He would ask her. Are you worried it’s going to grow legs and run away? He would always laugh when he caught her doing it. In the beginning it had been because she wasn’t used to the weight of the ring on her finger, but after he died it was to remind her of him. It had been three years since t...
How could this crude man possibly be her husband? Where was the guy who’d been so kind and almost poetic in the emails? Sure, she’d never spoken to him on the phone, but he’d explained that they had to use satellite phones because of their location. It had made sense at the time. But how could sh...
Silence. “Um, Ryan, do you think you'll be much longer?” Silence. “Goodnight, Ryan.” Elle Holloway watched her boyfriend of six years lean forward toward his laptop and begin typing furiously...
Probably because she wanted to keep dreaming. But that wouldn’t pay the bills, so she reluctantly got up and went about her normal morning routine. An hour and a half after her alarm went off, Kristi opened the front door to bring Janie to the next door neighbor, Ella Thompson, for the day. ...
Actually, none of them did. A week dragged by and he had never been in a worse mood. In addition to Marshall and Darrell avoiding him, his own horse seemed not to want to have too much to do with him. It was probably that his level of tension made the big animal uneasy. ...
It was like a convoy arriving from the Circle O and as expected, they arrived early to make a start before the heat kicked in. Andrew was still asleep in pride of place, on the grass by the front porch and Maddie had prepared a big pot of black coffee, figuring he would ...
You are the kindest people anyone could ever meet. Anyone else would have turned me away after finding out about me and the things I’ve done, but you didn’t. You gave me a job and a place to live when I really needed them, but more importantly, you were people who cared about me when you didn’t h...
"Is the Queen on fire again?" he asked when we came through the door. "Not yet," Matthew said. "And maybe not again." Rick Gannon looked from Matthew to me. "Did you remember something?" "I know who hit me," I said....
She was torn. Torn between feeling immense sadness at his loss of his mother, the life he’d led in the system, and the fact that he now had a funeral to plan and anger at the fact that he hadn’t told her any of this. He hadn’t told her that he’d been in the foster care system or of his mother’s i...
The younger girl screamed, throwing a wooden chair in the direction of the older woman holding out the spoon. “I don’t want that crap! I want FOOD! Real food! I’m outta here!” Emma bolted for the door, enraged when she figured out for the hundredth time that she was locked in. “Let! Me! OUT!” &nb...
The noise and confusion under my window didn't relent. Looking at the ornate mantle clock someone had placed on a plain pine dresser, I saw it was still early, barely six. Sarah fed the hands at eight, and most of them had already done a couple of hours work by that time, but this...