Chapter One

Thunder echoed in the distance. Lightning lit up the hot Oklahoma sky again as it had for the past twenty minutes. The thunderstorm forecasted earlier was on its way. Just a few miles out west of town, and Liza Starr Love hoped it didn’t bring on any tornadoes. Or destructive rain ruining her crops before she could get them in. Thankful, she was able to work a little longer in her hayfield before the winds forced her inside for the night.

As she sat at her computer screen, she looked out her office window at the black clouds giving off precipitation—rain the farmers, like herself, desperately needed, but could do without a destructive tornado, which was always on her mind living in tornado alley. The wind picked up speed.

But the wind and rain did not deter her from working on her tenth historical romance novel she wrote under the name of Liza Capshaw. Rarely did anything stop her when she was on a roll. And tonight, she was there. Her fingers danced and flew over her keyboard.

*Ross York was tired. Bone weary tired. It had been the longest day so far since he'd left with his four-year old daughter, Sara, on the wagon train just a few weeks ago. Taking his daughter to live with his brother and family in Santa Fe because he would start as a Peterson Detective when he returned to Oklahoma, and the new lifestyle would be no place for his daughter. Even though the wagon train was slow moving, it afforded him the time to see the country, explain to his daughter why she would be living with her uncle instead of him—and to try to forget his wife's death … and the man he had killed for taking Mary from him.

As he climbed up into the wagon, before he went inside to tuck his daughter in for the night, he looked back over his shoulder. A storm was headed their way. A damn big thunderstorm, from the looks of it. Great! That's all he needed. Another storm, like the one they ran into during the first week of their trip.

The storms reminded him of one of the short nursery rhymes he always recited to Sara: As the days grow longer, the storms grow stronger.

It was the beginning of June. Their days were growing longer. Would more of the storms come, too?*

She stopped typing and shuddered against the cold coming in through the open window. Pushing her chair away from her desk, she stood to close it. If she didn't shut it, her carpet would be soaking wet from the wind blowing the rain sideways.

With the task done, she noticed her cinnamon-scented candles had been snuffed out. She picked up the small box of matches and lit them again because she always wrote with candles burning. As she turned around to sit down, the quartz crystals and rose-shaped rocks scattered about her office gave off a faint glow. To her knowledge, they had never done that before and she wondered what was causing it.

Just as she sat back down at her computer desk to resume her typing, a loud bang somewhere in her house made her jump nearly a foot. Loud noises and having the door to her office, or any door for that matter, at her back did a number on her nerves. The layout of her office prevented her from being anywhere else but with her back to the door.

A movement at the side of her caught her attention. She turned to face the door. "Goodness, you scared me," she said, as she got up and approached her niece, Janie. Tears glistened on the little girl's cheeks.

"I'm sorry," Janie stuttered as she sniffled.

"What's wrong, sweetheart?" She squatted down in front of the small child and gently put her arm around her.

"I want my mommy. I'm scared, Auntie Liza. My dolly scared, too. Loud noise woke us up. Sleep with you?"

"Ok, sweetheart," she assured Janie. It was so refreshing to hear a little person talk. At Janie’s age, she was learning to put sentences together, although at times like these, they were incomplete. And she liked the way Janie used the word 'you' in place of the word 'me'.

Smoothing back the hair falling over Janie's forehead, she said, "I need to finish a few more paragraphs of my book. Would you and your pretty doll like to sit on my lap?" She waited for the wild-eye fear to leave Janie's big sky-blue eyes. Picking her up, she carried her to the chair, sat down and place the little girl on her lap.

"I'll read a nursery rhyme to you as I type it. Would you like that?"

"Uh-huh," Janie answered shaking her head.

After getting in a comfortable position—as much as she could with a small person on her lap—Janie leaned back against her as she placed both her hands on the keyboard. Typing was a little slower and awkward, but it didn't matter because she understood Janie's fear of thunder.

A stormy night was special. After she finished typing the nursery rhymes, she'd lay down with Janie in her bed until she fell asleep. Although she didn't like thunder either, she did like the rain. But she didn't want to take the chance to lose everything she had written so far. So tonight, she wouldn't write as long or as late as she normally did. She began again, picking up speed as she got her rhythm back to finish the scene she'd been working on.

*Ross wearily shook his head. He wondered for the hundredth time if he was doing the right thing—taking his daughter and moving her away from the only life she had known right up until his wife was murdered.

Yes. Yes, he was.

The memories of his Mary’s death at the hands of a renegade outlaw Indian two years ago were still too painful to bear if he stayed another minute in their home. The haunting memories of losing the child she’d been pregnant with were just as painful.

He opened the flap to the wagon, and quietly slung his leg over the back entrance, careful not to wake up Sara if she was asleep. He wasn't sure how many nursery rhymes he could handle reading tonight.*

"Are you gonna tell a rhyme, Auntie Liza?” Janie asked.

"Just a few more minutes, honey. I have her father in the back of the wagon, and he thinks his little girl, Sara, who is close to your age, is asleep," she said as she put her finger to Janie's soft, petite nose. "But she's not. So as soon as I finish typing her saying something to her daddy, then I'll read you the nursery rhymes as I type them. Ok?"

"'Kay," replied Janie as she settled back in her lap.

*“I was waitin' for ya, Papa, ta tell me about the lady on her white horse?"

"I thought you were asleep." Ross tousled her blond locks as he sat on the edge of her makeshift bed—a thin feather mattress placed upon two old steamer trunks his Mary had brought with her across the ocean from England nearly seven years ago.

"Of course not, Papa. I was waitin’ for ya. Please tell me some rhymes from mama’s book."

"Oh, yes, of course!"

Ross couldn't help but smile as she held out the handwritten, tattered book to

him. Sara was now his only child, perhaps the only one he'd ever have, and he

wanted to protect her. He couldn't resist her wants any more than he could

resist the memories haunting him each night when Sara finally fell asleep, and

he blew out the candle.

"Which of the scented candles your mother made would you like me to light tonight?" he asked, before he took the book from her small hands.*

*"The cin’mon, please, Papa.”

Ross placed the book on the edge of the makeshift bed, grabbed the candle, found a match and lit it. He carefully set it on a flattened tin so the wax wouldn't melt all over everything. "You want the one about the lady and her white horse, yes?"

"Oh, yes, Papa."

He didn't need the book; he knew them by heart listening to his wife say them to Sara every night since she was born.*

She was pleased with Janie's patience. Finally, she spoke slowly and clearly, because her niece loved the nursery rhymes just as much as her hero's daughter, Sara, did.

*“Ross started reciting, "Ride a cockhorse to Banbury Cross, to see an old lady upon a white horse. With rings on her fingers, and bells on her toes, she shall have music wherever she goes.”

“Tell me another one, Papa."*

"Are you gonna read 'nother one, Auntie Liza?"

"Yes, probably a couple more."

"Goody!" Janie said as she clapped her hands together and nearly dropped her doll in the process.

"Careful or you'll lose your friend." She scooted Janie more up into her lap so she and her doll would not fall. There was no denying her love for this little girl on her lap she now had to raise since her sister, Kate, died in a car accident.

She was saddened by the fact she and her husband, Steve, didn’t have any children of their own before he passed away eight months ago from a farming accident. Most of the time since, she didn't think she'd ever get over the grief of losing him. But now raising Janie helped keep her sane, as did her writing.

Shaking her head to clear it of her bad memories, she now had to type about her hero's sad memories. She didn't want to think about hers when she wrote. With Steve gone, it was going to be hard not being able to celebrate any more sales of her books with him. At least she had her friends from the writer's critique group who shared her hopes, dreams, rejections, and sales. And there was her writer friend, Cat, who was down on her luck now living in her home to share expenses since the economy was bad.

She started talking softly again as she typed.

“Ross recited: "Hey, diddle, diddle! The cat and the fiddle, the cow jumped over the moon; the little dog laughed to see such sport, and the dish ran away with the spoon."

"Pease, tell me 'nother one, Auntie Liza."

*“"Little Nanny Etticoat, in a white petticoat, with a red nose; the longer she stands the shorter she grows."” Ross leaned over and blew out the candle. Sara was well on her way to falling asleep, but not quite. He knew he couldn't get away without saying her favorite one.

Thunder clapped loudly overhead.

“"Now I lay me down to sleep, I pray the Lord my soul to keep."”

Thunder clapped loudly overhead.

Storms this time of year in Oklahoma could get very fierce. This one was now directly over her house. Janie shivered in her arms. She continued to speak as

she typed.

""If I should die before I wake,""

Lightning lit up the whole room. She had to finish; she had to save her work.

""I pray the Lord my soul to take.""

There was a tremendous bang and then her computer screen went blank. "Shit! I knew I should have turned it off."

Suddenly, the lights in the room went out and Janie squirmed back against her for safety. “Auntie Liza, you said a bad word.”

“I know honey, and I’m sorry, but we lost power, and I lost my book. But it will be all right, sweetheart. We have candles lit so we can still see.”

She was thankful she remembered to light them so she could recognize things around her when storms like this frequently shut off power to her farm.

“Your rocks, Auntie Liza,” Janie said as she pointed to the brightest one in the room sitting on her desk in front of them. “What’s doing?”

She stared at the rose-shaped rock and wondered what was causing it to glow so brightly. What caused it to glow at all? If they had done that before during a storm, she hadn’t noticed.

As Janie turned around in her lap to look at the door, she squealed with delight. "Neat trick, Auntie Liza. How'd you bring'em here?"

"Huh?" The hair prickled at the back of her neck. She didn't know what Janie was talking about, but she sensed someone behind her. When she turned her chair around, she looked into large, fearful, brown eyes—the eyes that belonged to her hero.

She closed her eyes for a few seconds and when she opened them again, they were still in her office.

This just wasn't happening to her. As an author of historical romances, she prided herself on how well she presented the facts and the truth, as she knew them, in her books. This wasn't truth. It had to be a dream.

First, she shook her head and blinked several more times. She closed her eyes tightly for several minutes again, hoping when she opened them these ... these ... apparitions wouldn't be real. They wouldn't be here.

She took a deep breath. Counted to three. Slowly, she opened her eyes. This was totally, insanely incredible. Her wish was not a dream. Ross York and little Sara were definitely in her house, in this room.

"Who are you and how did you get in my house?"