A WIDOWER rancher finds a young VIRGIN bathing in his stream… when he SEES HER beautiful face… The stream water flowed peacefully until the eyes of that widowed rancher caught a vision that froze his world.
A young woman was bathing there as if she were alone in paradise. He turned his face away out of respect, but it was already too late. That innocent beauty seemed strangely familiar to him. She was the most wanted woman in the territory. What was she doing on his land?
The July sun burned hot over the Arizona mountains when Ezekiel Morrison rode down to the stream that cut through his land. At his age, the rancher bore the marks of time and loneliness on his face. His calloused hands held the reins with the same firmness with which they held his sorrows.
It had been five long years since he had lost his wife and his young daughter. Since then, that isolated property was all that remained of his life. The silence of the mountains had become his only companion.
As he approached the bend in the stream, he heard the soft sound of running water… mixed with something else. A delicate movement was disturbing the morning peace.
He pulled the reins of his horse and dismounted slowly, walking carefully through the bushes. His eyes widened when he saw a female figure in the crystalline waters.
Black hair floated like silk in the current. The young woman looked like a vision, bathing unhurriedly, oblivious to the world around her.
Ezekiel felt his heart race—not just because of the beauty of the scene, but from the shame of invading such an intimate moment. He turned around, attempting to slip away in silence, but fate had other plans.
A dry branch snapped under his feet, making the young woman turn quickly. For an instant, their eyes met through the vegetation.
They were almond-shaped eyes, large and frightened, shining like two lost stars.
He muttered an apology and moved away faster, his face burning with embarrassment. But something about that delicate face was familiar, like a memory insisting on resurfacing.
Where had he seen those soft features before? That expression of someone carrying secrets?
Back in his log cabin, Ezekiel couldn’t get the image of the girl out of his mind. READ THE NEXT EXCERPT.
