With her sister and hard-drinking father in tow, she needed all her strength for the long trek westward. But Abby could hold her own with any man, until she met a rugged gunman named Rourke...a man who roused the unspoken yearnings of her passionate soul.Rourke was a battle-scarred Union veteran, hired to guard the wagon train. A loner by choice and by fate, his heart was moved by Abby's plight--though the young beauty proudly refused his aid. Yet with the wagons rolling on through dusty plains and treacherous deserts, a tenderness bloomed between them as he taught her how to survive in a brutal land. Mile by mile, she grew to adore this magnificent man, and when he touched her she longed to be his alone. But as she tasted rapture's first, wild depths, she faced a bitter secret from the gunman's violent past. With Rourke in mortal danger, they would challenge destiny itself--to save the love and happiness they discovered on a perilous...Passage West...