Excerpt of Hawk's Way Brides by Joan Johnston

MARA HAD TRIED EVERY OTHER ALTERNATIVE, and there was only one left. She had to swallow her pride and approach Falcon Whitelaw for the help he had once offered. Although, she couldn't imagine him even giving her a chance to open her mouth before he shut the door in her face. Mara shuddered when she remembered the awful things she had said to him, even if they were true.

But Susannah was sick, very sick, and she needed treatment that would cost thousands of dollars. Mara had applied to a number of agencies for help, and it was available, but only if she and Susannah left home and traveled to another state. Life was grim enough these days without leaving behind everything that was familiar.

On Grant's death, Mara had used most of his life insurance to buy a home for herself and Susannah. She had vowed never to move again. If there was any way to stay in Dallas, where they had finally grown roots — shallow ones, but roots, nevertheless — Mara intended to pursue it. She had exhausted every other road to achieve her goal. There was only one left. She had to approach Falcon Whitelaw and ask him for money to help with Susannah's medical expenses.

Begging left a bitter taste in her mouth. But Mara was willing to humble herself in any way that was necessary to make sure Susannah got the treatment she needed. It was galling to have to approach the one man in the world she blamed for her current predicament. If Grant hadn't died in that accident, they would have had the health insurance he usually received as a part of his compensation. But Grant had been between jobs, so there was nothing. Instead Mara had been caught in every mother's nightmare. She had a sick child and no insurance to pay for medical bills.

Health insurance had been the last thing on her mind when Grant had left her widowed, and she found herself unemployed with a meager amount of life insurance and a child to raise. She had used the balance of the life insurance left after she bought the house to pay college tuition, believing that an education was the best investment for their future. It was a wise move, but had left the two of them exposed to the disaster that had occurred.

Mara hadn't even realized, at first, that Susannah was sick. In the months following Grant's death, her daughter had been tired and listless and seemed uninterested in doing the things she normally did. Mara had thought Susannah was merely grieving in her own way. Until one day Susannah didn't get out of bed at all. She had a high fever, and nothing Mara did could bring it down.

She took Susannah to the emergency room of the hospital and experienced the horror of watching her small, helpless child be hooked up to dozens of tubes and monitors. The diagnosis of Susannah's illness had come as a shock. Mara had sat stunned in the chair before Dr. Sortino's cluttered desk and listened with disbelief.

Acute lymphocytic leukemia. "Children die of that," Mara had managed to gasp.

A pair of sympathetic brown eyes had looked out from Dr. Sortino's gaunt face. "Not as many as in the past. Nearly three-quarters of all children diagnosed with this disease today live."

"What about the rest?" Mara asked. "What about Susannah?"

"Our cure rate with chemotherapy is ninety percent. If that doesn't work, there's always a bone-marrow transplant to consider."

Mara had stared at him with unseeing eyes. Chemotherapy. She had never known anyone personally who had taken chemotherapy. But she had read enough, and seen enough on television, to know that chemo-therapy made you vomit, and that your hair fell out. The thought of that happening to her precious daughter, the thought of all Susannah's long black hair falling out, made her feel faint.

"Mrs. Ainsworth? Are you all right?"

Dr. Sortino was on one knee beside her, keeping her from sliding out of the chair. She felt the sting of tears in her nose and eyes. "No, I'm not all right!" She fixed a blazing stare on the doctor who had been the messenger of such ill tidings.

"I'm angry," she spat. "I'm furious, in fact! Why Susannah? How did this happen? She's just a little girl. She's only eight years old!"

Dr. Sortino's eyes were no longer sympathetic. A look of pain and resignation had glazed his eyes after her vituperative attack. He rose and returned to his place behind the desk, putting a physical barrier between them that did little to protect him from her anger and despair.

"I'm sorry, Mrs. Ainsworth," he said. "There are as many as a dozen factors that may have been responsible for Susannah contracting the disease. We haven't done enough tests yet to make a guess on the precise reasons for her illness. But we can cure it...in most cases. You're lucky. Susannah has a tremendous chance of survival. With other diseases..."

He left her to contemplate her good fortune. But Mara didn't feel lucky. Leukemia was a serious disease. Her precious, wonderful daughter might die. "When do you start treatment?" she asked. "Will Susan-nah have to stay in the hospital? How will we know if it works?"

That was when kindly Dr. Sortino had started asking questions about insurance. That was when she had realized the enormity of the cost of treatment, and the hospital's inability to absorb another patient of this kind without a payment from some source.

"There are other facilities that can serve your needs better if you can't pay at least a portion of the costs up front," the doctor had said.

But those facilities were in another state.

Mara had tried buying insurance, but Susannah's illness was a preexisting condition and could not be covered.

"But I don't need insurance for anything else!" she had argued. After the insurance companies turned a deaf ear, Mara tried the various foundations that provided assistance for children. And got the same answer. Help was available only if she was willing to go somewhere else to get it.

Mara knew she was foolish for clinging to the familiar, but she wasn't sure she could survive weeks, and maybe months, of living in a Ronald McDonald House in a strange city, all alone with only Susannah and her fears to keep her company. She needed a place that was home. She needed the support of the few friends she had made. And Susannah needed the normalcy of school and friends around her during her recuperation.

Her daughter was going to be one of the lucky seventy- three percent who were cured of the disease. Mara refused to consider any other outcome to Susannah's treatment.

But she needed money and needed it fast. Borrowing was out of the question. She had just finished her first year of college, working part-time as a cook in one of the college hangouts. She didn't qualify for the sizable loan she needed without some security, and she hadn't enough equity in the house to do the job.

On the other hand, Grant had told her before he'd gone to the bar that Falcon Whitelaw was as rich as Croesus, that he had inherited a fortune from his maternal grandfather, including the B-Bar Ranch on the outskirts of Dallas. Falcon wouldn't even miss the thousands of dollars it was going to cost for Susannah's care. Besides, she was going to offer him something in return.

Mara had grown up at her mother's side and knew everything there was to know about keeping house for a rancher. She planned to trade her services as housekeeper to Falcon in exchange for his financial assistance in paying Susannah's medical bills. She feared she would end up indentured to him for a long time. Just the initial treatment was going to cost nearly 25,000.

Which reasoning all led her to the front doorstep of Falcon White-law's B-Bar Ranch. She had to admit the ranch wasn't what she had expected. The terrain was flat and grassy, but long ago someone had planted live oaks around the house. It had the look of a Spanish hacienda, with its red tile roof and thick, whitewashed adobe walls.

Her hand was poised to knock, her heart in her throat. She swallowed both heart and pride and rapped her knuckles on the arched, heavy oak panel.

No one answered.

She knocked harder, longer and louder. At last, the door opened.

FALCON HAD BEEN OUT LATE CAROUSING, and he had just dragged on a

pair of jeans to answer the door, not even bothering to button them all the way up. They hung down on his hipbones and revealed his white briefs in the vee at the top. He scratched his belly and put one bare foot atop the other. He squinted, his eyes unable to focus in the harsh sunlight that was streaming in through the crack he had opened in the door. He thought better of trying to see and put a hand over his eyes, pressing his temples with forefinger and thumb in an attempt to stop the pounding inside his head.

"Who's there?" he muttered.

Mara stared in disbelief at the bleary-eyed, tousle- headed, unshaved face that had appeared at the door. "It's eleven o'clock," she said with asperity. "Are you just getting up?"

"Good God," Falcon said with a moan. He would never forget that condemning voice, not in a million years. Of all the days for her to show up at the B-Bar, she had to come now. He slowly lowered his hand and squinted painfully into the sunlight until his eyes had adjusted enough to confirm what his ears had told him.

It was Mara Ainsworth, all right. She was wearing that same derisive, accusing look she had worn at Grant's funeral.

Falcon considered shutting the door in her face. He didn't owe her anything. He had offered her his help a year ago, and she had refused it in no uncertain terms.

So what is she doing here now?

From the look on her face she had come to play Puritan temperance woman. He just wasn't up for the game.

Mara's belief that Falcon was an irresponsible care-for- nobody was reaffirmed as she eyed him from head to barefoot toes. Her nose wrinkled in disgust when the smell of beer assaulted her nostrils. He was drunk! Or rather, had been. He looked hung over at the moment.

"Are you going to invite me inside?" she demanded.

Falcon was a second late responding, and Mara invited herself in, since he was obviously in no condition to do it. She pushed past Falcon and walked through the arched doorway right into the living room, leaving him standing at the open door.

The house was dark and cool. The furniture was leather and wood, large and heavy, the sort of thing the conquistadors must have brought with them from Spain. Navajo rugs were thrown on the red brick floor, and Mara found herself facing shelves full of Hopi Indian decorations. Arches inset along the walls held ornamental vases, adding to the Spanish flavor of the room. It was beautiful. It felt like a home. Which was odd, she thought, considering a bachelor lived here.

Without turning to face Falcon she said, "I need to talk to you." Mara surreptitiously rubbed her stomach where she had brushed against him. Her belly was doing strange things. He was an animal — that was why she felt this animal magnetism toward him. She hated the man. It was absolutely ridiculous to think she could be attracted to him.

She turned to face him, willing herself not to feel anything.

But she hadn't forgotten the powerful shudders that had rippled through her when Falcon looked at her the first time they had met. Something had definitely happened that hot summer day on the street in Dallas. She despised herself for what she had felt then. And it had happened again just now.

Animal magnetism, she repeated to herself. That's all it is.

Falcon shut the door with a quiet click and leaned back against it. He folded his arms across his bare chest, crossed one bare ankle over the other and stared at her. "I didn't think you ever wanted to see me again."

She flushed. The color started at the edge of her square- necked blouse and shot right up her throat to her cheeks, where it sat in two bright pink spots. "I...I didn't."

His eyes narrowed. "But now you do?"

She swallowed hard and nodded once. "Well." He paused. "Well." Falcon didn't know what else to say. This was certainly an astounding turn of events. Just when he had convinced himself he could live without her, the woman of his dreams had shown up at his door. Of course, she hadn't exactly picked a moment when he was at his best.

Falcon didn't ask her to sit. He didn't want her to be any more comfortable than he was. And he was downright miserable.

That didn't keep him from feeling the singular, consuming attraction for her that had struck him the first moment he saw her. And this time he knew he wasn't mistaken — she was feeling it, too. His lips curved in a self-satisfied smile. So, she was ready to admit the attraction she felt and had come to apologize for all those horrible things she had said to him.

Falcon gave free rein to the fierce sexual desire he felt for Mara Ainsworth. His groin tightened, and his blood began to hum. He refused to hide his arousal. Since she had invited herself in, she could just put up with the condition she found him in.

Mara was appalled at the blatant sensuality in Falcon's heavy-lidded stare. There was no hiding the bulge that was lovingly cupped by his butter-soft jeans. Even more appalling was her body's reaction to the prickly situation in which she found herself. She was dumbfounded by her gut response to Falcon's maleness. Her breasts felt heavy, and her belly tensed with expectation.

It was time to state her business and get out. "I've come to get the help you offered a year ago. I need money. Lots of it."

Mara saw the shock on Falcon's face and hurried to finish before he could throw her out. "Susannah is very ill. She could die." She swallowed over the lump of pain that always arose when she said those words. "She has leukemia."

Falcon had dropped his lazy pose against the door and was standing now on both feet with his hands balled at his sides.

"When Grant died he was between jobs and we didn't have any insurance and I don't have the money for chemotherapy and I've tried to get it other places but they want us to leave Dallas and Grant said you have lots of money so you wouldn't miss it and I think it would be better for both Susannah and me if we stayed where we are. So can you help us?"

Falcon had taken several steps toward Mara during this breathless speech. As he reached out to give her the comfort she so obviously needed, she took a step back away from him.

So. She wanted his money, but she didn't want him. That was blatantly clear.

"I'll work for you," she choked out. "I'll keep house, cook, clean, whatever you need. I know how to keep ranch books. I'll pay you back in service for every penny, I promise you that. I'm...I'm desperate. Please."

Falcon felt sick to his stomach. Mara, pretty Mara, had been reduced to begging. And she wasn't even asking him to give her the money. She was going to pay it all back. She didn't want to be beholden to him. Because she despised him.

It was there on her face every time she looked at him. She still blamed him for Grant's death. She was never going to forgive him.

So why should he give her the money?

Because there is a chance, just the slightest one, but a chance, that you might be responsible in part for her predicament. Falcon was shaken to the core by that possibility.

And that poor kid. He remembered Susannah's hazel eyes peeping out from behind Mara's skirt on the day he met her and the childish giggle before she hid herself completely from his sight. It was a shame for any kid to be sick, but it caught him in the gut to imagine that engaging little girl bedridden.

"Is Susannah...will she get well?" he asked.

"There's a good chance, a three-to-one chance, she'll be cured by the chemotherapy. But the hospital won't start treatments before I assure them I can pay. Can you...will you help?"