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“Okay, here is Pink Pistol Sister number seven,” Mabel intoned. “Mariah Bartee finally succumbed to Dax Talon’s charms and married him on the first day of spring, March 20, 1940. She traded danger and secrets she’d known for much of her life for security and love. It was a peaceful new beginning for both.”
“Sounds like she had a hard life,” Carol mused.
“It was 1940. Not an easy time for anyone. Wasn’t that coming out of the Great Depression?” James asked.
“Yes. The stock market crashed in 1929, so that was just eleven years later.” She took a breath. “Here is what she found for them. The challenge of raising her siblings is one Mariah Bartee willingly bears. She’ll keep them together at all costs—and safe from the danger lurking on the mountain. A handsome stranger’s arrival raises the stakes when he asks for her help. She doesn’t trust easily.
“Dax Nolan, a cowboy from the lowlands, hesitates to involve Mariah, but no one knows the mountains like her. Desperation drives him. Can the bones recently uncovered be his missing sister?
“Mariah reluctantly agrees to guide Dax, and they encounter danger and secrets. As they search for truth, she finds herself falling for him. He can offer security—and love. And,” Carol added, “before you can ask, the note says the pistol was in Boulder, Colorado. A long way from Missouri!”
“I can’t wait to make a map for it, even though it’s obvious there is no set guidelines for how long the pistol goes between owners and where it might show up next.”
“Speaking of showing up next, here is the next one. Rexanna Brennan married Roan Bertoletti on September 29, 1955. I’ve shot exotic game worthy of the finest of trophies, but my cowboy’s love has been my biggest prize of all.”
“She was a big game hunter? The pistol doesn’t seem to care whether the woman knows how to shoot or not, since this woman was a hunter and I’ve never shot a gun before.” Mabel was trying to find a link between them, if not time or location, then personality, but that didn’t seem to matter, either.
“Mine says, After a devastating loss, wild game hunter Rexanna Brennan returns home to her family’s ranch to heal. She never expects to learn her crazy aunt has left her a pink pistol with an even crazier legend. But more unsettling, a Hollywood cowboy has moved onto the ranch, stealing her family’s hearts and maybe her legacy, too.
“False accusations throw Roan Bertoletti into scandal and yank him out of his movie star life. His reputation shredded, he grasps at the second chance the Brennan family gives him. With his roots firmly planted, he’s living his dream to be a cowboy again, and he has no plans to leave the ranch anytime soon.
“But Rexanna’s grief pulls at him. So does her insistence she can’t stay. Can he convince the beautiful heiress to claim what has always been hers?”
“He must have been able to persuade her,” James said with a grin. “I can feel a kinship with this dude—wanting to be a cowboy and talking the girl into falling for him.”
“You didn’t have to talk me into anything,” Mabel chided, but mostly because she felt bad that it had taken her so long to notice him. Still, the fact that she noticed him in God’s perfect timing couldn’t be disputed. Everything had come together so perfectly. Maybe that’s what they all had in common. The pistol had shown up at the perfect time in their life.
“Is there another?” James asked.
“There are two more,” Carol said. “Mabel?”
“Grace Marshall wed Levi Gibson amid autumn’s splendor on October 15, 1972. He called me a lucky shot, but what I really am is lucky in love to marry the man I love with all my heart and soul.”
“That’s romantic,” Carol said with her hand over her heart. Then she looked down at her own paper. “As a registered nurse at the Boise VA Hospital, Grace Marshall is devoted to her patients, but some wounds require more than medical care. A patient too stubborn and angry to accept the help he needs storms out of her exam room, ruffling her feathers. Yet, when the man returns to apologize, something about him tugs at her heart.
“Levi Gibson left for war young and idealistic but returned from Vietnam with physical scars and a haunted soul. He tries to banish the darkness brewing inside him with hard work on his family’s potato farm, but it’s a young nurse’s kindness that brings unexpected light and joy into his life. If Levi can open up to Grace and let her see his pain, could she be the key that unlocks a future full of hope instead of mere survival?
“After her father sends Grace a legendary pistol, target practice provides an excuse to spend time with Levi during the summer of 1972. As his shadows overwhelm him, it will take far more than a lucky shot for Grace to hit love’s mark.”
“A nurse and a soldier.”
“The year was 1972. Then the pistol disappears for more than fifty years.” Carol tapped her paper. “The next time it surfaces, it’s with this woman’s niece.” She glanced at Mabel. “Did she write something on the paper?”
“Yes. Josephine Jade Buchanan married Dalton Matthew Kelley on April 29, 2023, in Loksi, Oklahoma. The inheritance from my beloved aunt enriched my life in unimaginable ways by giving me a second shot at love and a home. This time, I’m holding onto my Oklahoma cowboy and the priceless gift of a future with him.”
“We all know how the pistol made it from Oklahoma to North Dakota.”
“They weren’t even married when she sent the pistol to us.”
“I don’t think they need to keep it until they’re married. Just until they find love. They probably wrote the wedding date down when they knew it.”
“Oh, that makes sense.”
“I want to hear about the woman who just had it.” James motioned to the paper in front of Carol, indicating she needed to read.
She didn’t need a second push. “Childhood disappointments and a bitter divorce taught Jade Buchanan that trusting her heart to a man leads to disaster. When she returns to Oklahoma to settle her aunt’s estate, Jade discovers the cowboy hired to renovate the house is none other than Dalton Kelley, her first love. She’s not worried, though. She has a solid plan—supervise the renovation like the adult she is, sell the property, and return to New York City with money to start a design company with her best friend. Simple. Until she starts working with Dalton and feelings she thought long dead bubble to the surface, raising havoc with her carefully laid plans.
“Needing money thanks to cattle rustlers, Dalton hires on to renovate Jade’s recently inherited house. Working for his teenage sweetheart will be awkward, but he can handle it in the short term. He’ll collect his money, say goodbye to Jade, and find a woman without big-city dreams to settle down with on his Done Roamin’ Ranch. But the job brings trouble he hadn’t counted on, and the more time he and Jade spend together, the less he can picture any other woman by his side.”
