively Nell turned into his touch so that it wasn ’t her cheek his fingers touched, but her lips that caressed his palm.
    He made a strangled sound, and wrapped his other arm around her shoulders, drawing her close. And then there was no distance, no space between them, and Nell was right where she wanted to be, hard against the solid warmth of his chest so she could feel the beat of his heart.
    “ Oh, hell, Nell.” His voice was as ragged as the breath he drew as he held her tight and buried his face in her hair. Nell slid her arms around his back, holding him close as his lips moved over her, kissing her hair, her jaw, her cheeks, her chin, and finally—at last—her mouth.
    His touch was thawing her. Since they’d parted in Reno ten months ago, she’d grown