Iron Cowboy / Seduced by the Rich Man: Iron Cowboy

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 some sort, but nobody knew who he was related to that had died. So many old people had out-of-town relatives these days, even in Jacobsville, Texas, a town of less than two thousand inhabitants.

Standing outside next to the driver’s side of the black pickup was a tall, husky man with wavy black hair in a ponytail and an olive complexion, wearing a dark suit and sunglasses. He looked like a professional wrestler. He was probably a sort of bodyguard. Maybe his employer had enemies. She wondered why.

The man in the gray suit was glaring at the magazine counter with both hands deep in his pockets, muttering to himself.

Sara wondered what he was looking for. He hadn’t asked for assistance, or even looked her way. But the muttering was getting darker by the minute. She couldn’t afford to turn away a potential customer. No small town business was that secure.

“May I help you?” she asked with a smile.

He gave her a cold look from pale green eyes in a tanned face that seemed to be all hard lines and angles. His eyes narrowed on her short, straight blond hair, moved over her wide forehead, down over her own green eyes and straight nose and high cheekbones, to her pretty mouth and rounded chin. He made a sound, as if she didn’t live up to his specifications. She didn’t dare make a comment, but she was really tempted to tell him that if he was shopping for pretty women, a designer boutique in a big city would be a better place to look than a small bookstore.

“You don’t carry financial magazines.” He made it sound like a hanging offense.

“Nobody around here reads them much,” she defended.

His eyes narrowed. “I read them.”

She did occasionally have to bite her tongue to save her job. This looked like one of those times. “I’m very sorry. We could order them for you, if you like.”

“Forget it. I can subscribe.” He glanced toward the mystery paperbacks and scowled again. “I hate paperbacks. Why don’t you carry hardcover novels?”

Her tongue was stinging. She cleared her throat. “Well, most of our clientele are working people and they can’t afford them.”

Both thick black eyebrows arched. “I don’t buy paperbacks.”

“We can special order any sort of hardcover you want,” she said. The smile was wavering, and she was trying hard not to offend him.

He glanced toward the counter at the computer. “Do you have Internet access?”

“Of course.” He must think he’d landed in Borneo. She frowned. They probably even had computers in the jungles these days. He seemed to consider Jacobsville, Texas, a holdover from the last century.

“I like mystery novels,” he said. “Biographies. I like first-person adventure novels and anything factual on the North African campaign of World War II.”

Her heart jumped at the subject he’d mentioned. She cleared her throat. “Would you like all of them at once, then?”

One eyebrow went up. “The customer is always right,” he said shortly, as if he thought she was making fun of him.

“Of course he is,” she agreed. Her teeth hurt from being clenched in that smile.

“Get me a sheet of paper and a pen. I’ll make you a list.”

She wouldn’t kick him, she wouldn’t kick him, she wouldn’t kick him… She found paper and pencil and handed them to him, still smiling.

He made a list while she answered a phone call. She hung up, and he handed her the list.

She frowned as she read it.

“Now what’s wrong?” he asked impatiently.

“I don’t read Sanskrit,” she began.

He muttered something, took the list back and made minor modifications before handing it back. “It’s the twenty-first century. Nobody handwrites anything,” he said defensively. “I’ve got two computers and a PDA and an MP3 player.” He gave her a curious look. “Do you know what an MP3 player is?” he asked, just to irritate her.

She reached in her jeans pocket, produced a small iPod Shuffle and earphones. The look that accompanied the action could kill.

“How soon can you get those books here?” he asked.

She could, at least, make out most of the titles with his so-called handwriting corrections. “We order on Mondays,” she said. “You’ll have as many of these as are in stock at the distributors by next Thursday or Friday.”

“The mail doesn’t come by horse anymore,” he began.

She took a deep breath. “If you don’t like small towns, maybe you could go back to wherever you came from. If you can get there by conventional means, that is,” with an edge to the smile that accompanied the words.

The insinuation wasn’t lost on him. “I’m not the devil.”

“Are you sure?” she queried, all wide-eyed.

One eye narrowed. “I’d like these books delivered. I’m usually too busy to make a special trip into town.”

“You could send your bodyguard.”