Patchwork Bride

Patchwork Bride
Jillian Hart

At last, Meredith Worthington is returning to Angel Falls, Montana. Now that she's escaped the matchmaking and scheming of her East Coast finishing school, she can follow her dream of becoming a teacher. And perhaps get to know Shane Connelly, the intriguing new wrangler on her father's ranch….Shane had a bellyful of "eligible ladies" back East. So he left them–and his high-society family–behind. Meredith reminds him of everything he'd like to forget, yet he can't resist her charm. But will love have time to blossom before she discovers the secret he's been hiding all along?

This was a Meredith that Shane had never seen before…

A bell jangled as she opened the store’s glass door, waltzing toward him like sunshine on the darkest of days. As her shoes tapped on the damp boardwalk, he launched off the seat and with a bow, held out his hand.

Meredith lifted a slender eyebrow, perhaps sensing his sarcasm. He could not stop the rolling crest of emotion threatening to take him over. The snow did not touch him, the wind did not chill him as she laid the palm of her hand softly against his. Time stopped, Shane’s soul stilled and her gaze found his.

Wide-eyed and startled as a doe by a hunter, she did not move. Nor did he. A second stretched into a moment without heartbeat or breath, and he felt as if eternity touched him….

JILLIAN HART

grew up on her family’s homestead, where she helped raise cattle, rode horses and scribbled stories in her spare time. After earning her English degree from Whitman College, she worked in travel and advertising before selling her first novel. When Jillian isn’t working on her next story, she can be found puttering in her rose garden, curled up with a good book or spending quiet evenings at home with her family.

Patchwork Bride

Jillian Hart

www.millsandboon.co.uk (http://www.millsandboon.co.uk)

A man’s heart plans his way,

but the Lord directs his steps.

—Proverbs 16:9

Contents

Chapter One

Chapter Two

Chapter Three

Chapter Four

Chapter Five

Chapter Six

Chapter Seven

Chapter Eight

Chapter Nine

Chapter Ten

Chapter Eleven

Chapter Twelve

Chapter Thirteen

Chapter Fourteen

Chapter Fifteen

Chapter Sixteen

Chapter Seventeen

Chapter Eighteen

Chapter Nineteen

Letter to Reader

Questions for Discussion

Chapter One

Angel Falls, Montana Territory, April 1884

Lord, what have I gotten myself into?

With the crisp April wind in her hair, Meredith Worthington braced her hands on her hips and glared at the mud-caked fender of their ladies’ driving buggy. The vehicle was currently mired in the deep mud in the country road. Totally and impossibly stuck and she didn’t know what to do. How would they get home from school?

This had never happened when she was at her finishing school back east. Then again, she never would have been allowed to drive a horse and buggy along the busy city streets. A lady was expected to be driven, not to do anything as garish as handle the reins herself.

“This is a fine mess I’ve gotten us into,” she muttered, sloshing through the mud in her new shoes. “Me and my bright ideas.”

“You wanted to drive.” Her littlest sister rolled her eyes. “In fact, you insisted on it.”

“Don’t remind me.” Not a request she’d regretted because she’d been wanting permission to drive for a long while, but why did this happen on her first day? She stared at the axle nearly buried in mud. Who knew the mud puddle would be that deep?

“I bet you miss Boston now.” Wilhelmina, Minnie for short, hopped in the shallow mud at the shoulder of the road, making little splashes with her good shoes.

“Miss that place? Hardly. Finishing school was like a very comfortable, very pleasant prison.” Meredith puffed at a hunk of hair that had fallen down from her perfect chignon, but the stubborn curl tumbled right back into her eyes. Much better to be home in Montana, even if she had to figure a way out of the very mud her mother had warned her against.

She winced, already hearing the arguments. Her independent ways were not popular with her family. If she didn’t get the buggy home and soon, she feared she would not be allowed to drive ever again. And if she couldn’t drive, how would she secure employment and get herself to work every day? Her dreams may be as trapped as her buggy.

“A prison? I’m telling Mama you said that.”

“You will do no such thing,” she informed her sister, who squished around in the ankle-deep mud quite as if she liked it. “If you don’t stop playing and help me, we will be stuck here forever.”

“Or until it starts to rain.” Minnie looked up from making shoe prints in the soupy earth. “It looks like a storm is coming. With enough rain, the mud will thin down and we can get the wheels out.”