Total pages in book: 18
Estimated words: 16571 (not accurate)
Estimated Reading Time in minutes: 83(@200wpm)___ 66(@250wpm)___ 55(@300wpm)
Estimated words: 16571 (not accurate)
Estimated Reading Time in minutes: 83(@200wpm)___ 66(@250wpm)___ 55(@300wpm)
He’s been alone too long.
Now they’re stuck on the frontier—with only one bed and no way back.
Cora's a modern midwife. Boone’s a widowed cowboy.
She didn’t mean to land in 1870s Colorado…
But he sure as hell means to keep her.
🔥 Broody homesteader
💥 Time travel romance
💘 Prairie-core smut vibes
Welcome to the wild west, sweetheart
*************FULL BOOK START HERE*************
CHAPTER 1
Cora
Dragging a hand over my forehead, I wipe away the sweat that has pooled on my skin since I set out on the trail earlier this morning.
It’s still quiet enough that I haven’t run into anyone, thank God.
The thought of looking someone else in the eyes right now, of admitting the depths of guilt and shame that are twisting in my guts at that moment, it’s...it’s more than I can take.
It’s the whole reason I came out here in the first place – the depths of Colorado, somewhere I won’t be haunted by the sterile memories of what happened on that maternity ward the month before last.
It doesn’t matter how many times they tell me that it’s normal, that I shouldn’t feel guilty, that there’s nothing more I could have done.
But I do. The guilt gnaws at me.
No matter what I try to tell myself or how I try to frame it, I know that there was a mother who walked out of my ward without the child she had spent so long looking forward to.
The thought snags on my mind again, sending a shock of discomfort through my system. I can still remember the wail of agony that she let out when we told her that we weren’t going to be able to bring her little one to her.
She'd suffered a stillbirth, and, despite our best efforts, we couldn’t revive the child. It wasn’t the first time something had gone wrong in that ward, but it was the first time I felt so utterly, completely helpless in the face of the pain someone else was going through.
I’d worked as a midwife for years, and, of course, I’d known there would be difficult aspects of the job. They had done their best to train us for that, but the actual reality of being confronted with it is entirely different.
And I am only just starting to understand that. I can’t undo the hurt that woman feels, and I can’t find some way to draw her baby back from the brink.
No, I just need to accept that I failed...
And I can’t. I don’t know what I thought a hike out here might do to change things, but I had to try something. I’d tried to go back to work, but my distractedness and the constant reminder of everything that had happened had been too much for me to take.
Iris, the ward head, had insisted I take some time off to clear my head. It happens to all of us, she had assured me, as she had pulled me into a huge hug. We need some time to ourselves, once in a while...
I had resisted it at first, but eventually, I had packed up my car and driven out to my native Colorado to spend some time in the wilderness here. Somewhere as far removed from the hospital as I can find. Somewhere that feels as though it belongs to another world entirely.
The dark wood of the trees dappling sunlight along the ground, the scent of overturned earth in the air. The old paths that wind between the trunks from generation to generation marking them out time and time again.
It’s better than being back on the ward, but that doesn’t mean that I have forgotten anything-
And then, all at once, a noise catches my attention. For a moment, I think I must be imagining it, some vestige of what I left behind still clinging to the back of my head. Because it sounds...
It sounds like a baby crying.
The kind of crying that indicates something is really, really wrong. A cold flush crosses my cheeks, even amidst the heat.
What the hell...?
And there it is again, this time, unmistakable.
My heart skips a beat. There are animals who make noises that can sound like those of a baby, right? It could just be that. But I’ve spent enough time out here to know the difference, and something tells me that this isn’t just some fox trying to get the attention of unsuspecting prey.
Cutting off the path is a bad idea and I know it, but, nonetheless, I hook my bag over my shoulder and make my way into the woods. I call out a couple of times, trying to make out what is going on out there, but hear nothing in return – nothing.
Nothing that is, apart from the sound of crying filling the air, over and over again.
It drifts on the breeze like something from a bad dream, and the lump in my throat grows larger and larger with every step.