Read Online The Reluctant Bride (Montana Born Brides) by Katherine Garbera - Free Book Online Page B

My dad was a ranch hand in California.”
    “ I never knew that,” she said.
    “ We didn’t have time to talk, did we?”
    “ Not really. I’m glad you had the chance to Skype with my parents the night we got engaged.”
    “ Me too. I would have liked to have known them,” he said.
    She would have liked that too.
    “Tell me about Afghanistan. Talk to me about the day that Lane got hurt,” she said. If they had any chance of getting married, she knew she needed to understand the man he was now. And it was easier somehow to talk about him than about herself and her own emptiness.
    He tossed the last bits of coffee from his mug onto the ground and looked out toward the mountains and away from her. She let the silence build between them for as long as she could, before she reached over and took the mug from his hand and set it on the wood of the tree trunk.
    “ We have to talk about it sometime.”
    He gave her a gruff sort of nod and looked back at her, and she knew it was her imagination, but she saw the desert in his eyes. She knew he needed something from her and she patted his arm, trying for comfort, but, because she was unsure, it felt weird even to her.
    “ We were on patrol through the bomb-created corridors in Now Zad, using the minesweeper and disabling any IEDs we came across. Lane and I always divided them into evens and odds. Figuring the odds would be in our favor. I stopped to prepare to disable a possible IED and Lane moved further forward with the rest of our team and set off a low metal bomb that we couldn’t detect.”
    He talked low, his voice gruff. He stopped after that. Turned his head back toward the horizon and she scooted closer, wrapping her arm around his shoulder. She didn’t know what to say. Her heart ached and she knew when he’d needed her, she hadn’t been there. The fact that he was here now gave her a chance to make up for that. “God, baby, I’m so sorry. That must have been horrible. It could have been you.”
    “ Why wasn’t it me?” he asked.
    “ God had a different plan for you. He needed you to save Lane. And now he’s fine. Living a good life, right?”
    She really didn ’t know Lane that well. She’d talked to Annie and Sienna, but the actual Scott brothers were still sort of a mystery to her. She was a florist and engaged, so most of the men of Marietta gave her wide berth.
    “ I guess,” he said, shrugging and then getting up and walking away. “Maybe he’s just making the most of his situation.”
    “ As he should,” Risa said. Guilt was a hard thing to live with. She didn’t want to deflect what Monty was feeling, but she did sort of understand it.
    “ You’re right about that. I was the one in charge that day, Ri. I should have—”
    “ What? You said yourself that it was undetectable. I know you, Monty. If there had been a way to change the outcome you would have done it. Did you freeze when he was hurt?”
    Monty turned to look at her. “No. The explosion rocked the earth and there were dirt, rocks, splinters and all sorts of rubble. We were all calling for Lane but his radio was fried. I found him in a crater. When I got to him, he was struggling to put on a tourniquet, and Tony and I brushed his hands out of the way and did it for him.
    “ Instincts took over. We got him stable and evacuated back to base. It was only then I started thinking it could have been me.”
    She wrapped her arms around her own waist as he isolated himself in emotions that she couldn ’t break through. She was scared for him and felt a bit of anger that she hadn’t been able to comfort him when he’d needed it. Maybe there was some way she could help him now.
    She walked over a little bit closer and he turned toward her.
    He grabbed her and held her close, his face buried in her neck. “I was so glad it wasn’t me.”
    She held him tightly to her and rubbed his back. “I am, too.”
    “ What kind of man does that make me?” he asked.
    She pulled back and