Chapter One

      Central Kansas

      1883

      “Geez, mister, I didn’t kill ya, did I?”

      Already tired, sore and surly, landing on the hard ground had pitched Blake Barlow into about the worst mood possible. Not to mention getting shot. The high-pitched voice grated on his last nerve, too. With buckshot burning in his thigh and pain still seizing his back from the fall off his horse, he shifted little more than his gaze.

      A kid, whose front teeth were bigger than his eyes, dropped to the ground. “Praise the Lord,” he muttered like an old woman who’d just heard the war had ended. “I done thought I killed ya, mister.”

      “What were you shooting at?” Blake growled.

      “Nothing.”

      “Nothing?”

      “No, sir, I was just shooting.”

      “Just shooting?”

      The kid nodded. “Yep. I didn’t even see ya. Probably on account I had my eyes closed.”

      Blake reached over and snatched up the shotgun the kid had dropped, gritting his teeth as the movement sent his back into another seizure of pain. “How old are you?”

      “Eight,” the boy said, scurrying back a bit.

      “Eight?” The fire in Blake’s leg was subsiding, but that just gave him more energy to turn into anger. “Who gave you a gun?”

      With a mop of brown hair that needed a good cutting and even browner eyes, the boy hung his head. “No one. I just kinda borrowed it.”

      “Kind of borrowed it?” Blake tried not to yell. The boy was already quivering and digging his dirty bare toes into the recently tilled ground, but this was about the last straw. He’d been crisscrossing no-man’s-land for the past week and had started wondering why. “Borrowed it from whom?”

      “No one really. It’s the gun hidden in the barn.” The boy shot a nervous glance over his shoulder. “I’ll get my hide tanned for this one. Clara don’t like guns. None at all.”

      All of Blake’s anger and injuries were forgotten. Well, his injuries were. Scrambling to his feet, barely wincing, he asked, “Clara who?”

      “J-J-Johnson.”

      The sigh that gushed from his chest left Blake about as empty as a rain barrel in this dry Kansas land. He refueled, though, drew up enough anger to see red. Johnson. She wasn’t even using his last name. That was fine by him. She could call herself anything she wanted to—once she signed the divorce papers.

      Leaning heavily on the gun—his leg was back to burning—he asked, “Where is she? Clara Johnson?”

      The boy cringed as he turned slightly. Blake lifted his gaze, made out the flying skirts of a woman racing across the barren land.

      It was her. His wife. The woman who’d left him four months ago. Six weeks after their wedding day.

      The miles, the months, the anger all blurred together, twisting his insides until they were raw, yet one open space remained. Had him remembering their wedding day. Wedding night.

      He let the memories flow for a moment, but then, even as an unfathomable desire rose in him, he forced them to fade. The memories that is. Wanting her may never fade. He’d practiced exactly what he’d say when he finally found her, just like he did closing arguments, but she wasn’t close enough to speak to yet, so he just stared. And fought what the sight of her did to him. From the moment he’d seen her long dark honey-colored hair and snapping blue eyes, she’d lit up his world like sunshine, and, ironically, did so again right now.

      Damn it.

      She was almost within touching distance when she stumbled to a stop, wide-eyed and breathing hard. Silent for a moment, she stared at him as if he was some sort of nightly apparition.

      He might have chosen the most beautiful woman on earth to marry, but Clara was just like all the others. Selfish. Deceitful. Devious. He’d be glad to be rid of her once and for all.

      “How’d you find me?” she snapped, her blue eyes as cold as December.