The Drifter

Wiggs (Lord of the Night) turns an able and sensual hand to the old story of the capable, straitlaced spinster and the sensual roving rogue. Jackson T. Underhill (tall and blond with the requisite facial scar) is running from the law with his childhood friend Carrie, a prostitute and opium addict who shot the mayor of Rising Star, Texas, and who is posing as Jackson's wife. When Carrie falls ill, Jackson rouses Dr. Leah Mundy from her bed at gunpoint in the picturesque seaside village of Coupeville, on Washington's Puget Sound. Leah, whose whole life has been devoted to hard work, and whose self-esteem as a woman has been undermined by a charlatan father, allows herself to dream of a home and family with Jackson (including the social acceptance she never receives as a female in a typically male profession). And Underhill, the sexy drifter who has never belonged anywhere, dreams of coming home each night to his passionate physician and an extended family of endearing misfits. It's a smart, unorthodox coupling to which Wiggs adds humor, brains and a certain cultivation that will leave readers anticipating her next romance. (June)