Stranded on the Prairie

  FRANKIE LOVE

  Copyright

  Cover Design by Cormar Covers

  Copyright © and 2025 by Frankie Love

  All rights reserved.

  No part of this book may be reproduced in any form or by any electronic or mechanical means, including information storage and retrieval systems, without written permission from the author, except for the use of brief quotations in a book review.

  Click HERE to grab a free steamy read from Frankie Love!

  About

  STRANDED ON THE PRAIRIE

  By Frankie Love

  Riley is a yoga teacher with a heart wide open and a suitcase full of crystals. When she wakes up in the wild, she’s lost… until Wyatt finds her.

  He’s all grit and gravel—boots, beard, and a broken past. The kind of man who doesn’t believe in fate... until she crashes into his.

  Now they’re stuck together. One bed. One fire. And one undeniable pull that changes everything.

  Time-travel, prairie-style

  Free-spirited heroine meets guarded cowboy

  Slow burn with a hard twist

  Fate, heat, and second chances

  Somewhere between the stars and the soil… she just might find her forever...

  Contents

  1. Riley

  2. Wyatt

  3. Riley

  4. Riley

  5. Wyatt

  6. Riley

  7. Wyatt

  8. Riley

  9. Wyatt

  10. Riley

  Epilogue

  About the Author

  CHAPTER 1

  Riley

  Idraw in a deep lungful of the clean Colorado air, close my eyes, and feel a smile cross my lips.

  Ah. This is what I’ve been waiting for...

  When I flick my gaze open again, I cast it around the gorgeous landscape surrounding me – the greenery that stretches on as far as I can see, punctuated by trees that look as though they have been standing there for centuries.

  I can hear the rush of water just out of sight, the steady flow of it a far cry from the usual rush of traffic outside the windows of my yoga studio. Checking my phone, I make sure that I’m not too far from the path, and then cut down to scoop up some fresh water from the river and catch my breath.

  Mom would have loved this.

  The thought, as it so often does, crosses my mind without warning – I do my best to brush it aside.

  Mom would have wanted me to enjoy it, too, without beating myself up over everything.

  But either way, she’s not here, and I have to make the most of this little adventure that I can.

  As I pick my way down the hill towards the rushing water below, I feel a little twinge at the thought of having to go back to the city when this is all over.

  Not that there isn’t plenty there I love, of course. No oat milk lattes out here in the forest, that’s for sure. But there’s something about feeling the soft earth under your feet and breathing in the clean, unpolluted air and drinking deep from the ice-cold river water that makes me feel like I’ve been scrubbed out, right down to my soul.

  I need to start doing this more often. Hey, maybe I could even start holding yoga retreats out here – a hike out to the hills, and then a few savasanas when we got up here in the setting sun...

  I stoop down to fill my flask from the river, the bite of the water rushing over my hand, and wonder if anyone would actually sign up for something like that.

  I mean, if I like it here, I have to think that there would be plenty of my students who feel the same way. The release of being in nature, even just for a little while, forces you to consider your breath in a way that being in the city⁠—

  "Shit!” I cry out, my voice echoing around the small valley that the river runs through. My foot skids on a mossy rock, and my shoes slips beneath the water, soaking my socks with freezing water.

  I reach a hand out to balance myself, but, before I can get my bearings, a sudden rush behind me draws my attention. My head whips around, and, just like that, I feel the weight of the water against my legs as they are knocked out from underneath me, sending my flask flying into the air.

  The last thing I see before I hit the riverbed is my pack flopping just out of reach, and then, a second later, everything goes black.

  I don’t know how long I am out for, but when I break the surface of the water again, I gasp for air, groping and coughing as I expell the chill from my lungs. My clothes are soaked to my skin, and the air prickles with a discomforting cold all of a sudden.

  I tip my head back, looking to the sky above – the blue’s been replaced by a sudden, threatening gather of clouds. Shit, how long was I out for...?

  I glance around for my pack, praying to everything good and pure that my phone didn’t get drenched in the fall – but I can’t see it anywhere.

  Shivering, I scramble out of the river and climb on to a large rock for a better vantage point, looking around for some kind of explanation.

  What the hell...?

  Did it get washed downriver? I didn’t think it landed in the water, but maybe I managed to send it flying when I tripped. Oh, crap, I don’t know if I can find my way out without my phone. My sense of direction has always been terrible, and-

  Suddenly, a chill wind rushes through the valley, and I wrap my arms around myself – it strikes me that, without my pack, in drenched clothes, in a place I don’t know well, I could be in trouble.

  Heaving myself towards the bank, I drag myself back up towards the path. If I just follow it back down to where I came from, then I won’t be⁠—

  Wait. The path is gone. Or, at least, I think it is. It’s certainly not where I remember it being, cutting between the tall trees and the emerald grass.

  My brows knit together in a panic as I cast my gaze this way and that, but there’s no sign of it, not here, not anywhere...

  I mutter another curse to myself, then squeeze my eyes shut and try to pull myself back into the present.

  Okay. No path, no pack, no phone, and the weather seems to have turned against me, too.

  There has to be a way out of this, right?

  The universe wouldn’t have dumped something like this on my head if I couldn’t cope with it, I just need to find a way through, one way or another...

  I settle on a direction, and start to walk, my entire body practically seized from the cold. I wait for the clouds to part and show the sunshine that I saw beaming down before, but it doesn’t come.

  If anything, they just grow more and more threatening, until, at last, a rain of sleet drops out of the sky. I dive beneath a tree for cover, but it doesn’t do much to keep the cold off of me, dripping into my clothes and soaking in to my flesh to ensure that what little of me that isn’t frozen soon ends up that way.

  I sink down to the ground, my arms wrapped around myself, my teeth chattering as I watch the sleet turn to snow in front of me. Why the hell is it snowing in Colorado at this time of year? I checked the weather before I came out, and it was meant to be nothing but sunshine as far as I could see. But this...

  My eyes begin to grow heavy, and a sudden wash of exhaustion hits me hard. Maybe I just need to rest for a while, and then I can start back on to the trail again, try to find someone who can point me in the right direction...

  But, before I can grow too comfortable, something catches my attention – the sound of footsteps cutting through the woods, a man’s voice, low, the rumble of it cutting through the tiredness in my body.

  My gaze flickers open, and sure enough, there before me is a man who looks like he could have come straight from the front cover of some period-piece drama on a streaming service.

  He’s got a crop of brown hair, streaked with a few lighter patches from the sun, and he’s wearing a heavy leather coat over what looks to be well-worn cotton pants and a matching shirt. His brow is knitted together with obvious concern as he takes me in, and, as I part my lips to try and say something to him, he reaches down to pull me up.

  "Come on. With me."

  "I just got lost," I blurt out, my head kind of screwy from the cold and the tiredness. "I lost my phone back there, I don’t know how to get Maps on-"

  "What are you talking about?” he mutters, as he slips an arm around my waist, drawing mine around his shoulders. Whatever protest or explanation that I might have had vanishes just as quick as I thought of it when I feel the warmth of his body against mine.

  I guess I shouldn’t be letting some random guy carry me off into the woods, but it’s not like I have many better options right now.

  "My phone," I try again, but my voice is weaker now, not exactly convincing. "I was just..."

  "You need to warm up," he grunts to me, tightening his grip around my waist as he leads me further into the dark woods. The blackness is spattered with white where the snow is falling quickly around us, and I lean on him for support, my legs barely grazing the ground as he carries me away from the cold.

  My clothes are still clinging to my body, freezing against my skin, and I know he’s right. The cold is starting to feel a little too close to comfort for me right now, and if I don’t get out of the snow, I might be in serious trouble.

  And besides...the warmth of his skin, the strength of his muscular body, and the glint in his dark brown eyes hardly leave me much room for argument, d

o they?

  CHAPTER 2

  Wyatt

  Icrouch by the fire, stoking the flames to get them up a little higher, and cast a glance to the girl tucked under a blanket on the armchair opposite me.

  I grimace. She’s still shivering. I’ve tried my best to warm her up, but I don’t want to move too quick or she could get chillblains. What the hell was she doing out there dressed like that, anyway?

  In clothes so tight they look like underthings, in the middle of winter like this. It’s a miracle I stumbled across her in time, not that she would have been easy to miss, with her red hair and olive skin. She doesn’t look like she belongs here, though I can’t exactly work out why – still, not like I could have left her out there to die.

  I’m not having that on my conscience, that’s for sure.

  Outside, the wind howls against the windows, rattling them in the frame. The storm’ll be gone by the end of the night, I’m sure, but she’ll still be here, and I don’t know what I’m going to do with her now she is.

  My mind drifts, briefly, to Boone and Elias, the wives they’ve taken in the last year or so. Both of them having appeared nigh-on out of nowhere, in the middle of the woods, in the midst of a storm, looking like they came from somewhere else entirely.

  Is she one of them?

  She might be. Until she wakes up, I guess I’m not going to have an answer.

  I lift my hands to warm them in front of the fire, and, for a brief moment, my mind returns to the comforts of the town nearby. I can practically hear my father in my head, trying to coax me back home again. We’ve got everything you need here, boy, he’d tell me. And when you find a wife, you’ll have even better reason to stay...

  I push the thought from my mind and rise to my feet, checking the pot of stew that I’ve had cooking over the fire since we got back. Not much in the way of good hunting out there, but I managed to pick up a couple of rabbits and a fox who I’ve skinned and added to the stew. It’ll keep me going for the next few days – and her, too, since she’s here.

  Not that I know anything about her.

  Not that I know if she’ll even want to stay when she wakes up.

  Finally, I hear movement behind me, and I glance around – her eyelids flutter, and she lifts her head, fingers bunching around the rough blanket I tossed over her when she came in.

  Partly to keep her warm, and partly to keep my mind from getting too drawn in to the way that her body looks under the confines of those tight clothes.

  Because then, I might have to admit that my reasons for bringing her here aren’t entirely altruistic. And it might have more to do with my body than the decency of my mind.

  She looks around, her gaze bleary for a moment, and then her brow furrows. She sits bolt-upright, the blanket half-falling from her body, displaying the curve of her breast beneath her skintight shirt. I avert my eyes quickly.

  "Where am I?" she demands, as she springs upright – but, it seems, the cold has seeped further into her bones than she realized, because she groans in pain, sinking back into chair and rubbing at her legs and arms.

  "I brought you back to my cabin," I reply, keeping my voice as steady as I can. "It was bitter cold out there. You wouldn’t have lasted long in that weather."

  She roves her gaze towards me, narrowing her eyes.

  "Did you take my phone?" she demands. I stare back at her, nonplussed.

  "I don’t know what you’re talkin’ about."

  "Well, I had a phone when I slipped into the water," she tells me accusatorily, stabbing her finger in my direction as she gathers the blanket around herself again. "And a whole pack, too. Someone must have taken it, and you’re the only person who-"

  "I didn’t take anything from you," I retort hotly, unappreciative of her tone. She reels back slightly, and I realize I’ve been harsher than I need to be.

  This girl was clearly on the brink of unconsciousness out there, no wonder she’s a little confused as to what the hell is going on. I haven’t had anyone in this house for long enough that it’s hard to remember how to act when someone is around like this, and I need to keep my tone in check.

  She sighs, rolling her eyes skywards.

  "Let me use your phone, then," she replies, glancing around. "What’s your wifi password..."

  "What the hell are you talking about?”

  She snorts slightly in surprise. Whatever answer she expected from me, that’s clearly not it.

  "I’m sorry, what year are you from?" she asks, an edge of sarcasm to her voice.

  "1857. What about you?”

  As soon as I come out with that, all the color drains from her face. Her hands tighten on the blanket once again, so much so that her knuckles turn white.

  "What?" she breathes, her eyes widening. She seems to be waiting for me to take it back and admit it’s nothing more than a joke, but I don’t see why I should.

  Did this girl just drop out of the damn sky? She’s sure acting like it, I just don’t know why.

  "You really don’t know what year it is?”

  "No, I know what years it is," she protests. "It’s 2025. I wouldn’t forget something like that. This is-"

  She glances around at the cabin – one I built with my own two hands, when I came out here myself ten years before. Not exactly the fanciest place in the world, but it’s home, and more than that, it’s freedom.

  She lets out a long, stuttering breath, as though it’s all starting to hit her like a ton of bricks.

  "You’re not serious, are you?” she whispers to me. "I mean, it’s not – it can’t be-"

  “25?” I repeat after her, my brain still hooked on that part of things. "That’s when you think it is?”

  "No, that’s when I know it is," she protests. "I was out walking in the woods, I was doing this hiking retreat to clear my head before I went back to my yoga studio, and-"

  "Yoga?" I reply, eyebrow cocking a little higher.

  "Come on, you must know what yoga is," she replies, a slight laugh to her voice. "I mean, it’s not as though-"

  I shake my head. She falls silent. A flash of panic crosses her face.

  "What are you trying to say?” she whispers to me, her breath hitching in the back of her throat like she can barely get the words out. "Is this...?"

  "I don’t know what this is," I reply. "But I-"

  Before I can say another word, there’s a knock at the door. I straighten up and head over to answer it. On the other side stands Boone and Cora, his wife, and he lifts his chin in greeting.

  "Didn’t have much luck catchin’ rabbits today," he remarks. "Was hoping you might be able to spare us a..."

  But he trails off as his gaze moves past me and towards the woman curled up on my armchair. Cora brushes past me at once, her belly swollen with her child, and drops down to her knees in front of the girl sitting in my armchair.

  "Are you alright?” she asks, her voice laced with genuine concern. The girl stares at her, her lips curled downward, clearly still as confused as ever.

  "I – I don’t know," the girl admits, and she looks to me. "He just told me it’s 1857. And I don’t-"

  "Oh, God," Cora mutters, reaching out to take her hand. "Another one, Boone."

  "Another one?” I ask, frowning.

  "Another what?” the girl asks.

  "What’s your name, sweetie?" Cora asks.

  "Riley," the girl replies. "But I-"

  "Riley, I don’t know how to tell you this, but whatever year you came from, that’s the better part of two centuries into the future now," Cora tells her softly. "The same thing happened to me. Let me guess, you were out here hiking alone, and...?”

  "I fell into the river," Riley confesses, her face draining of color. "And when I came to, all my things were gone, and I was-"

  "You were here," Cora finishes up for her, tightening her grip on her hand. "I know it’s hard to believe, but you’re not where you used to be. You’re not in the twenty-first century anymore. You...you travelled through time."

  I stare at Cora, glancing over to Boone if he seems to be reacting to his wife’s announcement with any kind of shock – but he doesn’t. He’s clearly heard this all before. Hell, by the look on his face, he believes her, too. Riley’s eyes fill with tears, her lips parting in abject shock.

 

1 2 3 4 5