The Bridal Promise

Excerpt Letter to Reader About the Author Title Page Acknowledgments Prologue Chapter One Chapter Two Chapter Three Chapter Four Chapter Five Chapter Six Chapter Seven Chapter Eight Chapter Nine Chapter Ten Chapter Eleven Chapter Twelve Copyright

“I Want This Marriage To Continue Past The Six-Month Arrangement”.

The very air seemed to still Matt’s words. Perri froze, staring hard into his eyes.

“I don’t have much to give you. But I want a chance,” Matt continued. “Can you forgive me for the past?”

“Yes, I can forgive you, Matt,” Perri said simply and without hesitation. “You’re the father of my child. And I love you. And most importantly, I want the past behind us so I don’t have it hanging over me and this baby.”

Cradling her in his arms, Matt buried his face in her throat. “Then we’ll call it done,” he said, moved by her declaration of love.

“Matt,” she asked, “why did you move my things into your room?” She could feel his body go tense.

“Because you’re the mother of my child. And because”—he paused, looking straight into her eyes “—you’re where you’ve always belonged, Perri,” Matt continued. “And where I need you to be....”

Dear Reader,

Spring is in the air—and all thoughts turn toward love. With six provocative romances from Silhouette Desire, you too can enjoy a season of new beginnings...and happy endings!

Our March MAN OF THE MONTH is Lass Small’s The Best Husband in Texas.This sexy rancher is determined to win over the beautiful widow he’s loved for years! Next, Joan Elliott Pickart returns with a wonderful love story—Just My Joe. Watch sparks fly between handsome, wealthy Joe Dillon and the woman he loves.

Don’t miss Beverly Barton’s new miniseries, 3 BABIES FOR 3 BROTHERS, which begins with His Secret Child. The town golden boy is reunited with a former flame—and their child. Popular Anne Marie Winston offers the third title in her BUTLER COUNTY BRIDES series, as a sexy heroine forms a partnership with her lost love in The Bride Means Business. Then an expectant mom matches wits with a brooding rancher in Carol Grace’s Expecting.... And Virginia Dove debuts explosively with The Bridal Promise, when star-crossed lovers marry for convenience.

This spring, please write and tell us why you read Silhouette Desire books. As part of our 20th anniversary celebration in the year 2000, we’d like to publish some of this fan mail in the books—so drop us a line, tell us how long you’ve been reading Desire books and what you love about the series. And enjoy our March titles!

Regards,

Joan Marlow Golan

Senior Editor, Silhouette Desire

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The Bridal Promise

Virginia Dove

About the Author

VIRGINIA DOVE grew up in a small town in Oklahoma, where Route 66 and the Chisholm Trail intersect. After graduating from Southern Methodist University, she came to New York City, where she began a successful career as a dancer under her stage name and performed on Broadway in such musicals as My Fair Lady, Best Little Whorehouse In Texas and Chicago. Currently she lives in New York City with her husband, and she still twirls a mean baton.

Many thanks to Melissa Senate.

And as always, all my love to Lexie.

Prologue

Seventeen-year-old Perri Stone stood before a louvered window at Gledhill and carefully opened the gold locket that hung around her neck. The diamond hidden inside the oval sparkled as it caught the light of the setting sun. She tilted the locket back and forth, mesmerized by the way the rays bounced off the faceted stone.

Soon, she would be able to put Matt’s picture inside. Soon, it would be all right for everyone to know they were getting married. Soon, they wouldn’t have to sneak around and hide the truth. Just as soon as Matt explained things to his parents, everything would be all right.

Perri closed the locket on a kiss and whirled around Gannie Gledhill’s formal living room. Gannie was the closest thing to a grandmother Perri had in Spirit Valley, Oklahoma. She had taken a special interest in Perri and in Matt, long before they had even fallen in love. Even as children, Matt and Perri had never doubted that Gannie loved them both as if they were her own.

Dancing over to the fireplace, Perri studied each object on the mantel and reasoned out how to proceed. Maybe this evening they would tell Gannie of their plans. It wouldn’t be any surprise to her. Gannie knew that they were very much in love. They had been meeting here at Gledhill for nearly a year.

Soon, she thought, I’ll be eighteen and everything will be all right. Her fingers closed over an arrowhead that had lived on the mantel ever since Matt had found it out by the horse barn. Its edges were still razor sharp; but the meticulous, hand-chipped surface had been worn smooth by time. She gripped the stone hard enough to hurt. Please, she prayed, let the old scandal and the bad blood between our families no longer matter.

Perri closed her eyes and tried to imagine how her mother was going to react to the news. Janie Stone had her own reasons for wanting her girl to stay away from the Ransoms. But Gannie would bring her around. Perri was sure of it. Perri Ransom. She considered how it sounded for maybe the millionth time. Mrs. Matthew Ransom.

The sound of a car pulling up the drive drew her back to the window, expecting to see Gannie on her way to the garage. Instead, Perri’s blood froze as Leila Ransom, Matt’s mother, got out of her car. For a time, Mrs. Ransom simply studied the old Gledhill farmhouse. Then she stalked onto the porch and through the front door. Leila Ransom moved into the living room like a predator closing in for a quick, clean kill.

“Are you pregnant?” Leila asked calmly, her lovely green eyes resembling ice crystals.

Speechless, Perri shook her head.

“If you find out that you are, I’ll pay for an abortion. You’ll need one because Matt isn’t going to many you, no matter what he’s told you. He has more pride than that and more concern for his position in this community.” Leila glanced at the clock on the mantel. Her expression suggested she might find it amusing to time their exchange. “He’s done with you, dear,” she said, “believe me.”

Perri couldn’t hide her sense of shock or her helpless anger. Never had she imagined herself in a showdown with Matt’s mother. She was in over her head and she knew it.

“I do hope you will listen to me,” Leila cautioned, “because I don’t plan to give you a second chance. If you continue to see my son, I’ll make certain you regret it.” Pale blond curls rebounded as Leila turned toward the front windows.

“Certain well-placed rumors, about how your precious little mother has been having an affair with my husband for years, won’t be too difficult to arrange. Everyone will know that’s the real reason behind her divorce. And everyone in town will believe it. Don’t think they won’t.” Amused now, she nailed Perri with those inhuman eyes.

“Never doubt that I can do it or that I will, Perri. The fact that it’s a lie will mean nothing when I’ve finished with her. I’d enjoy the opportunity,” Leila added as an afterthought. “That goody-goody act of hers won’t be of much help by the time I’m done.

“No,” Leila smiled coldly, “I think it would be best for you to take your daddy up on the chance to go to that special high school, the one I heard your mother bragging about. Leave for Raleigh and spend your senior year living with your father and his new family. And stay away from my son.” Leila thoughtfully adjusted her wristwatch, pausing to tap a perfectly manicured nail against the crystal.

The sound struck Perri as inordinately loud, empty and hollow. She flinched away as if from a blow.

“Maybe they’ve got some summer courses. Now that’s an idea,” Leila brightened. “You could leave immediately after school is out.

“And,” she shrugged delicately, “if you don’t, when I’m done with her, your precious momma will have to leave town. Do I make myself crystal clear?”

Perri began to tremble as Leila closed in for the kill. “Yes, ma’am,” she whispered. It was over. Every hope and dream had been shattered.

“Never mention any of this conversation to Matt, ever,” Leila ordered. “Do we understand each other?”

“Yes, ma’am.” Tight-lipped and terrified, Perri didn’t even realize she was in shock. All she knew was an overwhelming sense of hopelessness and loss.

“Good.” Leila sighed with satisfaction, glancing at the mantelpiece. She walked out and drove away without another word.

Unable to move, Perri found herself staring blindly at the ticking clock. Cruelty had worked wonders. And so quickly.

Perri never cried.

One

Twelve years later

Matt Ransom was not in the mood for a tornado. Although with his luck, it probably wouldn’t be a twister. It would probably be something he couldn’t out-dodge, like more baseball-sized hail.

It was hard to complain about tornadoes in Tornado Alley without feeling just a little silly; but he had a mind to anyway. He knew his brother, Whit, was watching helplessly as almost two thousand acres blew away in the Oklahoma Panhandle. Just two inches of rain since November had left many with no choice but to sell their cattle. And these hadn’t been even a hope of a wheat crop for Whit. Irrigation did little good when forty-five-to-fifty-mile-an-hour winds raged day after day.

At least around Spirit Valley, Oklahoma, there would be a harvest, of sorts. Blessed by the river and many deep wells, in addition to a man-made lake, Spirit was outside of the burn ban. Every field was full of short oats.

“By now, the wheat should be dropping its heads, dammit,” he muttered as in frustration he automatically checked the land and the sky.

Understanding that others were having it worse didn’t make his own situation any less aggravating. When racing against a storm, it was usually the storm that won the race. Today wasn’t going to be an exception. Something was in the air and he could smell it. So far, it was only black clouds, some serious wind and approaching dense rain. Born for and of the land, Matt held no hope it would stay as it was now.

The stop signs and stoplights he now had to navigate were giving him the blues. His father still couldn’t reconcile himself to the fact that the town had grown to need them. Too many people. Matt had grown up seeing those stop signs removed at the start of every harvest. The wheat-laden combines coming in from the farms had made their way into Spirit Valley without a hitch. There was a time when every kid in town knew not to cross Elm Street without being very careful during June.

Matt swore silently as he stopped at yet another light. Harvest was vital to the whole community. The combines would roll on through, from the farms to the grain elevators over by the railroad tracks, as fast as the weather would allow. “Stopping every couple of blocks is just uncivilized,” he grumbled as he floated the last four lights.

At the moment, Matt had a fractious yearling that he wanted ready for the sale coming up at Shawnee. Salem didn’t appreciate the hole in the roof over his stall and didn’t care who knew it. A paint with an attitude; just what I need. Matt shook his head at his own lame joke. He had to get out of town. It was affecting his brains.

He had a dozen things to do today without having to repair the damage from yesterday’s hail. “All right, I was lucky,” he acknowledged as he slapped the steering wheel with the heel of one broad hand. It was only one building. At least his father’s roof was undamaged.

Not that Sam Ransom would let his oldest son know if he needed any help. The two of them hadn’t had a true conversation about anything other than horses or hard work since before Matt’s mother, Leila, had passed away. And that had been years ago. Matt knew he was responsible for the distance between them and he accepted that. Yet of all the things that had hardened him since he’d become a man, the breach with his father still brought a daily ache. He made a mental note to check the old place himself before too many more days went by.

“Here it comes,” he muttered. Big fat drops of rain began to break from the black clouds overhead.

Annoyed at the delay in repairing the roof, and fit to be tied over having to make a repair to anything this early in the season, he almost missed the fact that Gannie Gledhill’s front door was open. It never occurred to him to let such a transgression slide by. As the pickup behind him honked in protest, he abruptly turned in and barreled up the drive.

Just driving toward Gledhill brought an ache to his heart. Lord, how he missed Gannie. It was too soon. He wasn’t ready for her to be gone. The funeral had only been two days ago, and he couldn’t seem to adjust to the loss of the only woman he’d never once doubted he could trust. But it was more than that. Gannie’s death brought too many painful changes.

Gannie. Her family went back almost as far as Matt’s own. Her grandfather had been sent by the Rock Island Railroad when the line had brought its rails to this part of Oklahoma. Old Man Gledhill had married a local girl, buying a farm and building a house in town. He’d had everything brought in from back East, including silk wallpaper for the dining rooms. “Got a good deal on the shipping rate,” Sam Ransom used to say.

Much to her family’s regret, Olivia—her given name—had refused to go back East to school. Instead she had stayed, graduated from the Oklahoma College for Women and become the town librarian. She had never married. Yet so many children over the years had found a “safe harbor” with her. Sam Ransom had given her the name of Gannie, “the town’s Grannie,” when he was still in grade school.

Keeper of the town’s books, its heritage, and its children: to many, she was Spirit Valley. To Matt she was even more. How had he made it through the last twelve years? With Gannie’s love, faith and guidance, he acknowledged. It had taken Gannie’s bracing approach to keep him sane.

And staying steady and well-respected in Spirit Valley was the Ransom family’s heritage. Ransom: The price of redemption; an atonement. Now with Gannie gone, the old house was linked in Matt’s mind to only one other woman.

He could picture her laughing in the dining room; or watering the backyard. Luminous eyes had watched him as sunlight had played through the windows of an upstairs bedroom. Matt hadn’t often noticed the Indian heritage in her, unless he’d looked past the light hair and eyes. But it was there. Light in that little room had branded her keen-edged cheekbones as Perri Stone had stood slim, motionless, his.

Perri’s eyes, he thought. Time had frozen a memory of Perri Stone in just about every corner of that house. Perri’s eyes had always intrigued him. The center of each iris was a warm, brandy-colored brown surrounded by emerald green. Matt had never considered, until now, how they were a lighter variation of his own mix of onyx and forest green. Well, that shocked him, teasing back to life some of his fury.

Driving too fast to absorb the implications of the slightly opened gate to the little graveyard and the red rose on one simple stone marker, he slammed the longbed under the carport. Matt barely felt the sudden whipping of wind and chilly rain as he took the steps of Gledhill’s wraparound porch two at a time.

Whoever it was, would want to have a good reason for being on the property, because he was in no mood for any more delays. He had a full day of business to attend to, some of it sonny indeed.

Among other things, he had some horses running at Remington Park tomorrow, if the weather didn’t cancel the races. And some owners had threatened to drop by in anticipation of the running. The social necessities of a well-respected horse farm were never something he could easily oblige. The screen door slammed out his frustration as his boots hit the old wooden floor.

Whoever it was had walked right on in as if he owned the place. And whoever it was, she was really in no mood for the Spirit Valley grapevine to find out so quickly that she was moving in. Perri Stone shook loose the raindrops on her way in from garaging the car. She moved fast, hoping to head off the visitor and graciously sweep him right back out the front door.

The cowboy reached the back doorway of the living room at almost the same moment she entered. They both stuttered to a halt as recognition over small matters, like a red rose on an old grave and the identity of who always walked into that house like he owned it, returned to haunt her.

Jeans, boots, work shirt and cheekbones. In the low, stormy light it could have been anybody. But those cheekbones, combined with the piercing eyes and the sharp brows and nose of a hawk, meant it wasn’t just anybody. Stifling the small cry wasn’t an option. Her heart wished that it could be.

He uttered a low oath as she smacked into his chest, more through his refusal to give an inch than due to speed. Matt’s hands reached out to hold her in a response both instantaneous and automatic. It didn’t improve his mood one bit.

Perri knew to expect a storm. So far they had managed a cold, civilized distance. But until six weeks ago, when they had begun keeping vigil over Gannie’s hospital bed, they hadn’t shared a roof in twelve years. And the last time they had been in this room together, he’d been closer to violence than she’d ever seen him in her life.

Perri would not give him the satisfaction of seeing her go weak in the knees as he grabbed her and the sweet memories came flooding back. Her momentary relief that it was Matt in the house was rooted in the distant past, and promptly overshadowed by the reality of the present.

“Dammit, Ransom, you scared me to death!” she declared, recklessly pushing away from him.

“My pleasure, Stone,” he answered coldly. Matt stared at her as he quickly let her go.

She stared right back. Then without another word, Perri moved to the television and found a weather bulletin. A tornado was passing twelve miles to the southwest of where they were standing. The open front door brought in air cold enough to tell her to expect the sound of hail. Although she wasn’t soaked from her run back into the house, she shivered. At the moment she had a more immediate threat to face than the approaching violence out the front door.

He moved slowly, silently behind her as she kept her eyes glued on the weather map and tried to focus on what the weatherman had to say. It felt as if a brick wall, warmed by the sun, had suddenly materialized at her back.

She was a tall woman. But he was a tall man, broad-shouldered and with a long reach. Waves of heat were rolling off of him, anger waves most likely. It couldn’t be any other kind between them. She resisted the urge to rest against him when the meteorologist announced that Spirit Valley was out of danger. There would be no comfort there.

Perri fought back the urge to yawn as she felt him shamelessly look her over. Nerves had always caused her to yawn, and yawn big, at the most inopportune moments. This time, she reasoned, it might be more than her life was worth to succumb to the response. She started as the erratic beat of an arriving hailstorm further destroyed her peace of mind.

Matt eyed her critically. “You seem taller. Did you grow or something?”

“An inch, when I turned nineteen.” Perri’s eyes never left the screen.

“That must be it, then. Something seems off.” He circled to her side. “Something more personal than the fact that you’re all grown up now,” he continued. “I’ve been meaning to tell you. You filled out in all the right places, looks like.” Matt smiled with satisfaction when she stiffened at that remark.

She turned to face him, forcing herself to look at him as if he were someone she could easily dismiss. “What are you doing here, Matt?” Perri asked with just the right note of polite weariness. But it was a mistake to look him in the eye.

Matt’s eyes. At first one didn’t notice the variance in color. They looked almost black, his Indian heritage plainly spelled out in bone structure, hair and eyes. A closer look revealed the presence of dark-green shards. The result yielded eyes that seemed to absorb the light. Eyes more aged than the man. Matt looked like he hadn’t truly smiled from the heart in a long time.

“I saw the front door open and stopped to check,” he said, as if such a thing was obvious. It was. “You didn’t waste any time running back to collect what’s yours, did you?” Matt paused before saying softly, “Of course, it’s only a matter of time before you run somewhere else, isn’t it?”

Well, there was no answer for that, under the circumstances.

“Where’s the car?” he inquired. “The garage?”

She nodded.

“Did you get everything in before the rain started?”

“You needn’t concern yourself.” Her answer was immediate and brisk.

“Did you get everything in?” It was a demand, not a request for information.

She shook her head, no Her eyes dropped to his hand, as she realized he had just undone the top two buttons of her jacket. Perri wouldn’t give him the satisfaction of trying to slap his hand away. If she lost her temper with him, she lost. It was that simple.

“Very funny, Matt.” It simply amazed her that she could sound so damn bored while her pulse was scrambling like mad at his touch.

“Just testing a theory I have about those buttons.” He looked so deceptively friendly as the nail of his index finger scraped lightly down from her collarbone to the third button, revealing skin the color of honey above the top of her lace camisole.

Perri breathed in the scent of wind and sun, horses, hay and Matt: an all-too-familiar combination she had worked very hard to forget. It was, at this moment, impossible to forget anything about him, not when he touched her.

Abruptly, he moved toward the back door. She felt the same sick, hollow sensation come over her that she bad felt the day she had learned he was marrying someone else.

“You can button back up, for now. I’ll get the rest of your stuff.” He paused in the doorway. “And you can quit glaring at me, Stone. I’m just being neighborly. After all, we have to work together. I’m looking forward to it.”

She missed him the second he walked out the door. Dear God, how was she ever going to work with this man? She rebuttoned her jacket and finally released the breath she’d been holding. Perri moved through the front door, to the comfort of the covered porch.

The hail was beginning to play out, the small pellets clattering harmlessly off the roof. The brief storm that had passed in Gannie’s living room had caused far more damage than the current weather pattern.

Perri stood there staring blindly at the honeysuckle as it took a beating from the storm. She reminded herself that she was twenty-nine years old now, not seventeen and helplessly in love with a twenty-four-year-old Matt Ransom. Those two individuals no longer existed and the ones who stood on the property today had a job to do.

Surely. they were mature enough to get it done. They would work together because they had to, for something important to both of them. He was just playing with her, she reasoned, nothing more. Just testing her for a reaction. He had made it crystal clear he didn’t want her.

She had seen him change overnight into a man who would enjoy toying with her if she challenged him. Standing toe-to-toe and balding it out might be satisfying; but a calm, dignified approach was the only safe road.