1883

It wasn't that long ago Theresa Metcalf shot her brother dead and put him in the ground so the evil in him wouldn't touch another soul.

She'd loved Rusty as a boy, but her brother had had too much of his father, Frank Metcalf, in him. Rusty had become an outlaw—perhaps one too many beatings could do that to a young child. She'd been more fortunate than the brother who'd become a desperado; her father's wrath hadn't tainted her in quite the same way.

Rusty is dead by your hands, Theresa, she thought solemnly, the memory of that fateful night never far from her mind. But Theresa Metcalf no longer existed, she reminded herself. She'd left Turner Hill in California one month after the shooting and the awful scandal that followed. She'd changed her name and her whole identity, leaving behind her old life as notorious Rusty Metcalf's reclusive sister.

Her dear childhood friend Laura Larson had coaxed her to come to Hayworth, Texas, to replace her position as caregiver to ailing cattle baron Hoyt Hayworth. Laura, her only true friend in the world, was with child and could no longer tend to his needs. Laura had vouched for her with Hoyt Hayworth, gaining her the employment. And she began living a lie—as Tess Morgan, a family friend of Laura's from Oklahoma.

Three months into her care for Hoyt, he'd sent for a preacher to marry them. That was just like Hoyt— pale in color, weak of heart, but his mind as sharp as a bull's horn. He'd given her little choice in the matter, relying on her compassion to grant an ill man's final wish.

She'd buried her husband on their third-month anniversary. Now she faced the enormity of her role here in Hayworth with trepidation at best, becoming