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 news 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?
Carolyn Brown is a NEW York Times and USA Today bestselling romance author of more than fifty books.
Brown's books have been translated into nine foreign languages and fourteen have been reprinted in large print format. Her books have been reviewed in Library Journal, Booklist, Romantic Times, Romance Reviews Today, Publisher's Weekly, Cataromance, USA Today and Romance Reader At Heart. Two of her romances have been published as Japanese Manga books.
Brown writes cowboy romance for Sourcebooks: The Lucky Trilogy, the Honky Tonk Series and now the Spikes & Spurs Series.
She has also written more than forty sweet romances for Avalon; several historical series as well as contemporary stand alone romance novels.
Sourcebooks will publish her debut women's fiction novel in August, 2012.
Check out her website at carolynlbrown.com
