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Worse, he’d managed to slide out of said trouble with his slick charm and boyish smile every single time.
    That only fueled her anger. She’d show Noble exactly what he’d cost her . . . and how to atone for his crimes.
    “Besides,” Cari continued, “Noble is MIA. His agent isn’t answering questions, and I can’t nail down a forwarding address. He has a place in Texas, but the number is disconnected.”
    “I just wish that guys like him didn’t get away with their stupid behavior. Anyone else would be handcuffed to their hospital bed.”
    “Listen, Katherine, Bradley isn’t going to let him walk away from this. You can bet that by the time he’s done, Rafe Noble will have paid through the teeth.”
    Get in line.
    She wasn’t sure why, but that only made Katherine feel worse. Maybe it was because she wanted Noble to want to help, not to have to force him. But that might be expecting a bit too much, even for her. . . .
    “I’m glad you’re getting away,” Cari said, cutting through her thoughts. “Forget about New York. Do some shopping; buy a new outfit. This will all be sorted out when you get home.”
    “I hope so.” Katherine switched lanes to fly past a semi. “Thanks, Cari. I’ll be in touch.” She clicked off, then pushed the Play button on her CD player.
    A collection of books on CDs had caught her attention at the last place she gassed up, and she couldn’t believe that they’d had the B. J. King Western—the one she’d shoved into her suitcase. It seemed like providence, a sign from God or something to help her find the courage to face Noble, so she’d purchased it.
    She didn’t expect to feel a kinship with the heroine, a widow with an infant, left on her own in the middle of Wyoming.
WYOMING, 1933
    Mary Sutton stood at the edge of the grave, her feet in the dry, lifeless soil, the hot sun sending a trickle of sweat down her back, and knew that she’d never be whole again. The baby fussed in her arms, and Mary readjusted Rosie’s bonnet, pulling it low so the dirt couldn’t find her eyes. Even so, it caked her little mouth and nose, just as it dusted Mary’s skin, her dark pleated skirt, the once-white blouse. She felt soiled all the time.
    Or maybe that feeling came from deep inside her soul.
    “’Bout ready, Mrs. Sutton?”
    Mary turned and squinted at Matthias Thatcher, the man she’d agreed to marry, to raise Charlie’s daughter. Her stomach turned. Matthias was fifty, with a paunch that told her exactly what she’d spend her time doing, and he owned theland where Charlie had run their tiny head of cattle. Matthias wasted no time telling her that he owned her, too. He didn’t own her soul. But they had to eat, so . . .
    “I’m ready, sir.”
    He didn’t hold out his hand to help her into his Ford Model A. Charlie had dreamed of owning a car, and when Matthias drove out to the fields—usually to harass her poor husband—Charlie had stopped his work to watch the dark machine motor toward him. If Matthias’s whiskey-induced diatribe affected Charlie, he didn’t show his irritation as he let his gaze wander over the sleek machine.
    It felt traitorous to ride in it now, away from their two-room shanty to Matthias’s big two-story house. Just like every rancher in Wyoming, Matthias hadn’t had a decent crop of calves for years, and his herd had dwindled to a handful of bony cows unable to reproduce. But he made his money in his vast land holdings, in squeezing the small rancher of every drop of profit and working him until he crumpled into the soil at the age of thirty-one.
    Leaving behind a child, a wife, and nothing else.
    Mary swallowed back a wave of grief and soothed the baby. At least Charlie had seen his daughter before his heart gave out. She’d given him that much.
    They pulled up to the unpainted house. It sat in a dip between two weather-beaten, grassless hills. The effects of the last dust storm had piled dirt against the barn and porch. Dirty