Teresa Hill - The Texan's Diamond Bride

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BY

Dear Reader,

Special thanks to a man named Tom who—despite the fact that no one should ever do this because you can get killed—explains his love of exploring old mines and talks about how to do it. (Please don’t ever try this!)

Also, to Lauren in New York with an eBay store called Diamonds By Lauren, who loves coloured diamonds, especially canaries. I’ve admired many beautiful stones and rings on her site. Wouldn’t you know it, it finally paid off. (Hours spent browsing the internet isn’t a waste of time to writers. It’s about ideas. Really.) Finally, there is a stone that’s found only in the area of Texas around Llano. It’s commonly known as Llanite and described on one website as “a form of granite with some gemmy-looking blue quartz inclusions in it.”

No, it’s not red. But for this story, it is, and my heroine discovered it and named it something else.

Happy reading,

Teresa Hill

TERESA HILLlives within sight of the mountains in upstate South Carolina with one husband, very understanding and supportive; one daughter, who’s taken up drumming (Earplugs really don’t work that well. Neither do sound-muffling drum pads. Don’t believe anyone who says they do.); and one son, who’s studying the completely incomprehensible subject of chemical engineering (Flow rates, Mom. It’s all about flow rates.).

In search of company while she writes away her days in her office, she has so far accumulated two beautiful, spoiled dogs and three cats (the black panther/champion hunter, the giant powder puff and the tiny tiger stripe), all of whom take turns being stretched out, belly-up on the floor beside her, begging for attention as she sits at her computer.

With special thanks to my mother, Rachel Mcintosh, who accompanied me to Texas by plane and then on a lovely road trip from Dallas through the Texas Hill Country to San Antonio and Austin. We found San Antonio lush, green and beautiful, ate in a cafe in Austin with a huge rattlesnake skin on display above our booth and discovered that, for some reason, there are no acceleration lanes on Texas highways! (Really. There aren’t. Why? Acceleration lanes are a very good thing.)

Paige McCord lay stretched out on a hilltop about a mile away from Travis Foley’s Texas ranch, peering through a pair of high-powered binoculars for the third day in a row of her little surveillance mission.

It was early November, the temperatures warm for that time of year but not oppressively so for this sort of outdoor activity, the fall foliage of the Texas Hill Country at its stunning peak.

But Paige hadn’t come to check out the sights or enjoy the weather.

Although there was one particular sight she had to admit she was enjoying.

And there he was.

Paige checked her watch. Nearly three-thirty.

“A tad late today, aren’t you?” she asked him, adjusting the binoculars to pick up his image as he headed up the dirt trail toward the old mine entrance.

Paige was twenty-six, born and raised in Texas. She was not the kind of girl to have her head turned easily by some cowboy just because he spent his whole life working outdoors, obviously doing very physical work. Which she admitted tended to make a man lean as could be, and yet beautifully muscled, his skin pleasantly browned by the sun.

There was a certain walk cowboys did, an easy, loose-hipped swagger, in jeans that tended to be worn thin over the years, faithfully following every dip and swell of a man’s body.

The look was completed by an expensive pair of boots, scuffed up by hard work over the years and a cowboy hat—not one that was for show—and a little late-afternoon stubble on his face, because he would have gotten up before the sun, and the days were long.

This man had all that, but she’d seen all that before.

And she had things to do, she reminded herself, things that were much more important than admiring a good-looking man.

Everything in her life seemed to be changing, changing too much and too quickly, and it had thrown her harder than any horse that had ever managed to unseat her.

Paige’s two older brothers had just gotten engaged, and Paige hoped they knew what they were doing, but wasn’t so sure. It had all happened so fast.

Tate, her second-oldest brother, had come home from two tours of duty as an Army surgeon in the Middle East and never been the same. She’d been worried about him for a while. Then he’d dumped his fiancée, Katie, whom Paige really liked, and in no time flat, was engaged to the McCord family’s longtime housekeeper’s daughter, Tanya. Paige liked Tanya. She did. She’d just always thought Tate would end up with Katie, that Katie would take good care of Tate and finally be a McCord.

Then Blake, her oldest brother, had suddenly decided he wanted Katie for himself, and Katie had just agreed to marry him!

Paige still didn’t know exactly how all that had happened, she just hoped neither of her brothers had been hurt, and she didn’t want them fighting with each other. The family had enough to worry about without her two older brothers feuding.

Her cousin Gabby, who was practically Italian royalty and the spokesperson for the McCord family’s jewelry empire, hadn’t settled for just an engagement. Gabby had run off with her bodyguard and married him!

It was enough to make Paige’s head spin.

Then, there was her twin sister, Penny, who’d been acting weird all summer, always sneaking off somewhere, keeping all sorts of secrets, and normally Paige and Penny never kept secrets from each other. The last time Paige had talked to Gabby, Gabby had asked all sorts of questions about Penny that Paige couldn’t answer. Gabby was sure something was wrong.

Not that any of the McCords were acting like themselves lately and not just because of the flurry of romances.

It was their mother.

And their youngest brother.

And their father, dead for five years now.

None of them were what they seemed to be. Her family wasn’t at all what Paige had always believed it to be.

She was still so mad—and so shocked—she hardly let herself think about it, but her mother, Eleanor, had confessed this summer to the entire family that she’d long ago been involved with Rex Foley, the patriarch of a family that had been feuding with the McCords since Civil War days.

Not only been involved with him before she’d ever married Paige’s father, but had a child with Rex years later! Paige’s adorable youngest brother, Charlie, born after Paige’s parents had separated briefly when Paige was a little girl, was actually Rex Foley’s son!

Paige remembered, barely, a time when their family’s Dallas mansion had been filled with tension. She and her sister, Penny, had hidden together in corners all over the house, trying to avoid the angry voices and all the tears their mother cried, their father gone, supposedly just on a long business trip.