mistletoe, the magic of Christmas is just what they need to reignite their love! Mistletoe works its magic as passion is rekindled in this festive Regency story….
#926 VIKING WARRIOR, UNWILLING WIFE—Michelle Styles
War drums echoing in her ears, Sela stood with trepidation on the shoreline. The dragon ships full of warriors had arrived—but it wasn’t the threat of conquest that shook Sela to the core. It was her heart’s response to the proud face of Vikar Hrutson, leader of the invading force—and her ex-husband! Now the warrior must conquer his woman’s heart!
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
Chapter Thirteen
Chapter Fourteen
Chapter Fifteen
Chapter Sixteen
Chapter Seventeen
Chapter Eighteen
Chapter Nineteen
Chapter Twenty
Chapter Twenty-One
Chapter Twenty-Two
Chapter One
Silver Bend, Montana, May 1885
Jonas Black looked up from his ledgers and flipped open his ornately engraved gold pocket watch. Nearly three already. In preparation to leave his desk, he blotted the numbers he’d just tallied, then rubbed his ink-stained fingers on his denim trousers. There was something he did every afternoon at this time.
“Gonna be trouble at the North Star!” The tall stoop-shouldered man who tended bar rapped on Jonas’s open office door at the same time as he shouted.
The North Star was the three-story hotel a few doors down, where Jonas and most of his employees lived. Jonas owned the hotel as well as the Silver Star Saloon.
“Tall fella, but not beefy,” Quay told him. “He’s hollerin’ for Mrs. Holmes.”
Jonas didn’t bother to grab his jacket. He might talk this man into leaving peaceably, but experience had taught him it might take more than a simple please to appeal to an abuser. No call to ruin a perfectly good coat.
He glanced at the holstered Colt hanging on a peg just inside the door, but deliberately walked past and locked the door behind him.
With the shutters open to the warm afternoon sun, the saloon was warm and bright. The freshly scrubbed floors, the two patrons and the woman polishing the top of the mahogany bar barely registered as he strode for the door and out onto the shaded boardwalk.
“Madeline, come out here now! Don’t make me come in and get you.”
The stranger stood in the street, a sweaty bay tethered to the post in front of the hotel. His tailored black suit was coated with a layer of dust as though he’d been pushing the mare for the better part of a day. In Jonas’s book, men who abused horses ranked right up there with men who mistreated women. Jonas had heard Madeline Holmes’s story and drew the easy conclusion that this was the man she’d run from before finding refuge in Silver Bend.
“Don’t make me come in there and drag you out!” the man shouted.
“Looking for someone?” Jonas called easily.
“Stay outta this, mister. Ain’t none of your concern.”
Jonas walked several yards toward the hotel. “Well, seems it is my concern since you’re standing there hollerin’ at the front windows of my establishment. State your business, Mister…”
“Baslow. This your hotel?”
“That it is. Jonas Black’s the name. And you are?”
“I’m lookin’ to take a woman back with me. I want Madeline Holmes.”
“Is she your wife?”
The angry man deepened the scowl on his already craggy face, and his complexion reddened. “Ain’t none of your damned business what she is. All you need to know is that she’s comin’ with me.”
“I guess we can leave that up to Maddie, now, can’t we?”
At Jonas’s familiar use of her name, Baslow turned his whole body toward Jonas and squinted. “What’s she to you?”
“A good employee. I’ll go tell her you’re here and you can ask her directly what she’d like to do.”
The man jerked his head toward the saloon Jonas had exited. Quay still stood just outside the doors.
“She’s in there?” Baslow shouted. “Whoring?”
Jonas gestured to a brightly painted wooden sign that hung on the outside of the building. “No sportin’ women in my establishment. Maddie’s one of my housekeepers.”
“The hell you say. Madeline!” he roared, stalking toward the saloon.
Jonas frowned at Baslow’s belligerent tone and aggressive stance. Eagerness for the man to try to push past him so he’d have reason to restrain him made his fingers tingle and his blood pump.
Instead, Baslow gave him a wide berth, striding to face the open saloon doors.
Casually, Jonas turned and stepped past Quay into the dim interior. This time his gaze sought and found the dark-haired woman who’d stopped polishing the bar and stood in rigid fear, her eyes as wide as saucers, her face pale. “Frank,” she said on a dry rasp.
Jonas thought she might have been pretty once, before abuse and fear had added the appearance of more years to her narrow face. Using intimidation, the man had held her in his home and his bed for eight years. Breaking away had taken courage. Following through with her decision to escape would take even more.
“You don’t have to be afraid,” Jonas assured her.
“Quay and I are right here. The whole of Silver Bend would see if he tried to force you away in plain sight. You don’t have to go back with him. He can’t make you. Tell him you don’t want to leave. Make it loud ’n clear so there are witnesses.”
Her frightened gaze moved from Jonas to the doorway. He’d seen the same bleak dread on too many faces,
