âIâm going to wake up.â
Jesse raised his eyebrows. âExcuse me?â
âYou heard me. Iâm dreaming. This is a dream. It has to be. I am definitely not standing on a ledge halfway up a mountain, talking to a man whoâwho looks as if he stepped out of Central Casting for a movie starring John Wayne.â A curl of golden brown hair blew over her lip; she shoved it behind her ear and her chin rose a little higher. âJohn Wayne is dead, and I am dreaming. End of story.â
Jesse almost laughed. She was a tough piece of work. Whatever else she was, he had to admire her for that.
âIâve got news for you, baby. John Wayneâs alive. And this is no dream.â
âWrong on both counts,â she said. If her chin went up any higher, sheâd tumble over backward. âJohn Wayne is history. And I am sound asleep in my tent. Thereâs not a way in the world you can make me think otherwise.â Her eyesâmore violet than everânarrowed. âThis is not real.â
âYouâre wasting valuable time. The descentâs going to be tough enough without factoring in the heat.â
âNo,â she said, though now there was a faint quaver in her voice, âI told you, this isnât real.â
âIt damned well is,â Jesse snarled, and he proved it by pulling her into his arms, bending his head and covering her mouth with his.
Mills & Boon® Modern⢠Romance is pleased to present this new and exciting mini-series!
MEN WITHOUT MERCY
Arrogant and proud, unashamedly male!
Modern⢠Romance with a retro twistâ¦
Step back in time to when men were menâand women knew just how to tame them!
This month:
BLACKWOLFâS REDEMPTION by Sandra Marton
Experience the drama, excitement and passion when an independent twenty-first century woman is thrown back in time and comes face to face with a twentieth-century man as arrogant as he is gorgeous and as confident as he is sexyâ¦
Sparks fly and temperatures soar!
Sandra Marton wrote her first novel while she was still in primary school. Her doting parents told her sheâd be a writer some day, and Sandra believed them. In secondary school and college she wrote dark poetry nobody but her boyfriend understoodâthough, looking back, she suspects he was just being kind. As a wife and mother she wrote murky short stories in what little spare time she could manage, but not even her boyfriend-turned-husband could pretend to understand those. Sandra tried her hand at other things, among them teaching and serving on the Board of Education in her home town, but the dream of becoming a writer was always in her heart.
At last Sandra realised she wanted to write books about what all women hope to find: love with that one special man, love thatâs rich with fire and passion, love that lasts for ever. She wrote a novel, her very first, and sold it to Mills & Boon® Modern⢠Romance. Since then sheâs written more than sixty books, all of them featuring sexy, gorgeous, larger-than-life heroes. A four-time RITA® award finalist, sheâs also received five RT Book Reviews awards, and has been honoured with RTâs Career Achievement Award for Series Romance. Sandra lives with her very own sexy, gorgeous, larger-than-life hero in a sun-filled house on a quiet country lane in the north-eastern United States.
âReality is merely an illusion, albeit a very persistent one.â Albert Einstein, commenting on our perceptions
âAnd now for something completely different.â âMonty Pythonâs Flying Circusâ, commenting on that very same subject
Blackwolf Canyon, Montana, 5:34 a.m.,
one hour before the summer solstice, June 21, 2010
THE moon had set almost five hours ago. Still, night clung tenaciously to the land.
The high, rocky walls of the canyon seemed determined to hold to the chill of darkness; a razor-sharp wind swept down from the surrounding peaks and whipped through the scrub, its eerie sigh all that disturbed the silence.
Sienna Cummings shivered.
There was a wildness to this place, but in these last moments before the dawn light pierced the bottom of the canyon, she could almost sense the landâs ancient, often bloody history.
A heavy arm wrapped around her shoulders.
âHere,â Jack Burden said, âlet me warm you up.â
Sienna forced a smile and stepped free of the expedition leaderâs embrace.
âIâm fine,â she said politely. âJust excited. About the solstice,â she added quickly, before Burden could pull his usual trick of turning whatever she said into a suggestive remark.
No such luck.
âIâm excited, too,â he said, managing to do it, anyway. âLucky me. Alone with you, in the dark.â
They were hardly alone. There were four others with them: two graduate students, an associate professor from the Anthropology Department and a girl Burden had described as his secretary. From the way she looked at him, Sienna doubted if that was her real job, but that was fine with her; for the most part, it kept her obnoxious boss from sniffing after her.
Except at certain moments.