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Welcome to the Blog Tour for Claiming Her Legacy by Linda Goodnight, hosted by JustRead Publicity Tours!
ABOUT THE BOOK
Title: Claiming Her Legacy
Author: Linda Goodnight
Publisher: Harlequin Love Inspired Trade
Release Date: April 26, 2022
Genre: Inspirational Historical Romance
With her family’s legacy on the line, a woman with everything to lose must rely on a man hiding from his past…
Oklahoma, 1890
Frontier women don’t ride off alone to track an outlaw—not even women as capable as tomboy spinster Willa Malone. But Willa desperately needs the bounty money offered for her father’s killer if she’s to keep their homestead and take care of her sisters. That means she needs an expert tracker’s help. Gideon Hartley has the skill, but the handsome trail guide also has a troubling secret…
Gideon has spent years trying to numb his pain with whiskey. Little by little, their quest—and Willa’s belief in him—is restoring the sense of purpose he thought he’d lost. Journeying into the heart of danger, they’ll have to face down the past together if they hope to protect their future…
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ABOUT THE AUTHOR
TOUR GIVEAWAY
(1) winner will receive a $25 Amazon gift card!
Be sure to check out each stop on the tour for more chances to win. Full tour schedule linked below. Giveaway began at midnight April 5, 2022 and lasts through 11:59 PM EST on April 12, 2022. Winner will be notified within 2 weeks of close of the giveaway and given 48 hours to respond or risk forfeiture of prize. US only. Void where prohibited by law or logistics.
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Here are some excerpts of Claiming Her Legacy for you to read!
I absolutely LOVE Linda Goodnight’s writing! The Malone sisters–and their plight–will capture your heart. Willa is a brave, amazing woman. You won’t be able to put Claiming Her Legacy down until you reach the very last page, and these excerpts prove that!
Excerpt 1, CLAIMING HER LEGACY by Linda Goodnight.
Mercy rifled through the posters until she found the face she sought. “Here he is. The scoundrel who murdered Papa.”
All three sisters stared down at the drawing of the outlaw.
Charlie Bangs, the cowardly snake who’d murdered her father. Cold beady eyes, dark unkempt hair and a droopy handlebar mustache.
Hatred curled in the pit of Willa’s stomach. She’d never forget that face as long as she lived. Charlie Bangs deserved to die.
According to the prospector who’d brought him home, Papa had befriended the man who’d taken his life. He had even shared his camp and grub. Unlike his cynical daughter, Finn Malone believed the best of people.
His friendly nature had gotten him killed.
Oblivious to the dried blood staining her fingers, Mercy smoothed the poster flat. “Would you look at this? A thousand-dollar reward. No wonder men take to the bounty trails.”
“Papa’s life was worth more than that!” Savannah exclaimed hotly.
“Indeed,” Mercy said, “but a thousand dollars is still a great deal of money, Savannah. Enough to pay off Papa’s bank loan with plenty left over to order that sewing machine you’ve been mooning over in the mail order catalog.”
“I wasn’t mooning. The machine is a thing of great use. I could sew for the ladies of the community as well as for us.”
Willa didn’t think many in their fledgling settlement had an extra penny to spend on tailored yard goods, but Savannah needed her dreams. She was a good hand with a needle and took in mending here and there. The pay wasn’t much. Certainly not enough to repay the bank loan.
Finn Malone in his great rush toward the gold fields had borrowed against their land claim for a grubstake. Now that he was gone and the dab of gold with him, she and her sisters must either repay the loan or find themselves on the streets.
A step on the stairs drew her attention to a bleary-eyed woman with the dregs of last night’s rouge smearing her cheeks. At Willa’s glance, the saloon girl quickly receded into the dark confines of the stairwell.
With a shudder, Willa said, “Bounty hunting beats working upstairs for Madam Frenchy.”
“Willa Malone!” Mercy’s eyes widened. “We could never do such a thing.”
“Maybe that’s what the girls upstairs thought, too, at one time. We need money, and there’s hardly any way for a woman to survive out here unless she has a man to support her.”
The admission galled her.
“I could marry Mr. Baggley,” Savannah said, but the dread in her eyes cut Willa to the bone.
“Don’t be ridiculous. You’re not marrying that old goat to put food on the table.” Homer was sixty if he was a day and only washed once a year if the creek was high and warm.
Worse still, he had the manners of a billy goat, blatantly making his attentions clear one afternoon in the mercantile for the whole town to hear. As long as Savannah could cook and bear him a passel of young ’uns, as he put it, he didn’t care one whit if she was gimpy.
“He is rather repulsive,” Savannah admitted. “But I’ll marry him if I must.”
Willa’s jaw hardened. “You won’t.”
Doubt gnawed around the edges of her mind. What if they had no choice? What if her baby sister was forced to marry a rich old man who had only one thing on his mind?
Marriages of convenience were not that unusual for women alone, but how different were they from Madam Frenchy’s girls?
Willa shuddered, fingering the wanted poster. She’d do about anything to keep her sister from being sold off like a brood mare. Savannah was a beautiful educated Christian woman. Any man worth marrying would love her for those wonderful qualities and ignore her damaged leg.
But no such man was pounding on the door.
Mercy, too, was beautiful and smart. Willa’s thoughts skittered to a halt. Something untoward had happened to Mercy, something that had changed her view of marriage and family.
They were three women in a territory brimming with males and not a one of them could attract a suitable husband.
Unlike other ladies, the Malone sisters could not depend upon a man for help. Their future would be up to them and the Good Lord.
ISBN-13: 978-1-335-41876-0
Claiming Her Legacy
Copyright © 2022 by Linda Goodnight
All rights reserved. No part of this book may be used or reproduced in any manner whatsoever without written permission except in the case of brief quotations embodied in critical articles and reviews.
This is a work of fiction. Names, characters, places and incidents are either the product of the author’s imagination or are used fictitiously. Any resemblance to actual persons, living or dead, businesses, companies, events or locales is entirely coincidental.
This edition published by arrangement with Harlequin Books S.A.
For questions and comments about the quality of this book, please contact us at CustomerService@Harlequin.com.
Love Inspired22 Adelaide St. West, 41st FloorToronto, Ontario M5H 4E3, Canadawww.LoveInspired.com
Printed in U.S.A.
Excerpt 2, CLAIMING HER LEGACY by Linda Goodnight.
The three sisters still argued come bedtime.
Willa divested herself of dusty boots and set them by the cabin door with a resolute thunk. “I’m going to hunt him down and collect that bounty and neither of you will convince me otherwise.”
“This is crazy talk.” Mercy, already in a long nightdress, loosened her hair and let it fall over one shoulder. “A woman can’t go bounty hunting.”
“Why not? I can ride and shoot better than most men.”
“It is simply not done. Women don’t ride off alone after outlaws. Lawmen do.”
“I staked this claim alone, didn’t I?”
Mercy had stayed behind at the rail depot with Savannah, who could no more run for land than she could leap over the moon. Papa had run with Willa, hoping for a double portion, but he’d come up short. Willa hadn’t.
“There were plenty who tried to take it away because I was a woman.”
She’d faced the claim-jumpers with a loaded rifle in hand, dead set on keeping what she’d staked until Papa and the sisters arrived to set up camp.
“Yes, and now we have to find a way to keep it.” Worry weighed Mercy’s soft words. “But bounty hunting is not the way, Willa. Riding after an outlaw alone, a known killer, is too dangerous. Even for a man.”
Mercy reached for a brush, and with more than the usual vigor, began the first of one hundred strokes of her glorious hair.
Willa had given up such feminine niceties long ago. A braid down the back was sufficient. Practical.
No one would notice if she primped anyway.
Willa’s chin jutted. “I’ll hire someone to go along. A tracker.”
Mercy’s brush paused. “Who?”
Willa’s heart rattled at the truth in Mercy’s statement, though she didn’t dare let either sister see her concern.
Finding a knowledgeable guide with the grit for bounty hunting would be difficult enough. Finding one who’d agree to a share of the bounty in return for his services might be next to impossible. And riding the trail with a woman? Even she saw the futility in that.
Yet, what other choices did she have?
“I’ll find one,” she said with false bravado. “With the many settlers coming and going in this territory, someone will know a guide.”
“Even if you find one, how will you know where to go?” Mercy resumed her brush strokes, the red hair gleaming in the lamplight. “This is a big country. A man on the run can hide many places.”
Willa shivered, her heart jittery in her chest as she slipped into her nightgown and turned back the quilt Mercy’s mother had pieced from scraps.
She didn’t remember her own mother but she fondly recalled Papa’s second wife, Maeve, a gentle soul who’d nurtured a needy, motherless six-year-old. Maeve, as Irish as Papa, had been the balm that soothed Papa’s wanderlust for a while. Those were the good days when Papa had worked the railroad and Maeve had turned a sod house into a loving home.
Emotion knotted in Willa’s chest. At times like this, when life was hard and decisions were harder, she missed having a mother to lean on. She missed Maeve.
She recalled Papa playing his fiddle by the firelight as Maeve’s work-roughened hands put together the tiniest pieces of scrap cloth until a pattern emerged, amazing Willa.
She also remembered Maeve’s swollen belly and the promise of a brother or sister. She’d gotten Mercy and lost Maeve in the same pain-filled day.
Months later, while Papa awaited wife number three, a mail-order bride from Georgia, he had given the quilt to Willa.
Now, with the enormity of what she planned tight in her chest, she pulled the precious cover closer, imagining the comfort of Maeve’s biscuit-and-rosewater scent.
“The bounty hunter had a good notion Papa’s killer was headed to Indian Territory to hide out for a spell,” she murmured. “I’ll start there.”
“Willa, stop! Put this out of your mind.” By the light of a coal oil lamp, Savannah’s slender fingers jabbed a needle in and out of a ripped chemise. “A woman traveling out there, even with a man’s protection, would be in terrible danger.”
ISBN-13: 978-1-335-41876-0
Claiming Her Legacy
Copyright © 2022 by Linda Goodnight
All rights reserved. No part of this book may be used or reproduced in any manner whatsoever without written permission except in the case of brief quotations embodied in critical articles and reviews.
This is a work of fiction. Names, characters, places and incidents are either the product of the author’s imagination or are used fictitiously. Any resemblance to actual persons, living or dead, businesses, companies, events or locales is entirely coincidental.
This edition published by arrangement with Harlequin Books S.A.
For questions and comments about the quality of this book, please contact us at CustomerService@Harlequin.com.
Love Inspired22 Adelaide St. West, 41st FloorToronto, Ontario M5H 4E3, Canadawww.LoveInspired.com
Printed in U.S.A.
Excerpt 3, CLAIMING HER LEGACY by Linda Goodnight.
The man was a drunk.
In shocked dismay and with hope dwindling, Willa twisted her hands in her lap beneath the round parlor table. The guide and tracker she wanted to hire sat across from her, nursing a cup of coffee and a hangover.
Now she understood the sly warnings she’d received about Gideon Hartley.
Having taken only the time for that one drink of whiskey before stumbling down the stairs behind her, his longish black hair was mussed and his clothes badly rumpled. He had, however, tucked in his shirt, though Willa feared the courtesy had only added to his roguish appearance.
Her heart had ricocheted like a bullet on a boulder when she’d tromped into the hotel room and recognized Hartley as the man from the saloon. He was, she feared, every bit as handsome as she remembered.
A handsome rogue who drank too much.
While she fidgeted, afraid he’d refuse her request and even more afraid he wouldn’t, he took his slow, sweet time doctoring his coffee. First, a spoon of sugar, followed by a taste and a grimace. Then a dollop of cream followed by yet another sip.
Tapping her foot in impatience, Willa glanced around at the lovely rose-papered parlor furnished with a settee and a small table to accommodate the hotel’s guests. A man and woman occupied the settee, thankfully far enough away not to overhear her conversation with Gideon Hartley. If she ever got to have one.
He reached for more sugar.
“Mr. Hartley, while I appreciate the flavor of well-prepared coffee as much as anyone, I have an important matter to discuss with you.”
The spoon clinked against the saucer, leaving a dot of brown liquid on the white china.
“All right, then,” he said with a heavy sigh. “To what do I owe this disgustingly early morning visit?”
“It’s afternoon.”
He flinched and turned slowly to squint out the broad window. Afternoon shadows pointed toward the east.
“So it is.” His dark eyebrows drew together in a frown. “You seem familiar. Have we met?”
“You helped my sister a few days ago.”
“That doesn’t sound like me.”
With studied nonchalance, he poured more cream into his coffee. And stirred. Again.
Willa found his self-deprecation less than amusing.
“You weren’t drunk at the time,” she snapped. “Perhaps that’s why you don’t remember.”
He arched an eyebrow. “Such a viperous tongue from such an enchanting source.”
Willa struggled not to roll her eyes. The man was not only half-drunk, he was a slick liar. She knew her shortcomings as well as her strengths. Savannah was enchanting. Willa was merely determined.
“The man my sister tried to save was a bounty hunter. He was tracking the murderer who killed my father.”
“Ah. Now, I remember. The ladies in the saloon. One fighting with death while the other fought not to lose her breakfast.”
She’d had no breakfast to lose. “How chivalrous of you to mention it.”
He showed his teeth. “How else may I be of assistance?”
Though his tone indicated less than cooperation, Willa leaned forward, determined to forge on. He was her only hope.
“I’m told you’re a tracker and a guide. I want you to help me find my father’s murderer.”
ISBN-13: 978-1-335-41876-0
Claiming Her Legacy
Copyright © 2022 by Linda Goodnight
All rights reserved. No part of this book may be used or reproduced in any manner whatsoever without written permission except in the case of brief quotations embodied in critical articles and reviews.
This is a work of fiction. Names, characters, places and incidents are either the product of the author’s imagination or are used fictitiously. Any resemblance to actual persons, living or dead, businesses, companies, events or locales is entirely coincidental.
This edition published by arrangement with Harlequin Books S.A.
For questions and comments about the quality of this book, please contact us at CustomerService@Harlequin.com.
Love Inspired22 Adelaide St. West, 41st FloorToronto, Ontario M5H 4E3, Canadawww.LoveInspired.com
Printed in U.S.A.
Enjoy! And don’t forget to enter the giveaway! –Wren
Disclaimer: I voluntarily reviewed a complimentary copy of this book which I received from the author. All views expressed are only my honest opinion.
finchnwren 