I have been busy getting back into the writing thing I do - I just submitted a short romance novella, a western historical, to the national romance writers organization for a new anthology that will come out next year. At 20 pages, it took me a quick two weeks to write, edit, seek corrections/advice from two fellow author friends, and submit it. If it isn't accepted (I will find out in May), I plan to extend it by another 20 pages and put it out there to you, my readers.
Mixing genres seems all the rage lately, and I've been thinking of combining a foreign character into a Regency historical romance. A good friend of mine is Indian, and she laments the lack of strong Indian heroines in traditional romances. An idea has been forming in my adventurous brain and I see a wealthy girl hoping to escape an arranged marriage and seeking the help of a confirmed bachelor who is an English sea captain working for her fiance.Some of my first attempts at romance novels involved international locations and non-English characters, and I'd like to revisit that. Maybe readers are over the tortured duke and kilt-challenged Highlander!
I hope your winter is almost over for you, and you are looking forward to new books and travels in the spring. Please enjoy the following excerpt from my new novella, RETURN TO ME, set in the American west:
“I’d
heard you were back.” The lump of tears swelling in the back of her throat threatened
to spill over. She inhaled a sharp breath and tasted the dust of the street.
“Good for you, Garrett Kincaid. You finally made something of yourself. Goodbye.”
She led Johnny by the hand and walked past him.
“Laurel, wait.” His boots
scuffed the ground behind her.
“I
have nothing to say to you.”
A
small crowd had gathered outside the dry goods store and saloon across the
street to stare at the living proof of a man who’d struck it rich in gold
country. She continued toward the boarding house without looking back. Her
behavior would cause speculation, but she was beyond caring.
“I
have plenty to say to you, Laurel.” He strode beside her and kept pace as she
broke into a slightly panicked jog.
She
stopped in her tracks to confront him, not caring if she made a scene. “Get
away from me, Garrett! I never want to speak to you again. What you did….”
She
shivered as if she stood in the shade and the blazing sun wasn’t searing the
tops of her shoulders.
“I
wasn’t the only one down by the river, as I recall.” He pulled off his hat and
held it to his chest. Everything around her faded. All she could see were his
sharp eyes gazing steadily into hers. “We may have made a mistake back then, Laurel, but you and I both
know it came out of something.”
“Came
from what? Love?” She closed her eyes
against the image of his face, which had been etched into her brain. “Don’t
talk to me about love, Garrett. I hope that’s not why you came back here, to
try and….”
“I
came to make my peace with Emmett,” he interrupted. He shoved his hat upon his
head again. “I’ll accept whatever punishment he wants to give me. Hell, if he
wants to shoot my knees out, he can. God knows, I deserve it.” His frown
deepened. “I’m not that kid I used to be, Laurel.
I want to prove it to him. And to you.”
“You
can’t. Prove it to him, at any rate.”
“Why
not?” He glanced around the busy street–at the saloon on the corner and all the
way down the dusty road to the church at the end, as if he expected Emmett to
walk out of either building; two places his brother had never been. “I went to
the ranch first, when I got in this morning. Some fella I never met told me Emmett
had let the place. Where is he, anyway?”
“In
Texas. Or Kansas.” She allowed a
bitter smile to reach her lips, wallowing in the burden of misery she was about
to thrust upon his broad shoulders. He could take it. He’d always been strong.
Strong enough to break her heart and destroy his brother.
“When’s
he coming back?”
“He’s
not. Not in this life, anyway.”
“What
are you saying?” His bronzed cheeks paled. The narrow creases at the corners of
his eyes–brought on from years of hunting for gold–deepened. He no longer
looked like the rowdy cowboy who’d stolen her heart right from under his
brother. Something in his eyes changed, and, for the first time in his life, he
looked strikingly like Emmett.
“He
died. I don’t know how.” The words blurted from her in a torrent. “I received a
letter from a doctor. I can’t recall now where he was. He’s buried there, in
whatever little town he ran off to.”
His
Adam’s apple bobbed and he blinked rapidly before clearing his throat. “What
happened?”
She
shrugged. The memories flooded her in all their familiar violence, hurling her
back to the cool spring morning when she’d awakened to find every trace of Emmett
gone. His horse, clothes…even his Sunday suit were missing. He’d even taken
their wagon but left her with the orneriest mule that ever kicked out the back wall
out of a barn. A rancher and his cowboys showed up a few days later with a
lease written in Emmett’s hand, hastily scribbled on a scrap of paper, granting
them permission to work the land. The rancher gave Laurel enough money to put
her and Johnny up at the boarding house in town. She had enough to get her back
to Boston, but she had nothing there anymore. Numb, she’d found a job as the
schoolmistress when old Mrs. Henley up and died that winter.
“He
left us. I don’t know if it was to find his fortune elsewhere…” Her voice
dwindled off. Emmett had abandoned her just as Garrett had done. Except Emmett caught
a fever in some little town somewhere and was buried in a town whose name she
couldn’t remember.
Garrett
shook his head slowly. “I can hardly believe it, Laurel. That doesn’t sound
like Emmett.” His gaze pierced hers. “Leaving his wife and child like that. I
thought if I left, he would…you’d both….” His face flushed.
“You
didn’t know him the past few years, Garrett. He changed.” She bit her lip. Changed was too mild a word. In
Garrett’s absence, Emmett’s pleasant moods had vanished overnight. He took to a
whiskey bottle and spent less time on the ranch and more time riding the range,
arriving home late at night when he thought she was asleep.
“I
should have been there.” His eyes glistened. “I should never have gone.”
“No
one stopped you from leaving.”
He
broke her stare by focusing his attention on the shiny toes of his new
rattlesnake skin boots.
“We
both know why I had to go. I wasn’t doing anybody any favors sticking around.”
She
straightened her shoulders and tried to remember how brave she’d been the last
few years, when all she wanted to do was crawl into a hole somewhere and forget
the world. But she had Johnny to care for. Sometimes, she wondered what might
have happened to her had it not been for her little boy’s trusting smile.
Johnny fidgeted, anxious to get out of the sun.
She
nodded toward the boarding house across the street. “I can’t stay out here
talking to you like this. I’m taking Johnny to our rooms. I’m glad you survived
the gold fields.”
Garrett
remained immobile, but his jaw clenched and unclenched a few times. He glanced
down at Johnny, as if noticing the child for the first time. He dropped to one
knee and held out his hand.
“Hey,
there, Johnny. I’m your…your Uncle Garrett.”
Johnny
stuck out his hand before Laurel could stop him. “Pleased to meet you, sir.”
His little baby voice quavered.
“I
want to take you and your mama to have dinner with me.” Garrett spoke solemnly
to Johnny. He ignored Laurel’s shake of her head and mouthed no.
“Can
we have candy, too?” Johnny bounced on his heels.
“Sure,
son, we can have all the candy you want.” His face went scarlet.
Son. Although any
other man could have used the term innocently enough, Garrett’s use of it
jarred her. She would have held onto her stomach if she’d had a free hand. She
suddenly feared she would lose her breakfast all over the street.
Garrett
straightened to his full height.
“That
is, if you’re willing, Laurel. I’d like to go over the situation at the ranch
with you. I want to buy that rancher out of his lease.” He stuck his hands into
his pockets, ruining the line of his expensively tailored coat. “I’ll take over
the place. Make it the kind of ranch Emmett always wanted.”
The
women by the store huddled in a group, darting disapproving glances at their
usually proper schoolmarm who was now chatting away in the middle of the street
with her dead husband’s handsome brother.
“Fine.
You can fetch us at six. Johnny goes to bed at eight.”
He
tipped his hat and gave Johnny a brief salute. He smiled at last when the
little boy saluted back.
“Six
it is.” He held his hat in both of his hands as they walked away.
She
steeled herself not to turn and take a final look at him. Her heart thudded
like a hammer in her chest, but she busied herself with balancing her packages
in one arm and holding tightly to her son’s hand in the other, all the while
telling herself it was good that Garrett Kincaid was ready to take on
responsibilities. He might become an upstanding citizen. Maybe run for mayor,
should the town fathers ever agree on the sort of governing body they wanted.
She
stepped onto the shaded porch of the boarding house and steered Johnny past the
men smoking their pipes and crowding the entrance.
Garrett
was welcome to start all over in Broken Junction. She would just have to find a
way to avoid him for the rest of her natural life.
