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Monahan's Gamble
Elizabeth Bevarly
THE LOVE BET?The bettor: Sexy Sean Monahan. At stake: dating beautiful– if slightly flaky– Autumn Pulaski, the new girl in town, for more than her prescribed four weeks. If he could only get her to go out with him for eight weeks, then she' d be in danger of breaking her rule. Or was he the one in danger?While her no-man-for-more-than-four-weeks policy might sound a bit bizarre, twice-jilted Autumn was not about to risk her heart again. Not even for the bluest eyes this side of paradise. But when the four weeks were over, the sound of her rule had been replaced by… funny thing, they sounded like… wedding bells?
“Autumn Pulaski Only Has Her Cockamamy Four-Week Rule Because She Knows It Will Make Guys That Much More Determined To Go Out With Her.”
Sean Monahan waited for his pronouncement to sink in.
His brother Finn studied him. “So what makes you think that you could avoid being so bamboozled yourself?”
“Like I said, I know women,” Sean reiterated. “I’m hip to her game before we even play it. I will come out the winner. In more ways than one.”
“You really think so?” Finn asked.
Sean nodded. “Hey, if there’s anybody out there who can last longer than four weeks with Autumn Pulaski,” he said with a smile, “I’m the man.”
Finn eyed Sean with much consideration. Then, right when it occurred to Sean, at the very back of his brain, that he might have just steered himself toward a deadly cliff, Finn uttered the words that, for thirty-four years, had tolled the death knell for Sean’s good sense.
“Prove it, little brother,” Finn said knowingly. “Prove it.”
Dear Reader,
The year 2000 has been a special time for Silhouette, as we’ve celebrated our 20th anniversary. Readers from all over the world have written to tell us what they love about our books, and we’d like to share with you part of a letter from Carolyn Dann of Grand Bend, Ontario, who’s a fan of Silhouette Desire. Carolyn wrote, “I like the storylines…the characters…the front covers… All the characters in the books are the kind of people you like to read about. They’re all down-to-earth, everyday people.” And as a grand finale to our anniversary year, Silhouette Desire offers six of your favorite authors for an especially memorable month’s worth of passionate, powerful, provocative reading!
We begin the lineup with the always wonderful Barbara Boswell’s MAN OF THE MONTH, Irresistible You, in which a single woman nine months pregnant meets her perfect hero while on jury duty. The incomparable Cait London continues her exciting miniseries FREEDOM VALLEY with Slow Fever. Against a beautiful Montana backdrop, the oldest Bennett sister is courted by a man who spurned her in their teenage years. And A Season for Love, in which Sheriff Jericho Rivers regains his lost love, continues the new miniseries MEN OF BELLE TERRE by beloved author BJ James.
Don’t miss the thrilling conclusion to the Desire miniseries FORTUNE’S CHILDREN: THE GROOMS in Peggy Moreland’s Groom of Fortune. Elizabeth Bevarly will delight you with Monahan’s Gamble. And Expecting the Boss’s Baby is the launch title of Leanne Banks’s new miniseries, MILLION DOLLAR MEN, which offers wealthy, philanthropic bachelors guaranteed to seduce you.
We hope all readers of Silhouette Desire will treasure the gift of this special month.
Happy holidays!
Joan Marlow Golan
Senior Editor, Silhouette Desire
Monahan’s Gamble
Elizabeth Bevarly
www.millsandboon.co.uk (http://www.millsandboon.co.uk)
For Eathel and Rex Bellaver,
two of the funnest people I know.
ELIZABETH BEVARLY
is an honors graduate of the University of Louisville and achieved her dream of writing full-time before she even turned thirty! At heart, she is also an avid voyager who once helped navigate a friend’s thirty-five-foot sailboat across the Bermuda Triangle. Her dream is to one day have her own sailboat, a beautifully renovated older model forty-two-footer, and to enjoy the freedom and tranquillity seafaring can bring. Elizabeth likes to think she has a lot in common with the characters she creates, people who know love and life go hand in hand. And she’s getting some firsthand experience with motherhood, as well—she and her husband have a six-year-old son, Eli.
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
Epilogue
One
There was nothing Sean Monahan enjoyed more than a game of cutthroat poker—unless it was a game of cutthroat poker played with a couple of his brothers. Sean was a gambler by nature, and a winner by birth. When he took chances, they invariably played out. And there wasn’t much that gave him a bigger charge than fleecing his own flesh and blood.
Hey, that was just the kind of guy he was.
He and two of his brothers and two of their friends had only been playing poker for an hour, and already Sean’s take was substantial. Best of all, he’d won most of his loot from his big brother, Finn. At this rate he’d have the down payment for that new roadster he’d been lusting after for months, in no time at all.
As he sat in the kitchen of Finn’s expansive—and, Sean knew, expensive—condo, he gazed over a pretty decent hand at Cullen, one of his three younger brothers, and tried to gauge his sibling’s hand by the expression on Cullen’s face. As he did so, Sean puffed diligently on a very nice cigar, inhaled the spicy aroma of Finn’s famous five-alarm chili and pondered whether or not he should get up for another beer or simply wait until someone else did—preferably Finn—and have him get Sean one, too.
Life just didn’t get any better than this.
“Where’s Will tonight?” he asked, having noted the glaring absence of Will Darrow, Finn’s best friend since childhood and a staple at the group’s twice-monthly poker/chili/beerfest.
His big brother chuckled low in a way that Sean found very interesting. “Will’s got some things to work out,” Finn said cryptically. “Issues. The boy’s got a lot on his mind these days.”
Charlie Hofstetter, another member of the all-male poker quintet, glanced up from his own hand. “Is that why he’s been so cranky for the past week? What’s up with that? Will’s never cranky.”
Finn’s cryptic chuckles eased into a mysterious grin. He puffed once on his own cigar and dragged a hand through his black hair. “Like I said. Issues.”
“But what does that mean?” Sean insisted, shoving back a fistful of his own dark locks, thinking he and Finn both needed a cut.
“You’ll all find out soon enough,” Finn told him. But he said nothing more to elaborate.
Sean muttered an impatient sound. “You always think you know everything, Finn.”
“That’s ’cause I do know everything,” his big brother stated with all certainty.
Sean wanted very badly to argue with that statement, but he knew better. Somehow Finn always did seem to know everything. It was a damned annoying trait for an older brother to have.
“Gordon’s missing tonight, too. Where’s he?” Sean asked further, wondering why none of the other four men had offered an explanation for it already.
Cullen sighed dramatically. “Gordon’s nursing a broken heart,” he said in a girlie, wistful voice as he puffed on his cigar.
Sean chuckled. “That’s some feat. I didn’t realize Gordon had a heart to break. Who’s the lucky girl?”
Cullen shifted his cigar from one side of his mouth to the other. “Autumn Pulaski,” he mumbled around the obstruction.
“Autumn Pulaski?” Ted Embry, the fifth member of the group cried incredulously. “What was he doing going out with her in the first place? Everybody knows Autumn never dates anyone for longer than a month.”
“A lunar month, at that,” Charlie pointed out.
“She is such an oddball,” Ted remarked.
“Free spirit,” Finn corrected him. “I believe the correct label for a woman like her is ‘free spirit.”’
“‘One hot tomata’ seems like a more appropriate label for her to me,” Cullen added.
None of the other men disagreed with the evaluation, including Sean. In fact, he noted, all of the other men observed a moment of worshipful silence in honor of the occasion. So what could Sean do but respect that by observing a moment of reverential meditation himself.
Then Ted broke the spell. “Okay, so I guess I can see why Gordon was going out with her. But he should have realized there’d be a time limit on the thing. He shouldn’t have involved his heart. Hell, he never should’ve involved any other body part than his—”
“Oh, man, did you see her at Josh and Louisa’s wedding last month?” Charlie—delicately—interrupted.
Oh, man, indeed, Sean echoed to himself. Had he ever seen her. She’d looked good enough to— Well. A number of ideas erupted in his brain at the recollection, all of them vivid, none of them decent. She’d worn a paper-thin dress of some flowery, gauzy fabric, and every time she’d crossed in front of the reception hall windows that bright, sunny afternoon, every male breath in the place had gone still.
She might as well have been wearing nothing at all, so clearly outlined had her body been under that dress. It had more than made up for the wide, ridiculous-looking straw hat she’d worn on her head, the one whose brim had been big enough to obscure the beautiful face beneath. Then again, Sean thought, few people had been looking at Autumn’s face that day.
Normally, though, that wasn’t the case at all. Because in addition to being a ‘free spirit,’ as Finn had tagged her, she was also, most definitely, what Cullen had called her, too. One. Hot. Tomata. True to her name, Autumn’s hair was a tumble of auburn curls that spilled in a rich, riotous cascade down to the middle of her back. Her eyes were the color and clarity of good Irish whisky—and every bit as intoxicating. Finely sculpted cheekbones and one of those faintly turned-up noses gave the impression that she had posed for any number of classical paintings. And her mouth…
Oh, her mouth.
Sean could write rhapsodies about that full, luscious, decadent mouth. Her complexion seemed to be perpetually golden, regardless of the season, and somehow Sean knew—he just knew—that there were none of those irritating bathing suit lines to mar the color. Autumn Pulaski, free spirit, oddball and one hot tomata, just seemed like the type who would go for nude sunbathing.
“Gordon will get over it,” Charlie said confidently as he went back to arranging his hand. “Every man Autumn’s ever dated has gotten over it. Eventually.”
“I still don’t see why Gordon got involved in the first place,” Ted said. “I mean, he’s actually been looking for a long-term relationship, and everybody in town knows that Autumn’s hard-and-fast rule has always been that no man—no man—will ever last longer than four weeks when it comes to dating her.”
“Why does she have that rule, anyway?” Cullen asked. “I never could understand the reasoning behind it.”
Sean glanced up just in time to see Ted shrug. “No idea,” Ted said. “But ever since she moved to Marigold—what?…two years ago?—she’s always made that clear. I get the feeling it’s a rule she’s had in place for a lo-o-o-ong time. I’ll open,” he added carelessly, tossing two chips into the middle of the table. Just as carelessly he continued, “Hey, Gordon was lucky. At least he got in the full four weeks with her before she dumped him. A lot of guys never even make it to the half-moon.
“She is such an oddball,” Ted said again.
“Free spirit,” Finn corrected once more.
“Well, whatever she is, I’m not asking her out,” Cullen announced. “I have enough trouble with women, thank you very much. I don’t need one starting a timer on me the minute she opens the door.”
“You and me both,” Charlie agreed. “I don’t think there’s a man in Marigold—hell, in the entire state of Indiana—who could last longer than four weeks with Autumn Pulaski.”
Sean shook his head slowly and tossed two chips into the pot to see Ted’s opening bid. “I could date Autumn Pulaski for more than four weeks,” he stated quite seriously—and not a little proudly.
“You?” a chorus of incredulous echoes erupted from around the table.
Sean gaped his indignation at the disbelief that was so evident in each of his compatriots. “Yeah, me. What’s so unbelievable about that?”
Each of the men gazed at him in silence for a moment, as if they couldn’t imagine why he would even ask such a thing. But it was Finn who challenged, “What makes you think Autumn would go out with you for any length of time, let alone more than her very standard, very adamant, lunar month?”
Sean shrugged. “I’ve got a way about me.”
Now each of his compatriots laughed. Quite raucously, in fact, something Sean decided he probably shouldn’t dwell on.
But he did. “Well, what the hell is so funny?” he demanded.
“You’ve got a way about you all right, boyo,” Finn said through his chuckles. “But it’s not necessarily the one you think.”
“Hey!” Sean cried even more indignantly. “Women love me.”
“Autumn’s different,” Cullen said.
Sean took some heart in the fact that at least Cullen didn’t deny that women loved him. After all, there was so much evidence to the contrary. Women really did love Sean. Often for weeks on end.
Sean threw his little brother an indulgent look. “Autumn’s not different,” he said. “Women are all alike. Deep down they all want one thing.”
Four male faces gazed back at him, this time in very expectant silence. But it was Finn who said—and he was clearly battling a giggle when he did so—“Oh?”
Sean nodded.
His big brother grinned tolerantly. “And what, oh omniscient knower of women, would that one thing be that they all want?”
“Equal pay for equal work,” Cullen offered with a smile before Sean had a chance to answer.
“No, men who do their own laundry,” Ted piped up with a chuckle.
“No, men who not only do their own laundry but sort by light and dark, too,” Charlie threw in for good measure.
“Oh, hardy-har-har-har,” Sean replied. “Very funny, wise guys.”
Eventually the men stopped laughing—again. And when they did, Finn turned a more serious—sort of—gaze on his brother. “Truly, Sean,” he said. “What is this one thing that all women want? We’re on the edge of our seats.”
Sean lifted his chin a bit defensively. “A wedding ring,” he said.
