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Jilted by love, Cara Lindsay flees an unscrupulous relative in 1833, and sails from Boston to Mexico?s untamed Nuevo California, seeking a new life with a beloved aunt and uncle. Heartbroken on arrival to find that her aunt has died, and her uncle is drowning his grief in whiskey, Cara realizes she must find work and another place to live. To survive, she takes a companionship position inland, on... More

Jilted by love, Cara Lindsay flees an unscrupulous relative in 1833, and sails from Boston to Mexico?s untamed Nuevo California, seeking a new life with a beloved aunt and uncle. Heartbroken on arrival to find that her aunt has died, and her uncle is drowning his grief in whiskey, Cara realizes she must find work and another place to live. To survive, she takes a companionship position inland, on El Rancho Monte Vista, to the wife of its owner, the tough and irresistible Don Miguel Navarro. Although Cara was not informed about this prior to arriving on the ranch, the wife of the popular and respected Spanish ranchero suffered permanent brain damage in a suspicious fall. She was in the late stages of pregnancy with their first baby when she tumbled down a flight of stairs. Mentally, she?s now a young child. Full responsibility for the ranch had fallen on Miguel?s shoulders three years earlier when his parents, aunt, and uncle were slaughtered in a raid by renegade Indians. Since then, life on the seventy thousand acre spread had been difficult; now, suddenly, after his wife?s accident, it was not only more dangerous, it was incredibly lonely as well. Hiring Cara as companion to his simple-minded wife, his heart opens to her kindness and beauty like parched earth to rain. Despite a clashing first encounter with her employer, when Cara challenges him for neglecting the care of his wife, Cara finds herself inevitably drawn to the man. Her feelings for him ignite. At first excited by the richness of the new country--its tastes and scents, her encounters with its native peoples, and the Spaniards and Mexicans--Cara gradually realizes there are undercurrents there she does not understand. The dangers she?d been warned about are real. Her initial reception by Miguel and his remaining aunt, his household manager, had been cool. There were incidents that led her to suspect someone hated her enough to hurt or kill her. As Miguel?s attentions toward her grow, she finds herself the target of the apparent envy of the sullen, sultry daughter of the owner of the nearest ranch. The woman appears to want Miguel for herself. Miguel?s cousin, whose parents were killed in the raid, works Monte Vista with him. As he senses the growing attraction between Miguel and Cara, he attempts to entice her away from any closeness to Miguel until she becomes afraid of him. Cara feels she?s caught in a vice between the woman and the two cousins. Loving Miguel, knowing he returns her feelings, but aware they can never be together, Cara plans to leave the ranch. She would never let herself become the mistress of any man. But she learns she has no place to stay until the ships sail for Boston again months away. Superstition says that when the bells of Monte Vista cry, someone will die. Two deaths have already occurred. Cara suspects the bells may one day cry for her, and until she can leave for Boston she?s trapped in the midst of danger and an impossible love.

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