Adams Didn’t Want To Speak Of The Past, Or Even The Future.
He didn’t want to think of anything but Eden. “You are beautiful.”
“I’m not really beautiful, Adams. I’m only Eden, and once just one of the guys.”
“Sweetheart—” his drawl was unconsciously seductive “—it’s been a long time since you were one of the guys.”
At her look of surprise, Adams’s first instinct was to fold her in his arms, to show her in ways words never could that she was beautiful. So beautiful the memory of her moonlit image had been strength and solace for a lonely man in his worst days.
He’d known beautiful women. But never in love. Never in tenderness. And no matter how he’d searched, none had been Eden.
Now she was here, only a forbidden touch away….
Men of Belle Terre: Honorable, loyal…and destined for love.
Dear Reader,
Silhouette is celebrating our 20th anniversary in 2000, and the latest powerful, passionate, provocative love stories from Silhouette Desire are as hot as that steamy summer weather!
For August’s MAN OF THE MONTH, the fabulous BJ James begins her brand-new miniseries, MEN OF BELLE TERRE. In The Return of Adams Cade, a self-made millionaire returns home to find redemption in the arms of his first love.
Beloved author Cait London delivers another knockout in THE TALLCHIEFS miniseries with Tallchief: The Homecoming, also part of the highly sensual Desire promotion BODY & SOUL. And Desire is proud to present Bride of Fortune by Leanne Banks, the launch title of FORTUNE’S CHILDREN: THE GROOMS, another exciting spin-off of the bestselling Silhouette FORTUNE’S CHILDREN continuity miniseries.
BACHELOR BATTALION marches on with Maureen Child’s The Last Santini Virgin, in which a military man’s passion for a feisty virgin weakens his resolve not to marry. In Name Only is how a sexy rodeo cowboy agrees to temporarily wed a pregnant preacher’s daughter in the second book of Peggy Moreland’s miniseries TEXAS GROOMS. And Christy Lockhart reconciles a once-married couple who are stranded together in a wintry cabin during One Snowbound Weekend….
So indulge yourself by purchasing all six of these summer delights from Silhouette Desire…and read them in air-conditioned comfort.
Enjoy!
Joan Marlow Golan
Senior Editor, Silhouette Desire
The Return of Adams Cade
BJ James
BJ JAMES’s
first book for Silhouette Desire was published in February 1987. Her second Desire novel garnered for BJ a second Maggie, the coveted award of the Georgia Romance Writers. Through the years there have been other awards and nominations for awards, including, from Romantic Times Magazine, Reviewer’s Choice, Career Achievement, Best Desire and Best Series Romance of the Year. In that time, her books have appeared regularly on a number of bestseller lists, among them Waldenbooks and USA Today.
On a personal note, BJ and her physician husband have three sons and two grandsons. While her address reads Mooresboro, this is only the origin of a mail route passing through the countryside. A small village set in the foothills of western North Carolina is her home.
Contents
FOREWORD
In the coastal Lowcountry of South Carolina, where the fresh waters of winding rivers flow into the sea, there is an Eden of unmatched wonders. In this mix of waters and along the shores by which they carve their paths, life is rich and varied. The land is one of uncommon contrasts, with sandy, sea-swept beaches, mysterious swamps, teeming marshes bounded by ancient maritime forests. And a multitude of creatures abide in each.
In this realm of palms and palmettos, estuaries and rivers, shaded by towering live oaks draped in ghostly Spanish moss, lies Belle Terre. Like an exquisite pearl set among emeralds and sapphires, with its name the small, antebellum city describes its province. As it describes itself.
Belle Terre, beautiful land. A beautiful city.
A very proper, very elegant, beautiful city. A gift for the soul. An exquisite mélange for the senses. With ancient and grand structures in varying states of repair and disrepair set along tree-lined, cobbled streets. With narrow, gated gardens lush with such greenery as resurrection and cinnamon ferns. And all of it wrapped in the lingering scent of camellias, azaleas, jessamine and magnolias.
Steeped in an aura of history, its culture and customs influenced by plantations that once abounded in the Lowcountry, as it clings to its past Belle Terre is a province of contradictions. Within its society one will find arrogance abiding with humility, cruelty with kindness, insolence with gentility, honor with depravity, and hatred with love.
As ever when the senses are whetted and emotions untamed, in Belle Terre there will be passion, romance and scandal.
Prologue
“Yes, sir, the controlling interest in the company is mine. No, sir, it isn’t for sale.” The expected acknowledgment was spoken softly. The rejection was delivered in courteous respect.
But not one man among the phalanx of powerful corporate elders mistook the softness, the respect or the courtesy. Men such as those seated in the subtly but flawlessly appointed office had not come unprepared. Each executive who sat so coolly beneath the steady gaze knew this much younger man was a southerner of good family, born and raised on an historic plantation in coastal South Carolina. Each knew he was a superb analyst and engineer for offshore oil rigs; an innovative, intuitive inventor, an astute investor, a canny businessman.
He was Adams Cade, at the relatively young age of thirty-seven the most promising young intellect of the modern business world. An exile from home and family. A convicted felon.
It was for the first this corporate board had come calling. For the latter that none misjudged gentle courtesies as weakness.