“I Am Choosing This Of My Free Will, Father,”
Caitlyn told the priest.
“As am I,” Grant said so convincingly that Caitlyn found herself wishing he really meant it. That her husband truly wanted her to be his wife in every respect, and not just the “bonus” her father had promised his foreman.
Her husband!
As much as she would have liked to indulge such fantasies, Caitlyn refused to delude herself. Love played no part in this travesty of a vow. Why, her father might just as well have sold her off to the highest bidder!
Father O’Reilly beamed at Grant. “You may now kiss the bride.”
Grant placed a light kiss upon her lips. Considering the circumstances, his tenderness was so unexpected, it made her knees buckle. Her heart gave a hopeful leap. Perhaps this marriage would continue to surprise her happily….
Dear Reader,
Please join us in celebrating Silhouette’s 20th anniversary in 2000! We promise to deliver—all year—passionate, powerful, provocative love stories from your favorite Desire authors!
This January, look for bestselling author Leanne Banks’s first MAN OF THE MONTH with Her Forever Man. Watch sparks fly when irresistibly rugged ranch owner Brock Logan comes face-to-face with his new partner, the fiery Felicity Chambeau, in the first book of Leanne’s brand-new miniseries LONE STAR FAMILIES: THE LOGANS.
Desire is pleased to continue the Silhouette cross-line continuity ROYALLY WED with The Pregnant Princess by favorite author Anne Marie Winston. After a night of torrid passion with a stranger, a beautiful princess ends up pregnant…and seeks out the father of her child.
Elizabeth Bevarly returns to Desire with her immensely popular miniseries FROM HERE TO MATERNITY with Dr. Mommy, about a couple reunited by a baby left on a doorstep. Hard Lovin’ Man, another of Peggy Moreland’s TEXAS BRIDES, captures the intensity of falling in love when a cowgirl gives her heart to a sweet-talkin’, hard-lovin’ hunk. Cathleen Galitz delivers a compelling marriage-of-convenience tale in The Cowboy Takes a Bride, in the series THE BRIDAL BID. And Sheri WhiteFeather offers another provocative Native American hero in Skyler Hawk: Lone Brave.
Help us celebrate 20 years of great romantic fiction from Silhouette by indulging yourself with all six delectably sensual Desire titles each and every month during this special year!
Enjoy!
Joan Marlow Golan
Senior Editor, Silhouette Desire
The Cowboy Takes a Bride
Cathleen Galitz
To my loving father, Cecil Connors,
whose livelihood depended on the oil field for
many years. Thank you for acting as my trusted
adviser on this book—and in my life.
CATHLEEN GALITZ,
a Wyoming native, teaches English to seventh to twelfth graders in a rural school that houses kindergartners and seniors in the same building. She lives in a small Wyoming town with her husband and two children. When she’s not busy writing, teaching or working with her Cub Scout den, she can most often be found hiking or snowmobiling in the Wind River Mountains.
Contents
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
One
“Now what?” Grant asked, wiping the sweat from his forehead with the back of his hand.
Behind him, Copper Mountain rose from the plains like a great dark whale breaching against a cerulean sky. Before him, the sage-covered desert stretched into the distance where a trail of dust heralded the arrival of an unannounced visitor to the oil rig. It was not a welcome sight.
The day was ungodly hot, he was already tired and out of sorts, and the last thing he needed right about now was another interruption. Earlier in the day he’d discovered the drilling line was as frayed and worn as the shoestring on which they were operating, and he’d had to re-spool a new one. On an already tight schedule, the process cost time he could ill afford. To top it all off, an hour ago the driller had stumbled out of the bunkhouse reeking of alcohol. The owner offered to take over the key position himself, but at fifty-eight Paddy Flynn was no longer a young man, and both the rigors of the oil field and the unreasonable demands he’d made upon his body left him in no shape to perform such strenuous duties.
Unwilling to put his employees’ lives and limbs in the irresponsible hands of a drunken driller, Grant had no other choice but to fire the man on the spot and assume the job himself. A troubleshooter, he rotated between all of L.L. Drilling’s operations. Mentally Grant corrected himself. What was left of L.L. Drilling’s operations.
Everyone knew that this rig was the company’s last hope for staying solvent. To put it in Paddy’s own words, if they didn’t hit a deep pocket soon, they’d all be plumb bust.
The 1990s hadn’t been kind to the oil industry. Just to keep afloat, they’d been forced to sell off all but two of their big rigs and had kept only a handful of work-overs for service jobs. With each sale, Grant saw his dream of someday buying a ranch slipping away. He already had the place picked out. It was a prime piece of unspoiled Wyoming wilderness, tucked away on the side of a mountain. If he closed his eyes he could almost see it, could almost hear the trill of the river that threaded its way snakelike through a meadow big enough to hold and capture a man’s heart.
At the sound of the vehicle coming to a stop below, Grant forced his eyes open. Trouble never bothered sneaking up on him. He groaned at the sight of the passenger who climbed out from behind the steering wheel in the dirt parking lot below. The absolute last thing he needed right about now was for some hot little number in tight jeans and a T-shirt to step out of her brand-new four-wheel drive and distract an already unruly crew. From their reaction to the news that good old Harry had just been run off, Grant knew they were disappointed to hear that their drinking buddy had just been replaced by the company hard-ass. Even under the best of circumstances it was bound to take a couple of shifts with no complications just to get his men in synch.
“Hey babe—y!” someone hollered down as the woman opened the door and took her first step into the blinding sunlight.
The vehicle shook slightly as she slammed the door shut behind her. A fine layer of dust sifted to the ground like a sprinkling of brown sugar. The hint of shiny, fire-engine red paint peeking out from beneath the remaining layers of grime indicated to Grant that the woman must be a greenhorn. It was unlikely a Wyoming native would take a new vehicle on the kind of back roads that led to this rig. The driver had to either be lost, crazy, or so filthy rich that she didn’t have to worry about scraping together money for costly repairs. None of the possibilities endeared her any to Grant.
Even