The Barefoot Bride

Book excerpt: From genteel Boston to the wilds of Montana, she is searching for a safe haven for her family—and finds unexpected love. Having lost her beloved husband, a whaling captain, to a watery grave, Molly Gallagher refuses to risk more heartbreak. Determined to keep her headstrong son from following in his father’s footsteps, she agrees to become the mail-order bride of a Montana country doctor. She tells her new husband that she can never give her love to another man; what she doesn’t tell him is that she has a young daughter and a rebellious teenage son. Molly’s ruse might have worked, but Seth Kendrick has secrets of his own: a willful daughter determined to end the marriage before it even begins—and a double life keeping his neighbors safe from outlaws. In an untamed land of vigilante justice, Molly has no choice but to trust this gray-eyed stranger whose stubbornness matches her own, whose kisses unleash flash floods of desire—and who may be the one man in a million who could win her fiery, faithful heart. “A book you will read and remember for a long, long time . . . Wonderful characters light up the pages.”—Rendezvous