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Overview
Can two yearning hearts learn to beat as one? Dake Reed is a jaded soldier traveling home from the Civil War when he stumbles across an ambushed wagon--and a helpless newborn in need of a mother. The last thing Cara James expects to see is a lean and handsome stranger riding across the lonely prairie with a baby in his arms. She's nothing but a backwoods girl with sky-blue eyes living on a Kansas homestead, making rag dolls . . . and dreaming of a better life. Desperate to find someone to share his burden, Dake uses his sweet-as-molasses drawl to coax Cara into leaving everything behind and joining him on his journey. As Dake and Cara travel to a place they both hope to call home, Cara dares to dream it's not just the child who needs her tender touch . . . but the man. Jill Marie Landis is the New York Times bestselling author and seven-time Romance Writers of American Finalist for the RITA Award. Long known for her historical romances, Jill Marie Landis also now writes The Tiki Goddess Mysteries (set on the island of Kauai, Hawaii, where she lives with her husband, actor Steve Landis).
Product Details
| ISBN-13: | 9781611947786 |
|---|---|
| Publisher: | BelleBooks |
| Publication date: | 08/15/2017 |
| Pages: | 266 |
| Product dimensions: | 6.14(w) x 9.21(h) x 0.60(d) |
About the Author
Some of her recent releases include the Irish Angels Series, inspirational historical romance from Zondervan, and MAI TAI ONE ON, TWO TO MANGO, and THREE TO GET LEI'D, and TOO HOT FOUR HULA the first four titles in her hilarious "Tiki Goddess Mysteries" set in Hawaii. Her historical romances PAST PROMISES, UNTIL TOMORROW, JADE and THE ORCHID HUNTER are being released in e-book for the very first time in 2014.
Jill Marie resides in Hawaii with her husband. When she's not writing or sitting on the beach reading, she enjoys visiting with family and friends, raising orchids, working in her garden, occasionally quilting, but most of all dancing the hula. You can visit her website at http://www.jillmarielandis.com
Read an Excerpt
CHAPTER 1
God always gives a spider enough thread to spin a web ...
Nanny James
NOTHING BUT A series of seldom-used wagon tracks marred the high prairie swell that surrounded the James homestead. With summer's crop of com harvested long since, dried-brown and broken stalks stood in skeletal relief against the setting sun. Beyond the cornfields, a stand of timber hugged a low ridge, while fronting the acre of forest stood a lone black walnut tree. Beneath the deepening shade of its ancient twisted limbs, the observant traveler could discern four wooden crosses. Three weathered, one new.
Kansas, this land so haunting in its very loveliness, gave in abundance; a garden of wildflowers every summer, larkspur, sweet William, prairie roses, and Japan lilies, beds of wild onion; moonlight bright enough to plow by; coal for the gathering. But not all the land gave was good. Tornadoes swept out of the sky without notice, wind and rain often drove themselves through wooden walls or sent swollen rivers and streams over their banks.
Set into the hillside beyond the walnut tree, a weathered, shingle-roofed dugout was nearly invisible. To the naked eye the place looked deserted. Inside, Cara Calvinia James hummed softly to herself as she finished decorating the pine tabletop with the only matching place setting she owned. Stepping back to admire her handiwork, she studied it a moment before she adjusted the dried larkspur in the cream pitcher and pulled it closer to her dinner plate.
"There. Pretty festive, if I have to say so myself," she mumbled aloud.
She picked up the thread of a song she'd been humming and sang a chorus of "Beautiful Dreamer." With a quick spin that sent her mended, calf-length skirt swirling, she lifted her arms in imitation of a waltz with an invisible partner. Her toes brushed the hard-packed dirt floor as Cara twirled barefoot around the table that stood in the center of the one-room dugout.
She danced across the room to the doorway where a red Indian blanket, its edges frayed where it caught on the rough wooden door frame, swayed in the breeze. Pushing it aside and ducking beneath, Cara stepped out to see how her birthday supper was coming along. She pushed her wild mane of curly blond hair out of her face and glanced westward. With her hand shading her eyes, she stared into the red ball low on the horizon and admired the fiery glow of sunset that stained the sky with brilliant streaks of pink and orange.
In the center of the clearing before the house, a spot she used as her outdoor kitchen in summer, a fire burned low under a blackened pot that held a range hen she'd set to boil. No hoecakes for her tonight. This was her birthday, and like her Nanny James often said, "Happiness is a habit you have to cultivate."
Just because there wasn't anyone around to wish her salutations, Cara reckoned if she couldn't hold her own festivities for her twentieth birthday, then the world had indeed become a sorry place.
Cara reached down for the long-handled spoon resting on a crate not far from the fire. She shoved it into the pot to lift the hen and test its doneness. It was almost time to add the carrots and onions.
The vegetables were bagged in gunnysacks, stacked against one wall of the house with the rest of her meager possessions. The only things she'd yet to pack for her journey out of Kansas was the collection of handmade dolls now lining a plank shelf set on wooden pins that bordered the room. Nearly twenty dolls in all. She'd made them herself out of scraps of material — bits and pieces of clothing so worn they could no longer be used. Some had faces of nuts and dried apples; others were made entirely of rags. One of her favorites had a head and body formed of a bedpost.
Before she started making them, she'd never seen dolls with calico faces, but somehow, after she had sewn on their button eyes and the touches of ragged lace and shredded rag hair, she thought them endearing, if not downright beautiful.
Cara pulled four carrots out of a sack and then reached deep into another for a fat onion. Intent on using the dented dishpan sitting outside on a rough wooden bench, she thanked the Lord once more for the abundant harvest of vegetables this summer. It was a far piece to California, that much she knew. She was assured she wouldn't starve before she found a place to settle down and look for work.
No matter what the future might bring, Cara vowed as she picked through the vegetables that she wasn't about to let herself be forever bound to this lonely scrap of land five miles from her nearest neighbor. This place had been part of her father's dream, not her own.
Everett James had always been a dreamer. But by the time Cara was ten she had stopped believing that her father's dreams would ever come true. Their emigration to Kansas, his "big opportunity" sponsored by an Eastern abolitionists' group, was supposed to have been their eventual ticket to California, but they never got there. The dream ended when he was murdered by pro-slavery advocates who had infiltrated Kansas from Missouri. Though she was still a child at the time, she was forced to do her share in the fields alongside her granny, her mother, and her older brother, Willie. Not only had they nearly starved to death that first winter, but they lived in constant fear of roaming bands of border ruffians intent on driving out settlers who would vote to make Kansas a free state.
One by one, the others were taken by the land. Her mother died of typhoid three years ago. Nanny James followed shortly after. And Willie, her serious, ever responsible big brother, had passed on a month ago when he fell from a borrowed hay rake and broke his neck.
She missed them all — her father and his dreams, her mother's easy smile, Nanny's intuitive wisdom. But she took Willie's loss the hardest, for he had been her constant companion and closest friend.
Feeling isolated and alone, Cara stared off across the land and blinked back tears. Her nearest neighbors lived a half day's walk away. A boisterous family of ten, the Dicksons had come to bury Willie after she walked over to ask them for their help.
Hooter Dickson, the second eldest son, had up and asked her to marry him on the spot. Cara took one look at the near toothless, thin-haired Hooter and refused. Without feeling the slightest bit offended, Hooter promised to help her put out her com in the spring, but she felt no compulsion to stay to endure the loneliness and fight the elements alone. Instead of wallowing in her sadness, she had decided to take destiny by the reins and that was exactly what she intended to do come morning.
Vegetables in hand, she sat down on the bench and took up her paring knife, set to peel the carrots before she dunked them into the somewhat clean water in the dishpan. Intent on her work, she heard the sound of hoofbeats before she saw the lone rider materializing out of the west, headed straight toward her door.
Set against the low rise, the dugout was not easy to find even when a body was looking for it, but the smoke from her outdoor kitchen must have given it away.
Excitement, curiosity, and caution bubbled up like an emotional stew inside her as Cara set the carrot and knife aside, shoved her blond hair back off her face again, and shielded her eyes with her arm. It was a man all right. A big one from the looks of him outlined against the setting sun.
She darted inside, picked up the loaded pistol she kept on a stool beside the door, and then stepped back out. Since the war there had been so many displaced drifters on the land that Willie had always warned her that it was wise to take care before inviting a stranger in. Standing with the gun concealed in the folds of her faded yellow skirt, she was ready to face the man on the huge bay.
He rode straight up to the dugout. Cara watched him dismount and wondered if he'd been wounded for he moved as gingerly as a man twice his age and kept one hand on his potbellied stomach. Beneath the brim of his low-crowned black hat, his sun-darkened features were ruggedly handsome. His nose was unbroken. Deep creases bracketed his lips. His finely tapered brows were straight, not arched.
She met his eyes and in one glance Cara knew she had never seen eyes of such a deep, clear green. They appeared fathomless, yet there were shadows lurking in their depths. There was no comparing him to anyone she'd ever met. Hooter Dickson didn't hold a candle to him. This stranger was incredibly handsome.
She forced herself to break the hold of his steady speculative gaze. She looked down at his dusty boots, flicked her sight up to the holster strapped to his thigh.
Her hand tightened on the pistol. Cara stepped forward. "How do, mister?"
Dake Reed shifted the bundle hidden by his jacket, unwilling to wake the infant sheltered against his shirtfront because it had been mewling pitifully off and on since he had ridden away from the wagon. He glanced around the hard-packed dirt yard before the dugout. A broken wheel, bits of wire, a bottomless cane chair with a missing leg, assorted piles of scrap wood, bones, antlers, weeds, and pieces of wooden crates littered the ground. His gaze paused on the rag that covered the doorway. It probably hid any number of odd inhabitants if the look of the wild-haired blonde standing barefoot in the dirt was any indication.
He studied the blonde from beneath the brim of his hat. Of medium height, she was so slight that her faded yellow dress hung on her shoulders; the bust and waistline came nowhere near embracing her slender frame, but he could see the rise of her firm breasts along the dipping neckline. Since the dress was two sizes too wide and a foot too short, her lower calves and ankles showed beneath her skirt. Her feet were streaked brown with the dry prairie earth. She stared up at him with sky-blue eyes that barely shone through a tangle of curls that kept falling forward into her face. As he watched, she shoved her hair back for the third time. Dake was tempted to ask if she'd ever thought of tying it back and found himself dismissing a sudden vision of having the pleasure of brushing it for her.
She had a wide mouth. Next to her eyes, her full, pouting lips would tempt a saint to taste them. Physically, she didn't appear to be out of her late teens, but there was nothing young about the wariness in her eyes as she stared up at him.
Dake had to force himself to recall what he was about to say to her. Finally, he stared over her head at the dugout. There was no sign of anyone else about. He looked down at her again.
"I need your help," he said without preamble, praying there might be a soft spot in her heart for children.
She peered up at him curiously. "Johnny Reb, huh?"
There was no denying his drawl. He had given up trying to lose it. "I'm originally from Alabama, ma'am. Union Army, though."
He watched her slowly arch a brow and stare up at him speculatively as if weighing the truth of his words. She didn't relax her stance at all. "What is it you need?"
He patted the mound beneath his jacket. "I —"
She cut him off. "Are you wounded?"
He blinked. "Why?"
"Because you stepped off that horse like an old-timer and you've been holding your stomach ever since."
He looked down at his hand where it rested on the front of his buckskin jacket. "Mind if we go inside?"
"I do, sir. I don't know you from Adam."
Dake nodded. So be it. He began to unbutton his jacket, slowly and carefully, keeping one hand on the infant tucked inside. When he looked up again, he saw amazement in the girl's eyes.
"I'll be battered and fried," she whispered, stepping forward. In a hushed tone she asked, "What have you got there?"
"A baby."
"Well, I can see that." She reached out with her finger and brushed the tawny down on the baby's head. Magnetically, a thin curl looped around her finger. "Boy or girl?"
"Boy."
"Yours?"
"No. Definitely not mine," he assured her.
"Where'd you get it?"
"I was just following the Neosho and came upon three people who'd been ambushed, homesteaders from the looks of them. The woman had just given birth. She had two servants with her, both dead. She told me her name and where she was from and then she died. I've been looking for a place to stop for two hours now. Yours is the first place I came to." She was staring at the baby so hard he wondered if she had taken in all he had said. He added as an afterthought, "I'm Dake Reed. Until last week I was a captain in the army, stationed at Fort Dodge."
Dake stared down at the girl's blond curls and watched her smile at the baby as he pulled it all the way out of his jacket and cradled it in his arms. The sheets he'd swaddled the baby in were stained with its mother's blood and the mucus it had been born in. Dake frowned at the damp spot on the front of his shirt and thought of the price he'd paid for the beautifully tanned buckskin.
The girl stepped back a pace and crossed her arms. It was then he noticed the pistol in her right hand. "I'm Cara. Cara Calvinia James."
She didn't move, nor did she make an offer to take the baby from him. In fact, she was studying him in a measuring way, as if making up her mind whether or not to believe him at all. Finally, she nodded toward the dugout. "Bring him in."
They were both forced to duck beneath what barely passed as a blanket to enter the low doorway. Dake bent nearly double. Once through, he straightened in the darkened interior. The place smelled of must and onions. The back wall had been cut into the low hillside. Most of the dwelling was nothing but raw earth. As he crossed to the table, he noticed the room was incredibly bare of any amenities and nearly dark as a cave.
Muted light filtered through oiled paper at the two small windows in the front wall. The table, three mismatched chairs, and a sagging rope bed against one wall were the only pieces of furniture in the sparse room. Surely Cara Calvinia James didn't live here alone?
"You can put him down over here." Gun in hand, Cara pointed to the table and watched the big man awkwardly holding the baby in the crook of his arm. She watched him take note of the single place setting at one end of the rickety table.
He looked up slowly, regarding her intently. She lifted her chin a notch and stared back. Her hand tightened on the gun butt. It was hard to imagine that anyone who had stopped to aid a dying woman and carry a newborn to safety might harm her, but as she had told him earlier, she didn't know him from Adam and baby or no, until she thought she could trust him, she wasn't about to take her eyes or her gun off him.
The baby cried out and quickly forced their thoughts back to the problem at hand.
"Do you have a cow?" he asked.
"A cow?" His voice was deep, his drawl so slow that she repeated the word in order to discern what he meant. Then with a shake of her head, she informed him, "I did. Just sold her along with the pigs. Got a good price, too. Twenty dollars."
"Damn," he mumbled.
Offended by what she thought was a slight, Cara said softly, "I thought it was good money."
Dake shook his head as he lay the infant on the table. "I mean, I'm sorry you sold her. This little boy needs milk. I don't know how long he can go without eating."
"I've still got a goat that gives milk," she volunteered.
He reached down to unwrap the naked child. "Do you think that would work?"
Cara Calvinia James shrugged. "I don't see why not." The baby was a mess, his skin blotchy with dried blood. "Do you think you should wash him off or something?" She was frowning down at the stump of the baby's umbilical cord and the stained blanket beneath it.
"He might catch cold." Dake shook his head. He had learned enough growing up on a plantation to help deliver a baby, but the details of child care were out of his realm. "You think washing him so soon will hurt him?" "I don't mean for you to drown him. Just wipe him off here and there. And he needs a diaper, I know that much."
Dake Reed looked hopeful. "Do you have any?"
"Nope." She flushed almost immediately. "But I've got some clean rags I keep ... for emergencies."
"Maybe you can tend to that while I go out and milk your goat?" "Me tend to him? I don't know anything about tending a brand-new baby." The thought of him leaving her alone to tidy up the slippery bundle on the table filled her with dread. What if she dropped the wriggly little thing?
(Continues…)
Excerpted from "Until Tomorrow"
by .
Copyright © 1994 Jill Marie Landis.
Excerpted by permission of BelleBooks, Inc..
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