A Lone Wolf’s Serenade (Preview)

Pearl Sullivan lifted her eyes and cast them to the heavens, unable to believe she was ankle-deep in cow waste. She looked down with disgust, pulling her boot out of the pile, and began the tedious task of scraping her shoe in the grass to rid it of further cow dung.     

“Oh, for the love of the Lord,” she murmured. The situation was only made worse when her best friend, Wendy Price, who had come along with her to milk the cow, laughed hysterically behind her. She gave her friend a narrow look. “Don’t act like this has never happened to you, Wendy Price,” she spat out, trying to hold back a smile but inevitably grinning from ear to ear. 

“Oh, it definitely has,” Wendy replied through her laughter, “but I have been waiting for a chance to see it happen to someone else. Now I know I’m not alone.” She continued to laugh while Pearl shook her head and rolled her eyes. She headed for the water pump and splashed the liquid over the bottom of her boot, cleaning the rest of it off.

“All I wanted to do was milk a cow,” she grumbled good-naturedly. 

Pearl lived with her family in the middle of a Chicago neighborhood that hosted many poor families. She and her parents, Lisa and Artie, along with her young sisters, June and May, and their baby brother, Joseph, lived in a tiny shack on a small plot of land that afforded them a small garden, a chicken coop, and a shed where they kept Annie, the cow. 

How she had managed not to see the cow dung from the only animal in the shed and step in it would always be a mystery. 

“Reminds me of someone we used to know,” Wendy remarked when her laughter died down. 

Confused, Pearl looked up at her friend, her brows pulled together. She noticed Wendy looking at the dung remnants on her boot. The realization made her skin tingle. Wendy was talking about the man who had left Pearl the year before when she was eighteen, who had asked her to marry him and spend the rest of her life with him.

She shook her head, a new level of disgust passing through her. “Oh, Wendy, why must you bring him up? I don’t want to think about him.”

“I know you don’t; I’m sorry,” Wendy replied, contrition in her voice. “I couldn’t help it. I saw him the other day.”

Pearl’s heart tightened in her chest. She didn’t want to think about Caleb. She had been certain he was the man she would marry and be with for the rest of her life. They met when she was seventeen and he was twenty years old. For two years, she had supported, encouraged, and even studied his books with him to get ahead in the career as a lawyer he wanted so badly.

But when he graduated with a two-year degree and got a job at twenty-two with a small firm on the upper west side of Chicago, she noticed a change in him. He began to avoid her and make excuses for not seeing her. Then, on an outing with friends, Pearl spotted him with another woman in a restaurant known as a meeting spot for lovers. And they weren’t exactly sitting miles apart. 

He’d broken Pearl’s heart. From then on, she found it hard to trust any men. There didn’t seem to be a lot of offers coming her way after Caleb, though. He was well-known in most parts of Chicago. He was a talkative, social man whose outer façade was much different than the unfaithful, egotistical man he was underneath. 

Pearl was still hurting from the betrayal. He’d promised so much behind closed doors and betrayed her in front of everyone. No matter how many times Wendy and her other friends and family told her it wasn’t her fault, she still felt like she’d done something wrong, something to push him to want to go to other women. 

Eventually, she would be over it. But in the meantime, she had her family to worry about. There wasn’t much money coming in, and she was determined to find a position somewhere to help bring in some money. She might be a woman, but she was strong and willing to work hard. No one would hire her for manual labor, though, unless she worked as a cleaner. She wasn’t against that, but there wasn’t anyone in Chicago wanting to hire her now that Caleb was moving in wealthier circles.

And she didn’t want to be around Caleb’s new circle of friends anyway. She definitely didn’t want to work as a maid for one of them. She was hoping Lucy in the seamstress shop on West Main street would hire her, at least temporarily, during the summer months. She always got extra work during those months, she’d said in the past, because kids wore their clothes out playing outside so much. 

She finished milking Annie and carried the bucket back to the house and into the kitchen, with Wendy close on her heels, chewing on a length of hay she’d taken from a stack near the shed. 

“What about you?” Pearl asked, setting the bucket on the counter by the icebox to be transferred to smaller bottles. “Are you still going to the dance next week with Billy?”

She liked the way Wendy blushed and looked away shyly. It made her feel good to know her best friend found love and had a future planned. 

“Of course,” Wendy responded softly. “He wouldn’t take anyone else, you know.”

“No,” Pearl replied firmly, grinning wide. “I’m sure he wouldn’t. Sit down and relax. You want a biscuit or a cookie or something?”

Wendy giggled. “I’ll take a cookie if you have some. Are they sugar?”

“Yeah, sugar cookies. I didn’t have anything else to make them with. I made snickerdoodles last week, you know.”

“I know. I love the way you bake. You’re so good at it.”

A memory flashed through Pearl’s mind. Caleb laughing, taking a bite from a hot, straight out of the oven cookie and telling her exactly the words Wendy had just said. 

She turned away from her friend to get the cookies from the tin, pushing the memory away, determined not to let that man hurt her anymore.

Chapter One

Pearl stooped over, resting one knee on the floor, trapping her skirt underneath it. She struggled to button the back of Joey’s hat so it would stay on his head. It was makeshift, something she’d come up with herself because her little brother had a smaller head than normal, and his hats never fit. She and her parents quickly grew tired of hearing him complain that his hat kept sliding down over his eyes and he was getting in trouble for losing them because he preferred to carry them and left them everywhere he went.

Pearl pushed the button through the hoop and sighed, glad that task was done. She could hear the worry in her parents’ voices as they talked in the next room. May and June, who were eight and nine respectively, weren’t listening to their parents. They were at the window, looking out anxiously, waiting to leave for school. 

Sometimes Pearl wondered if her sisters were mischievous at school. They were that way at home some, but she’d always thought they were probably well-behaved at school. Mrs. Blackberry had never mentioned any misbehaving. The way they were standing there today, though, so anxious and excited, it made her wonder what they were like when they weren’t at home with family. 

Everyone changed when they weren’t with their family. Sometimes it was to an extreme, such as Caleb, who wore two faces, sometimes more, depending on who he was with. Pearl thought herself to be a one-faced woman. She was still growing, learning, maturing, and hoping others would allow her to do that before they judged her. 

Caleb hadn’t cared two figs about her reputation and did a lot of damage that Pearl was still feeling in the poor class of Chicago. She still saw certain looks from people she didn’t even know, that disdain she always saw on Caleb’s face whenever she had the misfortune of running into him. She longed to get away from that, but how would that ever happen? Praying for relief hadn’t worked so far. She didn’t know what God was waiting for but knew they needed help immediately. 

The seamstress job was the only thing she had to help her family get out of the hole they were living in, barely enough food on the table and recycled clothes for the kids. It was the way life was for her and her family. She would do anything to bring them out of the depths of poverty. 

Her father’s words came through to her as she ushered the little ones out the door. She froze for a moment, watching them run ahead to the buggy, unable to move for a moment. 

Had she heard him right? Had he just said the man who owned the plot next to theirs had sold out to a large company coming into town? What did that mean for their little plot of land? Pearl didn’t even know if her parents owned their small house and the land around it. She’d always assumed they did.

What if they didn’t?

What would happen to the family?

Tears came to her eyes as she stepped out of the house and closed the door behind her. She couldn’t let her siblings see her in a state. They would ask what was wrong, and she’d be forced to lie to them, which she did not want to do.

She cleared her throat and straightened her spine, taking a deep breath. As she let it out, Pearl walked toward the buggy and climbed into the driver’s seat. She twisted at the waist to look at her brother, who was beside her, and her sisters, who were in the back.

“Ready for school?”

“We’ve been ready!” May exclaimed, bouncing excitedly. “Let’s go! We have friends we want to see! Let’s go!”

Pearl laughed, nodding and turning back to face the front of the buggy. She took the reins in hand and clucked at the horses to make them move, a sound her father had taught her that was different from normal commands to move. He wanted to make sure it was harder to steal the buggy. The horses wouldn’t move unless they heard that particular sound.

It was nice that her siblings didn’t seem to care about the hardship of poverty. They were clean and had clothes to wear. They had shoes on their feet and knew that their father worked hard every day to provide for them. Here they were, excited to go to school while she was worried about whether they would have a home soon. 

Her fearful thoughts brought the topic back to her mind, whether she liked it or not. Would they have to sell? If they did, would they get enough money to go somewhere nice? Would they be able to move to a nicer home and live in a better part of Chicago, or maybe even move out of Chicago?

The prospect of starting somewhere brand new made Pearl feel giddy inside. That was exactly what she wanted to do. She longed to get out of Chicago, something she didn’t even realize might happen. 

Now that she had the possibility of that actually happening … it almost sounded too good to be true. 

But would her father sell? He had been given that property by his grandfather, Grandpa Matthew, who passed away just after Pearl was born. 

Remembering this fact settled Pearl’s mind about whether her parents owned the property. She shook her head at her initial questioning. Her fear had made her thoughts irrational. 

But that didn’t change the fact that since it was her father’s property, would he be willing to sell it? They were a poor family. Surely he wouldn’t pass up the chance at prosperity, or at least some financial security, just to hold onto his father’s land.

Would he?

Pearl took her siblings to school and dropped them off, waving with a smile and a happy, “See you after! See you after!”

Her heart pounded fiercely in her chest as she drove on to her seamstress job at Lucy’s place. She wanted to talk to her parents. She wanted to be involved in what was happening, help them in any way she could, and be there for them. 

She would talk to them after work. She could only hope they hadn’t made their own decision yet. And if they had, she hoped it was the right one.

What was the right thing to do, though? Pearl didn’t have all the facts yet. She would have to wait. Patience was such a hard skill to learn. She worked on it every day. 

She pulled the buggy up beside the building in the alley on the left. It was going to be a long day.

Chapter Two

One last glance in the room let Pearl know the girls were already asleep. Joey went to sleep early in the evening, around seven, and slept until seven the next day. He’d done that since he was three, and now he was six. 

She’d hurt one of her fingers at work, sliding a needle into it while fixing the trousers of one of her neighbors. It had bled profusely, but she managed to keep any of the red stuff from getting on the man’s clothes. That would have cost her money she didn’t have. 

It was one of the many accidents she’d had since she’d started at Lucy’s Seamstress Shop. She’d been worried she would be let go for the last two weeks. Today’s accident only made that threat linger over her head even closer. The pendulum was about to drop. If she lost her job at the shop, she would have to find alternative means to bring money to her family. 

Pearl stopped at the kitchen door. It was eavesdropping, she knew. But she found out most of her information that way. The last two months had been so hard, and what she was hearing from her parents’ discussion that evening was just a continuation of what they’d been talking about that morning. 

Only now, she heard something that bothered her even more. 

“I don’t know what we’re supposed to do now, Lisa,” her father mumbled, pain in his voice. Pearl’s heart ached for her father. He worked so hard. He tried so hard. “I can’t find something else. Ray knows that.”

“But how can they let you go from the mill when they know it’s the only thing going around here that will support a family our size? It’s barely supporting us as it is, and that’s with poor Pearl working her little fingers to the bone, too. I should do something. I should find some work of some kind. You know I’ll do anything I can, Artie.”

“You have to stay available for our children, Lees, but thank you for offering. You keep doing that, and I keep turning you down.”

“I’m going to keep offering, Artie. There must be something I can do.”

Pearl didn’t want to stay there any longer and wonder if she’d heard right. She pushed the door open and stared at her parents, who sat next to each other on the couch opposite the entrance she’d just come through. 

“Mama,” she said, her voice wobbly. “Papa. What’s happening? This morning I heard you say our neighbors are selling, and we might have to sell or be overrun. And now, did I hear you say you lost your position at the mill? Is that what you said, Papa?”

Her father shook his head, dropping his eyes to the floor. Her mother put her arm around his shoulders and drew him to her. She looked up at Pearl, answering for her husband. “You didn’t hear him wrong, honey. But you shouldn’t be worrying about this. It’s bad enough we take your money for–”

“No, Mama, you don’t take my money,” Pearl said, hurrying to them and kneeling so she could put one hand on each of their bunched knees. She switched her gaze from one to the other, feeling an overwhelming sense of love for them. “I give you that money to help with this family. I don’t want to see any of us starving, including the two of you. I’ll think of something more I can do, I promise! And I’ll scout around to see if I hear of any other jobs Papa can do. We’ll make it; I just know it.”

“I feel as if God has just abandoned our family,” her father moaned, pressing the palms of his hands against his red eyes. “After so many years at the mill and during a time of drought when Ray knows our small crops didn’t produce many goods, how could he just let me go this way?”

“Oh, Papa, I’m so sorry. Is there any chance this can be reversed, and you won’t lose it? Can you work out any kind of severance?” She’d heard that word from Lucy when the woman was talking about letting some of her warehouse people go. Pearl hadn’t even known she owned a warehouse where clothing was made. She didn’t talk much about it, but she did mention the place now and then. Enough to make Pearl curious about where the facility was. And maybe if they were hiring men in need of work.

“I don’t think so. I will be working till the end of the week. Then me and several other men are being told not to come back.”

“How do you know about it?” Pearl asked. “Did they warn you ahead of time?”

That didn’t seem like Ray or the other men at the mill to Pearl. She’d never been impressed with how they treated their workers. It was as if the men were prisoners or slaves with slave masters. Pearl had long ago decided if she ever married, she wouldn’t marry a man who liked to give orders. 

The only thing Pearl wanted in life was for her family to prosper and be happy. She wanted her sisters and brother to be successful. She wanted them to know they were loved from the very time they were born, despite the hardships their parents faced. 

Sometimes she thought about how happy she’d been when Caleb became successful and started to make good money. At first, she was sure he’d help her family with some of it, but it didn’t take long to realize that was not the case and never would be. She’d realized his greed long before she understood what a cad he was where females were concerned. 

“I don’t know what we’ll do, Pearl honey,” her father said, reaching out to wrap one large hand around her neck. He gave her a loving look. “But I know you will be here to help us. I truly believe God sent you first and so much earlier than the others because He knew we would need you. I don’t know what we’d do without you.”

Pearl sighed, smiling back at him. “I love you both so very much,” she said gently. “I will always be here for you. I’ll do anything to ensure our family is happy and secure. I promise you. I won’t ever abandon you.”

Her mother leaned down to kiss her cheek and hugged her so their cheeks pressed together. Pearl giggled, smelling lavender in her mother’s hair. 

“You’re the best daughter we could have ever asked for,” her mother said, giggling back as she spoke.

Pearl was more determined than ever from that moment on. She didn’t tell them about her worries at work. She would just have to do better and not have any more accidents. She’d slowed down her work some, but that made her production go down, and Lucy wasn’t happy about that either. 

Pearl hoped to find a happy medium somewhere in there. All she needed to do was keep working and maybe add a few more hours onto her normal day, a few more pieces she completed, so her pay would be higher. 

“I’ll do whatever I can.” She whispered the promise but knew they had heard her. “I truly, truly will.”

Chapter Three

Johnny Hayes pushed his long fingers through his dark brown hair, knowing it would instantly flop back to where it had been. He stared down at the papers on the desk without really seeing them. His mind was elsewhere and had been for days. 

His beloved wife, Katie, had died three years ago, leaving him with a son, Billy, who was now six and becoming a rambunctious little man. Johnny tried to be patient with him but wasn’t very good at it. He constantly felt he wasn’t good enough to raise the boy and had relied on the women in Hot Springs, Texas, where he lived, to help him with Billy. 

Now his nanny, Dawn, was leaving. She had come to help out two years ago and had done a tremendous job getting Billy through the rough stages of toddlerhood. She’d trained him to go potty, cooked good meals for him, and ensured he got to bed at a decent time. 

Billy had been in school one year now, and she’d taken care of him every morning and picked him up after to make sure he got home okay. 

Johnny didn’t know what he was going to do without her. He felt terrible, like a horrible parent, and it was only exacerbated by that fact. He was the father. He should know how to care for his son without the help of a woman, shouldn’t he? Especially one that wasn’t the child’s mother, to begin with. 

He sat back in his chair and stared out the window, absentmindedly flipping his pen around his fingers. He had one month to prepare for her departure. She’d told him a long time ago it would happen, and he’d ignored it, hoping it wouldn’t. 

Therefore, the pressure he was feeling was his own to bear. He’d done it to himself. How could he learn to take care of a six-year-old in one month?

Johnny scowled, pushing his chair back and standing to go to the window and brood. Just as he sighed heavily, there was a knock on the door behind him. 

He twisted at the waist and looked at the closed door, wondering who it could possibly be. A second before it opened, he surmised it was Ben O’Malley, his best friend, and a fellow rancher. He had the neighboring Gunner Trail Ranch, which spanned forty acres. Ben had a tribe of Indians living on part of his land. The community took up at least nine acres. There had never been much trouble coming from them. Ben was married to one of the daughters of a tribe member. They were very happy together, but that didn’t matter to some of the men in town, who considered him to be an outsider as well because of his heritage.

There were some in Hot Springs who didn’t appreciate the Indians living so close, however. They carried prejudices Johnny didn’t understand and Ben constantly fought against. 

“Come in,” he called out. 

The door opened, and Ben stepped in, his red hair long, hanging from the bottom of his hat and spread out over his shoulders. He needed a haircut in Johnny’s opinion, but the Irishman never cared for other people’s opinions much, so Johnny kept that to himself. 

“Ben,” he said with a nod. “Come to see if I’ve signed those papers yet? I’m not gonna sign them.”

Ben grinned. “I wasn’t coming to see if you’d signed them,” he said with gaiety in his voice. “I’m not worried about that. You ain’t gonna sign off with Atticus and those others. I trust that.”

Johnny pretended to be surprised to hear that. He lifted his eyebrows and gave Ben a shocked expression. “You didn’t come for the papers? I thought you were selling out along with the rest of the men in town?”

Ben chuckled, shaking his head as he crossed the room to sit in one of the chairs in front of Johnny’s desk. He stretched his long legs out in front of him casually so that one of his feet tapped against the side of the desk. 

“Nah. And I’ll have you know it isn’t ‘the rest’ of the men in town. There are quite a few on our side.”

“I wish the mayor was,” Johnny murmured. He’d been disappointed and frustrated by the fact that Mayor Cartwright was greedier than he’d thought. Or maybe it wasn’t greed spurring his actions. Maybe it was the prejudice he held against the Indians living on Ben’s land.

It wasn’t his fight, but Johnny was fully prepared to stand with his best friend to make sure nothing bad happened to those people. They’d done no harm to anyone and were simply existing. The mayor and his ilk didn’t even consider them people. They were savages, and he wouldn’t hear it any different. Most men he spent his time with were of the same mind.

“We have enough men on our side to take care of that next election time.”

“I don’t know about that.” Johnny returned to his seat and lowered himself slowly. “They’ve had several times they could have not voted for him but did. He’s always managed to bribe people into doing what he wants. Money is his powerful weapon.”

“I agree. It takes a strong will to decide to work over selling out. And we’ve had to work extra hard this year, what with the drought and all. Some of these farms and ranches aren’t big enough to sustain the kind of loss we had in the last few years.”

Johnny snorted, picturing some of his neighbors in his mind. “They aren’t big enough to last through one year of what we’ve had. I understand that’s why they’re selling. But they don’t get that it’s just a big scheme to get rid of the Indian tribe on your land.”

“The mayor thinks buying up all the property around me will prompt me to do the same. They keep offering staggering amounts of money that I have to keep turning down. Kia ain’t too happy about it.”

Johnny frowned at his friend. “She must know you have to keep that land … all of it … or harm will come to her people. Doesn’t she get that?”

“I don’t think she believes it.” 

Johnny was taken aback by the statement. He pulled his eyebrows together and tilted his head to the side. “She doesn’t believe it? What do you mean? She doesn’t believe those men will do whatever they can to drive her people away?”

“I sincerely don’t think she does. And what are you going to do about Dawn? Have you given any thought to what I mentioned?”

Johnny pressed his lips together. “It’s all I’ve been thinking about all morning. I reckon it’s the only option I have left. I’ll have to bring someone from the east.”

“A new nanny?”

Johnny felt a twitch in his chest when he replied, “Nah. A new wife.”

Chapter Four

It took another month, but the thing Pearl dreaded most eventually came about. She was just not coordinated enough to do seamstress work without pricking her fingers, missing loops, and mismatching buttons. That day was the last time she would get blood on a customer’s clothes, Lucy vowed, and asked her to leave her employ as politely as she could. 

Pearl’s heart had broken at that moment – really the moment the needle went into her finger, and she cried out in pain. The blood didn’t make her cringe as much as she had just cost herself the only job she could find in upper west Chicago. There was nothing left for her. Her family would starve without her income.

Crying tears of desperation, she ran to the deli where Wendy would be, cleaning up the pans in the back. Wendy’s family owned the little café, but there were so few customers, they were barely making it by themselves. Wendy had told her if they could afford it, they would have hired her on to work there. 

Maybe they’d had a good month, Pearl told herself. Maybe they would be able to give her something – anything. She had to make money for her siblings. She couldn’t let them starve. 

Wendy saw her coming. Pearl could tell her friend knew something was wrong before she got to her. Wendy had her hands elbow-deep in soapy water and pulled them out, grabbing a towel and hurrying to meet Pearl at the back door, which was wide open. There were three cracked, white stone steps in front of the door for Pearl to go up, but Wendy hopped down to the ground and gathered Pearl in her arms as soon as they met. 

“Oh no. It’s happened. You lost the job, didn’t you? Oh, Pearl, honey, I’m so sorry. I’m so sorry. But never fear! I think I have found a solution for you and your family!”

Confusion and surprise mixed in Pearl as she pulled back to give her friend a curious look. 

“What do you mean?” she asked, sucking in her breath, a moment of hope stilling her tears. 

Wendy’s smile reassured her. Her friend only had her best interests at heart, and this was something Pearl knew for a fact. 

“Come here. I found something today and have been wanting to show you. In fact, I was going to come by your house and show you this evening. You and your parents.”

Pearl was very curious by that time. Her tears had stopped, and excitement had taken the place of sorrow and fear. She followed Wendy out of the back room where the big sinks, mops, brooms, buckets, and other cleaning equipment were kept. They went through the café lobby. 

Pearl was glad to see quite a few customers enjoying Wendy’s family recipes. They’d even added bottles of Coca-Cola to the menu, which was very new and different. Pearl didn’t think the bubbly drink was going to catch on. Then again, she hadn’t tried it yet. She was a little afraid to do so. She couldn’t imagine what those bubbles did inside her body. It sounded scary to her.

She didn’t make eye contact with anyone there, though. She was always afraid she would see someone she knew from when she was with Caleb. That was too painful to bear. She would be glad when her shame and humiliation went away. It surely wouldn’t if she never got away from Chicago, though. As big as the city seemed to her, she was always afraid to run across Caleb or one of his friends. 

Wendy went to her large handbag and opened it, unbuckling the toggle at the top. She reached in and pulled out a magazine. Pearl stared at it as Wendy opened and thumbed through it.

Her eyes lit up, and she folded the magazine so it was open, handing it to her with a triumphant look. 

“I took the liberty of circling several of these gentlemen for you. Men, I think, would be a good fit for you. Look at this one! He has a six-year-old son!”

Pearl took the magazine curiously, looking down at it with interest. She lifted her eyebrows. “A mail order bridal service? You think I should travel and marry one of these men?” 

Pearl’s first reaction was one of horror. Leave her family behind to marry a stranger far away? The thought was unbelievable, unconscionable, irrational. Even ridiculous if she were to venture that far. 

She shook her head, turning the magazine around to hand it back.

“Don’t be silly,” she stated. “I can’t leave Chicago on some wild adventure with some strange man in …” She turned the magazine back just long enough to look at the advertisement. “Texas.”

“Yes, you can.” Wendy had lost her smile. She pushed the magazine away from her, back toward Pearl. “You need to give this a chance, honey. I’m not telling you this is a good idea because I want you to leave Chicago. I’m telling you because I know some other ladies who’ve successfully done this, and in the end, they helped their family.”

Pearl frowned and snorted, shaking her head. “How can leaving my family behind be a good thing for them? One less mouth to feed? You know that’s not how Mama and Papa will take this. They will think I’m abandoning them.”

Wendy tilted her head to the side. “Now you know your parents would never think that of you. They would know you were doing something to help the family. Look. Just look at some of them, Pearl. This one …” She approached and stood beside Pearl, looking down at the magazine with her. “See? He’s perfect. He says he’s a quiet man with a good career, a working ranch, a lot of money, and a son that needs to be cared for. What else could you want?”

“That doesn’t tell me much about him, though, Wendy,” Pearl countered. “It only tells me he’s quiet and can afford to feed me. What does that have to do with me leaving my family behind?”

“If he has a son, he will be sympathetic toward children,” Wendy answered logically. “He’s not advertising for a nanny; he’s advertising for a wife. That means he wants a companion for his son. He’s doing it so his son has a mother. He’ll have compassion for your parents and your little brother. And probably your sisters, too. He might even offer to let them all move out to his mansion in Texas.”

Pearl narrowed her eyes at her friend. “It doesn’t say he lives in a mansion,” she pointed out humorously.

Wendy smiled, knowing she was getting through to Pearl. It was starting to sound like a good idea, after all. But how would she know if he would help her family? She wouldn’t know that until she actually got there and explored what kind of man he was.

“If I was to do this,” she said contemplatively, “I’d have to make sure my family was cared for at least for a month or two, so I could find out what kind of man he is.”

Wendy nodded. “I agree.”

“But what if he turns out to be a cold-hearted, mean man who won’t help them? I can’t just come back. I’d probably develop feelings for his son and not want to abandon the boy with a cold, distant, mean father.” She recoiled at the thought, scrunching up her face. 

Wendy laughed. “You’ve already got him portrayed as a monster, and you’re ready to take his son from him!” 

Pearl had to laugh with her friend. “I’m terrible, aren’t I?”

“You are. But I’ll bet he isn’t like that. And you’re friendly, charming, smart, and beautiful. He won’t be cold-hearted around you for long. I’ll even bet he’s the kind of man who would send your family money without telling you!”

“Now that would really be something,” Pearl said.

“So you are considering it?” Wendy sounded more excited than Pearl about the prospect.

She had to laugh, shaking her head. “I am. I do think I am. Thanks for the idea, Wendy. You’re a good friend.”

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“A Lone Wolf’s Serenade” is an Amazon Best-Selling novel, check it out here!

Pearl Sullivan’s devotion to her family fuels her every decision, but when her father loses his job, she faces a difficult choice. She needs to marry a wealthy stranger in order to secure her family’s future. However, the winds of change carry her toward the enigmatic Johnny, and a daring proposition that could alter the course of her life presents itself…

As their worlds collide, can Pearl open her heart to a complete stranger?

Johnny Hayes, a rancher with a rugged exterior, has weathered the tempests of grief. Left to raise his young son alone, he yearns for a beacon of light in his life. At the prospect of a potential companion, a shimmer of hope dances before him… Pearl’s letter with words of empathy and a shared understanding of parental responsibilities, ignites a spark of anticipation. Could this stranger from afar save his wounded heart?

Perhaps she’ll be the one to rekindle the fire of his spirit that had long been extinguished…

As Pearl and Johnny’s connection deepens, their newfound happiness is suddenly threatened… Can love truly conquer the trials that fate has woven into their path? While the fragile bond they’ve nurtured is facing new trouble, will Pearl’s heart be torn between loyalty to her family and the irresistible pull of love?

“A Lone Wolf’s Serenade” is a historical western romance novel of approximately 70,000 words. No cheating, no cliffhangers, and a guaranteed happily ever after.

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