Linda L. Rigsbee,
author of
Once Bitten, Twice Shy
A Contemporary Romance Novel
This clean romance novel weaves a web of old-fashioned morals and young love close enough to entagle the reader.
Carmen Pulock had all she could handle running a goat dairy with limited funds - and battling Mother Nature to boot. The last thing she needed was a "pretty boy" underfoot. But he was her partner's brother, and he wanted to see the farm. It was bad enough to discover that the "dandy" was more adept at running the farm, but the real trouble started when she fell in love with him.
Brought up by aging parents in the back hills of Arkansas, Carmen had old fashioned ideas about marriage that didn't set well with her liberated friends. She was ready to settle down and get married - and her man had better be ready to wear the pants. Alex fit all her requirements, but Alex had been bitten by the love bug before, and he was twice shy about relinquishing his long-standing role as a bachelor.
She was prepared to wait for him to change his mind, but she wasn't prepared for the dark secret that he and his sister had been hiding. She had fallen hopelessly in love with a man who could not meet her most important requirement. Without him, life would be miserable, but life with him would mean a sacrifice she was not willing to make. Could she alter her dreams and still be happy?
Excerpt from "Once Bitten, Twice Shy":
He exited the stall and closed the gate, staring down at her defiantly. "I threw the hen into the woods, so the fox will probably get it anyway."
"You what?" Carmen glared up at him. "Of all the . . . Now he'll get a taste for chickens and start raiding my hen house every night. Thanks a lot for training him to hunt my chickens."
He stared at her in surprise. "Hello? The fox was already in your chicken house. That's why the chicken died, remember? I'm not training him to do anything."
"Well, you didn't have to give the chicken to the fox. We could have slaughtered it."
"How thoughtless of me," he said dryly. "Maybe you'd like me to hike out to the highway and scrape up some road kill for supper."
She met his bittersweet chocolate gaze defiantly, their noses literally inches apart. And then the bitterness was gone from his eyes, leaving only the sweetness . . . and a touch of something else. An uneasy feeling began in the pit of her stomach. He smelled faintly of cologne and leather, and his lips were smooth and . . . Wait a minute. Weren't they in the middle of an argument?
