Home for the Heart — Sarah J. McNeal

Lucy Thoroughgood has gone and done it now -- fallen in love with Hank Wilding, a man she's known all her life. He's content with friendship, but Lucy's heart has flown the coop and she knows she's in love with the determined bachelor. When she visits him with a proposition -- to let the orphans she cares for learn to ride his horses during the summer -- he surprises her with one of his own. She must accompany him to the dancing lessons he's signed up for. Secretly pleased, she hopes that perhaps this arrangement might lead to more than friendship. But Hank's loved hard and lost, with his engagement to one of the popular town girls going south two years earlier. He's sworn to never lose his heart to another -- including Miss Lucy Thoroughgood. A teenage orphan, Chayton, could be the key to thawing Hank's heart -- but danger follows the embittered boy. Will Hank be able to give Chayton the home he yearns for -- or will the boy's past bring only sorrow to those he cares for? When a Lakota premonition becomes reality, Lucy's life hangs in the balance. Will Hank have the chance to let Lucy know how wrong he was?