He reformed her question, and her stomach knotted. Now, he asked too much of her.

"I asked you first," she whispered. She swallowed her regret, a wall erecting between them. He wanted those words from her, but she couldn't say them. For in saying those three words, she'd commit herself to this, to him, and that was the trouble.

She'd said the vows - to have and to hold, in sickness and in health, 'til death do them part. She'd said them, though, with a gun at her back and a stranger's hand in hers. By admitting she loved him, the words took on meaning and held requirements. It meant she'd stay by his side always and maybe never see her family again. She became responsible to him.

A tear rolled down her cheek. She swiped it away.

Michael cleared his throat. "I love you, Anne. My question is, why you don't love me back?"

-----

Michael O'Fallen simply wants to survive. A poor Irish boy living in post-Civil War New York, the events of one horrible night send him running far south to unsettled Florida and an uncertain future. Promise-bound to a group of outlaws in an effort to escape his crime, their hidden plans for him loom sinister on the horizon. What is it he's been brought here to do?

The oldest of her siblings, Anne Sawyer is the one her poor mama depends on. Her papa is harsh and abusive. He drinks too much and gambles away what little they have. Rumors that he's lost their house come full circle the night the new owner comes to collect. Except, it seems what her papa gambled this time wasn't the house at all, but her.

Carried into the darkness in a stranger's grasp, she and he are forced to marry with a gun to their backs. But the many dangers they face in their tenuous marriage soon take second place to the darkness in his past. Darkness that might destroy them unless they look to heaven for love and redemption.

Book 1 of the Florida Irish Series by best-selling author, SUZANNE D. WILLIAMS. A novel.