Chance of a Lifetime by Vivian Vaughan is the 1st in her Tremaynes of Apache Wells series of f/m historical western romances set in 19th century Texas, this installment starring a plucky young woman who wants to do more with her life than her conventional mother will allow, and a distrustful young man who was raised by the Apache (
Wikipedia) after the unsolved murder of his parents and considers himself outcast from both white and native society, and together,
they fight crime! they find in each other kindred spirits, free courtesy of publisher Diversion Books, who are e-printing it from its 1999 Kensington Zebra Splendor paperback.
Currently free @
Amazon (available to Canadians & in the
UK) &
iTunes (available to Canadians and most regions worldwide, as Diversion freebies often are).
If you happen to like this one and wish to read more, Diversion Books titles are couponable @
Kobo and often very reasonably low-priced to begin with, and they've plenty of Vaughan's other reprint titles already available.
Description
Fort Davis, Department of Texas, 1868. Sabrina Bolton lives with an omnipresent feeling of guilt: her twin sister’s death when the girls were five left their mother in a perpetual state of melancholy. Now, fourteen years later, everything Sabrina does brings the admonishment “Proper young ladies don’t...”
Sabrina wants more. She wants to treat people at the post hospital; she wants to work at her father’s off-base mercantile with her friend, Rosa Ramírez; and she wants romance. Then her mother makes the ultimate choice—a suitor for Sabrina. Sabrina cannot summon one romantic feeing for Captain Lon Jasper. Indeed, he criticizes her behavior as much as her mother does.
Then the man called Tremayne rides onto the base and straight into Sabrina’s heart. Tremayne was reared by Apaches after his parents were murdered by unknown assailants, and he considers himself an outcast in both worlds. To him, all white-eyes women are witless. As if to prove the point, he almost runs down a fiery-haired woman who has wandered into the street and tripped on her skirts. He helps her stand, and from that moment they find no peace unless they are together. As their love grows, Tremayne knows he must leave Sabrina. Together she would be an outcast, too.