Fiona Brand - High-Stakes Bride

Dear Reader,

High-Stakes Bride was always going to be a ranch story, because Carter Rawlings—the sixth and final member of my Down Under SAS team—has a strong link with the land. When I planned the book, the solution to who would finally tame my most elusive bachelor yet was simple—Dani Marlow, the girl next door. What I didn’t understand until I began writing was how deep the secret of Dani’s past went and just how wide-ranging the repercussions would prove to be. Dani turned out to be a headstrong, complex heroine, a fitting match for Carter, a seasoned assault specialist who is faced with the biggest challenge of his life: keeping Dani safe.

Enjoy!

Fiona Brand

ISBN: 9781408946428

High-Stakes Bride

© Fiona Brand 2006

First Published in Great Britain in 2006

Harlequin (UK) Limited

Eton House, 18-24 Paradise Road, Richmond, Surrey TW9 1SR

All rights reserved, including the right of reproduction in whole or in part in any form. The text of this publication or any part thereof may not be reproduced or transmitted in any form or by any means, electronic or mechanical, now known or hereinafter invented, including without limitation xerography, photocopying, recording, storage in an information retrieval system, or otherwise, without the written permission of the publisher.

This ebook is sold subject to the condition that it shall not, by way of trade or otherwise, be lent, resold, hired out or otherwise circulated, without the prior consent of the publisher, in any form or cover other than that in which it is published and without a similar condition including this condition being imposed on the subsequent purchaser.

All characters in this work have no existence outside the imagination of the author and have no relation whatsoever to anyone bearing the same name or names. They are not even distantly inspired by any individual known or unknown to the author, and all incidents are pure invention.

This edition is published by arrangement with Harlequin Enterprises II B.V./S.à.r.l.

® and TM are trademarks owned and used by the trademark owner and/or its licensee. Trademarks marked with ® are registered with the United Kingdom Patent Office and/or the Office for Harmonisation in the Internal Market and in other countries.

www.millsandboon.co.uk

FIONA BRAND

has always wanted to write. After working eight years for the New Zealand Forest Service as a clerk, she decided she could spend at least that much time trying to get a romance novel published. Luckily, it only took five years, not eight. Fiona lives in a subtropical fishing and diving paradise called the Bay of Islands with her two children.

About the Author

Prologue

Chapter 1

Chapter 2

Chapter 3

Chapter 4

Chapter 5

Chapter 6

Chapter 7

Chapter 8

Chapter 9

Chapter 10

Chapter 11

Chapter 12

Chapter 13

Chapter 14

Chapter 15

Chapter 16

Chapter 17

Chapter 18

Chapter 19

Coming Next Month

Twenty-two years ago, Dawson, New Zealand

Eight-year-old Dani Marlow’s eyes flicked open in the dark. Icy moonlight filtered through the thin drapes pulled across her window, turning the pink quilt on her bed a frosted grey and bleaching the floorboards silver.

The sound that had woken her came again. Not the skeletal scrape of the clump of small trees that grew outside her window, or the ancient creaking of the oak that shaded most of the front lawn, but the sharp clink of metal against metal.

Breath suspended in her throat, she lay rigid, eyes fixed on the cracked plaster of the ceiling as she strained to listen. Time passed. The wind strengthened, the cold palpable as it rattled branches and whispered through desiccated leaves. Slowly, the tension ebbed from her limbs, her lids drooped and she began the warm drift back into sleep.

Glass shattered, the sound as explosive as a gunshot, jackknifing her out of bed. Bare feet hit the icy cold of the floor and, for a terrifying moment, Dani lost the sense of where she was—and when.

Light flooded through the gap where her bedroom door stood ajar, momentarily blinding her. Blankly, she registered footsteps, the crash of overturned furniture. A dull thud followed by an anguished cry shocked her out of her immobility.

Heart pounding, she wrenched her wardrobe door wide and fumbled through layers of clothing, fighting the frantic urge to burrow into the musty storage space and hide. She hadn’t been dreaming, what was happening was real. He was here—now. Somehow he had found them again, and this time he had gotten inside the house. She didn’t understand why or how it happened, just that no matter where they moved to, sooner or later, it did.

For a frantic moment she couldn’t find what she was looking for, then her fingers closed on the stick she kept there. The wood was smooth where she’d peeled the bark away, and as heavy as a baseball bat. She had made it three months ago at the last place they had lived, when a neighbour had seen a man watching their flat and reported him to the police. They had managed to get away when the police cruiser had arrived and frightened him off. The time before they hadn’t been so lucky. Susan had ended up in hospital with cracked ribs and a concussion, and Dani had gone into care.

Stomach tight, Dani edged along the narrow hall and halted in the doorway to the kitchen. A silver shape arrowed through the air. She ducked as the kettle hit the wall, spraying water. Simultaneously a loud bang was followed by a burst of blue light as the electrical mains above her head blew, plunging the house into darkness. Soaked and shivering, blinking to clear the flash of the explosion and adjust to the much dimmer moonlight pouring through the kitchen window, Dani struggled to make sense of the black shadow grappling with her mother.

Susan Marlow, clearly visible in a long pale nightgown, struck out, knocking the shadow back and abruptly the scene made sense. The shadow was a man dressed all in black, his hands, his face—every part of him blanked out—except for a narrow strip where his eyes glittered.

He swung, his arm a blur. Susan crumpled and, with a fierce cry, Dani launched herself. The stick arced down, crashing into the only part of him she could see, his eyes. The jarring force of the blow numbed her fingers and sent the stick spinning. A split second later she was flung through the air, for a timeless moment tumbling….

When Dani came to she lay sprawled at an angle, half under the kitchen table. Pain throbbed at the back of her head as she dragged herself into a sitting position and clung to a table leg for support.

He was at the sink. He had taken off what she now realized was a balaclava and was washing his face. As he turned, the glow from a flashlight uplit a broad chest and powerful shoulders, dark hair cut close against his skull, and a face that was nightmarishly distorted. Blood streamed from a swollen, misshapen nose and a livid cut below one eye where the flesh had peeled open revealing the glistening white of bone—the effect like something out of a horror movie.

Clutching his face to stem the flow of blood, he stumbled into the tiny lounge, the flashlight beam flickering over broken furniture and shards of glass as he stepped through the window he’d smashed to get into the house and merged with the night.