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Bound By A Promise
By Diana Palmer Harlequin Enterprises, Ltd.
Copyright © 2004 Harlequin Enterprises, Ltd.
All right reserved. ISBN: 0-373-51281-3
Chapter One
He was standing alone by the shore, a big, solitary figure against the thin mist that blanketed the silvery water in the early morning. Kathryn had seen him there before a number of times since she and Maude had moved into the lake house for the summer. But keeping up with the famous author's blazing deadlines had only allowed for a few brief outings on the lake for Kate, one of which the man standing there had shattered with his arrogance.
Kathryn Summers was curious about Garet Cambridge, even while she resented everything he stood for. His aircraft corporation was one of the biggest in the country, and his genius for designing new planes had earned him an international reputation. But all it meant to Kathryn was that he could buy people.
She knew too much about prices already, having just been thrown over by the man she loved when he found out that her social pedigree didn't meet his family's exacting standards. The daughter of a small Texas cattle rancher whose parents were divorced was hardly a likely candidate for the social register. In fact, it was only this job, working for the notorious Maude Niccole, that made it possible for her to keep her father's ranch from being put on the auction block. His health was steadily failing, and so were the ranch's profits.
She glared at Cambridge unconsciously from her perch on a log beside the spreading waters of Lake Lanier. She'd come here for the peace and quiet, and she wished he'd decided to spend his summer in Europe or Miami instead of here. Perhaps he thought the reporters who trailed him might not think of looking for him on a North Georgia lake. And apparently they hadn't, because he was alone; a ghostly figure in brown slacks and a cream open-necked sports shirt, his dark hair lifting in the breeze.
As if he felt the intensity of emotion in the glare of her pale brown eyes, he turned suddenly and saw her sitting there, with her silver blonde hair flowing down like silk around her thin shoulders.
He moved forward with his hands in his pockets until he was standing over her, towering over her, and his leaf green eyes glittered down at her out of a face as dark as a Native American's.
"You're trespassing," he said gruffly, not even bothering with polite conversation.
She cocked her head up at him. "Excuse me, I wasn't aware that you owned the shoreline as well as the lake," she said bitterly, referring to an earlier incident between them, when he'd practically ordered her off the lake.
One dark eyebrow went up at the sarcasm. "I own fifty acres of shoreline," he said quietly. "What you're sitting on is part of it. I came here for privacy, not to be hounded by curiosity seekers."
She'd have given anything at that moment to have had wealth enough, power enough, to tell him where to go. But she had nothing, and he could force her to go easily enough. She got up from the stump without another word, brushing off her blue denim jeans. With a sigh of resignation, she started back toward Maude's luxurious beach house.
"Who are you?" he growled after her.
"Amelia Earhart," she replied carelessly. "Do keep your eyes peeled for my plane, I seem to have misplaced it," she added, and kept right on walking.
Behind her, she imagined she heard the deep sound of a man's laughter.
Maude was waiting for her in the sprawling living room, her bags packed, her thin face nervous.
"Thank goodness, you're back!" the novelist sighed. "I thought you'd never come home! Kate, I've just gotten a telegram. My father's in the hospital, and I've got to fly to Paris immediately."
(Continues...)
Excerpted from Bound By A Promise by Diana Palmer Copyright © 2004 by Harlequin Enterprises, Ltd.. Excerpted by permission.
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