Free Second Chance Bride (Montana Born Brides) by Trish Morey Page A

to surprise him.” A pause, before she continued, her voice flat. “And I did.”
    “What happened?”
    “I texted him once I was in Perth. I said from the airport, ‘ Surprise, I’m right here in Perth! ’ He texted back right away. Said what a surprise and he was thrilled and where was I staying?
    “And fool that I was, I couldn’t see it even then. I said, with him of course.
    “That’s when he said he was away on business and to get myself booked in somewhere overnight and he’d fix everything when he came back the next day.
    “And I sat in this dingy tiny box of a hotel room, because it was all I could afford after blowing my money on a one way ticket, and there was nothing in it but a fuzzy TV and a Gideon’s Bible and a phone book. And because stupid me hadn’t ever bothered to find out his address, because stupid me thought he’d be so happy to pick me up from the airport, I wouldn’t need his address, I had no idea where he lived. So I looked him up. And I found him.”
    Her fingers were still troubling the pages of the magazine. Mitch put his hand over hers and she looked up at him, tears swimming in her eyes. “I knocked on the door of this very suburban house in a very suburban street with a car out the front that had kiddie seats in the back and I remember thinking, please god, let me have this wrong.
    “ He opened the door in the middle of saying something to someone behind him and I remember there was a kid’s trike hanging from his hand and toys spread all over the floor. Then a woman appeared from another room asking who it was and she had a belly the size of a basketball and I died on that front porch. I just died.
    “And I remember I said, ‘Sorry, wrong house,’ and he shut the door in my face and went back to his suburban existence and his pregnant wife and his kids and just left me standing there.”
    Mitch put his arm around her and pulled her close. She shook her head. “I’m not crying because of him. I’m crying because I was so stupid. Everyone warned me and I didn’t listen. Because Tara told me I was crazy and that he’d be some sixty-year-old pervert but I knew better, because we’d Skyped and he was so good-looking and I knew she was probably just jealous because she’s such a stick-in-the-mud and her Simon is so darn dull. And I just, I just wanted to show everyone that I could do something right.”
    She hiccupped against his chest, her long braid a heavy snake over his arm. “I’m going to be more like Tara from now on. I’m going to stop being impulsive and I’m going to be sensible and I’m going to think about things.”
    ‘‘Maybe you needed to come here,” he offered, his thumb stroking her shoulder. “The big changes in our lives rarely take place with us just wanting them. Usually they come about because of some major defining event.”
    “You think Travis was my major defining event?”
    “Maybe.”
    “But then I jumped head long into Bella’s.”
    “You were desperate, that’s all. Look how long you had to think about my offer, and I thought that was a no brainer. So you see? You are being less impulsive already.”
    “You think?”
    “So long as you remember one thing.”
    She sniffed and sighed, and he could feel her body relaxing into him, “What’s that?”
    “Don’t try and be someone else, even if it’s your own sister. Don’t change who you are, Scarlett. I like you, just the way you are.”
    After a little while, she said sleepily, “You sound a lot like my Aunt Margot.”
    He kissed her hair. “I knew I liked the sound of her.” And as she fell into a doze against his chest he wondered where his words had come from. He’d met her barely two days ago—what did he care about her messy impulsive life that he needed to reassure her, even if it was the truth?
    T hat was the bit that niggled at him the most.
    Because he did like her.
    A lot.

    Broome was hot and humid and her jeans stuck to her legs but after bumping their