No Other Will Do (Ladies of Harper's Station Book #1) , livre ebook

Baker Publishing Group - Karen Witemeyer

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189 pages

English

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Enjoy Bestselling Author Karen Witemeyer's Terrific New Romance!Men are optional. That's the credo Emma Chandler's suffragette aunts preached and why she started a successful women's colony in Harper's Station, Texas. But when an unknown assailant tries repeatedly to drive them out, Emma admits they might need a man after all. A man who can fight--and she knows just the one.Malachi Shaw finally earned the respect he craved by becoming an explosives expert for the railroad. Yet when Emma's plea arrives, he bolts to Harper's Station to repay the girl who once saved his life. Only she's not a girl any longer. She's a woman with a mind of her own and a smile that makes a man imagine a future he doesn't deserve.As the danger intensifies, old feelings grow and deepen, but Emma and Mal will need more than love to survive.

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Historical romance

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Publié par	Baker Publishing Group
Date de parution	07 juin 2016
Nombre de lectures	0
EAN13	9781441269423
Langue	English
Poids de l'ouvrage	1 Mo

Informations légales : prix de location à la page 0,0432€. Cette information est donnée uniquement à titre indicatif conformément à la législation en vigueur.

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Cover
Title Page
Copyright Page
© 2016 by Karen Witemeyer
Published by Bethany House Publishers
11400 Hampshire Avenue South
Bloomington, Minnesota 55438
www.bethanyhouse.com
Bethany House Publishers is a division of
Baker Publishing Group, Grand Rapids, Michigan
www.bakerpublishinggroup.com
Ebook edition created 2016
All rights reserved. No part of this publication may be reproduced, stored in a retrieval system, or transmitted in any form or by any means—for example, electronic, photocopy, recording—without the prior written permission of the publisher. The only exception is brief quotations in printed reviews.
Library of Congress Cataloging-in-Publication Data is on file at the Library of Congress, Washington, DC.
ISBN 978-1-4412-6942-3
Scripture quotations are from the King James Version of the Bible.
This is a work of fiction. Names, characters, incidents, and dialogues are products of the author’s imagination and are not to be construed as real. Any resemblance to actual events or persons, living or dead, is entirely coincidental.
Cover design by Dan Pitts
Cover photography by Mike Habermann Photography, LLC
Author is represented by Books & Such Literary Agency.
Dedication
To one of the strongest women I know,
my grandma—Vera Burgess.
Nearly a century old and still ready to take on the world. From her blackberry jam to her persimmon cookies, she filled my childhood with sweet memories, and her never-quit attitude has given me an example of fortitude and perseverance I aspire to duplicate.
I love you, Grandma!
Contents
Cover
Title Page
Copyright Page
Dedication
Epigraph
Prologue
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About the Author
Books by Karen Witemeyer
Back Ads
Back Cover
Epigraph
What doth it profit, my brethren, though a man say he hath faith, and have not works? can faith save him? If a brother or sister be naked, and destitute of daily food, and one of you say unto them, Depart in peace, be ye warmed and filled; notwithstanding ye give them not those things which are needful to the body; what doth it profit? Even so faith, if it hath not works, is dead, being alone.
James 2:14–17
Prologue
W INTER 1882 C OOKE C OUNTY , T EXAS
Malachi Shaw made the arduous climb back into consciousness with great effort. But everything Mal had accomplished so far in his thirteen years of life had required great effort. Not that he had achieved anything worth bragging about. Orphaned. Starving. And . . . cold.
That’s what his senses picked up first. The cold. And not just the huddling-under-the-saloon-stairs-in-a-too-thin-coat-during-a-blue-norther kind of cold. No. This was a cold so harsh it burned. Which made exactly zero sense.
With a groan, Mal lifted his head and tried to draw his arms beneath him to push himself up. That’s when the rest of the pain hit. His shoulder throbbed, his ribs ached, and his head felt as if it had collided with a train. Oh, that’s right. It had.
Memories swirled through his mind as he slowly crawled out of the snowdrift that must have broken his fall. He’d hopped the train, just as he’d done a half dozen times over the month since his drunk of a father finally got himself killed—run over by a wagon while trying to cross the street. The old man hadn’t been good for much, leaving Mal to scrounge for food in garbage bins while he spent whatever coins he managed to earn at the card tables on whiskey. But at least he’d kept a roof over their heads—a run-down, leaky roof supported by slanted, rickety walls that couldn’t even hold the wind out, but a roof nonetheless.
The morning after they’d laid his father in the ground, the lady who owned the shack kicked Mal out on his ear. Barely gave him time to gather his one pathetic sack of belongings. A sack, Mal discovered as he frantically searched the area around him, that was nowhere to be found.
“No!” He slammed his fist into the frozen earth near his hip, then slumped forward.
What had he expected? That God would suddenly remember he existed and lift a finger to help him? Ha! Not likely. The Big Man had never cared a fig for him before. Why start now? Much better to sit back in heaven and get a good laugh watching poor Malachi Shaw fumble around. Taking his ma so early, Mal couldn’t even remember what she looked like. Giving him a father who cared more about his next drink than his own flesh and blood. Then even taking that much from him. Leaving him alone. No home. No one willing to give him work. Leaving him no option but to ride the rails, looking for some place, any place, that would give him a fair shake.
And what had that gotten him? A run-in with a gang of boxcar riders who hadn’t appreciated him infringing on their territory. Mal reached up to rub the painful knot on his forehead. There’d been four of them. All twice his size. Each taking his turn. Until the last fella slammed Mal’s head against the steel doorframe.
Malachi didn’t remember anything after that. Obviously, they’d thrown him off. He could barely make out the tracks at the top of the long embankment. It was too bad God hadn’t just let him break his neck in the fall. But then, where would be the fun in that?
“Gotta keep the entertainment around, don’tcha?” He scowled up at the gray sky that would soon be deepening to black. “Wouldn’t want you and the angels gettin’ bored up there.”
Mal brushed the snow from his hair and arms with jerky movements and pushed to his feet. He beat at his pants, dusting the snow from the front and back as he ground his teeth. His fingers burned as if someone were holding them to a flame. His ears and nose stung, as well. He couldn’t feel his feet at all. Not good.
He stomped a few steps until most of the white had fallen away from the laces of his boots. Cupping his hands near his mouth, he huffed warm air into them. Not that it helped much. The only thing that would keep him from turning into a boy-sized icicle was shelter. And a fire. And a coat. The thick flannel shirt he’d gotten from the poor box at the church did little to cut the wind. And now that it was wet from the snow, it chilled him more than protected him.
At least there weren’t any holes in his shoe leather. The soles were thin but solid. If he were to count his blessings, like the preacher who’d given him the clothes advised, he’d at least have one. Better than nothin’, he supposed.
If only those fellas had left him his sack. No sack meant no food, no dry clothes, no flint for a fire.
“Quit your whining, Mal,” he muttered to himself. “Groanin’ won’t fill yer belly. If ya wanna get warm, do somethin’ about it.”
Straightening his shoulders, Malachi lifted his head and scanned the landscape, looking for any hint of a building in the area. A barn with animals heating the air would be best. But there was nothing. Nothing but snow-dusted prairie grass with a few random post oaks sticking their heads up every now and again.
What’d he expect? For a closed carriage to show up with one of them fancy drivers who’d call him sir and ask him where he’d like to go?
Take me to the nearest barn, my good man, Malachi imagined saying. And don’t spare the horses.
With a snort, Mal flipped up the collar of his shirt, stuffed his stinging hands in his pockets, and started trudging east. Gainesville shouldn’t be too far away. That’s where he’d been when he got the brilliant idea to hitch a ride in the third boxcar from the end. Not his best decision. But the fellas already occupying the car had jumped on him pretty fast. The train couldn’t have traveled too many miles from town before he’d been tossed. Surely there’d be a farm or ranch nearby with a barn he could hunker down in for a night or two. All he had to do was find it before full dark hit.
By the time he came across the first structure, Mal was shivering so hard, he could barely keep his balance. The wind pounding him from the north kept pushing him off track, making him fight to walk a straight line. But, hey, at least it wasn’t snowing. That preacher man would be proud of him. He’d just doubled the size of his blessing list.
Mal chuckled, but the expulsion of air turned into a cough. One that made his chest ache. Hunching his shoulders, he ducked his head and turned full into the wind, cutting across a field to shorten his path to the barn.
Light glowed from the windows of the house that stood a short distance away. Smoke blew out the chimney at a sharp angle, as much a slave to the wind as he was. He usually took steps to avoid people, but in this instance, he was too cold to even consider looking for a more suitable hideout. If he could just bed down in some straw for the night and get warm, he could be away before the owners woke up in the morning.
Suddenly thankful for the encroaching darkness, Malachi flattened himself against the far side of the barn and inched his way around until he reached the doors at the front. Opening the one closest to him just enough to squeeze through, he slipped inside and held the door, fighting the tug of the wind in order to close it quietly. The last thing he needed was for the slam of a door to bring the farmer running. Farmers tended to carry shotguns, and Mal wasn’t too fond of buckshot.
He peered through the crack he’d left open and watched the house, ready to make a run for the field, if necessary. But no one came out to challenge him. He released the breath he’d been holding and closed the door the rest of the way. Looked like his blessing list was up to three now. Mal grinned and trudged to the darkest corner he could find.
The smell of hay tickled his nose, but he was too happy to be out of the wind to pay it any mind. With numb, shaky fingers, he managed to undo the buttons on his flannel shirt. He removed it along with the long-sleeved wool undershirt he wore and stretched