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NEW YORK TIMES BESTSELLING AUTHOR

Joan Johnston
Hawk’s Way
Carter & Falcon

MILLS & BOON

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CONTENTS

THE COWBOY TAKES A WIFE

CHAPTER ONE

CHAPTER TWO

CHAPTER THREE

CHAPTER FOUR

CHAPTER FIVE

CHAPTER SIX

CHAPTER SEVEN

CHAPTER EIGHT

CHAPTER NINE

THE UNFORGIVING BRIDE

PROLOGUE

CHAPTER ONE

CHAPTER TWO

CHAPTER THREE

CHAPTER FOUR

CHAPTER FIVE

CHAPTER SIX

CHAPTER SEVEN

CHAPTER EIGHT

CHAPTER NINE

CHAPTER TEN

THE COWBOY TAKES A WIFE

CHAPTER ONE

DESIREE PARRISH HAD BEEN secretly observing Carter Prescott throughout the Christmas pageant. So she saw the moment when his jaw tightened, when he closed his eyes and clenched his fists as though he were in pain. A bright sheen of tears glistened along his dark lashes. Moments later he rose from the back pew in which he sat and quietly, almost surreptitiously, left the church.

For a moment Desiree wasn’t sure what to do. She didn’t want to leave because her daughter, Nicole, hadn’t yet performed her part as an angel in the pageant. Nicole was an angel, Desiree thought with a swell of maternal pride. But it was because of her five-year-old daughter that she needed Carter Prescott’s help. Desiree had to speak privately with the cowboy, and she wasn’t sure if she would get another opportunity like this one.

According to his grandmother, Madelyn Prescott, Carter had come to Wyoming from Texas looking for someplace to settle down. What if Carter moved on before she got a chance to make her offer to him? What if he decided to leave town tonight? Without giving herself more chance for thought, Desiree rose and headed for the nearest exit. She made a detour to grab her coat and wrap a scarf around her face to protect her from the frigid Wyoming weather.

Desiree was alarmed when she stepped outside to discover her quarry had disappeared into the night, hidden by the steady, gentle snowfall. She frantically searched the church parking lot, running through the fluffy snow in the direction his footprints led, afraid he would get away before she could make her proposition known to him.

She cried out in alarm when a tall, intimidating figure suddenly stepped from behind a pickup. She automatically put up a hand as though to ward off a blow. There was a moment of awful tension while she waited for the first lash of pain. In another instant she realized how foolish she had been.

She had found Carter Prescott. Or rather, he had found her.

“Are you all right?”

She heard the concern in his voice, yet when he reached out to touch her she took a reflexive step backward. It took all her courage to stand her ground. She had to get hold of herself. Her safety, and Nicole’s, depended on what she did now.

Disconcerted by the growing scowl on Carter’s face, she lowered her arm and threaded her fingers tightly together. “I’m fine,” she murmured.

“Why did you follow me?” he demanded in a brusque voice.

“I…” Desiree couldn’t get anything more past the sudden tightness in her throat. The cowboy looked sinister wrapped in a shearling coat with his Stetson pulled down low to keep out the bitter cold. He towered over her, and she had second thoughts about speaking her mind.

But she had no choice. It was two weeks until Christmas. She had to have a husband by the new year, and this cowboy from Texas was the most likely candidate she had found. She examined Carter closely in the stream of light glowing from the church steeple.

From the looks of his scuffed boots and ragged jeans, life hadn’t been kind to him. His face was as weathered as the rest of him. He had wide-set, distrustful blue eyes and a hawkish nose. His jaw was shadowed with at least a day’s growth of dark beard. His chin jutted—with arrogance or stubbornness, she wasn’t sure which. From having seen it in church, she knew his hair was a rich, wavy chestnut brown. He had full lips, but right now they were flattened in irritation. Nonetheless, he was a handsome man. More good-looking than she deserved, everything considered.

“Look, lady, if you’ve got something to say, spit it out.”

Desiree responded to the harsh voice with a shiver that she chose to blame on the cold. Plainly the cowboy wasn’t going to stand there much longer. It was now or never.

Desiree spoke quickly, her breath creating a cloud of white around her. “My name is Desiree Parrish. I know from having spoken to your grandmother before the pageant this evening that you’re looking for a place to set down some roots.”

His scowl became a frown, but she hurried on without stopping. “I have a proposition to make to you.”

She opened her mouth and then couldn’t speak. What was she doing? Maybe this was only going to make things worse, not better. After all, what did she really know about Carter Prescott? The grown man standing before her was a stranger. She wondered whether he remembered the one time they had met. His eyes hadn’t revealed whether he recognized her name when she had spoken it. But, maybe he had never known her name. After all, they had only spent fifteen minutes together twenty-three years ago, when she was a child of five and he was a lanky boy of ten.

It was spring, and Carter Prescott had come from King’s Castle with his father to visit the Rimrock Ranch, since the two properties bordered each other. She would never even have met him if her kitten hadn’t gotten stuck in a tree.

She had been trying to coax Boots down by talking to her, but the kitten had been afraid to move. The ten-year-old boy had heard Desiree’s pleading cries and come to investigate. She thought now of all the reactions Carter could have had to the situation. He might have ignored her. Or come to see the problem but left her to solve it herself. He might have made fun of her or taunted her about the kitten’s plight. After all, she was just a kid, and a girl at that.

Carter Prescott had done none of those things. He had patted her awkwardly on the shoulder and promised to get Boots down from the tree. He had climbed up into the willow and reached for the kitten. But Boots evaded his reach. He had finally lurched for the kitten and caught her, but cat and boy had come tumbling down in a heap on the ground.

Desiree had screamed in fright and hurried over to make sure Boots was all right. She found her kitten carefully cushioned in the boy’s arms.

He had handed Boots to her with a grim smile. “Here’s your cat.”

She was too busy fussing over Boots to notice Carter’s attempts to rise. It was his gasp of pain that caused her to look at him again. That was when she saw the bloody bone sticking out through his jeans above the knee.

Her second panicked scream brought their fathers on the run. Her father picked her up and hugged her tight, grateful she was all right. She babbled the problem out to him, her voice too hysterical at first for him to realize what had happened.

Carter’s father bent down on one knee to his son. His lips had tightened ominously before he said, “Your mother will give me hell for this.”

Carter hadn’t made a sound when his father picked him up and carried him toward their pickup. His face had been white, his teeth clamped on his lips to stop any sound from escaping. Desiree had tried to follow him but her father had held her back.

“Let the boy be, Desiree,” he’d said. “He won’t want to cry in front of you.”

“But Daddy, I have to see how he is,” she protested. “He saved Boots.”

Her father relented, and she ran after Carter and his father.

“I’m sorry,” Desiree called up to Carter, her tiny legs rushing to keep pace.

“You ought to be,” Carter’s father said.

Stunned at the meanness in his voice, Desiree stopped in her tracks. But Carter turned to face her over his father’s shoulder. He nodded and tried to smile, and she knew he had forgiven her.

But she and Carter had never crossed paths again. When she asked about him several days later, her father had told her that Carter had been visiting Wyoming for only a few days. His parents were divorced and Carter lived in Texas with his mother. He wouldn’t be coming back.

Desiree had never seen Carter again, until he showed up at the Christmas pageant in Casper tonight. Was she willing to gamble her future on a man she had known for barely fifteen minutes twenty-three years ago? It seemed idiotic in the extreme.

Desiree wasn’t an idiot. But she was in urgent need of a husband. Carter might not be the same person now as he had been then. But she remembered vividly how he had cradled the kitten to keep it from harm at the expense of his own welfare. Surely he could not have grown up a cruel man. She was staking her life on it.

Carter was already turning to walk away, when she laid a slender hand on his arm. She tensed when she felt the steely muscle tighten even through the sheepskin coat.

“I need a husband,” she said in a breathless voice.

Carter’s head snapped back around. His icy blue eyes focused intently on her face.

“I’m willing to sign over half the Rimrock Ranch to you if you’ll agree to marry me. Of course,” she added hastily, “it would be a marriage in name only.”

His eyes narrowed, and she found herself racing to get everything out before she lost her nerve. “The Rimrock is the second largest outfit in the area, nearly as big as King’s Castle, your father’s place. It’s got good water and lots of grass. The house was built by my great-great-grandfather. You’d be getting a good bargain. What do you say?”

Desiree gripped his arm tighter, as though she could hold him there until he responded in the way she wished him to answer. She chanced a look into his eyes and was surprised by the humor she saw there. His lips twisted in a mocking smile.

“Surely you could get a husband in a little more conventional way, Miss Parrish,” he replied.

This wasn’t a laughing matter. The sooner Carter Prescott realized that, the better. Desiree reached up and pulled aside the heavy wool scarf that was wrapped around her face.

“You’re mistaken, Mr. Prescott.” She angled her face so he could see the vivid scar that slanted across her right cheek from chin to temple. “No man would willingly choose me for a bride.”

She raised wary brown eyes to the man before her and shuddered at the cold, hard look on his face. Her shoulders slumped. She should have known better. She should have known even the promise of the Rimrock wasn’t enough to entice a man to face her over the breakfast table for the rest of his life.

Desiree hurriedly wrapped the scarf back around her face to hide the scar. “This was a stupid idea,” she muttered. “Forget I mentioned it.”

Desiree quickly stumbled away, embarrassed by the stinging tears that had sprung to her eyes. It would have been humiliating enough to have him refuse her offer. She didn’t want him to see how devastated she was by his reaction to the scar on her face. It had been so long since she had exposed herself to someone for the first time that she had forgotten the inevitable horror it caused.

She would have to find another way to save herself. But merciful Lord in heaven, what was she going to do?

Meanwhile, Carter had been so stunned by the entire incident that Desiree had nearly reached the door of the church before he recovered himself enough to speak. By then he was glad she was gone, because he wouldn’t have known what to say. He stared after her, remembering the look of vulnerability in her deep brown eyes when she had exposed her face.

He was amazed even now at the strength of his reaction to the awful sight he had seen. He had felt fury at the destruction of something that had obviously once been quite beautiful. And pity for what it must be like to live with such a scar. And disgust that she had been reduced to begging for a spouse.

If he was honest, he also had to admit that his curiosity was piqued. How had she been wounded so horribly? Why was she so anxious to find a husband? And why had she singled him out?

Carter wondered if she remembered the one time they had met. It was a day he had never forgotten. He unconsciously rubbed his thigh. His thigh bone—the one he had broken saving her blasted cat—still ached when the weather was wet or cold. If he got tired enough, he sometimes limped. He never had liked cats much since.

For other reasons that day was etched in his memory like brutally carved glass. The scene between his mother and father when his mom had arrived at the emergency room of the hospital had been loud and vicious. It was easy to see why his parents hadn’t stayed married. They had been in the process of a divorce when he was conceived, and he had been born before the divorce was final. His mother just hadn’t seen fit to inform his father of that fact. She had only brought him to Wyoming to meet his father because Wayne Prescott had accidentally found out about his son and demanded visitation rights.

The incident at the Rimrock Ranch had convinced his mother that his father was not a fit custodian. That day had been the first and last he had seen of Wayne Prescott. So Carter remembered well his first meeting with Desiree Parrish. It had been a dark day in his life.

Desiree was correct in her assumption that he wanted roots, but his wants and needs had culminated in a specific objective. He wanted the land that would have been his inheritance if his mother and father hadn’t divorced. He wanted King’s Castle.

Unfortunately, on his father’s death the land had gone in equal shares to his father’s very young widow, Belinda Prescott, and his father’s bastard son, Faron Whitelaw. Carter had already made a generous offer to them for the land. They had promised him an answer tonight.

He felt queasy at the thought that they might refuse him. Where would he go if he couldn’t stay at King’s Castle? Where would he find the solace he so desperately needed from the memories that relentlessly trailed him wherever he went? He had been running for so long—six years—that he had begun to wonder if there would ever be an end to it.

As he stepped into the cab of his pickup and headed back to King’s Castle, he couldn’t help thinking about the offer Desiree Parrish had made to him. He remembered well the lush, grassy valleys to be found on the Rimrock. A river carved its way over the prairie, right through the ranch. The ranch house was a two-story, wooden-planked structure, simple but enduring. He had never seen the inside.

To tell the truth, before he had discovered King’s Castle was on the market, he had inquired about purchasing the Rimrock. His agent had been told, in no uncertain terms, that the ranch was not for sale. So why had Desiree Parrish offered him half the place for his name on a marriage certificate? And how could she have believed that someone rich enough to buy the Rimrock, lock, stock and barrel, would bargain away his freedom for it?

Unless she doesn’t know you’re rich.

Carter found himself chuckling as he realized the image he must have presented to the young woman, unshaven, with his jeans frayed and his boots worn to a nub. Apparently his grandmother hadn’t told Desiree his true circumstances. He sobered abruptly. He had learned, to his sorrow, that wealth couldn’t buy happiness. In fact, it had been the source of great tragedy in his life.

Carter felt the tension pounding behind his eyes. He never should have given in to his grandmother’s pleas for him to attend the Christmas pageant. Tonight the memories had come back to haunt him. Listening to those childish voices, seeing those angelic faces, had brought all the pain of betrayal and loss back into sharp focus. He wanted to forget the past, but he wasn’t sure it was possible. Guilt rode heavy on his shoulders. And regret. And anger.

Carter stopped his truck in front of the ranch house at King’s Castle, a three-story stone structure with turrets and crenels, which his father had called The Castle. It didn’t fit this land anywhere near as well as the simple house on the Rimrock. He headed around back to the kitchen door, which he knew would be open. He found his way through the darkened house to the elegant parlor, where a fire still glowed in the grate. He stirred the ashes and added a log from the pile nearby. Finally, he poured himself a whiskey and settled into the chair near the fireplace, where he could empty his mind of the painful past and concentrate on the future.

It was Desiree Parrish who filled his thoughts. He remembered how tiny, almost delicate, she had seemed next to his great size, how the snowflakes had gathered on her dark hair and eyelashes. Those memories were overshadowed by the look of fear in her huge brown eyes when she had revealed her scar to him. And by the way she had braced herself for his revulsion.

It was true the scar was ugly, but Carter had shifted his gaze to her eyes, which had called out to him. He had seen a wounded spirit that was the equal of his own. It had taken a great deal of effort to resist reaching out to fold her protectively in his arms. Fortunately, she had run before he could do something so foolishly impulsive.

Carter didn’t know how long he had been sitting there, when he heard Madelyn and Belinda Prescott and Faron Whitelaw returning. He felt his gut tighten, reminding him how much their answer mattered to him. He wanted this place; he needed this place, if he was ever to forget the past and go on with his life.

Madelyn entered the room scolding. “What happened to you, young man? There were several more people I wanted you to meet, although I suppose we can have a party here and—”

He had risen the instant she came into the room and was already there to help her out of her coat. “I’m not much interested in parties, Maddy.”

“You should be,” she countered. “Why, a handsome young man like you ought to be settled down now, with babies and—”

“I just want an answer from Belinda and Faron, one way or the other,” he said sharply, cutting her off again. He laid her coat across the sofa, which gave him a chance to focus his attention anywhere except on Belinda and Faron. He was afraid he might see their answer to his offer on their faces. He was afraid that answer would be no.

At last, he forced himself to look at them. They were staring at each other, and he could feel the tension between them. His heart began to pound, sending blood rushing to his head, making him feel dizzy. He reached for his whiskey and swallowed a restoring gulp. He met his half brother’s eyes and said, “Well, what have you decided?”

“Give us another few minutes,” Faron said. “Belinda and I have some things we need to discuss before we can give you an answer.” Faron quickly ushered Belinda out of the room and into the ranch office across the hall.

Carter crossed to the bar so he would have his back to his grandmother. He didn’t want her to see the frustration—and fear—he felt. He poured a glass of port and turned to hand it to Madelyn. His casual calm was hard won. The hell of it was, he didn’t think he was fooling Madelyn for a minute.

His grandmother settled herself on the sofa. Instead of launching into a thousand questions, she sipped her port and stared into the fire.

He was too nervous to sit and too proud to let Madelyn see him pacing anxiously. He hooked an arm over the mantel and focused on the map of King’s Castle that hung above it. The boundaries had changed over the hundred-odd years the land had been owned by Prescotts, but even now it was an impressive spread. He froze when he heard the office door open.

“Maddy, can you come in here for a minute?” Faron called.

“Excuse me, Carter,” the old woman said. “I hate to leave you alone. I’m sure I won’t be gone long.”

He didn’t look at her, afraid that his feelings were naked on his face. “Don’t worry, Maddy. I’m used to being alone.”

He could have bitten his tongue after he’d said the words, knowing how much he had revealed in that simple sentence. He felt more than saw, her hesitation. But he heard her set her glass down on the end table and leave the room.

He shook his head in disgust. How had he let possessing The Castle matter so much to him? He was only setting himself up for disappointment. He should have come sooner, when Wayne Prescott was still alive, and demanded his heritage. But he hadn’t needed Wayne’s land then. He hadn’t yet experienced the tragedy that had left him rootless and alone.

“Carter?”

He forced all emotion from his face as he turned to face Faron, who was flanked by the two women. He knew the answer before Faron spoke.

“We’ve decided not to sell.”