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who didn’t approve of Opal’s work with the orphanage. If her father sided with Aunt Jennie, there was no chance he’d help her find funding for New Hope.
    It was a chance she couldn’t take. So she’d left on her own.
    She had no other choice.

     
    Charlie cursed Opal’s independence even as he admired her for taking matters into her own hands.
    He’d never imagined she would take off on her own in the middle of the night. Didn’t know she had that much gumption.
    Since she’d headed in the wrong direction, he figured he could catch up to her before lunch.
    It was the three extra sets of hoofprints that had him worried.
    He and the ranch hands that could be spared from their daily duties, five in all, had split off in separate directions when they’d come upon the additional tracks. Hoping they could surround or ambush the other riders before anything happened to the boss’s daughter.
    All Charlie could think about were the thugs that had chased them outside of Sheridan and bullets flying toward Opal. He’d been a disappointment to his former fiancé, Edith, all those years ago, but this time he couldn’t afford to fail. It might mean Opal’s life.
    Why hadn’t he tried harder to get Frank and Opal to reconcile their differences? He should’ve insisted Frank listen to his daughter even though the older man had been ill. If he had, she might not have run away. But his boss was stubborn and it seemed his daughter had inherited that same characteristic.
    Now the sun was getting awful close to setting behind the Big Horns, and once it was gone, so was his hope of tracking his boss’s wayward daughter. No light meant he couldn’t see her tracks. He only hoped she planned to bed down instead of continuing on. There were too many things that could happen to a rider in the night. If her horse stumbled, or shied…
    And then he topped a rise and caught sight of a riderless Misty standing near a grove of trees and all rational thought fled his mind. He kicked his horse into a gallop and only saw the landscape flying by in fractured pieces.
    When he reached Misty, he threw himself off the animal, shouting, “Opal!”
    Where was she?
    Desperation, fear clawed at his throat as he imagined her body lying broken on the ground somewhere—
    And then she appeared out of the trees, hair wind-tousled and falling out of a simple braid, frowning fiercely at him.
    “Go away, Charlie.”
    The stubborn tilt of her chin and her flashing eyes sent relief spiraling through him. He strode over to her and took her upper arms in his shaking hands.
    She was alive. Unhurt. He hadn’t failed to find her.
    “What’s the matter?” Opal demanded, then seemed to change her mind. “Nevermind. I want you to get back on your horse and go back and tell my father you didn’t find me.”
    He ignored her finger pointed toward Turk. “That’s not going to happen.”
    That pert chin hiked up. “I’m not going back, so unless you plan to escort me to Sheridan, you’re wasting your time. I must get back to the children and I have a wedding to plan.”
    Her sassy attitude quickly overpowered his relief and he scowled. “Do you even know where you’re going? Because Sheridan is that direction.” He jerked his thumb over his shoulder. “You’ve backtracked some and it’s probably a two-day ride from here.”
    He thought he saw her lower lip tremble, but she simply crossed her arms and glared at him.
    “And I don’t know if you thought about this before you ran off, but horse thievin’ is a punishable crime out here.”
    “I didn’t steal Misty,” she said quickly, hands gesturing wildly as she went on. “I planned to have her boarded in Sheridan until you or my father could come get her.” Her lips pressed into a thin line. “I have to get back to Omaha.”
    Before he could follow up on her mention of a wedding—why hadn’t he heard about her suitor before this?—the sound of a pistol hammer being cocked froze him in