Thorn's Challenge - Brenda Jackson [0]
Brenda Jackson
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Thorn’s Challenge
BRENDA JACKSON
This is to my readers who felt the chemistry between Thorn and Tara from the first and wanted their story.
To my friend India Catrett, “Motorcycle Lady” extraordinaire. The only woman I know who owns her own Harley. Thanks for all the information you provided on motorcycles, Bike Week and motorcycle racing. This book is definitely for you.
Love endures long and is patient and kind…it takes no account of the evil done to it—pays no attention to a suffered wrong.
—I Corinthians 13: 4-5
Contents
Prologue
Chapter One
Chapter Two
Chapter Three
Chapter Four
Chapter Five
Chapter Six
Chapter Seven
Chapter Eight
Chapter Nine
Chapter Ten
Chapter Eleven
Chapter Twelve
Epilogue
Prologue
T ara Matthews hated weddings.
She had done a pretty good job of avoiding them until she had met the Westmorelands. Since then she had attended two weddings within an eighteen-month period. She’d had even been maid of honor when her good friend, Delaney Westmoreland, had married a desert sheikh almost a year and a half ago.
And today, like everyone else in the grand ballroom of the Sheraton Hotel in downtown Atlanta, she had come to celebrate the wedding of Delaney’s brother, Dare Westmoreland to the woman he loved, Shelly Brockman.
The worst part, Tara thought as she glanced around her, was that she couldn’t really complain about having to attend the weddings. Not when the Westmorelands had become the closest thing to a family she’d had since that fateful day in June two years ago. It was to have been her wedding day, but she had stood at the altar in complete shock after the groom, the man she had loved, who she thought had loved her, had announced to all three hundred guests that he couldn’t go through with the wedding because he was in love with her maid of honor—the woman she’d considered her best friend for over fifteen years. That day Tara had left Bunnell, Florida, hurt and humiliated, and vowing to her family that she would never return.
And so far she hadn’t.
A few days later she’d accepted a position as a resident pediatrician at a hospital in Bowling Green, Kentucky. Leaving her hometown had destroyed her and her father’s dream of working together in his pediatric practice.
While working at the hospital in Kentucky, she had met Delaney Westmoreland, another pediatrician, and they had become the best of friends. She had also become good friends with four of Delaney’s five older brothers, Dare, Stone and the twins, Chase and Storm. The initial meeting between her and the fifth brother, Thorn, had been rather rocky. She’d “gone off” on him about his unpleasant mood. Since then, they had pretty much avoided each other, which suited her just fine. At six foot-four, thirty-five-years of age, ruggedly handsome and sexy as sin, Thorn Westmoreland was the last man she needed to be around; especially since whenever she saw him she thought of scented candles, naked bodies and silken sheets.
“I’m going to the ladies’ room,” she whispered to Delaney, who turned to her, nodded and smiled. Tara smiled back, understanding that the older woman Delaney was talking to wasn’t letting her get a word in. Glancing at her watch to see how much longer she needed to put in an appearance, Tara made her way down a long, empty hallway to the restrooms.
Her thoughts drifted to the fact that next month she would be moving from Kentucky to the Atlanta area. She was moving because an older married doctor with clout at the Kentucky hospital had been obsessed with having her in his bed. When she’d rebuffed his advances, he’d tried making her work environment difficult. To avoid the sexual harassment lawsuit she’d threatened to file, the hospital had decided to relocate her and Atlanta had been her first choice.
Tara was so busy putting her lipstick case back in her purse after leaving the restroom that she didn’t notice the man coming out of the men’s room at the same time, until they collided head on.
“Oh, I’m so sorry. I wasn’t looking