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9 Out Of 10 Women Can't Be Wrong
Cara Colter
There was some innocence in that kiss Ty could barely fathom.
Once he broke it off, she stared at him, her eyes huge. He could see she was trembling. She actually took her fist to her mouth, and bit on it, as if to stop the shaking.
The gesture stopped him cold. “Harriet,” he growled. “Harriet Pendleton.”
She laughed nervously. “All grown up,” she said, as if that in some way made what had happened between them all right.
Ha. She was a friend of his sister’s. A kid.
Off-limits to him.
He had to get through the remaining four days without looking at her lips again. Because those were not the lips of a kid. Actually, hers wasn’t the body of a kid, either.
Yes, Harriet Pendleton was a woman now. And Ty Jordan wanted her like the red-blooded man he was….
Dear Reader,
Summer is over and it’s time to kick back into high gear. Just be sure to treat yourself with a luxuriant read or two (or, hey, all six) from Silhouette Romance. Remember—work hard, play harder!
Although October is officially Breast Cancer Awareness month, we’d like to invite you to start thinking about it now. In a wonderful, uplifting story, a rancher reluctantly agrees to model for a charity calendar to earn money for cancer research. At the back of that book, we’ve also included a guide for self-exams. Don’t miss Cara Colter’s must-read 9 Out of 10 Women Can’t Be Wrong (#1615).
Indulge yourself with megapopular author Karen Rose Smith and her CROWN AND GLORY series installment, Searching for Her Prince (#1612). A missing heir puts love on the line when he hides his identity from the woman assigned to track him down. The royal, brooding hero in Sandra Paul’s stormy Caught by Surprise (#1614), the latest in the A TALE OF THE SEA adventure, also has secrets—and intends to make his beautiful captor pay…by making her his wife!
Jesse Colton is a special agent forced to play pretend boyfriend to uncover dangerous truths in the fourth of THE COLTONS: COMANCHE BLOOD spinoff, The Raven’s Assignment (#1613), by bestselling author Kasey Michaels. And in Cathie Linz’s MEN OF HONOR title, Married to a Marine (#1616), combat-hardened Justice Wilder had shut himself away from the world—until his ex-wife’s younger sister comes knocking…. Finally, in Laurey Bright’s tender and true Life with Riley (#1617), free-spirited Riley Morrisset may not be the perfect society wife, but she’s exactly what her stiff-collared boss needs!
Happy reading—and please keep in touch.
Mary-Theresa Hussey
Senior Editor
9 Out of 10 Women Can’t Be Wrong
Cara Colter
www.millsandboon.co.uk (http://www.millsandboon.co.uk)
To my nephew, Mathew, (Sarvis the Silent) with love
Books by Cara Colter
Silhouette Romance
Dare To Dream #491
Baby in Blue #1161
Husband in Red #1243
The Cowboy, the Baby and the Bride-to-Be #1319
Truly Daddy #1363
A Bride Worth Waiting For #1388
Weddings Do Come True #1406
A Babe in the Woods #1424
A Royal Marriage #1440
First Time, Forever #1464
* (#litres_trial_promo)Husband by Inheritance #1532
* (#litres_trial_promo)The Heiress Takes a Husband #1538
Wed by a Will #1544
What Child Is This? #1585
Her Royal Husband #1600
9 Out of 10 Women Can’t Be Wrong #1615
The Coltons
A Hasty Wedding
CARA COLTER
shares ten acres in the wild Kootenay region of British Columbia with the man of her dreams, three children, two horses, a cat with no tail and a golden retriever who answers best to “bad dog.” She loves reading, writing and the woods in winter (no bears). She says life’s delights include an automatic garage door opener and the skylight over the bed that allows her to see the stars at night.
She also says, “I have not lived a neat and tidy life, and used to envy those who did. Now I see my struggles as having given me a deep appreciation of life, and of love, which I hope I succeed in passing on through the stories that I tell.”
Dear Reader,
There is someone I would like you to know. She was my favorite heroine. Ruth Caron was petite and pretty. She had china-blue eyes and sandy brown hair. Her front teeth were a little crooked. She was a playful spirit who loved to dance. She was afraid of water and was always a little self-conscious about her lack of education. She quit school when she was seventeen, got married and started having babies. One of whom was me.
Many of my heroines are ordinary women who reach inside themselves to find the extraordinary depths of their spirits. My mom was like that. Just one example was her terror of water. Instead of surrendering to that fear and passing it on, she made sure my sisters and I had swimming lessons. My mom baby-sat kids to make money, and I think of the sacrifice she made to ensure I would know only joy in the water. In her later years, she even took up swimming herself! (Shallow end only!)
When she was diagnosed with breast cancer in 1990, her courage was monumental, far beyond what anyone would have ever expected of such an ordinary and humble woman. She died in August of 1995 at the age of 57. The hole in my heart will never be filled.
I wanted you, the reader, to at least have a glimpse of this remarkable woman. I wanted you to know, right this instant, someone feels the great love for you that I felt and feel for my mom. Please do breast self-exams and have mammograms regularly. Donate to breast cancer research. Do it for your mother, your daughters, your sisters, your friends. Do it for yourself.
With all my best wishes,
Contents
Prologue (#u96d1c467-bc8b-5e55-b6ef-fd9d8d33dabe)
Chapter One (#ud85e7f12-6eec-5dc6-85fe-06ef18f57c2b)
Chapter Two (#uca452895-4267-5dd8-9c7e-03266c42d64d)
Chapter Three (#u3a2f8866-65a9-5f2b-bf68-9a39e3d907ce)
Chapter Four (#litres_trial_promo)
Chapter Five (#litres_trial_promo)
Chapter Six (#litres_trial_promo)
Chapter Seven (#litres_trial_promo)
Chapter Eight (#litres_trial_promo)
Chapter Nine (#litres_trial_promo)
Chapter Ten (#litres_trial_promo)
Epilogue (#litres_trial_promo)
Prologue
“Your brother is a photographer’s dream. And a red-blooded woman’s nightmare.”
“Harriet,” Stacey said sleepily, from the other side of the bed, “Ty doesn’t see you as a red-blooded woman. Go to sleep. He’s going to have us up at five in the morning, because you said you wanted to see them bring in the cattle from the upper pasture. Your enthusiasm for the ranch is beginning to make me very sorry I invited you. I thought we were going to sleep in, watch videos and make pizzas.”
“You can do those things in Calgary,” Harriet said, as if her mind wasn’t solidly locked on the words Ty doesn’t see you as a red-blooded woman.
Why would he? Stacey Jordan’s older brother, Ty, was the most astonishing man Harriet Pendleton had ever seen. He was tall, broad-shouldered, lean and hard-muscled from years of ranch work. His face passed attractive and went straight to sinful. When his eyes rested on her, dark as melted chocolate, Harriet felt the shiver of pure male energy in the air.
Don’t ask, she ordered herself firmly. But a small voice, definitely hers, asked aloud. “Why doesn’t he see me as a red-blooded woman?”
As if she didn’t know. Harriet Pendleton was well aware she was too everything. Too tall, too skinny, too freckled. Add to that crooked teeth, and bottle-bottom eyeglasses. Too ugly.
“Harriet, he doesn’t see you as a red-blooded woman because you’re my friend. He thinks we’re both kids.”
“But I’m older than you!” Harriet protested. “Twenty-two is not a child.”
“So, tell him!” Stacey said grumpily. “And let me go to sleep.”
“Someday,” Harriet said, “I’m going to be a famous photographer and I’ll have enough money to get my teeth fixed and have laser surgery done on my eyes.”
“Harriet, don’t be so silly. You glow. Anyone who knows you, knows how beautiful you are.”
Except your brother.
Harriet and Stacey were roommates at the Alberta College of Art. Harriet was upgrading some photo courses, Stacey was taking commercial art. Stacey had invited Harriet to spend spring break on her brother’s ranch, the Bar ZZ, south of Calgary.
It had sounded like so much fun.
It would have been so much fun, except for him. A man like that made breathing in and out seem difficult. Words caught in Harriet’s throat. She was in such a constant state of blush that he thought her face was naturally beet red. He’d remarked they needed to keep her out of the sun! She was so self-conscious in his presence that she did everything wrong, tripped over her own feet. After she’d fallen and spooked the cattle, he’d remarked they needed to keep her away from the cattle, too.
“He calls me Lady Disaster,” she fretted, out loud.
“He’s teasing you, Harriet! Please go to sleep. Please?”
She willed herself to go to sleep. She promised herself that tomorrow everything would be different. And it was.
The next day Harriet fell off a horse and broke her arm.
Her trip to the Bar ZZ was over, ending in the emergency ward of the tiny High River Hospital. At least she had felt his arms! He had carried her, strong and sure, gently teased her out of her pain.
And then he’d said goodbye.
But when she developed the photographs she had taken, she realized she would never really say goodbye to him.
The photos of Ty shone, as if the man was lit from within. She had done on film what she had no hope of doing in real life. She had captured him.
On the basis of those pictures, she was offered a photo assignment overseas.
And on the basis of a badly bruised heart, she took it….
Chapter One
Tyler Jordan was aware he was being watched.
There it was again. The secretary, a woman old enough to be well beyond such nonsense, glanced up coyly from behind her work, looked at him longer than he considered strictly polite and then, with the flash of a secretive smile, looked back to her computer screen.
Ty pretended he hadn’t noticed her scrutiny and studied the room uncomfortably. The outer waiting area of Francis Cringle and Associates struck him as being more like the kind of office he’d seen in the rare movie he watched than like a real life office, or at least not any real life office he’d ever been in.
He couldn’t believe his sister—a girl born and raised on a ranch—worked in a place like this…actually fitted in here.
He was sitting on a sofa of butter-yellow leather. Another faced him. Huge deep-green plants were scattered throughout. He wasn’t sure how a real plant survived in an atmosphere with no natural light. The artificial lighting was muted; the rug, covering marble tiles, looked old and worn in a way that convinced him it had been picked up at an African bazaar.
He heard the quick tap of heels coming down the hallway outside this posh office and felt himself tensing.
If whoever it was went on by, then he knew he must be imagining all the unusual attention he was getting. But no, the tapping of the heels slowed, and then she came in. Tall and willowy, in a tight blue skirt and a short matching jacket, she glanced quickly his way, her confidence astounding, given the balancing act she must be doing on those high stiletto heels, then moved over to the desk and had a whispered conversation with the woman there. The conversation was punctuated with breathless giggles and sidelong looks.
At him.
The looks were loaded with secrets…and satisfaction. Looks not at all in keeping with the muted atmosphere of subdued professionalism that the well-known public relations firm’s office had achieved.
Ty frowned and picked up a magazine off the dark-walnut coffee table in front of him. He caught a glimpse of his reflection in the highly polished surface, and it confirmed how out of place he was here. Cowboy hat, white denim shirt unbuttoned at the throat, jeans. He might have raised some of the cattle that provided the luxurious leather he was now sitting on.
