Secondhand Bride

Zusatztext Romantic Times You'll adore the McKettricks.... Informationen zum Autor Linda Lael Miller Klappentext "One of the finest American writers in the genre" ("Romantic Times") delivers the stunning conclusion to her McKettrick Cowboys trilogy featuring three sexy cowboys and their unsuspecting brides. Original. Chapter One Triple M Ranch, Arizona Territory FALL 1885 There was no place to run to, no place to hide. Jeb McKettrick, always careening recklessly from the core of his being to the circumference and back again, was caught between the bunkhouse wall and the manure pile, with all the rage of a woman scorned bearing down on him in redheaded, whip-wielding, chicken-scattering fury. Chloe Wakefield had found him, as surely as the needle of a compass finds due north, and chased him all the way from Indian Rock. Pretty much kept up, too, even though he´d been on a fast horse. He was dead meat. The buggy she drove might have been a chariot, drawn by the four horses of the Apocalypse, instead of a battered conveyance and a single lathered and huffing nag, both hastily procured at the livery stable in town. For the length of a heartbeat, Jeb actually believed she meant to run him down, grind him into a pulp under the wheels of that spindly, black-bonneted rig. For all his reckless love of life, he could not help but conclude that there would have been a certain mercy in oblivion. At least then he wouldn´t have had to deal with the problem. Clearly, he was not to be spared. After a minute or two, his stepmother´s chickens settled down a little, though, and went back to their ground-pecking and feather-shuffling. Maybe that was a good omen. The only rooster in evidence, Jeb scrambled for his trademark grin, his one talisman, found a shaky semblance of it, and stuck it to his mouth. He put his hands out from his sides and made himself the picture of innocent affability, though on the inside, he was a tangle of contradictory emotions -- sweet terror, bitter amusement, and anger, too, because, dammit, he was right, and she was wrong. And because he had never guessed, before that day, that among his many secret and interchangeable selves lurked a yellow-bellied chicken heart. "Chloe," he said, making a plea of the word, as well as a smooth reprimand. A red hen tapped briefly at the toe of his right boot; he ankled it aside impatiently. Standing up in the buggy now, drawing back on the reins with powerful, delicate hands, Chloe fixed him in a sapphire glare. "Don´t you ´Chloe´ me, Jeb McKettrick!" she commanded. "You´re a liar and a cheat and three kinds of devil -- you´ve all but ruined my reputation and my life, you sorry excuse for a man, and I have half a mind to whip the hide off you right here and now!" He rolled his shoulders once, within his brown corduroy jacket, pushed his hat to the back of his head. He had no defense, other than his charm and good looks, which did not seem to be having any noticeable effect. "May I suggest," he countered, with an ease that was wholly false, "that you consult the other half?" She set the brake lever, snatched up the buggy whip, and clambered down; all of this happened so quickly that the separate motions seemed to tumble into one continuous whole. Her auburn hair, falling from its pins and combs, blazed like fire around her face, which was flushed with outrage, and she advanced. "Scoundrel!" she spat. "Rounder! Do you have any idea what I´ve been through because of you?" "Chloe," he said again, with hopeless goodwill. She took his measure with her eyes and plainly found him wanting, but she was a little calmer, it seemed to him. Or maybe she was merely winded by the mad rush from town. By some perverse twist of fate, he´d just come out of the Bloody Basin Saloon when she stepped down from the aft...

Dettagli sul prodotto

• Autori: Linda Lael Miller
• Editore: Pocket Books USA
• Lingue: Inglese
• Formato: Tascabile
• Pubblicazione: 26.11.2004
• EAN: 9780743422758
• ISBN: 978-0-7434-2275-8
• Pagine: 429
• Dimensioni: 108 mm x 171 mm x 23 mm
• Serie: McKettricks; McKettrick Cowboys; McKettrick Cowboys
• Categoria: Narrativa > Romanzi