Having forfeited his marriage and custody of his children in his ambition to achieve partner status, a Houston attorney works to defend a pharmaceutical company whose drug may have killed a young girl, and when the plaintiff's counsel turns out to be his high-school sweetheart, an unexpected romance ensues. Back after The Loner, obsessive lawyer Luke Creed is about to pay The Price for serving corporate interests. Copyright 2002 Reed Business Information, Inc. Best-selling and prolific author Johnston excels at both historical and contemporary romances and now makes her hardcover debut with a particularly timely tale. Luke Creed, introduced in The Loner [BKL Mr 15 02], is about to get a partnership in his prestigious Houston law firm, but his ambition has cost him his marriage and custody of his daughters. On a visit home he runs into his old high-school sweetheart, Amy, and realizes immediately that he still has feelings for her. But she has escaped a difficult marriage, and love is the last thing on her mind. Luke returns to Houston and a new case, which involves a woman who is suing the drug company he represents, concerned not with money but with getting the drug her daughter was taking before she died taken off the market. Her attorney? Amy. When Luke realizes his daughter is taking the same drug, he risks everything to help Amy to investigate the many deaths associated with this drug, a dangerous quest that draws them together even as complications multiply. Maria Hatton Copyright © American Library Association. All rights reserved Joan Johnston, the New York Times bestselling author of Sisters Found, The Loner, The Texan, and The Cowboy, has written forty-four award-winning historical and contemporary novels. She received a master's degree in theater from the University of Illinois and also graduated with honors from the University of Texas at Austin School of Law. She lives in South Florida and Colorado. Chapter One "Blackthornes and Creeds are like oil and water," Luke Creed told his brother Sam. "They just don't mix." "If that were true, Mom wouldn't have married a Blackthorne after Dad died, would she?" Sam replied as he stuffed his mouth full of blueberry pancakes. "I take it back," Luke said, pouring blueberry syrup over the newest batch of pancakes his sister-in-law had dropped onto his plate. "Oil and water don't mix, but at least they can coexist in the same space." "Big brother is always right," Sam said. "I -- " Luke waved his fork to cut off his older brother. "Blackthornes and Creeds are more like gasoline and matches. Put them together and you end up with one helluva blaze." Too often in his youth, Luke had seen the deadly conflagration burn white hot, destroying without care or conscience. In the twelve years since his mother had married Jackson Blackthorne, Luke hadn't forgotten or forgiven the devastation his family had suffered at Blackthorne hands. His father murdered, his brother crippled, their cattle infected with brucellosis, priceless cutting horses disappearing into thin air, with every disaster leading straight back to some Blackthorne. Which was why Luke dreaded having lunch with his mother and stepfather today. These days, Blackthornes and Creeds were supposed to be one happy family. Luke hadn't bought into the fantasy. He looked across the breakfast table at Sam, who would spend the rest of his life in a wheelchair thanks to an "accident" on the high school football field that involved a Blackthorne. "How can you stand working with that Blackthorne bastard day in and day out?" "At least I'm working out-of-doors. How can you stand working in a law office in the big city every day?" Sam replied. It wasn't easy for Luke, living in the city, but it beat the alternative -- working for his stepfather -- all to hell and back. "We don't see nearly enough of you since you moved to Houston," Sam said. "Why don't you come back here and work with me on the ranch?" "You mean work for Blackjack," Luke said bitterly. "He owns Three Oaks now." The two modern-day South Texas ranching families, one rich and powerful, the other poor and struggling, had been mortal enemies since the Civil War, fighting over a piece of land owned by the Creeds along Bitter Creek, a trickle of water that never ran dry, even in the dryest years. Generations of Blackthornes had killed and crippled generations of Creeds in an attempt to force them off that precious piece of land. But the Creeds had hung on. And Three Oaks had remained lodged, like a chicken bone in the throat, smack dab in the middle of the Blackthorne ranching empire, an eight-hundred-square-mile ranch named for that same Bitter Creek. When widower Jackson Blackthorne had married widow Ren Creed, their marriage had united the two families -- and the two pieces of land. With nothing left to fight over, the feud should have been over. As far as Luke was concerned, there was too much bad blood betwee