Promise Me

In her second western, DeVries (The Gambler's Daughter) offers up a romance of the trail, with emphasis on romance rather than the nitty gritty of the route west. Miranda Dare has escaped post-Civil War Atlanta with the freed slave Cinthy, to travel by hook or by crook to Denver and her maternal uncle. She saves Captain Clayton Sloane from bandits, only to steal from him herself. To avoid imprisonment, she agrees to help Clayton deliver the three motherless children given into his charge to their father. While Clayton and Miranda are stock romance characters (brooding soldier who's been ""done wrong"" by a conniving woman, and feisty heroine who has to prove her mettle at every turn), the author manages to make them believable. Clay and Miranda are together on nearly every page, which for a lesser writer could make it hard to maintain interest. But DeVries (who also writes as Laura Gordon) manages to keep the sexual tension high with no more than a few kisses and a subtle sensuality. (May)