Diana Palmer - Montana Mavericks Weddings: The Bride Who Was Stolen in the Night Cowgirl Bride

is the prolific author of more than a hundred books. Diana got her start as a newspaper reporter. A multi New York Times bestselling author and one of the top ten romance writers in America, she has a gift for telling the most sensual tales with charm and humor. Diana lives with her family in Cornelia, Georgia.

Visit her website at www.DianaPalmer.com.

A bby Turner of Whitehorn, Montana, was getting married. There never was a more reluctant bride. She stared at the small diamond solitaire on her left hand with sad gray eyes in a pretty face framed by wavy dark hair and wished with all her heart that shed said no instead of yes when Troy Jackson had proposed. He was a kind and sweet man, but she knew for certain that within a month of the wedding, shed be walking all over him. She was a fiery, impulsive woman with an outrageous sense of humor, and she embarrassed him. Shed tried to deny that part of her nature, but it kept slipping out. Inevitably people noticed.

Whitehorn was a small town where people lived as they had for generations. A ranching community sprawled outside the city limits and Troy, along with his father, ran several hundred head of Hereford cattle on their third-generation ranch. It wasnt as large as Chayce Derringers spread, but then, Chayce had more money than most local people. He was involved in mining as well as ranching. Hed been Abbys guardian since the death of her father, his foreman. Abby had been ten at the time. Her mother, Sarah Turner, had been crippled in the same wreck. Chayce had taken mother and daughter right into the big house with his housekeeper, Becky, and assumed total responsibility for them.

Whit Turner, a former rodeo cowboy, had been not only his foreman, but his idol and surrogate father as well. Chayce had loved him. He was fond of Abby, too, and hed spoiled her rotten. At least, until she was sixteen. That had been when the arguments began, each one hotter than the one before.

Abby had given Chayce fits, not because she was rebellious, but because she was feeling the first stirrings of love for him. He was fifteen years her senior and completely impervious to her, and it hurt. Consequently, Abbys temper grew steadily worse until she was eighteen. Shed pushed him too hard only once, and something had happened that had kept him completely out of her life ever since. It had been almost four years since Abby had seen him at all. He made sure of it.

Hed arranged for her to go away to college as soon as she graduated from high school, just two weeks after their disastrous encounter. It had been traumatic. Her mother had died that same year, and Chayce had been determined that she needed the change of sceneand to get away from him. What had happened, he told her grimly, couldnt be allowed to happen again.

So Abby had gone to college at California State University, taking her degree in business, and Troy Jackson had come to her campus to do some work on his teacher certification. Theyd started dating and very soon Troy had proposed. They lived in the same town, he pointed out, and hed inherit his fathers ranch one day. What could be more natural than to marry Abby and have kids to inherit it when he himself passed on?

It had seemed logical. Abbys encounter with Chayce had put a wall between them that hadnt ever come down. He was a fiery and independent man whod had a devastating love affair when he was little older than Abby was now at twenty-one. Hed never gotten over the loss of his fiance, and hed never let another woman close enough to wound him. Hed made it crystal clear that Abby didnt have a chance, despite his headlong ardor that night so long ago.

Abby had just graduated the first week of June, with only Troy and her college roommate, Felicity Evans, to watch her accept her diploma. Chayce hadnt come near the campus, although hed sent a telegram of congratulations.

He wasnt home, now, either, of course. He found reasons to go on long business trips the minute Abby announced any plans to stay at the ranch. Shed written him about her engagement to Troy and asked him to give her away at their August wedding in Whitehorn. He hadnt replied. She wondered if he would.

She tried not to talk about Chayce, but he was so much a part of her life that it was inevitable that she did. Troy made his distaste for her guardian quite clear, although he promised to tolerate Chayce once he and Abby were married. He only hoped, he told her firmly, that Chayce would be a little more discreet in future about his love affairs. Chayce was handsome and rich and eligible and he was dating a well-known Hollywood starlet. Therefore, it was inevitable that he was photographed with her and the pictures ended up in the tabloids. The publicity nauseated Troy, who was even more old-fashioned than Becky, Chayces housekeeper.

Because Troy made so many tart comments about Chayce, Abby made sure that she didnt let her own feelings for him show.

She stared at the ring on her finger, wondering what on earth had possessed her to agree. Despite his glacial treatment of her, she loved Chayce. She was never going to be able to give her heart or her body to anyone else. After four long years, that was painfully apparent. But Troy was kind and sweet and after one ardent kiss that Abby hadnt been able to respond to, hed confined his affection to handholding and lazy smiles. Perhaps he hoped that his reticence would succeed where his ardor hadnt.

What he didnt realize was that Abby was incapable of feeling physical desire for him. It was a problem that she hoped they could work out after they were married, but she didnt dwell on it. She couldnt go around forever mooning over a man who didnt want her and who had made it perfectly clear.

Becky was working in the kitchen when Abby joined her there, smiling as she took down a glass and poured iced tea into it.

Thirsty, are you? The gray-haired woman smiled affectionately at the younger woman in tight jeans and a pretty pink tank top. And so you ought to be after all that cleaning. Youve been in the attic almost since daybreak.

Ive been in hiding, Abby confided with a grin. Her gray eyes sparkled and around her face, wavy but untidy dark hair curled. She had a lovely figure and she wore clothes these days that emphasized it. Troy didnt like that, either. In fact, Troy didnt like a lot about her, she realized worriedly.