fireplace where he had stopped his pacing to watch the set-to between his brothers.
“We all have our dreams and they aren’t the same as yours, Quin.” Chance marched over to stand nose to nose with Bowie and Quin. “You aren’t Pa and you never will be.”
“We are doing what is best for the 4C,” Quin enunciated slowly. He glared at his brothers, clearly daring them to say otherwise.
“Life has got other things for me,” Chance declared, throwing back the challenge.
“Brother—” Bowie held Quin’s gaze without flinching “—I don’t answer to you anymore.”
The three men Leanna loved most in the world were half a second from ripping the family apart. In the heat of grief and anger they could do and say things that might never be healed.
She stepped into the middle of the circle. Anger pulsing from each one of them struck her like a physical blow.
“No one made you ruler over us all, Quin!” she shouted, and hoped her desperation penetrated the violence ready to erupt.
It didn’t. It only added fuel.
“Grow up,” Quin growled at her. “You’re not fit for anything other than looking pretty and playing games.”
Bowie and Chance lurched into motion at the same time.
She said the one and only thing left to say. She uttered it barely above a whisper but it echoed like a gunshot. “I say we sell the ranch and each take our share.”
Chance froze, his shocked gaze locking on her.
Bowie’s head jerked toward her.
“Have you lost your damned mind?” Quin gasped.
Chances are, she had, but who in this room hadn’t?
Quin was crazy with guilt, so were Bowie and Chance, for not having been with Mama and Papa that day. One of them should have been driving the wagon because of Papa’s injured hand. His hand had to be the reason he lost control of the wagon. Any one of her brothers could have prevented that.
She tried not to judge them, but she couldn’t…quite, even though her sin was just as great. At least her brothers hadn’t done anything intentionally.
Leanna had been in control of every hateful word she had spoken to her mother when she and Papa had ridden away in the wagon that awful day. What kind of spoiled, shallow girl called her mother a… It hurt too much to bring up the word but it burned into her brain and seared her heart.
And all because Mama had said no to a new dress.
It had seemed so important at the time, to go to Wolf Grove with her parents and buy the prettiest gown in the dress shop for the family portrait.
If only she could throw herself into any one of her brothers’ arms and let him make it all better.
Nothing would make this better, though, and she knew it. She probably did need to go her own way in order to heal and grow.
“Ma and Pa are buried on this land, you spoiled brat,” Quin said in a soft, steel-laced tone.
Every one of them knew what that tone of voice meant. Quin had reached his limit.
Even though selling the ranch was the last thing she really wanted, Quin was right: she was a spoiled brat.
Now she had to get away, to show herself and Mama that she could make it on her own.
As it turned out, leaving wasn’t as hard as she thought it might be. Quin, facing a mutiny, had given in to his temper and kicked them out. They each took only what they were wearing and their favorite horse.
Not a blessed one of them tried to get their oldest sibling to change his mind.
So Leanna rode away in a black silk gown on her black horse, Fey.
A hundred yards from the house, she kissed Bowie’s cheek. After he rode away she kissed Chance’s and gave him a hug. She promised to let both brothers know where she settled.
There wouldn’t be much more communication than that, though. She needed to stand alone if she was to become a person she respected. She turned to look back at the house.
Quin stood on the porch alone. She wept then, for Bowie and Chance and even herself. Most of all she wept for Quin. All he’d wanted was to keep things the same and they had turned on him. He couldn’t understand that nothing would ever be the same again.
Well, she couldn’t turn back now, even if she wanted to.
“Let’s hurry, Fey.”
Clouds spread across the sky. A storm was coming.
Chapter One
August 1882
Leanna Cahill figured the good folks of Cahill Crossing might