Chapter 1
Wyoming Territory, April 1884
Grant had never seen Maisie Hewitt so mad.
She stomped from the direction of the footbridge that crossed the narrowest point of the Haven River between their two homesteads, her boots crunching on the winter-brown grass as if it had personally done her wrong. Her fists were clenched in the gray woolen shawl that she hugged around herself over her calico dress, her straight brown hair tumbling from the braids she wore wrapped around her head like a crown. Her appearance was typical Maisie, except for the fierce scowl she wore and the angry muttering she seemed to be doing. Grant wasn’t close enough to catch her words, but he doubted they were complimentary.
“Hey, Mais,” he called, drawing her attention to where he stood in the shadow of a willow tree, metal trap in hand and a bucket of raw meat scraps at his feet. He generally tried to keep the less pleasant aspects of trapping from the attention of the women of the two homesteads—it was a messy task but a necessary one. Coyotes would wreak havoc on their sheep, especially once the spring lambs were born and released into the fields with the flock.
But Maisie looked like she could use someone to talk to.
“You alright?” Grant asked as her head whipped toward him and her pounding steps slowed, veering in his direction. She favored him with a sharp, incredulous glare, as if asking if he could possibly be so stupid as to miss the obvious signs of her not being alright. “What’d Carter do now?”
Because there was only one person who could rile Maisie like that. Whatever was upsetting her, it had to be her brother’s fault.
Maisie rolled her eyes to the dusky, overcast sky with a wordless growl of frustration before heaving a deep, slow breath and letting it all out in a whoosh. “What hasn’t he done?” She tugged her shawl tighter as she hugged her arms more firmly around herself, her knuckles showing white against the gray wool. “First, he went to town this morning. Without me.”
Grant sucked in a sharp breath. That was enough of an offense right there. The nearest town, Haven River Falls, was a five-hour drive away, which meant that nobody from their homesteads went often, and it was a treat to go, practically a holiday. A full family event.
Even Grant liked seeing new faces and socializing with someone other than his family or his neighbors every once in a while, and for the girls of the two families, it was the highlight of the warmer months. His younger sister, Jilly, had been chattering about what she wanted to see first when their family took their first trip of the spring for practically the entire winter.
For Carter to make that first trip alone, without coordinating with the Brooks family, without even bringing Maisie…
Grant shook his head and set down the trap he’d been holding. “That must have made for a fun morning. What did you do?”
Maisie’s fury seemed to settle to a low simmer. “Obviously, I came over to your place to tell the girls about it.”
Grant had been out with Pa and his older brother, Jack, checking the fields and fence lines before he’d headed out to set traps, so he hadn’t been home for Maisie’s visit. But Ma and Jilly had been home, along with Cora, Maisie’s sister who had married Jack last fall. He could just imagine how that conversation had gone.
“I trust they were sympathetic.”
Maisie snorted at his understatement, and Grant grinned at being able to lighten her mood even that much.
“So you went home, I’m assuming feeling a bit better because I didn’t see a female posse ride by with shotguns and pitchforks.”
Another snort, followed this time by a chuckle. Maisie’s face relaxed into a hint of a smile, closer to her usual expression than he’d seen yet today. He knew she was picturing exactly what he was—Jilly and Cora on the warpath, with Maisie leading the charge. It would never happen, of course. Cora had always been the peacekeeper between her older and younger siblings, and Jilly seemed to have a soft spot for her friends’ grumpy brother.
“I spent most of the day here. Carter was home by the time I got back, and would you believe, he had the gall to yell at me for being gone! After he drove all the way to Haven River Falls—alone, without me—gone the whole entire day—and I walk next door to see our sister and my best friend, and I’m the one who gets an earful!”
Maisie’s simmering anger bubbled up again. Grant could just see it threatening to boil over like a pot on the stove as she let go of her fistfuls of shawl and waved her hands around to emphasize her point, as if her dagger-edged words weren’t emphasizing it enough. The shawl slipped off one shoulder from the motion, and she yanked it violently back into place.
There wasn’t much Grant could say to that. Yes, it was unfair. Yes, Carter was clearly using a double standard in this situation.
But also… Grant could kind of see where he was coming from. If he’d come home after a day away and found Jilly gone—well, he’d probably be scared enough to lay into someone too. Grant might be more easygoing than Carter, but he knew well enough how fear and worry and even relief could express themselves as anger. Especially for someone as perpetually surly as Carter Hewitt.
Just thinking of Carter telling off Maisie made the situation a little funnier. “How big an earful?” Grant asked, his lips edging toward another grin but not quite daring to laugh until he knew if Maisie would join him. “More than three words?”
Maisie’s cheeks and lips twitched as she fought to keep her ferocious expression. But she was too good-natured, and the fight didn’t last. She giggled. “Unfortunately. I got a whole paragraph. He growled more words at me tonight than he’s said all winter, I think.” She rolled her eyes.
Grant chuckled. “I think there’s been a running bet in our house over whether we’ll see you both for church each Sunday or whether it’ll just be you because you’ve strangled him in his sleep.”
Maisie sighed. “I never thought I’d miss Cora so much. I mean, she only moved next door. But sharing a cabin with Carter all winter…” She made a face.
“Being snowed in with anyone can be a bit much,” Grant agreed. “Even with my family. We all get along, but…” He shrugged. “It’s just too many people in a house that size.”
At least Maisie and Carter had a two-room cabin for two people, so when they couldn’t stand each other, they could each have their own space. The Brooks home was three rooms and a loft. Ma and Pa had the bedroom on the main floor, and Jack and Cora had taken the loft, which Jilly had willingly vacated for them. But that left Jilly and Grant sharing the sitting room, with Jilly on the couch and Grant on a mattress on the floor.
The only room without someone sleeping in it was the kitchen. It was too full with a table, chairs, stove, and stored food for winter to fit a mat—Grant had tried. He’d actually moved out to the barn once the weather had started warming toward spring. There was space in the hay mow for him to sleep, and he was so used to the sounds and smells of animals that he didn’t even mind sharing the building with all the sheep, horses, chickens, and their herding dog, Bandit. It was better than tripping over every member of his family as he tried to drink his coffee in the morning.
“It’s really just too crowded,” he reiterated, studying the dry grass at his feet.
He glanced up at Maisie. He hadn’t told anyone about his plan yet, the idea that had formed a year or two ago and had grown over the past winter, fertilized by his discontent. He didn’t know if Maisie could keep a secret—she was always talking to Jilly about every tiny detail of their lives—but even if she couldn’t, he was due to tell his family soon anyway. And he thought that if anyone would understand, she would.
Somehow the hope of having one other person on his side, understanding where he was coming from, before having to convince the rest of the family seemed too good a chance to pass up.
“I’m gonna move out,” he said quietly, watching for her reaction. “Once the weather’s safe for travel, and once the shearing and lambing are done, I’m gonna go put in for my own homestead.”
Maisie’s mouth fell open. “Really?”
Grant nodded. “I need space—more space than I’ve got here.” There was more he could say, a lot more, about how he wanted to see what he could make of life on his own, without always having his father and brother to fall back on. He wanted to spread his wings, be independent, and even try something new. If he ever wanted a family, he’d need his own place; he couldn’t share the family homestead forever. But that was too much to share all at once when he didn’t know how Maisie would react. So instead of talking, he held his breath.
Her sudden movement, her hand gripping his arm like a lifeline, startled him.
“Take me with you,” she pleaded.
Chapter 2
Maisie probably should let go of Grant’s sleeve. His hands were dark in the dying daylight, shadowed by the gore of whatever he was using to bait his coyote traps, and some of that was probably on his shirt. She also shouldn’t notice how solid with muscle his forearm was. But her heart and mind felt like they’d been trampled by a cattle stampede after everything today, and Grant Brooks was firm and solid, a safe place, a fresh breath. Freedom.
Maybe she was overly dramatizing it, romanticizing it even, but what else could she do? She couldn’t stand another day sharing a house with her overprotective, overbearing, overly grumpy older brother. She’d go mad. Perhaps she already was, and that’s why she hadn’t yet released Grant’s arm.
“Take me with you,” she said again, her fingers pressing a smidge tighter before she finally let go. “Please.”
Grant blinked at her, clearly baffled by her sudden intensity. “What are you—?”
What was she suggesting? Wasn’t it obvious?
“Marry me, Grant,” she said urgently. “We’ll start a homestead together. No one will question that we want our own space if we’re married. There’s nowhere on either homestead that could fit us if we wanted to stay. You’d only have to share your space with one person instead of five, I’d be able to help shoulder the work, and you’d be taking me away from Carter. It’s a perfect solution all around.”
“But Carter would never—”
“He didn’t argue when Cora married Jack,” Maisie pointed out. “If he was fine with letting one of his sisters marry a Brooks man, he’s gotta be fine with letting the other.”
“But we’re not…” He waved his hand uncomfortably between them.
Maisie wasn’t sure how much of his recent spurt of incomplete sentences was because she was too eager to answer to wait and how much was because he simply couldn’t find words to express his befuddlement. This one felt more like the latter.
“Not in love?” Maisie asked.
He nodded.
This was true. Cora and Jack were almost disgustingly in love. Jack worshipped the ground beneath Cora’s feet, and she lit up for him like she held the sun inside her. When Maisie was around them, she couldn’t decide if she wanted to gag at their sickening sweetness or weep because she longed so desperately to have the same thing.
What made it even harder was seeing Cora steadily growing bigger, carrying the newest Brooks-Hewitt family member. She was due sometime this summer, and Maisie wanted to be there for her. Truly she did. But the ache of wanting a family of her own—the ache that had begun nearly six years ago as she’d grieved the loss of their parents—made it so hard to be around her glowingly happy sister.
But Maisie would never get that family of her own if her overprotective brother refused to take her anywhere around men she could fall in love with. Last summer, the few times they’d been in town, he’d scowled and growled and put a hand on his holster, scaring off any potential suitors. Not that she wanted a rough cowboy or even a townie—she liked homesteading too much, liked having her garden and her bees.
But there were ranchers around that might make good husbands. She’d danced with Lawrence Taylor at the Fourth of July celebration last summer and liked him well enough. His family ran a ranch near Haven River Falls, and he was tall and handsome with tanned skin and light brown eyes. She’d briefly entertained the hope that he might try to court her, but they lived too far apart to make it doable. Maybe if she could have met him in town again, but that wouldn’t work if Carter wouldn’t take her. Maisie might have calmed down a bit on the outside, but her internal monologue was still plenty irritated.
That was the situation she found herself in, though. She wanted a family—a husband, children, a home of her own.
Sure, she’d been living in the cabin she’d been born in, working her family’s land, and for the past six years it had been just her and Cora and Carter. But still it didn’t feel like hers. It had been Ma and Pa’s homestead and their family, and then after they passed, Cora had stepped up to manage everything, and Carter had silently claimed his share of the work.
Maisie had done her share too, but somehow the homestead felt like it belonged more to her siblings than to her. Maybe it was because during those first few years she was still young enough to be spending most days with Ma Brooks and Jilly in the schoolroom—or rather, at the Brooks kitchen table. Whatever the reason, the Hewitt homestead wasn’t hers, and she wanted a place that was. A place that she could leave her mark on.
And she was tired of waiting.
Putting in for her own hundred-and-sixty acres was out of the question; if Carter lost his temper over her being off the homestead for a few hours, he’d never stand for her going to the land office and taking on her own place. And she didn’t much like the idea of doing everything completely alone. She liked people too much.
Finding someone to fall in love with looked equally impossible.
And so, she was back to her probably awkward, definitely forward conversation with Grant.
“No,” she said, “we’re not in love.” She tilted her head to consider him. His hair looked brown in the dusk, but it shone more red in the sunlight. His blue eyes were clear and focused on her. He had a smile that lit up a room and a ready laugh, though now both were absent. “But we’re friends, and I trust you. And aren’t friendship and trust a good foundation for marriage?”
Maisie was pretty proud of that argument.
“They are,” Grant acknowledged. “But there are some things…” He cleared his throat and glanced away, and Maisie wondered if she’d see him blushing if the light were better. “Wouldn’t it be weird to… be married…”
He trailed off, and Maisie felt a blush rise in her own cheeks. Was he talking about—? Why hadn’t she expected that at some point they’d have to discuss that part of marriage? Oh, right—because this had been an impulsive proposal, and she hadn’t thought it through.
“It might be awkward at first,” she said, her face flaming, “so maybe we start with a marriage of convenience. Like, married on paper and sharing the cabin but not…” She gestured vaguely. “Not right away. I mean, someday… Eventually we could make it real. I want a family, don’t you? But not right away. Obviously.”
Maisie clamped her jaw shut to stop the flow of embarrassing words. She seriously regretted asking Grant to marry her. Would he notice if she turned and fled back across the river? She could hide in the barn until her strawberry-red face cooled off, maybe tomorrow.
Grant clasped his hands behind him and turned slightly, casting his gaze over the brown-stubbled fields. Maisie was grateful; she didn’t want him to look at her right now. But she really wished she could tell what he was thinking.
“It’s… not a terrible idea,” he said finally. “But I need some time to think it over. I had a whole plan in my head of how I’d do it, and I need to think through how I’d need to adjust that plan to fit another person, or if I even can.” He glanced at her then. “You’ll keep it to yourself for now?
Maisie nodded. “I won’t say a word.” She hugged her shawl tighter against a sudden chill. “I should get home, but… thanks, Grant. You actually helped me feel a lot better.”
It was true. As Maisie turned back toward the footbridge that would take her over to the Hewitt homestead, leaving Grant to finish setting his trap, she felt lighter. Her annoyance with Carter still hummed in the background, but she felt less explosive. Grant had even made her laugh a little, a skill only he and Jilly seemed to have. Cora had always been good at diffusing the tension between Maisie and Carter, but her skill was in calming and deflecting; Grant had helped Maisie see the humor in the situation.
Loving Maisie will be available on October 14, 2026. Preorder now from Amazon.
