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  A Sheriff’s Haven for the Rebellious Bride

  STAND-ALONE NOVEL

  A Western Historical Romance Novel

  by

  Lydia Olson

  Copyright© 2019 by Lydia Olson

  All Rights Reserved.

  This book may not be reproduced or transmitted in any form without the written permission of the publisher.

  In no way is it legal to reproduce, duplicate, or transmit any part of this document in either electronic means or in printed format. Recording of this publication is strictly prohibited and any storage of this document is not allowed unless with written permission from the publisher

  Table of Contents

  * * *

  A Sheriff’s Haven for the Rebellious Bride

  Table of Contents

  Let’s connect!

  Letter from Lydia Olson

  Chapter 1 – Bree

  Chapter 2 – Maxwell

  Chapter 3 – Bree

  Chapter 4 – Maxwell

  Chapter 5 – Bree

  Chapter 6 – Maxwell

  Chapter 7 – Bree

  Chapter 8 – Maxwell

  Chapter 9 – Bree

  Chapter 10 – Maxwell

  Chapter 11 – Bree

  Chapter 12 – Maxwell

  Chapter 13 – Bree

  Chapter 14 – Maxwell

  Chapter 15 – Bree

  Chapter 16 – Maxwell

  Chapter 17 – Bree

  Chapter 18 – Maxwell

  Chapter 19 – Bree

  Chapter 20 – Maxwell

  Chapter 21 - Bree

  Chapter 22 – Maxwell

  Chapter 23 – Bree

  Chapter 24 – Maxwell

  Chapter 25 – Bree

  Chapter 26 – Maxwell

  Chapter 27 – Bree

  Epilogue – Maxwell

  Your Honest Review

  * * *

  Let’s connect!

  * * *

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  Letter from Lydia Olson

  * * *

  “There is no better place to heal a broken heart than on the back of a horse”

  This is my moto, this is how I grew up.

  My name is Lydia and when I am not baking cookies with my daughter or riding the bike with my son, I am a Western Historical Romance writer. It is my passion, my hobby and my career.

  After I received my BA in Psychology I realised that this would help me create believable characters. Characters that are based on real people. I want my readers to feel as if they have lived themselves in the West.

  Growing up myself in a ranch I have a lot of tales to share. Stories that will help you not escape reality, but rather navigate you through reality. You will feel what it would feel to go through situations that make your heart pound and your palms sweat. You will access the depths of someone else’s mind, you will open your selves to new experiences and different point of views.

  What do you say? Wanna take a vacation with me?

  Lots of hugs,

  Chapter 1 – Bree

  I was near the bottom of the page when I realized I hadn't remembered a single word I'd read. For the past hour, I had been squinting in the moonlight trying to read my favorite book, but it had been impossible.

  Behind me, where the trees spread out across the top of the mountain, I could hear Woody's fiddle echoing through the night along with the noise of my drunk family. The sound of their boots stomping on the wooden barn floor drifted toward me giving me a slight thumping pain at the back of my head.

  All I'd wanted was to get a little peace and quiet to read beneath my favorite tree, but there was no chance of that. I huffed and slammed my book shut, resting my back against the old redwood that had been as much a part of my family as everyone else. Except the tree was more dependable, never judged me and never shouted.

  "Hey, what are you doin' out here?"

  I didn't see where the voice came from until I saw the shape of a skirt step out from the shadows. The boots were recognizable immediately. They were the opposite of mine, covered in a thick layer of mud with the soles attached by a winding layer of thin rope.

  "Eileen? Why aren't you at the dance?"

  "I was gonna ask you the same thing, sis."

  She came and dropped herself down beside me, blowing her hair out of her eyes. Just like everyone else in my family, she was cursed with a wild mane of unruly, blonde hair. Eileen's was especially out of control and reached down to her waist. It always looked as though it had been styled with a pitchfork instead of a brush.

  “You have a leaf in your hair,” I said, pulling it out from her crown.

  “Stop fussin', will ya?”

  She hated me picking and plucking at her, but there was always something to fix. There wasn't a patch of her dress where there wasn't a thread coming loose, or a fingernail that didn't need to be scrubbed.

  “Goodness,” I grumbled, looking at the dirt around her fingertips. “When was the last time you bathed?”

  “Only last night.”

  “You lie, Eileen.”

  She narrowed her brown eyes and flared her nostrils. She had inherited Pa's dark eyes, unlike the rest of us who were blessed with Ma's gray eyes that were the same color as gun metal and rainstorms.

  Around Eileen's neck dangled her beloved, but broken, field glasses. They had been scavenged by one of our brothers.

  They only worked if you held them at just the right angle, but Eileen loved them anyway, and she was always halfway up a tree holding them to the heavens hoping to spot an eagle or a kestrel. Noticing the book in my hand, she looked at it as though it was dirt.

  "The Adventures of... How do you say them words?"

  "Huckleberry Finn," I told her. "It was only published last year but it's already rumored to be one of the best books ever written."

  She wrinkled up her nose with disgust.

  "Books," she spat as though it was a dirty word. "What are you doing wasting your time reading stupid books when you could be dancing at a good ole Texan shindig?"

  "You know I hate barn dances," I sighed. "I don't get what's so fun about watching everyone drink so much moonshine they fall on their asses. And you know what Pa gets like at these things. He drinks one jug too many and suddenly he wants to fight the world."

  "Yeah, and he's beggin' for a fight with you right now. It was him who sent me out looking for you."

  My stomach tightened. I didn't want to think about the upcoming argument I was going to have with him about me skipping out on yet another dance.

  Since I was a kid, the fortnightly barn dances had been a bone of contention between me and Pa. I always hated them. Couldn't stand the smell of liquor or the deep embarrassment I felt watching my dumb brothers and cousins get drunk like fools.

  They'd dance like lunatics before passing out among the squalor of the pigs. Not to mention every dance always ended in a fight. Every morning after, all the men in my family would wake up with black eyes and bloody li
ps and not remember a single thing about how they got them.

  "Pa sent you looking for me?" I asked. "How did he know I was missing?"

  "You're always missing," Eileen groaned. "And you're the only one not at the dance."

  "Well if you see him, you can tell him I'm not coming. I'm staying put right here and that's that."

  To emphasize my point, I picked up my book and started reading again. Or at least I tried to but as soon as my eyes hit the first word of the page, an almighty crash came sounding from the barn along with what sounded like an anguished battle cry.

  "That'll be Bertie and Eugene again," said Eileen with a roll of her eyes.

  Bertie and Eugene were our two youngest brothers and by far the worst behaved of all my siblings. They ran around the mountain more like feral wolves than boys of seventeen and eighteen.

  God knew what they were doing in the barn. The last time there had been a dance, they'd run riot around the farm destroying everything before tipping over one of the cows.

  Pa had done nothing more than give them both a stern word of warning, but just like he always did with my brothers, he encouraged them to continue their terrible behavior.

  It would be my lucky day if all I got was a stern warning. All I ever did was keep to myself, do all the chores I was ordered to and occasionally sneak away to read a book beneath the moonlight. But you'd think it was me who was the badly-behaved kid.

  Another noise came from the distance, but I couldn't help notice it was coming from the opposite direction of the barn. It drifted up from below the mountain, a steady rhythm building faster and faster like conkers dropping from the trees. It was the unmistakable sound of horses' hooves battering at the desert floor.

  “Who's that?” I asked, scrambling forward to look down the mountain. “Eileen, gimme your field glasses.”

  “Why? It's probably just one of the townsfolk.”

  “But I wanna see! Gimme your glasses.”

  With a reluctant sigh, she pulled them off her neck, paying extra special attention to not get the strap tangled in her hair. I took them and held them up to my eyes but saw nothing but a kaleidoscope of black and gray through the shattered lenses.

  “Good grief, Eileen. These things hardly work.”

  “Wait, you need to hold them like this.”

  She adjusted them against my face and as though by magic, a slight, though blurry, image began to appear. Suddenly, I found myself looking at a burly, proud figure on a pure white horse. He held a lantern up to guide his way, the small flame right in front of his face so I could make out a strong jawline and high cheekbones.

  Even from up where I was, I could tell the face was handsome, groomed and refined. It was nothing like the faces of the men I saw up on the mountain. They barely shared a whole mouth of teeth and looked as though their skin was made of crumpled leather.

  Yet, there was something else that caught my attention. Something bronze that captured the light of the lantern. As I squinted my eyes and tracked the figure with the glasses, I realized it was a sheriff's badge.

  “Who is it?” asked Eileen, squashing her face up beside mine.

  “I think it's that Sheriff Banks Pa's always moanin' about.”

  His name was almost like a cuss word on the mountain and held as much hatred and reverence as the name of the Devil. Especially among Pa and my brothers. It had seemed that for most of my life, my family and the townsfolk of nearby Hollistown of Cohen County were at war and, of course, that made Sheriff Banks enemy number one in the eyes of outsiders like us.

  I'd heard so much about how everyone hated him that I had images in my mind of him as a monster. What I hadn't anticipated was how impressive and becoming he looked.

  He rather reminded me of the heroes I had read about in books like Pride and Prejudice. Except he was a more tanned and rugged Mr. Darcy than perhaps Jane Austen would have liked. I also doubted Mr.

  Darcy could command a horse with such speed and strength or make a pistol strapped to his side look so sensual. No, he was better than the heroes in my books because he was stronger, yet a little unpolished and rough around the edges, much like myself. He was also real.

  Taken aback, I was left speechless for a moment as I watched him ride his horse at speed toward the center of the town.

  “Are you okay?” Eileen asked. “You've been sitting there with your mouth dropped open for a full minute.”

  I watched Sheriff Banks slow down and disappear around the back of the saloon. Only now did I lower the glasses.

  “Eileen, why has no one told me about how handsome the sheriff is? He has shoulders as wide as a door and a face that...”

  “Bree! You can't talk about the sheriff that way!”

  She snatched the glasses out my hand and returned them to the safety of her neck.

  “If any of the boys hear you talk that way about him, you'll be in trouble. How could you say such a thing? Sheriff Banks is an enemy to this family. To this mountain. He wants nothing more than to see us all in jail or worse, hanged.”

  When she put it that way, I couldn't help but feel a little guilty, but at the same time, I didn't think I'd seen anyone look so distinguished before. Something was stirring inside me that frightened me as much as it excited me. Was this the attraction to the opposite sex I had heard so much about but never experienced?

  “Forget about him,” Eileen told me. “I mean it.”

  At hearing the force in her voice, I dropped the subject and sat back at my spot beneath the tree. Beside me, Eileen stared off into the distance as though she was trying to send her hate down to the town through mind power alone.

  "So... You're coming to the dance?” she asked.

  "Like hell I am."

  The sound of Woody's fiddle grew louder but his playing grew worse the drunker he got. It was now nothing more than a frantic scratching that sounded like a wounded animal.

  "You have to," insisted Eileen with her fingers gripping around my wrist. "You gotta come or Pa's gonna get even madder."

  I pulled my wrist out of her hand and wriggled away from her.

  "Pa won't even know what day of the week it is, let alone my whereabouts. Sonner or later, he'll be so drunk he probably won't know his left from his right."

  There was a look of fear creeping into Eileen's eyes. When she looked like this, she always appeared older. She was my younger sister but right now, she looked closer to Ma's age. There were dark circles below her eyes and her brows furrowed close together, so deep lines carved across her forehead in worry.

  "Please," she begged. "I'm worried he'll come looking for you and if he does that then..."

  Behind her, a crackling noise came from the nearby bushes. She flinched and I jumped along with her. I knew what she was thinking because I was thinking the exact same thing.

  It terrified us both to think we'd heard Pa's footsteps in the thick undergrowth and edged a little closer to one another. I held my breath and waited to hear him approach along with the smell of liquor and chewing tobacco that always accompanied him.

  But what I saw instead was a flash of orange and a large bushy tail as a squirrel darted out in front of us.

  "Good grief, I nearly fainted," said Eileen. "I was sure it was him."

  I was sure it was him too, and the thought scared me more than I cared to admit. We both sat in silence for a moment, contemplating our own fear. I listened to the sound of the party growing increasingly raucous in the distance and wondered why I wasn't like everyone else.