Duncan's Bride Read online

  Contents

  Chapter One

  Chapter Two

  Chapter Three

  Chapter Four

  Chapter Five

  Chapter Six

  Chapter Seven

  Chapter Eight

  Chapter Nine

  Chapter Ten

  Chapter Eleven

  Chapter Twelve

  An Excerpt from Troublemaker Chapter 1

  Chapter 2

  About the Author

  By Linda Howard

  Copyright

  About the Publisher

  CHAPTER ONE

  IT WAS TIME he looked for a wife, but this time around he wasn’t looking for “love” as part of the bargain. He was older and infinitely wiser, and he knew that “love” wasn’t necessary, or even desirable.

  Reese Duncan had made a fool of himself once and nearly lost everything. It wouldn’t happen again. This time he’d choose a wife with his brain instead of the contents of his jeans, and he’d pick a woman who would be content to live on an isolated ranch, who was willing to work hard and be a good mother to their kids, one who cared more about family than fashion. He’d fallen for a pretty face once, but good looks wasn’t on his list of requirements now. He was a normal man with a healthy sex drive; that would be enough to get the kids he wanted. He didn’t want passion. Passion had led him into the worst mistake of his life. Now he wanted a reliable, commonsense woman.

  The problem was, he didn’t have time to find her. He worked twelve to sixteen hours a day, trying to keep his head above water. It had taken him seven years, but it looked like this year would put him in the black, finally. He had lost half his land, a loss that ate at his soul every day of his life, but there was no way in hell he would lose what remained. He had lost most of his cattle; the huge herds were gone, and he worked like a slave taking care of the remaining heads of beef. The ranch hands were gone, too; he hadn’t been able to afford their wages. He hadn’t bought a new pair of jeans in three years. The barns and house hadn’t been painted in eight.

  But April, his ex-wife, had her outstanding debts, incurred before their marriage, paid. She had her lump-sum settlement. She had her Manhattan apartment, her expensive wardrobe. What did it matter to her that he’d had to beggar himself and sell his land, his herds, wipe out his bank accounts, to give her the half of his assets to which she felt “entitled”? After all, hadn’t she been married to him for two whole years? Hadn’t she lived through two hellish Montana winters, entirely cut off from civilization? So what if the ranch had been in his family for a hundred years; two years of marriage “entitled” her to half of it, or its equivalent in cold, hard cash. Of course, she had been more than happy to settle for the cash. If he didn’t have that much, he could sell a little land. After all, he had oodles of it; he wouldn’t miss a few thousand acres. It helped that her father was a business magnate who had a lot of connections in Montana as well as the other western states, which explained why the judge hadn’t been swayed by Reese’s arguments that the amount April was demanding would bankrupt him.

  That was another mistake he wouldn’t make. The woman he married this time would have to sign a prenuptial agreement that would protect the ranch in case of divorce. He wouldn’t risk so much as one square foot of the dirt of his children’s heritage, or the money it would take to run it. No woman was going to take him to the cleaners again; she might leave, but she wouldn’t leave with anything of his.

  Given the way he felt, he would have been just as happy to remain single for the rest of his life if there hadn’t been the question of children. He wanted kids. He wanted to teach them to love the land as he had been taught, to leave that land to them, to pass on the legacy that had been passed on to him. More than that, he wanted the life that children would bring to the empty old ranch house, the laughter and tears and anger, the pain of childish fears and the shouts of joy. He wanted heirs of his bone and blood. To have those children, he needed a wife.

  A wife would be convenient, too. There was a lot to be said for available sex, especially since he didn’t have the time to waste trying to find it. All he needed was a solid, steady, undemanding woman in his bed every night, and his hormones would take care of the rest of it.

  But unmarried, marriageable women were scarce in that part of the country; they were all packing up and moving to the cities. Ranch life was hard, and they wanted some excitement in their lives, some luxuries. Reese didn’t have the time, money or inclination to go courting, anyway. There was a more efficient way to find a woman than that.

  He’d read a magazine article about how many farmers in the Midwest were advertising for wives, and he’d also seen a television program about men in Alaska who were doing the same. Part of him didn’t like the idea of advertising, because he was naturally a private man and had become even more so after his disastrous marriage. On the other hand, he wouldn’t have to spend a lot of money just to put a few ads in the personal sections of some newspapers, and money meant a lot to him these days. He wouldn’t have to meet the women who didn’t appeal to him, wouldn’t have to waste time driving here and there, taking them out, getting to know them. He didn’t particularly want to get to know them, not even the one he would eventually choose to be his wife. There was a hard layer of ice encasing him, and he liked it that way. Vision was much clearer when it was unclouded by emotion. The impersonality of an ad appealed to that part of him, even though the private part of him disliked the public nature of it.

  But he’d decided that was the way to go, and Reese Duncan didn’t waste time once he’d made a decision. He would put the ad in several of the larger newspapers in the West and Midwest. Drawing a pad of paper toward him to begin framing how he wanted the ad to read, he wrote in bold, slashing strokes: WANTED: A WIFE…

  MADELYN SANGER PATTERSON sauntered back into the office after lunch. You never got the sense that Madelyn had hurried over anything, her friend Christine mused as Madelyn strolled toward her. Nor did you ever think that Madelyn sweated. It was ninety-five degrees outside, but no dampness or wrinkles marred her perfect oyster-white dress, set off by the periwinkle silk scarf draped artfully over one shoulder. Madelyn was a clotheshorse; everything looked good on her, but her own sense of style and color added a panache that stirred women to envy and men to lust.

  “You’re a disgusting person,” Christine announced, leaning back in her chair to better appraise Madelyn’s approach. “It’s unhealthy not to sweat, unnatural not to wrinkle, and ungodly for your hair not to get mussed.”

  “I sweat,” Madelyn said with idle amusement.

  “When?”

  “Every Tuesday and Thursday at 7:00 p.m.”

  “I don’t believe it. You give your sweat glands an appointment?”

  “No, I play racquetball.”

  Christine held up her fingers in the sign of the cross to ward off the mention of exercise, which in her opinion was the eighth deadly sin. “That doesn’t count. Normal people sweat without exertion in weather like this. And do your clothes wrinkle? Does your hair ever hang in your face?”

  “Of course.”

  “In front of witnesses?” Satisfied she had won that exchange, Christine looked pleased with herself.

  Madelyn propped herself against the edge of Christine’s desk and crossed her legs at the ankle. It was an angular, almost masculine pose that looked graceful when Madelyn did it. She tilted her head to study the newspaper Christine had been reading. “Anything interesting?”

  Christine’s mother always mailed her the Sunday edition of their newspaper from Omaha, so Christine could stay up-to-date on local news. “My best friend from high school is getting married. Her engagement announcement is here. A distant acquaintance has died, an old boyfriend has