Welcome to the Blog Tour for Claiming Her Legacy by Linda Goodnight, hosted by JustRead Publicity Tours!
ABOUT THE BOOK
Title: Claiming Her Legacy
Author: Linda Goodnight
Publisher: Harlequin Love Inspired Trade
Release Date: April 26, 2022
Genre: Inspirational Historical Romance
With her family’s legacy on the line, a woman with everything to lose must rely on a man hiding from his past…
Oklahoma, 1890
Frontier women don’t ride off alone to track an outlaw—not even women as capable as tomboy spinster Willa Malone. But Willa desperately needs the bounty money offered for her father’s killer if she’s to keep their homestead and take care of her sisters. That means she needs an expert tracker's help. Gideon Hartley has the skill, but the handsome trail guide also has a troubling secret…
Gideon has spent years trying to numb his pain with whiskey. Little by little, their quest—and Willa’s belief in him—is restoring the sense of purpose he thought he’d lost. Journeying into the heart of danger, they’ll have to face down the past together if they hope to protect their future…
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EXCERPT
The three sisters still argued come bedtime.
Willa divested herself of dusty boots and set them by the cabin door with a resolute thunk. “I’m going to hunt him down and collect that bounty and neither of you will convince me otherwise.”
“This is crazy talk.” Mercy, already in a long nightdress, loosened her hair and let it fall over one shoulder. “A woman can’t go bounty hunting.”
“Why not? I can ride and shoot better than most men.”
“It is simply not done. Women don’t ride off alone after outlaws. Lawmen do.”
“I staked this claim alone, didn’t I?”
Mercy had stayed behind at the rail depot with Savannah, who could no more run for land than she could leap over the moon. Papa had run with Willa, hoping for a double portion, but he’d come up short. Willa hadn’t.
“There were plenty who tried to take it away because I was a woman.”
She’d faced the claim-jumpers with a loaded rifle in hand, dead set on keeping what she’d staked until Papa and the sisters arrived to set up camp.
“Yes, and now we have to find a way to keep it.” Worry weighed Mercy’s soft words. “But bounty hunting is not the way, Willa. Riding after an outlaw alone, a known killer, is too dangerous. Even for a man.”
Mercy reached for a brush, and with more than the usual vigor, began the first of one hundred strokes of her glorious hair.
Willa had given up such feminine niceties long ago. A braid down the back was sufficient. Practical.
No one would notice if she primped anyway.
Willa’s chin jutted. “I’ll hire someone to go along. A tracker.”
Mercy’s brush paused. “Who?”
Willa’s heart rattled at the truth in Mercy’s statement, though she didn’t dare let either sister see her concern.
Finding a knowledgeable guide with the grit for bounty hunting would be difficult enough. Finding one who’d agree to a share of the bounty in return for his services might be next to impossible. And riding the trail with a woman? Even she saw the futility in that.
Yet, what other choices did she have?
“I’ll find one,” she said with false bravado. “With the many settlers coming and going in this territory, someone will know a guide.”
“Even if you find one, how will you know where to go?” Mercy resumed her brush strokes, the red hair gleaming in the lamplight. “This is a big country. A man on the run can hide many places.”
Willa shivered, her heart jittery in her chest as she slipped into her nightgown and turned back the quilt Mercy’s mother had pieced from scraps.
She didn’t remember her own mother but she fondly recalled Papa’s second wife, Maeve, a gentle soul who’d nurtured a needy, motherless six-year-old. Maeve, as Irish as Papa, had been the balm that soothed Papa’s wanderlust for a while. Those were the good days when Papa had worked the railroad and Maeve had turned a sod house into a loving home.
Emotion knotted in Willa’s chest. At times like this, when life was hard and decisions were harder, she missed having a mother to lean on. She missed Maeve.
She recalled Papa playing his fiddle by the firelight as Maeve’s work-roughened hands put together the tiniest pieces of scrap cloth until a pattern emerged, amazing Willa.
She also remembered Maeve’s swollen belly and the promise of a brother or sister. She’d gotten Mercy and lost Maeve in the same pain-filled day.
Months later, while Papa awaited wife number three, a mail-order bride from Georgia, he had given the quilt to Willa.
Now, with the enormity of what she planned tight in her chest, she pulled the precious cover closer, imagining the comfort of Maeve’s biscuit-and-rosewater scent.
“The bounty hunter had a good notion Papa’s killer was headed to Indian Territory to hide out for a spell,” she murmured. “I’ll start there.”
“Willa, stop! Put this out of your mind.” By the light of a coal oil lamp, Savannah’s slender fingers jabbed a needle in and out of a ripped chemise. “A woman traveling out there, even with a man’s protection, would be in terrible danger.”
ISBN-13: 978-1-335-41876-0
Claiming Her Legacy
Copyright © 2022 by Linda Goodnight
All rights reserved. No part of this book may be used or reproduced in any manner whatsoever without written permission except in the case of brief quotations embodied in critical articles and reviews.
This is a work of fiction. Names, characters, places and incidents are either the product of the author’s imagination or are used fictitiously. Any resemblance to actual persons, living or dead, businesses, companies, events or locales is entirely coincidental.
This edition published by arrangement with Harlequin Books S.A.
For questions and comments about the quality of this book, please contact us at CustomerService@Harlequin.com.
Love Inspired22 Adelaide St. West, 41st FloorToronto, Ontario M5H 4E3, Canadawww.LoveInspired.com
Printed in U.S.A.
Claiming Her Legacy
Copyright © 2022 by Linda Goodnight
All rights reserved. No part of this book may be used or reproduced in any manner whatsoever without written permission except in the case of brief quotations embodied in critical articles and reviews.
This is a work of fiction. Names, characters, places and incidents are either the product of the author’s imagination or are used fictitiously. Any resemblance to actual persons, living or dead, businesses, companies, events or locales is entirely coincidental.
This edition published by arrangement with Harlequin Books S.A.
For questions and comments about the quality of this book, please contact us at CustomerService@Harlequin.com.
Love Inspired22 Adelaide St. West, 41st FloorToronto, Ontario M5H 4E3, Canadawww.LoveInspired.com
Printed in U.S.A.
ABOUT THE AUTHOR
TOUR GIVEAWAY
(1) winner will receive a $25 Amazon gift card!
Be sure to check out each stop on the tour for more chances to win. Full tour schedule linked below. Giveaway began at midnight April 5, 2022 and lasts through 11:59 PM EST on April 12, 2022. Winner will be notified within 2 weeks of close of the giveaway and given 48 hours to respond or risk forfeiture of prize. US only. Void where prohibited by law or logistics.
Giveaway is subject to the policies found here.
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