Blaylock's Bride

Blaylock's Bride
Cait London

MEN of the YEAR MAN of the MONTH THE BLAYLOCKS"When and if it comes my time to add to the Blaylock clan, I want a marriage certificate over the bed." - Roman Blaylock, rancher and executor of the Llewylyn estate The women of Jasmine, Wyoming, had long ago given up on taming Roman Blaylock - and that was just the way he wanted it.But a deathbed promise was about to bring him face-to-face with the one woman who made him long for a family of his own - the one woman he could never have. Unless he could convince the tempestuous Kallista Bellamy that the man of whom she was most suspicious was the one person she could trust… .Some men are made for lovin' - and you'll love our MAN OF THE MONTH, the first of three new Blaylock brothers!

Letter to Reader (#ua63ad36a-428e-5033-83df-98ed856a29c8)Letter to Reader (#u3b8b152d-7282-5121-af65-74c12cacfe64)Title Page (#u09910db9-ec83-5d1f-9cef-29bb583a0d65)Acknowledgments (#u12046086-d431-5dda-9416-a9c148c3a23c)Prologue (#u5a26eba6-f3a3-5e9e-8fd4-fbccee23e202)Chapter One (#u6cd37f02-c0c6-537f-b604-f9a91d873997)Chapter Two (#u854158fc-7875-515b-9111-e56c5cbd168b)Chapter Three (#litres_trial_promo)Chapter Four (#litres_trial_promo)Chapter Five (#litres_trial_promo)Chapter Six (#litres_trial_promo)Chapter Seven (#litres_trial_promo)Chapter Eight (#litres_trial_promo)Chapter Nine (#litres_trial_promo)Chapter Ten (#litres_trial_promo)Chapter Eleven (#litres_trial_promo)Chapter Twelve (#litres_trial_promo)Copyright (#litres_trial_promo)

Dear Reader-Friend,

I am so pleased to be a part of Silhouette Desire’s 10th anniversary MAN OF THE MONTH promotion, and to return to the Blaylocks, the family in Midnight Rider (SD #726) and The Seduction of Jake Tallman (SD #811). Readers have often requested a return to the Blaylocks. Jake is a Blaylock cousin, and we met the Blaylock family in Dan’s book, Midnight Rider. The bachelor brothers were just too tempting, and Blaylock’s Bride, Roman’s story, reopens the saga of the Blaylock family; Rio’s story is next. The setting is unique: smalltown Jasmine, Wyoming (similar to the towns I travel through every summer), filled with ranchers and farmers from the valley, stuffed with wonderful characters and surrounded by the Rocky Mountains.

Poor Roman. A darkly brooding hero, he’s given up on love, hoarding himself in his work and ranch. He was just too fascinating to leave moldering. So I tossed Kallista—an exciting, furious woman out for revenge—into his lap and, as a writer, enjoyed the fireworks.

I hope you enjoy the Blaylock family, bound by love and land, and I look forward to hearing from you, my reader-friends.

Dear Reader,

April brings showers, and this month Silhouette Desire wants to shower you with six new, passionate love stones!

Cait London’s popular Blaylock family returns in our April MAN OF THE MONTH title, Blaylock’s Bride. Honorable Roman Blaylock grapples with a secret that puts him in a conflict between confiding in the woman he loves and fulfilling a last wish.

The provocative series FORTUNE’S CHILDREN: THE BRIDES continues with Leanne Banks’s The Secretary and the Millionaire, when a wealthy CEO turns to his assistant for help in caring for his little girl.

Beverly Barton’s next tale in her 3 BABIES FOR 3 BROTHERS miniseries, His Woman, His Child, shows a rugged heartbreaker transformed by the heroine’s pregnancy. Powerful sheikhs abound in Sheikh’s Ransom, the Desire debut title of Alexandra Sellers’s dramatic new series, SONS OF THE DESERT. A marine gets a second chance at love in Colonel Daddy, continuing Maureen Child’s popular series BACHELOR BATTALION. And in Christy Lockhart’s Let’s Have a Baby!, our BACHELORS AND BABIES selection, the hero must dissuade the heroine from going to a sperm bank and convince her to let him father her child—the old-fashioned way!

Allow Silhouette Desire to give you the ultimate indulgence—all six of these fabulous April romance books!

Enjoy!

Joan Marlow Golan

Senior Editor, Silhouette Desire

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

Blaylock’s Bride

Cait London

www.millsandboon.co.uk (http://www.millsandboon.co.uk)

CAIT LONDON lives in the Missouri Ozarks but loves to travel the Northwest’s gold rush/cattle drive trails every summer. She loves research trips, meeting people and going to Native American dances. Ms. London is an avid reader who loves to paint, play with computers and grow herbs (particularly scented geraniums right now). She’s a national bestselling and award-winning author, and she also writes historical romances under another pseudonym. Three is her lucky number, she has three daughters, and the events in her life have always been in threes. “I love writing for Silhouette,” she says. “One of the best perks about all this hard work is the thrilling reader response and the warm, snug sense that I have given readers an enjoyable, entertaining gift.”

Together again—To my new editor at Silhouette,

Joan Marlow Golan. Thank you, Joan, for giving me my

start in writing, for your patience in teaching me how to

write many moons ago.

Thank you, Melissa Senate, for being you, for being

supportive, for building my career and for the wonderful

years we’ve had together.

A special thank-you to my dear readers, who have asked

to see more of the Blaylock family after reading

Midnight Rider and The Seduction of Jake Tallman.

Author’s Note: The research for the Bisque Cafe was

done at the Paint Cafe in Springfield, Missouri, where I

painted my first smiling, belly-up hippopotamus.

Prologue

“You’re safe here with me, little bit...here on Llewlyn land,” Boone said to the little girl holding his hand. The wind sweeping across Llewlyn land was chilly, Wyoming’s early September ablaze with fiery quaking aspens amid the fir and pine trees; fur thickened on the animals now, a natural preparation for winter. On the Rocky Mountains above Llewlyn Ranch, the bears were fat with summer berries and fish and honey stolen from wild beehives.

Boone Llewlyn lifted his head, letting the wind—filled with the scent of the land, of the pines and earth and fields—now through his shaggy gray hair and caress his leathered skin.

He was old now, bent by age and shame. Boone kept the little girl’s fragile hand cradled in his large, rough palm, his scarred heart filling with love.

This was his grandchild, Kallista May. Her green eyes and sleek silky hair came from his mother, that stubborn edge along her jaw from Llewlyn blood. At six, and dressed in her favorite red jacket and boots, she was too thin, and had seen too much of life’s dirty ways.

To remind Boone who had the legal claim to the little girl, her mother would come to tear her away soon, and Boone’s wounded heart would weep. The cruel game used the girl as a pawn, to assure monthly payments to her mother and to Boone’s son, her father.

Boone swallowed the emotion tearing through him. He treasured his inheritance, his parents, and the land that had been left to him. But in his thirty years away from this valley, he’d amassed a fortune and spawned two irresponsible sons...bigamists and careless, lazy men now—Boone couldn’t bear to have them near his land.

So he paid them all—his sons and their harem of wives, married illegally under different names—and in return, they kept his secret from the good people of Jasmine, the Blaylocks and the rest. He’d bought his sons free of bigamist charges, because he couldn’t have his grandchildren publicly named as illegitimate.

As a young man, he’d been in love with Garnet Marie Holmes, but she had wanted to stay in the valley. He’d turned to another woman and the world—and both had shamed him. Sara had been knowing, cultured and totally devoted to creating the picture of success that Boone had wanted then. Still in love with Garnet, he hadn’t asked for love or comfort, and had chosen his glittering, cold wife to suit his needs for power and money. When the babies came, they had less of her than Boone and still hunting his fortune, he’d left them to survive in her care. Sara had burned out her life long ago, mourned by no one. In his pursuit for money, he’d forgotten that a child was a precious gift, and that it took care to make a child feel proud and strong. And so his sons were weak men. Their wives were—Boone didn’t want to think of the greedy, immoral women his sons had chosen.

After a time, Garnet Holmes had turned away another suitor, Cutter Lomax. Because Boone wouldn’t lend money to Cutter and had stopped his land schemes, Cutter believed that Boone had caused the ruin of his life. After that, Cutter bitterly blamed the loss of Garnet on Boone, and a longterm feud began. Garnet soon married Luke Blaylock, a fine man, and together they’d had a beautiful family. Boone had always loved Garnet Marie, and wished her well; he couldn’t bear to let that dear sweet, honest woman—or the rest of the valley—see inside his black shame.

He had to protect the land from his sons. Llewlyn land was for his grandchildren, if they came back...

Boone studied the Herefords grazing in the field; he barely noticed the deer moving along the fence. He’d created legalities to protect himself and Llewlyn land, but he mourned his grandchildren...The Innocents whom he wanted to claim for his own. Yet he couldn’t shame his parents...or truth be told, himself. His pride and his shame had made him weak, though he loved his sons.

He held the girl’s hand and kept her safe—while he could, this tiny precious part of his blood, though she didn’t know it.