One Wish - Softcover

The daughter of a town marshal, Linda Lael Miller is a #1 New York Times and USA TODAY bestselling author of more than one hundred historical and contemporary novels, most of which reflect her love of the West. Raised in Northport, Washington, Linda pursued her wanderlust, living in London and Arizona and traveling the world before returning to the state of her birth to settle down on a horse property outside Spokane. Published since 1983, Linda was awarded the prestigious Nora Roberts Lifetime Achievement Award in 2007 by the Romance Writers of America. She was recently inducted into the Wild West Heritage Foundation's Walk of Fame for her dedication to preserving the heritage of the Wild West. When not writing, Linda loves to focus her creativity on a wide variety of art projects. Visit her online at LindaLaelMiller.com and Facebook.com/OfficialLindaLaelMiller.

Chapter 1

August 1889...

Charity Barnham lay facedown and spread-eagle in the tree house, staring through a crack in the floor. Only a minute or so before, she'd been alone with her misery, but the whinny of a horse and a disturbance in the thick brush of the hillside had put an end to that. The rider reined in directly beneath her, swung down from the saddle and spoke soothingly to his black and white pinto gelding.

When the intruder swept off his hat and set it carelessly in a crook of the tree -- one of the footholds Charity had used to climb to her leafy sanctuary -- she saw that his hair was fair, the color of late-summer honey, and long enough to brush the collar of his black canvas coat.

Her heart skimmed over a few beats. She knew every man who worked on the Double B, her father's ranch, and most of the population of Jubilee as well. This man didn't fall into either category, which meant he was a drifter at best, and an outlaw at worst. Either way, she didn't relish the prospect of an encounter.

She hoped he hadn't noticed Taffeta, her black mare, grazing in the little meadow at the top of the hill.

The stranger whistled softly through his teeth as he began unsaddling his horse. His motions were easy and deliberate; it was almost as if he knew she was there, as if he were teasing her by taking his time.

He tossed the saddle aside, slipped the bridle off over the gelding's head, and watched for a moment or two as the animal made its way down the bank to drink thirstily from the creek. Then, to her profound perturbation, the man proceeded to set up camp. Just far enough from the tree for safety, he made a circle of stones, then got busy gathering dry sticks and branches for firewood. From his saddlebags, he took what looked like a length of fishing line.

She tensed, ready to flee the minute he disappeared around the bend in the creek. He didn't look like a greenhorn; surely he knew that the gelding would have scared off any trout that might be passing by; if he wanted to catch anything, he'd have to go downstream to the swimming hole, where the water was wider and calmer.

The pinto, thirst assuaged, moved off into the sweet grass to nibble.

The man, shedding his long coat and thus revealing a Colt .45 riding low on his left hip, strode to the creekbank, hunkered down there to dig a mess of earthworms from the wet ground with the blade of a hunting knife, then tucked the squirming handful into the pocket of his vest.

She let out a long, slow breath. Now he would leave, and she could scramble down from the tree, find Taffeta, and be away before the stranger ever noticed her.

Instead, as if to thwart her, he walked out onto a log, fallen across the creek during the last big windstorm, baited a hook, and cast his line.

She muttered something unladylike and calculated her chances of making it down the trunk and up the hillside without catching his attention. Impossible, she decided. He was only about twenty yards away, and he looked agile, able to close the distance between them as fleetly as a grizzly on all fours. On the other hand, she reflected, he might be a perfectly decent fellow, just a weary traveler, going innocently about his business.

The .45 and the ease with which he wore it belied that idea, though. The pistol, heavy as it was, might have been a part of his anatomy. He could be a lawman, she concluded, her mind racing, but it was just as likely that he was a gunslinger, a claim jumper or a bounty hunter. Such men were not, of course, to be trifled with.

It was about then that he pulled in the first fish.

She sighed in exasperation. At this rate, she would be imprisoned in this dratted tree until the man broke camp and moved on. Taffeta would wander home, riderless, and within minutes the whole ranch would be in an uproar. Her father was bound to turn the countryside upside down and inside out, looking for her, thinking she'd taken a spill riding or even gotten herself kidnapped. He was protective where she was concerned.

The gunslinger -- by now she had decided for sure that this man was trouble -- having put the flailing trout out of its misery with a quick motion of his knife, rebaited the hook and cast the line again. The whole process was repeated four times before he brought his catch back to the edge of the stream, where he left it in the cold water, secured by a twig. The pinto, by this time, had wandered some distance away, but Charity didn't waste a moment hoping the man would go after it; he simply whistled, and the beast raised its head from the grass, flicked its ears, and ambled back toward camp.

Beneath her indignation, her impatience, and an overwhelming sense of caution, she felt a swell of resentment. There was about this man an elegance of motion, an elegance of thought, that said he commanded singular powers. Instinctively, Charity knew that things came to him -- not just horses and trout, but people and even events -- because he summoned them. This insight both intrigued and unnerved her, for she was of an independent nature, strong in her own right, yet here was someone who surely made her match. A worthy adversary.

While the sun moved behind the tips of the trees on the western horizon, the man made his fire, fetched a small, scorched fry pan from his gear, and began cooking the trout. The scent rose through the branches of the tree, teasing her rumbling stomach.

At home, Peony, the family cook, would be setting out supper. Fried chicken, peas from the kitchen garden, mashed potatoes, gravy. Charity emitted a small groan and rested her forehead on her now-folded arms. How long had she been cowering in this tree? One hour? Two?

When she raised her head, the stranger was looking directly at her -- though of course he couldn't have seen her, for it was the height of summer and the tree was thick with leaves. His eyes were blue-green, his grin was audacious, and she felt a sweet, tightening sensation, deep within, just looking straight into his face that way.

"I reckon you ought to come down now," he said. "Because after I eat my supper, I plan to bathe in that stream yonder."

Her eyes widened, and she swallowed. After a few moments spent collecting herself, she got to her feet and shinnied down the tree trunk, nearly stepping on his hat, which still rested in the lowest crook of the branches. Covered with dust and cobwebs, she shook out her divided skirt and brushed busily at her blouse. Her light blond hair was coming loose from the many pins and combs required to restrain it, and she supposed her face was splotched with dirt into the bargain. She was twenty-three years old, well past the age for such foolishness; she'd just been caught lurking in a tree house, and her pride was nettled.

She saw no point in asking how the man had known she was there, though she wondered mightily. She had, until then, fancied herself to be capable of great stealth, like an Indian medicine woman or a hunter. Now she would have to reassess that perception, and that was irritating.

The stranger pulled his supper from the fire and set it aside with an expert motion of one hand, rose from his haunches, and sauntered toward her. He moved, as she had noticed before, with a disturbing, animal-like grace. She was at once drawn to this man and frightened enough to turn on one heel and run like a startled deer. Only the formidable power of her own will kept her from making a scrabbling dash up the hillside.

Stopping a few feet from where she stood, head tilted slightly to one side, hands resting on his hips, he regarded her with a look of insolent amusement. "Well," he said, as though that single word were a complete thought all in itself. "Were you planning to pass the night in that tree?"

She met his gaze squarely, even though her heart was thundering against her ribs. "If necessary," she admitted.

He laughed and the sound found its way into her very soul and echoed there. "You don't need to be afraid of me, Miss Barnham. Or are you somebody's missus by now?" He folded his arms and studied her thoughtfully.

She was fresh out of patience and under every inch of her skin, renegade nerves ran riot. "How do you know my name, sir?" she demanded.

He flashed that wicked grin again. There was an arrogance in him that should have been insufferable but instead made him even more attractive. "I couldn't have forgotten you," he said with a nod toward the chattering stream. "After all, I nearly drowned, hauling you out of that water."

"Luke Shardlow," she breathed, amazed. And that time, she took a step back, resisting the odd power he seemed to have over her.

The aqua-colored eyes narrowed slightly, and some of the easy geniality was gone from his manner. "I see the Shardlow name is still poison around here, just like it always was."

She felt a pang at that, though she couldn't have identified the emotion behind it. The name was accursed, after all -- Luke's father had gone to prison and later hanged for the murder of his wife, and his elder brother, Vance, was wanted for a whole string of vicious robberies. Luke himself had left Jubilee -- nobody seemed to know where he'd gone -- after old Trigg Shardlow's trial, when he was around fifteen.

"I-I'd better be getting on home," she said.

"I'm not about to hurt you," Shardlow said, with a note of mingled sorrow and disgust in his voice. Then, without another word, he turned his back on her and walked away, toward the campfire. The gelding was snuffling at the fish cooling in the frying pan, and Luke growled a command that sent the animal skittering backward.

She didn't move. "I never thanked you properly for saving my life," she said clearly.

Luke turned, looked at her over one shoulder. The grin, though tenuous, was back, and he inclined his head slightly in acknowledgment of her words.

"Did you get a beating?" she asked, wondering even as she spoke why she was lingering. It was like passing a finger back and forth through a candle flame, daring the fire to burn her, talking to a Shardlow. Suppose he was an outlaw, like his brother?

"Pardon?" he picked up the frying pan, assessed the contents for horse damage, and apparently found nothing amiss.

"That day when I fell into the stream. You said your pa was going to whip you for ruining your clothes."

"You didn't fall," Luke pointed out, the affable defender of truth. "You waded in, after a frog prince or something." He paused and shook his head at the memory, then answered her question. "No, I came out of that one with my hide intact. The old man was off someplace, I guess. Otherwise occupied." He glanced toward the brilliant, fading sun. "You'd better get on home, Miss Barnham. They'll be looking for you."

She nodded, turned and started up the hillside.

Sitting cross-legged on the ground, a few feet from the fire, Luke ate his supper and watched the dying sunlight flicker on the surface of the stream. Although he had his demons, like everybody else, he was used to solitude and at peace with his past, turbulent though it was. His reflective mood had, in fact, nothing to do with the frustration and shame of being old Trigg's younger son; no, he was thinking about Charity. How much she had -- and hadn't -- changed in fifteen years. The spark in her slate gray eyes that said she was on comfortable terms with her own spirit and the world around her. The proud, graceful way she carried herself. She was tall and, though slender, womanly in a way it would behoove him not to consider too carefully or too long. Feminine she most definitely was, but there was nothing fragile about her.

He chuckled, remembering her bristly discomfiture at being stuck up in the branches of that venerable oak. He'd noticed her right away, of course, for he'd taken refuge in the same place many times, as a boy. And in the interim, hard experience had taught him not to make camp underneath any tree without making damn sure he knew what was up there. Once, he'd been jumped by a cougar, and lost a good horse and a strip of hide off his back in the ensuing dispute. On another occasion, a man he was tracking had laid for him in the same way, and he'd almost lost that scrap, too. He had scars to show for the lesson.

His meal finished, he ferreted a bar of soap wrapped in cheesecloth from his saddlebags and headed toward the creek. Reaching the water's edge, he unstrapped his gunbelt and laid it carefully on a flat rock he'd long since chosen for the purpose. Then he kicked off both boots and tested his fast-moving bath with a toe.

He drew in a harsh breath at the chill, but he'd been on the trail for the better part of a week, and figured he probably smelled like his horse, which left him with little choice in the matter. The home place, though private, was nothing but a pile of rotted timber and cobwebs now -- he'd already been by there. He could have gone to Jubilee's one rooming house for a decent bed and a hot bath, he supposed, but the return of Luke Shardlow, after all these years, was bound to draw attention. He wanted time to get his bearings before he made his presence known.

So he got out of his clothes and flung himself, blue-lipped and cursing, into the biting cold of the water. It was, given some of the thoughts he'd been having about Charity Barnham, a good decision, however painful. After a lot of splashing and sputtering, and another fit of swearing, he came out again, clean. Or at least reasonably so.

He kept a spare set of clothes rolled up in his blanket, and hastened into them, dancing there in the sweet summer grass like a one-legged man on a bed of hot coals. It was a good quarter of an hour before his teeth quit chattering, but the bath had left him feeling a certain exhilaration. If he'd been anywhere else, he'd have been ready for a night of drinking, card-playing and woman-chasing, but this was Jubilee. Here, more than any other place on earth, he needed to keep his wits sharp -- to watch and listen and, at the same time, give the impression that he was in town purely to raise hell.

That last part shouldn't be so difficult, given the family reputation.

After donning the gunbelt again, he whistled a summons to the pinto, called Shiloh, and staked the animal on a lead long enough to reach the stream bank. He started to make his bed in the grass, as twilight fell, then changed his mind and climbed up into the tree.

The platform of old weathered boards was much as he remembered it, except that Charity's scent lingered there, with the green smell of the leaves and the odors of pitch and dust. She'd apparently swept with a branch or something, for the place had a tidy look about it. In her haste to depart, she'd left behind the stub of a candle and a battered book. Grimm's Fairy Tales.

He smiled, thumbing the pages. Miss Barnham, it would seem, was still looking for a magic frog. Fancy that, after all these years.

He spread the bed roll carefully, stretched out with a sigh, and slept.

Charity had been right in thinking she would be late for supper -- the dishes had been cleared and her father and Mrs. Quincy -- Blaise -- the attractive widow he planned to marry come the fall, were lingering over coffee. Aaron, Blaise's ten-year-old son, had already been sent to bed.

Thankfully, neither Jonah nor his intended wife remarked upon Charity's late arrival and hasty slapdash ablutions; they were too caught up in each other for that. Jonah stood and drew back his daughter's chair, and Mrs. Quincy favored her with a bright smile. Peony, who had already made her opinions of folks who couldn't be bothered to ge...