Books

Out of Splinters and Ashes

Crowned Heart winner and Rone Finalist

Cate is a runner. She prefers to help her fiancé run his senate race, but instead she runs to avoid the friend who always defeats her. She also runs to fix what’s broken between her grandmother, who has moved out of the family home, and her grandfather, who is accused by the army of a WWII crime.

Dietrich is a writer. He prefers to use his journalistic pen as an avenging weapon for truth, but when he aims his talent at Cate’s grandfather he finds his heart gets in the way of his ink. Cate runs hard to escape and fix instead of to win, but an unexpected finish line challenges her when Dietrich puts himself and his heart directly in her path.

Chapter 1 (partial)

The book was small with a hard, plain cover, dark and dusty green with an embossed flower barely visible on its front. Dietrich held it on his open palm, stretched his other arm upward, and twisted the ridged plastic casing of the airplane’s reading light. A soft glow lit a circle around the name pressed beneath the flower: Amabile. A name and a book that had meant nothing when Monika, the woman claiming to be Dietrich’s aunt, had handed it to him.

“The author is the same on both books.” Monika pointed to the paper booklet she’d first given him, explaining her natural mother had wrapped that one in Monika’s blanket with her when Monika was given up for adoption at birth. “They are the same name and the same story. I found the hardcover book after my adoptive mother gave me the first. This story is all I have to find my real mother.”

“You still haven’t found her. I’m sorry.” Dietrich made no mistake declaring Monika was mistaken. It was what he did; he was a journalist of all that was pure and the truth of and for his country. And now for his family, his Oma, his grandmother who couldn’t be Monika’s mother. Erika Müller, his grandmother’s name at that time, could never have given birth here in Berlin, right before the Second World War, before she’d even met his grandfather.

“My real father is in there, too, if that’s my mother’s story. He was American. You’re a journalist, one of the top in Germany. You write for the government, so you would want to know the truth about me…about us…wouldn’t you?”

Dietrich looked at Monika then, tall and slender, light hair, and narrow features. She almost resembled Germany’s old Aryan ideal from that war, just like he did, he being Oma’s true descendant. Monika wasn’t claiming to be from Dietrich’s Opa, his grandfather. She was claiming to be half American, from another man, from before the war. It couldn’t be.

Oma would never have loved an enemy or allowed herself to be taken advantage of by one. What this stranger—Monika—was saying would destroy their family, not to mention his integrity and reputation as the author of all that was right for his country.

“Erika Müller was surely my mother. Erika Schmidt now, I realize, since she married your grandfather. She was an author before she married him. And I understand that the story types between hers and this one are different, but if you…”

“My Oma is not your mother. Again, I’m sorry, but you couldn’t be more wrong. About everything, including about me if you think with my reputation I would trust fiction as a reliable source.” He asked her to leave and she agreed, but she refused to take the hardcover book with her.

“Read it. I know it’s a story, but it has to be true. Show it to your Oma and ask her. I’ll come back soon…sometime soon. Maybe then I can meet her.”

He wouldn’t, and Monika wouldn’t either. He would never read it or show it to Oma, and Monika would never be allowed back. He kept the book so she’d go, intending to mail it to her with a letter warning her to never return. He would have burned the book if it hadn’t been for the determination on Monika’s face, the threat her desperation posed. This book and her silly theory meant too much to her, though it meant nothing to him.

Until he found another. Also plain, its size and coloring barely noticeable amongst the other books in Oma’s attic. Those books were her romantic tales, their covers exploding with lovers entangled in intimate poses—books she’d written and was well known for, stories that had kept at least Germany’s women warm before and into the Second World War. Erika Müller was slanted across the bottoms of each of those covers in delicate script, appropriately alluring for such stories.

But the book he’d found near them was like what Monika had left behind. Ordinary, with THE MIRROR embossed in simple block lettering at the top, and Amabile at the bottom, beneath the same sort of flower.

It couldn’t mean anything. It was surely a coincidence. But he’d done his research then—on Monika, on Amabile, even on Erika Müller. But he’d asked Erika Schmidt in person, not about Monika, or Amabile, or about loving an American enemy, but about being a writer, something the two of them had shared in common even though she hadn’t written since before he was born. He’d also asked again about her injuries, the burns and scars she kept covered by clothing even in the summer. “Furnace explosion.” That was all Oma ever said. But he knew it was a tremendous explosion that had nearly killed her not long before the war. Making it impossible for her to have had an American lover and deliver a child at that time.

Dietrich set Monika’s book on his lap and opened The Mirror again. The faded print stared up at him.

He’d always known. He’d always closed his eyes to what was but wasn’t there with Oma even before these books and Monika had come to his door. His journalistic instinct, the inner eye that turned impressions into words, had always sensed something.

He’d been aware of an occupied vacancy at Oma’s side, an absence so powerful it was palpable. It was in the way she stood, the way she moved, so much a part of her it had become a part of their family, all of them allowing space for a presence that wasn’t there. He’d excused it as sorrow. She’d lost her parents, given up her writing, and then her husband had passed, his Opa.

But the manifestation of what was missing had been missing much longer than at least his grandfather. That absence, that invisible presence, had a form, according to Monika. The form of a man, and he was American. A runner in Hitler’s Olympics, tall and lanky and blond. And cruel. According to the stories, he’d run fast, run away with Amabile’s heart, and then run away for good. Dietrich stared at the sort of book he’d never bothered to read, this one in particular being one he wished he hadn’t.

He leaned back in his seat. He would read this and the other book one more time each on the flight from Berlin to New York, sifting out every detail about “him” that he could—the American who had stolen Amabile’s heart and left her with nothing but scars…and, God help them all, possibly a baby. He’d told Monika to stay away, that he’d contact her in two weeks when he returned. By the time this flight landed, he would know, he would have discovered enough about this man to be able to find him if he existed.

Available at Amazon:

Love on a Train

The moment Martha noticed Raymond on the train, everything her mother warned against erupted – romantic notions, palpitating heart, the desire to write it all in a novel. Martha lived and wrote that love story until the day Raymond handed her a sketch. “Want to see a picture of the girl I plan to marry?” The penciled profile resembled Martha… But when Raymond went away, she knew. She wasn’t the girl he planned to marry.

David was her father’s apprentice, everything Martha’s mother said made a good husband – hardworking, no romantic nonsense, no tolerance for writing about it. Martha added a fictional happy ending to her and Raymond’s story and published it. Cleansed herself of romantic love, and prepared to marry David. Until a copy of her book appeared. Full of sketches – Raymond’s version of their love story, drawings that enticed her heart to beat once again – for the wrong man.

Chapter 1 (condensed)

Mama said it couldn’t be done.

I glanced at the stack of books on the table beside me and the line of women in front of me—a row of eyes glued my direction, copies of my book in their hands.

Love on a Train by Martha Cole.

Mama said it shouldn’t be done. She said a book like this should never be written. Not by a respectable young woman, and certainly not by me, her and Daddy’s only daughter.

“You’ve heard of Mills and Boon, maybe. Those publishers of sappy emotional tales out of England?” Mama’s lectures about the pitfalls of romance and stories that told about it generally began the same way—an undermining of the literature, followed by a promise that if I ever believed or read such nonsense I’d ruin every chance I had for a future of wedded contentment.

I glanced at Mills and Boon’s logo on the spine of my book, ran my finger over their emblem, thinking how right Mama had been in the end. I never did read such stories. It turned out they were inside me, instead—not just waiting to be read or written, but to be lived.

“Is it true?” a hushed voice asked above me. “I mean, did this really happen?” She inched one of my books across the table until it stopped in front of me.

I glanced at the faces behind the young woman, a line from my table to the bookstore’s entrance, each expression expectant—the hope for love cropping up somewhere, with someone—that one someone who would stay with her forever.

That one someone who had sat beside me on a train, taught my heart to sing and to write as I’d never written before. And then disappeared.

“It’s a work of fiction,” I replied. I glanced at the cover before I drew it open, at the profile of a young girl, a pencil sketch of a face so similar to mine… “Want to see a picture of the girl I plan to marry?”

“Oh. I see,” the young woman answered from above me. “Even if it’s just a story, it can still happen, right?” Hope rang in her voice.

I looked up from the book’s cover. The lights that dangled on chains from the bookstore’s high ceiling created a halo around her head—innocent expectation, all too familiar, all too easily destroyed.

“This sort of love has happened for real,” I admitted. “I know for a fact it did. It just isn’t this story.”

“Want to see a picture of the girl I plan to marry?”

Raymond’s face forced its way into my mind—the way he’d looked when I first met him, and the way he looked again when he asked me that question, both of us riding the train into Kansas City for our respective jobs.

The first time I saw him, I believed he was the man God intended for me. I barely managed to stagger past him down the train’s aisle, smitten in an instant with his dark good looks. I dropped into a seat not too far away, wishing he’d glance my direction. My heart had exploded—beat hard enough I was afraid he could hear it as I watched him—the first and only man I’d ever had a longing for, the only man I thought I ever would.

The young woman waiting for me to sign her copy of my book let out a sigh. “I wish you’d written about the real love story. Maybe you could do that in your next book.”

I picked up the fountain pen. “Who do I address this to?” I asked. Mama was right. I should never have written this story. I should never have agreed to sit in this bookstore calling it a work of fiction instead of the story I thought I was meant to live—the story someone else ended up living for me.

“Amelia Long. And wish me lots of love when you sign the book, will you?” A faint blush dotted her cheeks. “I really did adore your story, even if it wasn’t real. You’re very clever. And talented. Are you married?”

I bent over her book. “To a lovely young woman, Amelia Long,” I wrote. “May love find you or you find it, whether on a train, a plane, or on the sidewalk outside your own home. Sincerest wishes, Martha Cole.”

“That’s beautiful!” Amelia took the book from my hands and twisted it her way. “Thank you.” She clutched the book to her breast and hurried away.

“You didn’t answer her question.” The next woman stepped forward, her eyes exactly like Amelia’s, exactly like mine were at one time. This woman was slightly older, but that longing still evident as it spilled from her glance. “She asked if you were married.”

“Engaged,” I replied, taking the copy of my book she handed me. “I’m engaged to a man named David. David Tidwell.”

Available at Amazon:

Asked For

Lana was young when Cletus asked for her. Barely more than a girl, he offered her a home and her grandmother a pittance to survive on. He cared nothing about pretty and had no desire to honor a bride. All he wanted was a wife young enough to give him sons.

Lana gave Cletus more daughters than sons, lastly giving him James, the one Cletus referred to as That Boy, denying James was his. Two other men recognized what Cletus dismissed about his wife. Jim never thought she’d be taken away so young to be someone else’s; and Mr. Morgan remarked to James, “Your mother’s the most beautiful woman I’ve ever known.”

Did she or didn’t she? Was Lana faithful or not? James has the key, That Boy who looks nothing like Cletus, but who walks in his shoes more than anyone else.

Prologue

Magdalena 1960

Mama had six children after she had me, five of them one right after the other, mostly because Pop couldn’t leave her alone. It wasn’t that he was in love with her; he just loved hard the same way he worked hard. He worked her hard too, and us kids, keeping up with that patch of Missouri dirt he called a farm, and the welding shop he ran in town. Mama never complained, no matter what Pop did, and my brothers and sisters didn’t either. They were too afraid.

My name is Magdalena. When I was growing up I was Magdalena Paine, but now I’m Magdalena something different. I’ve been several something differents since I was a girl, but none of them matter.

What matters is the time I was Magdalena Paine, because that’s when I first saw Mama for what she really was…beautiful. None of the rest of my family would have ever noticed if Glen Morgan hadn’t said it to my littlest brother, James. “Your mother’s the most beautiful woman I’ve ever known,” Glen told him. That comment opened my little brother’s eyes, and made me look at beauty in a different way, a deeper way. It just took me awhile to see it through my own eyes instead of Mr. Morgan’s.

Available at Amazon

Mine to Tell 

Amazon #1 Best Seller, Readers Crown Award, and Crowned Heart winner

Annabelle Crouse defies her family shame by opening up her great-grandmother’s shunned life. And the boarded-up house Julianne Crouse had been relegated to by an unforgiving husband after an unexplained absence. His accusation of betrayal has tainted the Crouse women with disgrace for years, and Annabelle wants freed. Pressing through cobwebs and dust, she finds hidden clues and the coded story left behind by her great-grandmother — Why did she go? And why did she return? Only one person, a man she grew up with but never noticed, stands with Annabelle as she discovers the parallels between her life and her great-grandmother’s story–two women, generations apart, daring to experience what love truly is.

Chapter 1 (condensed)

“Mama, please tell me about my great-grandma. I’m plenty old enough now.” I was about to begin my senior year in college, I had just bought a brand-new 1988 Ford Pinto, and I was nearly engaged. I was old enough for these sorts of adult pleasures and responsibilities, but to Mama I was never old enough for the story of my great-grandmother, the one I’d always sensed I was supposed to know.

I grabbed a handful of the peapods she was shelling, willing Mama to tell me about Julianne Crouse, the black sheep of our family.

Mama always became agitated when I asked. She’d go on about how much better off we’d be if someone had just burnt Julianne’s house to the ground, the reminder of our ruined reputations.

Mama had done her part to atone for Julianne’s errors by making sure she was an exceptional farm wife. I was expected to do the same.

“Well,” Mama finally began, “you are getting older.”

I drew myself up. I fancied myself like Julianne, whose picture I had discovered years ago in an old box beneath my parents’ bed. Her eyes beckoned me to discover what secrets, what truths, and what sins lay behind them.

“Your great-grandfather, Isaac worked the farm and preached wherever he could. He had two boys from his first marriage, your great-uncles Simon and Levi. He became a widower then married your great-grandmother.” Mama’s head shook back and forth. “I imagine those boys were a handful for your great-grandmother. Simon said when he was thirteen, your great-grandmother up and left. Isaac had returned late. Julianne fixed his meal, then disappeared.”

My mind raced with a thousand images of my great-grandmother’s face as she left…or fled, whichever it was.

“There was a note…”

What did it say? My fingers shelled peas with the speed of a professional gardener.

“One of the boys found it after Isaac died.” There was disgust in Mama’s voice.

“So you think…”

“Annabelle, that note said, ‘I have to go. It’s important. Julianne.’ ”

“But she came back,” I exclaimed. “She did whatever was important and then she returned. There’s nothing horrible about that.”

“Yes, she came back. A couple of weeks later. Simon said they were eating when she came in, her face whiter than the wall. Little Levi jumped up to give her a hug but Isaac made him sit back down. Simon said she carried her bag into their bedroom and closed the door.”

“Clearly she never intended to be gone for good,” I mused aloud.

“Won’t know that without knowing why she left in the first place,” Mama answered rather tartly. “Anyway, Isaac went to their room. Simon and Levi couldn’t hear much, just their raised voices, Julianne’s different than usual. Then their door burst open and Isaac stormed out. Not long after that, Isaac turned a shed into that little house and moved her into it.”

“I feel sorry for her.”

“You can’t do that,” Mama snapped. “She clearly did wrong.”

“But she left for a reason she said was important. Maybe it wasn’t wrong.”

Mama looked me in the eye. “Simon said there was another man.”

“How could he know that?”

“Isaac never preached again. Does that tell you something?”

I didn’t know my great-grandmother, yet I did. I’d felt her all my life. She was lingering like an unsolved mystery, an unfinished tale, an argument to resolve.

“Simon said your grandpa was born nine months after her disappearance,” Mama whispered.

If that was true, we weren’t Crouses. We were something else, and this farm was ours by squatter’s rights, not by inheritance. That was why Mama insisted someone should burn Julianne’s house down. Maybe Simon had left it there to remind us we were bastards.

“What happened to her and Isaac?”

“Isaac died eventually. Julianne continued to stay in her own house. The boys were grown, so it didn’t matter. Then, one day she disappeared again. She left another note that said, ‘I’ve got to go. I’ve written more for later. Love, Your mother, Julianne.’ That’s when Simon boarded up her house.”

“ ‘I’ve written more for later.’ What did she mean by that?”

“More explanations she’d send in a letter or something.” Mama’s voice grew stronger. “Promise me you’ll honor your family in everything you do for your father and Grandpa Samuel’s sakes.”

They were passing the mantle to me, a tightrope of ceremonial right living that demanded I become invisible so the Crouses could forget their shame.

I assured her I would guard my ways. But in the back of my mind was that voice that had been there all my life. It sounded like me, but it was Julianne. I needed to listen to it. I needed to hear what it said, and so did they.

Available at Amazon

Sonata Contineo

The nearly sixty-year-old pamphlet Rachel found contained everything her best friend, Lane, longed to know about the obscure history of his deceased great-grandfather. It touted the pianist’s musical prowess, his success as a college music professor, and his uncanny knack for bringing out the best in his piano students. Rachel couldn’t wait to show Lane her find, but the penciled-in comment at the bottom of the first page stopped her cold. “Justifiably shot in the back by his wife one morning as he was dressing, because of another woman.”

Set on a course of unraveling the truth about the 1930’s life and murder of Lane’s great-grandfather, Rachel discovers parallel truths about herself and Lane as she opens the story of his great-grandparents and the woman who was his great-grandfather’s supposed lover.

CHAPTER 1 (condensed)

Lane Alexander’s fingers ran the length of the keyboard. His melodic sensation plumed upward, its chords billowing throughout the room. I drank in their beauty, my lithe form draped across his piano in a way that drew lecherous glances from men skulking nearby in the smoke-filled lounge. I ignored them, just as Lane ignored me, his fingers flying across the keys. He had a way of bringing life to forgotten masterpieces, sleeping artists, even stone cold hearts like mine.

I applauded as the last notes faded and willed him to play more, but he didn’t.

My allure waned. The smoke thinned. The gentlemen entranced by my sensuality, vanished. As did my clingy white gown and the mile long cigarette I’d been smoking.

Grit from the hard floor ground beneath my back. My eyes opened to the ceiling of Barnes Hall’s practice room, and Lane staring down at me from the piano bench.

My face warmed as I punched our backpacks I’d been using for a pillow. It was 1988, not 1920. I was acollege coed, not a scantily-clad groupie.

“No more applause?” he asked.

“Was I clapping?” My cheeks burst into flames.

He turned to the piano, the soft glow of well-spent passion lingering on his face. This was one of those special moments we had shared since childhood and into college, me a biology major and he studying music.

“Those old pieces are your best. You’re going to shine at your Senior Recital.”

He gathered his music and walked to where I lay.

“You’re still giving your recital, right?”

He nodded, a grey angst stealing into his gaze.

I got to my feet, yanked up our backpacks, and tossed his to him as we exited to Barnes Hall’s musical clutter.

“Musicians sure are a messy lot,” I pointed out.

“Musicians are preoccupied, not messy,” Lane argued. “Your sterile science building…” He stopped, his gaze fixed on the “Memorial to Pittsfield State College’s Musicians of Renown” board.

I followed his gaze to a gap in the columns of nameplates haling the college’s greatest musicians.

“My great-grandfather’s name. It’s gone.”

I looked where the nameplate had always been. Someone had pried it off, not even leaving the rivets. I glanced around, hoping “Jonas Dresden – 1933” was nearby.

Lane’s fingers hovered over the empty space as if they were communicating – Lane in the hallway and Jonas from the grave. As a biologist I knew dead was dead and no science could re-fire a person’s lifeless grey matter enough to communicate again. I slid my arm around his shoulders.

“Mr. Alexander, I see you have some time on your hands. I take it this means you’re ready for your recital?”

Lane and I turned to the unsmiling face of Dr. Kimbrough, Chair of the Music Department.

“Yes, sir.” Lane dropped his hand from the board while I yanked my arm from his shoulders. “I just came from the practice room.”

Dr. Kimbrough peered down his nose at me then turned back to Lane. “None of your funny business, young man. You are to play exactly what I gave you. Not those old pieces you seem fond of.”

I glanced at Lane, recalling the archaic pieces he’d just played.

“Your future here depends on this,” Dr. Kimbrough said.

Lane’s future was in his talent, not his recital performance.

“Not everyone in the department sees you as you presume. Some would consider you a person whose whims may override his good judgment.” Dr. Kimbrough’s eyes encased Lane in a steely coldness. “It’s a shame.” His long, arthritic finger pointed to where Jonas’ nameplate had been.

I was witnessing a war. Lane had an enemy, a fellow musician, no less, and that was inconceivable.

“What’s a shame?” I locked stares with Lane’s enemy.

Dr. Kimbrough’s enormous white eyebrows danced with some inner demon. “It’s a shame to live in the past. Some are best left dead and buried. Practice what I gave you, or your musical path may be cut short.”

Old or not, I imagined kicking the white-haired monster and watching him tumble to the floor. I could easily outrun him, but I could never outrun the agony Lane would suffer at this dinosaur’s revenge.

Dr. Kimbrough’s gaze shifted to me. “Mind the company you keep, too. That makes or breaks a person, as some pasts bear out.”

He disappeared, and I turned toward Lane. “What’s going on?”

“Not everyone was in favor of letting me into grad school here.”

I couldn’t believe that. Lane had been hailed as a one-in-a-million pianist the moment he entered Barnes Hall. “Does Dr. Kimbrough know something about your great-grandfather? Can he keep you from grad school?”

The college offered only that Jonas had been a good professor and wrote music, none of which was still around.

“Dr. Kimbrough can do some damage.” Lane looked tired.

“Then practice what he gave you.” I wouldn’t, but Lane wasn’t as mulish as I was. “Even if he gave you ‘Pop Goes the Weasel’ to play, do it his way.”

Someday you’ll know about your great-grandfather, I vowed. I’ll make sure of it.

Available at Amazon

The Lady’s Arrangement

Neither Rex nor Regina wants a spouse, but they do have needs.

Ranger Rex Duncan needs a false identity just long enough to uncover a ring of Kansas ranch thieves. Answering Regina’s ad for a temporary husband, he leaves his beloved red dirt of Oklahoma to assume that disguise. But the most obstinate woman he’s ever known confounds his assignment, and with hair the red color that has always made his heart beat a little faster.

Regina Howard needs a new Mrs. in front of her name just long enough to reclaim her deceased husband’s ranch, since Kansas law won’t allow women to own property. When Rex answers her ad for a husband who can take orders as part of a brief business arrangement, she finds this stubborn man ignores her every command. Yet a good man is far more than just a name…

Chapter 1 (condensed)

Tiny flickers sputtered between the toes of my boots, the heap of dry grass and twigs catching. I waited for the fire to grow…and destroy my boyhood home.

I couldn’t save everything Pop had built. Thanks to some widow I’d never heard of until today.

Flames gobbled the kindling near the base of our house. I couldn’t handle this as the law—like I was paid to—and settle things between my pop and Matt Morrissey, the swindler who’d stolen this ranch from him. I couldn’t hunt Morrissey down the way a Ranger should. There wasn’t time.

Flames snaked up the house my father had built for him and me. Fire roped what he’d added later to accommodate the woman who became my stepmother and the boy they had together. Luke. Little Brother. He called me part-brother.

“It’ll hurt when you find out everything you built is gone, Pop. As soon as I get back, I’ll explain it was me that did this and why.”

My stepmother was most likely watching from heaven. Luke’s mother raised me as her own. He looked like her, the opposite of me—his half-brother he resented for being so much like our father.

We ran through smoke as boys. Me making it to the other side, while Luke staggered behind, coughing and sometimes crying. “Rex, your little brother can’t keep up. If you fell, Luke could never save you.” Luke wouldn’t have tried to save me, but I never took the chance he’d try and fail and be even more miserable. Neither did I let him succumb to the smoke. I stayed on my feet, ahead of him just enough to make him try harder. To turn him into his father’s son.

Ma hid little treasures for me in a shed that would go last. I’d dig them up as a boy and see what she’d given me. I hadn’t done that since before she died. I’d retrieve her tin box and take it with me, her last gift to her stepson.

My fires turned our ranch into a beacon. Maybe Morrissey would spot it. I’d have him if he appeared. I’d see he hanged before I left for Kansas. The last place I wanted to go.

“I need you in Liberal, Kansas.” My boss’s orders rang in my head.

“I have plenty of work here.”

“This work might be tied to something there. A ring of thieves with a main man calling the shots. We need someone to go up there without looking like the law.” He handed me a newspaper, tapping print he had circled.

I read what he’d marked. “No.”

I tugged that newspaper from my pocket. I re-read the words that sealed my father’s buildings’ fate.

A gunshot exploded. I crouched low. Gunfire or not, everything had to burn. “No disrespect, Mrs. Howard. Well, maybe a tad.” I tore the newspaper in half and scraped my flint and steel. My boss’s ringed words caught.

“Wanted: Husband to co-own a ranch immediately. Purely business arrangement, and will be well compensated. Able to take orders. Contact Mrs. R. Howard, Liberal, Kansas.”

Another shot split the air. I fed the newspaper’s flickers into the nearest building. The shot came from the same direction. One man.

“Fulfil her arrangement until we catch the ringleader,” my boss had explained. “Don’t let her or anyone know who you are or what you’re doing. All she wants is a husband’s name so she can keep her ranch the bank doesn’t want owned by a widow. We’ll make sure she maintains the fake name you’ll carry. Then you can come back here.”

I hurried to the last buildings.

“Stop, or I’ll shoot.”

I knew that voice as well as my own. I heard the tremor in it, the sputter of a boy racing through smoke. I rolled beyond Luke’s next shot.

“I said stop!” His voice was full of smoke and horror.

Go home, Luke. I hid my face as I ran. Luke shot and missed again.

“Come out. Slow and easy.” The angst in Luke’s tone didn’t betray whether he was shooting at a villain or the brother he envied.

I ran. Away this time.

“Stop!”

I heard Luke behind me. His voice, his boots and grunts of anger as he tried to keep up. I wouldn’t fall. Neither would I stay just out of his reach to make him a little better. I ran hard, but so did he. Damn it, Little Brother, it’s too late to be a hero.

He shot again. Then stopped. The fiery destruction behind us and my own boots the only sounds.

“You won’t get away with this.”

I listened for “part-brother.” That last shot came too close.

He would return to the ranch. And cry. It was in the tremor that weakened Luke’s threats.

I ran to where my horse was tied. My trip to Kansas was going to be fast enough to disappear and hurry back.

Once in the saddle, I looked toward what was left of our home. “I’ll settle with you when I get back, Morrissey. You’ll pay for every tear my brother spills, and the heartache you’ve caused my pop.” I left the blazing ranch behind. “And I’ll marry you, Mrs. Howard of Liberal, Kansas. But I sure don’t want to.”

Available at Amazon 

  Letters and Lies

Louise Archer boards a westbound train in St. Louis to find the Kansas homesteader who wooed and proposed to her by correspondence, then jilted her by telegram – Don’t come, I can’t marry you. Giving a false name to hide her humiliation, her lie backfires when a marshal interferes and offers her his seat.

Marshal Everett McCloud intends to verify the woman coming to marry his homesteading friend is suitable. At the St. Louis train station, his plan detours when he offers his seat to a captivating woman whose name thankfully isn’t Louise Archer.

Everett’s plans thwart hers, until he begins to resemble the man she came west to find, and she the woman meant to marry his friend.

Chapter 1 (condensed)

Every promise Mama had believed for me radiated from her face. I wouldn’t let her down. I’d board this train as if nothing had changed, then fix what had once I arrived.

“My Louise Archer on her way to become Mrs. Jim Baylis of Crooked Creek, Kansas.”

Jim’s last-minute telegram burned within my glove—Don’t come. I can’t marry you. I glanced to my friends for any “at last” looks on their faces while “maybe not” thundered in my mind.

“I told you your open door would come.” Mama effused the promise she never lost faith in. “Imagine Jim’s face when you reach Dodge City.” Mama saw her only daughter married while I saw her future secured once my husband’s name appeared alongside mine on the unsettled estate Papa left behind.

“Actually, I’m to take a stagecoach from Dodge City to Crooked Creek.” After I asked directions to the Baylis homestead so I could find Jim.

“He changed your plans? Why didn’t you tell me? You know I love hearing his letters.”

Everyone did. I glanced at my friend who’d suggested I correspond with her husband’s homesteading friend in Kansas who was ready for a wife.

“He sent a telegram.” Six words I would never share.

“How thoughtful.”

I felt poisoned. Mama would too if she learned Jim had shut my open door. Which she wouldn’t. As soon as I found him, I’d wedge it back open.

“You’re beautiful, Louise, so tall, so…”

“So like my father.” The man who had built this marriage into his will before he passed.

“He must be so proud watching from Heaven.”

If Papa happened to be watching everything I was up to, he could only credit me with a foolproof plan.

“I can’t wait to meet Jim,” Mama said. “He writes so well.”

I’ve built a home for two. We’ve done everything except meet. Please come. Please say yes you will marry me.

I’d been quick to write yes. What I should have said no to was his suggestion we share no photographs…only words, so we could truly know one another. Now I had to find a man with only “tall, sturdy, weathered, and dark brown hair” to go on.

The train blasted a warning.

“I’m so happy. You will be too,” Mama said.

Neither of us would be happy if the ruse I’d devised to get me to Jim without anyone knowing I was his jilted spinster didn’t work. I gripped my bags, one hiding a ticket for Mrs. Penelope Strong, I would surreptitiously hand to the conductor.

People would believe I was a widow on my way west to complete my late husband’s business. No one doubted widows. My plan would get me where I could study Jim’s situation, contrive a solution, then introduce myself.

“When we set our wedding date, I will wire you.”

“No need,” Mama replied. “I intend to come long before your wedding.”

“What?” My plan allowed me one week. Mama would be devastated to learn I’d lied.

A line formed at the nearest car’s door, a conductor at one side and two men on the other—one tall and sturdily rugged with a western-style hat next to a slighter man more finely dressed. The conductor helped passengers into the car, as Tall-and-Sturdy studied each.

I hadn’t counted on some stranger paying so much attention. I had to slip past him. I am Mrs. Penelope Strong, traveling west on my late husband’s unfinished business…

I hugged Mama and my friends then turned toward the train…and the two men. I’m Mrs. Penelope Strong… The platform blurred.

Please come. Please say you will marry me.

I swiped at tears.

“Ma’am.” The tall man removed his western hat from a head of dark brown hair. “I see you’re headed west alone.” Dark eyes spotted my tears. “I could help…”

I lifted my chin. “Yes, I am, but I don’t need…”

“Excuse me.” Mama appeared. “Your uncle Roy said don’t worry, he will mind our store like it’s his own.”

“He what?” Mama’s greedy brother should be nowhere near Papa’s store. I’d formalized paperwork to block his slithering attorney until I married.

Passengers pushed past me.

“Time to say goodbye, ma’am,” the conductor said.

I’d worked hard to keep Roy’s shenanigans from my parents. Papa might have been failing, but I wasn’t. “Goodbye, Mama.”

“You look distraught, ma’am,” Tall-and-Sturdy said.

“Of course I’m distraught,” I snapped. “I’m recently widowed.” I cringed. Widows may be distraught, but they would be kind. “I’m Mrs. Penelope Strong, and I’m on my way to…” If I said Dodge City, this man might know Jim. “Larned, Kansas, to finish my late husband’s business.” I prayed no one shouted goodbye to Louise Archer.

“Larned’s a long trip on hard seats. Ours is comfortable. We can make do somewhere else until then.”

Until then? These two were headed to Larned? “Thank you,” I said with as much new-widow meekness as I could. I took the proffered elbow to let Tall-and-Sturdy steer the distraught Mrs. Penelope Strong to their seat. Once we reached Larned, I’d slip off then back on the train and stay out of sight until Dodge City.

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Katie Walsh

Katie Walsh expects to write a love story someday. The hero resembles her father, and the heroine the deceased mother she never knew but imagines from the longing on her father’s face.
Katie doesn’t expect her father to be murdered, or his will to leave their farm to Guy Knowles, the man she hoped to marry, and order her to another state. Betrayed by the men she trusted, what should have become a love like no other withers and dies.
Until Ted Howard, who doesn’t fit the hole Guy left in her heart. Instead, he fits himself into what she needs—someone who will stay, protect her, and break his own heart for her if needed.

Chapter 1

I always knew I would write a love story someday. The seed of it sprouted with a look on my father’s face. A love like no other. The solemn look of longing each time I asked him about the mother I never knew.
“She passed.” Papa’s two-word response sounded like “The End” whenever he said it. But no end existed in his expression where devotion to the woman who died giving birth to me seventeen years ago lived on.                                                       He offered little else about her as we struggled to keep our small Nebraska farm afloat throughout the 1930s. But the hero in my story began to emerge from that initial seed and take on my father’s qualities—quiet tones, a lean and dark-haired stature, a trustworthiness like what I and our neighbors placed in Papa.
What I lacked was my heroine’s face, form, and character. I imagined her like my mother, the woman I longed to know. The one who remained as hidden from
my sight as the kernels of corn Papa and I planted in our land’s dusty soil.
“You’re the spitting image of her,” Papa sometimes conceded. That told me she was of slight build with a mane of unmanageable red hair. I relished that sameness, but I still wanted more.
When our neighbor, Guy Knowles, began to drop by and take me for long but mostly silent walks across Papa’s pasture, I wondered if my parents had done the same thing and if my excitement mirrored what my mother’s might have been. Did she, like me, translate every quiet step into tender words? Did she see lifelong devotion on Papa’s face then, like I watched for it now on Guy’s?
I expected my love story—the one I would write and the one I would live—to be like theirs. What I didn’t expect was that both stories would begin the day a stranger came to my door and told me my father had just been killed. Killed, not died. Nor did I expect this tale of “A Love Like No Other” to reach full bloom in a tiny jail cell far away.