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Bandera's Bride
Mary McBride
He'd hidden his passion behind another man's name.For John Bandera knew that a genteel Mississippi flower like Emily Russell could never share her life with a half-breed Comanche rancher. But the hiding was over. His true love was here, in the flesh. And he wanted to make her his bride!Six years of heartfelt correspondence had to count for something, a very pregnant and very along Emily Russell insisted as she headed west to find the man of her dreams. But instead of the Southern cavalier she thought she loved, she'd found John Bandera, a man of secrets and soul-spinning sensuality…!
“I’m as fat as a sow. I know. And just as ugly.”
Her lower lip jutted out now in a full-fledged pout. “How unchivalrous of you to point that out.”
“Oh, no, querida.” His hands moved to cup her face, and the grin he’d been sporting was replaced by an expression of such earnest warmth that it fairly melted Emily’s heart. “A woman can never look ugly when she is brimming with life.”
Emily couldn’t break her gaze from those incredibly warm eyes. She didn’t want to. All of a sudden, instead of feeling like an awkward, overgrown sow, she felt like a swan, all featherlight and full of grace.
“Go,” he said. “Before I kiss you.” He angled his head toward the door of the saloon.
Suddenly Emily couldn’t think of anything in the world she wanted more than for John to kiss her….
Dear Reader,
Much of the beauty of romance novels is that most are written by women for women, and feature strong and passionate heroines. We have some stellar authors this month who bring to life those intrepid women we love as they engage in relationships with the men we also love!
Mary McBride’s poetic voice and powerful stories have won her numerous historical romance fans. And with the recent debut of her first contemporary romance from Silhouette, Mary’s audience keeps expanding. Bandera’s Bride is a heartwarming Western about two misfits who fall in love through letters. But when Southern belle Emily Russell, now pregnant, decides to travel to Texas to propose marriage to her letter lover, she finds only his half-breed partner, John Bandera. Neither dreams of achieving the other’s love—only they magically do.
Susan Amarillas brings us a new Western, Molly’s Hero, a tale of forbidden love between a—married?—female rancher and the handsome railroad builder who desperately needs her land. In The Viking’s Heart, a medieval novel by rising talent Jacqueline Navin, Rosamund Clavier is the proud noblewoman who falls in love with the fierce Viking sent to escort her to her own arranged marriage. Will she choose love or duty?
And don’t miss My Lady’s Dare, by the sensational Gayle Wilson. This Regency-set tale will grab you and not let go as the Earl of Dare becomes fascinated by another man’s mistress. Nothing is as it seems in this dangerous game of espionage and love!
Enjoy! And come back again next month for four more choices of the best in historical romance.
Sincerely,
Tracy Farrell,
Senior Editor
Bandera’s Bride
Mary McBride
www.millsandboon.co.uk (http://www.millsandboon.co.uk)
Available from Harlequin Historicals and MARY MCBRIDE
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Bandera’s Bride #517
Other works include:
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For the men in my life—Leslie, Loren and Merit
Contents
Prologue (#u7b8e3fe9-b9e7-5bf5-89fa-26fb064ee903)
Chapter One (#u1ed7a20d-a9cf-5057-adc5-dba4606b6d75)
Chapter Two (#u3828f81c-5258-5aed-872c-a34b4458a188)
Chapter Three (#u27822e44-d14b-5a98-8415-3fa1a7acb819)
Chapter Four (#u38a6ac85-2897-5ed0-ae90-388de57fb1bf)
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)
Chapter Eleven (#litres_trial_promo)
Chapter Twelve (#litres_trial_promo)
Chapter Thirteen (#litres_trial_promo)
Chapter Fourteen (#litres_trial_promo)
Chapter Fifteen (#litres_trial_promo)
Chapter Sixteen (#litres_trial_promo)
Chapter Seventeen (#litres_trial_promo)
Chapter Eighteen (#litres_trial_promo)
Chapter Nineteen (#litres_trial_promo)
Epilogue (#litres_trial_promo)
Prologue
Texas, 1866
It wasn’t a perfect partnership, the one between the Southerner, Price McDaniel, and the half-breed, John Bandera. It was as far from perfect as the rugged landscape of south Texas was from the gentle hills of Russell County, Mississippi. The two men had almost nothing in common.
Physically, they were as mismatched as daylight and dark. McDaniel was a slight man with hair as fair as corn silk. John Bandera, the dark half of the equation, had bronze skin and cast-iron black hair. Part Comanche, part Mexican, and part anybody’s guess, he was imposing in size alone, but it was his amber, catlike gaze that kept most men at a wary distance. His partner, Price McDaniel, was usually too drunk to be cautious.
When drunk, which was often, Price was a man given to lengthy proclamations uttered in a drawl that was one third Mississippi and the rest pure Tennessee whiskey. John Bandera rarely drank and said little in return.
The two men didn’t even particularly like each other. Still, they were partners, bound by a single and uncharacteristic burst of heroism at the Cimarron Crossing in 1864 when Lieutenant McDaniel had saved Scout Bandera’s life.
Despite their differences, the partnership—thus far—had proven beneficial for both of them. The year before, after being mustered out of the army, Price had had more money than good sense, and he had wanted to build a ranch in Texas to rival anything back in Russell County, Mississippi, no matter that he didn’t know a longhorn from a mule deer or a heifer from a steer.
John had been broke, physically as well as financially. The army had no use for a scout on crutches and John had needed a place to heal. He’d owed Price for saving his life, and he figured one year of his sweat and expertise would cancel his debt to the Southerner.
Now that year was up.
The house was finally finished. Its pine floors and door frames glowed a rich gold beneath a first coating of shellac. The place still smelled of sawdust, but that raw odor mingled now with the fragrance of oiled walnut and rich leather.
Price McDaniel’s furniture—two wagon loads all the way from Mississippi—had arrived earlier in the day. There were wardrobes, chairs and sofas, dressers, mirrors, all manner of beds and bedding. There was one big swivel chair that matched one enormous desk. And there had also been one cream-colored letter tucked neatly inside the center drawer.
Price had been on a tear ever since finding it. He had read the letter at least a dozen times, and had looked at the enclosed carte de visite long enough and hard enough to wear the chemicals right off the little photograph. At the moment, the picture lay facedown on the desktop, the envelope was strewn in little pieces on the floor, and Price was fashioning the letter itself into a rough approximation of a bird.
“Ladies,” he slurred as he folded one edge of the vellum, then crimped it, “especially those of the Southern persuasion, are like gardenias. Have you ever seen a gardenia, John?”
As lamplight glanced off the fresh pine paneling, it made the half-breed’s eyes all the more amber when he looked up from the list of supplies he was composing—goods intended to see his soon-to-be ex-partner through the coming winter.
“Nope,” he replied, about to add that he’d never seen a lady, either. Instead he returned his attention to his list, knowing Price would go on with his drunken declamation whether anyone was listening or not.
He did, interspersing his words with wet, laborious sighs.
“They’re all pale and creamy and petal-soft. Dewy and cool to the touch. Only you can’t. Touch them, I mean. Southern ladies are just for the looking. Touch them, and they bruise. Just like a gardenia. You remember that, John, if you ever have the supreme misfortune to meet up with one of them.”
“I’ll keep it in mind.” His chances of meeting up with a lady, Southern or otherwise, were slim, slimmer, and none, John thought. The notion that he’d ever have the opportunity to touch one struck him as ludicrous. He’d learned early and at the painful end of a switch not to want what he couldn’t have. Ladies were high on that particular list.
He made a last notation now on his own list, then parked the pencil stub behind his ear. “If you’re all done ranting, Price, maybe we could go over a few things.”
The Mississippian smiled sloppily as he lifted the folded letter, held it shoulder-high a second, then launched it across the room. The pale paper flew like a snub-nosed, stubby-winged owl before it plummeted to the floor beside John’s moccasined foot.
He ignored it a moment, then picked it up and smoothed it out across his knee, instantly intrigued by the daintiness of the penmanship, trying to imagine the pale, fine-boned fingers that had drafted each delicate word.
He read not the whole, but separate, beautifully crafted words and phrases here and there. How delighted we all were. Sympathetic to your dire circumstances as a prisoner of war. Russell County. Do remember. Forever your home.
His amber eyes flicked up to meet his partner’s. “You going back?”
Price chuckled softly as he filled his empty glass from the bottle near his elbow, then raised the glass in a wavering salute.
“Here’s to Russell County, Mississippi, where a Russell is always a Russell and everybody else is…everybody else.”
He downed half the whiskey, then continued. “And here’s to Miss Emily Russell. May she bloom and prosper in Russell County soil. Here’s to gardenias in all their pale and untouchable glory.”
Price drained his glass and thumped it down on the desktop. “Here’s to us, partner. And to the frigid day in hell that finds me back in Mississippi.”
“You’re staying.” It wasn’t a question so much as an acknowledgment. A disappointed one. John had hoped for a moment that Price would go home. It was where the man belonged, after all. So what if he had turned his back on the Confederacy in order to get out of a Yankee prison? He hadn’t been the only Rebel prisoner who’d put on a blue uniform and headed west as a Galvanized Yankee.
But he didn’t belong out West anymore. He belonged back home with well-bred gentlemen like himself and with ladies like gardenias. And he was damned lucky, in John’s estimation, to have a place where he belonged.
“I’m staying.” Price’s clenched fists banged hard on the desktop. “Russell County be damned, along with all the Russells in it.” He picked up the little carte de visite and, without even glancing at it, flicked it across the desk toward John. “Good riddance to them all.”
John’s dark hand shot out to catch the photograph before it fluttered to the floor. It felt warm in his palm, almost alive. He stared at its blank side a moment, as if hesitant to look at the face of the woman…no, the lady…whose delicate hand had composed the letter still lying on his leg. What face could be flawless enough? What pose perfect enough? What tilt of chin or hint of smile could be worthy of the lady in his head?
This one! His heart bunched up in his throat when he gazed at Emily Russell, and as his sun-bronzed thumb smoothed over the photograph, he wouldn’t have been at all surprised to see her lovely image begin to wither and fade. What was it Price had said? Touch them, and they bruise.
John had to clear his throat before he spoke, but there was still an unfamiliar, nearly ragged catch.
“She’s a lady, Price. You ought to write her back.”
“Like hell,” his partner snorted, replenishing his glass, sloshing whiskey over the rim. “Since when are you so concerned with proprieties?”
Since a minute ago, John wanted to say, but he merely shook his head and muttered, “It’s the right thing to do.”
Price rolled his eyes. “Well, you go on and write her, then, if you feel so strongly about it. Go on, John. Be my guest. Write the lady back.”
He did. Then, although he’d meant to leave when that first year was up, John Bandera hung around waiting for a reply.
When it came—addressed to Price—he wrote her back.
