Mack has built a solitary life for himself as a railroad surveyor. The only person he can rely on is his brother and partner. But when his brother is gravely injured, Mack is forced to accept help from the lovely Josie and her sidekick Ruthie.

Josie is Mack’s opposite in every way. She’s a dreamer who has led a charmed life. She sees the good in people. She draws people in, makes them feel special.

Trapped on a mountain, surviving an avalanche, and exposure to the elements… being with Josie is the biggest risk of all. Because she makes Mack want things he’s never had before. Home. Family. Someone to love.

A sweet & cozy romance from Family Fiction’s #1 Essential Christian Romance Author (2020).

The Sunny Ridge, Montana series: Twin sisters came west searching for home and found something more.

READ MUCH ADO ABOUT JOSIE NOW

READ THE FIRST CHAPTER

“Is there a doctor in town?”

Mack Anderson’s words emerged as a demand, and the farmer frowned. Mack and his brother Howard rode on the backs of a couple of mules. They’d bypassed the small farmhouse when Mack noticed the farmer toiling in his field.

Mack couldn’t help his rudeness. His brother was in trouble. Bad trouble.

It was unlikely they were going to find help. The little town of Sunny Ridge, Montana, was still miles away. A town that small could hardly support a doctor, could it?

But he was desperate. Howard had passed out twice from the pain of his broken leg. Mack had been forced to tie him onto the back of the pack mule so they could make better time. Now, his brother’s face was pale and drawn, his eyes glassy and unfocused.

The farmer took one look at Howard’s leg, jutting out at a wrong angle, and blanched.

“No doctor, but Nell at the hotel helps patch up folks who’re in a bad way. Her niece Josie was making calls this morning. I bet you can catch up to her. She was headed West, toward town.”

He didn’t need to catch up to anyone. Surely he could locate the hotel on his own.

They kept riding.

“Oh, heavens.” A female voice rang out.

They approached another tiny farmhouse. At this one, a woman in a drab gray dress was pinning clothes to a clothesline and caught sight of Howard’s leg from yards away. “You’re in bad shape, aren’t you? Josie’s not far ahead of you. She can take you over to the hotel.”

Mack nodded tightly. He wasn’t pushing the mules into a run to catch up with anyone. He was pushing them only because Howard needed help.

Howard groaned as they neared a third farmhouse, where a horse hitched to a wagon waited near a sun-bleached fence.

A little boy chased a young girl in the yard. When they glimpsed Mack and Howard riding up, they darted toward the house, yelling, “Ma! Josie!”

He didn’t need this Josie, whoever she was.

But Howard must be at the end of his endurance. And they were still two miles—at least—from town.

Two women stepped onto the porch. One was fair and wore what was obviously a workday dress. She had a stained apron on over it. The other woman was slightly younger and had hair like a bright copper penny. She wore a dress that looked to be a similar style but the material was new, unfaded.

The younger one had to be Josie, didn’t it?

The copper-haired young woman didn’t hesitate but hitched up her skirt and hurried off the porch, rushing toward Howard’s mule just as he slumped in the saddle.

Mack saw it happening and jumped off his mule. He grabbed for his brother before Howard toppled from the saddle and supported his weight awkwardly.

“I gotta get down from here,” Howard muttered. He was still tied to the saddle.

“Let me help,” A musical voice said from behind him. A prickle of awareness went up the back of his spine.

Howard was deathly pale, and Mack’s fingers shook as he struggled with the knot.

He couldn’t refuse the woman’s offer.

She came to stand at Mack’s elbow, reaching for Howard as Mack struggled with the rope. The older woman, who must’ve lived there, had gathered her children close and was staying out of the way.

“If you want help setting his leg, my aunt is up at the—”

“Hotel. I know. You must be Josie.”

His fingers fumbled with the last knot, and he spared a second to glance at her. She was pretty enough, with that hair tucked in a low bun behind her head and a spray of freckles across her nose. Her brown-eyed gaze was intelligent. And filled with compassion. His heart kicked.

The knot came loose beneath his fingers.

“There’s room in the wagon. Can I help carry him?”

“I’ve got him.”

He staggered under Howard’s weight, but it was too late to change his mind because she’d hurried to the wagon and was lowering the tailgate. She stepped on one of the wheel spokes and clambered into the wagon bed, shifting a few crates to one side so that Howard would have a place to rest.

Mack did his best to lift him carefully into the bed, but Howard couldn’t keep from grunting in pain.

“I’m sorry,” Mack said, wincing at the look of agony on his brother’s face.

Josie draped her shawl over Howard as Mack secured the tailgate. While she climbed into the driver’s seat, Mack returned to the mule. The animal was used to carrying supplies, not men, and it wasn’t happy about being asked to let Mack ride just now but finally accepted its fate and followed Josie’s wagon. The second mule was tied to Mack’s and followed too.

Josie glanced at Howard where he lay and then at Mack. “Do you have a name?”

There hadn’t been time for introductions. He introduced himself and Howard, who had either relaxed enough to sleep or had fainted again.

He felt Josie’s gaze like the brush of a feather, though he kept his own eyes focused between the mule’s ears.

“Y’all aren’t from around here.”

Her comment didn’t have a question tacked onto the end, and he was tempted not to answer. He didn’t particularly like sharing personal information.

But she was helping Howard.

“We’re conducting a survey. Just passing through.”

“A survey? For whom? The railroad?” There was far too much excitement in her voice, and he’d been hired because Mr. Townsend trusted in Mack’s confidentiality. He gave a noncommittal shrug.

“A mapmaker?” she prodded. “Or maybe we will finally get a repair on the bridge over Crater Creek?”

He shrugged again and saw the unhappy moue her lips made.

“You really won’t say?”

“I really won’t.”

“You have a team of linemen, I suppose.”

He scowled, frustrated by her curiosity. And also because he’d had to leave the other two mules behind, tied off in a thicket near where Howard had fallen into a rocky ravine and broken his leg. His brass transit, compass, and other tools, as well as their tent and food… all of it left behind.

Of course, Howard was more important.

But if Mack lost his supplies, he could kiss the payment from Mr. Townsend good-bye.

He and Howard had worked together for three years. Howard measured, working the chain, while Mack performed the more technical aspects of the survey. They worked alone. It’d almost always been the two of them against the world. There’d never been a disaster like this.

“How do you find Montana?” she asked now. “I came here from the East, and I think it must be the most beautiful place on earth. Just look at the sky.” Her voice was far-off, almost dreamy.

His heart kicked again.

And that irritated him. She was just a girl.

“It’s fine.” The Rockies, purple in the distance, were pretty enough. But so were the Appalachians, and so were the Cascades.

She gaped at him, open-mouthed. He wasn’t looking at her. Not really. But he could see from the corner of his eye that her lips firmed into a tight line.

She stayed silent for all of a minute. “You’re very taciturn for someone who is in need of help.”

“I don’t need help.” The denial was an instant reaction. And a stupid one. Although technically, it was Howard who needed help.

She sent him a skeptical glance.

“I’ll see my brother settled and then figure out what to do from there. Does that satisfy your interrogation?”

“If you think this is an interrogation, I should warn you about Aunt Nell. She’ll want to know everything about you. We don’t get many guests.”

Good luck to Aunt Nell. Mack had been on his own for a long time in a world where he’d had to fight for scraps of food, find his own shelter, find his own way.

He was on the move so often that he had no use for friendships. Howard was his only friend. And he liked it that way. Life had taught Mack that the only person he could rely on was himself.

* * *

Josephine Weissborn had known her share of bullheaded people—her twin Juliet had a stubborn streak a mile wide—but Mack Anderson seemed to be the most obstinate man alive.

That was fine with her. If he didn’t want to talk, she would deliver him to Aunt Nell and be done with him.

The late spring breeze pulled wisps of her hair into her face, and she impatiently brushed them away.

Since Mr. Anderson couldn’t be bothered to make polite conversation, she’d spend the last few minutes before they reached town daydreaming about the upcoming trip she wanted to take.

Last autumn, before the snow set in, her aunt and uncle had taken her and Ruthie—a young girl who’d been orphaned and was currently in their care—on an overnight trip to the base of the Rocky Mountain range. It had been a much-needed diversion after Josie’s twin sister Juliet, had been married to her cowboy sweetheart. Josie and Juliet had been each other’s constant companions since birth, and adjusting to living in a world where Juliet didn’t share her bedroom had been difficult for Josie.

Aunt Nell had suggested the short trip as a distraction.

Josie had begged to take along her camera and several plates. She’d felt like herself for the first time behind the lens of her camera. The windblown mountains, the sunlit valley, the clouds throwing shadows…

She’d come alive.

But her tintypes hadn’t turned out. She’d taken plenty of still-life photographs. Her aunt’s table. Juliet and Rodeo. Ruthie, posing with one of the horses.

She’d wanted to try her hand at landscapes, but her tintypes had been awful.

She needed to go back and try again.

She’d spent hours poring over a series of newspaper photographs, and she was certain she’d figured out what she’d done wrong.

She just needed a second chance.

But Uncle Ezra had only recently recovered from a bout of croup that had settled in his lungs and turned to pneumonia. Aunt Nell didn’t think he was fit to travel, nor did she think she could leave him behind.

Josie could make the journey on her own. If she borrowed a horse from the livery, she could ride out in a day and a half. She didn’t mind the idea of camping alone.

If Aunt Nell would agree.

Which she wouldn’t. She was too protective.

She glanced at the man in the wagon bed. With a bad break like that, he wouldn’t be up to traveling for days. Maybe weeks. Which meant her aunt would have a paying customer at the hotel, and it would be even longer before Josie could cajole her into taking another trip.

Drat.

“How much further?”

She sent a sideways look at the man riding his mule. He might be rude, but he was certainly handsome with the hair beneath the brim of his hat bleached blond by the sun. Or he would be if he got rid of his scruffy, overgrown beard. And took a bath.

His blue eyes reminded her of the sky’s reflection on a mountain lake. Was surveying a physical job? His physique seemed to prove that it was.

It would serve him right if she answered with a shrug, but she took pity on him. Every time he glanced into the back of the wagon, she could see his worry for his brother. She tried to imagine what she would feel if Jules were injured so gravely.

“It’s not far. Just over the next rise.”

He didn’t bother with a thank-you.

Within a few minutes, they had crested the hill, and Sunny Ridge came into view. It wasn’t anything to write home about. A cluster of buildings. The hotel standing proudly at the end of the one street.

They were still several dozen yards away when eight-year-old Ruthie ran outside. When she caught sight of the stranger riding beside Josie, she turned tail and ran back inside, probably to tell Aunt Nell someone was coming.

Nell came onto the porch, wiping her hands with her apron. Josie reined in as close as she could.

She made quick introductions between her aunt and the two brothers. Nell took one look at the man’s injury and rushed inside, shooing Ruthie ahead of her. “Find Ezra!” she called.

The last glimpse Josie had was of the girl’s rolling eyes.

Josie understood that. Her uncle could be forgetful, and there was no telling where he’d gotten off to on this mild afternoon. Who knew how long it would take for Ruthie to locate him?

“Ruthie may not be able to find my uncle,” she told Mack. She set the brake and carefully held her skirts out of the way as she descended from the wagon. “I’ll help you carry your brother inside.”

The skepticism was clear in his expression.

“I’m stronger than I look,” she said tartly. She really had never met such a rude specimen of a man.

She decided to play on his sympathies for his brother. “He’ll be more comfortable inside on a bed. And my aunt can get started doctoring him.”

She saw the quick flash of emotion on his face. It was exacerbated when his brother couldn’t hold in a low moan.

“Fine,” Mr. Anderson muttered.

Between the two of them, they managed to scoot Howard down to the end of the wagon near the tailgate.

“I think if we lock our arms together, we can make a sort of chair for him to rest in,” she suggested.

“He’s heavier than you think,” Mack warned.

“I’ll be fine.”

She wasn’t prepared for the shock of attraction that zipped through her when she reached out and locked hands with Mack.

He felt it too, she was sure, because his gaze darted up to meet hers. She caught the startled awareness in his eyes.

His brother moaned again, and there was no time for reflection or discussion. They needed to get Howard inside. Now.

There would be time to dwell on this unwelcome attraction later.