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“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.

She knew what she’d done wasn’t properly legal.

She had no papers, no official claim to Ben or his brother.

But she’d promised her late sister-in-law Anne in those last days before she’d passed.

She could still hear her breathless plea.

Take them. Keep them safe. Make sure they don’t grow up like him.

And Clare couldn’t break that promise.

The scenery out the window showed the Laramie Mountains in the distance.

Al-most there. Al-most there.

Calvin, Wyoming, was the next stop.

Absently, Clare noted the portly gentleman in the row in front of them getting up out of his seat. Before she’d fully registered it happening, Eli had slipped his scrawny arm between the seats and snatched it back with something clasped in his hand.

Clare caught his wrist in an iron grip.

“What is that?” Her whispered hiss and tightening grip had Eli revealing a fine gold watch with a broken chain.

She glanced over her shoulder at the man halfway to the hopper toilet at the back of the train. He hadn’t even registered the watch was missing. No one else paid them a lick of attention.

It was a valuable piece—gold-plated and everything. It would be so easy to slip it inside her pocket. The man wore a fine suit. No doubt he could buy another. Clare and the boys had little funds. Her past whispered to her: easy pickings.

She took the watch from Eli’s hand and dropped it back on the seat in front of them.

“We aren’t Barlows anymore,” she told him in a low, steady voice. “Remember the things your mama taught you. Thou shalt not steal.”

Eli shoved back into the seat. He crossed his arms over his chest and jutted his chin in defiance. Gone was the older brother eager to help with his baby brother. Now she saw an echo of Victor, his father. Anne would have known better what to say, how to reach him. Clare didn’t.

Her stomach clenched with grief over missing Anne. Through every hardship, Anne’s faith had been a beacon. She’d changed Clare, brought light and truth into the world of darkness Clare had been born into. Clare had to continue Anne’s legacy for her boys.

“Calvin, Wyoming!” the conductor announced as he passed down the aisle.

As the train slowed, Clare’s heart pumped faster.

Ben sprang to his feet, gripping the seat back in front of him and lifting his boots off the floor to get a better view through the window of the row in front.

Eli remained affixed to the seat, his mouth screwed tight.

She prayed he would keep his mouth shut and not give them away the first moment off the train.

The train braked and rolled to a stop. Clare rose from her seat, heart pounding, knees trembling. She smiled tightly at the boys.

At the front of the train, the steel-haired man with a wide, neatly trimmed mustache, around the same age as her pa, was the first passenger to stand.

After a grand stretch, he donned his fancy black Stetson.

She’d made him when he’d first entered the compartment.

He had the sharp eyes and that certain shrewd manner of a man who lived outside the law.

Ben’s hand slipped into hers. She dropped her eyes, turning her face away from the oily gaze that made her skin crawl and focusing on keeping the boys at her side as they disembarked.

A brisk breeze swept over the boardwalk, stirring up dust as Clare stepped off the train. Her skirt flapped against her legs as she surveyed the town. Behind the rooftops, the hills were dotted with trees, their green leaves on the verge of turning gold and amber with the cooler fall weather.

The streets were wider than the ones back home.

Wide enough for two large wagons to pass.

Wide enough for the herds of cattle that ranchers would drive into town and load onto trains headed for Chicago.

Isaac had written in his last letter that she would arrive in time for the roundup. And wouldn’t that be something?

She passed a young woman, carrying a toddler on her hip, who seemed to all but disappear into the arms of a hulking man in overalls. Clare froze and pressed sweaty hands together, struck by the realization that she hadn’t considered how to greet her new groom. Would he anticipate a warm hug?

Where was Mr. McGraw?

She scanned the area and caught on a lone cowboy near the corner of the platform away from the rails.

Dressed in dark trousers and a light-blue canvas shirt topped with a black vest, he stood rigid, shoulders squared, chin slightly lowered.

He had that watchful look—steady and unblinking.

His fingers even twitched at his side, a gunman ready to draw.

For a moment, she recoiled. Then she noticed what was missing—no gun belt, no pistol. Still, he glanced around, alert as any lawman.

No one else waited on the platform. Other folks were walking away. This had to be Isaac McGraw.

She took a few steps in his direction, her breath catching at the heat of his intense stare. If this was him, then her intended groom was an exceptionally handsome man, with his high cheekbones, vivid green eyes, and square jaw softened by a dimple. But why was he scowling at her?

They met at the far corner of the platform. She was aware of Ben and Eli trailing behind her. Eli muttered something to his brother that she didn’t hear.

“Mr. McGraw?” Was that her voice? Breathy and trembling?

She saw the minute flare of his nostrils. Other than that, he was totally unreadable. He nodded.

“I’m Clare.”

Ben shifted his feet, and the handsome cowboy–rancher’s eyes flicked over Ben and moved to Eli. His frown tightened.

Her stomach dropped. She hadn’t told her intended groom about her nephews. She hadn’t wanted to give him any reason to reject her.

She glanced away. Saw the train porters unloading wooden crates. One crate caught her attention with the flash of a familiar name— Hercules Powder. Explosives?