LITMIR.BIZ

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      To Nikki WhiteFeather and his cousins:

       Rachel McCafferty, Laicee Chandler, Miles McCullough, Patrick and Parker Henry. You are all great kids.

      SHERI WHITEFEATHER

      lives in Southern California and enjoys ethnic dining, summer powwows and visiting art galleries and vintage clothing stores near the beach. Since her one true passion is writing, she is thrilled to be a part of the Silhouette Desire line. When she isn’t writing, she often reads until the wee hours of the morning.

      Sheri also works as a leather artisan with her Muscogee Creek husband. They have one son and a menagerie of pets, including a pampered English bulldog and four equally spoiled Bengal cats. She would love to hear from her readers. You may write to her at: P.O. Box 5130, Orange, California 92863-5130.

      Contents

      Chapter One

      Chapter Two

      Chapter Three

      Chapter Four

      Chapter Five

      Chapter Six

      Chapter Seven

      Chapter Eight

      Chapter Nine

      Chapter Ten

      Chapter Eleven

      Chapter Twelve

      Chapter Thirteen

      Chapter Fourteen

      Epilogue

      One

      How many days had she pleaded her case? Begged Harold to change his mind?

      Annie Winters sat at her desk in the back room of her retail store, cradling the phone to her ear. “Please, be reasonable.”

      Harold’s breath rasped through the receiver. The eighty-six-year-old Cheyenne lived on a reservation in Montana, nine hundred miles away from Annie’s hometown in Southern California, yet he held her future in the flick of a ballpoint pen. She needed his signature. Desperately.

      “My granddaughter was married,” he stated stoically. “She had a husband.”

      Annie stared across the room, as an image of her dear friend came to mind. Jill with her shining black hair and crooked smile. Jill, the biological mother of the children Annie intended to adopt, the boys she had come to love with all her heart. Yes, Jill had been happily married to the father of her children until a car accident had taken both of their lives two years before, making orphans of their three young sons.

      Annie sighed. “I don’t have a man in my life, Harold. I can’t just pull a husband out of a hat.”

      “I won’t sign the adoption papers unless you get married. You can’t be both parents no matter how hard you try. My great-grandchildren need a father.”

      Annie shifted the phone. After Jill’s death she had altered her life-style, knowing the children needed her. She’d started a new business, bought a new home, grieved with the boys, cradled them, kissed their skinned knees and watched them grow.

      How could Harold expect her to survive without gap-toothed grins and sweet, warm hugs? Youthful chatter and jelly-stained clothes? “You can’t take them away from me. You just can’t.”

      But he could, and they both knew it. Without Harold’s consent she would lose the children. Harold was their only legal living relative. He had the power to grant the private adoption she had been pursuing.

      She squeezed her eyes shut, dreading her fate. Harold wasn’t insisting she marry just any man; he’d firmly stated that her future husband must be a registered Cheyenne, someone able to teach the children about that side of their heritage.

      And there was only one man in her acquaintance who fitted that description.

      Dakota Graywolf.

      Drawing a deep breath, Annie opened her eyes. Dakota had scheduled a trip to see the boys. He’d be arriving within two weeks. That gave her fourteen days to muster the courage to propose to the last man on earth she wanted to marry.

      Two weeks later, a single-lane highway led Annie to the Sleep Shack, a motel as tired and run-down as its name. The dilapidated pink structure sat on the outskirts of a dusty California town, blistering and peeling in the harsh desert sun.

      Of the three trucks parked in the narrow lot, she recognized his immediately. He drove a bright-red pickup, an American-made model displaying generous mud flaps, squashed bugs on the windshield and wide tires with plenty of tread.

      She exited her minivan and smoothed her blouse, straightening the embroidered collar. As she made her way to the motel door, the desert winds played havoc with her hair and billowed her ankle-length skirt, taunting yards of blue silk.

      Annie knocked, and Dakota Graywolf flung open the door

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