Table Of ContentWild Sweet Ecstasy
by
Jo Goodman
Copyright 1992 by Jo Goodman
Published by Kensington Publishing Corp.
Zebra Books The shining splendor of our Zebra Lovegram logo on the
cover of this book reflects the glittering excellence of the story
inside. Look for the Zebra Lovegram whenever you buy a historical
romance. It's a trademark that guarantees VELVET PASSION Michael foun
his skin. She wanted to run a finger down the length of his spine.
She wanted to trace it with her lips.
Ethan turned around. Michael was just pulling the nightshirt modestly
over her knees. She almost looked prim. Almost. But there was her
hair which had been loosed from every confining pin and lay across her
shoulders and back in all its magnificent splendor.
There was the delicate hollow of her throat which was laid bare by the
open collar of his nightshirt. Then there was the way her lips came
together as she swallowed her smile. His blue-gray eyes slid over her
hair, her throat, and came to rest on her mouth.
"I'm about tired of sleeping on the floor," he said in a low voice.
Then he came toward her.
Michael raised her face. Her eyes held his.
"This is when you should tell me to stop," Ethan said.
Michael blinked once. Her mouth parted slightly. No sound came.
"Can you?" he asked, his voice just above a whisper.
"No"
HEART STOPPING ROMANCE BY ZEBRA BOOKS MIDNIGHT BRIDE (3265 $4.50)
by Kathleen Drymon With her youth, beauty, and sizable dowry, Kellie
McBride had her share of ardent suitors, but the headstrong miss was
bewitched by the mysterious man called The Falcon, a dashing highwayman
who risked life and limb for the American Colonies. Once the Falcon
had saved her from the hands of the British, then set her blood afire
with a moonlit kiss.
No one knew the dangerous life The Falcon led - or of his secret
identity as a British lord with a vengeful score to settle with the
Crown. There was no way Kellie would discover his deception so he
would woo her by day as the foppish lord Blakely Savage and ravish her
by night as The Falcon! But each kiss made him want more, until he
vowed to make her his Midnight Bride.
SOUTHERN SEDUCTION (3266, $4.50) by Thea Devine Cassandra knew her
husband's will required her to hire a man to run her Georgia
plantation, but the beautiful redhead was determined to handle her own
affairs. To satisfy her lawyers, she invented Trane Taggart, her
imagiary stepson. But her plans go awry when a handsome adventurer
shows up and claims to be Trane Taggart!
After twenty years of roaming free, Trane was ready to come home and
face the father who always treated him with such contempt.
Instead he found a black wreath and a bewitching, sharp tongued
temptress trying to cheat him out of his inheritance. But he had no
qualms about kissing that silken body into languid submission to get
what he wanted. But he never dreamed that he would be the one to
succumb to her charms.
SWEET OBSESSION (3233 $4.50) by Kathy Jones From the moment rancher
Jack Corbett kept her from capturing the wild white stallion, Kayley
Ryan detested the man. That animal had almost killed her father, and
since the accident Kayley had been in charge of the ranch. But with
the tall, lean Corbett, it seemed she was never the boss. He made her
blood run cold with rage one minute, and hot with desire the next.
Jack Corbett had only one thing on his mind: revenge against the man
who had stolen his freedom, his ranch, and almost his very life.
And what better way to get revenge than to ruin his mortal enemy's
fiery red-haired daughter. He never expected to be captured by her
charms, to long for her silken caresses and to thirst for her
never-ending kisses.
Available wherever paperbacks are sold, or order direct from the
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above address.
ZEBRA BOOKS are published by Kensington Publishing
Corp.
475 Park Avenue South New York, NY 10016
Copyright C 1992 by Jo Goodman All rights reserved. No part of this
book may be reproduced in any form or by any means without the prior
written consent of the Publisher, excepting brief quotes used in
reviews.
If you purchased this book without a cover you should be aware that
this book is stolen property. It was reported as "unsold and
destroyed" to the Publisher and neither the Author nor the Publisher
has received any payment for this "stripped book."
First printing: May, 1992
Printed in the United States of America
Prologue Spring 1875
She was not the sort of woman he usually noticed.
Ethan Stone's shaded glance was more likely to alight on a woman with a
quick and easy smile and a bit of invitation in her eyes. There was
nothing the least inviting about this woman.
For one thing, she was serious.
Her mouth was flattened by the weight of her thoughts and there was a
small vertical crease between her eyebrows. He could not make out the
color of her narrowed eyes but the expression was grave and focused
somewhere on the wall behind him. If he moved a little to the left her
eyes would bore directly through his shoulder.
He shifted his weight on the desktop where he was lounging, hitching
one leg higher and stretching out the other. The slight movement did
not attract her attention and Ethan continued his leisurely assessment,
fascinated in a way that was not particularly flattering to his
subject.
She wore a pair of gold-rimmed spectacles that sat low on her nose. He
didn't see many women wearing glasses, so that she had them at all made
her something of an oddity. The manner in which they perched on the
end of her nose suggested she didn't need them for anything but reading
and writing. Certainly, by the way she stared out over the top of the
thin wire frames, she didn't require them for deep thinking.
Her skin was pale, her complexion smooth, and it was possibly her best
feature. Her hair could have been her best feature but it was a nest
for pencils. Ethan counted three of them buried there. Pencils aside,
her hair was quite magnificent. She had done what she could, he
thought, to make it seem less so. That she was not entirely successful
led Ethan to believe it was her one true vanity. An effort had been
made to scrape it back tightly, to make it ruthlessly conform to the
shape of her head, but pride or sanity had caused her to stop short of
that cruelty to herself and to those who looked at her. Rather than
being molded to her head, her hair was a soft coppery penumbra of
light, a frame of deep red and chestnut for her face. By accident or
by design, slender, curling threads of hair had escaped the loose
chignon and gently brushed her forehead, her cheeks, and shimmered in
the gaslighted room.
The thick, lustrous quality of her hair was at odds with the severe,
starched white blouse she wore, the equally stiff black skirt, and the
tight, forbidding set of her serious mouth. As much as that mouth of
hers put him off, that hair drew his interest.
Amused, one corner of Ethan's mouth lifted as he watched the woman's
hands absently search the surface of her desk, sliding over a stack of
papers, several books, a leather notepad, and patting down a half dozen
loose sheets of paper scattered across the top. Unable to find what
she wanted, the flattened line of her mouth shifted to one side in an
expression of disgust, and her shoulders heaved once with an impatient,
silent sigh. Tearing her gaze away from the point beyond Ethan's
shoulder, she began searching in earnest, lifting books, the note-pad,
and sifting through the stack of papers. She pushed her spectacles up
the bridge of her slender nose and repeated the search, but more
methodically this time. She appeared about to give up, slumping back
in her chair, the starched white blouse not looking quite so stiff now,
when she cupped the side of her face in her palm and her fingers
touched one of the pencils in her hair.
The shape of Ethan's mouth was only fractionally altered but it was
enough to replace amusement with derision. The woman plucked the
pencil from her hair, but instead of applying it to paper, she held it
in the manner of a cigarette, stuck the tip between her lips and
inhaled as if she were smoking. Ethan shook his head, not quite
certain he believed what he saw. He didn't know any women who
smoked.
Well, there was Caroline Henry, but she worked in a saloon. After
regular hours she might smoke in the privacy of her bedroom, usually
after she had been energetically engaged, but she always asked
permission.
Ethan's thoughts came back to the woman across the newsroom. She
didn't look as if she asked anyone for anything. He tried to imagine
her in bed. He couldn't get past the cameo brooch closing the collar
of her starched white blouse. The thought of throwing up that stiff
black skirt was unappealing, and probably impossible.
She took the pencil out of her mouth, exhaled softly, and leaned
forward over her desk. The pencil was rapped lightly against one of
the books, a steady tattoo that kept the beat of her tapping left
foot.
The spectacles slid slowly down the length of her pared nose as she
bent her head over her work. Except for a rabbit-like wrinkle to keep
them in place, she didn't seem to be bothered by their position. She
began writing in earnest, her hand fairly flying across the paper in an
effort to keep pace with her thoughts.
Ethan's blue-gray eyes settled again on the crown of her beautiful
mahogany hair. The two remaining pencils were a nuisance, but he
refused to let them spoil his pleasure. It was her hair, after all,
that had first captured his attention. That, and the fact she was the
only woman in a room of two dozen men.
It made sense, he supposed, that in a city the size of New York there
would be women working outside their homes. He was used to seeing
women in saloons, dance halls, on the stage, perhaps even managing a
hotel. Occasionally a woman might help her husband run his store or
teach at the local school house. Since coming East, though, Ethan had
seen young women working as clerks in large department stores, employed
as professors at one of the private universities, and even as doctors
in some of the hospitals. It shouldn't have been so surprising then
that the Chronicle counted one lone female among its secretarial staff
- even if she probably did use her luncheon time to sneak a
cigarette.
Ethan considered it was a good thing to be confronted with this vision
of a modern city woman. It was the final confirmation that he didn't
belong in New York. He was thirty years old, born in Nevada, raised
all over, and except for some time in Pennsylvania for schooling, and a
few years in the south during the war, he'd rarely been east of the
Mississippi. He was ready to go home.
"You can go in now, Mr. Stone."
Ethan heard the voice but the words didn't register immediately. Her
hair really was magnificent. He wondered how old she was.
Twenty-three, twenty-four? In spite of her serious air she did not
look old beyond her years. "Hmmm?" he murmured idly.
The secretary cleared his throat as he stood behind his desk. "This
way, Mr. Stone. Mr. Franklin and Mr. Rivington have already stepped
inside. Mr. Marshall's a busy man and I'm afraid he's behind schedule
as it is."
There was very little that Ethan did in a hurry. Drawing a gun and
sizing up a person's character were possibly the only two exceptions.
It was his general opinion that everything else could wait. That
included the publisher of the New York Chronicle and the men who had
insisted he accompany them to this meeting. He came to his
feet
slowly, offering the lazy, derisive smile that was never meant as an
apology to the efficient, no-nonsense secretary, and turned his lithe
frame in the direction of the publisher's office. "By all means," he
said, faintly drawling over the words, "schedules must be kept."
Ethan couldn't wait to board a train west.
Mary Michael Dennehy came out of her work-induced trance just as Ethan
was turning away. She cocked her head to one side, glimpsing the
strong three-quarter profile before she was left to stare at his
back.
Her gaze skimmed over him then dropped back to her work. She heard the
door to Logan Marshall's office and she dropped her pencil, stretched
her arms above her head, and sighed.
She called above the general din of the newsroom, making herself heard
to Logan Marshall's secretary. "I suppose I was just squeezed out of
my 1:30 appointment by that man."
Samuel Carson held up three fingers. "Men," he said, shaking his hand
to indicate the number of them. "That particular man was a marshal."
A Marshall? wondered Mary Michael. The publisher had an older brother
who didn't do much with the paper any longer, but she wasn't aware of
any other relatives. What chance did she have in the face of
nepotism?
"And," Samuel Carson continued, "you never had an appointment, Miss
Dennehy."
Mary Michael smiled. A dimple appeared on either side of her wide,
generous mouth. It would have riveted Stone's attention. It made
color rise in Samuel Carson's neck, starting just below the stiff
cardboard and fabric collar of his shirt, until his entire face was
flushed.
He felt the heat, reminded himself that he was married with four small
children, and abruptly went back to his work.
Oblivious to her smile's effect on Samuel Carson, Mary Michael finished
stretching and returned to her hunched position over the desk. A
pencil loosed itself
from her thick hair and dropped on the paper in
front of her. The wondrous smile became a quick, self-depreciating
grin as she rummaged through her hair and found the last pencil tucked
in the coil at the back of her head.
She stared at it a moment, shrugged, then slipped it behind her ear in
case she needed it later. It was inevitable that she would.
Brushing aside the pencil lying on top of her work, Mary Michael
continued writing. The small crease appeared between her brows again
and her mouth flattened in concentration. She wrote furiously, as if
there had been no interruption. Indeed, her conversation with Samuel
was forgotten now and her attention to the task in front of her
total.
It was a full thirty minutes before she finished. Her neck was stiff
and her hand was cramped. She raised her head, tilted it to the right,
then the left, forward, then backward. Prying her fingers from around
the pencil, she shook out her hand. The circulating blood actually
tingled. Mary Michael took off her spectacles, folded the earpieces
carefully, and laid them on top of her finished work. She absently
rubbed the bridge of her nose with her thumb and forefinger, closing
her eyes. Finally she slid fully back into her chair and stretched her
legs under her desk.
"No rest, Miss Dennehy." Fred Vollrath said, dropping a stack of
letters on her desk. The pile leaned precariously for a moment, then
collapsed in a neat and silent avalanche. "These just came for you."
One eye opened. It glanced at the aftermath of the avalanche of
letters then rose to meet the city editor's frank gaze. "You're not
serious, Mr. Vollrath." But she saw that he was. Her other eye
opened and she abandoned her relaxed posture. "I can't possibly answer
-" "Can't? I'm certain I misunderstood. You didn't say 'can't, did
you?"
She had known it would be like this when she came to the Chronicle.
Known it and accepted it. But she had
been an employee for nearly
fifteen months and there was hardly any lessening of pressure or
trials. It had been expected that she would quit at one week, a month
then two months, later six. When she was still working after a year
many of her fellow employees believed she had done it to spite them.
Mary Michael knew there was an ongoing wager in the press building as
to how long she would stay. She had been there so long one naive copy
boy actually forgot what he was collecting for and asked her to place a
bet and name a date.
She did. To the astonishment of everyone in the office she gave him
two bits and said, "When hell freezes over."
The next day someone left a small block of ice on her desk with the
word hell carved on its surface. She let it melt.
Had she but known it, she won some grudging respect that day. Her
guard up, she could not feel the lessening of tension around her.
"No, sir," she said quietly.
"I'll do them before I leave tonight."
Fred's thick brows lifted. "Not the whole pile, Dennehy. I never said
do it all. That was your assumption."
She grimaced as he walked away. He was right, she realized. She
always thought she had to do more, be better, prove something. "I was
working on something else," she said under her breath. She saw the
city editor stop as if he had heard her muttering, hesitate while she
held her breath, then keep on going. Mary Michael released a heavy,
discouraged sigh and sliced open an envelope at random with her letter
opener. She began to read. Minutes later, her own project pushed
aside, she began to write.
It was four-thirty when she looked up at the clock.
She had made a little headway into the pile of correspondence,
answering a dozen letters. It wasn't particularly satisfying,
especially when she glanced around the newsroom and saw how others were
engaged in important significant assignments. What was satisfying,
however, was seeing that Samuel Carson was absent
