Snowbound in Montana Read Online Free

by.
    He’d been hoping she would sit up front with him. The seat across the aisle was vacant. But she moved to the very back, where she pulled out her phone, as well as a set of ear buds.
    Marshall focused back on his clipboard, and his task of checking off the guests as they were loaded onto the bus. They had an eclectic group, but this often happened at Christmas. The two families—the Bracketts with their twin daughters, and the Ritchies who had a fourteen-year-old daughter and a younger son—were seated in rows across from each other. He could see right away that the teenaged girls were going to make friends. They were leaning into the aisle, comparing the music on their i-Phones. Soon, he guessed, they’d be switching seats so they could all be together.
    He felt a little sorry for the boy, seven-year-old Kevin. He was in the window seat next to his sister, Anna, already squirming with boredom, despite the i-Pad his mother had given him. Marshall hoped the parents would at least pay him some attention. But given the way they were pouring over their book of New York Time’s Crossword Puzzles, he kind of doubted it.
    The two couples on the trip were seated nearer the front, just behind him. Mary and Ted Arbuckle, in their late fifties, sat in the silent, companionable way of people who’d been together a long time. Typically, he found couples to be the least work in a group, since they tended to be self-contained units. He wasn’t so sure about the Kellys though—Jason and Sydney, attractive, athletic looking, thirty-somethings. Jason had his arm over the back of the bus seat, leaning in toward his wife, while Sydney was perched on the far edge of her seat, as if trying to maximize the distance between them.
    He could sense the tension between them. Not a good thing.
    With the last name ticked off on his sheet, they were ready to go. “All set, Stan,” he told the driver, before settling back, prepared to enjoy what would hopefully be an uneventful three-hour trip into the backcountry of Montana.
    But of course, he couldn’t relax. He was a little worried about the weather forecast, which promised snow—and lots of it. Hopefully, the storm would hit after they arrived, and wouldn’t last too long. Fresh snow was good. Blizzards were not.
    It took about two and a half hours to drive north to Livingston, then west to Whitehall, and finally south again to Dillon, which was the nearest town to the Baker Creek Lodge. A few flakes started falling during the last part of the trip, but nothing major. The lodge itself was tucked into the Tobacco Root Mountains—not the most poetic of names, but the beauty of the land made up for that, in Marshall’s opinion.
    As the bus made the final turn onto the five-mile access road to the lodge, he turned around, making sure everyone was seated. The roads on this last stretch were narrow and windy. He didn’t want anyone causing any distractions to the driver.
    Everything looked good. A few people had fallen asleep. The Ritchies were still hard at their crossword puzzle. Poor Kevin was staring out the window, looking bored. From the back, Marshall thought he caught Eliza glancing his way, but a second later her eyes were closed, as if she, too, had fallen asleep. He must have imagined that look.
    So much for the extra effort he’d made to include her on the trip. Looked like she intended on keeping as much distance between them as possible.
    *
    Eliza regretted her decision to sit at the back of the bus. She had a tendency to get motion-sick, and this last stretch of the trip had been the worst. But she’d seen what she’d thought was a hopeful look in Marshall McKenzie’s eyes when she’d stepped onto the bus, and so she hadn’t taken one of the seats in the front near him. She’d come on this trip to escape romantic troubles. Not seek out new ones.
    As the roads narrowed, and became more twisty, she found herself looking toward Marshall, trying to judge from his