Joanna Jordan

“...if loving Case meant going to hell, maybe heaven wasn't for her.”

“I have plans for my life and they don't include taking time out to break my back busting virgin sod with a flimsy plow.”

“Never has anyone been so willing to be ruined as you were.”

“How could he convince her to join him and hitch her buggy to a star when she was bound and determined to hitch it to a sodbuster's plow?”

“Had he forgotten all that had transpired between them in that other hidey-hole?”

“He snorted and his long face informed her he was still as grumpy as a woodpecker with a headache.”

“But best of all ... was the satisfaction of having once again saved the bacon.”

“Don't you ever save me again. Do you hear me, you hotheaded little incendiary? Don't help me, rescue me, offer me succor, or do me a favor. Do you understand, you nihilistic dynamitard! Don't you dare ever save me again!”

“There's a big ruckus under way down at the Rusty Plug. The miners are really tearin' the bone out.”

“Never again could he see a dogwood blossom or eat a fish without thinking of her.”

“They could no more reconcile to a mutually satisfying life than a donkey could sprout wings and fly.”

“She was full of flaws which with time would evolve into full-blown personality defects.”

“This time he jerked the appendage from her soft lap and tucked it under his leg, Indian fashion.”

“I'd soon crawl down a rabid badger's hole as crawl into your bedroll.”

“Surely hers was the heart of a harlot.”

“In sober moments, it shamed him to think and act like he did. But he wasn't sober now.”

“Poor Almafae hadn't been quite right since the time she'd stuck her head in a gnat ball at the age of two.”

“January worked harder than a stump-tailed cow during fly time...”

“He'd seen her pale skin, glowing like a ripe peach in the flickering light of the kerosene lamps, and the sight had left him with a bad case of the horn colic.”

“Coyness wasn't the only thing Ardetta had been aggressive about and he'd had to summon up all his southern chivalry to turn her down gently. When he'd relented and obliged her with a kiss, she'd been on him like ugly on an ape. He'd narrowly escaped her clutches with his honor intact.”

“He didn't mind facing the music in most cases, but he wasn't partial to the wedding march.”

“Abruptly, he wheeled Shadow into a full turn, stopped, and yanked his rifle out of the sheath on his saddle.”

“When she squeezed his arm and told him she had two pies in her buggy, he thought he'd died and gone to heaven.”

“The worst part was he never did get any of that damned apple pie.”

“Just thinking about January being in that shack all alone made him swell up fit to bust his britches.”