Lynnette Kent - The Ballad of Dixon Bell

“Yeah, your boyfriend’s one of them. And ol’ Mano’s working for him. I’d say there’s a pretty strong link between Bell and Torres and my ruined houses.”

“Dixon Bell wouldn’t stoop to vandalism. He’ll deal with you face-to-face.”

“I’ll believe that when I see it.”

“So open your eyes.” Dixon spoke from the entry hall. “And say what’s on your mind.”

“This is family business. You don’t belong.”

Kate couldn’t let that comment pass unchallenged. “You’re the one who doesn’t belong, L.T. By your own choice.”

L.T. swung back to her. “Listen, bitch—”

Dixon snaked an arm around his throat from behind. Dragging the other man backward, he strode to the front door and launched him down the steps.

Kate held her breath, hoping and praying L.T. would simply leave.

Instead, he charged.

Dear Reader,

When I was a teenager I fell in love with The South—a mythical place where wide, lazy rivers reflected the moon’s glow and sultry evenings seduced lovers with the perfume of gardenia blossoms and honeysuckle vines. Add a plantation house standing ghost-white amidst moss-draped live oak trees, and you have the perfect recipe for romance.

Dixon Bell and Kate LaRue are two people who see that side of the South in their hometown of New Skye, North Carolina. Dixon’s been wandering the world for thirteen years and has yet to find a place he’d rather live. When he learns that Kate—the first and only woman he’s ever loved—will soon be free, he knows it’s finally time for him to go back. He doesn’t anticipate the complications he encounters in wooing Kate. Maybe coming home isn’t supposed to be easy.

Kate barely noticed Dixon when they were in high school together. She can’t help noticing him now, however, and she can’t ignore the longings he awakens in her love-starved soul. But she’s imprisoned by the unwritten rules and expectations of the society she grew up in. Being an adult in your own hometown is never as easy as you’d expect.

The Ballad of Dixon Bell is the second book in my new series for Superromance, AT THE CAROLINA DINER. If this is your first visit, welcome to a world where you run into somebody you know whenever you step out your door, where the family’s always aware of what’s going on in your life and can usually track you down if they want to, where friends are tried and true. A world where romance is still very much alive—just ask Dixon and Kate.

And watch for The Last Honest Man, coming in August!

Lynnette Kent

P.S. I’d love to hear from you. Write me at PMB 304, Westwood Shopping Center, Fayetteville, NC 28314. Or visit my Web page, www.lynnettekent.com.

www.millsandboon.co.uk

To the Southern Gentlemen I know best:

Frank, Barry and Ed.

And, as always, for Martin.

Love you, guys.

CHAPTER ONE

CHAPTER TWO

CHAPTER THREE

CHAPTER FOUR

CHAPTER FIVE

CHAPTER SIX

CHAPTER SEVEN

CHAPTER EIGHT

CHAPTER NINE

CHAPTER TEN

CHAPTER ELEVEN

CHAPTER TWELVE

CHAPTER THIRTEEN

CHAPTER FOURTEEN

CHAPTER FIFTEEN

CHAPTER SIXTEEN

CHAPTER SEVENTEEN

March

Boswell, Colorado

“YOU MAKING TIME with your sweetheart again, Dixie?”

“That ain’t his sweetheart. That’s his baby girl. Right, Dixie?”

Dixon Bell just grinned at the cowboys’ teasing and kept walking at a slow, easy pace toward the three unbroken horses poised along one curve of the corral. The buckskin and the pinto danced away as he got close. The black quarter horse mare knew him, though, and had come to trust him a little. Ears twitching, tail flicking, she watched him approach. She was nervous, sure. But willing to give him a chance.

“Hey, there, gorgeous,” he crooned, coming to a stop by her shoulder. He put a hand on the smooth, warm skin of her neck. “Thanks for waiting for me. How’s it going?”

She turned her head toward him, nosed his arm and chest, then jerked away as the buckskin came near again. Ears drawn flat against her head, eyes wide, the mare warned the other horse off.

“No need to be jealous, sweetheart.” Dixon chuckled as he stroked his palm along her back. “I’ve only got eyes for you.”

Talking quietly, he ran his hands over her ribs, her flanks, her chest, combed his fingers through her jet-black mane. As she calmed, he bent to stroke her legs, lifting each foot in turn, all the time praising her for standing still, for letting him have his way.

Then he straightened up and allowed the halter he’d hooked over his shoulder to drop down to his hand. “Remember this?” He held it under her nose, watched her sniff. “We got this on yesterday. Let’s try again.”

She wasn’t happy about it, but did finally let him slip the soft halter over her nose and ears. Left to run wild in the Colorado hills since her birth two years ago, she hadn’t been trained to accept human restraints. Though she balked when he hooked the lead rope to the halter, the mare eventually consented to be led around the corral without too much fuss…as long as the buckskin kept her distance. This quarter horse wasn’t interested in sharing her man with anybody else.

“She’ll make a good mount,” the ranch foreman commented when Dixon left the corral. “You’re sure taking your time, though. There’s easier, quicker ways to break a horse.”

“I’m not interested in easier and quicker,” Dixon told him. “Usually that means some kind of pain for the animal. I’m content to take things slow, exercise a little patience.”

“Next thing we know, you’ll be hugging trees.” The foreman gave him a friendly punch in the arm as they parted ways. Dixon returned the halter to the barn and headed to the bunkhouse to wash up for dinner. The aroma of grilled meat hung in the dry mountain air, teasing him with visions of steak and potatoes. He’d been up at dawn, heading out to round up cows and calves, and the only food he’d managed all day was a quick sandwich at lunch. Hungry wasn’t a big enough word for the emptiness inside him tonight.

A stop at the mailbox on his way in rewarded him with a letter from home. Dixon delayed the pleasure until he’d changed into a clean shirt and jeans and washed his hands. Then he sat on his bunk to read what his grandmother, Miss Daisy Crawford, had to say.

She wrote, on lavender-scented paper in an old-fashioned, flowing script, of her friends, her neighbors, the civic meetings she went to, the goings-on at church. One of her cats had been sick, some kind of kidney problem, but the vet prescribed a new diet which seemed to be working. The weather had been strange this year—variably cold and hot—so she never knew what to wear when she went out.

Finally, I thought you might want to know that we’ve had something of a scandal here recently. L.T. LaRue—whom I would designate a scalawag, if there were still such a thing—up and left his family a few weeks ago. Moved out of their house and into a love nest with his office secretary, declaring to the world his intention to get a divorce and marry this girl young enough to be his daughter. I taught her in Sunday School just a few years ago; I can’t imagine what could have happened to bring her to such a state.

This domestic tragedy leaves Kate LaRue—she was Kate Bowdrey, as I’m sure you recall—alone to take care of two teenagers. Poor Kate, she’s struggled to put up with that man these ten years, even adopted his children, and look what he’s gone and done to her. Some men just are not to be relied upon.