The Brava Novella Contest finalists have been announced, and it was exciting to see some friends in there. Not surprising, of course, as I happen to have very talented friends. I hope y’all have read them and voted for your favorite!

I thought I’d share the scene I submitted. It obviously didn’t work for the judge(s), but I have some affection for this story and who knows…someday…

 It’s a little long, so I’ll put it after the jump. (It’s working title was Hunting Maggy, btw.)

Chapter One

After two years and five months of hunting, Cooper Dawson finally ran the damn woman to ground at a dilapidated boarding house in a two-bit railroad town.

She had her back to him, drying dishes, when he stepped into the sorry excuse for an establishment’s kitchen. Cooper took a couple of steps to the left to ensure she couldn’t bolt out the back door. She wasn’t getting away from him again.

“Kitchen’s closed,” she said without turning around. “And the rooms are all let.”

“I reckon I’ll just have to share yours, then, Mrs. Dawson.”

Cooper watched his wife’s shoulders tense under worn calico and saw the messy knot of sorrel-colored curls at the back of her neck start to tremble. Maggie turned, towel in one hand and plate in the other, and he noted the changes time had made in her.

The pale skin she’d once fussed over now sported a golden glow that made the spattering of freckles over her nose and her pretty blue eyes stand out. She was leaner than when they’d married, but her hips were still round and her breasts full enough to fill his hands.

For a moment Cooper allowed himself to set aside his wounded pride—to savor the memory of her naked body arching off the bed under his own. Thinking back on their wedding night sorely tempted him to pull Maggie into his arms and kiss her until her knees buckled.

Then the tin plate whizzed past his ear and thumped against the doorjamb.

“Now, darlin’, is that any kind of welcome for your long-lost husband?”

“You weren’t lost.” Maggie put her hands on her hips, the towel still dangling from her left hand. “You ran off and left me, like a stray dog scrounging for a better meal.”

Cooper hadn’t reckoned on a particularly tender welcome from his wayward bride, but he hadn’t exactly expected flying dinnerware, either. “I wasn’t gone but six months, Maggie. Six months breaking my back every damn day, trying to give you a better life. How do you think I felt when I got my letters back along with a note saying you’d run off?”

“Abandoned?” She walked toward him, hips swinging slowly like a suspended pocket watch. Drawing him in, making his body ache almost as much as his heart had for the last two and a half years. “Forgotten? Like maybe you weren’t enough?”

“I told you I was coming back—with enough money in my pocket so you and I wouldn’t have to work ourselves to death just trying to get by like my parents did. I didn’t want your body to hurt and your hands to get hard and callused.”

“Instead my heart hurt and hardened. I told you all I wanted was to work beside you and have your babies. And I told you I wouldn’t abide being left, but you still had to go. Now you can just keep on going.”

“Come with me, Maggie.” Cooper extended his hand to brush a stray strand of hair from her cheek, but she flinched away. “I’ve got enough money to get us a pretty little house somewhere, and—”

“No, Cooper. This is my home now.”

He was trying to keep a tight rein on his temper, but damnation, this was his wife and he’d had to scour damn near all the land west of the Mississippi to find her. It was enough to make any man feel a mite ornery.

“Then show me where we sleep, darlin’, and after I take care of my horse you can welcome me home proper-like.”

She lashed out with the towel, but Cooper caught it easily and yanked it out of her hand.

Six months he’d spent cold, hungry, back aching from sifting for a glimpse of precious yellow metal. But the glint of gold that caught his eye now hit him like a fist to the chest.

Standing in front of the preacher and confessing he couldn’t afford to put a ring on his new bride’s finger had set Cooper on the path to the gold fields.

His fingers closed around Maggie’s left wrist, halting her retreat. “How’d you come by that ring?”

“I’m not your business anymore.”

“A man putting a wedding band on my wife’s finger sure as hell is my business, darlin’. I want his name.”

“Go to hell, Cooper Dawson.”

“I’ve been in hell the last two and a half years, Maggie. But now I’ve come home.”

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