Chapter 1

December 28, 1847

Melody Hughes sat looking at the gifts in her lap. Christmas was only three days past and she’d just buried her father. He’d died on Christmas Eve when his horse had slipped on a patch of ice, tossed her father over the horse’s head, and cracked his head open on a rocky outcrop. She’d not been able to bring herself to open the gifts he’d given her. She knew what they’d be; it was what he gave her every year: a new dress and a new pair of men’s dungarees for training the horses. Only now the second gift was useless.

She could still hear the words that Mr. Granger, the lawyer her father used, had said to her. “I’m so sorry for your loss, Miss Hughes, but as you know it’s not lawful for a woman to inherit property. Your father left instructions that if you were unwed at the time of his passing, his entire estate would be left to his foreman, Brent Cooke. It was his wish that you and Brent would marry and continue to run the ranch together.”

Melody would never marry Brent Cooke. The man refused to see how valuable she was as a horse breeder or trainer. He insisted her father had spoiled her and that Liam, not Melody, did the real breeding, breaking, and training. He often expressed his belief that Melody should be in dresses tending to the house and looking for a husband. The fact that Melody couldn’t cook, sew, or had no desire to be in any way what he determined proper female attire seemed to escape his notice.

As she sat staring at the gifts, her father had left for her she heard Brent’s heavy footfalls come onto the front porch, and he had the nerve to enter the house without knocking as if he already owned it. Which, of course, he did.

“Melody, we need to talk.”

She glared at the man who ran the cattle side of her father’s operation, her blue eyes ablaze with anger at the man’s audacity. “By all means, Mr. Cooke, make yourself at home in my house. But I guess it’s your home now, isn’t it?”

The dark-haired cowboy sighed. “There’s no need to be rude, Melody. I have no intention of taking your home away from you. Your dad wanted us to marry and for me to keep running the ranch. We can go see the preacher tomorrow and nothing will change except your last name.”

Melody looked at him with suspicion in her eyes. “Nothing will change? So as your wife, I’ll still be able to run the horse breeding and training side of the ranch like I’ve done since I was old enough to sit on a horse?”

Brent shook his head. “You know that isn’t proper work for a lady, Melody. Once you’re my wife, then you’ll act like a proper wife and take care of our home and eventually our children. I still don’t understand why your Pa allowed you to act like a harridan all those years. He should have tanned your hide the first time you came outside in those britches and started playing at doing men’s work.”

Melody stood up and faced him. “Then I will not marry you, Brent Cooke. I am a horse breeder and trainer, not a proper housewife. I don’t know how to do the things a wife would do, and I have no desire to learn to be one. If you don’t want me as I am, then no, I won’t marry you.”

Brent glared down into her face. “You’ll marry me and make a proper wife or you’ll get your rebellious body off my ranch by the first of the year. Those are your options, marry me and become a proper wife and woman, keeping your ranch, or refuse and lose everything. You have three days to decide. Until then, don’t even think about setting foot in the barn or the horse paddock. If I see you there, I’ll take a willow switch to your hide, just like Mr. Hughes should have done all those years ago.”

Melody shoved him away from her. “I don’t need three days, I don’t even need one. You and I will never marry and I’ll be out of your house and off your ranch tomorrow. I will, however, be taking Sunset since no one else can ride her, anyway. You can consider her my pay for the work I’ve done the past twelve years.”

Brent shook his head. “Go on, take your horse and leave and when you realize you don’t have any other choice, you come on back and I’ll make a proper ranch wife of you. I give you till sundown tomorrow to come crawling back begging me to marry you.”

With that, the bear of a foreman stuffed his hat back on his head and stomped out the door, slamming it behind him. Melody refused to waste one more minute crying over what couldn’t be. She’d set out in the morning to her friend Clara’s bed-and-breakfast in town. Clara and Clyde would help her find a situation that allowed her to use her skills, but one thing was certain: it would be a cold day in the devil’s playground before she came crawling back to Brent Cooke asking to be his wife.