Say You'll Stay And Marry Me

Say You'll Stay And Marry Me
Patti Standard

SAY YOU'LL STAY AND…One lean and lonesome cowboy stood between Sara Shepherd and her vacation plans. But Sara wasn't sure she wanted Mac Wallace out of her way! If she truly wanted to go, why stay to help out the rancher and his sons after he'd fixed her truck?Mac hadn't complained when Sara started caring for his house and kids. But when would she get around to him? Then Sara showed him her special TLC, and Mac's spirits perked right up! How could he get a dose of Sara every day? There was only one thing to say….

“I can run for a long, long time yet.” (#ua83ac9b1-d4b5-5eed-881d-26ad6f11401e)Letter to Reader (#u62038174-c22f-5b1b-a32f-88199c9b2dcc)Title Page (#u156f8778-f7ac-5326-b90e-095c0ff3029e)Dedication (#uae7e048f-3158-555f-99dd-3db77bcdd02e)About the Author (#u03a4b302-c4b6-5ab1-9eda-5d61568260da)Chapter One (#u63ce78f5-22af-5c01-bf98-8530956583a5)Chapter Two (#u61b28096-79b9-52ee-b54d-6ea90e35237c)Chapter Three (#udbbb9c90-ec2d-5b68-a840-9282dd121d92)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)Epilogue (#litres_trial_promo)Copyright (#litres_trial_promo)

“I can run for a long, long time yet.”

Sara’s voice was composed as she walked to the front door. But once the screen closed behind her, Mac heard her take the stairs two at a time.

It was good she’d left before he pulled her to him. Before he plundered her mouth with a thoroughness that would make her forget she was in a hurry to leave.

He cursed the cast that kept him pinned when he needed to pace until the image of Sara standing in moonlight faded along with his restlessness. Until the heady scent of roses that clung to her skin was replaced by the smell of sage and rangeland.

He must be very, very careful, he warned himself. Sara had proven she’d bolt when the going got really tough. He needed a team player. Definitely not a woman like Sara.

But how could he let her go?

Dear Reader,

To ring in 1998—Romance-style!—we’ve got some new voices and some exciting new love stories from the authors you love.

Valerie Parv is best known for her Harlequin Romance and Presents novels, but The Billionaire’s Baby Chase, this month’s compelling FABULOUS FATHERS title, marks her commanding return to Silhouette! This billionaire daddy is pure alpha male...and no one—not even the heroine!—will keep him from his long-lost daughter....

Doreen Roberts’s sparkling new title, In Love with the Boss, features the classic boss/secretary theme. Discover how a no-nonsense temp catches the eye—and heart—of her wealthy brooding boss. If you want to laugh out loud, don’t miss Terry Essig’s What the Nursery Needs... In this charming story, what the heroine needs is the right man to make a baby! Hmm...

A disillusioned rancher finds himself thinking, Say You’ll Stay and Marry Me, when he falls for the beautiful wanderer who is stranded on his ranch in this emotional tale by Patti Standard. And, believe me, if you think The Bride, the Trucker and the Great Escape sounds fun, just wait till you read this engaging romantic adventure by Suzanne McMinn. And in The Sheriff with the Wyoming-Size Heart by Kathy Jacobson, emotions run high as a small-town lawman and a woman with secrets try to give romance a chance....

And there’s much more to come in 1998! I hope you enjoy our selections this month—and every month.

Happy New Year!

Joan Marlow Golan

Senior Editor

Silhouette Books

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

Say You’ll Stay And Marry Me

Standard, Patti

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

TO STARR.

YOU KEPT THE PRESSURE ON.

PATTI STANDARD

started her writing career after she stopped working full time and began an at-home typing service. She says that the brand-new word processor and all those blank disks were too tempting to ignore. Having been a romance fan since her teens, she decided that the time would never be better to try to put on paper the stories she’d been writing in her mind for years.

Patti also loves to travel. She says that she started with Hawaii when she was sixteen and has been going ever since. Her family knows that trouble is brewing when she spreads out her map collection on the living room floor. She lives in a small town in western Colorado at the edge of the Rocky Mountains with her children and husband.

Chapter One

Sara Shepherd slammed the door and walked to the front of the truck, gravel crunching under her tennis shoes. She pushed sweaty bangs off her forehead with an exasperated. shove as she watched steam hiss its way around the edge of the hood, the white wisps of vapor evaporating instantly in the dry Wyoming air. Gingerly, using the hem of her yellow T-shirt to protect her hand from the hot metal, she pulled the latch and lifted the hood. Steam billowed out, an antifreeze cloud escaping from a gash in a rubber hose connected to the radiator.

Sara cursed softly, using language her English professor husband would have dismissed as a sign of an inadequate vocabulary if he’d still been alive. That her dilemma was her fault only added to her frustration. She’d thought about buying extra belts and hoses before she left Denver last week, but had decided against it since the truck was only two years old. Leaving the hood propped open, she walked to the cab, stepped onto the running board and stuck her head in the window to look at the odometer.

Sixty-three thousand two hundred and fifty-eight miles—plus some odd tenths.

In two years.

Sara felt a combination of pride and dismay at the thought of all those miles, hard, compulsive, seldom-stopping miles from Canada to Mexico, east coast to west. And so many miles still ahead of her. She dropped to the ground and carefully tucked the edge of her T-shirt into her jeans. She surveyed the empty asphalt that snaked in both directions before disappearing in a shimmering haze of heat at the horizon. Not a car in sight.

Wyoming surrounded her, desolate, with only sparse grass and sagebrush corralled behind the miles of barbed wire fence that edged the narrow, two-lane highway. A stray gust of wind brought a windmill creaking to life behind her, forcing its rusted blades to make a desultory turn, movement enough to shake its weathered wooden frame all the way to the ground but not enough to raise so much as a drop of water to fill the empty stock tank at its base. Just looking at the alkali deposit that ringed the tank made her thirsty. She licked her lips as she tried to decide what to do.

A well-worn rut cut off the highway and crisscrossed its way to the distant mountains. It looked tempting, especially since Yellowstone National Park lay behind those mountains. She’d planned to reach Yellowstone sometime tomorrow after spending the night in Jackson Hole. But she knew that rut could just as easily peter out at some gully as lead to a house and telephone. Better to backtrack to that gas station she’d passed, Sara decided, hoping it was only a few miles back.

She took a long drink from the thermos in the cab, then grabbed her credit card and driver’s license from her purse and stuffed the leather purse under the seat. She locked the truck’s doors, double-checking that the door to the white camper covering its bed—her home for the past two years—was also securely locked. She started down the road, the asphalt under her feet soft from the afternoon sun, well aware that she left her entire life’s possessions behind her.

The little gas station was closer than she remembered. It sat at the junction of two rural highways, alone except for a big white farmhouse ringed by shady cottonwood trees about a hundred yards behind the station. It was little more than a wide spot in the road, but the station’s neat white siding and green shutters looked wonderful after a forty-minute walk. Two gas pumps squatted on a paved mat, sharing space with rainbow oil slicks and a pothole or two. The door to an attached garage yawned wide, and she could see a hydraulic lift inside, workbenches stacked with tools and thankfully, a collection of belts and hoses on hooks near the ceiling. She should be on her way to Yellowstone in a few hours, after all.

She pushed open the glass door to the station and set a bell jangling somewhere inside. A boy, perched on a stool behind the counter, looked up from his comic book at the sound. Maybe twelve or thirteen, he had an open, friendly face with freckles and a slight overbite that braces were trying to correct.

“Hi. I didn’t hear your car.”

“I’m on foot,” Sara told him. “My truck’s about two miles up the road with a blown water hose. I was hoping you could help me out.”

“What year?” He dragged a dog-eared book from a shelf over the cash register and flipped it open on the scarred countertop.

She told him and described the location of the hose—by now she knew her truck intimately, inside and out. The boy thumbed through the pages, stopped at one, then followed a line of type across the page with his finger.

“Bingo! We’ve got one of those.”

“Great.” She relaxed and smiled with relief. She’d stubbornly tried to ignore her nervousness as she’d walked to the station. It hadn’t helped that her daughter’s warnings had come so easily to mind, keeping her company with each step. I told you so, the voice had said. A grown woman driving around the country like some middle-aged hippy. It’s just not safe, Mother. And her mind had spun out the word mother in a perfect mimic of Laura, in that exasperated and exasperating tone her daughter had adopted since graduating from college.

Sara had only broken down once before, and it had been a simple flat tire. But she would think seriously about trading in her faithful blue truck for a new model when she passed through Denver this fall. A breakdown in the winter was something she didn’t even want to contemplate.

“If you don’t mind, I’ll use your rest room for a minute while you ring that up. Add a bottle of that orange juice, too. It’s going to be a hot walk back.” She pointed to a cooler against the wall filled with drinks.