A Bond Of Scarred Hearts (Preview)

Prologue

It was because of his love for his mother that Pace Carlisle studied hard to become a doctor in Texas in the year of our Lord 1882. Pace was brilliant from the start, learning early in academics. He had a quick mind that easily absorbed knowledge. 

Pace hailed from Georgia originally. His brother has been drafted into fighting for the Confederacy and sadly died as a result. Pace and his ailing mother fled to Texas, where they were eventually stranded due to his mother’s fight against Tuberculosis. 

His mother’s illness drove Pace to learn all he could about medicine. It was easy for him and he soon discovered he had found his calling. The two settled in Bandera. He consulted the local doctor and asked for as much knowledge as he could get. He searched for books, even going so far as to travel to Austin, where there was a library stocked with the kind of books he needed.

But without a cure, Pace wasn’t able to help his mother. She died of the hateful disease only a year after settling in Texas. While still reeling from the terrible loss – he and his mother had always been close – Pace decided his only option was to take what was left of the family fortune – amassed by his father before his death when Pace was twenty, fourteen years ago – and traveled back to New York to attend formal classes. He did his best to hide his accent and origin, just in case his college mates and possible employers thought of him only as a country bumpkin whose family fought for the wrong side in the war.

When Pace returned, he traveled to Hoofprint Gulch, where he set himself up as the town’s only doctor. It was coming up on the tenth anniversary of his arrival in the small town. He had two women working as nurses and was rewarding his thriving practice with an assistant to celebrate the tenth year in business. He considered himself blessed to have the trust of the town of 450 residents.

Pace stepped off the front porch of his cottage, which was adjacent to the clinic he’d set up. He looked up at the bright blue sky above and said a quick prayer of thanks for such a beautiful day. Despite the position he was in, he prayed every morning for his friends and neighbors in Hoofprint Gulch. He didn’t want anyone to get sick or injured. He was glad he was able to help when it happened but he wouldn’t wish it on anyone.

He walked to the clinic and went in the front door, breathing in the scent of roses. His nurse, Ethel Rosenbaum, a 50-year-old nurse who had cared for wounded soldiers during the war, smiled at him from behind her desk. 

“Good morning, Doctor,” she said. “How are you this morning?”

“I’m doing well, as always, Ethel, thank you for asking. And you?”

She nodded. “I’m doing good.”

Pace liked the formal way Ethel greeted him in the morning, even though she’d been working for him the entire time he’d been in Hoofprint Gulch. 

“Has Maureen come in yet?”

“I’ve got her going through inventory in the back storage, sir,” Ethel replied. “I hope that’s all right.”

“Yes, of course.”

“I also have a possible candidate for the assistant position in your consulting office.”

Pace raised his dark brown eyebrows that made a gentle slope over his naturally narrow green eyes. “Oh? What’s his name?”

Ethel looked down at her desk, presumably to look at the name written on the pad of paper. 

“Jonathan Creek. He strikes me as a bit young and full of himself but it says on his resume that he’s a year older than you.”

Pace laughed softly. “I find that most people my age who have the distinction of being good at something like this have a hard time not being arrogant about the gifts God gave them. That’s not the way I am but I do know of many who are like that.”

Ethel didn’t say anything. She just smiled as he walked to the door of his office.

Before he reached it, the door of the back storage room was flung open and Maureen came running out. Her eyes were wide and she looked frightened. 

“What’s wrong, Mo?” Pace asked in an alarmed voice. He’d never seen his young nurse look like that. Her hands flew up to her face as Ethel came quickly to stand next to the woman. 

“Maureen!” Ethel threw her arms around Maureen.

“Oh, Doctor!” Maureen said in a distraught voice. “Miss Ethel! I think someone has broken in and stolen some medications!”

Pace lifted his eyebrows in surprise. Such a thing had never happened in Hoofprint Gulch. Not that he knew of. Theft had certainly not happened in his clinic since he’d opened it.

“How can that be?” His voice was incredulous. His long legs took him past Maureen and to the storage room door in just a few steps. He was through before he realized he didn’t know what he was looking for. He turned around and almost ran into Maureen, who had followed close behind him with an expression of doom and gloom on her face. Her eyes flicked up to his.

“Over here,” she said, taking the lead and going to a corner of the room that just happened to be below a window. The window was cracked open at the bottom. 

“Oh no,” Pace mumbled. “How much was taken?”

“All I noticed was two cases of morphine,” Maureen replied, her voice taut with despair. “I am sorry, Doctor. I didn’t know this might happen! I only cracked the window for some fresh air the last time I did inventory. And then… well, I guess I forgot to close it, oh it is my fault!” She was wailing by the end, covering her face with both hands. Ethel was comforting her, glancing at the doctor repeatedly to find out how he was going to respond. 

Pace looked at the window and the cases of morphine stacked below it on a shelf. Loss of inventory was supposed to be common. He calculated the monetary loss in his mind and decided it wasn’t too much of a problem. 

“It’s all right, Mo,” he said, comfortingly, putting one large hand on her shoulder and squeezing gently. “I’ll just work it out of you.” 

Maureen gave him a new wide-eyed look and he chuckled, brushing her chin with two fingers.

“I’m joking, dear. Don’t worry about it. The loss isn’t going to break me.”

“I’m sorry, Doctor,” Maureen said one more time.

He shook his head. “That’s enough of that. Let’s get back to work. Just don’t forget to write those two missing boxes down and come right away to tell me if anything else is missing.”

Maureen looked relieved. “I will. Thank you, Doctor.”

Pace just nodded as he left the room.

Chapter One

Bella North felt like at twenty-five, she should be able to control the direction of her life. Should it matter so much that she was a late bloomer? Not yet married and not really finding the man of her dreams in Hoofprint Gulch to begin with? She was satisfied with the way her life was going. She wished to no end that her father would stop interfering.

Jacob North was a loving father, there was no doubt of that. She and him were as thick as thieves, as close as they could be, two peas in a pod. On everything except one thing. Bella’s marriage possibilities. 

She wanted to choose the man she would spend the rest of her life with. He wanted to choose for her. Really, she felt that the only reason he was being so hard headed about it was because he was afraid she would never marry. It might be a shame on the family name. Bella didn’t know if that was the reason he’d chosen to interfere in her life for the first time since she’d become an adult.

It wasn’t like Bella was less fortunate in looks or brains. She had both, her hair long, auburn and usually kept back in a braid, her eyes a deep brown and set elegantly in her face. She was known as a beauty around Hoofprint Gulch but one that was standoffish and perhaps not as friendly as they’d like.

Bella wasn’t about to be as “friendly as they’d like”. She was her own woman and took pride in her virtue and moral standards. She was a God-fearing woman who wanted to live her life the way the Almighty directed. Maybe she wouldn’t always succeed but she wasn’t about to berate herself in such a way, risking her reputation and the reputation of her family.

Her thoughts were interrupted briefly when her eyes caught sight of movement in the distance. She was standing in the parlor, gazing out the large wall window at the land beyond her house. It stretched out quite a ways before abruptly being cut off by the woods. The trees were thick in those woods but Bella knew every single one of them and couldn’t imagine getting lost. 

In the middle of the pasture was a man-made lake. It was fed by a river that snaked its way through the surrounding counties. She narrowed her eyes and stared harder until she realized it was a swan. It had been digging under its wing with its beak, looking like a white blob in the middle of the water. But when it raised its majestic head, she knew exactly what it was. 

Taking in a deep breath, she wished her mother was there to see that beautiful waterfowl. 

Bella was just a young girl when her family moved from Bandera to Hoofprint Gulch. Back then it was little more than a camp. Her father was one of the original ranchers to stake out land outside town. He was now one of the top three ranchers in the entire county. 

Life wasn’t easy for the North family at the beginning. Jacob put in long hours and worked his tail off to make the family wealthy. But he’d succeeded. All his hard work paid off greatly. He found great success in business, was a charismatic man with a quick wit and a sharp brain. He wasn’t easily fooled and he never tried to fool anyone else. He was a fair and just businessman. Bella respected him for his business practices which, at her age, she was able to easily recognize.

During those initial days of struggle, Bella’s mother and brother were caught in a brutal stampeded triggered by a flash flood. She was just twelve years old when it happened, left to be the new mother of her little sister, Annie. Her father went through a bout of heartbreak and despair that almost cost them everything they’d built up to that point. But at the last minute, God blessed Jacob with the strength to keep going, to not give up, and to give his daughter the life she deserved. 

The doctor in Hoofprint Gulch was Dr. Weathers when the tragedy happened. He’d been unable to save them from the injuries they sustained as the hooves beat down on their bodies. 

Bella had never blamed him. He’d done everything he could. 

Sometimes she wondered if the doctor in Hoofprint Gulch now, Dr. Pace Carlisle, would have been able to do better.

She shook her head. Doubtful. Bella had only caught a glimpse of her mother through a crack in the examining room door and was surprised and dismayed that she was still alive. She was dismayed because the woman must have been in a tremendous amount of pain.

The image flashed through Bella’s mind, sending a spate of tingles over her skin.

She dismissed it with a vengeance.

Tasked with doing the chores alone, Bella hurried from the parlor, through the foyer and out the front door. She went around to the stairs that went down underground and held her skirt as she descended so she wouldn’t trip.

Without knocking, she went in the kitchen, met immediately by the scent of baking bread and a hefty cloud of heat. 

She was greeted by the three people in the room, a maid, the cook, and the groom. She smiled at them all, focusing her eyes on the maid, a young woman her age named Alice Cross. 

“Alice, I’m supposed to do all these chores out here by myself but I don’t want to be alone. Will you come with me?”

“Watch out,” the groom, Allan, said in a teasing voice, “she’s gonna ask you to do everything.”

Bella gasped and stuck her tongue out at him good-naturedly. “No, I’m not. I want a companion, not a slave.”

“Well, thank goodness for that!” the cook, Greta, gushed. She was an older woman who had emigrated from Germany to America when she was a girl. She still had a fair German accent but it was very faint.

Bella grinned again. “Please will you come, Alice? I promise not to make you do everything.”

“I will gladly come and help you with the chores, Miss Bella,” Alice said, giving a side-eye to Allan, who just laughed heartily and went back to his paper and coffee. 

“Thank you so much!” Bella turned to go back to the stairs that led to the outside. She hated doing the chores alone but she understood why she was told to do them. Her father said it would teach her the value of hard work and it did. There was nothing like the feeling of satisfaction she got after finishing a hard round of chores. And when one of the cattle had a calf? Those were the times that wore her out. Her father insisted she be either present or participating in helping through the birth. It would give her character, he said. She wasn’t going to grow up a rich, pampered, spoiled child.

Bella was eternally grateful to her father for making sure she grew up with principles and the willingness to work hard for specific goals. There were many roadblocks for her, since she was a woman and women were not as highly regarded as men in many of her interests. 

Nonetheless, Bella was bound and determined to pursue whatever goal she set up for herself, without letting her sex get in the way. All she needed was sympathetic man to help her achieve whatever she was seeking.

Bella couldn’t help wondering if she would have been free to choose her own life partner if her mother and brother hadn’t died. Her father was a bit overprotective because of that loss. She was sure that was where this was coming from.

There was nothing she could do about it though. She couldn’t bring them back. She would have to show her father that her independence was too important for him to ruin by arranging a marriage with a man she didn’t love.

Chapter Two

That night, after the chores were done, Bella and Annie decided to head into town and visit Jenny. Her father had announced at dinner that he’d chosen a man he wanted Bella to marry and that man was “Big Mike” Kelly, his closest friend. While it didn’t surprise Bella that he’d picked someone so close to him, it did shock her a little bit that the older man would agree to such an arrangement himself. How could he possibly want to marry her, the young daughter of his best friend, a girl he’d watched grow up? It seemed a bit morbid to Bella.

She and Annie adored Big Mike. He had married rich, had plenty of land and a large herd. He’d lost his wife, Delilah, in the same stamped that took Bella’s family. Big Mike’s sons had both survived and were now grown, one married and one courting. 

Surely Big Mike would find it odd that his best friend wanted to arrange a marriage between himself and a woman he had just recently described as a “kind of niece or something”. 

Jacob had a lot of influence over Big Mike, though. They both had their successes and had never been rivals. They traveled together as youngsters and both families claimed neighboring plots adjacent to the Gulch.

Both families contributed a lot to the community, both in monetary and physical ways, building it up from the small camp it had been to the thriving town it now was. Their children grew up together. The families became very close over the years. When the disaster struck, they both lost family to the gully-washer and the damage to the land and the herd was tremendous. 

Bella was glad when they finally arrived at the saloon. Bella’s best friend, Jenny Collins, worked there serving drinks behind the bar with her uncle, Thomas. Thomas was a large man and every person in the place knew if they messed with Jenny in any way, there would be Hell to pay. So she was left alone to enjoy her job without danger.

The two young ladies entered the saloon and looked around. 

“I can’t believe there’s no prospects to offer you, Bella,” Annie said quietly, shaking her head. “Look at these men. Not one of them is worth a moment of your time.”

Bella searched the room with her eyes. She didn’t see even one man she would be interested in talking to but she was of the mind that the saloon might not be the best place to find a man. 

Unfortunately, there weren’t any at the church either, at least, not that she’d noticed. And some of the men there were the men here, too. 

“I don’t want to marry Uncle Mike,” she mumbled in a voice only her sister could hear as they walked to the bar. 

Only a few of the men at the tables watched as the girls passed by. Annie, at nineteen, was off-limits to all of them. Their father had made that clear. 

Bella didn’t exactly feel unsafe. But she did wish they would keep their eyes to themselves once in a while. She reached the bar and was happy to slide onto a stool in front of it. Annie did the same next to her. 

Jenny approached, a glass in one hand a towel in the other. She was briskly rubbing the inside of the glass with the towel and gave both of them a big smile. “Hard whiskey double, as usual?” she asked.

She smiled wide as her friends laughed.

“Yes, that’s just what I need. That and a thrashing from my father for letting Annie do something like that, much less myself.”

“Two glasses of hard water coming up.” Jenny turned with a short laugh and filled two glasses from the pitcher of water behind the counter. She set one down in front of each of them. “Here you go. Now what’s the latest information on your quest to find a suitable husband? Has your father found one yet?”

“He’s found a husband,” Bella responded, “but not a suitable one.”

“He’s old,” Annie blurted out. “That’s why she doesn’t want him.”

Bella gave her a direct look. “That’s not why and you know it.” 

Annie giggled, putting one hand in front of her lips. “It’s one of the reasons. You can’t tell me it’s not, Bella. He’s as old as Papa!”

Bella returned her gaze to Jenny, who was looking at them both curiously. “How long till you tell me who it is?” she asked in a light tone.

Bella laughed. “Mike. Mike Kelly.”

Jenny’s eyebrows shot up. “Big Mike?”

“The one and only.”

Jenny shook her head. “I thought he was one of your pa’s best friends. Annie’s right. He is old. Why doesn’t your father arrange for you to marry one of his sons?”

“They’re both taken,” Annie said. “I would have thought you, of all people, would know that.”

Jenny gazed at the young lady. “I beg your pardon?”

“I mean because you work behind the bar, I would think a lot of people would come and talk to you or you’d overhear conversations that were exciting, like about a wedding.”

Jenny kept her eyes on Annie for a moment longer and a smile crept over her face. “That’s actually some good thinking, Annie. But I do try not to pay attention to what’s going on around me when I’m hear. I’m afraid I’ll overhear something I really don’t want to. So I try to ignore them all.”

“I understand,” Annie replied, nodding. 

“I just don’t know how I’m going to change Papa’s mind on this,” Bella moaned. She had a feeling she was going to become a very whiny person in the next few months or until this was resolved to her satisfaction. “He just won’t stop pressuring me and now that he has someone in mind, I’m afraid I’ll never be able to get out from under it. He’s going to be beating me on the head about it.”

“Well, who would be a better match for you?” Jenny asked, leaning toward her, propping herself up with both arms on the bar. “Look around. There’s plenty of men in here.”

“Yeah, Annie and I were doing just that earlier. But… I just don’t see anyone. I have only a short time before Papa starts making wedding arrangements. I have to find someone soon. But there’s just no one here!”

“What about Bart?” Jenny said, motioning toward the one other employee in the building, a young man about Bella’s age. “He’s a nice enough guy.”

Bella gave her friend a direct, hard look. “You want me to marry a nice enough guy?”

Jenny shook her head, a closed-mouth smile on her lips. “No. I don’t want you to settle for anything less than what you deserve. You’re right.”

“Bart is a ne’er do well,” Annie said, keeping her voice down low. “He’s a louse and a rake. That’s exactly why he’s unmarried. He couldn’t snag a wife to keep for long, I’ll tell you right now.”

“Well, what about the doctor? He’s unmarried and a handsome man.”

Bella thought about Dr. Carlisle. Jenny was right that he was handsome.

“He might have looks but if he’s got a personality, I don’t know what it is. He never comes out and does things! He’s very unsocial, isn’t he?”

Jenny nodded at Bella. “Yes, he is very much a man to keep to himself. But he’s so handsome. I can’t believe he isn’t married yet.”

“He’s also about ten years older than me.”

Jenny snorted. “Like that makes a difference.”

“It’s better than a man twenty years older like Uncle Mike,” Annie added.

Bella felt her chest tighten. “And you see, that’s another thing!” she raged as low as her voice would let her. She jabbed a finger in the air. “How am I supposed to see him as anything but family? I can’t! I simply can’t.”

“How does he feel about all this?” Jenny asked.

Bella shook her head. “I don’t know yet. I haven’t talked to him since my father told me what he had planned.

“Maybe it’s all in your pa’s mind,” Jenny suggested. “Maybe this is just an idea he’s had and Big Mike doesn’t even know about it yet.”

Bella sighed. “I wish that were true. But he told me that Uncle Mike agreed, which means they talked. That means he had to have agreed to it. Maybe he thought he could give me a better life but there’s not much difference between his place and mine. And in my place, I have the freedom to move about as I please. I don’t want a man controlling what I do and when I do it. I think Uncle Mike would treat me like that. Almost like an apprentice or something.”

“You could check in Bandera,” Jenny suggested. “It’s a lot bigger there.”

“Yeah,” Bella replied with a nod. “I’ll have to, won’t I? I don’t have much choice. I’ll have to do it quick, too, because there’s no telling how soon my papa wants me married and moved out.”

“Surely that’s not the reason he’s doing this,” Jenny said incredulously. 

“No,” Bella said, shaking her head. “That’s not my papa. He’s just trying to do what’s best for me, despite my own feelings about it. I’ll have to change his mind. I just have to.”

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“A Bond Of Scarred Hearts” is an Amazon Best-Selling novel, check it out here!

Bella North, the daughter of a wealthy rancher, is facing a terrible dilemma. Her father, in a mistaken bid to make his daughter happy, arranges for her to marry a man she has known all her life as her “uncle.” While the man is charismatic and interesting, he is much older than her and Bella can’t figure out for the life of her why he would agree to the union in the first place. When a caring and charming doctor enters her life like a hurricane, it suddenly becomes clear to her that she cannot afford to lose what seems like true love. Even though her father is insistent, she knows she must avoid this marriage at any cost. Can Bella find a way out of the situation before it’s too late?

Meanwhile, Dr. Pace Carlisle is the physician of the little town in the southeastern part of Texas. He has been living there for ten years and at the age of thirty-four, he has come to terms with his slim prospects for marriage. He hasn’t really thought about it much though, as his practice has always taken up a great deal of his time. Unbeknownst to him, the love he has been seeking is right there in his town, waiting for him to discover the riches of what could lie ahead for him. When a terrible accident brings the beautiful Bella to his home and he happily tends to her wounds, a warm feeling he thought he had long lost, emerges. Will he seek it out and cherish it before it disappears? Or will he kneel to her father’s wishes for her to marry another?

When Bella and Pace cross paths, they realize their meeting is not just a random coincidence. The two might seem an unlikely couple, but love doesn’t wait for people to make up their minds. Bella and Pace will face a hard battle against a determined father who has a deep-seated hatred for doctors after a tragic event that shook his family to the core. Can Bella and Pace change her father’s mind? Or will they have to make the hard choice of giving each other up and lose a once-in-a-lifetime love forever?

“A Bond Of Scarred Hearts” is a historical western romance novel of approximately 80,000 words. No cheating, no cliffhangers, and a guaranteed happily ever after.

Get your copy from Amazon!