The Doctor's Homecoming

Coming Home Was Hard

But Emma Sinclair feared leaving again would be even harder. Returning had resurrected all the joy and pain of her girlhood when she'd loved--and lost--rancher Wyatt Barlow. Was their renewed acquaintance a second chance at happiness--or just a heartbreaking game of capricious fate?

Sixteen Years Ago He'd Driven Her Away For Her Own Good

Now she was Dr. Emma Sinclair, who'd readily helped Wyatt's pregnant daughter and seemed determined to reunite their feuding families. But a future together was impossible, for there was still no way that a hardworking rancher could ever give Emma the life she deserved...!

Dual romances, disarming characters and a lush landscape make first-time author Bridges's late 19th-century romance a delightful read. When Dr. Emma Sinclair returns home to Pine Creek, Mont., after years of medical study in Philadelphia, her first patient is 16-year-old Melissa Barlow, the daughter of Emma's first love, Wyatt. Despite Melissa's premature labor, Emma successfully delivers her healthy baby boy. The joyful event isn't enough to overcome the enmity between the Sinclairs and the Barlows, however. The two families have been feuding like the Montagues and the Capulets ever since Emma's father accidentally killed a Barlow, and the fact that Emma's 17-year-old brother, hot-headed Cole, is the father of Melissa's child, has only worsened the gap between them. Believing that Cole will be an unfit husband, Wyatt refuses to let him marry Melissa, an act that propels the young couple to run away. While Emma and Wyatt pursue Melissa and Cole, they come to realize that they still care for each other, but they must first contend with a Barlow cousin who is hunting Cole to exact his own diabolic form of justice. Inevitably, old misconceptions are cleared and both couples acknowledge their love for each other and their new extended families in a saccharine denouement that is likely to satisfy most fans of western romances.

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