The old maxim that you can run but you can’t hide is the premise to Holby’s new series. A bitter, self-deprecating hired gun with a heart of gold takes the identity of a preacher traveling to his new congregation because the dying preacher tells him to “Feed my sheep.” Since the outlaw has been shot and is being chased by hard-core killers, he can’t decide if this is God giving him another chance or laughing at him again.

When Cade Gentry reaches Angel’s End in the middle of a blizzard and falls off his horse at the foot of the marble angel standing in the center of town, he is rescued by widow Leah Findley, whose sheriff husband was killed in the line of duty.

Since Leah and her son Banks have spare room in their home, the town is paying them to house the new preacher. With her job at the town eatery and revenue from the room, Leah and Banks are barely making enough to live. Since Cade, wearing the preacher’s long coat, has the search committee’s welcoming letter in his pocket, he’s packed off to Leah’s, much to the disgust of rancher Jake Reece who loves her.

But as Cade recovers from his gunshot wound during the blizzard, Leah begins to have doubts that he’s really a preacher. In fact, he swears an awful lot when he’s in pain, seems to have violent dreams, and doesn’t say grace before meals, although he often quotes Bible verses.

When Leah comes down with measles and another snow storm threatens, Cade, who’s had the disease, nurses her while Banks is packed off to live with a neighbor until his mother recovers.

As Leah has her doubts about Cade’s calling, Cade realizes he’s going to have to run from the community because he isn’t the new pastor and can’t be. He also knows the men who were trying to kill him will be looking for him and he doesn’t want to bring trouble to Angel’s End in general and Leah and Banks in particular.

With his many admirable characteristics, Cade isn’t a difficult man to embrace as a hero, mainly because even though he has a reputation as a hardened gunslinger who doesn’t care what people think of him, he fights doggedly to keep Leah and Banks safe and secure through natural disasters and epidemics.

Leah, for her part, is an understandable romance heroine dreamer. She’s spent four years mourning her dead husband, scrimping and saving, being helped by the people in town, even though there’s a decent, kind, adoring rancher who wants to marry her. But she’s holding out for love in a town that rarely sees new people move in.

Holby brings together this unlikely couple slowly, almost in a waltz of give and take. Cade will decide to run just as someone needs him while Leah will decide Cade is a fraud just as he gives Banks the kind of fathering he most needs.

The rest of the town is charmingly representative of frontier villages: A crusty, but likeable barkeep with his loyal canine; a blacksmith and his wife, parents of three sets of twins; and of course, Jake, the rancher who is enamored of Leah and resents Cade.

The next book in the series features Jake, and I’m looking forward to reading it after the excerpt at the end of this book.