The Widow’s Dance with Destiny (Preview)

Chapter One

“Nathan, I swanny if you take that broom from this cupboard and don’t put it back one more time!” The holler echoed throughout the halls of the boarding house, the frustration in the tired female’s tone all too easy to read. 

Tilly, from where she stood in the kitchen rolling dough out over a lightly flour-dusted counter, couldn’t help but smile to herself. Not but one floor above her head she could hear little feet scrambling about, the bumping and running of a scurrying child carrying through the old floorboards and brightening her smile even further. 

She was just as tired as Florence sounded, the deep ache in her bones making her movements slow and steady as she worked the bubbles out of what she was hoping would end up being bread for the next morning’s breakfast. She wasn’t, however, a mother, and therein lay the difference. 

She was willing to bet a whole month of Sundays that Nathan had taken the broom to use as a line for his “river” in the game he’d been playing for the last fortnight again. And she was willing to bet a whole separate month of Sundays that he had forgotten that anyone else might have need of it, too. He was hardly a malicious child. Just an imaginative one. 

Footsteps thundered down the steps, sounding like a whole herd of horses as Nathan rushed to his mama, a flash of his unkempt hair stealing past the kitchen doorway and further sounds of his being scolded carrying through the home shortly after. 

Somewhere further in the house, Cora could be heard hollering about beauty sleep and fish wives’ mouths. 

It was, all in all, a fairly normal evening. 

The sun had set several hours before, the candlelight all Tilly had to work by as she finished her last solitary task of the evening. 

Women’s voices, raised in separate choruses, laughter, and the sound of community. It was everything that Tilly had dreamed of when she’d first renovated the hotel into a boarding house all those years before. 

“And not a man in sight,” she whispered happily to herself, though a pang came with the words that she didn’t want to acknowledge or admit to. 

No matter how many women she welcomed through those doors to help them get back on their feet, no matter how happy their days were spent…nights like tonight, they still felt lonely. The phantom brush of her husband’s arms around her, his voice in her ear as he recounted all the work he had done through the day and his gentle teasing as to her lying about all day despite her having done no such thing…

She missed it in the quiet of the evening. 

Her smile had slipped into a sad one even she could feel as she rolled the dough back up, putting the two loaves she had made into two separate pans before covering them with a cheesecloth. 

“This is the part you would have taken over, Mr. Sutton,” she muttered under her breath to that phantom memory. 

He had always cleaned up after she was done getting things ready for the morning, going on and on about how he spoiled her while simultaneously refusing to allow her to lift a finger. 

“And the part that I get all weepy over.” 

She dashed at the back of her hand with one flour-covered hand as she cleaned her mess up, sweeping flour off into a dishcloth and depositing it with a sniff into the trash.

Lord, she missed him. She tried not to think about it. She succeeded more often than not these days, all of the work she had filling her days and the women she surrounded her with keeping her occupied and busy. She had a full life. There was no reason for it to have been lonely. 

But nights like tonight it was. 

Just having someone to share the silence with. That was what people didn’t think about. 

Cora could go on and on about romance and all the things she thought married people did. But Tilly remembered the silence. She remembered waking up to her coffee already made and the bleary-eyed smiles as they moved around one another in peace. Having someone to lean on. 

It hadn’t ever been about the grand gestures. 

She didn’t think her husband had ever made not-a-one before he died, courting her, or married to her. But he’d provided her with a lot of small moments. A lot of happy memories. 

“And that’s what I ought to focus on.” She sighed, casting one last look around the immaculate kitchen before grabbing her lantern and heading into the room she used for herself just off the front of the house. 

Every night was the same. A cursory look around the boarding house. A once-over to make sure all the windows were locked and doors secured. The town, while safer than most, was still the Western frontier. And she was still a woman alone out in it these days with other women to protect atop it. 

It was why, the moment she was in her bedroom, she checked to make sure that the shotgun was in the corner of her room and still ready and loaded. 

A just-in-case she hoped she never had to use. 

And, as always, she flinched at the sight of it. 

She wasn’t squeamish around guns. She’d never been anything near. Women out in the parts she’d grown up in were raised just the same as the men were, standing along with their pa with the gun in their hand learning how to defend the home if they needed. But the gun always brought back memories. 

It always made her think of that night. 

The screaming, the angry shouting, the sound of the chamber being emptied, and her husband’s body dropping when he didn’t move fast enough for the robbers who had forced their way in. 

Oh, it really was going to be that kind of night. 

She crossed the floor to the dresser at the end of her room, running her hands through the basin of water before splashing it up over her face and scrubbing off the flour she’d unwittingly deposited there earlier when she’d been working with the bread. 

She always missed her husband. 

Just…nights like these were always worse. And they were always brought on by that guilt that had been gnawing at her off and on all day long. 

All she’d done was watch that man in the general store buying flowers for the girl he was courting. She’d heard him waxing on about what a special evening he was trying to make for her. And it had stirred something in her. 

Something she’d thought was long dead, buried in the coffin with her husband. 

Want. 

She wanted that. A piece of her she’d thought had burned full out wanted to remember what it was like to have someone talk about her the way that man had been, to have someone to talk to at the end of her night. She’d wanted…someone. And it hadn’t been her husband. It hadn’t been anyone. It was the idea she wanted, the concept. 

But the guilt was all the same. But it was also the blink of an eye. 

Two years was like a lifetime out in the West. Living in a rough place like Cordell City in the Oklahoma Territory wasn’t as easy as they had hoped it would be. 

She stared at her reflection in the mirror, checking to ensure she’d rubbed all the flour off, and sighed again. 

Two years. All of the girls told her she was too young. That twenty-six wasn’t any age to go dooming herself to a life of celibacy and widowhood. They went on and on about the romance left for her out there, every new man that rolled through town another potential suitor for them to point out. 

But Tilly felt old. Looking at herself in the mirror even. Old and tired. 

She searched the reflective pools of green in the mirror, looking for anything there that might speak to anything else, but she saw…nothing. 

Well, maybe…

She leaned in, her eyes narrowing slightly to try and focus—

And nearly came out of her skin at the thud, thud, thud that carried through the house as she did.

Knuckles against wood. It was so much louder than Florence’s yelling from before, louder than Nathan scurrying and running about. It was a heavy hand knocking on the front door, and instantly Tilly jumped back from the dresser and looked frantically over to the gun sitting there in the corner. 

She could not answer…

But she could remember a night not so long ago that Cora had stood on the other side of that door, shivering and knocking for all she was worth like a horde of six women instead of what her small frame looked capable of. 

Two years ago, no one had knocked. 

With a grunt, she pushed away, grabbing the gun in one hand and the lantern hanging outside of her door in the other as she marched determinedly to the front door, her chin held high, despite the fact that no one was there to see it. She could hear rushing steps, the sound of bodies throwing on their dressing gowns, and Florence demanding that Nathan stay put carrying down the stairs. 

Positioning herself just so she opened the door a crack, the gun in plain sight as she cracked it just enough to see out but not quite enough for any large foot to fit through. 

The inky blackness of the night sky poured from the other side of the door, so disconcerting that, for a moment, she could see who stood on the other side. All she could see was a large shadow, more than a head taller than her and twice as wide to boot. 

Her fingers tightened on the hilt of the shotgun in her hand, her eyes narrowing as she peered past the light change to see the man who stood there. 

Because it was a man. There was no denying that. 

And Lord help her if he wasn’t one of the most handsome men she had ever seen. 

He was just as tall when her vision cleared, somewhere between six foot and six foot three, with broad shoulders and a waist that tapered as it went into narrow, athletic hips. There was a lean meanness to him, all lithe muscle, and hard plains. 

But it was his eyes that caught her. 

Like twin pools of darkness, they made the night sky around him look gray in comparison, dark lashes framing them that would have made the most made-up woman feel jealous. His skin was sun-kissed, almost like lightly tanned leather, a hardness to his face that had her shifting again; her words caught in her throat as he swept the black cowboy hat off of his head and offered her a warm smile that contradicted near everything about him. 

“Evening, ma’am,” he drawled, his dark curls falling haphazardly down his forehead and over his foreboding brow. “I’m sorry to disturb you so late.” 

Oh, Lord have mercy. 

Tilly shifted, that gun pressing hard into her palm, and the stranger had the decency only to glance at it, the corners of his mouth twitching as he took a half-step back with his free hand raised palm-out as if to reassure her. 

“A lady over yonder at Earl’s recommended I stop by here. She said this here was a boarding house and that I should ask for Tilly. Said to tell her that the Ragin’ Cajun sent me.” The man spoke slowly, his thick accent enveloping each word, but nothing he said put Tilly any more at ease. 

She didn’t know what was more disconcerting—that he was so large or that she was so affected by him. 

“I’m Tilly,” she answered carefully, picking and choosing her words as she opened that door just a mite bit wider. She knew Alice wouldn’t send her anyone who she thought might mean harm, but he hadn’t called her Alice. He’d called her the Ragin’ Cajun, and Tilly reckoned that meant he could have just heard her called as much. Though how he would have known to come here was beyond her. 

“And this here is your boarding house, yeah?” The stranger lowered his hands slowly, the one holding his hat dropping full to his side. 

It didn’t set Tilly any more at ease. 

A man like him could move faster than she could blink; she’d seen it done. 

“It is.” She was being taciturn, and she knew it. To the point, with no extras to her words, her fingers still gripped the gun in them just a little too tightly. 

“Ma’am, I don’t mean to set you any more ill at ease, but I’ve got to tell you that I don’t feel real comfortable with you grippin’ that gun like that. Now, how about I step down onto that bottom step there, I’ll keep my hands where you can see them, and you come out on the porch here and we talk a spell real easy like? I can promise you I’m a man of my word, and I didn’t come here with any harm in mind.” The man shifted, already taking another full step back, and Tilly felt herself tense. 

Carefully she looked out past him, taking her time to ensure that there wasn’t anyone crouched down off of the porch or just around the corner peeking to see her listen to him. She felt a fool, but stepping out like he said made her feel like one, too. 

“I won’t be putting my gun down just yet,” she told him seriously, satisfied enough to open the door, only just enough for her to slip through, one foot still on the threshold as she stopped and stared at him. 

Lord Almighty, but he was a big man. 

“That’s just fine. I don’t reckon I can blame you. My name is Boone, by the way.” He spoke conversationally, as if that shotgun weren’t plain as day still in her hands, his eyes on her face the whole time. 

Tilly didn’t know if that made her more uncomfortable or more at ease. Her heart beat a strange pattern in her ribcage as she took her time to survey him again. 

“And you said the Ragin’ Cajun sent you?” she asked, her head tilting slightly. 

“Yes, ma’am, though she said I might have to drop her given name Alice, even if most folks don’t call her such.” 

Tilly felt something in her chest tighten. Drat it, he did know her name. “What did Alice send you down for?” 

“Well, now, ma’am. She said you might be willing to rent out one of your rooms.” 

Lord. It took all Tilly had not to reach back and steady herself against the door behind her.

Chapter Two

Boone thought that the woman holding the gun was going to stare his head clean off the way she shifted her expression whenever he mentioned renting a room. 

He’d been shocked enough when she’d opened the door, his words deserting him for that short moment as he’d taken her in against the soft glow of the lamplight behind her. She sure wasn’t what he had expected when “the Ragin’ Cajun” had told him there was a widow who rented out quieter rooms earlier that evening. 

He’d expected some matronly sort with a severe expression and a tight gun-metal gray bun. The woman who had opened the door was anything but. She had to be a handful of years younger than him, if not more, and she had a soft, rounded face and the brightest green eyes he thought he had ever seen. She barely reached his chest, all soft womanly curves with that smattering of freckles on her small, slightly upturned nose. 

He felt for a moment like a hat had been pulled over his head. She was just about the prettiest woman he’d ever laid eyes on. 

And then he’d seen the gun. 

“Alice told you I rented rooms?” the woman—Tilly, she’d said—asked skeptically. 

“Yes, ma’am.” Boone tried to smile, watching the way her fingers shifted on the hilt of that shotgun she held. “This is a boarding house, isn’t it?” 

“A boarding house that only takes women and children,” Tilly returned frankly, no extra nothing to her words. She spoke so sparsely Boone was starting to wonder if he shouldn’t be more focused on the barrel of that gun. 

“Only women and children?” Boone repeated despite himself. Alice hadn’t mentioned not one word about none of that. She had said he might have to ask Mrs. Tilly real pretty, that she might not be willing to up and rent to him at this time of night, but that had been about it. 

“That’s right.” Tilly nodded definitively. “There’s a saloon just up the way, though, not too far from Earl’s. A couple doors down, even. They rent rooms there for men.” 

Boone grimaced. He knew that. That had been the stop before Earl’s. 

“Those rooms are full,” he answered with a half-shrug. “Not to mention it’s a bit rowdier of a crowd there than I would have liked.” 

And by a bit, he meant a lot. 

He’d seen more than one body thrown out that front door, and at one point, it had been three that had all been still all tangled up fighting in the short three hours he had been there. 

It was just the sort of place someone might go looking for him. And he didn’t much fancy the thought of that. 

“It’s a saloon,” Tilly said simply, eying him up and down like she wasn’t buying a word he was saying. 

He tried not to take it to heart. 

Instead, he plastered his most charming smile on his face, his expression wry as he nodded. “Yes, ma’am. I understand that. And, surely, I can understand why you might not be too keen on the idea of renting to a lone man out here in this here country. But, like I said just a moment ago. I’m a man of my word. I don’t want to be staying anywhere there’s a lot of drinking and roughhousing. I like my nights quiet and my mornings without all the grumblings of a hangover.” 

Tilly made a soft sound. It might have been amusement. It was hard to read her out in this darkness. Boone had a feeling she wasn’t an easy one to get a read on even in broad daylight. 

“There’s the livery too,” Tilly said after a spell, not sounding at all convinced by his words. “Men’ve been known to bed down with their horses for a night or two there. Might make for a quieter night than the saloon.” 

Boone was sure that it would. But again, easy to spot a man there. 

“Listen, ma’am—” 

But Tilly looked like she was done listening. She was already inching back into that doorway, and Boone just knew she was going to shut it on him in his face. She didn’t look like the type that put up with any sort of nonsense. 

“No, ma!” a little boy hollered, ducking through that small crack and the door, and feinting around Tilly so that he could rush halfway down the steps and stop hard just in front of Boone, his slate gray eyes wide with excitement. “Mister, are you an outlaw?” 

The little boy was like a hurricane. One moment he wasn’t there and there was a quiet certainty that Tilly was about to shut that door in Boone’s face and the next the whole porch was a hive of activity, the door flying open and a harried woman in a dressing gown glaring out of it down at the boy and not Boone. 

“Nathan! I said—” 

“I know what you said,” the little boy rushed out, still staring at Boone in awe and not even bothering to look back at the woman Boone was fairly certain was his mama. “But look how big he is ma! And look at how he’s wearin’ all black. He looks meaner than a rattler. Which is what an outlaw would look like. So what do you say, mister? Are you an outlaw?” 

Boone stared at the boy for a fraction longer than he probably ought to have before he laughed. 

It burst out of him with a suddenness, the eager look in the gray eyes staring up at him spurring it further. 

“Ah, no, sir. Nathan, is it? I’m afraid to disappoint you, son. But I’m not any sort of thing like that. I’m just a normal man looking for a quiet place to stay.” Boone didn’t dare look up at either of the two women framed in the doorway as he spoke, instead keeping his eyes on the boy in front of him.

A boy who looked more than a mite disappointed at Nathan’s words. 

It was almost enough to make Nathan feel guilty. 

“You know what, though? I think I have somethin’ that belongs to you.” Boone paused, pushing his hands in his pockets until he found the small, round piece he’d shoved in there. 

When he pulled it back out, the marble was dwarfed in his palm, glinting in the light from the door and displaying the swirled colors within it. He’d stumbled upon the thing by chance. He almost hadn’t even picked it up, but something had told him to. 

Boone had learned a long time ago to listen to the universe when it spoke to him. God moved in mysterious ways. 

“That’s not mine,” Nathan whispered disappointedly, his interest renewed but shifted to the trinket Boone held. 

“Sure it is,” Boone disagreed easily. “I found it just down the road. I was walking on my way here and the moonlight caught it just right. I picked it up, couldn’t tell you why. But I know now it’s on account of it belonging to you.”

Nathan’s eyes widened in excitement, the barest hint of a smile pulling at the edges of his mouth. “You mean it, mister?” 

“Yes, sir.” Boone held the marble out, depositing it in Nathan’s hand and watching how quickly the little boy’s fingers curled around that marble when he did. 

Guiltily, Nathan looked back over his shoulder toward his mama, and it was only then that Boone allowed his attention to shift back to the two women. 

The one who had run after Nathan in her dressing gown looked touched, her thick braid swinging as she smiled gratefully at Boone. 

“Nathan Travers, what do you say when someone gives you a gift?” she asked sharply. 

Nathan flinched, wrinkling his nose as he turned back to Boone. 

“Thank you, mister. Really and truly. I ’preciates it. I just turned six, you know. So it’s like a late birthday present!” 

Boone smiled, nodding both to Nathan and his mama. 

“Really, thank you so much, Mr.…” The woman trailed off, looking between Tilly and Boone in question. 

“No, mister,” Boone corrected affably. “Just Boone is fine. Boone Pearson.” 

Tilly’s hold on her gun seemed to have relaxed a little as she took Boone in, a look of quiet resignation filling her pretty features. 

“Boone Pearson,” she repeated. “This here is Florence Travers and her son Nathan Travers. And I’m Tilly Sutton. Now that we got all those introductions out of the way, why don’t you go ahead and step inside, and we can finish discussing this there?” 

That wasn’t a yes, Boone realized, his smile slipping only slightly. But it wasn’t a no either. He nodded, watching as the little boy bounded back up the steps only to be caught about the collar by his mama before he could rush past her again. 

Tilly stepped to the side so that Boone could follow the two of them and pass her. And she shut the door behind them quietly as soon as they were inside, too. 

“Through that door, there is the sitting room,” Tilly instructed calmly, grabbing a lantern off of what looked to be the front welcome desk as she passed. 

Boone took a minute to look around him appreciatively. It was a nice little house, warm and inviting despite how simple it was. There wasn’t any brocade, no elaborate decorations. It just…looked like a home. 

Silently, he followed her into the sitting room she had indicated, trying not to laugh as Nathan tried to hurry after them. His mama caught him just before he entered the room, her grip like a vice on his shoulder. 

“I’m really not trying to put anyone out,” Boone said slowly. 

He could have sworn he heard rustling and saw movement from the stairs, but he wasn’t about to crane his neck to see what all that whispering was. Or who it was, rather. 

“You said that,” Tilly reminded him, though not unkindly. 

It didn’t escape his notice any that she still held the gun, even if it was more relaxed when she did. 

“But I would be much obliged if you could rent me a room,” Boone continued, unperturbed by her response. 

He didn’t want to stay at the saloon, even if a room opened up. He had no intention of staying in the livery. 

This here was the type of place he needed. He could keep his head down here, lay low. Not nobody who was anybody would think to come poking about an all-women’s boarding house looking for him. 

“Rent a room here?” Florence asked in obvious surprise. 

“That is what he was saying.” Tilly nodded, shooting the woman a quick look. 

Florence smiled, eying Tilly knowingly. 

“Yes, ma’am. The saloon is full up like I was just telling Mrs. Tilly outside—or, I’m sorry, Mrs. Sutton, is that what you said your last name was? Alice didn’t go giving me any specifics…” He paused, hoping he was half as charming as he was trying to be. 

Based off of Florence’s expression he felt like he might be, but the resolute Mrs. Sutton didn’t bat an eyelash. 

“You might as well dispense with such titles,” Tilly said with a sigh, half leaning against the arm of the couch she stood in front of. “Not many people use them ‘round these parts. Tilly is fine. Mrs. Tilly, if you must.” She seemed to flinch a little around the use of her surname. 

Boone remembered she was a widow and reckoned maybe that had something to do with it. 

“And Alice sent you?” Florence echoed, sounding more and more surprised as the information came. 

“She didn’t say anything about this being a boarding house only for women,” Boone added half-apologetically to Tilly. 

Tilly sighed, running a hand down her face. “I reckon she must not have.” 

“Alice stayed with us for a spell when she first came to Cordell City,” Florence confided brightly. “Before she went and got a job at Earl’s and bought that house out back. She used to rent the room right next to Cora’s.” 

Boone’s eyebrows rose, but he smartly didn’t say anything. 

Tilly looked as if she didn’t know whether she wanted to laugh or cry. 

“I ran into Alice at Earl’s,” Boone shared, reckoning giving them more of a story couldn’t hurt his case to stay any. “She was in the middle of strong-arming some out-of-towner to hand over the poker chips he’d apparently stolen off of the table.” 

And she’d been a sight doing it. She was smaller than Tilly was even and even more slight. Like a little china doll, but she’d sounded meaner than a spooked bull with that thick Cajun accent of hers as she had demanded he lay those chips right back on the table. And looked even meaner when that man had gone to backhand her. 

“Sounds like Alice,” Tilly said with a certain kind of fondness. “But you’re telling me she just up and told you to come here?”

Boone coughed, shifting his weight from one foot to the other with a rueful grin. “Well, not exactly, ma’am. I ended up stepping in where I wasn’t needed, tryin’ to help her out. Which I found out right quick wasn’t necessary. And then she bought me a drink for being ‘so gentlemanly’ as she put it.” 

Florence giggled, clapping her hand over her mouth right after she did. 

“Sounds like Alice,” Tilly said with more resignation that time. 

“Anyhow, she got to asking me about why I was sitting about, and I got to telling her about the saloon and how I was looking for a place a little more quiet…” Of course, there had been a little bit more brawling between his story and the actual events, but Boone was overly aware of the little ears listening eagerly to his story. 

“And she got around to recommending my boarding house,” Tilly finished for him with a slight nod. 

Boone grinned, leaning back and looking at the three of them carefully. 

“And now I’m asking you, knowing what your rules are, if you might be willing to bend them just a mite to let me stay here, Mrs. Tilly.” 

Tilly sighed, looking from him to Florence, and then finally to Nathan. 

She didn’t say anything. 

Not for several long moments. 

And Boone started to wonder if his luck had finally well and truly run out.

---

“The Widow’s Dance with Destiny” is an Amazon Best-Selling novel, check it out here!

In the rugged expanse of a small ranching town, widowed innkeeper Matilda Sutton fights to keep her business afloat among the dusty plains and whispered rumors. Determined and fiercely independent, she opens her doors to young women in need, offering them refuge from a man-dominated world with little hope. But, when a mysterious stranger arrives seeking shelter, Tilly’s resolve is tested in ways she never imagined.

Will this newcomer restore her faith in men and love?

Boone Pearson is a man with a troubled past, haunted by a crime he did not commit. Despite his quiet demeanor and a heart weighed down by the burden of false accusations, he offers his skilled hands and unwavering loyalty to Tilly in exchange for a haven from his past. As they work together to renovate the boarding house and protect its inhabitants, his feelings for Tilly deepen, kindling an undeniable love that he never thought possible.

How long will he remain an asset for them before his past comes running back?

As Tilly and Boone work side by side, they find their hearts drawn together amidst the dusty plains. Yet, Boone’s shadowed past emerges with a corrupt marshal on their trail casting a dark cloud over their blossoming love. Will they overcome the challenges, or will their happily ever after slip through their fingers?

“The Widow’s Dance with Destiny” is a historical western romance novel of approximately 60,000 words. No cheating, no cliffhangers, and a guaranteed happily ever after.

Get your copy from Amazon!