Janelle Denison - Bride Included

“If you expect me to pack up and leave without a fight, then you have another think coming” “If you expect me to pack up and leave without a fight, then you have another think coming” “On the contrary, darlin’,” he said, his smooth drawl at odds with the resentment she detected in his voice. “I fully expect you to stay.” Wariness pulsed through Josie with every heartbeat. Was he tricking her somehow? Letting her believe. that he wasn’t going to take away the only home she and Kellie had? “I...I don’t understand.” “There’s a stipulation to the deed,” he said very carefully, as if he wanted her to understand what he was about to say. “A provision your father set and I agreed to before I won that last poker hand.” “What kind of stipulation?” Seth O’Connor’s smile was grim. “That we get married.” About the Author Janelle Denison has read romances ever since she was in high school. She never intended to become a writer, but her love of books and romance led to writing the kind of emotionally satisfying stories she’s enjoyed from Harlequin over the years. While perfecting her craft, she worked as a construction secretary, but recently decided to quit her “day job” to write full-time. Janelle lives in Southern California with her engineer husband, whose support and encouragement have enabled her to follow her dream of writing, and two young daughters, who keep life interesting and give her plenty of ideas for the young characters she includes in her books. Janelle’s greatest hope is that her romances leave her readers smiling and feeling as if they’ve made a couple of new friends. After all, nothing is more enjoyable and heartwarming than watching two opposites struggle against all odds, then fall in love despite those odds. Title Page Bride Included Janelle Denison www.millsandboon.co.uk Dedication To all the wonderful friends I’ve made who have helped me along this incredible journey, from the struggles in the beginning, to sharing the joy of each sale. There are too many of you to name, but each one of you played a part in making this dream a reality. And, as always, to Don, who makes every story special, just by believing in me. CHAPTER ONE CHAPTER TWO CHAPTER THREE CHAPTER FOUR CHAPTER FIVE CHAPTER SIX CHAPTER SEVEN CHAPTER EIGHT CHAPTER NINE CHAPTER TEN CHAPTER ELEVEN EPILOGUE Copyright

“If you expect me to pack up and leave without a fight, then you have another think coming”

“On the contrary, darlin’,” he said, his smooth drawl at odds with the resentment she detected in his voice. “I fully expect you to stay.”

Wariness pulsed through Josie with every heartbeat. Was he tricking her somehow? Letting her believe. that he wasn’t going to take away the only home she and Kellie had? “I...I don’t understand.”

“There’s a stipulation to the deed,” he said very carefully, as if he wanted her to understand what he was about to say. “A provision your father set and I agreed to before I won that last poker hand.”

“What kind of stipulation?”

Seth O’Connor’s smile was grim. “That we get married.”

Janelle Denison has read romances ever since she was in high school. She never intended to become a writer, but her love of books and romance led to writing the kind of emotionally satisfying stories she’s enjoyed from Harlequin over the years. While perfecting her craft, she worked as a construction secretary, but recently decided to quit her “day job” to write full-time.

Janelle lives in Southern California with her engineer husband, whose support and encouragement have enabled her to follow her dream of writing, and two young daughters, who keep life interesting and give her plenty of ideas for the young characters she includes in her books.

Janelle’s greatest hope is that her romances leave her readers smiling and feeling as if they’ve made a couple of new friends. After all, nothing is more enjoyable and heartwarming than watching two opposites struggle against all odds, then fall in love despite those odds.

www.millsandboon.co.uk

To all the wonderful friends I’ve made who have helped me along this incredible journey, from the struggles in the beginning, to sharing the joy of each sale. There are too many of you to name, but each one of you played a part in making this dream a reality.

And, as always, to Don, who makes every story special, just by believing in me.

CHAPTER ONE

“MOM!” Josie McAllister’s ten-year-old daughter, Kellie, burst into the kitchen, her wide green eyes filled with panic. “There’s a big man on a horse riding across the pasture. He’s headed toward the house and he looks mean!”

Josie frowned and washed her hands, sticky from the biscuits she’d just cut out for dinner. “Are you sure it’s not one of the ranch hands?”

“I’m sure!” Kellie’s chest heaved with panting breaths and her face was flushed, as if she’d bolted across the hundred yards separating the stables from the main ranch house. “I’ve never seen him before!”

Josie wiped her hands on a terry towel, a twinge of uncertainty rippling through her. It was Sunday, and even though her foreman, Mac, usually stopped by to check on the stock, the rest of the hands spent the day with their families. She’d heard Mac pull his old beat-up Ford out of the driveway over an hour ago, which meant she and Kellie were alone.

Normally, that wouldn’t be cause for concern. She’d lived in this house her entire life, and not once had a stranger or drifter threatened her or her father. She trusted the men they’d hired and had been lucky in that respect.

Tears filled Kellie’s eyes, and she tugged urgently on her mother’s arm, gaining her attention again. Josie wanted to believe her daughter was just being overly dramatic, but Kellie had never been the theatrical type. She was shy and mild-mannered, and had certainly never been prone to hysterics before.

Tossing the hand towel onto the counter, she gave her daughter a reassuring smile. “Come on, let’s go see who it is.”

Instead of opening the front door as she’d normally do to greet a visitor, she gave in to caution and pushed back the cream sheers covering the window in the entryway. She glanced out just as a man dismounted from a beautiful chestnut down by the stables and draped the horse’s reins on the hitching post.

The man was big—at least six foot two, with wide shoulders that tapered into a trim waist, lean hips and a horseman’s thighs. Even from this distance, she could see he was physically fit, and even though he hadn’t turned around so she could see his face, she instinctively knew he wasn’t one of her men. None of her ranch hands had a presence like this cowboy, a natural air about him that commanded respect and authority.

He turned and strode purposefully toward the main house. Still, she didn’t recognize him, but then the brim of his black Stetson cast shadows over his features. He wore a blue-striped Western shirt and a dark pair of jeans cinched at the waist with a heavy belt buckle.

“Mom, who is he?” Kellie whispered from beside her, as if the man had the ability to hear them.

“I don’t know...” The rest of her sentence caught in her throat as the man pushed his hat back on his head, finally offering her a glimpse of his face. Everything inside her went cold, like the biting chill that swept through the Montana mountains in the winter.

Seth O’Connor, the boy who’d tormented her throughout grade school, and in high school had scorched her with kisses she’d never forgotten, stolen her virginity and her heart, then had spurned her, nearly destroying her in the process. That had been eleven years ago, and even though they hadn’t spoken to each other since that day that had irrevocably changed her life, she’d seen him around town. He never looked her way, never gave any indication that she existed for him or that she’d ever meant anything more to him than the revenge he’d extracted.