A Bride For Crimson Falls Read online

  “I Don’t Have Casual Affairs, And We Both Know That’s All This Could Ever Be.”

  Letter to Reader

  Title Page

  Dedication

  Books by Cindy Gerard

  About the Author

  Prologue

  Chapter One

  Chapter Two

  Chapter Three

  Chapter Four

  Chapter Five

  Chapter Six

  Chapter Seven

  Chapter Eight

  Chapter Nine

  Chapter Ten

  Epilogue

  Copyright

  “I Don’t Have Casual Affairs, And We Both Know That’s All This Could Ever Be.”

  Colin’s arms tightened around her. “I know. And I’m sorry. I wish it could be otherwise.”

  Scarlett turned to him. “You’ve nothing to be sorry for.”

  Colin searched her face as she stood there. He couldn’t remember ever wanting a woman more—or when he’d made a mistake as big as pulling her into his arms.

  “You’re so wrong,” he whispered, too low for her to hear. He did have something to be sorry for. For the first time in his life, he was truly sorry he couldn’t offer a woman—that he couldn’t offer this woman—what she needed....

  Dear Reader,

  A book from Joan Hohl is always a delight, so I’m thrilled that this month we have her latest MAN OF THE MONTH, A Memorable Man. Naturally, this story is chock-full of Joan’s trademark sensuality and it’s got some wonderful plot twists that are sure to please you!

  Also this month, Cindy Gerard’s latest in her NORTHERN LIGHTS BRIDES series, A Bride for Crimson Falls, and Beverly Barton’s “Southern sizzle” is highlighted in A Child of Her Own. Anne Eames has the wonderful ability to combine sensuality and humor, and A Marriage Made in Joeville features this talent.

  The Baby Blizzard by Caroline Cross is sure to melt your heart this month—it’s an extraordinary love story with a hero and heroine you’ll never forget! And the month is completed with a sexy romp by Diana Mars, Matchmaking Mona.

  In months to come, look for spectacular Silhouette Desire books by Diana Palmer, Jennifer Greene, Lass Small and many other fantastic Desire stars! And I’m always here to listen to your thoughts and opinions about the books. You can write to me at the address below.

  Enjoy! I wish you hours of happy reading!

  Lucia Macro

  Senior Editor

  Please address questions and book requests to:

  Silhouette Reader Service

  U.S.: 3010 Walden Ave., P.O. Box 1325, Buffalo, NY 14269

  Canadian: P.O. Box 609. Fort Erie, Ont. L2A 5X3

  CINDY GERARD

  A BRIDE FOR CRIMSON FALLS

  This book is dedicated to the “Kabby Krew”:

  Carol (Ben), Carole (Sparky), Denise (Tunes),

  Karen (Sticks), and Sue (Bear Bait). Here’s to past

  “perdicaments,” present plans, and future foolishness—and

  many more summer vacations together at Kamp Toga.

  Your Captain

  Books by Cindy Gerard

  Silhouette Desire

  The Cowboy Takes a Lady #957

  Lucas: The Loner #975

  *The Bride Wore Blue #1012

  *A Bride for Abel Greene #1052

  *A Bride for Crimson Falls #1076

  *Northern Lights Brides

  CINDY GERARD

  If asked “What’s your idea of heaven?” Cindy Gerard would say a warm sun, a cool breeze, pan pizza and a good book. If she had to settle for one of the four she’d opt for the book, with the pizza running a close second. Inspired by the pleasure she’s received from the books she’s read and her longtime love affair with her husband, Tom, Cindy now creates her own warm, evocative stories about compelling characters and complex relationships.

  All that reading must have paid off, because since winning the Waldenbooks Award for Best Selling Series Romance for a First-Time Author, Cindy has gone on to win the prestigious Colorado Romance Writers’ Award of Excellence, Romantic Times W.I.S.H. awards, Career Achievement and Reviewer’s Choice nominations, and the Romance Writers of America’s RITA nomination for Best Short Contemporary Romance.

  Northern Minnesota is a land of sparkling glacial takes and forests that stretch as far as the eye can see. Fortunately, civilization has not yet marred its remote and intrinsic beauty. In any given spot, on any given lake, images of free-spirited Indian warriors riding spotted ponies through the tree line come unbidden, as the past collides with the present.

  Shadows of turn-of-the-century French fur traders and hardworking loggers weave like the wind through the pine. At night, in a secluded bay, when the moon dances on the water and the stars shimmer in an inky sky, the Aurora Borealis mystifies, intensifying the sense of wonder in this very special place.

  Come with us to Legend Lake, where its people are as in tune with the North Country’s uncompromising beauty as they are enmeshed in the past. And like many before them, become enamored by the mystery or the Northern Lights.

  Experience the beauty, and live all three captivating romances in the NORTHERN LIGHTS BRIDES TRILOGY as they unfold.

  Prologue

  With a defeated sort of longing, Scarlett Morgan let her gaze drift lovingly around the once elegant, but now sadly shabby, dining room of the Crimson Falls Hotel. “I don’t know why I let you talk me into this.”

  “Hey, you asked for ideas,” her friend J. D. Hazzard reminded her defensively. “All I did was deliver.”

  “Yeah, well, asking was my first mistake. Listening was my second.” She shook her head, disgusted by her lack of foresight. “A raffle was one supremely lousy idea.”

  “It was a desperate idea,” J.D. said. “And it worked,” he added, doing his best to look affronted. He slumped back in an ancient oak chair and snagged a sweating glass of lemonade from the top of an equally antiquated round oak table—one of a dozen that graced the threadbare carpet covering the uneven surface of the hotel’s dining room floor. “You needed money to keep the hotel going. The raffle provided it. The corporations who bought the losing tickets got the tax write-off they wanted. The lucky winner got the same, plus a piece of an historic hotel. And ultimately you got the forty grand you needed. Everybody won.”

  Beside him, J.D.’s wife, Maggie, nursed her own lemonade and shared his worry over Scarlett. He sent a pleading look her way. Dive in any time the spirit moves you, sweetheart...like now, his harried frown implored.

  Before Maggie could toss in a bid to settle her down, though, Scarlett revved up again

  “If everybody won, why do I feel like the big loser?” She waved the letter she’d just received under J.D.’s nose. The ominous mail had arrived by boat yesterday informing her that the winner of the raffle—aka her new partner, Colin Slater—would be arriving in Northern Minnesota tomorrow from New York.

  “Just listen to this.” She scanned the letter, then read an excerpt aloud to underscore how offensive she found it. “‘I’ll arrive on the fifth to spend some time in residence.’

  “In residence,” she sputtered, her temple flaring as hot as the July sun beating down on the hotel’s red-shingled roof. “Like he’s some land baron lording it over his peasants. Good night, J.D.! What possessed you to sell a ticket to this joker? He may be your friend, but he sounds like a prize pain in the—”

  “Whoa,” J.D. protested with a scowl. “Colin’s a good guy or I never would have let him in on the raffle. Come on, Scarlett, you can’t blame him for wanting to check out his investment.”

  She pitched the letter onto the table. “He sounds like some potbellied, cigar-smoking, boardroom baby boomer who can quote the Dow J
ones like a rosary and plan a corporate takeover like Stormin’ Norman can orchestrate a frontal assault. But I’d bet my dwindling bankroll he knows nothing about what it takes to run a hotel—especially one as unique as Crimson Falls.”

  “It was your dwindling bankroll that prompted you to hold the raffle in the first place,” J.D. reminded her carefully. “And do I dare mention that you didn’t know anything about running a hotel when you packed up, lock, stock and barrel and moved from St. Paul to the north woods to buy it six years ago? That didn’t stop you from trying it, anyway.”

  Beside him Maggie cringed.

  Scarlett narrowed her eyes. “Is that your tactless little way of informing me it was because I didn’t know anything about the business that it’s buried in red ink?”

  “Scarlett,” Maggie cut in, running interference. “J.D. wasn’t implying that your management skills have anything to do with your financial bind. He simply meant to point out that your finances are dangling by a shoestring here.”

  Maggie paused, her voice softening as grim acceptance cooled the anger in Scarlett’s eyes. “He meant to remind you,” she went on, gently reinforcing her point, “that you ran the raffle because you needed money to keep Crimson Falls going, and that even though Slater’s business is extremely lucrative, he still paid big bucks for his ticket. It’s only logical he’d want to check out his investment.”

  “But coming here wasn’t part of the deal,” Scarlett insisted stubbornly. “He was not supposed to poke his nose into my business. He’s a city dweller. This is the deep woods. Who’d have thought he’d bother to make an appearance.”

  “You’d just as well face it, sweetie. The man has a right,” J.D. said, feeling bolstered by his wife’s support. “Don’t you glare at me, Ms. Too-Proud-for-Her-Own-Good. This all could have been avoided.”

  Blinking back unexpected tears of frustration, Scarlett turned her back on her friends. She walked to the picture window that offered a breathtaking view of Crimson Falls in the distance, the watershed that had given the hotel its name.

  Yes, she could have avoided this hassle. J.D. and Maggie had offered to float her a loan big enough to cover the renovations and operating capital she needed to put her huge, old white elephant in order. And yes, she knew they had the money to do it. Between J.D.’s prosperous air freight business and the mint Maggie had earned as one of the most sought-after models in the fashion industry, the money they offered her wouldn’t have made a dent in their amassed revenues.

  “I may be desperate,” she admitted with the prideful defiance J.D. had pointed out, “but I will not leach off my friends. Not even if it means I might lose Crimson Falls.”

  “Scarlett.” J.D. walked up behind her. He and Maggie had fought this fight with her a hundred times. A hundred times they’d lost. Placing his hands on her slim shoulders, he turned her to face him. “It’s going to be all right.”

  She stared at the floor between them, then angled a softly smiling Maggie a weary look. Giving up, she linked her arms around J.D.’s waist and leaned into his companionable hug. He was a good friend. So was Maggie. No matter how many times she saw them together—Maggie with her sleek, classic beauty and J.D. with his blond good looks and lumberjack height and build—Scarlett was always taken with how stunning and how right they looked together. The love they shared also reminded her of all she’d never found in a relationship. Of all that had been lacking in her ten-year marriage to a control freak who had yet to figure out he’d let a good thing go when he’d left her and their daughter, Casey, six years ago.

  “Too bad you don’t have a clone, hotshot,” she said against the warmth of J.D.’s chest. “The world could use a few more good men like you.”

  “Exactly what I was telling Maggie last night,” he said, deadpan.

  “And the night before,” Maggie put in, joining them by the window and slanting her handsome husband an indulgent smile. “Give Colin a chance, Scarlett. I don’t know him as well as J.D. does, but if he says Colin’s okay, I’d take it to the bank. And remember, he did take a chance on you.”

  Scarlett slipped out of J.D.’s brotherly embrace and drew in a bracing breath. “I know you’re right,” she said, and wished her heart was in the admission. The sad truth, however, was that she was afraid. Next to Casey, the hotel was the most important thing in her life. It may not be much by some people’s standards—fifteen guestrooms, a sometimes leaky roof and sagging floors—but she didn’t want to lose it. Worse than losing it, was the prospect of losing control of it. She’d given up control only once in her life. That mistake had cost her more than a failed marriage. It had cost both her pride and her independence, and had taken her the last six years to recover. Now Slater’s interference in her life, coupled with Dreamscape Development’s plans to tear up the forest and erect condos near the falls—yet one more thing she had no control over—threatened her peace of mind again.

  “I promise I’ll give him a chance,” she conceded. “But so help me, if he comes in here with a briefcase full of quality-management, profit-margin breakdowns and wants to turn Cnmson Falls into a fivestar hotel, he’s going to find himself accidentally dunked in the drink.”

  An hour later, as Scarlett watched the Hazzards fly off to their summer cabin across the clear glacial waters of Legend Lake in J.D.’s float plane, she took small pleasure in visualizing shoving Mr. Colin Stuffed-Shirt Slater off the end of the dock.

  It turned out, though, that even the small pleasures were going to be denied her. The boat bringing her new partner radioed ahead the next day. When it docked late in the afternoon she was waiting on the hotel’s porch steps.

  Roughly two city blocks separated the hotel from the new dock and the lakeshore. At that distance she couldn’t make out the features of the man wearing a dark suit and a loosely knotted tie, but as he placed one foot gingerly onto the long wooden dock, she knew it had to be Slater.

  When the boat rocked in its own wake, the unexpected motion caught him off balance. Suspended between solid footing and the swaying boat, he slipped, stumbled, and with a flailing grab at thin air, fell over backward into the bay.

  Her spirits rose marginally as he went under with a thrashing splash and a gurgled, “I can’t swim!”

  She shook her head. If it took him over ten seconds to figure out he was “not swimming” in less than four feet of water, he wasn’t worth the effort of saving.

  “Hi, sweetheart,” she said, when Casey joined her on the steps.

  A gleeful grin tilted up one corner of her fifteen-year-old daughter’s mouth as she, too, watched Slater flounder around like a beached whale. “Is that Mr. Money?”

  “’Fraid so.” Scarlett turned her attention back to Slater with a mixture of amusement and weary acceptance. “Do me a favor, will you, hon? Go fish our new partner out of the lake. But be slow about it, would you? It’s a hot day. Let the man have his fun in the water.”

  With a last, long-suffering look, she walked back into the hotel, to see if her guests were okay, and prayed she had the strength to get through this.

  One

  Colin Slater trudged alongside his pint-size rescuer, doing his best to ignore both her smirk and the squishing sound his imported Italian loafers made with every step he took.

  “You sure you’re okay?”

  Had there been less amusement and more concern in her tone, he might have assured her that he was just dandy. Had he been less humiliated about losing his footing and then realizing the water was waist-deep, he might have responded with more than a grunt.

  Instead, the best he could do was heft his suitcase into a firmer grip and plod on up the lane beside her.

  The teenager sent a quick, grinning peek his way. Under other circumstances he might have found her youthful lack of guile charming. Other circumstances being anything but what they were right now.

  He sneezed loudly as his sinuses rejected the last of the lake water he’d inhaled in his unscheduled baptism.

  Damn
, he was happy to be here. About as happy as if he’d been stranded in the middle of the Mojave in a sandstorm. Barefoot. Without a camel. Or a fax.

  “I’m Casey, by the way,” the girl said, introducing herself belatedly. “My mom was beginning to think you weren’t going to show up.”

  “I should be so lucky,” he grumbled under his breath. Had it been his call, he wouldn’t have been anywhere near this backwater lake that wasn’t anywhere near anywhere. He’d still be in Manhattan, probably closing the Lawton deal he’d been working on for the past three months.

  But it hadn’t been his call. That fact rubbed against the grain with the same irritation as his soaked socks, which were slowly crawling down his heels inside his shoes.

  He turned his glare on the little strawberry blonde at his side, but gave it up when she flashed that full-of-herself grin again. Becky Thatcher with an attitude. He shook his head as she pulled ahead of him and loped up the steps leading into what he’d concluded was his new business venture.

  He scanned the aged and deteriorated structure he’d glimpsed from a distance when the boat had docked, then let out a deep breath. Some business venture.

  It was also proof positive that Colin Slater, self-made millionaire, business mogul extraordinaire, per the Wall Street Journal, was the sucker of the century.

  He couldn’t prevent a wry grin. J. D. Hazzard had missed his calling. Instead of making his fortune in air freight, Hazzard ought to be selling sand to sheiks. If he couldn’t convince them they needed more, they’d buy just to get rid of him. Just like Colin had bought those raffle tickets to get Hazzard off his back.