Adventure For A Bride: A clean historical mail order bride romance (Montana Passion Book 3) by Amelia Rose

brother to be such a good boy.” Millie smiled graciously, her tone light and warm, acting as though the entire incident was behind them. Micah looked up at her from beneath his lashes, grateful that she’d spared him a whipping but still irritated that she was there causing problems in the first place.
    Luke decided it must be safe if this strange woman had saved his brother from a well-deserved spanking. He darted forward again and grasped her hand, smiling up at her with a mouth full of pearly baby teeth. He looked over at Micah, who frowned at his disloyalty, then stuck his tongue out at his brother.
    “And we won’t be having any of that from you, either,” Millie said jokingly. “Brothers should get along, and be a help to their parents.”
    “We don’t have parents,” Luke answered innocently. “Just our pa.”
    “Luke!” Wyatt barked harshly, warning his son to be quiet. To Wyatt’s astonishment, Millie held up a hand to silence him and continued speaking to the little boy.
    “You don’t have parents? Whatever do you mean?” she asked in a high voice.
    “We had a ma, but I don’t know where she is now.” The boy looked at the ground in shame as his lower lip began to tremble of its own accord. It wasn’t long before the first tear slipped from the corner of his eye.
    Millie nodded her head at Gretchen to ask her to take the baby, then dropped down to look the boy in the eye. She pulled him closer and let him sit on her bent knee, then said, “You do have a ma, and you always will. You might not be able to see her, but she can see you from where she sits with the angels. She loves you very much, and I can already tell that she’s very, very proud of you. But because she can’t be with you right now, she’s asked me to come stay here and help care for you. Would that be all right?”
    Luke nodded silently, then pressed one small palm against Millie’s cheek and rested his head against the other cheek. Gretchen had to turn away lest the child see her emotional state, and even Pryor and Kieran looked away coughing and scuffed at the ground with their boot tips to avoid giving themselves away.
    “And you?” Millie asked, holding her hand out to Micah. “Would it be all right if I cared for you, too, since I’ll be caring for your brother and sister?”
    Micah paused for an eternity, then took a hesitant step toward Millie’s outstretched fingers. The sight of his little brother in her arms was enticing, as he, too, longed to be cradled in a motherly way. But at the last second, his loyalty got the best of him, and he turned around and ran back into his father’s house.
    Millie struggled to smile good-naturedly. “We’ll give him a little more time, won’t we?” she said to Luke, still nestled in her arms. He nodded without lifting his head from where it rested on her shoulder. Millie looked to Wyatt, but his expression was entirely unreadable, torn between gladness that his children had someone who so obviously cared about them, and not wanting this upstart to try to dislodge Anna Mae’s place in their hearts.
     

Chapter Ten
     
    Gretchen wasn’t so sure about leaving Millie in the tiny cabin surrounded by unruly and unwelcoming Flynns, but Kieran finally convinced her it was the only way they’d ever get used to each other. He left off without saying that he was actually a little more concerned for Wyatt with Millie around the place, and not the other way around.
    The first day or so, each party kept to him and herself. Wyatt went about his chores without ever acknowledging the veritable intruder, and Millie busied herself with unpacking her belongings and passing the time out of doors in the crisp early spring sunshine. While so much about this endeavor had turned out to be one stunning disappointment after another, one thing was certain: the wilds of Montana were every bit as beautiful as she’d hoped, and every bit as exotic.
    The only times their paths crossed for that first