Too Stubborn To Marry Read online

  Table of Contents

  Cover Page

  Excerpt

  Dearreader1

  Title Page

  Dearreader2

  Dedication

  Prologue

  1

  2

  3

  4

  5

  6

  7

  8

  9

  10

  11

  Copyright

  Once upon a time there lived the

  Marriage Makers—three fairy godmothers. Their

  job was to look after all the triplets in their

  domain, including the Knight triplets. One by one

  each fairy sprinkled her dust…

  And baby Ryan got an overdose of humor

  and stubbornness! He just became

  Too Stubborn To Marry.

  “Cathie’s writing always glows with warmth and

  charm.”

  —Jayne Ann Krentz.

  “Cathie is a great storyteller.”

  —Lass Small

  “Love and laughter is never more delightful

  than from the clever pen of Cathie Linz.”

  —Melinda Helfer

  Dear Reader,

  The comic antics continue with two very different but equally wonderful romantic comedies!

  Longtime reader favorite Cathie Linz has joined the LOVE & LAUGHTER lineup with a very special trilogy called MARRIAGE MAKERS. Susan Elizabeth Phillips says, “Cathie Linz’s fun and lively romances are guaranteed to win readers’ hearts! A shining star of the romance genre.” Jennifer Greene adds, “Every book has sparkle and wit; Cathie is truly a unique voice in the genre” Cathie is also the winner of the Romantic Times Storyteller of the Year Award, as well as being nominated for Career Achievement in Love and Laughter. Her trilogy about the Knight triplets includes lots of emotion, comedy and the antics of some well-intentioned but bumbling fairy godmothers.

  Jule McBride spins a fabulous tale in How the West Was Wed, part of our Western mini marathon. A three-time Reviewer’s Choice nominee for “Best American Romance,” Jule McBride has also been nominated for two lifetime achievement awards in the category of “Love and Laughter.” When Jule, a native of West Virginia, was little she kept her books inside her grandmother Helen’s carved oak cabinet, to which only she had the key. Only later did Jule realize that the characters she loved weren’t real and that someone called a “writer” conjured them. That’s when she knew one day she’d be a writer. And Jule has created very memorable and hilarious characters in this story of a cross-dressing cowboy! (Really, he’s the hero. It’s fun—think Tom Hanks and Robin Williams.)

  Enjoy the love and laughter,

  Malle Vallik

  Associate Senior Editor

  Too Stubborn To Marry

  Cathie Linz

  Dear Reader,

  I write books to make readers smile, to make them laugh. That’s why I’m honored to be a double nominee for a Romantic Times Love and Laughter award and delighted by the invitation to do this special trilogy for Harlequin’s LOVE & LAUGHTER.

  I figure we could all use a little more laughter in our lives, right? I don’t know of anyone who says, “No, thanks, I’ve got all the laughter I can handle right now, thank you, anyway.”

  Too much stress, yes. Too much laughter? Naw. Although I do remember this one time when I was ten and I laughed so hard my best friend and I spewed chocolate milk all over the dainty pink-and-white-striped wallpaper we were supposed to be helping my mom put up. But that’s another story…and I plan on using it in the final book in this trilogy.

  For now, sit back, kick off your shoes, keep those chocolate chip cookies handy (but be careful with the chocolate milk!) and be prepared to meet a man who is too stubborn to wed and the woman who captures his heart. I hope you fall for Deputy U.S. Marshal Ryan Knight the way both Courtney and I did! We both seem to have a weakness for a man out of uniform (grin).

  Happy reading,

  For my editor,

  Malle Vallik,

  who hears the

  creative voices and

  understands the

  magic of the process.

  Prologue

  “OKAY, ARE YOU ready for our next assignment?” Betty Goodie demanded of her two sisters, shoving the snowy white bangs of her Prince Valiant haircut off her forehead.

  “As ready as I’ll ever be.” Muriel’s voice quavered nervously.

  “We’re fairy godmothers,” Hattie stated firmly, shifting the chirping canary perched on the crown of her lemon yellow hat. In the process, she nearly poked out her eye with her color-coordinated magic wand. If there was one thing Hattie prided herself on, it was her ability to accessorize. “It’s our job to be ready…for anything.”

  The three sisters were gathered at their prearranged meeting place. Ryan Knight’s bedroom in the middle of the night. Moonlight was their only illumination. Betty was perched atop a blue lamp shade while Muriel chose to do her pacing on the pine headboard of Ryan’s bed.

  Hattie, meanwhile, was doing her primping from above. She’d taken over one blade of the stationary ceiling fan. She loved being higher than anyone else.

  “You claim we should be ready for anything, but we weren’t ready for what happened at the Knight triplets’ christening thirty-three years ago,” Muriel, the practical one in the family, recalled.

  “Don’t remind me.” Hattie shuddered, removing her hat to run nervous fingers through her silvery curls before jamming her overstated headgear back on her head. The canary chirped in protest. “First, Betty messed up by spilling too much common sense and sex appeal fairy dust on baby Jason Knight, then you also blundered and spilled too much stubborness and humor fairy dust on baby Ryan Knight.”

  “And then you really screwed up and splattered an overdose of intelligence and attitude fairy dust on baby Anastasia,” Muriel interjected.

  “I did not screw up!” Hattie declared indignantly. “I merely made a slight miscalculation. I was still a novice at flying in those days. I’m much better at it now.” To prove her point, she batted her petite gossamer wings and left her perch on the fan to perform a perfect midair somersault before daintily flitting to the open doorway and back again.

  “Show-off!” Muriel scoffed.

  “Fussbudget!” Hattie retorted.

  “No fighting, girls.” The brusque order came from Betty, who was the oldest of the Goodie triplets by ninety seconds and therefore considered herself to be the leader of their group. “Now that we’ve accomplished our goals with his brother, it’s time to turn our attention to Ryan.”

  Muriel paused from her pacing long enough to gaze down at their charge, who was sound asleep. Peering through the darkness, she made her magic wand glow with magical fairy light in an attempt to get a better view. “He doesn’t look like he’d cause any trouble.”

  “Hah!” Hattie was clearly skeptical. “Looks are deceptive. Remember, thanks to you, Ryan got too much from the stubbornness and humor end of the characteristic scales.”

  Muriel bragged, “His practical jokes are famous.”

  “More like infamous,” Betty noted.

  “Are you sure he didn’t get too much sloppiness, not stubbornness?” Hattie looked around the messy bedroom with censure. Clothing was haphazardly tossed over a chair while the leg of a pair of jeans trailed onto the floor. There was no empty space on top of the cluttered dresser, which is why Betty had been forced to perch atop the lamp shade. The pine floor was littered with a damp bath towel and several magazines, among other things.

  “He’s a guy,” Muriel defended him.

  “His brother, Jason, is a guy,” Hattie argued, “and he is extremely neat.” />
  Betty rejoined the conversation. “The neater they are, the harder they fall,” she firmly maintained. “Our work with Jason is done. We united him with his soul mate. Now we have to do the same with Ryan.”

  “I still say that a grape jelly jar is no place for you to keep something as magical as fairy dust.” Hattie’s soft musical voice was laced with disapproval.

  Betty was unrepentant. “I don’t use a grape jelly jar anymore.” She deliberately paused a beat before adding, “I’ve switched to strawberry. And I only bring that out at christenings, so don’t get your wings in a knot.”

  Hattie stamped her foot, her high heels clicking on the polished fan blade. “I keep telling you and Muriel that you two don’t show enough respect for the importance of what we do. Fairy godmothers are an institution. We don’t fall into the paranormal realm like witches. We’re…mythical.” Hattie said the word with great reverence.

  “I’ll tell you what’s mythical,” Muriel retorted. “The concept of time off. I say we need a union to get better working hours and benefits. Look at what happened to our predecessors.”

  Hattie shot her an exasperated look. “Our predecessors retired after 250 years and are doing just fine.” Frowning, she added the reprimand, “You’ve never taken our jobs seriously.”

  “Hey, I wasn’t the one who thought being a fairy godmother would be a lark.”

  “Yes, you were,” Hattie maintained. “You and Betty both.”

  “That was only to cheer you up,” Muriel said, “after it was too late to change things. The truth is, we wouldn’t be in this mess if you hadn’t gotten in the wrong line in heaven. If you’d put on your glasses instead of being so vain, you would have read the sign and seen that we were at the wrong location.”

  “You were the one who liked that line because it was shorter than the others.”

  “We learned why.” Muriel shoved an impatient hand through the spiky tufts of her short white hair, making her cowlick stick up even worse than usual and giving her the appearance of a woodpecker. “This fairy godmothering business is hard work.”

  “I would have preferred being a guardian angel,” Hattie confessed. “Their wings are so much more elegant looking. And they’re taller.”

  “Their wings are taller?” Muriel asked.

  “No.” Hattie frowned, before remembering that it caused wrinkles. She had enough of those. “The angels are taller than we are.”

  “Crickets are taller than we are,” Muriel said.

  Betty clapped her hands to regain their attention. “Enough with the ancient history already. We don’t have time for this.”

  A snore from below startled them all, reminding them of their purpose. Three pairs of blue fairy godmothers’ eyes honed in on Ryan.

  He slept on his right side. His tousled head lay on the pillow in such a way as to give them a good look at his profile; his high forehead, heavy brows, thick lashes on lean cheekbones, the noble nose and curved expressive lips. The rumpled comforter covered a body that was slim but as strong as steel. One muscular forearm, dappled with dark hair, was flung across the bottom sheet as if he were reaching for something—or someone—in his sleep.

  “Well, he’s not quite as good-looking as his brother.” This proclamation came from Hattie, who put a great deal of stock in appearances.

  “Stop picking on him.” Muriel flew down to the base of the bed to direct her magic wand toward Ryan’s bare foot On command, the denim comforter covering the rest of him shifted to cover his foot as well. “I like him.”

  “I like him, too,” Hattie said. “It’s obvious from the lines on his face that he laughs a lot.”

  “Thanks to me.” Muriel proudly threw back her shoulders, thereby displaying her ample bosom clothed in a white shirt and photographer’s vest.

  “He’s also got a stubborn streak a mile long thanks to you,” Betty reminded her. “Remember how he did a lot of the work on this house himself when he first moved in here, stubbornly refusing to call in a plumber to repair that leaky gas pipe.”

  “And almost blew himself up in the process,” Hattie added.

  “I think he’s learned his lesson since then,” Muriel loyally declared.

  Betty didn’t look so sure. “Regarding home repairs, maybe. Not his love life.”

  “He doesn’t have much of a love life,” Muriel noted, “not with his job as a U.S. Marshal.”

  “Deputy U.S. Marshal,” Hattie corrected.

  “Picky, picky.” Muriel stuck out her tongue.

  “Enough.” Betty clapped her hands imperiously. “No more bickering. Let’s get down to work here.”

  1

  “WHY DON’T YOU just shoot me now instead?” Deputy U.S. Marshal Ryan Knight said to his boss, Wes Freeze.

  “Shoot you?” Taking his time, Wes leaned farther back in his office chair and fixed Ryan with his trademark steely-eyed scrutiny. “Nah,” he murmured slowly, his voice laced with enjoyment. “I’d rather just torture you slowly and watch you squirm.”

  “This will definitely make me squirm,” Ryan assured him, leaning forward in his chair to make his point. At thirty-three, he’d run into his share of trouble and knew his strengths…and his weaknesses. “Trust me, I’m not the right man for this job.”

  “Trust you? As in the time you said to trust you, no one was going to do anything wild on my birthday this year?”

  “Hey,” Ryan protested, “I didn’t think hiring that bag lady comedienne to do a roast about your life was all that wild.”

  “Compared to what? The year before when you convinced me that I’d won a million dollars in a magazine contest?”

  Ryan couldn’t stop the brief smile. “You’ve got to admit that the guys did a great job making those documents looks official. Even the van was authentic, down to the Prize Patrol lettering on the side.”

  “I don’t have to admit anything, except that you made me look like a damn fool,” Wes growled.

  Ryan shifted uncomfortably. “That was never my intention, sir.”

  Wes’s office in the Portland district office felt as if it were getting smaller by the second. Sitting there facing his disapproving boss, Ryan suddenly recalled facing an equally unappreciative principal back at Chicago’s Lincoln High School. Even then Ryan’s practical jokes were legendary and were no more appreciated by the principal than they were by Wes now. But then Ryan considered neither man was exactly known for his well-developed sense of humor.

  “Let’s get back to the matter at hand, shall we?” Wes tapped his index finger on the open manila folder on his desk. “After only two hours in protective custody Anton Leva took off.”

  Ryan could feel his facial muscles tightening. “I accept full responsibility for his escape happening on my watch.”

  “Good. I’m glad to hear that. Although how he managed to squeeze out that dinky bathroom window, I have no idea,” Wes drawled with a shake of his head. “Had to be like threading rope through the eye of a needle.” Wes fixed that steely-eyed gaze on Ryan once again, and Ryan resisted the urge to squirm. “We need him back to testify in the Zopo brothers counterfeiting case. The U.S. Attorney’s office is not amused that you lost their chief material witness. And frankly I’m not laughing, either. Something like this doesn’t make our office look good. I want it cleared up. I want Leva apprehended.” Wes’s lips twitched in what could have been a smile. “Given his close ties with his niece, Courtney Delaney, it’s only a matter of time before he contacts her. After all, she is his only living relative and she’s right here in the Portland area.”

  Damn his luck, Ryan thought. He’d only been given the Anton Leva assignment after another deputy had called in sick. And damn his luck that Courtney was involved. The last time he’d seen her had been back in Chicago.

  “So I want you to stick close to this woman,” Wes continued. “The Zopo brothers could use Ms. Delaney to get to Leva.”

  “I understand that, sir. And, believe me, no one wants Anton back or Courtney k
ept safe more than I do.” The thought of her being in danger made Ryan’s blood run cold. The problem was that the idea of seeing her again made his body hot and bothered. He and Courtney had been lovers. Their breakup three years ago had been as passionate and stormy as their relationship. “Given my previous history with her, it might be better to have a female deputy interview Courtney. She’d probably be more willing to talk to her, given that bonding thing that goes on between women.”

  “That previous history is precisely why I chose you. That and a chance for you to redeem yourself. Besides, I don’t have a female deputy available right now for…bonding.” Wes’s mocking voice clearly displayed his irritation. “You’re the best deputy in the Northwest. You and I both know it.”

  “Courtney isn’t going to like me showing up.”

  “She doesn’t have to like it. Neither do you. What with LeSoto on family leave and Matsumo out sick, we’re short staffed. So you’re to provide protection to Ms. Delaney, if needed, while using her to locate Leva. You caused this mess by letting Anton Leva slip away, you clean it up.” Wes’s authoritative tone left no room for argument. “Have I made myself clear?”

  “Yes, sir.”

  “Good. Oh, and Ryan, just so you know. I plan on being out of town on my next birthday.”

  Ryan sighed. “Understood, sir.”

  RYAN LINGERED OVER a second cup of coffee in the only diner which happened to be located across from the only bank in Fell, Oregon. The small town was about an hour east of Portland. Courtney lived here, and had for the past year. So close and yet so far away.

  Whenever he’d thought of Courtney, and he had thought of her plenty, he had pictured her where he’d left her, back in the urban energy of Chicago.