The Prairie Doctor’s Bride. Kathryn Albright

and safe. He couldn’t imagine his own parents breaking the law in order to take care of him. They had packed him off to boarding school when he was Tommy’s age—with a formal, undemonstrative goodbye. Miss Marks would never have let her son go away at all.

      It had to be impossibly hard for her to survive on that piece of land. Almost any other woman in her situation would have moved into town long ago. What was it that kept her there? That plot of land or her unmarried status?

      She was an interesting woman—very different than any he’d ever met before. She was self-sufficient, stubborn and emotional all wrapped up under that ugly, floppy hat. And oddly enough, charming in an unsophisticated way. She had her pride. And she had certainly been worried about him being there all night even though it was her fault he was there in the first place. Guess she hadn’t thought that all the way through until morning came—another indication of how desperate she’d been about her son’s condition.

      He stopped walking as a new thought occurred. Maybe it wasn’t her own reputation that she had been worried about. Maybe it was ruining his reputation that concerned her.

      He started walking again.

      Now, there was an interesting concept.