Ira McNewell was supposed to be dead. The government had sent a telegram saying he had been killed in action, yet there he was, sprawled out beneath Alice on the floor of the Black Swan Hotel. Ira had been engaged to her sister Catherine when he'd gone off to the war, not Alice. Not it was up to her to give him the terrible ne... ws that the flu had wiped out his whole family, and his fiancee had married another man. To soften the blow, she hired him to work for her at the hotel. Poor Ira didn't know if he was doing the right thing or not. Alice had been tagged the village idiot when she was just a child. Having her for a boss wasn't the best-case scenario, but like thousands of other soldiers coming home from the war, he was broke and hungry. Working at the Black Swan was at least a job, and jobs were hard to come by. Alice had never minded that the folks in Huttig, Arkansas, thought she was dim-witted. At least not until Ira came home. She'd been in love with him since she was a girl, but she wasn't stupid enough to think he could ever love her back...or could he?read more
BIOGRAPHY Carolyn Brown is a New York Times, USA Today, Wall Street Journal, Publisher’s
Weekly and #1 Amazon and #1 Washington Post bestselling author. She is the author of
more than 100 novels and several novellas. She’s a recipient of the Bookseller’s Best
Award, Montlake Romance’s prestigious Montlake Diamond A... ward, and also a three-
time recipient of the National Reader’s Choice Award. Brown has been published for
more than 25 years, and her books have been translated 21 foreign languages, and have
sold more than 10 million copies worldwide.
When she’s not writing, she likes to plot new stories in her backyard with her tom cat,
Boots Randolph Terminator Outlaw, who protects the yard from all kinds of wicked
varmints like crickets, locusts, and spiders. Visit her at www.carolynbrownbooks.com.read more