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Carson Wayne had come to Mandelyn Bush with the ultimate request: he needed her to teach him how to treat a lady. No doubt he'd asked the right person Mandelyn was as polished and feminine as Carson was rough and reclusive. And she was the only person who could reason with him during one of his barroom brawls.
It was too intriguing a challenge to turn down. Mandelyn was curious about what lay beneath the outlaw's hard shell. She suspected that the renegade was really a caring and sensitive man.
But what she hadn’t counted on were her own feelings for this irresistible rebel.
“I need some help.”
“You!” Mandelyn burst out.
Carson glared at her. “Don’t make jokes.”
“Okay.” She sighed. “What do you want me to do?”
Uncharacteristically, he hesitated. His face hardened. “Hell, look at me,” he growled finally, ramming his hands into the pockets of his worn, faded jeans. “You told Patty I was too savage to get a woman, and you were right. I don’t know how to behave in civilized company. I don’t even know which fork to use in a fancy restaurant.” He shifted restlessly, looking arrogant and proud and self-conscious all at once. “I want you to teach me some manners.”
“Me?” Mandelyn exclaimed in shock.
“Of course you,” he shot back. “There’s no one else who could teach me as well as you could.”
Also available from MIRA Books and DIANA PALMER
THE RAWHIDE MAN
LADY LOVE
FRIENDS AND LOVERS
DIAMOND GIRL
PASSION FLOWER
CHAMPAGNE GIRL
ROOMFUL OF ROSES
AFTER THE MUSIC
ONCE IN PARIS
RAGE OF PASSION
PAPER ROSE
FIT FOR A KING
MOST WANTED
Coming soon DIANA PALMER’s newest blockbuster LORD OF THE DESERT October 2000
Cattleman’s Choice
Diana Palmer
MILLS & BOON
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For Alicia
And for Arizona’s Stephanie, Ellen,
Trish and Nita
Table of Contents
Chapter One
At first, Mandelyn thought the pounding was just in her head; she’d gone to bed with a nagging headache. But when it got louder, she sat up in bed with a frown and stared at the clock. The glowing face told her that it was one o’clock in the morning, and she couldn’t imagine that any of the ranch hands would want to wake her at that hour without cause.
She jumped up, running a hand through the glorious blond tangle of her long hair, and pulled on a long white robe over her nightgown. Her soft gray eyes were troubled as she wound through the long ranch-style house to the front door that overlooked the Chiricahua Mountains of southeastern Arizona.
“Who is it?” she asked in the soft, cultured tones of her Charleston upbringing.
“Jake Wells, ma’am,” came the answer.
That was Carson Wayne’s foreman. And without a single word of explanation, she knew what was wrong, and why she’d been awakened.
She opened the door and fixed the tall, blond man with a rueful smile. “Where is he?” she asked.
He took off his hat with a sigh. “In town,” he replied. “At the Rodeo bar.”
“Is he drunk?” she asked warily.
The foreman hesitated. One corner of his mouth went up. “Yes, ma’am,” he said finally.
“That’s the second time in the last two months,” she said with flashing gray eyes.
Jake shrugged, turning his hat around in his hands. “Maybe money’s getting tight,” he guessed.
“It’s been tight before. And it isn’t as if he doesn’t have options, either,” she grumbled, turning. “I’ve had a buyer for that forty-acre tract of his for months. He won’t even discuss it.”
“Miss Bush, you know how he feels about those condominium complexes,” he reminded her. “That land’s been in his family since the Civil War.”
“He’s got thousands of acres!” she burst out. “He wouldn’t miss forty!”
“Well, that particular forty is where the old fort stands.”
“Nobody’s likely to use it these days,” she said with venom.
He only shrugged, and she went off to change her clothes. Minutes later, dressed in a yellow sweater and designer jeans, she drew on her suede jacket and went out to climb in beside Jake in the black pickup truck with the Circle Bar W logo of Carson Wayne’s cattle company emblazoned in red on the door.
“Why doesn’t anybody else ever