DIANA PALMER

      is the prolific author of more than a hundred books. Diana got her start as a newspaper reporter. A multi–New York Times bestselling author and one of the top ten romance writers in America, she has a gift for telling the most sensual tales with charm and humor. Diana lives with her family in Cornelia, Georgia.

      Visit her website at www.DianaPalmer.com.

       CHAPTER ONE

      Abby Turner of Whitehorn, Montana, was getting married. There never was a more reluctant bride. She stared at the small diamond solitaire on her left hand with sad gray eyes in a pretty face framed by wavy dark hair and wished with all her heart that she’d said no instead of yes when Troy Jackson had proposed. He was a kind and sweet man, but she knew for certain that within a month of the wedding, she’d be walking all over him. She was a fiery, impulsive woman with an outrageous sense of humor, and she embarrassed him. She’d tried to deny that part of her nature, but it kept slipping out. Inevitably people noticed.

      Whitehorn was a small town where people lived as they had for generations. A ranching community sprawled outside the city limits and Troy, along with his father, ran several hundred head of Hereford cattle on their third-generation ranch. It wasn’t as large as Chayce Derringer’s spread, but then, Chayce had more money than most local people. He was involved in mining as well as ranching. He’d been Abby’s guardian since the death of her father, his foreman. Abby had been ten at the time. Her mother, Sarah Turner, had been crippled in the same wreck. Chayce had taken mother and daughter right into the big house with his housekeeper, Becky, and assumed total responsibility for them.

      Whit Turner, a former rodeo cowboy, had been not only his foreman, but his idol and surrogate father as well. Chayce had loved him. He was fond of Abby, too, and he’d spoiled her rotten. At least, until she was sixteen. That had been when the arguments began, each one hotter than the one before.

      Abby had given Chayce fits, not because she was rebellious, but because she was feeling the first stirrings of love for him. He was fifteen years her senior and completely impervious to her, and it hurt. Consequently, Abby’s temper grew steadily worse until she was eighteen. She’d pushed him too hard only once, and something had happened that had kept him completely out of her life ever since. It had been almost four years since Abby had seen him at all. He made sure of it.

      He’d arranged for her to go away to college as soon as she graduated from high school, just two weeks after their disastrous encounter. It had been traumatic. Her mother had died that same year, and Chayce had been determined that she needed the change of scene—and to get away from him. What had happened, he told her grimly, couldn’t be allowed to happen again.

      So Abby had gone to college at California State University, taking her degree in business, and Troy Jackson had come to her campus to do some work on his teacher certification. They’d started dating and very soon Troy had proposed. They lived in the same town, he pointed out, and he’d inherit his father’s ranch one day. What could be more natural than to marry Abby and have kids to inherit it when he himself passed on?

      It had seemed logical. Abby’s encounter with Chayce had put a wall between them that hadn’t