Ann Major
A Scandal So Sweet
A book in the Cowboy For Every Mood series, 2012
Dear Reader,
When you’re an author, occasionally you write a story that grips you more profoundly than some of your others. A Scandal So Sweet is such a book.
When I read, I enjoy escaping to worlds of grand passion and enduring romance. Maybe that’s why I’ve written so many stories of reunited lovers.
We all have those people in our lives we never forget. My lovers in A Scandal So Sweet have never succeeded in forgetting one another. Torn apart by scandal and betrayal in their youth, they become driven people who are both immensely successful in their careers, but their lives feel incomplete until they meet again.
Their passion reignites in an instant, and despite all the reasons they should remain apart, they find themselves irresistibly attracted to the love that is most dangerous for them.
Ann
A special thank-you to Stacy Boyd, my editor, for her patience and brilliance.
A special thank-you to Nicole, a fan who sent me an email encouraging me while writing this book.
And a thank-you to Ted.
Prologue
Houston, Texas
A man’s life could change in a heartbeat.
Seven days ago Zach Torr had been in the Bahamas, elated to be closing the biggest deal of his career. Then he’d received an emergency call about his uncle.
The one person who’d held Zach’s back these past fifteen years was gone.
Now, still dressed in the suit he’d worn to give his uncle’s eulogy, Zach stood on the same narrow girder from which his uncle had fallen. He stared fearlessly down at his contractors, bulldozers, generators, cranes and men, big tough men, who appeared smaller than ants in their yellow hard hats sixty-five stories below.
Zach was a tall man with thick black hair and wide shoulders; a man his competitors swore was as ruthless as the fiercest jungle predator. The women he’d left behind agreed, saying he’d walked out on them without ever looking back.
Normally, his eyes were colder than black ice. Today they felt moist and stung. How had Uncle Zachery felt when he’d stood here for the last time?
A shudder went through Zach. Men who walked iron were no less afraid of heights than other men.
The chill breeze buffeting him whipped his tie against his face, almost causing him to step backward. He froze, caught his balance…hissed in a breath. A sneeze or a slip-was that how it had happened? Up here the smallest mistake could be fatal.
Had Uncle Zachery jumped? Been startled by a bird? Been pushed? Suffered a heart attack? Or simply fallen as the foreman had said? Zach would never know for sure.
As Uncle Zachery’s sole heir, Zach had endured several tough interviews with the police.
The newspaper coverage had been more critical of him than usual because he’d stayed in the Bahamas to close the deal before coming home.
He hated the invasion of the limelight, hated being written about by idiots who went for the jugular with or without the facts.
Because the fact was, for Zach, the world had gone dark after that phone call.
When he’d been nineteen and in trouble with the law for something he hadn’t done, Uncle Zachery had come back to Louisiana from the Middle East, where he’d been building a city for a sheik. Uncle Zachery had saved him. If not for his uncle, Zach would still be serving hard time.
Houston-bred, Zach had been cast out of town by his beautiful stepmother after his father’s death. Her reason-she’d wanted everything. His father had naively assumed she’d be generous with his sixteen-year-old son and had left her his entire fortune.
If it hadn’t been for Nick Landry, a rough Louisiana shrimper who’d found Zach in a gutter after he’d been beaten by his stepmother’s goons, Zach might not have survived. Nick had taken Zach to his shack in Bonne Terre, Louisiana, where Zach had spent three years.
It was in Bonne Terre where he’d met the girl he’d given his heart and soul to. It was in Bonne Terre where he’d been charged with statutory rape. And it was in Bonne Terre where the girl he’d loved had stood silently by while he was tried and condemned.
Fortunately, that’s when Uncle Zachery had returned. He’d discovered his sister-in-law’s perfidy, tracked Zach to Louisiana, gone up against the town of Bonne Terre and won. He’d brought Zach back to Houston, educated him and put him to work. With his powerful uncle behind him, Zach had become one of the richest men in America.
His cell phone vibrated. He strode off the girder and to the lift, taking the call as he descended.
To his surprise it was Nick Landry.
“Zach, I feel bad about your uncle, yes. I be calling you to offer my condolences. I read about you in the papers. I be as proud as a papa of your accomplishments, yes.”
So many people had called this past week, but this call meant everything. For years, Zach had avoided Nick and anything to do with Bonne Terre, Louisiana, but the warmth in Nick’s rough voice cheered him.
“It’s good to hear from you.”
“I’ve missed you, yes. And maybe you miss me a little, too? I don’t go out in the boat so often now. I tell people it be because the fishin’ ain’t so good like it used to be, but maybe it’s just me and my boat, we’re gettin’ old.”
Zach’s eyes burned as he remembered the dark brown waters of the bayou and how he’d loved to watch the herons skim low late in the evening as the mist came up from the swamp.
“I’ve missed you, too, yes,” he said softly. “I didn’t know how much-until I heard your voice. It takes me back.”
Not all his memories of Bonne Terre were bad.
“So why don’t you come to Bonne Terre and see this old man before he falls off his shrimp boat and the crabs eat him?”
“I will.”
“We’ll go shrimpin’ just like old times.”
After some quick goodbyes, Zach hung up, feeling better than he had in a week.
Maybe it was time to go back to Bonne Terre.
Then he thought about the Louisiana girl he’d once loved-blonde, blue-eyed, beautiful Summer, with the sweet, innocent face and the big dreams. The girl who’d torn out his heart.
She lived in New York now, a Broadway actress. Unlike him, she was the press’s darling. Her pictures were everywhere.
Did she ever come home…to Bonne Terre?
Maybe it was time he found out.
One
Eight Months Later
Bonne Terre, Louisiana
Zach Torr was back in town, stirring up trouble for her, and because he was, a tumult of dark emotions consumed her.
Summer Wallace parked her rental car in front of Gram’s rambling, two-story home. Sighing because she dreaded the thought of tangling with her grandmother and her brother over Zach, she took her time gathering her bag, her purse and her briefcase. Then she saw the loose pages of her script on the floorboard and the slim white Bible she kept with her always. Picking them up, she jammed them into her briefcase.
When she finally slammed the door and headed toward the house she saw Silas, Gram’s black-and-white cat, napping in the warm shade beneath the crape myrtle.
“You lazy old thing.”
A gentle wind swayed in the dogwood and jasmine, carrying with it the steamy, aromatic scent of the pine forest that fringed her grandmother’s property. Not that Summer was in the mood to enjoy the lush, verdant, late-August beauty of her childhood home. No, she was walking through the sweltering heat toward a sure argument with Gram. About Zach, of all people.
Fifteen years ago, when she’d run away after her mother’s death, she’d felt sure he was out of her life forever.
Then Gram had called a week ago.
It had been late, and Summer had been dead on her feet from workshopping an important new play.
“You’ll never guess who’s making a big splash here in Bonne Terre, buying up property to develop into a casino,” Gram had said in a sly tone.