You Sleep In My Bed, You Wake Up As My Woman, the Rancher Whispered—She Froze

Chapter 2

The wagon rolled through sheets of rain while thunder tore the sky apart and sewed it back together again. Nora sat with her suitcase wedged between her boots, watching water pour off the brim of Caleb Ridge’s hat and stream down his coat. Neither of them spoke for the better part of three miles. The horses knew the road better than either traveler did.

Finally Caleb raised one hand and pointed toward a line of cottonwoods bending in the wind. “My place is just past those hills.”

Through the gray curtain of weather Nora made out the shape of weathered buildings — a barn with a sagging but honest roofline, a cabin with smoke already trailing from its stone chimney, wide pastures gone silver with rain. It was not grand. It was true. Fences stood strong around fields where a dozen horses pressed together against the wind, heads low, patient as the land itself.

Something inside her, tight since morning, loosened a thread.