A Confederate Cowboy Casanova

Summary:

Edward Cullen left Isabella Swan for her own good - and really it was. Fate had plans for Isabella and none of them involved the man-child Edward. When Bella comes into procession of an old family heirloom that had been passed on from mother to daughter for the last three generations, She's in for a surprise when Cliff Diving became a whole new adventure when she appears in Swan Lake Texas, merely weeks before the fated battle of Galveston, 1863, is to take place. How can this twentieth-first century girl survive, especially when her lit has labeled her a Northerner? Captive by Southern Confederate Soldiers she's thrust into the care of a familiar face; Major Jasper Whitlock. Labeled as a Union spy, can Jasper capture the secrets in her eyes without falling in love?

Prologue

"I love you,"

I never thought I would hear those sweet words uttered by marble lips, lips that had already once before uttered them when they had been petal smooth and pliable. Staring into the imperial topaz eyes, I imagined them a deep blue. He was in there, he was this stranger and the man that fixed me. When he disappeared that night during the evacuation of Galveston, I never thought I'd have him again - because were I was from, he already had someone else. Someone he didn't need to be careful with, someone who knew him in this life, while I only knew of him in the past.

I, many, say the past is exactly that and should stay there, but with him before me, his features sharp, defined and ethereal while his skin shone like diamonds beneath the weak Washington sun - I didn't want the past to stay in the past. I want it to be my future, my forever. I wanted the soldier I fell in love with and I wanted to get to know this creature - they were one and the same; the way he smiled was familiar and my heart skipped beats. He was in there, I knew he was.

I wanted to blurt out the very same words, the words I never got to say. But I couldn't, because it wasn't my place. How did I even know it was the romantic love of our shared humanity? He could be saying he loved me as if I were his sister. I had been, till Edward left me, or that perhaps it was that fateful day the cliffs. My mouth opened and snapped shut and in my silence I could feel it swirling beneath me and tears came to my eyes. I couldn't have him, he was married to Alice - his wife of sixty years and my sister.

My hands came up to cradle my stomach, the last gift from my soldier.

"I can't," slipped from my lips and fell into the wind. A mere whisper, but I knew he heard. And I didn't even know what I meant.