âMr. Brant, Get Off My Ranch.â
Ashley didnât bother to hide the fury in her voice. âYou can get right back in your truck and go.â
âHear me out, and I think youâll let me stay. Give me ten minutes.â
Her eyes narrowed. Gabe was facing a beautiful woman who was poised and determined. And she was going to be trouble.
âTen minutes is all you have,â Ashley said. âYouâve already wasted the first minute. Now what do you want?â
Crossing his arms over his chest, Gabe took a deep breath. âIâm building up our ranch, and I want more land and more cattle. I can get the cattle, but I canât get land in this neck of the woods.â
âIf you think we would ever sell you one inch of this land, youâre dead wrong.â
âI know you donât want to sell. I didnât come to buy.â
Gabe realized he could gaze into her blue eyes indefinitely.
âWhat do you want, Mr. Brant?â
âI came to offer you a marriage of convenience.â
Do You Take This Enemy?
Sara Orwig
With many thanks to my editors, Joan Marlow Golan and Stephanie Maurer
lives with her husband and children in Oklahoma. She has a patient husband who will take her on research trips anywhere, from big cities to old forts. She is an avid collector of Western history books. With a masterâs degree in English, Sara writes historical romance, mainstream fiction and contemporary romance. Books are beloved treasures that take Sara to magical worlds, and she loves both reading and writing them.
FOREWORD
Chapter One
Chapter Two
Chapter Three
Chapter Four
Chapter Five
Chapter Six
Chapter Seven
Chapter Eight
Chapter Nine
Chapter Ten
Chapter Eleven
Chapter Twelve
Stallion Pass, Texasâso named according to the ancient legend in which an Apache warrior fell in love with a U.S. Cavalry captainâs daughter. When the captain learned about their love, he intended to force her to wed a Cavalry officer. The warrior and the maiden planned to run away and marry. The night the warrior came to get her, the cavalry killed him. His ghost became a white stallion, forever searching for the woman he loved. Heartbroken, the maiden ran away to a convent, where on moonlit nights she could see the white stallion running wild, but she didnât know it was the ghost of her warrior. The white stallion still roams the area and, according to legend, will bring love to the person who tames him. Not far from Stallion Pass, in Piedras and Lago counties, there is a wild white stallion, running across the land owned by three Texas bachelors, Gabriel Brant, Josh Kellogg and Wyatt Sawyer. Is the white stallion of legend about to bring love into their lives?
Gabriel Brantâs stomach knotted as he drove along the hard-packed dirt road. He was tempted to make a U-turn and head home, but then he rounded a bend in the road and saw a sprawling house, two long stables, a corral, a guest house, a bunkhouse and several outbuildings. As his knowledgeable eye ran over the structures, his qualms vanished.
To his right was a fenced pasture filled with fine-looking horses. A sleek bay and a graceful sorrel, their ears cocked forward, paused to look at his pickup. Land spread out in all directions and his pulse jumped as he imagined all that prime land belonging to him. Still, as he drove, he was aware how much his father would have hated what he was doing. Father, grandfather, great-grandfather and great-great-grandfather. He wasnât too happy about aspects of it himself. The Ryders and the Brants had been feuding since the first generations of each family had settled in Texas.
Gabe was convinced that his relatives would understand his actions once they knew what the Brants would gain. âKeep telling yourself that,â he added aloud.
The possibilitiesâvastly more land, more water resources and a mother for his sonâreassured him that he was doing the right thing. He crossed a narrow wooden bridge, speeding over Cotton Creek. The Creek was the reason the Brants and the Ryders had originally settled in this area. It was also the source of the old feudâwater rights and border disputes. Gabe glanced at the winding narrow ribbon of murky water that gave life to both ranches. Today it was only inches wide, but Gabe knew it could go from a trickle to a flood.
As he approached the house and stables, a woman stepped from the porch into the May sunlight and strode down the wide graveled drive toward him, her cascade of midnight hair startling him. He hadnât seen Ashley Ryder since she was a kid. Back then she had been skinny, gangling and had worn braces. Heâd occasionally heard news about herâgoing to the University of Southern California, working in the advertising business in Chicago. Then, three months ago, she had suddenly moved home, and rumors had started flying around town.
She waited, facing his pickup as he slowed. His gaze ran over her swiftly. Tall for a woman, Ashley Ryder was wearing cutoffs and a blue cotton T-shirt that she filled out nicely. He noticed the bulge of her stomach and saw for himself that the rumors were true. Since she had returned home, she had stayed in seclusion on the Ryder ranch.