By: Johanna Lindsey

Paperback

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Newly widowed after a shockingly brief marriage to an elderly British lord, Jocelyn Fleming still aches with the pain of unexplored desire. And now her restless heart is leading her far from the protective bosom of polite London society to the perilous beauty of the American West . . .and to Colt Thunder.

Breathlessly exciting but dangerously unpredictable, Colt is a loner whose Cheyenne blood burns hotter than the blistering Arizona sun. Jocelyn's wealth and title mean nothing to this strange whose passion rules his actions and his heart. But neither the wild desert stallion nor the untouched English rose can deny their irresistible attraction. . .or prevent the firestorm of emotion that erupts when their vastly different worlds collide.

About the Author

Johanna Lindsey has been hailed as one of the most popular authors of romantic fiction, with more than sixty million copies of her novels sold. World renowned for her novels of "first-rate romance" (New York Daily News), Lindsey is the author of forty-seven previous national bestselling novels, many of which reached the #1 spot on the New York Times bestseller list. Lindsey lives in Maine with her family.

In The Press

Romantic Times
She creates fairy tales that come true.

Publishers Weekly
Lindsey's ( Defy Not the Heart ) latest is an exercise in formula writing, with no more passion than a stack of index cards. The story pairs a quintessential Lindsey heroine and hero, but the sparks don't fly. Jocelyn Fleming, a young English widow traveling across the U.S. to escape a murderous detective, and Colt Thunder, a half-Cheyenne drifter with an implacable hatred of white women, never quite become convincing characters. The plot, obstacle-heavy and motivation-thin, fails the duo and never tests the mettle Lindsey clearly intends each principal to have. Neither narrative nor romance is sufficiently robust to sustain the long, long trek through the still-wild West. Diehard Lindsey fans will probably enjoy going through the motions with Jocelyn and Colt, as even this weak showing is characteristically stylish, but the bestselling romancer won't win new admirers. (Dec.)

Library Journal
Lowell's volume follows protagonist Alana Reeves, who, suffering from amnesia, must try to unravel the circumstances of her husband's death. Things get even more complicated when an earlier love, long believed dead, resurfaces. More for the romance crowd, Lindsey's title presents the tale of a beautiful woman and a handsome scoundrel in the Old West.

Other Reviews
"She creates fairy tales that come true."-- "Romantic Times

Chapter One

Wyoming Territory, 1878

The Callan Ranch was silent that summer day except for the ominous crack of a whip. More than a halfdozen men were gathered in the grass-patched front yard of the ranch house, but not one made a sound as they watched Ramsay Pratt wield the whip with the expertise he was known for. An ex-bullwhacker, as stock drivers were frequently called, Pratt loved to show off his skills. He could knock the revolver out of a gunman's hand with the flick of his wrist, or a fly off the rear end of a horse without touching the hide. Where other men carried guns on their hips, Pratt carried a twelve-foot-long bullwhip coiled on his. But this demonstration today was a mite different from his usual tricks. This one was stripping the flesh off a man's back.

Ramsay did it at Walter Callan's behest, but he derived a good deal of pleasure from it, for it wasn't the first time he had whipped a man to death, or found that he enjoyed doing it, though no one here in Wyoming knew that. He didn't have it easy the way gunmen did. If they wanted to kill a man, they could pick a fight that would be over in a matter of seconds, then claim self-defense after the smoke cleared. But with Ramsay's choice of weapons, he had to disarm a man first, then proceed to whip the life out of him. Not too many people bought self-defense in that case. But in this case, he was following the boss's orders, and the victim was a no-account half-breed anyway, so no one would care.

He wasn't using his bullwhip, which could take a half-inch chunk of flesh with each stroke. That would end the entertainment too soon. Callan had suggested a shorter,thinner horsewhip, still capable of making mincemeat out of a man's back, but taking much longer to do it. Ramsay was all for that. He could drag this out for a good hour or more before his arm got tired.

If Callan weren't so mad, he would probably have just had the Injun shot. But he wanted him to suffer, to scream some before he died, and Ramsay meant to oblige. So far he was just playing with the victim, using the same cracking technique he used with the bullwhip, slicing an inch here, an inch there, not really doing much damage but making each little cut felt.

The Injun hadn't made a noise yet, not even a sharp indrawn breath. He would, though, when Ramsay started slashing instead of flicking. But there was no hurry-unless Callan got bored and called it off. That wasn't likely to happen, not as furious as the boss was. Ramsay knew how he'd feel if he just found out the man courting his only daughter was a damn breed. All these months he'd been fooled, and Jenny Callan too, from the look of her when her father confronted her with it. She'd turned right pale and sick-looking, and she stood on the porch now with her father, looking just as mad as he was.

It was a damn shame, for she was a real pretty gal. But who'd want her now after they heard who she'd kept company with, let touch her, and it was anyone's guess what else he'd done to her. She'd been deceived just as her father had, but who could have guessed that the Summerses' close friend was half Injun? He dressed like a white, spoke like a white, wore his hair shorter than most whites, carried a gun on his hip. It was just plain hard to tell what he was by the look of him, for the only things Injun-like about him were the straightness of his black hair and the darkness of his skin, which, truth to tell, wasn't much darker than that of any other man who rode the range.

The Callans still wouldn't have known if Long Jaw Durant hadn't been there to tell. Durant had been fired from the Rocky Valley Ranch and had only signed on the Callan spread yesterday. He had been in the barn when Colt Thunder, as the breed was calling himself, had ridden in on that big-boned Appaloosa, a son of Mrs. Summers' prize stallion. Naturally Durant was curious enough to ask one of the men what Thunder was doing there, and when told he'd been sniffing 'round Jenny Callan's skirts these past three months, he couldn't believe it. He knew Colt from his previous employment as being a close friend of the boss, Chase Summers, as well as his wife, Jessica. He also knew him to be a half-breed who until three years ago had been a full-fledged Cheyenne warrior, though that knowledge hadn't gone much farther than the Rocky Valley, apparently -- until today.

Durant had wasted little time in finding his new boss and apprising him of this news. Maybe if he hadn't done it in front of three other hands, Callan would have handled it differently. But with his men aware of his daughter's shame, there was no way in hell he could let the breed live. He had gathered up the rest of his men, and when Colt Thunder stepped out on the porch, having collected young Jenny for an afternoon picnic, he was facing a half-dozen nervous revolvers trained on his belly, enough firepower to keep his hand away from his own gun, which he was quickly relieved of.

He was a tall man, taller than any of the men surrounding him. Those who had seen him come and go over these past months had never had reason to be wary of him, though, for he smiled often, laughed often, gave every indication of being a man of easy temperament -- until now. Now there was little doubt that he had been raised by the Northern Cheyenne, those same Cheyenne who had joined with the Sioux to massacre Lieutenant Colonel Custer and his battalion of two hundred men just two years ago in the valley of the Little Bighorn up in Montana Territory. Colt Thunder, in the blink of an eye, became a Cheyenne brave, lethal, dangerous, the savage wildness of the Injun unleashed, striking fear into the hearts of civilized man...

ISBN: 9780380753000
ISBN-10: 0380753006
Audience: General
Format: Paperback
Language: English
Number Of Pages: 432
Published: 25th March 2003
Dimensions (cm): 16.5 x 11.3  x 2.9
Weight (kg): 0.206