Thad was speechless. With numb fingers he opened the single gate and stood back while his neighbors and the townspeople
swarmed through and spread out across the field.
“By sundown,” Wash yelled, “you’ll be ready to plow this field. And by October, you can replant.”
Leah reached out for Thad. His blue eyes were wet and shiny, and she bit her lips to keep from crying.
“Leah, honey,” he choked out. “What did we do to deserve this?”
She rested her head against his chest, listening to the unsteady thump of his heart. “If I knew,” she said, her voice shaking, “I would do a lot more of it.”
Her mother had been right, the slow drip had marked the stone.
Thad held Leah away from him, then bent to kiss her wet eyelids. “You are a bonny, bonny lass, Leah. It was a good omen when you stepped off the train in Smoke River.”
He took her hand and together they turned toward the open gate, walked through it and joined the gleaners.
T
he following year, Thad and Leah MacAllister were the toast of Smoke River. At harvesttime, Thad’s wheat field brought in twice as much as anyone expected, and the next week the mercantile was flooded with orders for seed.
Even more unexpected was the birth of Violet Marie MacAllister in October. After Violet’s entrance into the MacAllister family, nothing was ever the same for Thad’s son, Teddy, who had always claimed he didn’t like girls.
But Teddy took one look at the pink-and-white creature in the wicker cradle and fell head over boots in love with his baby sister.
That year and all the years that followed, both father and son were the proudest males in town.
All the characters in this book have no existence outside the imagination of the author, and have no relation whatsoever to anyone bearing the same name or names. They are not even distantly inspired by any individual known or unknown to the author, and all the incidents are pure invention.
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First published in Great Britain 2013
by Mills & Boon, an imprint of Harlequin (UK) Limited.
Harlequin (UK) Limited, Eton House, 18-24 Paradise Road,
Richmond, Surrey TW9 1SR
© The Woolston Family Trust 2013
eISBN: 978-1-472-00402-4