A Texas-Made Match. Noelle Marchand
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Matchmaker—Matched!
For Ellie O’Brien, finding the perfect partner is easy—as long as it’s for other people. Now the townsfolk of Peppin want to return the favor. But how could Lawson Williams be the right choice? The handsome ranch foreman was her childhood friend, but he’s the man Ellie deems least likely to court a tomboy with a guilty secret.
Lawson can’t help enjoying the town’s efforts to push him together with Ellie, though marriage isn’t in his plans. Yet Ellie’s become a warm, spirited woman who could chase away the clouds of his past. And with a whole town on their side, they could claim a love as big and bold as Texas itself...
“You, Ellie O’Brien, are afraid to take off the blinders that keep you from seeing yourself as everyone else sees you—as a kind, beautiful, spontaneous woman.”
Ellie stared at Lawson in awe. He thought she was beautiful? Hadn’t he always thought of her as one of the boys? Hadn’t he always seen her as a surrogate little sister? Apparently somehow that had changed. He now saw her as beautiful—a woman. She swallowed. Why did that send her heart galloping in her chest?
He carefully guided her chin up until she was forced to meet the knowing smile in his eyes. “You’re the kind of woman who wouldn’t have any trouble finding herself a husband, if she didn’t try so hard to cross every suitable man off her list or give him away to her friends.”
She didn’t have anything to say because she’d suddenly realized why those relatively suitable men had seemed so unsuitable. She realized it because she was staring the reason right in the face. She, Ellie O’Brien, had a crush on Lawson Williams.
NOELLE MARCHAND
Her love of literature began as a child when she would spend hours reading beneath the covers long after she was supposed to be asleep. Over the years, God began prompting her to write. Eventually those stories became like “fire shut up in her bones,” leading her to complete her first novel at fifteen. Now, at the age of twenty-four, that fire of inspiration continues to burn.
Noelle is a Houston native who graduated from Houston Baptist University in May 2012. She received a bachelor’s degree in Mass Communication with a focus in journalism and Speech Communication.
A Texas-Made Match
Noelle Marchand
Brothers and sisters, I do not consider myself yet to have taken hold of it. But one thing I do: forgetting what is behind and straining toward what is ahead,
I press on toward the goal to win the prize for which God has called me heavenward in Christ Jesus.
—Philippians 3:13,14
Dedicated with love to my father and brother.
Special thanks to Elizabeth Mazer
for allowing me to share all three of
the O’Brien’s stories! Also, thanks to Karen Ball
of Steve Laube Agency for all her hard work.
Contents
Chapter One
Peppin, Texas
September 1888
Ellie O’Brien was not the type of girl to chase after men.
That might have to change.
After all, today was her twenty-first birthday. While that hadn’t stopped her from revisiting her mischievous youth by climbing to her favorite place in the whole world—the top of the waterfall that pooled into her family’s creek—it was pushing marriageable age. This wouldn’t have been a problem in most Western towns, where the scarcity of women allowed them to take their time picking husbands. The town of Peppin didn’t have that problem, though. Women were plentiful, and the competition between them, while friendly, was still fierce. Ellie had never attempted to jump into the fray before. Now, though it might be too late, she wanted to at least try.
But first, one more moment of being a child.
Her fingers teased the hairpins from her hair with a familiarity born of desperation, then tossed them to the dry ground below like the nuisances they were. She shook out her curly golden tresses, reveling in her newfound freedom as the wind made her hair bounce in disarray. Warm mud oozed between her bare toes as she stepped closer to the precipice. The water rushed past her feet, urging her to join its free fall away from the side of the waterfall and into the creek seven feet below. If she took that final step forward, there would be no going back.
Literally and figuratively. She bit her bottom lip as she peered over through the treetops at the rolling green hills that stretched beyond their property. Perhaps it was too romantic to hope that courtship would be as exhilarating as a sheer fall or as refreshing as the cool shock of cold water that followed—but a gal could hope.
It wasn’t as if she were only interested in the romance part of