Free WESTERN ROMANCE: A Settler’s Wife’s Dreams (Contemporary Westerns Historical Romance, Cowboy Romance) by Melodie Grace

thinking that the rags she used to wear seemed so quaint compared to the expensive clothes Ted had made for her upon her arrival back at his shop. Lisa sat on the bed and ran her hand across the comforter, thinking about all the nights that it had been the only thing that had kept her warm while Frank was out hunting.
    Lisa was afraid to lose her life with Frank from her memory. The more time she spent away from the homestead in town, the farther away their time together started to feel, like somehow it was shrinking away from her and becoming smaller and less real. She would take Frank's old clothes out of the closet and press her face into them, drawing deep, slow breaths while imagining him standing their watching her. Sometimes she was sure she felt another presence in the room beside her own. But if there was one it never announced itself in any tangible way Lisa noticed.
    When she'd turn around expecting to see Frank standing there looking at her and found no one she'd sit for a long time at their table, now covered in dust, and cry for hours.
    Although Ted had sent men to get her things, there were still a lot of it left behind: from the cups in the cabinets to the bowls and plates. They'd never had enough money to have pictures taken so there were none on the walls or on the night stand.
    When she stood in the middle of the homestead cabin and surveyed it now, it seemed little more than a hovel. It seemed like something from a time in her life long since passed. It was like her life with Frank hadn’t really happened, or that it had all been some kind of dream that she now couldn't quite remember during the daytime. She tried to hold on to the memories, though. While Ted spent time gallivanting around the woods Lisa spent more time than she would have ever felt comfortable admitting to Ted, at the homestead. But she always left in a more sullen mood than when she arrived. It was just hard. Lisa didn't understand the hurt that assailed her heart.
    Even though she had slept with Ted while being married to Frank, she'd still loved Frank and wanted to carry on the life that they'd built together. It wasn't that she'd lost faith in Frank, or in their marriage. Looking back now her reasons for cheating seemed almost petty. Frank had been a good lover. It was only when he decided to be selfish that she grew really upset with him.
    Frank had also believed in her, that she could do anything, and the fact that she was a woman never contributed in a negative way to his thoughts. It just didn't matter to him at all. She was who she was to Frank - or had been to him. Frank had looked at the world as being against the two of them. He never would have conceived it possible that she would cheat on him with a very well to do shop owner in town when she rode there that day.
    Lisa couldn't help blame herself for what happened. Would the Indian have come to the house if she wouldn't have spent so much time with Ted? She knew that all that wondering made no sense but she did it anyway, everyday. She had a hard time seeing past the situation for what it really was - a tragedy that most likely would have happened in the near future if it didn't come to a head that day. But Lisa didn't like to think of it in those terms because it made her feel helpless. She liked to think she had more control over the world than that, even though it wasn't true.
    Maybe she just liked the illusion of having some kind of control over the world, or the idea that her actions mattered. Whatever it was exactly Lisa wasn't sure but she knew that she had a sea of regret in her, along with shame, and everyday it tried to drowned her. She would have looked to Ted for support and solace in those early days but it was tough because he was always gone running around after phantom Indians in the hills surrounding the town.
    When she tried to point out to him that most likely the Indian was a lone person, and not part of some larger group, he just shook his head and said