Trail of Dreams (Hot on the Trail Book 4) Read online

  TRAIL OF DREAMS

  Copyright ©2015 by Merry Farmer

  Amazon Edition

  This ebook is licensed for your personal enjoyment only. This ebook may not be re-sold or given away to other people. If you would like to share this book with another person, please purchase an additional copy for each recipient. If you’re reading this book and did not purchase it, or it was not purchased for your use only, then please return to Amazon.com and purchase your own copy. Thank you for respecting the hard work of this author.

  This book is a work of fiction. Names, characters, places, and incidents are products of the author’s imagination or are used fictitiously. Any resemblance to actual events or locales or persons, living or dead, is entirely coincidental.

  Cover design by Erin Dameron-Hill (the miracle-worker)

  ASIN: B00SOX6Z5O

  ISBN: 9781311876003

  Paperback:

  ISBN-13: 978-1507708606

  ISBN-10: 1507708602

  Trail of Dreams

  By Merry Farmer

  For Megan

  who taught me so much about the beauty of diversity

  Table of Contents

  Chapter One

  Chapter Two

  Chapter Three

  Chapter Four

  Chapter Five

  Chapter Six

  Chapter Seven

  Chapter Eight

  Chapter Nine

  Chapter Ten

  Chapter Eleven

  Chapter Twelve

  Chapter Thirteen

  Chapter Fourteen

  Chapter Fifteen

  Chapter Sixteen

  Chapter Seventeen

  Chapter Eighteen

  Chapter Nineteen

  Epilogue

  Author’s Note

  Chapter One

  Nebraska Territory, 1863

  As far as Katie Boyle was concerned, the Oregon Trail was a slice of heaven on Earth.

  “I love the sky,” she commented in her thickest Irish brogue to her new friend, Emma Sutton. The two of them walked together, arm in arm, along the hard-packed dirt of the trail. Dozens of wagons rolled along the worn path beside them, the sound of their wheels and the clopping of the oxen that pulled them music to Katie’s ears. “I love the grass too. It’s the tallest I’ve ever seen and it rolls like the waves of the ocean.”

  “Mmm hmm,” Emma replied, eyes downcast, cheeks pink in spite of the hat that shielded her face from the sun.

  “It’s a fair sight better than the actual ocean,” Katie went on, peeking at Emma from the corner of her eyes. “I don’t think I’ve ever been as sick as I was on the ship that brought us over from Ireland.”

  “Oh?”

  “Aye. The way it rolled and tossed on the waves? Well, I didn’t think I’d make it to America. I cursed my mam, cursed the heavens, and you can be sure I cursed Aiden Murphy most of all.”

  “Aiden?” Emma flushed and stole a glance behind them to where Aiden walked with Dr. Dean Meyers, the object of Emma’s affection, several yards back.

  “I’m sure it’s his fault somehow,” Katie teased, twisting to look where Emma was looking.

  Katie arched an eyebrow at the spring in Aiden’s step and the cocky angle of his shoulders. The afternoon sun shone down on his dark hair, lending a sparkle to his blue eyes. He wore his fiddle in its case slung across his back. He’d worn it since the moment they’d all set foot on the road that led from their humble village of Ballymote, all the way to America and the trail they walked now. That fiddle had been a part of him for as long as Katie had known him, which was to say his whole life.

  Aiden caught her watching and winked. Katie promptly ignored his audacity and the flutter in her gut.

  She glanced to Emma, but her new friend had missed the entire impish display. Emma only had eyes for Dean Meyers.

  “He’s a brazen beast, isn’t he?” she asked, referring to Aiden.

  “He’s lovely,” Emma replied, staring straight at Dean. The moment he glanced up and met her eyes, Emma snapped to face forward. She smoothed a hand over the skirt of her overly formal dress—something her mother had forced her to wear to catch a man—and cleared her throat.

  Katie did her best to hide her smile. She’d only known Emma for a short time. Not much more than a week ago, the wagon train Katie and her family were traveling with had come across Emma and her mother and Dr. Dean Meyers at a lonely way station. They’d been there for a week as Emma’s ankle healed from an injury sustained in a tornado.

  A tornado. The very thought of it set Katie’s heart pounding. She could only imagine how exciting it all had been. Between the little Dean had said and the looks he and Emma had been exchanging for the last week, Katie surmised there was more to the story than met the eye. No matter how much she hinted and pried for more information, Emma had said little about it. Bless her, but Emma said little about anything. At least she didn’t mind if Katie talked until she was blue.

  “I still think you should march right up to that man and kiss him, bold as brass,” she said, tilting her face into the sunlight.

  “What?” Emma gasped, clutching her arm tighter. “I could never.”

  Katie laughed. “I don’t suppose you could, but wouldn’t it make a sight? I’m sure half the old biddies in this wagon train would clutch their chests and drop dead of heart attacks. I’d be glad though,” she finished.

  “You would?” Emma blinked.

  “Yes, and why not? Love is a beautiful thing, and watching two young people fall head over heels down the hill of love to the valley of bliss is a rare treat.”

  Emma blushed darker. “If only that were possible.”

  “And who says it’s not possible?” Katie hugged Emma’s arm tighter. The laughter of children—some of them likely her younger brothers and sisters—rang up and down the line of wagons and a light breeze blew the rich scent of earth and grass across their path. How could anything not be possible?

  “My mother,” Emma sighed, shoulders sagging. “You know she has it in her mind that I should put Dean aside and give all of my attentions to Dr. Sandifer.”

  Katie’s lips twisted in a bitter sneer. “That great lummox.” She knew too well the fuss Mrs. Sutton was making over the blustery, arrogant doctor that had joined their wagon train in Independence. What she didn’t know was why a woman who seemed to be in all her right mental faculties would toss a peach like Dean Meyers over for a pit like Russell Sandifer.

  Emma heaved another sigh and lowered her head to stare at the toes of her and Katie’s shoes as they poked out from under their dusty skirts—one cotton, the other silk—as they walked. It didn’t take much for Katie to see how deeply her friend was hurting over the entire confusing thing.

  “Bah. I hate to see you so fussed over the situation,” she said. “No girl as pretty and as smart as you are who has a man like your Dean pining for you should be thwarted by something as common as a mother.”

  “Mother has been through so much,” Emma argued.

  Katie cut her off with a sniff. “All mothers with bright-eyed children have been through so much. My own mam struggled through the Great Famine while trying to raise more than half a dozen children, all while my father sweated and toiled to put food on our plates.” She shook her head. It wasn’t something she liked to think about. They’d come to America precisely so they wouldn’t ever have to think about those times again.

  She brushed her free hand through the air as if to clear the past. “You’re not the only one whose mother thinks she knows what’s best for them where men are concerned,” she confided.

  “Oh?” Emma perked up a bit.

 
Encouraged, Katie went on. “Aye, Mam’s had it in her head since I was knee-high that I should fall in love with and marry Aiden. Aiden!” She snorted. A swirl of something warm and tickly and unwelcome filled her gut.

  Emma started to glance back at Aiden and Dean walking behind them, but stopped herself. “Aiden seems like a perfectly acceptable young man.”

  “And that’s his problem,” Katie insisted. She took a breath. “Aiden and I have known each other almost since the day we were born. He’s only a few months older than me. I consider him one of my best friends, really, I do. But his mam and mine have been thick as thieves and just as crafty since their school days. Right from the cradle, they determined that Aiden and I were meant for each other.”

  “How romantic.” Emma smiled.

  “It is not romantic,” Katie growled. “It’s been a bloody big nuisance. Imagine, my whole life, everywhere I go and everything I do, Aiden has been there. He was there when we were young ones, skipping stones in the pond and chasing after foxes in the fields. He was there when we sat in that great, drafty school having numbers and letters and history pounded into us. And he’s been there, cheeky as a beggar, playing right into our mams’ schemes by bringing me flowers and playing on that blasted fiddle outside my window at all hours of the day and night. Flowers, when all I want is a friend. Imagine. He crowds me so much that I can’t tell whether my thoughts are my own or his. Why, when Da and Mam decided to pull up roots and move to America, he convinced his entire clan to come with us, just so he could continue to bother me.”

  Emma listened to the speech, her mouth dropping open more with each word and her eyes filling with stars. When Katie finished and tipped her head in a stubborn nod, Emma said, “That’s the most beautiful story I’ve ever heard.”

  “Ha,” Katie laughed. Her heart beat faster, but she did her best to ignore it. “It’s a dull story at that. Can you imagine what it’s like to have a rogue like Aiden shadowing your every step, never leaving your side?”

  “It would be wonderful,” Emma sighed.

  “Aiden is good, but dull as toast,” Katie protested. “I don’t want a boy everyone expects me to marry, a boy who I used to catch frogs with. I want adventure. I want excitement. I want to explore and discover and fly. There’s so much more to this wide world than the town and the people you’ve had around you your whole life. I want passion when I fall in love.” She grabbed Emma’s arm with both of her hands, her whole body vibrating with the force of her longing. “I want to fall in love with a valiant hero, a man who will risk life and limb to save me and… and rescue me from a dragon.”

  She was so wrapped up in the image she painted for herself that she almost didn’t hear when Aiden called out, “There are no dragons in America,” behind her.

  Katie jumped, flushing with heat at the sound of his voice. She told herself it was embarrassment at being caught pouring her heart out where others could hear. She let go of Emma’s arm and twisted to glare at Aiden. “Shut your gob, Aiden Murphy,” she ribbed him the way friends did.

  Aiden, being Aiden, only beamed at her. “Now why would I do that when you’re talking nonsense and need to be set straight, a ghrá?”

  “Ack! Don’t call me that,” Katie growled. She faced forward once more and kept walking, but her skin prickled as though she’d given herself away.

  Aiden Murphy chuckled as Katie bristled. “My apologies, a ghrá,” he teased. “If you think you’ll find a dragon here in the great American West, then go right on looking.” His heart soared at the mental picture of Katie rushing across the prairie, pushing through the tall grass, turning over rocks, and rushing into the hills to search for dragons, lance in hand.

  The Katie right in front of him humphed and twisted to glare at him. “The only dragon I see is the one stalking me from behind,” she clipped.

  Aiden’s smile broadened. He loved her bullish frown. He loved the bright flush and warm freckles that kissed her cheeks. He loved the saucy tilt of her chin, the intoxicating sway of her hips as she walked, the bounce of her bright copper curls. He loved her.

  “If I’m a dragon,” he met her barb for barb, “then you’d best beware. I might just breathe fire.” He was certainly hot enough for fire every time she was near.

  “Is that what that terrible smell is?” she fired back with a toss of her curls.

  Aiden laughed. His heart thumped against his ribs—like the dragon she’d accused him of being was trying to get out. “Aye, that’s the fire and brimstone that burns deep in my soul for you, a ghrá.”

  “Ha,” Katie scoffed, though Aiden caught the flush in her cheeks deepening. “Are you such a lunk head that you can’t tell the difference between upset digestion and love?”

  “I’ll admit,” Aiden fired back, sending Dean, walking beside him, a knowing glance, “love is upsetting.”

  Dean chuckled and shook his head, an ironic smirk tweaking his mouth. Aiden wasn’t one to pry into another man’s troubles, but Dean had confided enough of his dealings with Miss Emma Sutton to him in the last week for him to know a thing or two about what lay behind the smirk.

  “If love is so upsetting,” Katie went on over her shoulder, “then you should give it up.”

  “What?” Aiden called to her. “Give up? Never. Heroes never give up.”

  Katie laughed in earnest, giving Emma’s arm a squeeze. “See what I mean?” she said. “The daft man doesn’t even know he’s no hero.”

  A chip of ice cut through Aiden’s good-humored grin. Lord, but Katie drove him mad sometimes. He couldn’t remember a time that he didn’t love her, stubbornness, prickles and all. But she did have a way of cutting him when he least expected it, all in the name of “friendly” banter. He consoled himself with the thought that one day—one day when Katie least expected it—he would hold her in his arms and kiss the prickles right out of her. Sooner rather than later, if it were up to him. Leaving Ireland may have been the best thing they could do to speed things along. They were in a new land with new dreams and new possibilities.

  “What about you, Miss Emma?” He changed tack and tried to bring Dean’s sweetheart out of her shell. “Is love nothing more than a sour stomach?”

  “Well… I….” Emma tripped over her own tongue.

  Dean tensed just enough for Aiden to notice, his face pinching. “I think Emma is entitled to keep her opinion to herself,” he said. He followed that by murmuring so that only Aiden could hear, “Leave Emma out of this. She’s got enough to worry about at the moment.”

  Aiden nodded. “I’m sure her thoughts are as pure and refreshing as she is,” he said with a smile. In the week since they’d met, Aiden had come to like and respect both Emma and Dean, and if his new friend declared his sweetheart off-limits from the teasing banter he was used to, he would honor that. “As for your thoughts, a ghrá,” he shifted back to Katie, “I think our good Father Daniel back in Ballymote is thanking his lucky stars he doesn’t have to hear your confession anymore.”

  Katie laughed, full and throaty, sending a wave of desire through him that threatened to make it difficult to walk comfortably. “Now that he doesn’t have to hear your confession, Aiden Murphy, maybe he won’t fall asleep in the confessional anymore.”

  “He only slept during my confession because he was exhausted after hearing yours,” Aiden shot back.

  Katie humphed again and quickened her pace. She and Emma began to distance themselves from him and Dean.

  “Did the priest really fall asleep while you were confessing?” Dean asked, smile broad.

  “He did,” Aiden said. “The poor man’s eighty-two. He used to nap while the good folks of Ballymote poured out their sins to him. I heard Father James scold him about it once, but Father Daniel explained that if we all assumed he was asleep, we would confess more and find deeper absolution.”

  Dean laughed aloud. “I’m sure you had your fair share of things to confess about Miss Katie.”

  “Volumes,” Aiden laughed. “I’ve bee
n having impure thoughts about her for half my lifetime, much good that it’s done me.”

  Dean raised his brow. “That’s unusually gloomy for you.”

  “Not at all,” Aiden continued to chuckle. He watched Katie's back as she and Emma plowed ahead. “It all comes from your basic misunderstanding and complete bafflement over women and what they want.”

  Dean grunted, smirk back in place. “You can say that again. I love her with all my heart, but I don’t understand a thing going on in Emma’s head.”

  “No man can ever understand what goes on in a woman’s head,” Aiden agreed. “If we had the slightest inkling of what they think, if we could piece together the barest fragment of how they work, then like as not, we’d get overconfident and turn the world on its ear.”

  “Still, it would be nice to know that we’re on the right path sometimes,” Dean said. He blew out a breath and dragged a hand through his hair.

  “Ah, but we’re always on the right path if we’re on any path at all,” Aiden told him. He reached behind to lift his fiddle case off his back. His fingers always had an urge to play when his heart beat harder.

  “How do you figure?” Dean asked. He held out his arms to hold the fiddle case while Aiden took the instrument out as they continued to walk.

  “Well, we don’t know what’s going on in their minds, they don’t know what’s going on in our minds, so the only way to get two and two together is to keep moving forward.”

  He lifted his precious fiddle out of its felt-lined case and smoothed his hand over the wood, plucking the strings to be sure it was in tune. A few turns of the tuning pegs and it was ready. He took up the bow, then nodded as Dean shut the case and slung it over his shoulder, carrying it like any good friend would.

  “Take Katie Boyle, for example,” he continued, raising the fiddle to his chin and drawing the bow across the strings, producing a long, smooth note. He began a tune that started slow. “She’s quick to tell one and all that we’ve known each other our entire lives and are the best of friends. She’s not at all shy about sharing stories of how inseparable we’ve been since I was in knickerbockers and she was in short skirts. She might not tell you about how I held her hair back while she was bent double over the rail giving her lunch back to the sea on our journey across the ocean, but she trusted me to clean her up when she was done. So she can argue all she wants, but one way or another, she’ll end up in my arms, and in my bed,” he added with a wink, pausing in his song.