Joan Hohl – The Dakota Man (страница 1)
Praise for Award-Winning, National Bestselling Author
JOAN HOHL
“A compelling storyteller who weaves her tales with verve, passion and style.”
—New York Times bestselling author Nora Roberts
“Joan Hohl is a top gun!”
—New York Times bestselling author Catherine Coulter
“Writers come and writers go. Few have the staying power, the enthusiastic following, of Joan Hohl. That’s talent!”
—New York Times bestselling author Kasey Michaels
Don’t miss Mitch’s story—he’s the brother of Adam Grainger, the hero from Joan Hohl’s A Memorable Man (Silhouette Desire #1075)
Dear Reader,
Thanks to all who have shared, in letters and at our Web site, eHarlequin.com, how much you love Silhouette Desire! One Web visitor told us, “When I was nineteen, this man broke my heart. So I picked up a Silhouette Desire and…lost myself in other people’s happiness, sorrow, desire…. Guys came and went and the books kept entertaining me.” It is so gratifying to know how our books have touched and even changed your lives—especially with Silhouette celebrating our 20th anniversary in 2000.
The incomparable Joan Hohl dreamed up October’s MAN OF THE MONTH. The Dakota Man is used to getting his way until he meets his match in a feisty jilted bride. And Anne Marie Winston offers you a Rancher’s Proposition, which is part of the highly sensual Desire promotion BODY & SOUL.
First Comes Love is another sexy love story by Elizabeth Bevarly. A virgin finds an unexpected champion when she is rumored to be pregnant. The latest installment of the sensational Desire miniseries FORTUNE’S CHILDREN: THE GROOMS is Fortune’s Secret Child by Shawna Delacorte. Maureen Child’s popular BACHELOR BATTALION continues with Marooned with a Marine. And Joan Elliott Pickart returns to Desire with Baby: MacAllister-Made, part of her wonderful miniseries THE BABY BET.
So take your own emotional journey through our six new powerful, passionate, provocative love stories from Silhouette Desire—and keep sending us those letters and e-mails, sharing your enthusiasm for our books!
Enjoy!
Joan Marlow Golan
Senior Editor, Silhouette Desire
The Dakota Man
Joan Hohl
To my dear Melissa, the editor from…heaven.
JOAN HOHL
is the bestselling author of almost three dozen books. She has received numerous awards for her work, including the Romance Writers of America’s Golden Medallion award. In addition to contemporary romance, this prolific author also writes historical and time-travel romances. Joan lives in eastern Pennsylvania with her husband and family.
Dear Reader,
Twenty years!
Can you believe it? It seems impossible that twenty years have passed since Silhouette burst onto the publishing scene, astounding the industry with its immediate success, thrilling readers, like you and me, with fresh, absorbing and exciting love stories from the different lines—Special Edition, Desire, Intimate Moments—that evolved from the original Silhouette Romance.
And over these past twenty years, Silhouette has given its thousands—no, millions—of readers such gifted writers to craft those wonderful stories: Nora Roberts, Linda Howard, Diana Palmer, Elizabeth Lowell, Annette Broadrick, Kasey Michaels, Heather Graham Pozzessere and so many, many more.
I am both proud and honored to be counted among the numbers of Silhouette writers. And I sincerely hope you enjoy my offering to the celebratory year, The Dakota Man.
Twenty years! I still can’t believe it.
It has been a spectacular twenty years.
Thanks for the great books, Silhouette.
And thank you, loyal readers, for making it all possible. We owe it all to you.
All my best,
Contents
One
His brow furrowed in a frown, his square jaw clenched and his lips sealed in an anger-tight thin line, Mitch Grainger sat at his desk and stared at the object cradled in the palm of his broad hand. He could only scowl at the brilliant, multi-faceted engagement ring of clustered pink diamonds, encircled by smaller rubies.
Less than an hour ago, Mitch had retrieved the ring from the floor near his desk. Which is where the object had landed after bouncing off his chest, hurled at him in unreasonable fury by Natalie Crane, the beautiful, cool, usually unemotional woman who had been his fiancée mere moments before.
The flawless gemstones caught the afternoon sun rays slanting through the window blinds behind him. Mitch made a soft sound that was part rude snort, part unpleasant laugh.
Women. Would he ever understand them? Had any man ever understood them? More to the point, Mitch mused, closing his fingers around the bauble, did he give a damn anymore?
Not for Natalie Crane, certainly, he thought, answering his own question. Without allowing him the courtesy of offering an explanation for the scene she’d witnessed, she had jumped to the wrong conclusion. Coldly calling him a cheat and telling him their engagement was over, she had thrown the ring at him.
Fortunately, Mitch had never deluded himself into believing he was in love with her; he wasn’t and never had been. He had simply decided that, at the age of thirty-five, it was time to choose a wife. Natalie had appeared eminently suitable for the position, being from one of the most wealthy and prestigious families in the Deadwood, South Dakota, area.
But now Natalie was history. With her precipitous accusations, she had impugned his honor, and he forgave no one for that.
Honor, his personal honor, was the one standard Mitch held as absolute. He had believed Natalie knew the depths of his sense of honor. Apparently, he had been mistaken, or she never would have misconstrued the situation she had happened upon, immediately leaping to the erroneous conclusion that he was playing around behind her back with his secretary, Karla Singleton.
Poor Karla, Mitch thought, recalling the stricken look on his secretary’s face after the scene. Shaking his head, he slid open the top desk drawer, carelessly tossed the ring inside and slammed it shut again. He had never really liked the token, anyway. The concoction of pink diamonds encircled by clustered rubies had been Natalie’s choice; his preference had been a simple, if large, elegant two-and-a-half-carat, marquis-cut solitaire.
Poor, foolish Karla, he amended, heaving a sigh raised by both sympathy and impatience.
Mitch could understand passion, he had experienced it himself…quite often, truth to tell. But what he couldn’t understand, would never understand, was why in hell any woman—or man, either, for that matter—would indulge their passions to the point that they’d risk their health as well as pregnancy through unprotected sex.
But believing herself in love, and loved in return, Karla had risked all with a man who had taken his pleasure…then taken off. He had supposedly left to find a job with a future, but nonetheless leaving Karla devastated, pregnant, unwed and ashamed to tell her parents.
Not knowing what else to do, Karla had turned to her employer, sobbing out her miserable tale of woe on Mitch’s broad shoulder. Of course, Natalie had picked that moment to pay a visit to his office. She had witnessed him holding the weeping young woman in his comforting arms and heard just enough to erroneously conclude that, not only had he been fooling around with Karla, but that he had impregnated her, as well.
As if he would ever be that stupid.
In retrospect, Mitch figured it was all for the best, since he certainly didn’t relish the thought of being married to a woman who didn’t trust him implicitly. From all historical indications, marriage could work without depthless love, but in his considered opinion, it couldn’t survive without trust.
So had ended his brainstorm of acquiring a wife, setting up house and having a family.
On reflection, Mitch acknowledged the niggling doubts he had been having lately about his choice of Natalie, not as a wife—he felt positive she would make an exemplary wife—but as the mother of his children. And Mitch did want children of his own some day. While he had admired Natalie’s cool composure at first, he had recently begun to wonder if her air of detachment would extend to her children…his children.
Having grown up with two brothers and a sister, in a home that more often than not rang with the sound of boisterous kids, controlled by a mother who had always been loving, even when firm, Mitch desired a similar upbringing for his own progeny.
In all honesty, Mitch admitted to himself that he was more relieved than disappointed by the results of Natalie’s false assumptions.
But he still had Karla’s problem to contend with, for she had asked for his advice and help. Mitch had always been a sucker for a woman’s tears, especially a woman he cared about. His own sister could give testimony to that. The sight of a woman he cared for in tears turned him, this supposedly tough, no-nonsense C.E.O. of a gambling casino in Deadwood, South Dakota, into the stalwart protector, the solver of feminine trials and tribulations…in other words, pure mush.