Diana Palmer - Rough Diamonds - Wyoming Tough / Diamond in the Rough

‘Nobody does it better.̓

—New York Times bestselling author Linda Howard

‘Ms Palmer masterfully weaves a tale that entices on many levels, blending adventure and strong human emotion into a great read.’

—RT Book Reviews

‘Nobody tops Diana Palmer when it comes to delivering pure, undiluted romance. I love her stories.’

—New York Times bestselling author Jayne Ann Krentz

‘Palmer knows how to make the sparks fly… heartwarming.̓

—Publishers Weekly on Renegade

‘A compelling tale…[that packs] an emotional wallop’

—Publishers Weekly on Renegade

‘This story is a thrill a minute—one of Palmer’s best.’

—Rendezvous on Lord of the Desert

DIANA PALMERhas a gift for telling the most sensual tales with charm and humour. With over forty million copies of her books in print, Diana Palmer is one of North America’s most beloved authors and is considered one of the top ten romance authors in the US.

Diana’s hobbies include gardening, archaeology, anthropology, iguanas, astronomy and music. She has been married to James Kyle for over twenty-five years and they have one son.

For news about Diana Palmer’s latest releases, please visit: www.dianapalmer.com or www.millsandboon.co.uk

Novels by Diana Palmer

DESPERADO

LAWLESS

AFTER MIDNIGHT

ONCE IN PARIS

DANGEROUS

PAPER ROSE

MIDNIGHT RIDER

NIGHT FEVER

ONE NIGHT IN NEW YORK

BEFORE SUNRISE

OUTSIDER

LAWMAN

HARD TO HANDLE

FEARLESS

DIAMOND SPUR

TRUE COLOURS

HEARTLESS

MERCILESS

COURAGEOUS

ROUGH DIAMONDS

Coming soon:

CHRISTMAS WITH THE RANCHER

WYOMING FIERCE

PROTECTOR

WYOMING BOLD

www.millsandboon.co.uk

EDITH DANIELLE MORENA BRANNT was not impressed with her new boss. The head honcho of the Rancho Real, or Royal Ranch in Spanish, near Catelow, Wyoming, was big and domineering and had a formidable bad attitude that he shared with all his hired hands.

Morie, as she was known to her friends, had a hard time holding back her fiery temper when Mallory Dawson Kirk raised his voice. He was impatient and hot-tempered and opinionated. Just like Morie’s father, who’d opposed her decision to become a working cowgirl. Her dad opposed everything. She’d just told him she was going to find a job, packed her bags and left. She was twenty-three. He couldn’t really stop her legally. Her mother, Shelby, had tried gentle reason. Her brother, Cort, had tried, too, with even less luck. She loved her family, but she was tired of being chased for who she was related to instead of who she was inside. Being a stranger on somebody else’s property was an enchanting proposition. Even with Mallory’s temper, she was happy being accepted for a poor, struggling female on her own in the harsh world. Besides that, she wanted to learn ranch work and her father refused to let her so much as lift a rope on his ranch. He didn’t want her near his cattle.

“And another thing,” Mallory said harshly, turning to Morie with a cold glare, “there’s a place to hang keys when you’re through with them. You never take a key out of the stable and leave it in your pocket. Is that clear?”

Morie, who’d actually transported the key to the main tack room off the property in her pocket at a time it was desperately needed, flushed. “Sorry, sir,” she said stiffly. “Won’t happen again.”

“It won’t if you expect to keep working here,” he assured her.

“My fault,” the foreman, old Darby Hanes, chimed in, smiling. “I forgot to tell her.”

Mallory considered that and nodded finally. “That’s what I always liked most about you, Darb, you’re honest.” He turned to Morie. “An example I’ll expect you to follow, as our newest hire, by the way.”

Her face reddened. “Sir, I’ve never taken anything that didn’t belong to me.”

He looked at her cheap clothes, the ragged hem of her jeans, her worn boots. But he didn’t judge. He just nodded.

He had thick black hair, parted on one side and a little shaggy around the ears. He had big ears and a big nose, deep-set brown eyes under a jutting brow, thick eyebrows and a mouth so sensuous that Morie hadn’t been able to take her eyes off it at first. That mouth made up for his lack of conventional good looks. He had big, well-manicured hands and a voice like deep velvet, as well as big feet, in old, rugged, dirt-caked boots. He was the boss, and nobody ever forgot it, but he got down in the mud and blood with his men and worked as if he was just an employee himself.

In fact, all three Kirk brothers were like that. Mallory was the oldest, at thirty-six. The second brother, Cane—a coincidence if there ever was one, considering Morie’s mother’s maiden name, even if hers was spelled with a K—was thirtyfour, a veteran of the Second Gulf War, and he was missing an arm from being in the front lines in combat. He was confronting a drinking problem and undergoing therapy, which his brothers were trying to address.

The youngest brother, at thirty-one, was Dalton. He was a former border agent with the department of immigration, and his nickname was, for some odd reason, Tank. He’d been confronted by a gang of narco-smugglers on the Arizona border, all alone. He was shot to pieces and hospitalized for weeks, during which most of the physicians had given him up for dead because of the extent of his injuries. He confounded them all by living. Nevertheless, he quit the job and came home to the family ranch in Wyoming. He never spoke of the experience. But once Morie had seen him react to the backfire of an old ranch truck by diving to the ground. She’d laughed, but old Darby Hanes had silenced her and told her about Dalton’s past as a border agent. She’d never laughed at his odd behaviors again. She supposed that both he and Cane had mental and emotional scars, as well as physical ones, from their past experiences. She’d never been shot at, or had anything happen to her. She’d been as sheltered as a hothouse orchid, both by her parents and her brother. This was her first taste of real life. She wasn’t certain yet if she was going to like it.

She’d lived on her father’s enormous ranch all her life. She could ride anything—her father had taught her himself. But she wasn’t accustomed to the backbreaking work that daily ranch chores required, because she hadn’t been permitted to do them at home, and she’d been slow her first couple of days.

Darby Hanes had taken her in hand and shown her how to manage the big bales of hay that the brothers still packed into the barn—refusing the more modern rolled bales as being inefficient and wasteful—so that she didn’t hurt herself when she lifted them. He’d taught her how to shoe horses, even though the ranch had a farrier, and how to doctor sick calves. In less than two weeks, she’d learned things that nothing in her college education had addressed.

“You’ve never done this work before,” Darby accused, but he was smiling.

She grimaced. “No. But I needed a job, badly,” she said, and it was almost the truth. “You’ve been great, Mr. Hanes. I owe you a lot for not giving me away. For teaching me what I needed to know here.” And what a good thing it was, she thought privately, that her father didn’t know. He’d have skinned Hanes alive for letting his sheltered little girl shoe a horse.