“Really?” She smiled warmly at the thought that Jason Westmoreland lived on property that connected to the land she’d inherited. Technically that made her his neighbor. No wonder he wants to buy my land, she thought to herself.

“It’s a good thing you’re selling Herman’s land, but I wouldn’t sell it to him under any circumstances.”

She frowned when he opened the car for her to get in. “I haven’t decided what I plan to do with the ranch, Uncle Kenneth,” she reminded him.

He chuckled. “What is there to decide? You know nothing about ranching and a woman of your delicacy, breeding and refinement belongs back in Savannah and not here in Denver trying to run a hundred-acre ranch and enduring harsh winters. Like I told you earlier, I already know someone who wants to buy the ranch along with all the livestock—especially that stallion Hercules. They’re offering a lot of money. Just think of all the shoes, dresses and hats you’ll be able to buy, not to mention a real nice place near the Atlantic Ocean.”

Bella didn’t say anything. She figured this was probably not the time to tell him that as far as she was concerned there was a lot to decide because none of those things he’d mentioned meant anything to her. She refused to make a decision about her inheritance too hastily.

As her uncle’s car pulled out of the parking lot, she settled back against the plush leather seats and remembered the exact moment her and Jason Westmoreland’s eyes had met.

It was a connection she doubted she would ever forget.

One

One month later

“Did you hear Herman Bostwick’s granddaughter is back in Denver and rumor has it she’s here to stay?”

Jason Westmoreland’s ears perked up on the conversation between his sister-in-law Pam and his two cousins-in-laws Chloe and Lucia. He was at his brother Dillon’s house, stretched out on the living room floor playing around with his six-month-old nephew, Denver.

Although the ladies had retired to the dining room to sit at the table and chat, it wasn’t hard to hear what they were saying and he thought there was no reason for him not to listen. Especially when the woman they were discussing was a woman who’d captured his attention the moment he’d met her last month at a charity ball. She was a woman he hadn’t been able to stop thinking about since.

“Her name is Elizabeth but she goes by Bella,” Lucia, who’d recently married his cousin Derringer, was saying. “She came into Dad’s paint store the other day and I swear she is simply beautiful. She looks so out of place here in Denver, a real Southern belle amidst a bunch of roughnecks.”