“You’re going to ask me to be your mistress. I swear, rich men are all alike.”

      “What an interesting mind you have,” Max

      said. “But no. That is not the plan.”

      He had looked surprised when she levelled her

      accusation, so she’d apparently been wrong

      about what he was up to. She couldn’t imagine

      anything else, though, that he would need to

      pay her money for.

      “Then what?” Janine asked.

      “Why, I want to hire you to be my wife.”

      Iron Cowboy

      DIANA PALMER

      Seduced by the Rich Man

      MAUREEN CHILD

       www.millsandboon.co.uk

      IRON COWBOY

      by

      Diana Palmer

       DIANA PALMER

      has a gift for telling the most sensual tales with charm and humour. With over forty million copies of her books in print, Diana Palmer is one of North America’s most beloved authors and considered one of the top ten romance authors in the US.

      Diana’s hobbies include gardening, archaeology, anthropology, iguanas, astronomy and music. She has been married to James Kyle for over twenty-five years, and they have one son.

      Dear Reader,

      I still don’t know where this book came from. It was all very mysterious, and I think Tony the Dancer (you’ll meet him inside the book) had something to do with it.

      I laughed a lot when I saw it unfolding on my computer screen, and I also cried a little along the way. It’s not a melancholy book, but, like life itself, it has some heartbreak in it. The hero and heroine are both a bit mysterious. Both have secrets. Both have tragedies in their pasts. As usual, in my eccentric way, I have built false trails, so nothing is quite what it seems at the beginning. I do like surprises, as long as they’re nice ones. These are. Trust me.

      I hope you enjoy reading Iron Cowboy as much as I enjoyed writing it for you.

      Love to my fans.

      As always, I am your biggest fan,

       Diana Palmer

      To Ann Painter in Massachusetts with love

      One

      It was a lovely spring day, the sort of day that makes gentle, green, budding trees and white blossoms look like a spring fantasy has been painted. Sara Dobbs stared out the bookstore’s side window wistfully, wishing she could get to the tiny flower bed full of jonquils and buttercups to pick a bouquet for the counter. The flowers were blooming on the street that ran beside the Jacobsville Book Nook, where she worked as assistant manager to Dee Harrison, the owner.

      Dee was middle-aged, a small, thin, witty woman who made friends wherever she went. She’d been looking for someone to help her manage the store, and Sara had just lost her bookkeeping position at the small print shop that was going out of business. It was a match made in heaven. Sara spent a good portion of her meager salary on books. She loved to read. Living with her grandfather, a retired college professor, had predisposed her to education. She’d had plenty of time to read when she was with her parents, in one of the most dangerous places on earth.

      Sara’s father, with her maternal grandfather’s assistance, had talked her mother into the overseas work. Her father had died violently. Her mother changed, lost her faith, turned to alcohol. She brought Sara to Jacobsville and moved in with her father. She then launched herself into one scandal after another, using her behavior to punish her father without caring about the cost to her only child. Sara and Grandad had suffered for her blatant immorality. It wasn’t until Sara had come home in tears, with bruises all over her, that her mother faced the consequences of what she’d done. The children of one of her mother’s lovers had caught her alone in the gym and beaten her bloody. Their father had divorced their mother, who was now facing eviction from their home and the loss of every penny they had; their father had spent it on jewels for Sara’s mother.

      That had led to worse tragedy. Her mother stopped drinking and seemed to reform. She even went back to church. She seemed very happy, until Sara found her one morning, a few days later…

      The sound of a vehicle pulling up in the parking lot just in front of the bookstore stopped her painful reveries. At least, she thought, she had a good job and made enough to keep a roof over her head.

      Her grandfather’s little two-bedroom house outside of town had been left to Sara, along with a small savings account. But there was a mortgage on the house.

      She missed the old man. Despite his age, he was young in mind and heart, and adventurous. It was lonely without him, especially since she had no other living family. She had no siblings, no aunts or uncles, or even cousins that she knew about. She had nobody.

      The ringing of the electronic bell over the door caught her attention. A tall, grim-looking man came into the small bookstore. He glowered at Sara. He was dressed in an expensive-looking three-piece gray suit and wore hand-tooled black boots and a creamy Stetson. Under the hat was straight, thick, conventionally cut black hair. He had the sort of physique that usually was only seen in motion pictures. But he was no movie star. He looked like a businessman. She glanced out the door and saw a big, black pickup truck with a white horse in a white circle on the truck’s door. She knew about the White Horse Ranch outside town. This newcomer, Jared Cameron, had bought it from its previous owner, lock, stock, manager and resident cowboys. Someone said he’d been in town several months earlier for a funeral of