Prologue

Fort Laramie, Wyoming

1867

“Roaaaar!” Lily Hart growled playfully, as she pounced toward her little two-year-old brother, Jamie.

It was a day of joy as the late-afternoon sun filtered through the gauzy curtains. A golden stripe ran across the nursery floor, where Lily was on her knees imitating a wild beast. Wooden blocks were scattered across the floor tapestry and stuffed animals circled them like spectators to the gladiator stadium.

Jamie sat in nothing but a onesie as he giggled at Lily, his cheeks flushed and curls damp with sweat as the afternoon heat bore in through the house. He held a block in each hand and slammed them together with joyful squeals.

A day of joy, indeed. But most days between Lily and Jamie were joyous. He had become her best friend since he’d been born two years before. She thought it funny, being so close to a baby—but he was the best thing in her life. Her favorite thing.

She sat cross-legged on the floor across from him, her long legs folding easily beneath her. She held up one of his stuffed animals and let out a dramatic growl again as she wiggled it through the air. She was the predator. And he was just a laughing two-year-old as he shrieked and flopped backward, holding his feet.

“No!” he cried, giggling uncontrollably. “No bites!”

“No,” she laughed. “He just wants a hug.” She was good at the mock innocence thing. She crawled over to Jamie and patted his chest with the animal. “See, he’s gentle.”

He hugged it fully and she laughed before reaching over to brush a stray curl from his forehead. Her fingers lingered there. How in the world had he gotten so big already? He was speaking. Running. Trying to climb. Building little block houses—and of course knocking them down afterward.

Her heart squeezed for a second. She felt a lot of pride for him, but also sadness. He was getting older—and that meant she was, too. Her father kept telling her it was time to get married. She refused.

She wanted to marry for love. Not land or status.

And what would happen to Jamie if she just ran off and married a man?

He wasn’t her son, but sometimes it felt like he was. The connection between them was deeper than that of a brother and sister. And most of that was likely due to the fact that Lily’s stepmother, Edith, whom she loved, had passed. She thought of Edith, her warm hands and even warmer heart. She thought of the way she had smiled and how it was always the most beautiful smile she had ever seen. And when Jamie was born, it was even more beautiful than ever before. When Lily first held Jamie, Edith’s smile had been so bright.

“He needs you, Lil,” she had said. “I’m not always going to be here.”

The words had seemed overly dramatic at the time. Edith was sick, of course, but Lily hadn’t known it was that bad.

Of course, after everything… after her death, Lily had understood that she had been in absolute denial. Until the very end.

“Jamie,” she whispered to him, as his attention had already turned to his blocks again. He looked up, his eyes blinking through his large lashes. His big brown eyes—just like Edith’s—gleamed as they looked up at her. “You know I love you, right?”

Jamie nodded seriously. “Wuv you.” Her chest ached. She knew one day she would have to leave him. And knowing that she wasn’t getting any younger, that day would have to be soon if their father had any say in it. A knock came at the door. Heavy. Slow. Familiar. Lily’s stomach dropped.

Father.

“Stay here, okay? Don’t go knocking down any more block cities without me.”

Jamie grinned. “I will wait.”

She stood, brushed off her skirt, and quietly walked through the nursery door; her father was standing on the other side. “Come and join me in my office, yeah?” he said gruffly.

She nearly winced. He was so cold. So, so cold.

She nodded, her mouth suddenly dry. She watched as he retreated to his office, and she sighed heavily. It was all too quiet. Eerily so. She knew that whatever he wanted to talk about would not be in her favor.

Her father’s office was at the end of the hall, behind a thick wooden door carved with vines and flowers. It was big, beautiful, and one of the most unnecessary shows of money she had ever seen. Her father had a lot—while others didn’t. It didn’t seem fair sometimes.

As he saw it, he had worked hard. Though, as she saw it, he had been lucky to be born into circumstance. Her father was well regarded in town, and had made quite the name for himself, but it all seemed like such a waste to Lily. So much more could have been done to help other people, rather than him parading around and showcasing money on frivolous things others couldn’t even dream to afford—especially when some of them worried about how they would eat.

She knocked once.

“Come in,” came his gruff voice. As cold as ever.

She wasn’t even sure why he’d shut his door when he had only just requested her. It seemed like far too much of a show.

She entered.

Her father sat behind his massive oak desk, a glass of amber liquid in his hand. Whiskey. His drink of choice. The scent of cigar smoke lingered in the air, though she didn’t see one lit. It was clear by the haze that he had recently finished one.

He grumbled and nodded to her and then glanced to the side, where a man stood by the window. A man she didn’t recognize. If she was a betting woman—which she wasn’t—she would say they had just finished smoking cigars together. Celebrating something.

The man was handsome in the traditional sense, as he spun around to lock eyes with her, but the way he smirked made her shudder. He was tall, broad, and his suit was tailored to perfection. He looked like the usual kind of man her father liked to do business with. There was something in the way his eyes glinted, and the sharp edges of his jaw as they tensed that made Lily bristle almost immediately.

This was not a good man.

“Lily,” her father said, gesturing to the chair across from him. “Sit.”

She didn’t. She continued to stand. Her eyes were locked on the man, and he tried to smile, but it was the kind of smile that didn’t reach his eyes. A fake smile. A businessman’s smile. A liar’s smile.

“This is Tucker Morgan,” her father introduced, gesturing with an open palm toward the man.

Lily crossed her arms and didn’t speak. She knew exactly what this was. She nodded, trying not to forget her politeness. Not only did she refuse to stoop to being impolite, but she also knew how angry her father would be if she wasn’t at least somewhat courteous.

Besides, maybe I’m wrong…

“And,” her father said, with a smile that felt more like a warning, “Mr. Morgan has agreed to be your husband.”

For a moment, she said nothing. Just stared. Then she laughed. Not out of humor—there was absolutely nothing funny about it—but because the absurdity of it left her stunned. He was just deciding this now?

“You’re joking,” she laughed.

“I never joke about business.” He looked at her, his expression stoic, and difficult to read. He leaned back in his chair, his fingers resting at the side of his cheek near the corner of his eyes.

“Business?” Her voice cracked. “You’re marrying me off like you’re selling a pig?”

“Fathers do this all the time,” he sighed exasperatedly, as if she was somehow annoying him with her objection. “This marriage benefits both families. You’re going to be taken care of, which is all I can hope for.”

“What about Jamie?” she snapped. “Who’s going to take care of him?”

“Jamie has nannies. Staff. And I’m his father,” he said with a warning. “He’ll be fine. One day he will marry a woman just like you from a well-to-do family and it will also benefit me, and his betrothed’s family.”

“You think I’ll just walk out on him?” she asked, her fists flinging down, clutching at her side.

“He’s not your responsibility!” He slammed his hands down on the table. Tucker stood behind him, his eyes narrowed, jaw set, his hands stuffed into the pockets of his trousers.

“Of course he is!” she shouted with a snarl.

Her father’s eyes narrowed again as a seething anger flooded into him. “You will watch what you say to me! And how you say it!”

But Lily couldn’t stop. She wouldn’t. Her pulse was hammering. Her ears were ringing. All she could see was Jamie’s face—how he’d look when he woke up and she was gone. Her father had wanted nothing to do with him since Edith had died. Lily couldn’t leave him there. Not to marry some man that not only did she not know or love, but a man who looked just as heartless as her father, if not more so.

She turned to Tucker Morgan. The man she didn’t know and yet was expected to marry and hoped she was wrong about him. “Do you even care what I think about this?” she asked, almost pleading.

He smiled again, but it was no warmer. It was lazy and arrogant. “I think you’ll come around,” he all but laughed.

“I won’t marry you,” she whispered faintly—but with a finality she had never spoken before.

“Yes,” her father said, sternly as he rose from behind the desk. “You will.”

“You can’t force me—”

“I can and I will!” he interrupted, his voice booming and loud.

***

That night, Lily lay awake in bed, staring at the ceiling. The house was silent, but it felt loud because all she heard was the thunderous beat of her heart in her own ears. And, although the temperature was mild that night, it felt like she couldn’t breathe.

Edith’s voice echoed in her head. “Promise me you’ll take care of him.”

She had promised. And now, that promise was all that mattered. She couldn’t let Jamie grow up in this house under this man. The man who used to be her father. Or around people like Tucker Morgan. She had no real plan. No money. No horse. Just instinct and desperation.

But she would not marry a man like that.

And she would not leave Jamie behind.

She didn’t know what she was doing—or where she would go.

But they were getting out. The both of them.

Someway somehow. She knew that, deep down, the man she used to have up on a pedestal was involved in some things in which he ought not to be involved. She knew that her father was turning into a man of whom she wasn’t proud. A man who was involved in dangerous and terrible things.

He had too much money. They already had a decent amount of status, but the fact that he kept pulling in money. Their lifestyle became more and more lavish. She had even become aware that more and more undesirable folk kept coming to the house. It meant one thing to her.

He was involved in something bad. Something potentially illegal.

She knew that the walls would be closing in on her and she would have no choice but to relent if she didn’t get out soon. The moment her father had slammed that study door behind her, the man she used to know was gone.

She had tried everything over the last few months, begging him not to force her to be married. She had tried tears, logic, threats, begging—and none of them had worked.

She was going to have to marry someone, and it looked very likely that someone might be Tucker Morgan.

Two weeks.

That was what he’d said, wasn’t it?

Two weeks.

So that was her timeline. She was going to have to get her business in order within two weeks. She was going to have to come up with a plan within two weeks to free herself—and Jamie—from the fate their father wanted to bestow upon them.

She wasn’t going to leave her little brother behind. She owed it to Edith—and she owed it to Jamie.

She sat on the floor of her small room that night, knees pulled to her chest, watching the candlelight flicker on the slanted ceiling. She had gathered Jamie and brought him up with her. He snored softly next to her on the cot, his thumb in his mouth. She shook her head in grief when she looked at him. If she didn’t come up with a plan soon, she would likely never see him again.

Tucker Morgan wasn’t from around here. He looked rich. Like a landowner. He likely owned land all over the west, but he certainly didn’t live close to here. She would have seen him before now. Wouldn’t she?

He would likely move her far away.

That’s not going to happen. I won’t let it.

Lily had made a promise.

That promise had become her anchor. Her fire. And it burned hotter than any fear her father or Tucker Morgan could possibly instill in her.

She wasn’t going to marry that man. She wasn’t going to leave Jamie. She was going to run and she was going to take him with her.

Chapter One

Fort Laramie, Wyoming

1867

Lily’s plans started with the pantry. She snuck small bits of dried meat, flour, oats—little enough that no one would notice anything was missing, but enough to build a small stock. She didn’t hide it in her room, either. She hid it in Jamie’s. Her father never went in there.

The nannies did. But they never went into his memory trunk. That consisted of Edith’s belongings. Small treasures that Jamie would want when he got older. She just had no idea how she was going to get all the stuff out. But she knew she had to try.

Next came clothing. Her own skirts, a few of Jamie’s things. Then she slipped into her father’s office the final afternoon while he was out in town and she knew he would be gone for hours. His desk drawer had a loaded revolver in the third drawer. She’d never seen him use it, but he did clean it. Once a week. She had seen him spin it on his desktop. She wondered why he would clean it so often if he never used it…

But then she realized, maybe he did use it.

She didn’t often check to see if it was there.

He had another gun he carried with him on his side, but he didn’t clean that one nearly as much. She stared at it for a long moment before taking a deep, heavy breath and picking it up. She closed her eyes briefly, sighing, before wrapping it in a cloth.

She would need protection. She had to have it.

The final piece of the puzzle was now all she lacked.

A way to travel.

She couldn’t get all of the stuff she’d gathered anywhere on foot. She couldn’t even carry a quarter of it. She would have to have a wagon. And a horse…

They owned a couple. One wasn’t used very often. Her father had left it out back under a small shelter near the chicken coop. It had been her mother’s before she died. Her father had barely looked at it since, to the best of her knowledge.

She wondered if the weather had gotten to it and rotted it by now, but she would have to try. She didn’t have another way. Not without him noticing. Not without him hearing. At least not now.

She started slipping things out slowly—methodically. She wished she could bring the whole memory trunk out, but that would have been too obvious. So she took things out of it. Things that Jamie would love to have one day. Things she would love to have. Things that would remind them of Edith. Of their life together, before she passed. Of the man her father used to be.

She went about her chores that day, carrying small bundles tucked into her apron or hidden beneath laundry that needed to be hung out to dry. A rolled skirt here, a pouch of oats there. She timed it all as carefully as possible.

The wagon was a little worse for wear. It leaned in the grass a little crookedly—the wheels looking a little rickety, and the bench rough with weather rot, but it would roll. And that had to count for something.

She just hoped it would roll fast—with the horses harnessed. And she hoped it would hold together over rocks or divots.

She watched the windows as she continued to move things while she completed her chores. And she listened. Listened for the creak of the front porch, the slamming of the front door, the sound of her father’s voice. Anything that meant someone—specifically her father—was nearby.

She covered up all of the things with an old blanket she’d pulled from the barn, under the canopy of the wagon, praying no one would notice it was there—or the large lump of stuff under the blanket either for that matter.

“Where going?” Jamie asked, as soon as she came back inside with her empty laundry basket. She looked down, abruptly, and there he was, standing in the living room, clutching his stuffed animal, his little face tilted in nothing but pure curiosity. “Clothes in wagon.”

She froze and then forced a smile. There were clothes in the wagon. “Someplace better,” she replied with a hushing noise before crouching down to his level. “But it’s a secret…” She put a finger to her lips. “You can’t tell anyone or we won’t get to go.”

He beamed, bright-eyed. “Sweets?”

“With sweets,” she promised, kissing the top of his head, her chest aching the entire time. They had to go tonight. She just had to figure out how to slip him out of the house undetected. It meant he had to be quiet. And she had to be even quieter when she gathered him up. But everything else was already in the wagon, waiting.

Rosey and Buck would be waiting, too, after her father got home and settled in his office. They were the final piece of the plan. She would get them each harnessed up, put them in the barn that way, and come back in, where she would wait until everyone was asleep. Then, she would get Jamie, put him in the wagon, and hitch the horses up—and then they would go.

Quickly.

It was all so risky, though. She worried she wouldn’t get them ready without people hearing. She worried she wouldn’t be able to lead them out and strap them up to the wagon quietly enough. She was worried the nannies would catch her taking Jamie.

She worried a lot.

She couldn’t believe it was time already. She was nervous. But they had to go soon, before she was forced to marry this man.

***

The Bozeman Trail

The sun beat down on her unforgivingly as she continued to ride the wagon somewhere safe—somewhere they could set down roots. At least for a little while. She wasn’t sure where she was going. Not really. And part of her was terrified. She wasn’t some stupid girl. She knew the reality of what was to come.

The land was tough. The Wild West was tough. Scoundrelly, wild men. The hot western sun. Hardly any money—only what she had managed to steal from her father. And a little two-year-old boy in tow.

It wasn’t going to be easy.

And the way the ride was going already was an indication that it was going to get worse before it got better. The terrain was muddy from rain, and she knew her horses were getting tired again. They’d already had to stop a few times to get water for them and let them rest.

Not that Lily didn’t welcome the breaks. Her arms ached from holding the reins, and her buttocks and back were even more sore than that. She wasn’t used to sitting like this, or being jarred around. Luckily for her, though, Jamie wasn’t as taxed by it. He slept most of the way, so he paid no mind to the breaks—but as much as her body and the horses welcomed them, she was still worried to death with every stop they made.

She was on edge, looking over her shoulder the whole time. She knew her father could read tracks. If he had heard them leaving, he could be on their tail. And there was no telling what he would do to her when he found her.

The uneven land with hidden rocks and gullies jarred her mother’s old wagon so hard that Lily thought it might break in two. When they hit one large crack in the trail, Jamie fussed hard and wild. His scream came completely out of nowhere.

“It’s okay, sweetheart,” she cooed, pulling a blanket around him. “We’re on a big, rough adventure!”

He whimpered. “It’s hot.”

She nodded. “I know, sweetheart, but you need the blanket to keep you out of the sun as much as possible…” She grabbed her canteen and handed it to him. He was under the canvas, but just barely. She was scared he might fall out of the back if he moved too far away from her on the front seat. “Have some water.”

He took it with both hands, grinning softly, his little curls caked in sweat on his forehead. “Thanks…” he trailed before handing it back and putting his thumb in his mouth.

They camped by a low riverbank that night. They were lucky to find it. A good water source was the best thing she could have hoped for both for the horses and them. She made a small fire. One of the few things her father had ever shown her how to do. And she tried to make some oats for Jamie, with a little fruit she had taken. He refused them, though. She didn’t blame him.

He hated oats. And so did she.

She curled him up in her lap, leaned her back against the wagon wheel, and quietly cried. Her tears fell on Jamie’s soft hair. She had to be stronger than this. Better than this. She had to come up with a better plan…

She didn’t have a map, but she knew where she was headed.

It couldn’t have been far, as long as she was going in the right direction. She was following the sun—and her instincts, hoping that she was going in the right general direction. She had passed a few other riders, but didn’t have to ask any of them.

Truthfully, she didn’t trust any of them. A woman on the run with a two-year-old would be gossiped about, and the last thing she needed was her father—who clearly wasn’t right on her tail—knowing where she was going. She wondered how much of a head start she’d gotten. It must have been a whole night because she hadn’t been going particularly fast, and he knew how to read tracks.

There was no way he could have heard her leaving their home. He would have already found them.

So, she wasn’t going to dare risk all that she had accomplished and planned for by asking directions from the wrong kind of people. She needed to keep hidden where she could. Blend in. The night was chilly as Jamie snuggled close to her and she gripped the revolver at her side, every crack of a stick, or sudden rustle heightening her anxiety.

She barely slept.

Every time she happened to doze off, she would hear her father’s voice, or see Tucker Morgan’s cold eyes—or hear the sound of Jamie’s cries for her to “come back”, or a rustle on the other side of the creek bed.

“Doggone it…” she muttered to herself, shifting against the wheel, hoping she could get comfortable enough and her mind would rest easy just long enough that she could get a little shuteye.

She just needed… a little…sleep…