Runaway
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4.4 • 22 Ratings
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- $4.99
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- $4.99
Publisher Description
New York Times bestselling author Heather Graham recreates the tumultuous history of America’s least-known frontier, Florida, in a love story that burns with passion and truth.
“I accepted you as payment on a gambling table because you’re incredibly beautiful. And I want you for the same reason.”
His smoldering gaze claimed her long before a poker hand made her his. Tara Brent knew she could never escape this dark and brooding stranger who promised her safety, with a price: marriage—and life together in the lush, lethal wilderness of Florida. She didn’t even know his name, only the promise of passion, and refuge in his arms.
Jarret McKenzie swept his ravishing bride away from New Orleans to his remote Florida plantation, determined to uncover the desperate secret from which she ran. But he couldn’t tell her of his own Seminole roots—or open her guarded heart—until his former commander, President Andrew Jackson, declared war on the Indians, and a powerful enemy from Tara’s past found his way to their door.
PUBLISHERS WEEKLY
This entertaining kickoff volume to a five-part series by bestselling author Graham (And One Rode West) is a swift historical drama set in the untamed, exotic Florida of the 1830s. In a New Orleans poker match, ``Black Irish'' plantation owner Jarrett McKenzie wins the services of gorgeous, fiery Tara Brent for a night (against her wishes) and winds up marrying her and taking her deep into the Florida jungles. Naturally, Tara and Jarrett fall in love and learn each other's secret: that she is fleeing a murder charge, and that he has strong ties to the Seminole Indians, through the tribe's leader, Osceola, who is about to make war with President Jackson's American forces. Crisis follows crisis, often separating Jarrett and Tara, but he proves his courage time and again while she grows to care for his Seminole relatives, even risking her life for them. Meanwhile, tension rises as Tara is pursued by evil Clive Carter, the son of the man she is accused of killing, and as the conflict between the U.S. Army and the Indians builds to a crisis. Graham is an indifferent stylist, but she knows what her readers want-tempestuous protagonists, titillation and just enough history to ground the plot. She delivers these elements with panache, and closes the book with an enticing prologue to volume two, The Undefeated. Author tour. #
