Marie Ferrarella - A Small Town Thanksgiving

A LOT TO BE THANKFUL FOR

Ghostwriter Samantha Monroe has just arrived in Forever, Texas, to turn a remarkable woman’s two-hundred-year-old journals into a personal memoir. The Rodriguez clan welcomes her with open arms…and awakens Sam’s fierce yearning to be part of a family. But it’s the eldest son—intensely private rancher Mike Rodriguez—who awakens her passion.

Hiring Sam to preserve his great-great-great-grandmother’s story for future generations was Mike’s inspiration. He just didn’t realize how much he’d want her to be part of his family’s continuing saga. Delving into the past has made Sam hungry for a future—with Mike. The next move is up to him—if he doesn’t make it, the best woman he’s ever met just might waltz back out of his life forever!

“What part of ‘I don’t lie’ is unclear to you?”

It was apparent that his supply of patience was seriously running low.

Sam blew out a breath. “No part,” she freely admitted. It wasn’t that she didn’t understand what Mike was claiming—she just didn’t know whether she actually believed him. “I just never met anyone who didn’t, let’s say, ‘bend the truth’ once in a while when it was to their advantage.”

“Well, now you have.” He gave her a penetrating look that was meant to intimidate her. It annoyed him that it failed and yet it was also the start of grudging respect for her feistiness. “Are you going to argue with me all the way into town, or are you finally going to stop looking a gift horse in the mouth and just accept the fact that you lucked out?” he asked.

A few choice hot words rose to her lips, but she managed to keep them under wraps. Someday, though, she promised herself, she and this man were going to have it out—and she would put him in his place the way no one else apparently ever did.

Dear Reader,

I cannot remember when I first became fascinated by the various cultures of the first inhabitants of North America. I’ve been told that it seems to be a hallmark of foreign-born citizens to embrace Westerns. Me, I embraced the underdog in those Westerns. I was into learning about Native Americans way before it was popular, at a time when they were still known as Indians and no one realized that Custer provoked the confrontation at Little Big Horn because he wanted to be seen as a brave hero by the country. His goal was to be elected president the way Grant had been.

But I digress (occupational habit). When I was in fifth grade, I read a book called White Squaw, about a wife and mother who was kidnapped by Indians and eventually returned to her family. That story has stayed with me all these years. I thought it might be interesting if Mike Rodriguez decided to have someone organize and transcribe his great-great-great-grandmother’s journals so his own grandchildren would be firmly connected to their roots. As luck would have it, Mike’s ancestor was kidnapped by the natives of the area. And, as luck would also have it, the ghostwriter whom he hires to create a book from the journals is a widow searching for roots herself. By the time she has organized the journals into a coherent whole, she winds up capturing Mike’s heart and he hers. Happy endings all around. (What? You were expecting maybe not?)

As always I thank you for reading. I take none of you for granted and hope I have succeeded in entertaining you. From the bottom of my heart, I wish you someone to love who loves you back.

All my best,

Marie

A Small Town

Thanksgiving

Marie Ferrarella

www.millsandboon.co.uk

ABOUT THE AUTHOR

Marie Ferrarella, a USA TODAY bestselling and RITA® Award–winning author, has written more than two hundred books for Harlequin, some under the name Marie Nicole. Her romances are beloved by fans worldwide. Visit her website, www.marieferrarella.com.

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To Nik,

Who Finally

Got It All Together

And Got It

Right

Contents

Prologue

Chapter One

Chapter Two

Chapter Three

Chapter Four

Chapter Five

Chapter Six

Chapter Seven

Chapter Eight

Chapter Nine

Chapter Ten

Chapter Eleven

Chapter Twelve

Chapter Thirteen

Chapter Fourteen

Chapter Fifteen

Chapter Sixteen

Chapter Seventeen

Excerpt

Prologue

The day began like all the days that had come before. It was too hot with too much to do and none of it to my liking. I was bored and yearning for excitement, for an adventure that would take me away from trying to coax a bit of green, a bit of growth out of the parched, dry ground that destroyed more than it yielded.

I was young and wanted to live before I was old and dried up before my time, like Abuela and Tia Josefina. Tia and Abuela came to live with Papa after Mama died. Papa said she died bringing me into the world. I have no way of knowing if that is true since she was gone by the time I started to remember things. But Papa does not lie, so I suppose it must be so.

Frustrated with my futile efforts in the garden, I went to fetch water from the stream that ran on our property. Anything to get away from the boredom and the hard work, if only for a moment.

The stream is always cool and I can take my shoes and stockings off so I can feel the water against my sweating skin.

Sometimes, when I go to the stream, I pretend I am a princess, held against my will, waiting for a prince to come rescue me and take me away to his castle in the mountains. I pretend so hard that once or twice, I thought I heard the whinny of a horse and the sound of hooves against the ground.

I am disappointed when I look to see that the sound belongs to my imagination. Or to a stray mustang running closer than he should.

There are horses here that have no masters, that run where they want to and are freer than I am. I envy them. Or I did before...

But since that afternoon, I find myself longing for the boredom of home, for the tedious labor of scratching the ground, coaxing life from the hard, dry soil. For the feeling of triumph the few times I succeeded. When you lose something, that is the time when you realize that you really wanted it and did not have the sense to value it when it was yours.

But that day, when I went to fetch the water and dreamed of princes searching for their princess, the sound of horses existed outside my imagination. They existed in the real world.

The sound belonged to the Indian ponies that came galloping at me. Indian ponies mounted with riders. When I saw them coming, I ran as if the very devil was after me because he was. Abuela and Tia and Papa all warned me to be careful, that the Mescalero-Apaches would just as soon kill us than look at us. Papa said that they thought we invaded their land. When I asked him if we had, he told me that we were making it better, but that they did not understand that. I think they do not understand that because we do not speak their language and they do not speak ours.

I was swift of foot and could beat my brothers whenever we ran, but I was not swifter than an Indian and one of the riders caught me and picked me up as easily as I could pick up one of Tia’s baby chicks.