Primitive Nights
Page 28
Sure, Cole could see how that might be embarrassing.
“Then, in about six months, you ask her to marry you. She says yes, you get hitched and it’s all done with.”
Done with? His life, maybe. Hers, definitely. “What if Amanda says no?”
“Why would she say no?” Locke’s subtext was easy to read; she’d better not say no. “Be nice to her, make her feel pretty, tell her she’s a good cook and you’re set.”
“Mandy really is a good cook,” Dean added.
“You guys think all it takes to get married is to tell a girl she’s pretty and that she can feed you from now on and she’ll fall over from the romantic sentiment?”
Dean actually thought about it.
“Good point. Women are picky about stuff like that. You’re just going to have to make her fall in love with you or something,” Locke concluded.
Or something. Cole thought longingly to the fry that had mercifully tried to kill him minutes ago. Why had he fought it?
“I know this sounds completely unlikely, but…let’s say she doesn’t fall in love with me and the prospect of feeding me every day for the rest of her life isn’t enough of an enticement to get her to marry me?”
Locke shrugged. “At least you tried.”
Cole took his first breath of the meal…
“We’ll just find someone else and try again.”
…and choked on it.
“Try again? You mean you guys are going to shop Amanda around until someone bites?”
Locke didn’t smile this time. He didn’t do anything. He just stared, his blue gaze as implacably serious as the resolute will he’d used to raise the family currently surrounding him.
Asking Cole to marry Amanda was one thing. The Jackmans were his friends, despite Locke’s unnerving ability to…well, unnerve him. He wasn’t going to go telling anyone that the brothers were off their rockers and just short of pitching their sister on the auction block, and they knew it. Even the youngest ones. But should he turn them down, Amanda would quickly become a laughingstock in their quaint little southern California town of Rancho del Cielo. And no one in RDC ever forgot a good laugh.
Put like that, turning them down wasn’t an option.
Locke pulled something out of his shirt pocket and clacked it onto the center of the table. “See you at dinner, Cole. Seven o’clock. And wear a tie. You’re courting.”
He slid out from behind the table with a little more grace than someone his size should have been allowed. Within seconds, Cole found himself alone at the massive booth with an empty plate, a raw set of nerves and an open jeweler’s box complete with a glittering engagement ring.
For the first time since high school, Cole Engstrom was dying for a cigarette.
Primitive Nights
Candi Wall
Two different worlds…one distinct love.
As a member of Endurance International, Myla Jordan seeks to stop the illegal logging, diseases and displacement that threaten primitive South American tribes. While posing undercover as an engineer for one of the biggest industrial culprits—InterCorp—her helicopter crashes, stranding her in the Peruvian jungle. Captured and dragged before a tribal leader, she’s shocked by his light skin, green eyes, perfect English—and her body’s instant reaction to his touch.
The woman wearing an InterCorp insignia—yet protesting her innocence—is a direct threat to Damon Hanson’s people, yet he can’t bring himself to let her be killed. Raised in the tribe, taught the ways of the outsiders by his English mother, he knows of only one way to protect the foolish woman. Toss her over his shoulder, declare she is his…and somehow resist the temptation she presents.
Their powerful attraction gradually—sometimes painfully—overcomes suspicion. Yet even as their love grows as fast and wild as the rainforest, it may not be enough to overcome the common enemy that seeks to destroy them all.
Warning: With a modern-day Tarzan, who’s as wild and sexy as they come, being a captive has never been so…captivating.
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This book is a work of fiction. The names, characters, places, and incidents are products of the writer’s imagination or have been used fictitiously and are not to be construed as real. Any resemblance to persons, living or dead, actual events, locale or organizations is entirely coincidental.
Samhain Publishing, Ltd.
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Primitive Nights
Copyright © 2013 by Candi Wall
ISBN: 978-1-61921-326-5
Edited by Jennifer Miller
Cover by Lyn Taylor
All Rights Are Reserved. No part of this book may be used or reproduced in any manner whatsoever without written permission, except in the case of brief quotations embodied in critical articles and reviews.
First Samhain Publishing, Ltd. electronic publication: January 2013
www.samhainpublishing.com
Table of Contents
Dedication
Chapter One
Chapter Two
Chapter Three
Chapter Four
Chapter Five
Chapter Six
Chapter Seven
Chapter Eight
Chapter Nine
Chapter Ten
Chapter Eleven
Chapter Twelve
Chapter Thirteen
Chapter Fourteen
Chapter Fifteen
Chapter Sixteen
Chapter Seventeen
Chapter Eighteen
Chapter Nineteen
Chapter Twenty
Chapter Twenty-One
Chapter Twenty-Two
Chapter Twenty-Three
Chapter Twenty-Four
Chapter Twenty-Five
Epilogue
About the Author
Also Available from Samhain Publishing, Ltd.
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