The Ashtons: Walker, Ford & Mercedes: Betrayed Birthright / Mistaken for a Mistress / Condition of Marriage
Family, lies, secrets and passionBetrayed Birthright Sheri White Feather CEO Walker Ashton had always put business before pleasure but, when on the search for his mother he met Tamra Winter Hawk, his thoughts definitely turned to pleasure. Walker didn’t know why the beautiful Native American made him yearn for a forbidden liaison…Mistaken for a Mistress Kristi Gold FordAshton was prepared to deceive and seduce his grandfather’s assistant and mistress to save his uncle. But he soon discovered that Kerry Roarke was not all she appeared to be either. Could love develop with so much deception between them?Condition of Marriage Emilie Rose Mercedes Ashton agreed to marry her best friend, Jared Maxwell…for convenience sake because he would give her baby a name. But now both of them are having feelings for one another and want to change their conditions of marriage!
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One outrageous family, three lifetime passions!
THE ASHTONS: WALKER, FORD & MERCEDES
Three of your favourite authors bring you three pulse-racing romances following the scandalous Ashton dynasty
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May 2010
The Ashtons: Walker, Ford & Mercedes
Featuring
Betrayed Birthright by Sheri WhiteFeather Mistaken for a Mistress by Kristi Gold Condition of Marriage by Emilie Rose
Princes of the Outback
by Bronwyn Jameson
Featuring
The Rugged Loner
The Rich Stranger
The Ruthless Groom
Table of Contents
Betrayed Birthright
By
Sheri WhiteFeather lives in Southern California and enjoys ethnic dining, attending powwows and visiting art galleries and vintage clothing stores near the beach. When she isn’t writing, she often reads until the wee hours of the morning.
Sheri’s husband, a member of the Muscogee Creek Nation, inspires many of her stories. They have a son, a daughter and a trio of cats – domestic and wild. She loves to hear from her readers. You may write to her at: PO Box 17146, Anaheim, California 92817, USA. Visit her website at www.SheriWhiteFeather.com.
Prologue
1983
Damn David for dying. And damn him for marrying an Indian woman.
Spencer Ashton gazed out the windshield, then blew a frustrated breath. He’d just spent a grueling weekend in Nebraska, taking care of family business. But what choice did he have? Who else would pick up the pieces of David’s crumbled life and offer his half-breed kids a better existence?
That squaw wasn’t fit to raise David’s offspring, and there was no way Spencer would allow her to take them to her freeloading, war-whooping reservation. It was bad enough they’d lived on a farm that had
never prospered, a farm Spencer had helped David buy long before he’d married Mary Little Dove.
But in the end, David had been too proud to admit that he and his family were starving.
Spencer flipped the sun visor, squinting into the afternoon light. He was on his way home from the airport, heading to Napa Valley, California, where he owned a thriving winery and a twenty-two-thousand-square-foot mansion. The boy and girl he’d acquired—his dead brother’s children—sat next to him in the front seat of his luxury sedan.
He glanced over and saw that three-year-old Charlotte was still behaving like a lost bird. She even chirped every so often, grating on his nerves. He’d tried to put her in the backseat, but she wouldn’t leave her big brother’s side. Spencer had no use for wounded creatures, but what could he do? She was David’s daughter.
The eight-year-old boy, on the other hand, had already garnered Spencer’s respect. Walker held his head high. The kid had moxie. Balls. He deserved to be an Ashton.
Too bad he was part Indian.
But Spencer would find a way to get past that. Not that he favored children, Lord knew he had enough of his own. He even had another baby on the way, but Walker was different. He would probably prove to be better than any of Spencer’s kids.
Charlotte made another nervous sound, and Spencer gripped the steering wheel.
“She’s scared,” Walker said.
“Yes, of course. Your parents are gone.” Or so they had been told. Their mother was still alive, but that was Spencer’s secret. Everyone, except his lawyer, had been fed the same story: Mary Little Dove had died from injuries she’d sustained in an automobile accident, just like David.
Spencer and his attorney had strong-armed her into giving up her kids, but it had been the right thing to do.
Walker was proof. The boy looked dapper in the clothes Spencer had purchased for him. And he hadn’t balked about getting his hair cut, either. Spencer wasn’t about to take the kids home looking like a couple of ragamuffins.
He turned to study the boy’s posture. Although he protected his sister, keeping her close, he still had an air of independence. His mother had called him a warrior. A Sioux at heart. But Spencer sensed otherwise. This kid should have been white.
“I was poor when I was young, too,” Spencer said. “But I wanted something better.”
Walker glanced up. “My dad talked about you.”
“Did he?”
“Yes, sir.”
“I would have saved his farm. I didn’t know it was in foreclosure, that he was losing it.” Spencer knew what people said about him: that he was a bastard, a self-righteous prick. But what the hell did they know? He’d always done right by David, even if his kid brother had been a sentimental fool. “I tried to help your dad succeed.”
