
Part of Series
Madeline Denham realizes something doesn’t add up. More than with her siblings, her parents are very careful about whom they allow to socialize with her. As often as she is complimented on her appearance, there are those who study her as if they know something she doesn’t. She suspects her family is hiding something. Approaching her twenty-second birthday, she is painfully aware she has never been courted and never been kissed. After graduating from normal college, she returns home to Knights Ferry while she seeks a teaching position. Much to her dismay, during a community social, a well-dressed man she's never met before asks her to dance and then forces a kiss upon her. Rather than being flattered, she feels ruined. After inheriting his mother’s Angel’s Creek property in Calaveras County, James Hennessy finds growing fruit trees and a small table grape vineyard competes with his love of practicing law. He spends much of his time representing farmers in a cause important to his own interests—stopping the hydraulic mining that is clogging the Valley’s rivers and streams that provide the water the farmers need to irrigate their crops. At a dance, he plans to meet with a delightful woman he met previously on the train where he learned she is seeking a teaching position. When he realizes she is the object of unwanted attention, he steps forward to rescue her. Madeline hires James to uncover the secrets that plague her. However, will what they learn drive him away? Fortunately, she has two young twin brothers, who, like their oldest brother, want to become cowboys. For now, they’ll settle for corralling a good husband for their big sister, even if they have to rope and hogtie Madeline and James to get them to the altar.
Author

Zina Abbott is the pen name used by Robyn Echols for her historical novels. Her novel, Family Secrets, was published by Fire Star Press in October 2014 and her novelette, A Christmas Promise, was published by Prairie Rose Publications in November 2014. The first two novellas in the Eastern Sierra Brides 1884 series, Big Meadows Valentine and A Resurrected Heart, are now available. The author currently lives with her husband in California near the “Gateway to Yosemite.” She enjoys family history and any kind of history. When she is not piecing together novel plots, she pieces together quilt blocks.