Lauri Robinson - His Wild West Wife

Central Kansas, 1883

Chicago lawyer Blake Barlow has tracked his runaway wife all the way to the middle of nowhere. If she wants a divorce, he’ll grant her one—as soon as she tells him why she left.

Clara Johnson is angry. Blake betrayed her mere weeks after exchanging vows—but when he rides up to her family farm, it’s to get her signature, not to beg for forgiveness.

Clara and Blake agree their brief marriage was an impulsive mistake—but that doesn’t stop the passion between them from flaring as hot as ever…

His Wild West Wife

Lauri Robinson

www.millsandboon.co.uk

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Dedication

To my coffee-mate, and fellow writer, Margie Church.

Happy writing!

Lauri

Dear Reader,

Welcome to Blake and Clara’s story. From the moment he first appeared on paper, getting shot off his horse, my heart went out to Blake. He was so in love with Clara, and was so determined not to be. And Clara…This woman so deserved to be loved, she just had to realize it.

I must admit, I didn’t want this story to end. I was having too much fun with these two. Completely caught up in their journey, half the time I wondered what was going to happen next.

Thanks for downloading the book, and I hope you are as drawn in by Blake and Clara as I was.

With my fondest wishes,

Lauri

Contents

Chapter One

Chapter Two

Chapter Three

Chapter Four

Chapter Five

Chapter Six

About the Author

Copyright

Chapter One

Central Kansas

1883

“Geez, mister, I didn’t kill ya, did I?”

Already tired, sore and surly, landing on the hard ground had pitched Blake Barlow into about the worst mood possible. Not to mention getting shot. The high-pitched voice grated on his last nerve, too. With buckshot burning in his thigh and pain still seizing his back from the fall off his horse, he shifted little more than his gaze.

A kid, whose front teeth were bigger than his eyes, dropped to the ground. “Praise the Lord,” he muttered like an old woman who’d just heard the war had ended. “I done thought I killed ya, mister.”

“What were you shooting at?” Blake growled.

“Nothing.”

“Nothing?”

“No, sir, I was just shooting.”

“Just shooting?”

The kid nodded. “Yep. I didn’t even see ya. Probably on account I had my eyes closed.”

Blake reached over and snatched up the shotgun the kid had dropped, gritting his teeth as the movement sent his back into another seizure of pain. “How old are you?”

“Eight,” the boy said, scurrying back a bit.

“Eight?” The fire in Blake’s leg was subsiding, but that just gave him more energy to turn into anger. “Who gave you a gun?”

With a mop of brown hair that needed a good cutting and even browner eyes, the boy hung his head. “No one. I just kinda borrowed it.”

“Kind of borrowed it?” Blake tried not to yell. The boy was already quivering and digging his dirty bare toes into the recently tilled ground, but this was about the last straw. He’d been crisscrossing no-man’s-land for the past week and had started wondering why. “Borrowed it from whom?”

“No one really. It’s the gun hidden in the barn.” The boy shot a nervous glance over his shoulder. “I’ll get my hide tanned for this one. Clara don’t like guns. None at all.”

All of Blake’s anger and injuries were forgotten. Well, his injuries were. Scrambling to his feet, barely wincing, he asked, “Clara who?”

“J-J-Johnson.”

The sigh that gushed from his chest left Blake about as empty as a rain barrel in this dry Kansas land. He refueled, though, drew up enough anger to see red. Johnson. She wasn’t even using his last name. That was fine by him. She could call herself anything she wanted to—once she signed the divorce papers.

Leaning heavily on the gun—his leg was back to burning—he asked, “Where is she? Clara Johnson?”

The boy cringed as he turned slightly. Blake lifted his gaze, made out the flying skirts of a woman racing across the barren land.

It was her. His wife. The woman who’d left him four months ago. Six weeks after their wedding day.

The miles, the months, the anger all blurred together, twisting his insides until they were raw, yet one open space remained. Had him remembering their wedding day. Wedding night.

He let the memories flow for a moment, but then, even as an unfathomable desire rose in him, he forced them to fade. The memories that is. Wanting her may never fade. He’d practiced exactly what he’d say when he finally found her, just like he did closing arguments, but she wasn’t close enough to speak to yet, so he just stared. And fought what the sight of her did to him. From the moment he’d seen her long dark honey-colored hair and snapping blue eyes, she’d lit up his world like sunshine, and, ironically, did so again right now.

Damn it.

She was almost within touching distance when she stumbled to a stop, wide-eyed and breathing hard. Silent for a moment, she stared at him as if he was some sort of nightly apparition.

He might have chosen the most beautiful woman on earth to marry, but Clara was just like all the others. Selfish. Deceitful. Devious. He’d be glad to be rid of her once and for all.

“How’d you find me?” she snapped, her blue eyes as cold as December.

“It wasn’t easy, I’ll give you that,” he growled.

“It wasn’t meant to be easy.”

His foul mood exploded, spewed throughout his system. “Damn—”

“Watch your language,” Clara interrupted, amazed at the fortitude she had. The shot had sent her across the field, instinctively knowing Nathan had snitched the old shotgun out of the barn and fired it. The boy’s fascination with guns just didn’t end.

About like hers when it came to Blake Barlow.

Every emotion she’d ever felt—from depressed bitterness to the sweetest love imaginable—erupted like fierce thunderheads. She’d thought the storm inside her had played itself out when it came to him. Her husband. The man who’d betrayed her mere weeks after vowing to remain faithful to her for the rest of their lives.

She drew that forward—his betrayal. Pain, though, wasn’t what overcame her. Even after four months of telling herself she hated him, the joy of seeing him flooded her bloodstream.

Forcing her toes deep in the ground before she lost all control and jumped into his arms—as she had done when he’d return home from work each night—she balled her hands into fists. They were tingling, remembering what it was like to bury themselves in his dark hair, too brown to be called black and too black to be called brown. His eyes were a unique shade, too, not quite green or brown, but a combination of the two, and parts of her melted when he looked at her just right.

“I didn’t mean to shoot him, Clara. It was an accident, I swear.”

Catching Nathan’s words moments before the wind carried them off, she asked, “Shoot who?”

“Me.”

Though Blake’s tone was sharp, she had to blink a couple times, trying to calm the way the sound of his voice had other things leaping to life inside her. It had been that way the first time he’d spoken to her in the park in Chicago, where she’d been feeding the pigeons, waiting on the lawyer to deliver the papers she had to sign. She hadn’t known he was the lawyer. Not at first anyway. They’d talked of other things—the weather, the birds, the lake—before he’d asked her name and then started laughing and explained he was who she was waiting for.