Praise for bestselling, award-winning author
Joan Johnston
and her unforgettable novels of two ranching dynasties born of pride and passion: the Blackthornes and the Creeds
THE RIVALS
“Johnston’s characters brim with humanity.”
—Publishers Weekly
“Fast-paced and full of romance, excitement, and intrigue…. An excellent, smoothly crafted tale that plunges headfirst into breathtaking suspense and passionate romantic relationships. Joan Johnston does a terrific job in setting up this story, deftly and seamlessly providing the necessary background on each character.”
—AOL Romance Fiction Forum
“Joan Johnston is a true master.”
—Romantic Times
“Joan Johnston has penned a winner that will leave you gasping for more in her Bitter Creek series. Her richly laden plot, filled with sex, lust, danger, betrayals, and romance, leaves absolutely nothing to be desired.”
—www.romancejunkies.com
THE PRICE
“Johnston knows how to weave a captivating tale.”
—Sun Sentinel (Ft. Lauderdale, FL)
“Truly memorable…. Compelling, masterful storytelling…. Cover to cover, nail-biting, edge-of-the-seat reading! The Price is Joan Johnston’s best book to date. Filled with intrigue, sex, greed, and murder…The Price will be on my list of the ten best books of 2003.”
—AOL Romance Fiction Forum
“Johnston writes sprawling, sensuous romance that will keep readers avidly reading.”
—Booklist
“With a story that could have been ripped out of the headlines, Johnston expertly blends facts, romance, and suspense with poignancy.”
—Romantic Times
“Johnston writes brisk romance chock-full of compelling conflicts and strong local color.”
—Publishers Weekly
More Critical Acclaim for the Fiction of
Joan Johnston
“Joan Johnston does short contemporary Westerns to perfection.”
—Publishers Weekly
“Like LaVyrle Spencer, Ms. Johnston writes of intense emotions and tender passions that seem so real that the readers will feel each one of them.”
—Rave Reviews
“Johnston warms your heart and tickles your fancy.”
—New York Daily News
“Joan Johnston continually gives us everything we want…fabulous details and atmosphere, memorable characters, a story that you wish would never end, and lots of tension and sensuality.”
—Romantic Times
Other Bitter Creek novels by Joan Johnston
The Rivals
The Price
The Loner
The Texan
The Cowboy
Texas Woman
Comanche Woman
Frontier Woman
Also by Joan Johnston
Colter’s Wife
No Longer a Stranger
This book is a work of fiction. Names, characters, places and incidents are products of the author’s imagination or are used fictitiously. Any resemblance to actual events or locales or persons, living or dead, is entirely coincidental.
An Original Publication of POCKET BOOKS
POCKET BOOKS, a division of Simon & Schuster, Inc.
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Copyright © 2005 by Joan Mertens Johnston, Inc.
All rights reserved, including the right to reproduce this book or portions thereof in any form whatsoever. For information address Pocket Books, 1230 Avenue of the Americas, New York, NY 10020
ISBN-13: 978-1-4165-2438-0
ISBN-10: 1-4165-2438-X
POCKET and colophon are registered trademarks of Simon & Schuster, Inc.
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Acknowledgments
I want to thank Elizabeth Saunders, the deputy clerk in charge of the Austin Division of the U.S. District Court for the Western District of Texas, for her invaluable assistance with details about the federal court in Austin. If there are mistakes, they are mine.
My editor Maggie Crawford has the soul of patience, the cheerfulness of a good friend when you need one, and the amazing savvy to make my work better. Thank you, Maggie.
I am in awe of the effort it takes by so many people in a publishing house to get a novel to market and ensure its success there. To everyone at Pocket Books, especially my publisher Louise Burke, you are the best!
My agent Robert Gottlieb is always there when I need him and does his work so well that I don’t need him often. Just know how much I appreciate all you do.
I could never be a writer if I didn’t have good friends to get me through the tough chapters. You know who you are.
And to my mother, who passed away this year, I know you’re up there watching. And that you’re proud of me. And that you’ll like this one even better than the last. You always do.
Prologue
“I can’t believe Dad’s marrying that uppity, French-speaking, redheaded bit—” Kate Grayhawk cut herself off before she called her father’s prospective wife the B-word. She glanced at her uncle North, who was brushing down his horse in an adjacent stall. “You’ve met Jocelyn, haven’t you, Uncle North. What do you think of her?”
“Are you done grooming that animal?” he asked.
Kate turned back to the bay gelding she’d ridden across her uncle’s Texas hill country ranch that morning, sending the brush down the animal’s back in long, soothing strokes. “Miss Montrose is only twenty-five—just six years older than me,” Kate continued. “Dad was married to her sister, for heaven’s sake.”
“If I’m not mistaken,” he said, “Jocelyn’s sister died two years ago, leaving your dad a widower.”
Kate flushed. “He should be marrying Mom.”
That was the crux of Kate’s problem. She couldn’t believe her forty-six-year-old father and thirty-five-year-old mother were going to throw away this last chance at finding happiness together. “If Grandpa King hadn’t kept them apart, Mom and Dad would have gotten married before I was born, instead of never getting married at all.”
Her uncle gave a noncommittal grunt and continued grooming his horse.
Kate lifted the bay’s black mane and brushed the animal’s sweaty neck. Kate’s waist-length black hair was caught up in a ponytail to keep it off her neck, but the leftover curls at her nape were damp from the heat. “I wish I knew how to make Dad change his mind about that French ambassador’s daughter he seems to think is so perfect for him.”
“I believe her father was ambassador to France,” her uncle corrected. “She was born in Connecticut.”
Kate shot her uncle a narrow-eyed look. “Whatever. Dad shouldn’t be marrying some blue-blooded Eastern tenderfoot. If that wedding happens next month, Mom’s heart is going to be broken into so many pieces, it’ll never mend.”
Kate watched for another look of censure, but her uncle seemed totally absorbed in the glossy black stallion he was brushing. She’d learned over the years that Uncle North never sympathized, never offered advice, never offered to solve her problems. In fact, sometimes his ice blue eyes were so cold, they made her shiver. When she was a kid, she’d dubbed him North Pole, he’d seemed so remote and unfeeling.
She’d also noticed that whenever she poured out her troubles to her uncle, they somehow miraculously got resolved. She was sure Uncle North was paying attention, listening to every word she said. She knew he cared about her and wanted her to be happy. He just had a little trouble showing his feelings.
Whi
ch wasn’t surprising, considering that King Grayhawk was his father, and he’d had two really bad stepmothers after Grandpa King had divorced North’s mother. Kate knew for a fact that Grandpa King didn’t listen. And he didn’t care about anyone but himself.
The situation between her parents would have been resolved long ago if her two grandfathers, King Grayhawk and Jackson Blackthorne, hadn’t been mortal enemies. But Blackjack had stolen away Eve DeWitt—the woman King loved—and married her. What made the theft so much more heinous was the fact that Blackjack never loved Eve. His heart had always belonged to another woman. He’d married Eve only for the fifty thousand acres of good DeWitt grassland in Texas she’d brought with her as a dowry. The two men had been on opposite sides of the fence ever since.
It was no wonder that when her father got her mother pregnant all those years ago, Grandpa King had taken advantage of the situation to exact revenge by forbidding them to marry.
But her parents were meant to be together like oatmeal and raisins. Like eggs and bacon. Like pancakes and syrup.
Kate realized she was hungry. Her horseback ride with Uncle North had started at daybreak, and the sun was well up. She had an hour’s drive ahead of her, to get back to her condo near UT. She was finishing her freshman year at the University of Texas at Austin, and she’d left her homework sitting when she’d come to spend the weekend on Uncle North’s ranch. Her brushstrokes came faster until her uncle lifted his head and pierced her with a look from his ice blue eyes.
“You giving that horse a good brushing?” he asked.
“Yessir.” Kate slowed her hand, but her mind was still working a mile a minute. “What if I pretended to break a leg?” she said. “That would get Mom and Daddy here in a hurry.”
“It also might make your mom take chances getting here,” North said.
Kate bit her lower lip. When she’d called and left a message that she was in trouble a year ago, her mom had caused an accident because she was driving too fast, trying to get home to help Kate. “I see what you mean,” she said. “Maybe you could tell Mom you need her help with something, and I could ask Daddy to come help me with something.”
“I manage fine by myself,” North said. “And Libby—your mom—knows it.”
Kate’s face twisted in disgust. “You could pretend—”
“No.”
The curt word sounded final. Absolutely, positively firm. Kate would get no help plotting from Uncle North, that was for sure.
“You finished?” he asked.
Kate ran her hand along the bay’s glossy back and said, “Yep.”
North slapped his horse on the rump, left the stall, and headed out of the barn without another word.
Kate chewed on her lower lip, staring at her uncle’s broad, powerful back and long legs as he strode into the sunshine. In the past, she’d been happy to rely on one of Uncle North’s miracles to accomplish the impossible. But he hadn’t seemed the least bit interested in helping her get her mother and father back together. And she knew for a fact Uncle North didn’t like the Blackthornes—which included her father—one little bit.
Kate squinted as she stepped out of the barn into the blistering Texas sun. She waited for her eyes to adjust to the light as she stared out over the grassy hills dotted with the purple remnants of April bluebonnets. There wasn’t much time before her father’s wedding—to the wrong woman. Just one month. Her mother’s—and father’s—happiness was just too important to leave to chance.
She was just going to have to come up with a miracle of her own.
1
Jocelyn Montrose didn’t mean to eavesdrop. But the arguments and shouting coming from the library at the Castle, the legendary ranch house at Bitter Creek, were hard to ignore. Her future husband, Clay Blackthorne, was being verbally attacked in that room.
Those assaulting him were his family—his twin brother Owen and sister-in-law Bay, his younger sister Summer and brother-in-law Billy Coburn, and his father Blackjack and stepmother Ren. Clay’s brother Trace and his wife, Callie, were on the speakerphone from Australia, where Trace owned a cattle station.
Jocelyn pressed her cheek against the wall next to the slightly open door, peeked inside and listened.
“You see what a reliable advisor Morgan DeWitt turned out to be,” Owen snarled, his hand on the SIG P226 he wore as a Texas Ranger. “That bastard was an out-and-out thief and murderer.”
“Morgan’s suggestion to incorporate the Bitter Creek Cattle Company and sell stock seemed sound to me,” Clay replied. “The DeWitt ranch is incorporated, and they’ve never had a problem. I didn’t know until a year ago that Morgan was anything less than the astute advisor he seemed to be.”
“We incorporated Bitter Creek on your advice,” Summer said angrily.
“A suggestion I made based on—”
“That sonofabitch’s advice,” Blackjack interrupted. “This is getting us nowhere. The question is, how do we stop that bastard—whoever he is—from buying up a controlling interest in the Bitter Creek Cattle Company?”
The silence was deafening.
“This is a disaster,” Trace said from the speakerphone on Blackjack’s desk.
“It’s not my fault!” Summer shot back.
“I wasn’t blaming you,” Trace said.
Jocelyn saw Clay’s jaw tighten. It was clear they blamed him. She wanted to walk into that room and put her arms around him and comfort him. But he’d forbidden her to attend the family meeting. She wasn’t Clay’s wife yet, as he’d made very clear to her earlier this morning.
They’d arrived at Bitter Creek last night to make final preparations for the wedding and had discovered that all hell had broken loose. Clay’s rejection of her offer of support, her plea to be allowed to stand by his side, still stung.
“Anybody got a useful suggestion how to get us out of this fix?” Billy said, his dark-eyed gaze moving from grim face to grimmer face around the room.
Jocelyn felt her heart sink. No one seemed to have any idea how to stop the anonymous corporate raider who was threatening to steal the Blackthornes’ heritage. In a hostile takeover, the existing management was usually terminated. Summer and Billy ran the ranch, but the Blackthornes had owned Bitter Creek, a property in South Texas the size of a small northeastern state, for nearly a hundred and fifty years. The new management would have the power to do whatever they wanted—even sell the ranch to strangers.
“Maybe this raider just wants greenmail,” Trace suggested.
“What’s that?” Bay asked from her seat in one of the two horn-and-hide chairs in front of Blackjack’s desk.
“He makes a quick profit by threatening to take control and then selling the stock back at a premium—more than it’s really worth,” Clay explained to his sister-in-law as he poured himself another glass of Jack Daniels from the bar.
Jocelyn watched Blackjack, who sat in a swivel chair at his desk, down a glass of whiskey in two swallows.
Clay’s stepmother laid a hand on Blackjack’s shoulder and said, “It would be worth any price to save Bitter Creek, wouldn’t it?”
“It’s blackmail, plain and simple,” Blackjack said, slamming his empty glass on the old-fashioned wooden desk. “And I’ll be damned before I’ll pay it!”
“What else is left?” Summer said, her voice breaking. “You won’t consider a poison pill or a scorched earth defense or…”
Jocelyn heard Summer swallow a sob as she turned into Billy’s open arms, and then Billy saying, “It’s all right, sweetheart. We’ll think of something.”
But what she heard was more deathly silence.
Apparently the Blackthornes were unwilling to use the few methods of shark repellent—ways to discourage an unfriendly takeover—still available to them. A poison pill was anything that might make the target company stock less attractive, like authorizing a new series of preferred stock that gave shareholders the right to redeem shares at a premium after the takeover.
Jocelyn shuddered
when she considered the scorched earth defense. That involved the target company disposing of its crown jewels—its most desirable property—to thwart the takeover. The Blackthornes might be able to save the assets of the Bitter Creek Cattle Company from being confiscated by a corporate raider—if they sold the precious land their fore-bears had bled and died for since the Civil War.
No wonder they were unwilling to consider that option.
“I know who the raider is,” Clay said.
“Why the hell didn’t you say so?” Blackjack said.
An expectant hush fell on the room. Jocelyn held her breath, wondering who the anonymous corporate raider could be.
When Clay took another slow swallow of whiskey instead of divulging the name of their nemesis, Summer prodded, “Please, Clay. Who is it?”
“North Grayhawk.”
Jocelyn gasped, then covered her mouth and looked through the crack in the door to see if she’d been discovered.
No one was paying any attention to her. The Blackthorne and Coburn men stared at Clay through narrowed eyes, their jaws locked and their hands fisted in anger. The women reached out to restrain their enraged husbands, but their bodies were no less tense, their anger no less palpable.
“I should have known,” Blackjack said. “Those damned Grayhawks have been the bane of my existence since—”
Jocelyn saw him cut himself off as he glanced over his shoulder at his wife, who caressed the hair at his nape and said, “I’m so sorry, Jackson.”
“It’s not your fault,” he said gruffly. He reached a hand up toward his wife and she grasped it, as their eyes met and held.
Jocelyn felt her throat swell with emotion at the look that passed between them. She wondered what it would be like to be loved like that. In the stories she’d heard, Blackjack and Ren were star-crossed lovers who’d married other people—Eve DeWitt and Jesse Creed, respectively—and raised families who’d become mortal enemies.
The Next Mrs. Blackthorne (Bitter Creek Book 6) Page 1
