Book 1 of The Galván Brides Series
Classic Romance
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Argentinean Count Dante Galván is determined to collect a business debt from Daisy Collingsworth‘s family owned Kentucky horse farm. The half-million dollar stud fee has impoverished the family farm resources, and with no hope to pay the loan back in full, Daisy wants to renegotiate the deal in any way possible…
From the moment Daisy and Dante met, desire, pure raw hunger for each other, has had to take a back seat to business. Once Dante takes over the family business and sends Daisy to his home in Argentina to learn more about farm estate management, their passion erupts. Yet Dante’s a proud man with an unhappy past, and Daisy’s an equally proud woman with a wounded heart. Will their love finally overpower what holds them apart?
Classic Romance
In Dante’s Debt
read an excerpt →
Argentinean Count Dante Galván is determined to collect a business debt from Daisy Collingsworth‘s family owned Kentucky horse farm. The half-million dollar stud fee has impoverished the family farm resources, and with no hope to pay the loan back in full, Daisy wants to renegotiate the deal in any way possible…
From the moment Daisy and Dante met, desire, pure raw hunger for each other, has had to take a back seat to business. Once Dante takes over the family business and sends Daisy to his home in Argentina to learn more about farm estate management, their passion erupts. Yet Dante’s a proud man with an unhappy past, and Daisy’s an equally proud woman with a wounded heart. Will their love finally overpower what holds them apart?
In Dante’s Debt
Book 1 of The Galván Brides Series
Classic Romance
Themes & Archetypes
RITA Finalist, Short Contemporary Series Romance, 2002
Harlequin Presents
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In Dante’s Debt
“A half million dollars?” Daisy Collingsworth repeated incredulously, her lips curving tightly, heart thumping with sickening speed. “You might as well slit my wrists, Count Galvàn, I’d bleed faster that way.”
A trio of sleek glossy thoroughbreds pounded past, jockeys sitting high in the saddle, hooves kicking up fine pink-brown dust.
But Dante Galvàn ignored the yearlings in training. “I don’t want to kill you. I just want my share.”
“The lion’s share,” she retorted fiercely, grinding the heels of her boots into the soft racing track dirt, unable to fathom how fate, and her father’s mistakes, had so completely turned their lives upside down. This should never have happened. Not in a thousand years. The family farm was not negotiable. Never had been. Never would be.
But he clearly was unmoved by her argument. “I only take what is mine.”
She suddenly pictured him as a lion, a massive glorious leo sunning on a rock, while a half dozen lionesses loyally, happily did his work.
The mental picture infuriated her. Yes, he was Dante Galvàn, the son of one of her father’s former business associates, an associate notorious for underhanded business practices, but that had no weight with her. She wasn’t about to be knuckled under. “I will get a lawyer and fight you all the way.”
“Lawyers are expensive, Miss Collingsworth, and in this case even an excellent lawyer will be a waste of money.”
Her lips parted to interrupt but he held up a finger, momentarily silencing her.
“And if I might use a cliché,” he continued smoothly, the expression on his handsome face genial, downright friendly. “Even with a good attorney, you have no legal leg on which to stand. Your father signed a contract. My stables provided the stallion. Your mare delivered a foal. It’s time you paid the stud fee.”
She didn’t need to look at the contract to remember the outrageous amount the Galvàns had charged them for the stallion’s stud fee. It was so outrageous she’d actually laughed out loud the first time she’d seen the statement. “A half million dollars, Count Galván? Can we please be serious? No stallion is worth a half million dollar stud fee.”
“Your father seemed to think so.”
She colored, her face burning in hot fierce bands. “My father –” she broke off, swallowed hard, fighting the wave of nausea that threatened to overtake her. After a moment she felt calm enough to try again. “My father wasn’t thinking clearly.”
It was as close to the truth as she could admit. Anything else would be revealing too much of their own personal tragedy, and that she’d never do, especially not to a man as calculating and self-serving as Count Dante Galvàn.
