Welcome to Mandy's Madhouse
Home of Romance Author
Madeline Baker/Amanda Ashley

Excerpt from HAWK'S WOMAN
Chapter 1

Convent of Mary Magdala
Colorado, 1867

He looked dead. Surely no one could lay so still and look so horribly pale and still be alive.

Hallie McIntyre felt her stomach clench as she stared at the man's shirtfront, at the dark splotch of dried blood that made an ugly brown streak on the light blue wool, at the fresh stain that gleamed wetly in the twilight. She sighed, regretting that she had found him too late to be of any help.
Rising slowly to her feet, she straightened her skirts. Men were a rarity in her life and she couldn't help wondering who this man was, and where he had come from, and how he had come to be laying there in the mud in the middle of Sister Dominica's vegetable garden.

She offered a quick prayer, then removed her heavy black shawl and draped it over the body, automatically making the sign of the cross as she did so. Whoever the stranger was, his soul was in the hands of Almighty God now.

She was turning away when she heard a low groan.

The sound sent a shiver down her spine. She glanced over her shoulder, certain she had imagined it. He couldn't possibly be alive. But dead men didn't move, didn't groan with pain, the sound filled with such raw agony it made her ache inside.

She heard him swear under his breath. And then she heard him whisper a name. A woman's name....Anna.

She was wondering if it was his wife's name when he flung out one arm, dragging her shawl away from his face, and she saw that he was indeed conscious, and staring up at her.

"Oh, my." Startled, she would have fled had his right hand not snaked out to imprison her ankle.

"Where am I?" The words were harsh, as though they had been torn from his throat.

Stark unreasoning fear flooded through Hallie as she stared down at the long-fingered hand clasped tightly around her ankle.
"Let me go." She tried to pull her foot away. "Let me go!" She tugged again, harder, and then, as panic overwhelmed her, she began to struggle in earnest.

He swore a vile oath when the toe of her heavy black shoe smashed into his side, but he didn't let go of her foot.

"Please," Hallie begged. "Please let me go."

He shook his head weakly, his grip tightening around her foot. "Where am I?"

"If I tell you, will you let me go?"

"Maybe."

"You're at the Convent of Mary Magdala about five miles south of Bitter River," Hallie replied, her words coming in a rush. She tried to draw her foot from his hand again, but to no avail. How could he be so badly hurt, and yet so strong? "I told you what you wanted to know, now let go of me."

He grunted softly. "Need...water."

Hallie pasted what she hoped was a reassuring smile on her face. "I'll get you some, I promise," she said, speaking each word slowly and distinctly, "but first you'll have to let me go."

"Don't tell anyone...I'm...here."

"I won't," she said quickly. Too quickly.

He focused his hooded gaze on the intricately carved wooden crucifix that hung from a braided cord around her waist. "Swear it."

Hallie's gaze slid away from his. "I swear."

She was lying, and he knew it. As soon as he let her go, she'd take off as fast as her feet could carry her to tell whoever was in charge that there was a gun-shot stranger lying out in the dirt.

"I don't mean you any harm, girl." He took several slow deep breaths. "Just keep your mouth shut and let me...let me rest here awhile....and I'll be on my way."

She tilted her head to one side. "You're in trouble, aren't you?"

A long sigh escaped his lips. "More than you can imagine."

Hallie stared at the big sun-bronzed hand that imprisoned her ankle. In spite of the stranger's weakened state, he had a grip like iron. It frightened her, until she gazed into his eyes, dark brown eyes that were filled with anguish and quiet desperation.

He eased his hold on her ankle, though he didn't release her. "Please," he begged softly, "just keep quiet until I'm gone."

The faint note of pleading in his voice tugged at her heart. She had the feeling that he hadn't asked for, or been granted, many favors in his life, and that he didn't really expect one now.

"All right," she said, meaning it this time. "I won't say anything to anyone."

"Promise me?"

"I promise."

His hand fell away from her ankle and he went suddenly limp.

Hallie gazed down at him, certain he was really dead this time, and glad, way down deep inside, that she would never have to look into those eyes again. Such haunted eyes, filled with pain and bitterness; eyes filled with torment and the shadow of death. Perhaps he would find peace now...

She blew out a sigh when she saw the shallow rise and fall of his chest. A trickle of fresh blood oozed from the wound low in his right side. He wasn't dead, after all. No doubt she would have to do a penance for wishing him so.

She chewed on her lower lip a moment, then lifted the edge of his shirt. Picking up a handful of rain-damp earth, she pressed it over the wound to curb the bleeding.

When that was done, she made her way to the well and lowered the big old wooden bucket. She should find Reverend Mother, Hallie thought as she drew the bucket from the well and made her way back to the stranger. Promise or no promise, the man needed more help than she was capable of giving.

She wondered again who he was, and how he had come to be at the convent. They were a good distance from town, and she hadn't seen a horse. Surely he hadn't walked all the way from Bitter River in his present condition. She had never seen anyone who was badly injured before, never seen so much blood. Never been alone with a man...especially a man like this one. To her knowledge, only two kinds of men carried guns: lawmen and outlaws. And this man didn't look like a lawman.

He was lying as she had left him, his eyes closed, one hand pressed over his wound, the other tightly clenched at his side. It wouldn't have surprised her to discover he had passed into the next world, considering how much blood he had lost.

But he wasn't dead. His face was damp with perspiration; his shirt was soaked with rain and sweat and blood.

"Mister?" She knelt beside him. "Mister?"

His eyelids fluttered open and he stared up at her as if he had never seen her before.

"I brought you some water." Slipping one hand under his head, Hallie lifted him up a little, then held the dipper to his lips.

He drank greedily and asked for more.

"I don't think you should drink it so fast," Hallie admonished, and even as she spoke the words, he turned his head to the side and retched so hard, it made her own stomach ache.

He didn't look dangerous now, only weak and sick. She wiped his mouth with a corner of her shawl, then offered him the dipper again.

He drank more slowly this time, emptying the dipper twice before his head fell back and his eyelids closed again.

Hallie blew out a sigh. What was she going to do with him? She couldn't leave him out here. It would be full dark soon. A rumble of thunder heralded another storm coming. What should she do with him?

She glanced at the small white-washed chapel located beside the main house, then shook her head. If she put him in there, she would just have to move him again before Sunday worship service.

The shed? No, Sister Dominica kept her gardening tools in there.

The barn! That was the answer, Hallie decided. It was her job to feed the horses and milk the cows. None of the other sisters ever went into the barn, except for Sister Ayanna, but that good sister had slipped on the back step and broken her leg the week before and was confined to her bed. Sister Dominica was allergic to hay. Sister Marguerite was afraid of the cattle. Sister Ruth, Sister Paul, and Sister Monique were too old and feeble to do more than say their prayers. Sister Barbour rarely left the kitchen. The other sisters had been summoned to the Mother House in New Mexico to await new assignments.

Yes, she thought, he would be safe in the barn.
"Mister?" She shook his shoulder gently. "Mister, wake up."

He grunted softly, then stared up at her through eyes glazed with pain and weariness.

"I can't carry you. You have to get up."

He stared at her blankly for a moment, then nodded.

Hallie slung her shawl over her shoulder, then eased him into a sitting position. It took him a minute to catch his breath.

With her help, he managed to gain his feet. She hadn't realized how tall and broad he was. Standing, he loomed over her like a dark cloud. It wasn't easy, getting him to the barn. He leaned heavily upon her, his footsteps unsteady, his breath coming in labored gasps. She had to stop several times so he could rest. Each time they paused, she glanced anxiously over her shoulder, afraid someone from the house would see them.

She looked up at him as she guided him the last few feet. Sweat poured down his face, his skin was the color of the old parchment scrolls in the library. His arm was heavy where it rested across her shoulders. His fingers bit into her arm as he endeavored to keep his balance.

There was a sharp crack of lightning, followed by a low rumble of thunder, and then it began to rain.

Hallie was more than a little out of breath by the time they stumbled into the barn. As gently as she could, she lowered him onto a pile of straw in one of the empty stalls.

In spite of her best effort, he landed heavily on his right side, the air whooshing out of his lungs along with a string of the most vile curse words Hallie had ever heard.

By the time she had him settled, she was ready to utter a few curse words of her own.

Moments later, she heard the sound of the convent bell calling the sisters to the evening meal.

"Mister? I've got to go. I'll be back as soon as I can. Mister?"

Bending down, she placed her hand on his chest, reassured by the slight rise and fall of his chest. She didn't know whether he was asleep or unconscious, but there was nothing she could do for him now. If she didn't get back to the house right quick, Reverend Mother was sure to send someone looking for her, or, worse yet, come herself.

Rising, Hallie glanced down at the bloodstains on her apron and skirt. Changing clothes would make her late to dinner for sure, but there was no help for it. She couldn't go in looking like this.

Covering the man with her shawl, Hallie offered a quick, fervent prayer for his recovery, then ran across the fields to the convent, the presence of the stranger in the barn weighing heavily on her conscience.

Excerpt from LOVING JAKE

Chapter 1

Ginny Whelan felt a sudden yearning for her home in Crystal Springs as she drove down Norco’s main street. Norco, California, was a little city with a big country flavor. There were horse trails instead of sidewalks on just about every residential street. Even the post office had a place for patrons to tie up their horses. In fact, the Norco welcome sign proclaimed that Norco was the horse capital of the world, and she believed it.

Most of the city’s shops, stores, and car dealerships (of which there were many) were located on Hamner Avenue, which was the town’s main drag. The nearest mall was a good fifteen minutes away, assuming the 91 Freeway wasn’t backed up. And in the short time Ginny had been here, it was always backed up. She would have wagered that the city had more horses than cars, and more cows than people. Of course, there were also goats, donkeys, sheep, chickens, llamas, and even a camel or two. And every house had at least one large dog to keep the coyotes at bay! And she knew there were coyotes. She had found a dead cat on the front lawn the other morning. Not the whole cat, mind you. Just the head, and a couple of legs.

There were a few things about the town that she did like, like the rabbits she saw scampering in the park when she went walking in the morning, and the squirrels that were in residence in the greenery between the DMV and the post office. She had even seen squirrels in the K-Mart parking lot. She liked the birds, too. There were sparrows and crows and pigeons everywhere. And once, in the middle of Fifth Street, she had seen several vultures dining on a dead rabbit.

Ginny had been here a little over a week and she was already tired of house-sitting for her sister, Debra. Deb, Deb’s husband, Steve, and their boys, Doug and Derek, had all gone to Hawaii on vacation. Ginny shook her head, thinking that three weeks in a hotel with two kids under the age of five didn’t sound like much of a vacation!

She wondered idly what Carter was doing. She had been dating Carter Hastings pretty steadily ever since her father had introduced them four months ago. She had expected to miss Carter while she was gone but he had rarely crossed her mind. She hadn’t missed him near as much as she thought she would, or near as much as she thought she should, all things considered, and that bothered her. Maybe she was just kidding herself. Maybe he wasn’t Mr. Right. Maybe she was just getting desperate because she was afraid she was never going to get married. She had five sisters besides Deb, and they were all married with kids. No matter how many times Ginny told herself there was nothing wrong with being twenty-five and single, the words “old maid” echoed in the back of her mind.

Ginny was thinking how good it would be to get back home and sleep in her own bed again when her sister’s Volkswagen coughed, groaned and ground to a halt.

Muttering “oh, great”, she tried to restart the car, but nothing happened. Glancing out the window, Ginny smiled. Lucky for her, the car had decided to play Camille not far from a VW repair shop.

Grabbing her purse, she plucked the key from the ignition, got out of the car, and slammed the door. Feeling totally frustrated, she hurried down the street toward Jake’s VW Warehouse and Garage.
The sooner she got back to the big city, the happier she would be.

#
Jake Running Horse wiped his hands on a greasy rag. Had he lived back in the old days, he would have sought revenge. He would have killed the man who had wronged him, taken his scalp, and boasted of it around the campfire.

But he wasn’t a warrior and he wasn’t living in the old days. He owned a VW repair shop. It was the twenty-first century, not the nineteenth, and he was a civilized man, not a savage. And dammit, he needed to get over it.

But, for just a moment, Jake indulged his imagination and pictured himself riding a paint pony across the Great Plains in pursuit of the man who had pretended to be his friend and then gone behind his back and sabotaged his relationship with the woman he had planned to marry. Jake didn’t know which of them he was more upset with, Mike Dutton for sneaking around behind his back, or Lori Beth for so quickly succumbing to Dutton’s sweet talk. Well, good riddance to the both of them. They deserved each other.

Jake shook his head, annoyed that the memory still rankled. It had happened almost eight months ago. Since then, he had sworn off women for good.
Muttering an oath, Jake went back to work. Mrs. Dickinson would be there any minute to pick up her car and he wanted to have it ready when she arrived. She was a good customer, but she was also a gossip, a busy body, and a matchmaker all rolled into one, and if there was one thing Jake wasn’t in the mood for, it was listening to her constant chatter; or, worse yet, having to listen to her go on and on about how a man his age should have married and settled down long ago. A man his age! Shoot, he was still on the sunny side of thirty. What was the rush?

He swore again as he scraped his knuckles on the fan shroud. Just another couple of minutes and he would be through here and ready to close up for the night.
The thought had barely crossed his mind when he heard the clatter of high heels on the cement floor of the garage.

“Excuse me,” called a feminine voice. “Can you help me?”

Jake frowned. That voice, soft and with a slight Southern drawl, didn’t belong to Mrs. Dickinson.
Straightening, he turned toward the entrance, his gaze sweeping over the woman standing there. It definitely wasn’t Sadie Dickinson, who was about fifty years old and tipped the scales at right around two hundred pounds. No, the woman standing in the doorway was in her early twenties and probably didn’t weigh much more than a hundred pounds soaking wet, and he was willing to bet that ten pounds of it was hair. Reddish brown hair streaked with gold highlights. Her eyes were a warm shade of gray beneath thick lashes. Her skin was smooth and clear. As far as he could tell, she wasn’t wearing any makeup save for a touch of lipstick and a little eye shadow.

Jake cleared his throat. “What can I do for you?”
“My car broke down. I was wondering if you could take a look at it and tell me what’s wrong. It’s just down the street.”

Pulling a clean rag from his back pocket, Jake wiped the grease off his hands. “Sure, just let me lock up.”
Her car, a cherry 1962 VW bug, was about half-way down the block. “Nice,” he said.

“Thanks. It belongs to my sister.”

“Any chance she’d like to sell it?”

“I don’t know, maybe. I thought it was out of gas,” she explained as he lifted the deck lid, “even though I knew I had a full tank.”

He grunted softly as he checked the fuel pump and the gas line. No problems with either one that he could see. “I’ll have to take it back to the shop,” he said, closing the deck lid.

Ginny bit down on her lower lip. “How long do you think it’ll take to find out what’s wrong?”
“I should know sometime tomorrow. Why, you in a hurry to be somewhere?”

“Not really.” Once she fed the horses and the dog and the two pygmy goats, there really wasn’t a lot to do.

“Come on back to the shop so I can fill out the paperwork. I’ll call you as soon as I know what’s wrong.”

With a nod, Ginny the car and handed him the keys, then followed him back to the garage. She watched as he quickly jotted down her name and phone number, thinking that he was probably the sexiest man she had ever seen.

“Do you need a ride home?” he asked

“That would be great.”

“Just let me get my keys.”

He disappeared into the small office in the back of the garage, giving her a chance to look around. Not that there was much to see. It was a large building. Fluorescent lights hung from the high ceiling. The walls were gray, the concrete floor was stained with grease. Racks of metal shelves crowded with car parts - in no particular order that she could see - lined two of the walls. Pieces of a green Volkswagen took up one corner. A big red tool chest added a splash of color to the other wise drab décor. She thought a little paint on the walls and a few plants would do wonders for the place.

Jake emerged from his office a few moments later. “My truck’s parked out back.”

A truck, Ginny thought, of course. This was Norco.

She followed him through a narrow doorway that opened onto a large lot surrounded by a high wooden fence. The yard was littered with car doors, fenders, wheels, tires, a couple of engines, and the body of a VW, as well as a variety of other car parts, none of which she recognized.

His truck was a dark gray Silverado with the words Jake’s VW Warehouse & Garage stenciled in white on the side.

He opened the passenger door for her, then went around to the driver’s side and slid behind the wheel. “Where to?”

She gave him the directions to Deb’s house, then fastened her seat belt as he fired up the engine and pulled out of the driveway. He drove down Hamner for a couple of blocks, then turned left on Hidden Valley Parkway.

There were two parts to Norco, the older section and the newer one. Deb and Steve lived in the newer area in a beautiful four bedroom, two-story house that had cost half a million dollars four years ago. In addition to the bedrooms, there was an office downstairs and a bonus room upstairs. Ginny still couldn’t believe the price of houses in California. Deb's house was big and it was really nice but Ginny thought that, for a cool half a million dollars, it should have been a mansion and Tom Cruise should have been living next door!

Yesterday, on one of her walks, Ginny had picked up a real estate flyer. The price for the house, which was two blocks away from Deb’s, had been over nine hundred thousand dollars. Ginny had stared at the price in disbelief. If regular houses were selling for almost a million dollars, she couldn’t imagine what real mansions were selling for.

“Nice place,” Jake remarked, pulling into the circular driveway.

“It belongs to my sister and her husband.”

“So you’re just visiting?”

Ginny nodded. “Actually, I’m house sitting. Deb’s in Hawaii with her husband and kids.”

“How long are you going to be in town?”
“Another two weeks.”

Jake drummed his fingertips on the steering wheel. “I don’t suppose you’d like to go out to dinner with me some night.”

“I don’t think so.”

His gaze was dark and seductive as it met hers. “Come on, pretty lady,” he coaxed. “Change your mind.”


She thought briefly of Carter, then thought about eating dinner at home, alone, or going out, alone. She was tired of eating alone. What could one dinner date hurt?

Still, she hesitated. “I don’t know…”
“How about tonight?”

“You don’t waste any time, do you?”

He grinned roguishly. “Hey, if you’re only going to be here for two weeks, I don’t have any time to waste. What do you say?”

“I shouldn’t.”

“But you will?”

She stared at her hands. She really shouldn’t be going out with another man. Carter probably wouldn’t like it. But Carter wasn’t here and she was tired of eating alone in front of the TV. Taking a deep breath, she said, “All right,” before she could talk herself out of it.

“I’ll pick you up in what, half an hour?”

“Better make it an hour.”

Exiting the truck, Jake opened her door for her, admiring the sway of her hips as she walked away. She unlocked the front door, then glanced over her shoulder. With a wave of her hand, she stepped inside.
Jake shook his head. Eight months ago, he had sworn off women, he thought ruefully. Less than an hour ago, he had renewed that vow.

But that was before Ginny Whelan walked into his life.