Prologue

Nick had shouted at her. She knew he could be loud and she had heard him shout before but never at her and the force of his anger left her stunned. Exasperated at the impasse they had reached, Nick had abruptly stopped the shouting, turned on his spurred heel, grabbed his hat and jacket, and left the house, seemingly in one movement. He slammed the front door on his way out for emphasis.

Had she shouted back at him? She couldn't remember but in her mind she had. She had stood up to him, pushed back in desperation. She felt she was walking through quicksand with Nick and with each step she sank a little deeper.

Without a conscious thought of what she was doing, she went to the coat rack by the grandfather clock, tied her bonnet onto her head, grabbed her wool coat, stepped out the front door, and started to walk home to town.

She had come to the ranch that morning under much happier circumstances – to help Glory foal – and it had all disintegrated into . . . this. Victoria and Jarrod had gone into town following lunch, perhaps for business and errands, as they said, or perhaps to give the couple some time alone. They would be returning soon enough and they would be a little surprised she wasn't staying for dinner. No matter, she thought, Nick would make an excuse for her and he would be relieved she was gone.

With thoughtfulness absent when she stepped out the door, she quickly realized she would need to take the old bridle path and not the road to town. On the road, she was likely to encounter the mother and the brother and she did not want to explain this to them.

The cold January air felt bracing and clarifying to her and the occasional raindrop matched her mood. Nick's shouts rang in her ears, his angry face imprinted in her mind's eye. As she stepped onto the bridle path and now truly out of sight from anyone on the ranch, she heard his words repeating in her head and they stung her. She remembered his accusations of cowardice and each word she recalled brought a wash of hot, salty tears.

No one else thought she was a coward; everyone told her how brave she was for remaining in California after her husband died. Custom and practicality would have her return to Ohio to live with her father but she had chosen to remain in California just as she and Sam had planned.

She felt she'd known Sam all her life and in a way she had. He was a school friend of her brother's and had been in her life since she was ten years old, maybe earlier.

With five older brothers there had always been a lot of boys coming and going at Judge Barrett's farm. There they had a pond with a rope swing, and woods to hide in, trees to climb, snakes and frogs and enough horses to stage races and play cowboy with the milking cows.

She always got along with the boys when allowed to play with them. For her there had also been piano lessons, helping Cook, and the dainty work she learned at school. A graduate of Corbett's Young Women's Seminary, she was adept at lace-making, embroidery, petit-point, as well as comportment, dance, more piano, etiquette, and she even learned to speak a little French. She loved piano and needlework and was particularly good at the latter as evidenced by her current vocation of making ladies' underpinnings embellished by her lace and fine stitches. There was nothing, however, she loved more than riding a fast horse: She loved the power and the intelligence of the animal and the wind in her face as the creature launched her forward over the earth. It felt like flying to her.

She and Sam had slipped into an easy companionship. He was kind and gentle and quiet but with an ambition and longing to match her own. And when at eighteen years old she graduated from the seminary, her father happily gave her away to Mr. Samuel E. Powell, second son of financier Josiah Powell and his wife, Mary. Then off the young couple went to California where Sam had a job with the San Francisco Fire Department. They were young, adventurous, and ambitious and they had each other.

Sam was an engineer specializing in fire safety and management and she brought in extra money doing piece-work for dressmakers. She developed a reputation for her fine work and soon enough she was working with the city's finest dressmakers and corsetieres.

Together, their savings grew and when their days off coincided they would peruse the papers for orchard land and they had countless half serious, half joking debates about what kind of fruit they would grow while Sam built his career in a nearby town.

And then there was the dreadful day when those men came to the apartment and told her. She stayed in San Francisco after Sam's death - Initially too numb with shock to do anything else and then because she couldn't think of a life different from the one she and Sam made together. Two years later, even the comfort of that life could not block out the crowds and dangers of the city and she looked for a smaller, more stable, community in which to root her widow life and amend the dream from a working orchard to maybe, one day, a small house with a few fruit trees in the yard.

Lost in her memories and walking briskly, Nick's shouting still echoing in her head, she hadn't noticed when the weather turned from cold and breezy to frigid and blustering with cold, cold rain falling in diagonal torrents. Suddenly, she became acutely aware of her thoughts as if she was no longer the author but an observer. Two men. Two very different men: Her companionable husband and the effusive cowboy; One dead and gone and the other very much alive and working so hard to pull her into his life.

She gasped aloud and stood still a moment, feeling she had been holding something tightly closed in her hand and now her fingers had been forced open to reveal something beautiful. As she continued walking towards home she could almost hear Sam's voice in the wind telling her to move on and live her life without him and she smiled.