A Timeless Romance Anthology: Old West Collection by Carla Kelly & Sarah M. Eden & Liz Adair & Heather B. Moore & Annette Lyon & Marsha Ward - A Timeless Romance Anthology: Old West Collection

Author:Carla Kelly & Sarah M. Eden & Liz Adair & Heather B. Moore & Annette Lyon & Marsha Ward - A Timeless Romance Anthology: Old West Collection [Kelly, Carla & Eden, Sarah M. & Adair, Liz & Moore, Heather B. & Lyon, Annette & Ward, Marsha]
Language: eng
Format: epub
ISBN: 9781941145159
Google: PnTBAwAAQBAJ
Publisher: Mirror Press, LLC
Published: 2014-04-30T16:00:00+00:00

Chapter Two

Erik Dawson leaned against the outside wall of the church, waiting for the reverend to finish talking to the departing members of the congregation. For two years, he’d been coming to this church, and for two years, the reverend had rejected Erik’s requests for aid. But this new reverend had been here only a month, so Erik hoped to persuade the man to help his sister.

The Colorado mountain air seemed especially thin today, or maybe it was Erik’s growing awareness of his new secretary, Lydia Stone. He’d caught her looking at him more than once during services, and he didn’t know what to make of it. Miss Stone hardly paid him mind at the office. She went about her business in silence, totally absorbed in her work, as if she were afraid to make any demands.

Of course, Erik was no stranger to women looking at him. In fact, he’d experienced quite a few disreputable ones throwing themselves his way— that was part and parcel of spending time at his sister’s brothel— but Lydia Stone was different. It seemed she’d finally taken notice of him, although they’d spent hours together over the past two weeks, working in close quarters.

She was pretty enough, and definitely grown up enough, to have a husband and a brood of children of her own. Why she was single, and working in a rabble-rousing mining town, mystified Erik. She wasn’t widowed and didn’t seem particularly destitute— that much had been clear from her application. It all made Erik curious, even though he didn’t want to be.

The last thing he had time for was a woman.

Managing his silver mine and keeping track of his sister had taken up all of his physical time and emotional energy. Not to mention that the combination of Erik Dawson and women seemed to always end badly. His mother had left their family when he was nine, and his father drank himself into a stupor, disappearing two years later. Erik’s childhood sweetheart had up and kissed Teddy Jennings— his biggest enemy. Without their parents, his only sister, Margaret, four years his senior, had tried to support them. But she had no education, and no one would hire her to clean or watch children. It seemed their father had burned every possible bridge.

In the end, Margaret had fled to a brothel to feed him.

And that was how she paid for Erik’s private boarding school. It wasn’t until he was sixteen that he discovered where the money had really come from, and then he was so horrified he dropped out.

That’s when they’d had their terrible fight. Margaret had fled town, and Erik had spent the next fourteen years working in mines across the country, trying to find his sister. He found her more than once, but each time, she turned away his offer of support. Erik was determined to rescue her from her life of debauchery, settle her in her own home, and show her that she didn’t need to sell her body to earn a living.