*** Ansel Adams, or Ance as those he knows tend to call him, is a bad man, though, he didn't consider that to be his fault. His father had been a bad man, his grandfather had been a bad man-hell, as far as Ance knew he came from a long line of men were just a bit rotten down at their core. Everyone knewAnce was a man who would never change, never give up his lifestyle, never settle down....Until Penelope Reynolds came sobbing into his life. Ance hadn't given much thought to offering a rich man protection as he took a load of stolen goods to market until he realized that the banging sound coming from the crate was a tiny blond with pigtails, freckles and a bad leg. Suddenly he's struck with a choice. Save the girl and return her to her family or simply let life do what life does and chalk it up to bad luck for little Penelope--in the past the latter choice would have been easy, but not now. *** Audrey Reynolds has never been so afraid in her life. Her daughter has been stolen. Her daughter is all she has left in the world since the murder of her husband five years earlier. Desperate to find Penelope, Audrey enlists the help of U.S. Marshall Rodger York who also happens to be the man who's been trying to marry her since the day after her husband had been placed under the ground. They embark on a journey to find Penelope and Rodger has vowed to kill whoever took the girl away. But things go wrong and Audrey learns that the very man she went to for help might be the man responsible for every bad thing that's happened in the last five years...... Will Audrey find a way to survive and, more importantly, will she ever see her daughter alive again?
About the Author: Nicole Sturgill often feels as if she were born in the wrong century. There isn't much about modern day living that appeals to her. She prefers growing her own fruits and vegetables, hunting her own meat, hand-washing her dishes and letting her clothes dry on the line. Living as a housewife in the middle-of-nowhere Kentucky with her loving husband and three children, Nicole's passion is her writing. She writes to escape the day-to-day. She writes to bring the past to life. She writes to maintain her sanity. She writes most about that time period she feels she's lived a thousand lives in. Without the support of her husband, Nicole never would have had enough bravery to share her writing with the world. He pushed her to let others read what she worked so hard on. He never says a negative word when her writing consumes every moment of her day and he comes home to a messy house, rowdy children and a wife buried beneath stacks of paper, dried up ink pens and a glowing laptop. With her husband's support and her love of her passion, there will never come a day when Nicole isn't writing.