by Faye Sonja
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Chapter 2
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Chapter 3
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Chapter 4
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Chapter 5
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Chapter 6
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Chapter 7
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Chapter 8
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Chapter 9
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Chapter 10
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Chapter 11
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Chapter 12
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Publishers Notes
Copyright © 2016 by Faye Sonja
All Rights reserved.
No part of this book may be reproduced, scanned, or distributed in any printed or electronic form without permission. Thank you for respecting the hard work of this author.
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I would love to hear from you, come connect with me here:
http://www.fayesonjabooks.com
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[email protected]
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Click the yellow Find Out More link button below to get started
About The Author
Faye Sonja is a multi-voiced writer who aspires to use different voices in telling her stories, seeing characters coming alive through the multi-faceted writing styles give her great satisfaction.
As a young girl, Faye Sonja has been fascinated with stories of the Old West, especially the theme of Mail Order Bride where a woman will find the courage to leave her homeland, take the plunge to seek out the love of her life out there in the unknown land.
Such an act requires bravery, such an act requires faith. It takes a woman with strong Christian faith to step out on such a pursuit for her love.
It is Faye's desire that readers will once again have the courage to believe in love again from reading her books, to be inspired through the characters in her story who through perseverance, in the face of obstacles, overcame the hurdles using that simple faith and belief of theirs.
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Here's what real readers are saying about Faye Sonya books :
Brides of El Paso Book3
The Doctor's Flawed Bride with a Lisp
Writer's a litter different from the other authors I have been reading. She has a very good story and keeps your interest up. ~ Peggy Primavera
Mail Order Brides of Western Romance Book3
The Deaf Bride and The Sensible Teacher
It touch me so much because it's about deaf just like myself. I'm deaf also it showed that we can do anything for being deaf. Thank Faye Sonja for great writing a stories of handicapped and etc. ~ Doxiesmom3
Bride of Perry Lake Book1
The Big Feisty Bride tamed by Her Scarred Banker
I actually really enjoyed this book and I'm very interested in the fact that it's the first in a series. The author did a great job of making the characters relatable. The story itself shone, especially because it was romantic and sweet, and also a clean romance. The other thing I liked was that it wasn't predictable, which made the story an enjoyable read. ~ Cassandra
The Archer Sisters of Goldrush Book1
ADELINE - The Strong-willed Bride for Her Lonely Farmer
This was an entertaining short story for a sunny afternoon. Adeline is a little more strong willed than what makes a really likable character for me, but James is a keeper. All in all Addie and James' story encourages me to move on to Amelia's story (2) and then Averil's (3), too when it's completed at the end of this month. ~ J. Smith
Three Brides for Three War Comrades Book2
Ashamed, Beaten & Saved by Her Burned Hero
This the second story of the series was as good as the first, now I am looking forward to reading the last story of the series. ~ Jilm
Comment & Review on Social Media- Facebook
I love your books they are so easy to read and they are great I have right many of your books in my library, I particularly like you boxed sets with the stories leading into the next,keep them coming my friend as I have a lot of time and i intend to spend it reading now that I've retired and can read until I get sleepy and need to go to sleep! Thank you very much!. ~ Margie Cox
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Dedication
Jerry:
Hello. I'm looking for my wife.
.....but our little company had a good night tonight. A really big night. But it wasn't complete, it wasn't nearly close to being in the same vicinity as complete, because I couldn't share it with you. I couldn't hear your voice, or laugh about it with you. I missed my wife. We live in a cynical world, and we work in a business of tough competitors, I love you. You complete me. And I just...I…..
Dorothy:
Shut up. Just shut up. You had me at hello.
“Jerry Maguire” (1996)
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To those who have found the love of their lives:
May you never stay out of love, taking every effort to rekindle the magic moment when both of you first held hands.
To those who are waiting for the love of their lives:
May you never lose that belief in love, that magical moment when all that really matters is to fall in love.
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A note from the author
In this boxed set you will find 22 (7 Series & 1 Standalone Bonus) complete Mail Order Bride Romances.
Series 01
BRIDES OF SALT LAKE CITY
Series 02
THE ARCHER SISTERS OF GOLDRUSH
Series 03
BRIDES OF PERRY LAKE
Series 04
THREE BRIDES FOR THREE WAR COMRADES
Series 05
THREE BRIDES OF HAINES PRESS
Series 06
MAIL ORDER BRIDES OF WESTERN ROMANCE
Series 07
BRIDES FOR THREE SEASONS
Bonus Standalone
Brother Promised to His Resistant Bride
I love writing about theme with such strong personalities and deep moral values.
I hope you will enjoy this boxed set.
ADA’S SECRET- A TALE OF THE BIG BEAUTIFUL BRIDE
BRIDES OF SALT LAKE CITY
BOOK 1
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b o o k 1
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BIG BEAUTIFUL Ada needs to flee fast for her danger & she becomes the bride for a SMALL man-Bobby. What she doesn't know is that Bobby is not just small, he’s a prosecutor and his best friend is the city marshal! And Ada’s first friend is the MARSHAL’S WIFE!
Will her secret stay hidden and what happens if Bobby discover the truth?
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1
Fresh Start
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“ I have to give her a chance… This is
her new life now. We all have a past."
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North-West California
1872
Ada looked again at the photo of Mr. Bobby Grant, the man she had travelled to marry. He was a small man, but next to her he’d look completely tiny.
But Ada had no choice. She had to try as this was the fastest way she could get away from Salt Lake City, before they came for her…The coach stopped and Ada took a deep breath. Just smile and act jolly. Try not to cry if he’s horrified.
The second Ada Bartholomew’s short leather boots hit the dusty gravel of the main street in the small city of Brookstown, California, she prayed her past would stay
behind her and that this was far enough away from Utah for trouble not to catch up. She wiped her palms on her handkerchief and dabbed at her brow.
A new life. A fresh start. She prayed the man who – according to Miss Kitty at the Travelling Hearts Mail Order Bride Company in Salt Lake City – had been waiting two years for a bride would be here to see if anyone turned up off the coach today.
She adjusted the scarf around her neck. He’d sent it to Miss Kitty, for his future bride to wear for identification as he hadn’t the desire to write back and forth. If she didn’t want to stay once she’d met him, she was simply to hand the scarf to him and leave again. But she couldn’t leave because she had nowhere else to go. Ada was desperate.
In one day her stable family life had fallen to pieces. Her father told her and her sisters to leave, as he was getting a new wife. He said she and Anna had come from the pauper house, the same as Emma. Then he’d sent them to those awful lodgings.
She picked up her one bag once the driver handed it down from the top of the stage coach. This town wasn’t tiny in the least by the looks of it, but the railway hadn’t quite gotten here yet, so the last half-day’s travel was in the bumpy coach. She looked around and couldn’t see anyone fitting the man’s picture.
For certain she’d know him if he was here. Ada thought again about the sight they’d make together with her being such a generous dress size and height.
She turned the photo over again and read the back, then turned it back and studied him. Bobby Grant looked extremely thin, and his round glasses made his wiry features more prominent. He was listed on the paperwork as being shorter than her also. Her heart pounded in fear; he might think her unattractive and send her home again. That would be a disaster.
Leaving her home and her sisters was very nerve-wracking. Ada had to set a good example and be brave. She just hoped her sister, Anna, and foster sister, Emma, would be alright without her. They’d never spent a night apart since Emma came to live in their home as a newborn babe. Ada had been five and loved the new baby as much as she loved her two year old sister. She’d taken care of them both right from the start and kept them safe.
But everything had changed now and Ada had to separate from them. It was the only way.
Ada looked around some more, and the stagecoach pulled away behind the small station house. No one was here looking for her, that much was clear. Her heart sank a little at the stupidity of it all. He’d probably gotten here a hundred times on a Friday and been disappointed, and had given up hope. She was such an idiot thinking it would be this easy.
Still, she couldn’t think like that. Miss Kitty was very adamant about it and she wouldn’t send her on a wild goose chase halfway across the country. Her business depended on positive endings. Presumably he lived here in Brookstown, so she could find him. Surely he’d have let Miss Kitty know if he’d married already.
Unless it was recent…Well, it was no use thinking the worst and hanging around out here wondering; she’d best get into the station office and ask. Logically speaking, if he’d been coming here every Friday for two years, then he’d be known, even if only in gossip circles.
Being the subject of cruel gossip was something she could relate to. Ada swallowed her nervousness and tried not to think about how ridiculous and stupid she’d feel asking about someone they had never heard of or, worse still, never existed.
She’d be laughed at behind her back again and made to look desperate. She was no stranger to jibes and nasty comments about her size but it still hurt her feelings. Ada wondered how people could be so cruel and judge a person’s character on their appearance that way. She wasn’t dirty or smelly, and her clothes were well-sewn and always the highest caliber of material.
She was sure to wear the latest in fashion, and she was always prompt and polite. Ada kept a bubbly and helpful personality because she refused to show the shallow people who thought her to be lazy and greedy, or pregnant and unwed, that she was anything of the sort. She certainly wasn’t going to starve herself to get their approval.
Inside the station, the lady behind the desk looked over the top of her spectacles and her high bun of grey hair looked cemented in place. “May I help you?”
Ada gave her a broad smile. “I hope so. My name is Ada, and I’m here to meet with a Mr. Bobby Grant. I know this town is large, but I wondered if you knew him. According to my information he’s been coming here quite a while hoping for a wife…” Ada slid his picture across the counter and the lady looked at it, but she was already nodding her head.
“Oh, Praise be to God. I simply can’t believe it. He’d just rushed in this morning in a fine lather and asked if any lady should arrive today, to ask them to wait. I was about to come out when I saw you coming in.” She had her hand on her heart and a smile that reached her eyes.
By the look of the way they crinkled around the outside, she smiled a lot. “Ada…I’m June and I’m so pleased to meet you. I have prayed every night for so long that someone would get off that coach and meet Bobby and stay.” She held out her hand and Ada took it and squeezed.
“You have no idea how often I thought this was somehow a great big joke.”
“Dear girl, he’s never once said he believed anyone would come and stay; in fact, Bobby told me many times that no woman would. But he’s turned up every Friday for two years, so hope must live in his heart somewhere.”
Ada smiled and nodded. “It’s quite an unusual situation but more than suited me as I wanted to start a new chapter in my life as soon as possible.” Then she fell silent; she didn’t want to say too much in case anyone ever came asking.
One day, when she knew she could trust him, she would tell Bobby the story, and hope he believed her.
June stood up. “Please take a seat over there and I’ll get you a cup of coffee. If you’d like one?”
“I’d love one. How long will Mr. Grant be, did he say?”
“He said by five. An important meeting with the Marshal. That’s my husband. They’re firm friends, you know. Bobby’s an upstanding man with the law, the city prosecutor and highly respected. He has a sharp mind and is good with numbers, so Marshal Blake calls on Bobby often to help out with his administration. You two must come to supper once you’re settled and I must stop gossiping.” June smiled at Ada again.
Ada swallowed her nervousness back down and pasted a smile on her face. “If it works out, I’d love to come to supper. Thank you.”
“He’s a little quiet and broody. But I did see him smile once, so I know he’s got it in him. Just needs a good enough reason…” June beamed another huge smile at Ada and went out back.
The nerves made Ada feel quite light-headed; she could only pray that Salt Lake City’s long arm of the law wasn’t long enough to reach any of the lawmen in these parts, Marshal and prosecutor included. Perhaps it would be best to hand him his scarf and leave again, go elsewhere and look for an answer. It had all seemed so obvious in the heat of things yesterday morning.
It was, after all, self-defense, but the only witness she had was her foster sister, Emma, who’d been to jail already for something she never did. Ada had never held out much hope of anyone taking Emma’s word for it being self-defense. Emma was frantic that they get away because going back to jail for her was worse than anything else.
For God-fearing, honest women, they really were in a pickle. Emma then urged them to do what she’d apparently been doing for a few months now after seeing the ads on a noticeboard where she worked. She’d been writing a gentleman with a view to marriage.
So Ada became a mail order bride to get away from Salt Lake City, to be on the safe side. Ada left the very next morning and the other two would be secretly housed by Miss Kitty for a fee, which Ada had paid.
Ada never actually thought she’d killed the awful man who tried to drug her. But she never hung around to find out because Emma, who’d just walked in just as Ada had pushed him, was in a panic.
They left right away before anyo
ne saw them in that place with a politician who was known around the city to frequent prostitutes. Ada had seen him in the bakery ogling her and it made her skin crawl. She couldn’t believe the man she’d thought was her father all these years would set her up with a man like that. But she supposed the power of being a public figure had swayed his judgement.
“Here you are, dear. My, you look worried. Is everything alright? I guess it’s a scary time in a young woman’s life. But give Bobby some time and he’ll make a fine husband.”
“I do hope he likes me. I know he’s been waiting a long time, and he may not be overly fussy…but it would be nice to at least get along and be friends.”
“You’ll never find anyone as loyal as Bobby. What he lacks in the physical he makes up for in the mind. He’s as fierce as a warrior in the courtroom, he just needs some confidence in other areas. I hope you come to know the good inside Bobby before you judge the outside.” June spoke quietly and placed Ada’s coffee down.
“I’m in no position to judge anyone from outward appearances, June. I can assure you I’ve wished the same of people many times regarding myself.”
“I think you’ll get along just fine in Brookstown. As long as folk here know they can trust you, they’ll take good care of you.”
“Of course.” Ada sipped her coffee.
“Did you want sugar or cream? I never asked.”
“This is fine, thank you. Lovely.”
“I’ll get you another as soon as you’re ready. Just an hour to go. Here, read the local newspaper. That’ll help you get to know what’s about.”