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“The first thing I’m buying is the biggest, softest feather bed to be found. That’s what you deserve.”
Hanna snickered as he set her on the porch. “My, I have married well, haven’t I? I have a husband who places my comfort above all else—”
She barely had time to complete the teasing comment before Cale clutched her hand and nearly dragged her up the steps in his haste for privacy. A blush exploded on her cheeks when the stage owner—a wiry little man with frizzy gray hair—glanced up from where he sat, warming himself by the fire. He grinned wryly as his gaze bounced back and forth between her and Cale.
Hanna decided she didn’t care if the proprietor knew why they were in an all-fired rush to reach their room. If her legs had been longer, she’d have been the one tugging Cale up the steps.
Praise for Carol Finch’s previous title
Call of the White Wolf
“The wholesome goodness of the characters…will touch your heart and soul.”
—Rendezvous
“A love story that aims straight for the heart and never misses.”
—Romantic Times
#636 BADLANDS HEART
Ruth Langan
#637 NORWYCK’S LADY
Margo Maguire
#638 LORD SEBASTIAN’S WIFE
Katy Cooper
Bounty Hunter’s Bride
Carol Finch
Available from Harlequin Historicals and
CAROL FINCH
Call of the White Wolf #592
Bounty Hunter’s Bride #635
Other works include:
Harlequin Duets
Fit To Be Tied #36
A Regular Joe #45
Mr. Predictable #62
The Family Feud #72
Lonesome Ryder?/Restaurant Romeo* #81
Silhouette Special Edition
Not Just Another Cowboy #1242
Soul Mates #1320
This book is dedicated to my husband,
Ed, and our children—Kurt, Jill, Christie, Jeff and Jon. And to our grandchildren, Livia, Blake, Kennedy and Brooklynn. Hugs and kisses!
Contents
Chapter One
Fort Smith, 1870s
“Oh, my God, what have I done?” Hanna Malloy whispered apprehensively as she stepped off the steamboat that had transported her upriver from New Orleans. She stared at the gloomy, overcast sky, which promised another spring rain shower at any moment and listened to the drone of insects that swarmed near the river. In dismay, she surveyed the muddy frontier outpost of Fort Smith. This was her salvation? This was the answer to her prayers and her reward for six months of careful planning to seize control of her future? What in heaven’s name could she have been thinking!
“Want some help with them bags, missy?”
Hanna stepped away from the foul-smelling miscreant who’d approached her while she was lost in thought. The shaggy-haired man with beady gray eyes flashed her a smile that was missing two front teeth.
“Thank you for your kind offer of assistance, but I can manage on my own,” she replied.
The short, pudgy brute eyed her carpetbags covetously, glanced this way and that, then lumbered off. Hanna had the unmistakable feeling that if there hadn’t been dozens of river boatmen, cowboys fresh from trail drives, gamblers and railroad workers bustling around her, the man would’ve snatched her bags and taken off at a dead run.
Hanna gulped and glanced uneasily around her. She wasn’t in the best of company at the moment. Indeed, in all her twenty years of existence, she’d never been in such bad company without the protection of a chaperon.
A sense of panic and disillusionment very nearly overwhelmed Hanna. For moral support and a sense of comfort, she clasped the golden locket—a childhood gift from her mother—that hung around her neck. Inhaling a bracing breath, she strode past the abandoned, stone-walled garrison that had been built on a sandstone bluff overlooking the Arkansas River.
“Oh, Lord,” Hanna muttered as she hiked toward the frontier town set a mere hundred yards from the eastern border of infamous Indian Territory—where thieves and murderers were reported to run rampant. There were no paved avenues, no luxurious hotels, no fashionable boutiques and no lights to illuminate the mud-caked streets. There were, however, Hanna noted, amazed, a string of thirty saloons, a newspaper office, one bank and several shops that provided basic necessities. Dozens of wagons, hacks and saddle horses waited beside the uneven boardwalks.
She’d planned and schemed, hoarded her monthly allowance and used the funds her departed mother had set aside for her wedding trousseau for this? Sweet merciful heavens! Even in her modest-priced lavender gown Hanna looked overdressed and out of place in comparison to the few women she passed on the street.
Hanna