Allie Pleiter - The Lawman's Oklahoma Sweetheart

Bound by a Secret

When Katrine Brinkerhoff’s cabin is attacked, only sheriff Clint Thornton’s heroism saves her. She owes Clint her life—and her help catching the men responsible. All she has to do is trust in Clint’s plan to protect her family. But she can’t let herself care too deeply, not when her past carries secrets that would drive him away.

Infiltrating the murderous gang is a dirty job, yet Clint is determined to see it through. The brigands will face justice—and they will never harm Katrine again. Clint would give his life to keep the beautiful settler safe…but will he be willing to risk his heart?

Bridegroom Brothers: True love awaits three siblings in the Oklahoma Land Rush

“You can tell me one of your stories while I lay the corner timbers.”

“You want to hear one of my stories?”

Snapping the reins, Clint set the horse to a gentle trot toward the spot a bit outside of town where Katrine and her brother had staked their claim. “I like your stories.”

She laughed. “Lars thinks you find them silly.”

“They are.” Clint laughed right along. “Some of ’em, at least. But there’s a place for silly. We’ve got all the serious we need, and then some.”

She eyed him, head cocked to one side. “Sheriff Thornton, you surprise me.”

“I think we can dispense with the ‘Sheriff Thornton,’ don’t you? You can call me Clint.”

“Well, then, I suppose you may call me Katrine.”

She offered a shy smile. The breeze sent strands of her hair playing across her cheeks. It looked like spun sunshine to him—not that he’d ever say such a thing to her face. Clint swallowed hard and turned his eyes to the path. “Thank you kindly, Katrine,” he said. “I’ll do that.”

* * *

ALLIE PLEITER

Enthusiastic but slightly untidy mother of two, RITA® Award finalist Allie Pleiter writes both fiction and nonfiction. An avid knitter and unreformed chocoholic, she spends her days writing books, drinking coffee and finding new ways to avoid housework. Allie grew up in Connecticut, holds a B.S. in speech from Northwestern University and spent fifteen years in the field of professional fund-raising. She lives with her husband, children and a Havanese dog named Bella in the suburbs of Chicago, Illinois.

The Lawman’s Oklahoma Sweetheart

Allie Pleiter

www.millsandboon.co.uk

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Be strong, and let us fight bravely for our people and the cities of our God. The Lord will do what is good in His sight.

—2 Samuel 10:12

In memory of my dear mother-in-law, Clarice

Special thanks and acknowledgment are given to Allie Pleiter for her contribution to the Bridegroom Brothers miniseries.

Contents

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

Chapter Eighteen

Chapter Nineteen

Chapter Twenty

Chapter Twenty-One

Chapter Twenty-Two

Chapter Twenty-Three

Epilogue

Dear Reader

Questions for Discussion

Extract

Chapter One

Brave Rock, Oklahoma Territory

June 1889

Fast wasn’t fast enough.

Clint Thornton ignored the knot of iron tightening in his gut. He told his fear to go away, to stop growing colder and heavier with each minute, each uncrossed acre, each dangerous stretch of land between himself and the Brinkerhoff homestead. Oklahoma was hot and dry in June. A fire could turn deadly in a split second. And the fastest fire of all was one that had been set to kill.

He bent over his horse, boots digging into the animal’s flanks. Faster. Clint’s breath tightened to short, hard gasps. If he failed, Katrine would soon be gasping as well, lungs frantic for air, throat singed by the heat, chest bound by the dread of a cabin burning around her. The men threatening the homestead were once soldiers, after all, men trained in the taking of lives. A renegade soldier was a dangerous man indeed. Clint had learned they were seeking to burn a cabin to the ground tonight, but only when he’d followed a gut instinct to check on the Brinkerhoff place had he learned the blood-chilling truth.

Snapping his reins against the horse’s sweating flesh, Clint pressed on toward the four torchlights circling the tiny, nearly finished dwelling in the middle-of-the-night darkness just over the hill.

Katrine had nothing to do with any of this, but that wouldn’t stop the cavalrymen or the flames they were about to set. They were looking to kill her brother, Lars, the witness to their crimes, and if she happened to die as well it would be of no consequence to them.

Clint yelled out to the men, hoping to distract them and buy Katrine more time, but he was still too far away for them to hear. The knot in his gut seemed to constrict around his whole body as he watched the leader of those men. In a cruel trick of moonlight, Clint saw Samuel McGraw casually, almost amusingly, touch his torch to the roof of a shed next to the cabin. Air fled Clint’s lungs in a helpless whoosh that seemed to say “too late.”

No. It could not be too late. Clint yelled, “McGraw!” once, then louder, jabbing the horse with frantic boot heels. “McGraw!” Some survival instinct took over from there, turning his voice to one of conspiratorial indifference even as his insides were going off like cannons at the thought of Katrine trapped in the smoke. Even as he watched embers float lazily from the shed to settle and ignite on the homestead roof. “McGraw, it’s Thornton. Hold on there!”

Finally he was close enough to see McGraw’s face as he handed his torch to another man and peered in Clint’s direction. “Thornton?”

Clint kept at full gallop the last few feet into the homestead yard, even as the fire began lapping up the structure’s roof. “There’s men behind me,” he panted, hoping his breathlessness would come off as strain, not fear. “Just up over the ridge. Go.” He pulled on the reins as his horse made uneasy circles, spooked by the growing fire. “Get yourselves gone. I’ll cover. I’ll say the place was burning when I came up on it.”

He needed them to believe he was on their side if his plan to infiltrate the Black Four gang would ever work. But he also needed them to leave so he could save Katrine. McGraw, evidently one to see a job done, didn’t seem too eager to be gone. Clint’s heartbeat pounded ice against the heat now flushing his face. The ice threatened to swallow him altogether when he heard the sound of a bang from inside. It did swallow him when he saw the plank the soldiers had nailed across the homestead door.

“Get on out of here,” he insisted as hard as he dared. “I’ve reason to be here, you don’t. I’ll cover for you but it won’t do one lick of good in five minutes if you’re not gone.”

“He’s right,” Bryson Reeves, another of McGraw’s cronies, said as he tossed his torch into the little set of rosebushes Katrine had optimistically planted along the east wall. Clint felt them burning as if the flames nipped at his own throat. “Let’s get gone, Sam.”