Winter Blizzard

The whiteout struck with the suddenness of a gunshot, instantly erasing the horizon and blinding the three desperate riders who were already freezing in their saddles. If they did not reach the timberline of Carter’s ridge within the hour, the biting sub-zero gale would turn their veins to ice. The cowboys had laughed when they saw the old rancher filling his barn with sacks of flour, barrels of beans, and stacks of firewood. By the time winter arrived, those same men would be riding through a white wall of snow toward his ranch, praying he had prepared enough to keep their families alive. But as the wind screamed across the valley, stripping the breath from their lungs, those mocking memories felt like a lifetime ago. It had begun with firewood. Every morning in September, Samuel Carter disappeared into the pine forest before sunrise, his solitary …

The instant Lydia Fenwick whispered, “It hurts,” she braced for the rage she had spent her whole life learning to survive. She lay stiff beneath thick buffalo robes, both palms pressed against Gideon Rourke’s scarred chest, her breath shallow and trapped in her throat. Outside, a February gale tore across the Idaho mountains, shaking the pine shutters and driving fine white snow through every crack in the unchinked cabin walls. Gideon had paid her railway fare, married her before indifferent witnesses, given her his surname, and brought her to the only warm house for miles. Every man Lydia had ever known believed kindness was a debt, a loan that had to be repaid in flesh and humiliation. “Please,” she whispered, forcing the trembling words past her mounting fear, her fingers digging uselessly into the rough fabric of his woolen shirt. “We can try again later …