A lonely rancher ordered a plain, practical bride—then discovered the beautiful woman who arrived was running from a marriage she refused to accept

Chapter 2

The mare’s scream ripped him out of sleep at two in the morning. Caleb was on his feet before his eyes were open, boots and coat in his hands, and he crashed through the door into a night gone knife-blade cold. A dim lamp still burned in the barn, and his first thought was that he had left it lit — and his second thought was that her door stood open, the blankets thrown back.

She was already in the stall when he got there. Already kneeling in the straw beside Sage, wearing his enormous coat over her nightgown and a pair of his boots three sizes too big, her hair a tangled rope down her back.

“She’s been at it twenty minutes,” Evelyn said, and her voice was tight and urgent, stripped of all polish. “Nothing is coming. I heard her from the cabin. We need more light, Mr. Hart. Right now.”

He lit every lantern and hung them till the stall blazed. Her hands were on Sage’s belly, reading again, and when she looked up her face was set in a way that chilled him worse than the wind. “The position is wrong. One leg is folded back. I have to go in.”

“The tack room,” he said. “There’s soap.”