LITMIR.BIZ

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      ANNE MARIE WINSTON

      has believed in happy endings all her life. Having the opportunity to share them with her readers gives her great joy. Anne Marie enjoys figure skating and working in the gardens of her south-central Pennsylvania home.

      For Harold, who keeps all my parts in working order.

      Contents

      Prologue

      Chapter One

      Chapter Two

      Chapter Three

      Chapter Four

      Chapter Five

      Chapter Six

      Chapter Seven

      Chapter Eight

      Epilogue

      Prologue

      When he saw the letter addressed in a looping, unfamiliar feminine handwriting, Marty Stryker withdrew the mail from his post office box in Kadoka, South Dakota, as if it might be poisonous. Stopping by the trash barrel in the corner to get rid of the junk mail, he held up the envelope, weighing it in his palm.

      Should he even read it? The last few had been so goofy he hadn’t even bothered to answer them. Quickly, he slit one envelope and scanned the contents.

      Dear Rancher,

      How much would I have to know about children to marry you? I am eighteen years old. I know you might think that’s a little young but—

      With a snort, Marty tossed the letter into the trash. And another one bites the dust.

      Dispiritedly, he pushed open the heavy door and stepped out into the icy winter afternoon. His truck was parked at an angle just a few steps away on Main Street and he quickly strode over and folded his big frame inside, starting the engine and sitting there for a minute while it warmed up. He took off his hat and tossed it onto the seat, running his fingers through his gold-tipped curls.

      A mild depression settled over him. He’d placed an ad in several Rapid City, South Dakota, papers nearly a year ago for a wife. Who’d have thought it would be so difficult to find a good woman?

      He reached for the keys and cranked the engine, then started the drive south out of town to the Lucky Stryke, the outfit he worked with his brother Deck. All Marty wanted was a capable, friendly woman to share the raising of his daughter and help with the work around the ranch. Someone who’d enjoy a good romp between the sheets a few nights a week. She didn’t have to declare undying love; in fact he wouldn’t even consider marrying anyone who did.

      No, he’d had love once. And losing Lora had been unbearable. All he wanted now was a partner, someone he liked enough to live with and make a life with. He didn’t want more children, so she’d have to be someone who didn’t hanker after babies. But other than that, he didn’t have a lot of requirements.

      Or maybe he did. He thought back over the past few months to some of the disastrous encounters he’d had. Drunken women, priggish women, women who said they were thirty when they were closer to sixty…the one that took the cake, though, was the one who had declared that she could never live in a Godforsaken place like Kadoka.

      He loved his little town, with its population of seven hundred something. He loved the wide, flat prairie and the gently rolling hills. He loved the lousy winters and the scorching summers, the stupid cattle and the awesome power of the storms that swept down from the north. He glanced out the window at the eroded outcroppings and peaks of the Badlands that stretched away to the west, stark and strangely beautiful to his eye—

      And against his will, he remembered another trip on this very road, over two years ago, heading in the opposite direction at a much higher rate of speed as he’d rushed to get his laboring wife to the hospital in Rapid City.

      His hands clenched on the steering wheel and the tips of his fingers grew white. He’d lost the battle with time on the trip, lost both Lora and the infant son she’d carried, and lived with the loneliness and grief every day since. Getting married again wasn’t at the top of his list of things he really wanted to accomplish in his lifetime, but he had his daughter to think of. His daughter, his beautiful, totally out of control daughter, needed a mother. And he was tired of sleeping alone, trying to get meals and laundry done in between feeding, branding and birthing calves, tired of the dreary look his home had acquired without a woman’s presence.

      So he guessed he’d keep on with his ad campaign, even though his brother and his friends thought it was a crazy idea.

      The right woman had to be out there somewhere.

      Juliette Duchenay dropped the envelope through the mail slot in the Rapid City, South Dakota Post Office.

      A full minute later, she still stood in front of the box. What in the world had possessed her to answer a perfect stranger’s ad for a wife?

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