The Honeymoon Trap (13 page)
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An excerpt from
What a Bride Wants
Kelly Hunter
Copyright © 2014
“Y
es, I know
he’s perfectly presentable and possibly a very nice person. Second-born son from a good ranching family. All good things. It’s just that when he looks at me he sees Emerson Holdings and award-winning bloodlines – money on the hoof. He doesn’t see me.”
Ella Grace Emerson leaned against the walnut desk and watched with fond exasperation as her father paced the length of his study. He stopped and stooped to add another block of wood to the fire that sat snug within the stonework of the study’s western wall. A huge picture window took up most of another wall and in the distance loomed the soaring, snow-clad Crazy Mountains of Montana.
The charity dinner they’d just returned from had dragged on late into the evening. They’d been seated at a table of eight that had included Joe Carter and his middle son Max, and the blatant matchmaking efforts of both fathers had been enough to set Ella’s teeth on edge.
Max’s half-baked interest in her good-self had done the rest.
“It was worth a try,” her father argued. “You and Max have similar social status, similar interests. It could have worked well.”
“That’s what you always say. And it never does. Daddy, I am not a cow to be bred. You need to let me find my own man.”
“But you don’t.” Samuel T. Emerson threw up his hands. They were good hands, big and scarred and strong. They’d picked her up over the years and held her tight when she’d come off a horse. When her mother had died. When her high school crush hadn’t invited her to the prom. “Where are you going to find this man, Ella Grace? Out here with the cattle? Roaming around Marietta? Livingston, maybe? At least Livingston has more variety than Marietta, but wait… you never go there. You’re buried here. You could travel anywhere. Canada. Australia. Europe. But you don’t. You haven’t had a holiday in three years.”
“Has it really been that long?”
“Ella Grace, you’re twenty-five—”
“Hardly on the shelf.”
“—And opinionated as all get out, for which I take complete responsibility.”
“Surely I should take some—”
What a Bride Wants
is available on Amazon
Accidently educated in the sciences,
Kelly Hunter
didn’t think to start writing romances until she was surrounded by the jungles of Malaysia for a year and didn’t have anything to read. Kelly now lives in Australia, surrounded by lush farmland and family. Kelly is a USA Today bestselling author, a three-time RITA finalist and loves writing to the short contemporary romance form.
For more from Kelly, visit her website:
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