Author Lena Goldfinch: The Bartered Bride Singing Librarian Blog Tour

This week...

Singing Librarian is sponsoring a fun book blog tour for The Bartered Bride with reviews and a Giveaway! Visit each tour stop (listed below) to enter Giveaway.

Series: The Brides Series
Genre: Sweet Historical Western Romance
Inspirational / Christian
Publisher: Indigo Road Publishing
Publication Date: December 1, 2015
Number of pages: 390

What's a man to do when a "bartered bride" needs a rescue?

Jem Wheeler has always been a survivor. He just wants to make a fresh start in Colorado Springs after the loss of his wife. But then he happens upon a young mute woman being sold off to the highest bidder. He wasn't looking for a mail-order bride. He wasn't looking to rescue anyone either. But desperate circumstances can drive a good man to do things he hadn't planned on doing...

When Jem steps into Annie's life, she's not expecting anyone to save her. Mute from birth, she's just using all her wits to survive. All she's ever really wanted is a family of her own. For someone to see her. To look at her long enough to hear the things she can't say.

Could this bride be just what a grieving widower needs to make a happy home?

Annie nodded, suddenly shy. Unable to look at him.

She began to rise and suddenly Jem’s hand was in hers, supporting her as she stood. Warm tingles swam up her arm and filled her everywhere. Their eyes met, and in his she found a flicker of awareness that stunned her. He was looking at her. He saw her.

Annie was struck anew by the color of his eyes. A sort of smoky blue, not unlike the sky before a storm. How dark his brows and eyelashes were. She studied him, rapt. They were quite attractive eyes. She felt herself falling into them, everything else fading away. Time stopped. It was as if they shared a passing of souls. A fanciful thought. As if you could share your soul with someone just looking at them. Nevertheless, the feeling lingered.

His hand around hers was so warm, so strong. A hard-working kind of hand. A man’s hand. Lightly dusted with hair across the back of his fingers. Tanned.

She ran her thumb over the back of his, marveling at the rush of sensation that small motion brought. How had she never realized how sensitive her thumb was?

And then she had the almost irresistible urge to bring his hand up to her face and brush a kiss across his knuckles. Not that she would ever do something so daring, so improper and—and forward. She shouldn’t have even touched his thumb in such a way. Why, it was practically intimate the way it had felt, like something a real wife might do. But he was a stranger. For one short moment it might’ve felt like she’d known him forever, but that wasn’t how it was between them.

Oh, Lord. She’d touched him.

Annie blushed fiercely, becoming aware of Jem’s gaze on her, watching her in a rather fascinated fashion. She watched as his expression shifted through a range of emotions: surprise, confusion, and finally a shuttered expression she couldn’t read. He dropped her hand as if it had become a hot ember and stepped back.

Annie briefly closed her eyes, effectively releasing herself from the spell of Jem’s beautiful eyes and all her fanciful thoughts about souls passing back and forth in a simple gaze. The truth was, she was a woman standing there in bare feet, dressed in the world’s most awful clothes.

What could Jem have possibly seen of interest in her?

Nothing but her own wild imagination, that’s what.