Niñita
Prologue
She was the youngest of five, and her name was actually Lily Elizabeth, or Lily Beth. But from the moment she was born, so very tiny at first, everyone called her Little Bit. Me included, but then I guess I have a right to. I'm her Pa, Bart Maverick.
She was a surprise, to all involved. Her momma and me already had four healthy, strong children, and Little Bit was an unexpected surprise. Momma's name is Doralice Donovan Maverick, and she's one of the most beautiful creatures God ever created, inside and out. Exquisite golden hair that shimmers and shines, and the craziest aqua-blue eyes you've ever seen.
Doralice is medium height; she just about comes up to my shoulders, with skin like fine porcelain and the greatest laugh ever heard on the planet. A good wind would blow her over, but she's strong as an ox, physically and morally. She's delicate and frail, yet she survived being drug across the Mexican desert in handcuffs and chains. There isn't a problem she can't solve, or a mountain she can't climb. And I'm the luckiest man on the face of the earth, because she chose to love me with every fiber of her being.
Why that happened I have no idea, considering I kept her waiting for years while I roamed the countryside in search of . . . I never did understand what it was I was looking' for. Because everything I could ever have wanted was waiting for me right under my very nose. Fierce as a wildcat and gentle as a kitten, I could live with her for a hundred years and never know everything there was to know about her. We were like bottled lightning when we were together, and there was nothing on this earth that could keep us apart.
We made children like we made love, fierce and passionate, but by the time number four was born, we figured we'd run out our string. Our fifth child was so little we weren't even sure she was real until almost the last minute. Then we very nearly lost her to a breech birth in Indian territory with only me and her oldest sister to deliver her.
Once she'd announced her arrival into the world, her health was so precarious that I literally drove a team of our best cross-breeds into the ground to get her and her mother to a doctor. For almost a week we held our breath for every moment of every day, praying that God hadn't given us this precious gift just to turn around and take her away. And then, ever so slowly, a gifted doctor and what passed for modern medicine pulled both of them firmly into the land of the living. And Little Bit was our own true miracle.