The Prairie Prince
by Marcia Lynn McClure

(Please note, this title is not available in bookstores.)

Order now for only $10.95…a savings of $2.00 off the retail price

Last spring Born for Thorton’s Sake appeared in printed book form launching the mid-sized Marcia Lynn McClure printed books!  With the enormous popularity of this mid-size, e-book-to-print-book title, Sudden Storms followed in September!   We are pleased to announce that this May Day, 2008 finds The Prairie Prince available in printed book form, as well!   

Now available to order, The Prairie Prince promises to be another Marcia Lynn McClure treasure!   Order your copy of The Prairie Prince and complete your mid-sized Marcia Lynn McClure book collection today!  

(*With initial orders surges expected to exceed those of Born for Thorton’s Sake and Sudden Storms, please note that your book may ship 5-7 days from the date of your order.)  

Excerpt from The Prairie Prince  

The day was glorious!  After making certain the villainous new owner of the south one hundred twenty was nowhere about, Katie sat down in the prairie grass beneath her favorite pine tree.  Sighing, feeling somehow defeated, she studied the beauty of the land her father had stripped from her and her brother.  How would she find any solitude now?  Where would she go to read and think in peace?  The renewed realization of the loss brought tears to her eyes as she reached out and plucked a wild daisy growing nearby.  She hated Stover Steele for bribing her father into selling him the land.  She hoped his little triplet half-sisters kicked him in the shins, pulled his hair, and dipped his long-johns in syrup!  She hoped his homely spinster sister never married and nagged him incessantly for the rest of his life!

Still, Katie knew she was wicked to wish ill on a man she’d never met.  It was her father who sold the land.  How was this newcomer to Custer’s Creek to know how devastating his purchase would be to Jared and Katie Matthews?  She sighed and looked at the flower she held in her hand.

“He loves me,” she said to herself as she plucked a petal from the flower.  “He loves me not,” she said, plucking another petal.  She felt even worse, having plucked the petals from the innocent bloom when she knew darn well there was no one to be plucking petals about.  Placing the maimed flower in her lap she looked up into the splendor of the sky.  Only yesterday she’d read, slept, dreamt beneath her tree and the blue of nature’s curtain.  Only yesterday the possibility of princes, heroes, and happy endings seemed real.  Now, with the loss of her favorite space on earth, her happy dreams seemed lost, too.

Katie removed her shoes and stockings and set them aside.  The air and grass felt good on her bare feet.  How she hated shoes and stockings!  Certainly they were helpful, necessary in protecting feet from the elements, rocks, goat-heads, and various other things feet were exposed to.  But they were uncomfortable and confining all the same.  To the constant exasperation of her mother, Katie preferred not to wear them.

“You’re in long skirts now, Katie,” her mother had reminded her only the week before.  “Bare feet are for little boys—completely improper now that you’re a young lady.”

Katie didn’t care, however, and stretched out beneath her tree, watching the clouds lazily drift overhead as she wiggled her toes.  Soon the breeze’s soft breath and the warmth of the day lulled Katie to sleep and she dreamt she was a princess, whose beauty and grace bewitched a strong and handsome prince into becoming smitten with her.  The prince of Katie’s dreams was always the same—tall, dark-haired, and wildly handsome!  Though his face was never truly clear in her mind’s unconscious wanderings, the knowledge he was handsome permeated her sleeping wonders.  Katie loved these visions of her dream-born prince.  They somehow brought her a secret delight, a hope in the possibility of fairytales being true.  And so, beneath her favorite pine, the breeze playing through her hair, Katie dreamt of her prince, of happiness and true love.

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It was the whispering which began to wake Katie; the quiet giggles and soft whispers of little girls involved in mischief, which first interrupted her beautiful dreams.

“Put it on her head now, Bunny,” a young voice whispered. 

“No!” another quietly argued.  “It should go ‘round her neck—like a necklace.”

“Hush! Both of ya!” yet another young voice scolded.  “I made it, and I’ll decide where it goes.”

Katie opened her eyes slowly, for the clouds had left the sky and the brightness of the sun was nearly blinding.  Raising a hand to shade her eyes from the brilliant light of midday, Katie looked up to see three identical faces smiling down at her.

“You’re trespassin’, lady,” one of the girls said.  “But don’t ya worry—we purttied ya up a bit so’s Stover won’t be so mad.”

“What?” Katie asked, still emerging from the incoherence of a deep sleep.

“I’m Bonnie,” one of the girls said.

“And I’m Bunny,” another said.

“Just call me Berty,” the third said, smiling down at Katie.

“I’m…I’m Katie Matthews,” Katie stammered, uncertain as to what else she could say in response.

“Oh!  Then you must be the daughter of that Matthews feller Stover bought this here land from,” Bonnie said.  “Pleased to meet ya, Katie Matthews,” the girl added, smiling.

“Pleased to meet you, too,” Katie said.

“Bonnie?  Bunny?  Berty Steele!  What in tarnation are y’all up to?” At the sound of the angry masculine voice, Katie froze.  Realization was quickly seeping into her mind.  Realization she’d been caught trespassing by Stover Steele’s three triplet half-sisters, and by the sound of the deep voice hollering at them now, by Stover Steele himself.  

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