Montana, and you don’t even know it.”
“I….” She didn’t know how to finish, because she’d never thought she’d thought of herself all that negatively.
“I worry that you’ll work yourself to the bone only to prove a point, but really, no one is waiting for you to do anything but what you’re already doing.”
Montana focused on her coffee, a pinch starting in her chest. “Is it wrong to want a place of my own? For me and Aurora?”
“Of course not,” Aunt Jackie said. “But who are you going to call when you move in?” She looked up then, her eyes much sharper now. “Your mother? Georgia? Paris?”
“Okay,” Montana said.
“Johnny?”
“Okay,” Montana barked, her mood dark as night now.
Aunt Jackie didn’t back down, though. She held Montana’s glare for several long moments before she sighed. “I just want you to be happy. Bob and I love having you here. You are not a burden. We love it.”
“I know.” Montana dropped her gaze too, not wanting to argue with her aunt. No, she would not call either of her sisters to tell them about her new house or apartment. And she hadn’t spoken to her ex-husband in a decade; he wouldn’t care about her getting into her own place other than how much it cost. If he determined he could get anything from Montana—even a simple ten-dollar bill, he’d do it.
“Aunt Jackie?” she asked.
“Mm?”
“If I…I mean, do you…do you ever talk to your sister?”
Aunt Jackie brought her head up again. “Yes,” she said. “Your mother and I speak often enough.”
Montana nodded, nothing else to ask, because she hadn’t intended to ask about her mother, but Bishop Glover. She bit back the question as if Aunt Jackie would mind if she started dating for a reason she could not name. She and her aunt had never spoken of men, and Montana figured she probably put off some vibe that said she wasn’t interested in meeting someone new and trying to fall in love again.
She could admit she’d been beyond sour on men when she’d come to Three Rivers. Not only had her husband broken her heart and her trust, but after Montana had finally gotten back into the game of dating, her own sister had played a cruel, cruel card.
“What are you thinking, my darling?” Aunt Jackie asked, and Montana looked up from her coffee.
“Nothing,” she said, putting on the brightest, biggest smile she could. “I have to go up to the ranch this afternoon and meet with the exterminator. Aurora is going to a friend’s house. I don’t know if we’ll be home for dinner.”
“I’m on the swing tonight,” Aunt Jackie said. “I’ll text Bob and let him know to pick up a burger on his way home.”
Montana nodded and got up, a groan pulling through her throat as a pain shot up her back. “I’m okay,” she said before Aunt Jackie could ask. “I think that bed up at that ranch was actually too nice for me.” She took a couple of hobbling steps before her gait evened, and she thought everything about Shiloh Ridge Ranch was too nice for her—including Bishop Glover.
Maybe she should just maintain a professional, working relationship with him and nothing more.
Nothing more, echoed through her head as she lay in her own inferior bed and prepared to get the sleep she’d missed last night.
Montana pulled up to the Ranch House, as Bishop called it, complete with capital letters. It looked like a normal house, only bigger, and it overlooked the entirety of Three Rivers. When she got out of her truck, she turned and looked out over the side of the hill, the town below and to the north.
“This is incredible,” she said. If she lived somewhere like this, she’d sit on the front porch and sip coffee every morning, imagining what the people in town were doing. Who was late for work, and who was impatient to get their coffee so they wouldn’t be late for work.
Who’d just made it through the green light, and whose car wouldn’t start. She smiled to herself, stories flowing through her mind. The rumble of another truck interrupted her, and she turned her gaze to the road she’d come up to find two more vehicles coming.
The first was Bishop, in that big, black, sexy truck she’d ridden in last night. Right behind him came the exterminator, with a truck so wide, she felt sure it wouldn’t fit in the driveway.
She got out of the way so Bishop could park next to