The Rancher's Wife

The Rancher's Wife
Lynda Trent

ABANDONEDElizabeth Parkins had been left in the wilderness, along and destitute, by a man she's promised to love, honor and obey. Now fate had led her to Brice Graham, who offered her fulfillment of all her dreams. But the price, she soon learned, would be her heart and soul… !BEREFTWhen Elizabeth Parkins rode into his life, Brice Graham saw a way out of the loneliness that haunted his days. Here was the wife of his heart, the true mother of his child. But would she be content to pretend they'd been together forever - or would she demand something more… ?

“There isn’t anything going on between us,” he said. (#ucef11ae8-fa08-5cab-a25e-6076ee54c89a)Letter to Reader (#ue25aa2de-f505-5fdd-9b24-ab12bcf28d51)Title Page (#u9fa9ab43-f5a3-542b-812d-2ccc39b174e5)About the Author (#u44af9f97-72d8-55e4-a33c-8625be91f9e8)Dedication (#ue0131f4a-f5f3-5bb6-a2a6-70ff6018db29)Chapter One (#ue83513d1-783c-5a4b-9537-48e3424087a8)Chapter Two (#ucb666c53-1367-5904-9018-55af38830bfb)Chapter Three (#ue6cd103a-a2d3-5ea0-9b25-ce91efe0056e)Chapter Four (#uc8de0ef0-9bb9-5b79-9f20-38020e7a27d2)Chapter Five (#litres_trial_promo)Chapter Six (#litres_trial_promo)Chapter Seven (#litres_trial_promo)Chapter Eight (#litres_trial_promo)Chapter Nine (#litres_trial_promo)Chapter Ten (#litres_trial_promo)Chapter Eleven (#litres_trial_promo)Chapter Twelve (#litres_trial_promo)Chapter Thirteen (#litres_trial_promo)Chapter Fourteen (#litres_trial_promo)Chapter Fifteen (#litres_trial_promo)Chapter Sixteen (#litres_trial_promo)Chapter Seventeen (#litres_trial_promo)Chapter Eighteen (#litres_trial_promo)Epilogue (#litres_trial_promo)Copyright (#litres_trial_promo)

“There isn’t anything going on between us,” he said.

“You sleep in your room and I sleep in mine. Our conduct is entirely aboveboard.”

“Pretty much so, yes.”

“I only kissed you once.”

“I know.” She hadn’t intended for her voice to hold so much regret.

The silence grew long between them.

“Do you want me to give them some explanation? I guess I could say you’re my sister or a cousin.”

“No. I don’t want to lie. Especially not to a preacher. I hate dishonesty.”

“Then what do you suggest?”

“I don’t know.” She shook her head and sighed. “Why didn’t I ever think about this before now?”

Carefully he said, “We could let them assume you’re my wife.”

She looked at him and waited for an explanation.

“It’s what they already believe. No one would question it.”

Elizabeth exploded. “But it’s not true!”

Dear Reader.

This month we’re giving you plenty of excuses to put your feet up and “get away from it all” with these four, fantasy-filled historical romances.

Let’s begin with handsome rancher Brice Graham and his darling baby girl who will undoubtedly capture your affection in The Rancher’s Wife, an emotional new Western by award-winning author Lynda Trent. Critics have described the author’s works as “sensual” and “utterly delightful.” In this pretend marriage tale, an abandoned wife moves in with Brice in order to care for his daughter. Yet complications arise when the two wish to many for real...

Medieval fans, prepare yourselves for a spine-tingling story of forbidden love in Lyn Stone’s latest, Bride of Trouville, about a young widow, forced to marry, who must hide her son’s deafness from the husband she’s grown to love. And don’t miss Conor, by bestselling author Ruth Langan, in which a legendary rogue teams up—permanently—with a beautiful lrish noblewoman to thwart a plot to murder Queen Elizabeth.

If those aren’t enough excuses to curl up with a book, then perhaps half-Apache Rio Santee will entice you in Theresa Michaels’ new sigh-inducing Western, The Merry Widows—Sarah, about two wounded souls who heal each other’s hearts.

Whatever your tastes in reading, you’ll be sure to find a romantic journey back to the past between the covers of a Harlequin Historcal

.

Sincerely,

Tracy Farrell

Senior Editor

Please address questions and book requests to:

Harlequin Reader Service

U.S.: 3010 Walden Ave.. P.O. Box 1325. Buffalo, NY 14269

Canadian: P.O. Box 609, Fort Ene, Ont. L2A 5X3

The Rancher’s Wife

Lynda Trent

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

LYNDA TRENT

Lynda Trent has been writing novels for twenty years, using various pen names. Her time travel romances are written under the pseudonym Elizabeth Crane, and her ghost novels as Abigail McDaniels. Romance and mainstream novels, as well as nonfiction, are published as Lynda Trent.

Among other achievements, Lynda Trent has been awarded the prestigious RITA Award by Romance Writers of America for Opal Fires, a contemporary mainstream romance novel. She has frequently been a RITA finalist for both contemporary and historical romances. In 1985 she won a bronze Porgy for Best Western Novel in the West Coast Review of Books. In 1986, she and her former co-author were named Outstanding Historical Romance Writing Team by Romantic Times Magazine. Translations of her fifty-three books are sold worldwide.

To Courtney Jade Trent—a ray of sunshine

Chapter One

Something hurled itself at the side of the sod hut and Elizabeth prayed the storm hadn’t torn loose more of the barn. It wasn’t a real barn, only a lean-to, not like the ones she had known back home in Hannibal, but it was all the mule had for shelter. Her husband was gone on the horse so the poor mule had only his own body heat to keep him warm in the winter’s first snowstorm.

Nothing had gone as Elizabeth had planned when she married Robert Parkins seven years before. She had been seventeen and eager to escape her tyrannical father at any cost. At the time she had thought she loved Robert and that they would live in a pretty home filled with love and children. But she was twenty-four now with neither home nor child. Only Robert, and her disillusionment, and the sod hut they lived in that was, at best, a dubious shelter.

Robert had won the land in a poker game. Forty acres and a gold mine in the new Oklahoma Territory had seemed like a dream come true. Elizabeth should have known better. In the past seven years Robert had been a clerk, a teller in a bank, a merchant’s bookkeeper, an apprentice wheelwright and a tinker. He never stuck with anything for long and there had been spells between jobs when he had done nothing and she had supported them by taking in washing and ironing. As fast as she could save money, Robert found it and gambled it away. She had buried the last dream when she first saw the mud hut and the hole in the ground that was supposed to be a gold mine.

The storm winds shifted and her shutters rattled alarmingly. Elizabeth put the straight-backed chair in front of them and sat in it, hoping to keep the shutters closed and the storm out. She had always feared storms and was struggling not to become terrified of this one. Robert had ridden into town for supplies but had been gone for a week on a chore that should have taken two days, three at the most.

As always he had put the journey off until they were almost entirely out of food and Elizabeth was eating as little as possible in order to survive until he returned. The nights were the worst. She lay awake for hours at a time worrying that he might have been killed or that he had simply grown tired of a wife, a sod hut and a worthless gold mine, and had left them all behind.

Robert had believed in the gold mine and had been glad there were no greedy neighbors he would have to fend off once he struck it rich. To Elizabeth, who was accustomed to living in town, the absence of people close by had been frightening. They were all alone on the side of a rocky hill, thirty miles from the nearest town and five miles from another living person.

The gold mine had never yielded a thimbleful of gold, even though Robert had worked it steadily—or at least at a pace that was steady for him. Every day, once she had finished the other chores on the place, Elizabeth helped him chip away at the rock and haul out buckets of worthless rubble. All for nothing. Even Robert finally admitted that.

The land was no good for farming and too small to raise cattle, even the longhorn kind that were said to be able to exist on practically no grass at all.

The only level piece of ground was beneath the hut. The roof was of the lean-to variety and was covered with dirt and grass. While it had provided a measure of coolness that first summer, it was always damp, and downright wet when it rained. As a further inconvenience, bugs nesting in the roof frequently burrowed through and dropped onto whatever or whoever was below. The floor was dirt interspersed with rock, as were the walls. Not one single thing was pretty about it, and the constant dampness was already rotting the treasured quilts and linens Elizabeth had brought with them.

The shutters trembled and shoved against the back of her chair, forcing a wider entrance for the icy wind that seemed determined to rob her of what little heat she had left. Fortunately the gust was of short duration and the weight of the chair closed the gap again. Elizabeth had never been so afraid. At least, she told herself, she didn’t have to worry about the hut being blown down since it was built into the hill itself. Assuming, of course, the heavy snow didn’t make the roof collapse.

She refused to cry. Ever since she could remember, Elizabeth had hated to cry. It solved nothing and only made her feel vulnerable. Instead, she tried to work up a sustaining anger against Robert. It wasn’t hard to do. He had had ample time to ride to the town of Glory, buy provisions, get drunk, gamble away the rest of their money and ride home. A man could easily travel thirty miles on horseback in a day.