Marry Me, Cowboy

Their Eyes Met...And Something Electrical Passed Between Them. Letter to Reader Title Page Dedication About the Author HARLEY KERR’S THOUGHTS ON TEMPTATION, TEXAS! Prologue Chapter One Chapter Two Chapter Three Chapter Four Chapter Five Chapter Six Chapter Seven Chapter Eight Chapter Nine Copyright

Their Eyes Met...And Something Electrical Passed Between Them.

Something charged with so much force that it shocked every nerve in Harley’s body to life. Mary Claire’s nervous movements were as fleeting as those of a moth at a flame.

The brush of her fingers across his lips made Harley’s heart do a slow somersault while his blood warmed in his veins. It had been a long time since a woman had touched him in such a way. He’d forgotten the tenderness, the comfort rendered in so simple a gesture. On a sigh, he caught her wrist in his hand then held her palm against his cheek, absorbing the softness of her skin.

Slowly the thundering of her pulse trapped beneath his fingers registered in his muddled mind, and Harley’s gaze settled on lips slightly parted and eyes filled with... Was it longing?

Dear Reader,

THE BLACK WATCH returns! The men you found so intriguing are now joined by women who are also part of this secret organization created by BJ James. Look for them in Whispers in the Dark, this month’s MAN OF THE MONTH.

Leanne Banks’s delightful miniseries HOW TO CATCH A PRINCESS—all about three childhood friends who kiss a lot of frogs before they each meet their handsome prince—continues with The You-Can’t-Make-Me Bride. And Elizabeth Bevarly’s series THE FAMILY McCORMICK concludes with Georgia Meets Her Groom. Romance blooms as the McCormick family is finally reunited.

Peggy Moreland’s tantalizing miniseries TROUBLE IN TEXAS begins this month with Marry Me, Cowboy. When the men of Temptation, Texas, decide they want wives, they find them the newfangled way—they advertise!

A Western from Jackie Merritt is always a treat, so I’m excited about this month’s Wind River Ranch—it’s ultrasensuous and totally compelling. And the month is completed with Wedding Planner Tames Rancher!, an engaging romp by Pamela Ingrahm. There’s nothing better than curling up with a Silhouette Desire book, so enjoy!

Regards,

Senior Editor

Please address questions and book requests to:

Silhouette Reader Service

U.S.: 3010 Walden Ave., P.O. Box 1325, Buffalo, NY 14269

Canadian: P.O. Box 609, Fort Erie, Ont. L2A 5X3

Marry Me, Cowboy

Peggy Moreland

To Jim Bob and Kelly Clayman of Windsong Farm in Georgetown, Texas, who helped make this author’s childhood dream come true! Thanks for hours of riding pleasure and for instilling in me the competitive edge needed to race barrels and bend poles!

PEGGY MORELAND

published her first romance with Silhouette in 1989. She’s a natural storyteller with a sense of humor that will tickle your fancy, and Peggy’s goal is to write a story that readers will remember long after the last page is turned. Winner of the 1992 National Readers’ Choice Award and a 1994 RITA finalist, Peggy frequently appears on bestseller lists around the country. A native Texan, she and her family live in Round Rock, Texas.

HARLEY KERR’S THOUGHTS ON TEMPTATION, TEXAS!

I’ve lived my whole life in Temptation, a small town with an unlikely name in central Texas. Though there were those who considered living in Temptation a hardship and couldn’t wait to escape, I’ve always loved it here and never gave a thought to leaving.

Since I was old enough to walk, I followed my father around the ranch, learning from his experience. I gleaned a ton of it on my own when I took over the place at the age of seventeen after his death. I fell in love when I was sixteen, married my high school sweetheart three years later and brought her home to my ranch.

Though I never gave it much consideration the first time around, I thought my expectations for a wife were simple enough. I wanted a woman I could love and care for, and one who was willing to love and care for me in return. She’d have to be a strong woman, someone who could stand the isolation of the land and still thrive, one who was both independent and dependent at the same time. I wanted a woman—a partner, if you will—who’d stand by me through thick and thin. I wanted, simply put, a home and a family and a woman to share it all with.

But my first wife didn’t share those expectations. When we married, she was looking for a way out of Temptation, Texas. So when she left, taking my two kids with her, I sealed off my heart and swore never to love again.

When my old buddy, Cody Fipes, started this fool plan to advertise for women to move to Temptation to save our dying town, it never occurred to me that my heart might be in jeopardy again.

Prologue

Sixty or so men were crowded into the End of the Road Bar, the official gathering place for the male population of Temptation, Texas. Some sat slumped at tables with their backs rounded against spool-back chairs. Others straddled bar stools, their dusty, mudcaked boots hooked over the stools’ lowest rungs. Those unfortunate enough to have arrived too late to claim a proper chair hitched a foot against chipped plaster and pressed their shoulders to the wall, while still others leaned back on elbows braced against the long, scarred bar.

Having made the trek into town straight from work on their respective farms and ranches, most of the men wore jeans and boots. Others sported bib overalls over soiled T-shirts. Since there wasn’t a lady in sight to complain about the breach of etiquette, to a man their heads were covered, either with straw cowboy hats or monogrammed caps advertising farm equipment or feed.

Arriving late, Harley Kerr stopped just inside the door and looked around. Cody Fipes, his friend and Temptation’s sheriff, sat at a table in the rear of the room. Harley slipped into the empty chair Cody had saved for him and was rewarded with a beer shoved his way. With a nod of thanks, he one-knuckled his sweat-stained hat to the back of his head and closed a hand around the cold brew.

“Was beginning to wonder if you were going to make it,” Cody murmured in a low voice.

“Bull got in a pasture with some heifers,” Harley replied dryly. “Took me a while to convince him he didn’t belong there.” Hot and tired, he tipped back his head and took a long, thirst-quenching drink before setting the beer down and turning his attention to Roy Acres, Temptation’s mayor.

Seated on a tall stool centered in front of the long bar, Mayor Acres resembled a fly-fattened frog. His face flushed with the effort, he raised his voice a level higher to be heard over the scrape of chairs and the buzz of conversation as he called the meeting to order. The topic for the night’s meeting? Temptation’s quickly disintegrating population and the closing of local businesses.

Heads wagged regrettably as Mayor Acres read through the list of businesses that had closed in the past year. Lips pursed as Acres reviewed a survey taken at the local high school that revealed only seventeen percent of the students registered there intended to remain in Temptation after graduation.

Usually filled with raucous laughter and loud country music, the End of the Road was as quiet as a church on Saturday night as its occupants absorbed the depressing news about the town where they’d spent their entire lives. If something wasn’t done and done fast, Temptation, like so many other rural communities, would soon be nothing but a ghost town.

Few understood this better than Harley Kerr and Cody Fipes. They’d spent a lot of time over the past few years cussing and discussing Temptation’s slow decline. But unlike Harley, Cody had come up with a plan. Not one that Harley totally supported, but he figured at least it was a start.

With a tense glance at Harley, Cody stood and dragged off his hat. “Roy,” he said, nervously tapping his hat against his knee, “I think I might have a solution to Temptation’s problem.”

“Well, speak up, then,” Mayor Acres grumped impatiently. “That’s why we’re here.”

Cody hauled in a steadying breath, not at all sure how his idea would be accepted. “What we need to do,” he said slowly, “is to advertise for women.”

Somewhere in the crowded room the legs of a chair hit the floor with a loud thump, and one man, caught in midswallow during Cody’s brief recitation, spewed beer. Across the room someone shouted, “Hell. If you’re horny, Cody, why don’t you just drive up to Austin and pick yourself up a whore for the night?” The comment was met with hoots and hollers and a general round of back slapping:

Cody frowned. He hadn’t expected anybody to jump on his idea, at least not at first, but he sure as heck hadn’t expected to be made a fool of.

“That’s not what I had in mind,” he said dryly. “It doesn’t take somebody with a college degree to figure out that if you want to grow a town, you need women to do it. As far as I know,” he added, narrowing an eye at the man who’d told him to find himself a whore, “men haven’t figured out how to reproduce on their own just yet.”

He shifted, drawing his hat between his hands. “What we need to do is take a look at the businesses we’ve lost, assess what businesses or professionals we’ll need in the future and advertise for women to move here and fill those needs.”

At the word “need,” someone snickered and Cody shot him a look that would peel paint off a barn. Sorry he’d even bothered to share his idea for saving Temptation, Cody rammed his Stetson back on his head. “That’s all I’ve got to say,” he muttered, then sat down.

The laughter continued and Cody’s face turned redder and redder until Harley felt compelled to come to his friend’s defense. With a sigh, he pushed to his feet. “You boys can laugh all you want, but I haven’t heard a one of you come up with a better idea. Personally I don’t give a double-damn whether any women move here or not.” He waited a beat, then added, “But Cody’s right when he says it’ll take women to grow our town.” He clapped a hand on Cody’s shoulder in a show of support. “I, for one, stand behind him on this plan of his to advertise for women, and I hope all of you will do the same.”

What no one in the room realized was that the reporter from the county newspaper was busily scrawling notes on a steno pad, recording Cody Fipes’s plan to save Temptation right along with Harley Kerr’s endorsement of the plan. When the weekly issue was delivered to its subscribers on Wednesday, the entire county would read about the meeting in the small town of Temptation, Texas, whose population had dwindled to a depressing 978, and Cody Fipes’s suggestion for how to save it. By Thursday, the AP service would have picked up the story and carried it nationwide.

By Friday afternoon, news trucks and vans would line the narrow main street that marked the town of Temptation, their cameras rolling, hoping to capitalize on this story of the town who hoped to save itself by advertising for women.

Within forty-eight hours, single women from all fifty states would be gossiping—and maybe dreaming a little—about the small Texas town of Temptation where the men outnumbered the women eight to one.

One

Houston, Texas

A television sat on the apartment’s breakfast bar, its volume muted, while a suited anchorman on the screen droned out the six-o’clock news. Across the narrow dining room, Mary Claire Reynolds sat at her kitchen table, cradling her sleeping eight-year-old son, Jimmy, against her breasts. Her chin rested on top of his head while hot guilty tears streaked down her cheeks and dripped onto the boy’s red hair, the same unique shade as her own.

With Jimmy sitting in profile on his mother’s lap, his bruised cheek and split lip were visible to the two women sitting on the opposite side of the table. They had arrived as soon as they’d heard the news of the boy being attacked, offering, as they had so many times in the past, support and comfort.

Leighanna exchanged a concerned look with Reggie, then leaned across the table to lay a comforting hand on Mary Claire’s arm. “It’s not your fault,” she murmured softly. “You mustn’t blame yourself.”

Mary Claire caught her lower lip between her teeth, trying to hold back the strangled sob that burned in her throat, and tightened her arms around Jimmy. “It is,” she said, unable to stop the hot angry tears that streaked down her face. “If I’d been home, this never would have happened.” She cupped a hand on her son’s tousled hair as if at this late date she could protect him from the fists of the gang of boys who’d attacked him. Her hand inadvertently touched the bruise on his cheek, and he roused and tried to pull from her arms. She hugged him tighter, rocking slowly back and forth, murmuring to him to soothe him back into a restful sleep.

When he had settled again, she pressed her lips to his head. “I never should’ve divorced Pete,” she murmured with regret. “I should’ve listened to my mother and simply looked the other way when he strayed.”

Reggie straightened, a look of shock on her face. “Mary Claire, you don’t mean that!”

“I do mean it,” she said fiercely. “If I’d stayed, I wouldn’t have been working. I’d have been at home with my children where I belong.”

“You were miserable married to Pete Reynolds,” Reggie reminded her. “He was a two-timing snake.”

Mary Claire lifted her tearstained face. “But we were safe. I’d gladly sacrifice my pride for my children’s safety.”

“What about the children’s happiness?” Reggie asked. “Would you sacrifice that, as well?”

Mary Claire closed her eyes against the painful reminder.

“It’s true, isn’t it?” Reggie persisted. “The kids are happier now than they were when you and Pete were married. He never spent time with them. He was always too consumed with his job and chasing skirts. And when he was home, all the two of you did was fight.”

“But my children were safe,” Mary Claire insisted. “And I was at home with them to see that they stayed that way.” She pressed her lips to the top of Jimmy’s head again, then propped her chin there and turned her teary gaze on the television screen. Suddenly she stiffened, her eyes widening. “Leighanna! Quick!” she cried. “Turn up the volume on the television!”

Startled, Leighanna twisted in her chair and stretched to adjust the volume. On the screen a reporter stood in front of a sign that read Temptation, Texas, Population 978.

“Temptation? Isn’t that where your aunt Harriet lived?” Leighanna asked in surprise. Mary Claire nodded but quickly shushed Leighanna with a wave of her hand, her gaze riveted on the screen.

“...and while other small rural towns around the state and around the country are slowly losing their residents to the economic pull of larger cities, Temptation, Texas, has devised a plan to save their town.” The camera panned, taking in the sleepy community of Temptation.

Mary Claire felt her throat tighten at the sight of the town, remembering the lazy summers she’d spent there visiting her aunt Harriet. Things hadn’t changed much through the years. Temptation still looked like a Norman Rockwell painting.

An American flag still flew above the roof of Carter’s Mercantile, which served double duty as the town’s post office and only grocery store. A red-and-white-striped pole turned slowly in front of the barbershop while a dog napped on the sidewalk in front of the open door. The only movement that broke the solitude came in the form of a dust-covered pickup truck as it chugged down the street.

“That’s it,” Mary Claire whispered. The tears were gone and her eyes now glowed with newfound hope. “Temptation. We’ll move to Temptation.”

Leighanna turned to stare at her friend. “Temptation?” she repeated in disbelief.

“Yes, Temptation,” Mary Claire repeated firmly.

“Do you know anyone there?”

Mary Claire shook her head. “Just Uncle Bert and Aunt Harriet. But of course they’re gone now.”

“Oh, Mary Claire,” Leighanna cried, “you can’t just up and move somewhere where you don’t know a living soul! Temptation’s a small town. Why, there are more people living in a city block of Houston than live in that entire community.”

“Exactly.”

“But where will you live?” Leighanna asked, trying to keep the growing panic from her voice. “Where will you work? The reporter said the economy is drying up.”

Mary Claire kept her gaze on the screen. “I have my aunt Harriet’s house. There’s a renter living there now, but I’ll just tell him he has to move. As for work, I’ll find something.”

Knowing she was no match for Mary Claire’s stubbornness once she set her mind on something, Leighanna turned to Reggie for help. Of the two, Reggie was the more sensible and the only one whose stubbornness equaled Mary Claire’s. “Reggie, please,” she begged, “see if you can talk some sense into her.” When Reggie continued to stare at the screen, Leighanna gave her friend’s shoulder an impatient shove. “Reggie! Help me out here!”

As if waking from a dream, Reggie turned to look at Leighanna. “What?”

Leighanna let out a huff of breath. “For God’s sake, Reggie! Mary Claire says she’s moving to Temptation. You’ve got to try to talk some sense into her! She won’t listen to me. You heard the reporter. There’s nothing there! The economy has all but dried up.”

Slowly Reggie turned to look at Mary Claire. “You want to move to Temptation?” she asked, her face and voice completely stripped of emotion.

“Yes. If I have to take in laundry to support myself and my children, I’ll do it. Anything to get us out of Houston and to a safe place.”

Though she would have chosen anywhere else in the world for her friend to move, Reggie, unlike Leighanna, understood Mary Claire’s need to put as much distance as possible between herself and bad memories. She leaned over to cover Mary Claire’s hand with her own. “Then go,” she said, giving her friend’s hand a hard squeeze. “And know that if you ever need anything, whether it’s a shoulder to cry on or a loan to get you by until you’ve found a way to support yourself, all you have to do is call.”

Shocked, Leighanna nearly fell out of her chair.

Mary Claire curled her fingers around Reggie’s hand and squeezed back, tears budding in her eyes. “Thank you, Reggie.” She shifted her gaze to Leighanna, needing and wanting her approval, as well.

Leighanna hesitated only slightly before shifting to add her hand to the two already joined. “Personally I think you’re crazy,” she muttered. “But, like Reggie, I’m here if you need me.”

Temptation, Texas

Harley threw the last feed sack onto the back of his truck, then stripped off his gloves and tucked them into the back pocket of his jeans. Dragging his forearm across his brow, he narrowed an eye at the June sun blazing overhead. It had to be a hundred degrees in the shade and it wasn’t even noon. With a sigh, he caught the shoulder seams of his shirt between thick callused fingers and lifted in an attempt to peel the sweat-soaked fabric off his back. The day was going to be a scorcher, and although he’d been at it since well before six, his work was long from being completed. He still had the feed to unload once he reached his ranch and calves to move from one pasture to another.

On another sigh, he reached for the tailgate and started to lift, but stopped when he heard a whimpering sound coming from somewhere behind him. He turned slowly and let the tailgate fall back open when he saw a little girl, no more than five years old, limp ing barefoot and sniffling down the sidewalk toward him. He didn’t recognize her, but that didn’t surprise him. Ever since his old buddy, Cody Fipes, had proposed that Temptation advertise for women, the town had been overrun with strangers. He looked left and right but didn’t see another soul in sight to help the child.

In the way of small-town chivalry, he hopped up the step that led to the feed store and met her on the sidewalk, prepared to offer a helping hand. “Hey, there, sweetheart,” he said, dropping to one knee in front of her. “What’s wrong?”

She hiccuped once, then lifted her face, tears dripping off her chin. “I got a sticker in my foot,” she sobbed.

“Well, here, let’s have a look-see,” Harley said gently.

She laid her hand on his sleeve for balance, her touch as light as a butterfly, then lifted her knee. Though he strained, Harley’s size prevented him from being able to stoop over far enough to see the bottom of her foot. Needing a better vantage point, he caught her up under the arms and carried her toward his pickup. “Let’s set you up here, sweetheart, so I can have a better look.” He plopped her down on the tailgate and squatted down in front of her, lifting her foot. And there it was, tucked into the tender arch of her foot, a green-and-yellow sticker as big as a tick.

He frowned, knowing it was going to hurt like hell when he pulled the sticker out. “Can you count to three?” he asked.

She sniffled, dragging a hand beneath her nose. “I can count all the way to ten,” she said proudly through her tears.

“Well, you start counting and by the time you get to three I’ll have this old sticker out of your foot.”

“Okay,” she said, then hiccuped again. “One... two...”

Harley gave a quick yank and the sticker came out, along with a startled cry of pain from the little girl.

At that moment and out of nowhere, about sixty pounds of clawing anger slammed into Harley’s back. Startled, he stumbled to his feet, twisting around as he tried to grab ahold of what had hit him. An arm, no thicker than the branch of a willow tree, wound around his neck from behind and clung while a potato-sized fist pummeled his head. He made a grab behind him and within seconds had his hands on the shoulders and was looking into the eyes of a redfaced, redheaded boy who was fighting mad. That he was outsized didn’t seem to matter to the kid. Fists flying, tennis shoes kicking at Harley’s shins, he fought Harley as he screamed, “You let my sister go!”

“Now wait a minute,” Harley said in frustration as he tried to keep an arm’s-length hold on the kid while he angled him up against the side of his truck. “I’m not hurting your sister. I’m only—”

Before he could explain himself, Harley was hit again from behind, but this time the body that jumped him was a little heavier than the boy he’d just peeled from his back.

“What the hell—?” As he stumbled backward, a pair of legs wrapped themselves around his waist and a pair of arms locked around his neck, cutting off his air supply. A woman screamed at his ear, “Get your sister and run, Jimmy!”

Momentarily blinded by a mane of wild red hair, Harley gasped for breath as he struggled to wedge his fingers between the arms that circled his neck and his collar. When he’d won enough space to give himself some breathing room, he glanced down to see that the boy hadn’t moved an inch but was standing there bugeyed, his mouth hanging open wide enough to catch flies, staring at Harley as if he’d grown horns.

Harley had grown something all right, but it sure as hell wasn’t horns! It was on his back and whoever—or whatever—it was, was going to turn him into a damn eunuch if she didn’t quit kicking.

Having had enough of this craziness, Harley grabbed hold of the arms around his neck and twisted his body around, heaving at the same time, and sent the woman flying over his shoulder to land with a thump on the sidewalk in front of him. He followed her down, pinning her wrists on either side of her head while he straddled her. Startled green eyes stared at him through a tangle of red hair while her mouth moved ineffectively, sucking at air.