Read Montana Darling (Big Sky Mavericks Book 3) for Free Online Page B

home—a home Howard and his four children, Peter, Penny, Charlotte and Ben, more or less took over. And Mom let them.
    “But your room is so big,” Mom had reasoned. “The girls will share it, and you and Peter can have Flynn’s room. Ben needs a room of his own because of his condition.” Some mysterious breathing problem that sucked up everybody’s time, attention and money. The fat, ugly kid reminded Ryker of the Garbage Pail Kids cards his friends used to collect. He’d hated the little brat and even wished he’d die.
    He wondered how old Benny was now? Was he attending college on Ryker’s dime, too?
    His fingers tightened on his phone. He was so damn furious he didn’t even hear Louise approach.
    “Ryker?”
    Her voice held a note of caution.
    He shoved the phone in his pocket. “Sorry.”
    “Bad news?”
    “You could say that. It appears my stepfather has been draining my trust fund dry over the past year…or longer.” Before Colette’s death, Ryker had been so in love he hadn’t paid any attention to his U.S. accounts. Since Ryker went off the deep end trying to make sense of life, love, loss, he’d lived mostly off the grid, using a pay as you go phone and spending cash for his purchases. “And there’s a good chance he sold the land I’ve been living on. A woman claiming to be the rightful owner dropped by this morning to tell me to get off her land or she’d call the sheriff.”
    She sat beside him. “You need a lawyer.”
    “I can’t afford one.” The reality of his situation struck hard. He didn’t have enough money for a train ticket home. “Maybe if I sell my bike…” No. He needed deeper pockets and more resources. He needed help. “Once my brother gets off the fire line in California, he’ll lend me whatever I need to get to the bottom of this.”
    Louise shook her head. “That might be too late. The fires sound like they’re getting worse, not better. If this lady is threatening to evict you, you need help now.” She pulled out her phone and punched in a number.
    Ryker started to protest but Louise held up one finger, in a bossy librarian manner. When the person on the other end answered, she said, “Good morning, dear. I need a favor. Text me Mia Zabrinski’s number. You mentioned she and Austen are opening a law office. I’m sending her her first client.”
    Mia Zabrinski?
    Ryker sat back and looked to the sky. A rumble of laughter started low in his belly and crowed upward, releasing in a loud guffaw. The connections in small towns never ceased to amaze him.
    “What on earth is so funny?” Louise asked.
    He wiped the tears from the corner of his eyes using the back of his hand. “Sorry about that. The irony is so rich. Mia Zabrinski is the woman who said she and her husband bought my land.”
    “Oh, my. Well, that’s not good.” Louise took a deep breath and let it out. “Plan B.” She held up her phone and pushed a name on the screen. “We’ll call Ren Fletcher, then. He helped Oscar and me straighten out a problem we had with my husband’s ex-partner. I’m not sure he’s taking new clients—he’s a newlywed, but he’ll point you in the right direction.”
    Ryker looked toward Copper Mountain. Where, he wondered, would that be?

Chapter 3
    ‡
    “M om. Stop. Seriously. This is useless. My head was full of wicked ugly drugs when I packed. I don’t know where anything is.”
    Mia, her mother, Sarah, and the kids’ dog, Roxy, had been digging through packing boxes stacked with pyramid-builder efficiency in one stall of the Zabrinskis’s two-car garage. Mom clamped her hands on her slightly widened hips impatiently. “That doesn’t sound like you. It must be here somewhere.”
    Mia closed her eyes. The person who packed these boxes was a stranger—a woman possessed by poisonous chemicals, and by an even-more-poisonous anger. She’d wanted to hide all evidence of the perfect life she’d once bragged about to any and all that would listen.
    “I