Page 1 of A Dangerous Heart (Wind River Mail-Order Brides #4)

“Y ou can’t catch me!”

Shrieks and laughter from young voices carried on the early-autumn breeze as Isaac McGraw strode through the yard between the barn and the original family homestead—now his older brother Drew’s home.

His six-year-old niece Tillie had sprouted up while he’d been gone on his last mission for the U.S. Marshals. Eleven-year-old Jo had grown lanky and awkward and looked more like her mother every day. But when Isaac looked at them, sometimes he saw the little tykes they’d been before.

Isaac’s younger brother Nick trailed the girls toward the barn. He was within shouting distance but only raised his hand in a wave.

Isaac returned it half-heartedly and continued toward the main house.

He steeled himself and slowly pulled in air through his nose, the smell of damp hay and musky horses mingling in the fall air—familiar scents that now felt suffocating.

A low-hanging fog clung to the grass and the bottom rails of the paddock as Isaac trudged through the mist and climbed the steps.

The aroma of freshly brewed coffee greeted him as he crossed the threshold.

He stalked to the dry sink, reached for a cup on the shelf above, and snagged the tin pot from the stove.

“Were you out all night, Uncle Isaac?”

Isaac had seen his nephew David stacking plates in the corner as soon as he’d come inside. It was too much to hope the fourteen-year-old would keep his silence.

Isaac nodded, setting the coffeepot down and turning to lean his hips against the counter. He lifted his cup to take a sip but avoided looking directly at the boy. It was too hard. David reminded him of another boy, one who hadn’t lived to see his fourteenth birthday.

“Are you going again tonight? Can I come with you?”

David’s questions tumbled over each other. The boy had idolized Isaac since they’d pinned the marshal’s badge to his chest. And even now, when Isaac had given it up.

“No.” Isaac hadn’t meant to growl the word, but there it was.

David went quiet, subdued.

Drew hadn’t asked Isaac to keep watch, but it gave him an excuse to keep his distance, and it felt like penance for not having been here when the well had been poisoned a few months ago. According to their middle brother Ed, the family had been so ill they might’ve died.

Voices carried from the adjoining living and dining room, along with a husky laugh that belonged to his new sister-in-law Kaitlyn.

Moving to the doorway, he caught sight of Rebekah, Ed’s wife of only a few weeks.

Two of his brothers had settled into marriage recently. It was another sign he didn’t belong here anymore. He preferred the isolation of the hill country, his only companions a few varmints and a herd of cows.

But the ongoing feud with their neighbor made the solitude impossible. For now.

Isaac knew that any man willing to poison and kill wasn’t going to give up easily.

That’s why Isaac needed to keep watch. Heath Quade wasn’t going to give up, not when the McGraws owned the best water in the county.

Quade had made that abundantly clear as he’d bought out two more neighbors over the past weeks.

It wasn’t enough for him to own the biggest ranch in the county.

He’d bought or finagled nearly every piece right up to the McGraws’ property lines.

Isaac’s chest cinched tight at David’s disappointment. He moved into the dining room to join Ed and Rebekah and Drew and Kaitlyn.

“What’s this?” his brother Ed asked, bewildered. He was looking down at a white piece of paper on the table. Rebekah stood behind him, hands on her hips.

“It came to the mail-order bride postbox addressed to Isaac, postmarked a week ago. I found it in the mail when we were in town yesterday.” She narrowed her eyes on her husband. “I thought I was the only one you were writing to.”

Isaac watched color rise into Ed’s cheeks, and a tiny part of him liked that his brother’s new wife was sassing him.

Months ago, Ed and Drew and Kaitlyn had cooked up a plan to find Isaac a bride—without bothering to ask him if he wanted one.

The letters that were exchanged after the family had placed the mail-order bride ad on his behalf had caused a mess of trouble—and resulted in a match between Ed and Rebekah.

It gave Isaac a perverse kind of pleasure to see his brother squirming from the consequences of meddling in his life. Isaac was still angry.

“You are the only person I wrote to,” Ed said.

Rebekah softened. “Then why does this Clare Ferguson say she’s arriving on the train tomorrow?”

Isaac went still.

There was a jerky movement in the doorway at Rebekah’s question.

“Hold up, son,” Drew said at the same time as Isaac swiveled his head.

David stood in the open doorway, guilt written clearly on his expression. The kid had no poker face. He was trying to edge away unobtrusively, but Drew’s focus was legendary.

“Why don’t you come in here and tell us what you know about this letter.” There was no room for disobedience in the command.

David hung his head, barely stepping inside the room. “Jo made me do it,” he mumbled.

“Do what?” Ed asked.

Isaac’s skin prickled at the sideways glance David shot him.

“Write a letter,” the boy said hesitantly. He rubbed the back of his neck. “To get Uncle Isaac a wife.”

Kaitlyn choked on her coffee.

It seemed that once he’d started, the words just tumbled out.

“We heard you all talking at Uncle Ed and Aunt Rebekah’s wedding.

About Uncle Isaac. I told Jo it was a bad idea, but she—” His gaze flicked to Isaac.

“We don’t want Uncle Isaac to be sad anymore.

So we picked one of the extra letters and wrote back to the lady who sent it. ”

Isaac’s skin stretched too tight over his bones. No one in the family knew what had happened. There was no way David and Jo could know the well of darkness he’d descended into. But their innocent desire to help him—when he didn’t deserve it one whit—hit like a punch to his solar plexus.

Isaac saw the guilty looks his brothers exchanged and Drew’s glittering gaze.

“How many letters did you write?” Kaitlyn asked.

“Only two. Back and forth. They were good, long letters though. She’s a really nice lady from a farm in Missouri. We paid for her train ticket from Jo’s egg money and my savings.”

“Why would you do that?” Drew demanded.

Ed had color high on his cheeks. Rebekah was hiding a laugh behind her hand.

David tilted his chin stubbornly. “Well, it worked for you and Uncle Ed.”

Isaac turned to leave. He wanted no part of this.

But Ed said, “You’d better stay.”

Anger flared. His brothers were still meddling in his life.

“I don’t suppose you want to meet this woman?” Rebekah asked quietly.

Isaac ignored her completely.

Drew spoke to David. “Apologize to your uncle.”

“You can’t just mess with people’s lives.” Kaitlyn’s words overlapped with her husband’s.

David’s chin was still jutting out. “Pa and Uncle Ed did.”

Drew placed his hands on his hips and glared at his son. But he couldn’t quite put any heat in his argument. “You’re gonna have to fix this,” he said. “You’re gonna ride to town tomorrow and tell this woman to go back home.”

“What? But Pa, she’s coming to marry Uncle Isaac!”

The outburst was so unexpected from the usually even-keeled David that for a moment, the room went still.

Isaac felt the weight of the look Drew and Kaitlyn shared, the careful way Ed averted his eyes, Rebekah’s hand on his arm.

“I’m not marrying anybody, kid,” Isaac’s voice grated. “Not ever.”

David spun and ran from the room. The banging door punctuated the awkward silence that permeated the room.

Drew cleared his throat. “We’ll make this right.”

“You taught him to meddle,” Isaac said coolly. “I want no part of this.”

He left without looking back.

* * *

“Aunt Clare, are you really gonna get married to a cowboy?”

Get-ing marr-ied, get-ting marr-ied.

The train chugged and clacked, its wheels singing Clare Barlow’s future.

She looked down at her eight-year-old nephew Ben, who gazed up at her with a wrinkled nose and an expression filled with curiosity. He had his mother’s soft brown eyes and ready smile, always seeing adventure around every corner of life.

“What do you know about being a wife?” On Clare’s other side, twelve-year-old Eli had his chin jutted at a stubborn angle and his arms crossed.

His feet swung out into the aisle as if he couldn’t sit still.

A trait he came by honestly, from her side of the family. The Barlows were always on the run.

When he wasn’t scowling, Eli was a handsome boy. Already more handsome than his father, with his intense dark-brown, almost black, eyes framed by thick lashes, and a square jawline that hinted at the man he would become. Not like his father, if she had anything to do with it.

Noth-ing, noth-ing.

Clare found a reassuring smile for both boys. “Yes, I’m really getting married. And he’s a rancher, not a cowboy.”

She would have to be enough. She’d gambled everything on this escape.

It wasn’t the courtship most young women dreamed of—marrying a complete stranger.

But Clare’s belief in fairy-tale endings had been shattered years ago by her father.

She’d learned a harsh truth that many girls never grasped: every fairy tale contained a villain, and sometimes that villain was a part of one’s own family. A father. Or a brother.

“Can I be a cowboy too?”

Sweet Ben. Clare slid her arm around his small shoulders and pulled him closer. She whispered a reminder in his ear.

“Of course. And remember, you’re to call me Ma.”

“Okay,” he whispered back.

She’d waited until now to tell the boys about the plan. Too much was at stake. She’d been too afraid of being found out before they’d left Missouri. She’d spent the first hours of their journey constantly looking over her shoulder, certain that Victor would find them.

Her outlaw brother would kill her for running away. Doubly so for taking his sons.