Blackthorne's Bride

by Joan Johnston

  Blackthorne lowered himself to the floor beside his wife and stared down at their twin daughters. “They’re as beautiful as their mother.”

  “They look like you.”

  “Heaven help them.” He stared at the water streaming down the walls of the glass house. “It feels like we’re encased in some strange, watery world.”

  “I’ve always loved this glass house,” Josie said. “Now it will be an even more special place.”

  “Which you’re never coming within a mile of the next time you’re pregnant.” He kissed her brow, and then each cheek, and finally, her mouth.

  She laughed. “Oh, Marcus. Sometimes you’re so funny.”

  “I’m a duke. Dukes are never funny. They’re toplofty and arrogant.”

  She laughed at him again, a trilling sound that made his heart sing. Her laughter was interrupted by the sound of the carriage finally returning.

  “You’re safe at last,” his wife said. “The cavalry has arrived.”

  He made a disgusted sound in his throat. “Far too late to be of any real assistance.”

  She raised a brow. “You were planning to carry the three of us back to the Abbey?”

  “There is that,” he conceded.

  “Uncle Marcus! Guess who’s come for a visit!” Clay yelled from the carriage window. Without waiting for Blackthorne to guess, he added, “It’s Aunt Lark and Uncle David.”

  “And Grandmama and Aunt Lindsey,” Spencer shouted from beside him. “They’re all waiting at the Abbey for us to bring you home.”

  “Good lord,” Blackthorne muttered. “No wonder the carriage was late returning. They must have needed a ride from the train station. They weren’t supposed to arrive for another two weeks. I suppose Grandmama wanted to be sure she was here for the arrival of the heir.”

  “She’s going to have a bit of a wait,” Josie said ruefully, pulling her twin daughters close.

  The moment the coachman opened the door and let down the steps, the two boys came tumbling out and scampered through the rain into the summer house.

  “We have cousins!” Spencer said upon spying the babies lying on either side of Josie.

  “Slow down and be careful,” Blackthorne admonished.

  “Can I hold one?” Clay asked.

  The word “no” was on the tip of Blackthorne’s tongue, when Josie said, “Of course, but sit down beside me first.”

  Blackthorne’s heart was in his throat. What if Clay dropped the newborn? Or let her head fall back too far?

  The simple-minded boy dropped down with crossed legs and seemed to hold his breath, as Josie lifted the twin on her left into his waiting arms. He held the newborn as though she were made of breakable glass and looked up with a smile that made Blackthorne’s heart swell with love.

  “You’re doing a good job, Clay,” he said.

  “I want to hold one, too,” Spencer said, plopping down on Josie’s other side.

  She shifted the second girl into Spencer’s careful hands, and he looked up at Blackthorne and beamed with pride. “I think she likes me, Uncle Marcus.”

  “Let’s see if you still feel the same way about her in a few years, when she’s tagging along after you everywhere you go.”

  “Aw, it’ll be great,” Spencer said with the naïveté of the ignorant.

  “How come you had your babies out here, Aunt Josie?” Clay asked.

  “For some reason, our carriage was late returning to pick us up,” Blackthorne said sardonically.

  “Oh. ’Cause we had to pick up everyone at the train station,” Spencer said. “Wow, Uncle Marcus! I never knew you could deliver babies.”

  “Neither did I,” Blackthorne said. “Mostly, your aunt did all the work.”

  “Thanks,” Josie said with a laugh.

  They sat quietly together for a long time, sharing this very special moment.

  “The rain has stopped,” Josie said at last. “I suppose we should load everyone into the carriage and get back to the house. After all, we have a very anxious grandmother waiting to see the new additions to the family.”

  Blackthorne took the baby from Clay so he could stand, and then very carefully placed her back in his arms.

  “What’s her name?” Clay asked.

  “We only decided on one name, because we weren’t expecting two babies,” Josie said.

  “I suppose the first-born girl should be Elizabeth,” Blackthorne said.

  Josie focused her gaze on Spencer and asked, “What name should we give the baby you’re holding?”

  “I like Emma,” Spencer said.

  “I like Emma, too,” Clay said.

  “Then Emma it shall be,” Blackthorne said.

  “Hello, Emma,” Spencer said, trying out the name.

  “And this is Beth,” Clay said, using a shortened form of Elizabeth.

  “Sounds perfect,” Josie said.

  Once both boys were standing, each holding a baby, Blackthorne carefully wrapped his wife in the blanket and scooped her into his arms. “Gentlemen, it’s time to take our ladies home.”

  While he waited for the footman to help the boys get settled with the newborns in the carriage, Blackthorne felt Josie’s fingers caress his neck and leaned down to kiss her tenderly on the lips.

  “Thank you for our daughters,” she whispered.

  He grinned and said, “The pleasure, I assure you, was all mine. Anytime you would like a repeat performance, I—”

  She cut him off by pressing a hand over his mouth. “Whoa, there, Your Grace. Let’s take a little time to enjoy these two, before we start on two more.”

  “I love the way your mind works, my dear.”

  Josie laughed.

  This book is dedicated to my friend

  and marketing manager,

  Nancy November Sloane.

  Acknowledgments

  I want to thank my editor, Shauna Summers, for bringing out the best in me as a writer, Lynn Andreozzi for the amazing covers she puts on my books, Gina Wachtel for her support of me and my work, and all the folks at Penguin Random House who help make my books available to the reading public. I am eternally indebted to you all.

  I would never find the time to write without the help of my assistant and personal marketing manager, Nancy Sloane, to whom this book is dedicated. In the three years we’ve worked together, she’s been an enormous asset, keeping my website updated, running contests, formatting newsletters, and generally doing all the business of writing and promoting books that is so necessary these days.

  I want to thank my sister Joyce for her knowledge of English grammar. She’s always there when I have a question and always has the right answer!

  Finally, I want to thank all the readers who write to me begging for the next book. Your joy in my work makes it all worthwhile.

  By Joan Johnston

  Bitter Creek Novels

  The Cowboy

  The Texan

  The Loner

  The Price

  The Rivals

  The Next Mrs. Blackthorne

  A Stranger’s Game

  Shattered

  Sisters of the Lone Star Series

  Frontier Woman

  Comanche Woman

  Texas Woman

  Captive Hearts Series

  Captive

  After the Kiss

  The Bodyguard

  The Bridegroom

  Mail-Order Brides Series

  Texas Bride

  Wyoming Bride

  Montana Bride

  Blackthorne’s Bride

  King’s Brats Series

  Sinful

  Shameless

  Connected Books

  The Barefoot Bride

  Outlaw’s Bride

  The Inheritance

  Maverick Heart

  ABOUT THE AUTHOR

  JOAN JOHNSTON is the New York Times and USA Today bestselling author of many historical and contemporary romance novels. She received a master of arts degree in theater from the Un
iversity of Illinois and graduated with honors from the University of Texas School of Law at Austin. She is currently a full-time writer living in Colorado.

  joanjohnston.com

  Facebook.com/​JoanJohnstonAuthor

  @JoanJohnston

  LETTER TO READERS

  Dear Faithful Readers,

  So many of you wrote to ask for Josie’s story that I had to put it down on paper! I hope you’ve enjoyed reading Blackthorne’s Bride, the final book in my Mail-Order Bride series, which also includes Texas Bride, Wyoming Bride, and Montana Bride. This series has become one of my favorites.

  I’ve already started work on the third book in my contemporary King’s Brats series, which began with Sinful and Shameless and continues with Surrender. An excerpt from Surrender follows this letter. Enjoy!

  You can contact me, sign up for my e-newsletter, and enter contests through my website, joanjohnston.com. You can also like me at facebook.com/​joanjohnstonauthor or follow me at twitter.com/​joanjohnston. I look forward to hearing from you!

  By the way, if you enjoyed this novel, it’s connected to more than thirty-five other books in my Bitter Creek series, beginning with my contemporary novels The Cowboy, The Texan, and The Loner. If you’d like to read more about Cricket and Jarrett Creed, check out my historical Sisters of the Lone Star series, Frontier Woman, Comanche Woman, and Texas Woman.

  Take care and happy reading,

  Joan Johnston

  Taylor and Brian’s story heats up in the next installment of New York Times bestselling author Joan Johnston’s sizzling contemporary Western romance series, where power, money, and rivalries rule—and love is the best revenge.

  Surrender

  Coming soon from Dell

  Continue reading for a special sneak peek

  DOES YOUR LIFE really flash before your eyes when you know you’re going to die? Taylor Grayhawk was a great pilot, but there was nothing she could do with both engines flared out. A whirlwind of fire had engulfed her Twin Otter as she flew over Yellowstone National Park dropping smoke jumpers to fight the raging inferno that had been burning for the past two weeks. She turned to stare over her shoulder at the single smoke jumper who hadn’t made it out of the plane.

  “You can still jump,” she said over the eerie rustle of the wind in the open doorway at the rear of the plane.

  “Not without you,” the jumper called back.

  “I don’t have a parachute.”

  “We can share mine.”

  Taylor calculated the odds of getting to the ground hanging on to Brian Flynn by her fingernails—and whatever other body parts she could wrap around him. He was wearing a padded jump jacket and pants made of Kevlar, the same material used for bulletproof vests. It was bulky, to say the least. She imagined herself falling—sliding down his body—into the crackling flames below and shuddered.

  “I’ll take my chances on getting the plane to the ground in one piece,” she said, turning back to the control panel to see how much lift she could manage without the engines. Not much. She searched in vain for a meadow—any opening in the trees—where she might crash-land the plane.

  The spotter, who was required on all flights to gauge the wind, fire activity, and terrain, hadn’t shown up, so Brian, who’d already been dressed in his smoke jumping gear, had served as the spotter instead. Unfortunately, he hadn’t been able to steer her away from what turned out to be a catastrophic encounter with fire. Taylor doubted anyone could have anticipated the sudden tornado of flame that had shot up hundreds of feet into the air from the forest below.

  “This plane’s headed straight into the fire,” Brian said from the doorway. “We need to jump now, while there’s still time to hit a safe clearing. Get over here, Tag. Move your butt!”

  The use of her nickname, which came from her initials—Taylor Ann Grayhawk—conjured powerful, painful memories from the past. Brian had dubbed her with it when he was a junior and she was a freshman at Jackson High.

  Taylor felt the plane shudder as the right wingtip was abruptly shoved upward by a gust of hot air and knew that time was running out. In a voice that was surprisingly calm, considering the desperation she felt inside, Taylor reported their position on the radio, along with the fact that she’d been unable to restart the engines.

  “I’m putting us down in the first clearing I find,” she told the dispatcher.

  “Roger,” the dispatcher replied. “Good luck.”

  The problem was she didn’t see a clearing large enough to allow her to land without going in nose first. Survival was questionable. Disaster seemed imminent.

  Two words kept replaying in her mind: “What if…?”

  What if their fathers, King Grayhawk and Angus Flynn, hadn’t been mortal enemies? What if Brian’s elder brother, Aiden, hadn’t caught Brian making love to her after the junior prom? What if her fraternal twin sister, Victoria, hadn’t made it clear that if Taylor didn’t stay away from Brian, who was just one more of “those awful Flynn boys,” she was never speaking to her again?

  Brian had become a firefighter and married someone else. She’d become a corporate pilot and gone through several futile engagements. They were both free now, but Brian’s divorce a year ago had left him so heartsore and gun-shy that he was likely never to fall in love again.

  None of that mattered now. Very likely she and Brian were going to die in the next few minutes. What made her heart ache was regret for what her life might have been like if only…

  “Tag?”

  She looked over her shoulder at the tall, broad-shouldered man who’d been forbidden fruit when she was a teenager. She’d run her fingers through his thick black hair, holding on tight as they made love. His piercing blue eyes had seen past her movie-star-beautiful, confident, blond-haired, blue-eyed exterior to the abandoned child inside, who desperately wanted to be loved.

  She’d grown up with an older half sister as a mother, after the mother who’d borne her had run off with one of her father’s cowhands. Her wealthy father had been mostly absent, serving two terms as Wyoming governor in Cheyenne, while he left his four daughters back home at his ranch in Jackson Hole.

  Because of the animosity between the Grayhawk and Flynn families, she’d started out determined to seduce Brian Flynn—and dump him. It would be fair repayment for all the nasty things he and his three brothers had done to her and her three sisters. His heart was supposed to end up broken, not hers. She hadn’t planned on liking him. Brian was the first boy to offer affection in return for the sex she’d been offering to any boy who gave her a kind look—and some whose looks weren’t so kind—hoping to find someone who would care about her.

  “I’m not leaving without you, Tag,” Brian said. “Get out of that seat and get your beautiful ass over here!”

  Their eyes met, and she felt the past flooding back. All the things she should have done…and hadn’t. All the things she shouldn’t have done…and had.

  The thought of a future with Brian almost had her rising. But there was too much water under the bridge. Or water over the dam. She’d been disappointed too many times by too many men. Some people were lovable, and some were not. She was just one of those people who wasn’t destined to find a man who could love her. Brian Flynn had had his chance. She no longer believed in the possibility of any kind of happily ever after. Her life was liable to end in an altogether more gruesome way.

  “You go,” she said turning back to search through the windshield for the clearing she knew had to be there somewhere.

  A moment later she felt a strong hand grip her arm, yanking her out of her seat.

  “I am not, by God, going to take the blame for leaving you behind, you stubborn brat!”

  The plane shuddered, and the wings tipped sideways.

  “Let me go!” she cried, reaching back to the control column in an attempt to right the plane. But he pulled her inexorably toward the door, which was already tilting upward at an angle that might keep them both from escaping.
<
br />   Taylor jerked free and rushed back to her seat, grabbing the control column and bringing the plane back to level flight. She glanced over her shoulder and said, “Just go, Brian! Someone has to keep the plane steady so you can get out the door.”

  “I’m not going anywhere without you, Tag. Get that into your head. So you can either join me in getting out of this plane, or we can both go down with it in flames.”

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