Where There's Smoke

by Sandra Brown

Overview

When a determined doctor meets the rebellious heir to a Texas oil dynasty, sparks fly . . . but the flames of passion blazing between them could destroy an empire.

No one knows why Dr. Lara Mallory opened up her medical practice in the rowdy Texas town controlled by Tackett Oil. But everyone remembers her role in the well-publicized scandal that caused the downfall of White House hopeful Senator Clark Tackett.

Now the iron-fisted matriarch of Tackett Oil intends to use her money and power to drive Lara out of town . . . especially when Lara meets Key, the hell-raising -- and handsome -- youngest Tackett son.

Following a cataclysmic meeting, this determined doctor and brash, daring pilot find themselves hurtling on a dangerous quest for the one secret that can destroy the Tackett empire -- and anyone who dares to challenge its power. But Lara decides to find the truth behind the corruption in town, even if it costs her everything.

Product Details

ISBN-13:	9781455546466
Publisher:	Grand Central Publishing
Publication date:	04/30/2013
Sold by:	Hachette Digital, Inc.
Format:	eBook
Sales rank:	30,922
File size:	1 MB

About the Author

Sandra Brown is the author of seventy-two New York Times bestsellers. There are over eighty million copies of her books in print worldwide, and her work has been translated into thirty-four languages. She lives in Texas. For more information you can visit www.SandraBrown.net.

Hometown:

Arlington, TX

Date of Birth:

March 12, 1948

Place of Birth:

Waco, Texas

Education:

Honorary Doctorate of Humane Letters, Texas Christian University, 2008

Website:

http://www.sandrabrown.net/

Editorial Reviews

Brown's 16-year-old romance novel delivers a fair amount of heavy-breathing, which might be enough to satisfy her fans in spite of a contrived plot that includes, near the end, an unbelievable action-adventure sequence set in the Caribbean. The heroine is a feisty doctor, Lara Mallory, whose infamous affair with Sen. Clark Tackett aborted his presidential campaign and may have prompted his suicide. Mallory, who has set up her medical practice in the small Texas town run by Tackett's oil-rich family, is vilified by the stern Tackett matriarch, who vows to destroy her, and by the late senator's hell-raising brother, who makes it his business to insult and degrade her. But darn if that old boy don't jus' feel an attraction growin'. Anyone assuming that there is only one basic accent spoken in the Lone Star state will change their mind after sampling reader Ross's variety of voices—from socially prominent grand dames to unassuming oil field workers. Both she and the author are native Texans—and, as is the case with the romantic leads, both are on much firmer ground on their native soil than struggling through a bogus Caribbean battlefield. A Grand Central hardcover. (Nov.)

Publishers Weekly

Brown's fast-paced melodrama portrays a family oil empire in East Texas. Literary Guild main selection in cloth . (May)

Publishers Weekly - Publisher's Weekly

More frustrated passion, political scandal, and true Texas grit from Brown—this featuring the simmering love-hate bond between cool, beautiful Dr. Laura Mallory and the savage blue-eyed younger brother of the politician whose life she reputedly destroyed. The mystery is why Dr. Mallory set up practice in Eden Pass, Texas, in the first place. The focus of a national scandal when she was photographed years before being escorted in her nightgown from young Senator Clark Tackett's Virginia home by her husband, Ambassador Randall Porter, Mallory and Porter were summarily banished to the no-account Caribbean nation of Montesangre—where Porter and their baby daughter were murdered in a rebel ambush, while Tackett drowned in a Texas fishing accident that may have been a suicide. Mallory returned to the States to find her professional name permanently sullied and, in desperation, accepted the modest doctor's home and office that a remorseful Tackett had deeded her in his tiny hometown of Eden Pass. Predictably, Mallory is shunned by a community ruled by Tackett's mother, Jody, the iron-willed widowed dowager of Tackett Oil and Gas. But the beautiful doctor accepts the situation, living meekly off her savings until Tackett's reckless, handsome younger brother, Key, returns from the Middle East. Then she goes to work to convince Key—who is, naturally, torn between loathing the good doctor and wanting to tear off her clothes—to fly her to Montesangre to locate the site of her daughter's grave. Murder, terror, dark hints of concealed homosexuality, and the shocking resurrection of husband Porter follow as the backdrop to Mallory and Key's romance ("I don't want to be one of KeyTackett's women." "Yes, you do. Tonight you do"), making for an unusually perilous and gruesome journey toward marriage and a house on the lake. More sophisticated than Brown's Texas! books, this mainstream romance could well expand her already enormous readership. (First printing of 250,000; Literary Guild Dual Selection for Spring)

Kirkus Reviews