LITMIR.BIZ

      TORONTO • NEW YORK • LONDON

       AMSTERDAM • PARIS • SYDNEY • HAMBURG

       STOCKHOLM • ATHENS • TOKYO • MILAN • MADRID

       PRAGUE • WARSAW • BUDAPEST • AUCKLAND

      ABOUT THE AUTHOR

      Carrie Hudson lives in Southern California and worked in Hollywood as a successful commercial actress before giving it all up to follow her dream of becoming a writer. Creating stories that spin on an axis of love and happily-ever-after comes naturally for this incurable romantic. It’s not entirely her fault. She’s married to a fabulous guy, has two wonderful children and a pair of mismatched cats who spend much of the day licking one another, madly in love. Really, what chance did she have? To contact the author, please visit www.carriehudsonbooks.com.

      To my dear friend Debbi Rawlins,

       who shoved me back up on the horse when

       I needed shoving and for loving the whole

       Old West world as much as I do.

      And as always, to my husband, David,

       without whom I could never do this.

       You’re the best.

      Acknowledgment

      In 1874 George Armstrong Custer’s announcement that gold had been discovered at French Creek triggered the Black Hills Gold Rush and the rise of Deadwood. The town sprang up quickly, reaching a population of over 5,000 in an alarming amount of time, and attracting a slew of businesses from saloons to brothels to dry goods stores. Buildings were hastily erected and sometimes even tents were used by vendors, as well as attorneys plying their trade, but for the purposes of this book, I’ve focused on a much more scaled-down version of the camp. Also you will note that during this period, some of the newer inventions enjoyed back East were not yet available to the citizens of Deadwood.

      Contents

      Chapter 1

      Chapter 2

      Chapter 3

      Chapter 4

      Chapter 5

      Chapter 6

      Chapter 7

      Chapter 8

      Chapter 9

      Chapter 10

      Chapter 11

      Chapter 12

      Chapter 13

      Chapter 14

      1

      Question: Is it always fundamental to know one’s destination? Or, can not knowing be the path to truly knowing?

      (A little-known Confucius-ism)

      Hollywood, California

      March 2009

      THE PHOTOGRAPH of Ellie and her sister swam just beneath the surface of the chemical bath, appearing slowly as if rising through a bank of fog. Like a puzzle it evolved: her own dark hair, their clutched hands, her sister Reese’s head thrown back in laughter—until finally the two of them appeared just as Ellie remembered they’d been that day before everything had changed.

      That day, she remembered, was a Friday. She had worked for thirty minutes setting up that shot and kept getting it wrong. Either she would miss getting seated altogether before the autoshutter went off, or Reese would make a silly face and they would dissolve into laughter again. There was a decent posed shot—all terribly serious. Even she had to admit they both looked great, but she didn’t like it as much as this one. This accidental one. This shot captured the real Reese. Not the physician the world knew on TV news shows. Not the brilliant, accomplished one their parents adored.

      But simply her big sister whom she had loved.

      She transferred the photo into the stop bath, swirling it beneath the surface with the plastic tongs. She liked the contrast on this one. It was good and she knew it. But that wasn’t the point. It wasn’t for the show she was putting together. The point was—she’d realized sometime late this afternoon—she’d begun to forget that little dimple in Reese’s cheek and the way the lines around her eyes crinkled when she laughed hard. It had taken almost a year

Скачать книгу