Daniel&39s Bride [Paperback]

Bestselling author Linda Lael Miller’s beloved novel of the American West shimmers with the unbridled passion of two adventurous hearts brought together first by dire convenience and second by blooming attraction.

When a woman has to choose between death and marriage to a total stranger, she must be in a dire predicament...

And for Jolie McKibben, about to pay by hanging for a terrible crime she didn’t commit, salvation by marriage couldn’t come a moment too soon. Housekeeping for Daniel Beckham, a widower who invoked the town’s wedding ordinance to rescue Jolie from the gallows, is better than the alternative...but understanding the silent stranger who is now her husband might just about kill her.

Daniel doesn’t believe in Jolie’s innocence. And despite his willingness to marry the pretty, defiant “outlaw” on the spot, the prosperous farmer had little to say to her after “I do.” But for Jolie, their arrangement of convenience soon deepens into a rich and vibrant attraction that sets her trembling with desire in Daniel’s presence. Somehow, she would win his love, body and soul. Unless the desperados on her trail shatter the fragile, trusting bond of husband and wife...Chapter One

Prosperity, Washington Territory

August 2, 1877

The noose lay heavy around Jolie McKibben's neck, smelling of sweat and horseflesh and hemp. Frantic protests of innocence had long since rendered her throat too raw to speak, and she felt nothing except a certain defiant numbness as she stared back at those who had gathered to see her hanged. Her blue-green eyes were dry and hot, but a tiny stream of perspiration trickled between her breasts, like a tear gone astray.

She stood in the bed of Hobb Jackson's hay wagon, her fair hair sticking to her scalp under the dusty bowler hat she wore, her wrists bound tightly behind her back, her chin at the most obstinatelS8