Shadows of Yesterday

LEIGH . . . She was terrifyingly alone on a Texas highway about to deliver her first child when a rugged stranger in a pickup truck stopped to help her. Leigh Bransom had lost her husband eight months before when he was tragically killed on the job. This fateful meeting on a lonesome highway brought a handsome, new man into her life...yet he was a man with secrets and the power to break her heart again.
CHAD . . . He pursued a dangerous business, and his past was a mystery he kept hidden. He was determined to make Leigh care for him, but there were no guarantees that his love could protect her from her worst fears.
"Ma’am, is anything wrong? Can I help you?” Leigh Bransom didn’t even see the man until he knocked on the window of her car. Overwhelmed by the pain that gripped the lower part of her body, she had been incognizant of all else. Now, lifting her head from the steering wheel and swiveling it toward the voice that had distracted her, she moaned in renewed agony. Her would-be rescuer looked like anything but a knight in shining armor. “Are you all right?” he asked. No, she wasn’t, but she didn’t want to admit it to this rough-looking man who could easily get away with any crime he chose to commit on this lonely stretch of highway. His clothes were filthy, stained with grease and sweat. His large brass belt buckle with the state seal of Texas on it was at Leigh’s eye level as he bent from what must be a height of at least six feet to peer at her through the window. The well-worn jeans and short-sleeved plaid cotton shirt fit a large muscular frame. A battered straw cowboy hat cast a sinister shadow over the man’s face. Amid the pains Leigh felt her heart contract with terror."