CHAPTER ONE

      BLUE SUMNER rarely had anything given to him. The death of his mother when he was four years old had cut him off from the simple, exquisitely tender kind of giving that comes from the gentle heart and hands of a good mother. He’d learned quick not to expect anything to magically come his way, not love and certainly not anything more than what it took to keep body and soul together. As the son of a cowboy drifter who had spent more time drunk and out of work than sober and employed, Blue had grown up at the mercy of strangers who either pitied or scorned him.

      The drive to amount to something, to work himself to death if need be so he could make a good life and have a home, had got hold of him before he was out of grade school. By the time he’d turned fourteen, he’d been so obsessed to make something of himself that he’d quit school, lied about his age and gone to work full-time on the biggest ranch in the county. Later, he studied for his GED in his spare time, then passed the test for his high school diploma about the time his old classmates were halfway through their freshman year of college.

      As a boy who had faced daily ridicule for the poor quality of his clothes and his social ignorance, the loss of high school had been insignificant. His childhood had already been lost, crushed out by the hardscrabble life of a drunk’s son. He’d had to find success at something else, anything that would elevate his bad feelings about himself and give him a reason to leave liquor alone and stay on the right side of the law.

      From the time he’d got his first job on that big ranch, he’d worked twelve-hour days, seven days a week. Days off were rare, vacations unheard of, but he’d persisted, saving every dollar he could get his hands on, until he’d at last put together enough money to take out a loan on a place of his own.

      Eight years ago, he’d become the proud mortgage holder of a modest ranch. He’d sweated and bled over that piece of ground, living in the small run-down house that still had a room with a dirt floor, while he caught work for wages on some of the larger outfits.

      The land itself had been rugged enough to nearly kill him. He’d raised animals that were dangerous on their good days, delivered their offspring, doctored their ailments, treated them like prize pups—and sold them for every nickel he could get. He’d lived lonely and hard, doing without a lot of things others took for granted, chasing the mirage of home and respectability…

      Until the day he discovered that every inch of the dirt he’d slaved over just happened to be sitting on top of the richest new oil strike in a four-county area.

      It was amazing what a sudden eight-figure net worth did for a man. Amazing and enlightening. Things he could only wish for in the past could now be his in the time it took to toss down a piece of plastic or write out a check. From the moment the news of his good luck had circulated, he’d been accorded a deference that had taken him aback the first few times.

      He got invited to all kinds of high-toned get-togethers, about a million salesmen left messages on his new answering machine and every mother with an unmarried daughter made sure he’d been introduced and asked to supper. People who’d always kept a wary distance from him now went out of their way to speak to him or do business with him.

      And though he could now buy anything he wanted and could do whatever he pleased, it shocked him a little to suddenly discover that the things he wanted most—a home, a family and respectability—had more to do with the quality of the woman he chose to marry than the sweat, blood and sacrifice that had brought him this far.

      Because Blue Sumner had rarely had anything given to him, he knew right off that the kind of woman he was looking for could only be his for a price. A quality woman wouldn’t willingly marry a man who’d come from what he’d come from; she’d never be interested in a man who’d grown up rough-mannered and hard. And because she wouldn’t, Blue didn’t intend to give her a choice.

      Allison Lancaster drove