Loved Her Loose

Everybody in Bishop Creek knew Rueben Bailey had his whole life figured out.

He'd run his daddy's farm. Marry a good girl. Raise his kids on that land and lie down in its soil someday, same as the three generations of Baileys before him. And he was happy with that.

Right up until he looked at the girl who'd been trailing his little sister home since they were kids, and found out what she was running from every time she turned up at his barn after dark.

Blanchard Collins was young when she learned how to survive a house that was never safe. The only place she could breathe was the Bailey farm. And the only person who ever made her feel worth protecting was a boy two years too old for her, with a plan that didn't have room for a girl like her.

They were never supposed to happen.

She was too young. He was taken. Her best friend was his sister.

But they did and now they've got a plan of their own. An envelope, a silver ring and a map to a city hundreds of miles away, where her daddy can't reach her and he can finally find out who he is past the fence line he was born inside.