The Thawing of Mara

Janet Dailey

Janet Dailey's Americana Series

Dangerous Masquerade (Alabama)

Northern Magic (Alaska)

Sonora Sundown (Arizona)

Valley Of the Vapours (Arkansas)

Fire And Ice (California)

After the Storm (Colorado)

Difficult Decision (Connecticut)

The Matchmakers (Delaware)

Southern Nights (Florida)

Night Of The Cotillion (Georgia)

Kona Winds (Hawaii)

The Travelling Kind (Idaho)

A Lyon's Share (Illinois)

The Indy Man (Indiana)

The Homeplace (Iowa)

The Mating Season (Kansas)

Bluegrass King (Kentucky)

The Bride Of The Delta Queen (Louisiana)

Summer Mahogany (Maine)

Bed Of Grass (Maryland)

That Boston Man (Massachusetts)

Enemy In Camp (Michigan)

Giant Of Mesabi (Minnesota)

A Tradition Of Pride (Mississippi)

Show Me (Missouri)

Big Sky Country (Montana)

Boss Man From Ogallala (Nebraska)

Reilly's Woman (Nevada)

Heart Of Stone (New Hampshire)

One Of The Boys (New Jersey)

Land Of Enchantment (New Mexico)

Beware Of The Stranger (New York)

That Carolina Summer (North Carolina)

Lord Of the High Lonesome (North Dakota)

The Widow And The Wastrel (Ohio)

Six White Horses (Oklahoma)

To Tell The Truth (Oregon)

The Thawing Of Mara (Pennsylvania)

Strange Bedfellow (Rhode Island)

Low Country Liar (South Carolina)

Dakota Dreamin' (South Dakota)

Sentimental Journey (Tennessee)

Savage Land (Texas)

A Land Called Deseret (Utah)

Green Mountain Man (Vermont)

Tidewater Lover (Virginia)

For Mike's Sake (Washington)

Wild And Wonderful (West Virginia)

With A Little Luck (Wisconsin)

Darling Jenny (Wyoming)

Other Janet Dailey Titles You Might Enjoy

American Dreams

Aspen Gold

Fiesta San Antonio

For Bitter Or Worse

The Great Alone

Heiress

The Ivory Cane

Legacies

Masquerade

The Master Fiddler

No Quarter Asked

Rivals

Something Extra

Sweet Promise

Tangled Vines

Introduction

Introducing JANET DAILEY AMERICANA. Every novel in this collection is your passport to a romantic tour of the United States through time-honored favorites by America's First Lady of romance fiction. Each of the fifty novels is set in a different state, researched by Janet and her husband, Bill. For the Daileys it was an odyssey of discovery. For you, it's the journey of a lifetime.

Preface

When I first started writing back in the Seventies, my husband Bill and I were retired and traveling all over the States with our home—a 34' travel trailer—in tow. That's when Bill came up with the great idea of my writing a romance novel set in each one of our fifty states. It was an idea I ultimately accomplished before switching to mainstream fiction and hitting all the international bestseller lists.

As we were preparing to reissue these early titles, I initially planned to update them all—modernize them, so to speak, and bring them into the new high-tech age. Then I realized I couldn't do that successfully any more than I could take a dress from the Seventies and redesign it into one that would look as if it were made yesterday. That's when I saw that the true charm of these novels is their look back on another time and another age. Over the years, they have become historical novels, however recent the history. When you read them yourself, I know you will feel the same.

So, enjoy, and happy reading to all!
 

Chapter One

"MARA?"

Over the whine of the electric mixer, Mara heard her name called, but she didn't bother to acknowledge it. Instead she added more sugar to the egg whites and continued to beat them until they formed stiff peaks. She was spooning the meringue onto the pie filling when she heard the hum of the wheelchair approaching the kitchen.

"Mara, the mailman just drove by." The chair rolled to a stop inside the room. "I'm expecting some correspondence from Fitzgerald. Will you see if it's come?"

Mara didn't turn around. "I'm busy at the moment, Adam." She continued to spread the meringue thickly over the pie, ignoring the instant of tense silence.

"Will you please stop calling me that?" The request sliced tersely through the air. "I am your father and you will address me as such."

Over her shoulder, Mara glanced at the man whose surname of Prentiss she had rightfully carried since birth. Her heart turned to stone at the sight of the handsome man imprisoned in the wheelchair.

His hair was as black as her own, except at the temple where wisps of silver gave him a distinguished air. They shared the same deep color of eyes. There was enough similarity in their sculpted features that there was no mistaking they were father and daughter.

"I'm not denying my parentage, Adam." Her voice was as cool as her attitude.

He whitened at her continued usage of his given name, his fingers tightening on the armrest of his chair. Mara noted his reaction with indifferent satisfaction and let her attention return to the pie. After swirling the white top into decorative peaks, she opened the door to the preheated oven and set the pie inside to brown the meringue. All the while the man in the wheelchair remained silent.

"It looks good." Her father forced the words out, striving for lightness and a degree of familiarity. "What kind is it? Chocolate, I hope."

"It's lemon," Mara retorted, not changing the temperature of her voice.

"You should make some chocolate cream pie sometime," he suggested.

"I loathe chocolate pie." She set the beaters and bowl in the sink and ran the water from the tap.

"You didn't always hate it." It was almost a challenge. Then his voice became warm and reminiscent. "When you were growing up, we used to argue over who got the last slice of chocolate pie. We usually ended up splitting it."

"That was a long time ago." Her curtness dismissed the idea that the past had anything to do with today.

"Your mother made the best chocolate cream pies I've ever tasted." Adam Prentiss went on. "I don't know where Rosemary got the recipe, but—"

Mara pivoted. Anger blazed in her dark eyes, burning off the frigid aloofness that usually encased her. It consumed her with an all-enraging hatred.

"How dare you speak my mother's name!" she accused in a seething breath.

"She was my wife," he stated, levelly meeting her glare.

"Was she?" The taunting challenge was drawn through tightly clenched teeth as years of bitterness trembled through Mara. "You conveniently forgot about that when you ran off with that little tramp, didn't you?"

"I didn't forget it," Adam Prentiss denied.

"You had a wife and child." Her voice was rising in volume. You abandoned us without so much as a backward glance!"

"You were only fifteen at the time, Mara," he attempted to reason. "You couldn't know—"

"I was there!" she flared. "I know what happened. When you walked out on my mother for another woman, it killed her. It just took a few years before she literally died. She adored you, she worshipped you. She ate, breathed and slept for you. You were the only thing that mattered to her."

"Do you think I wasn't sorry?" her father retaliated. "Do you honestly believe I didn't wish there was another way? Do you think I didn't care?"

"All you cared about was that young blonde," Mara retorted, and turned away in disgust. "My God, she was only a few years older than I was!"

"I was in love with Jocelyn and I won't apologize for that," he said quietly. "But as strange as it sounds, it is possible to care about two women at the same time. I did care about your mother."

"I don't believe you. I saw the callous way you treated her," she reminded him. "Even before that blonde, you flirted with everything in skirts."

"For God's sake, Mara, those incidents were perfectly harmless." His impatient reply was angry.

"Harmless?" A bitterly amused sound came from her throat. "Yes, mother always used to laugh them off, but I could see the hurt in her eyes. You must have seen it, too. But it never bothered you, did it?"

"I don't have to justify my behavior to you. I've never pretended to be perfect." He was coldly indignant.

"But you managed to convince mother you were," Mara continued her attack with vindictive zeal. "She used to think she was the luckiest woman on earth because she was your wife."

"I was in love with someone else. Do you honestly believe I should have stayed married to your mother when I knew that?" her father challenged. "Both of us would have been miserable if I'd done that."

"So you walked out on her. That way she was the only one who was miserable," she pointed out spitefully.

"All right, I hurt your mother. I admit that," he declared in agitation. "But give me credit for providing for her financially. I turned everything over to her—the house, the land, money, everything I owned except my clothes. I had nothing. I still have nothing. You got it all when she died."
 

"Did you think she'd leave it to you?" Mara jeered.

"No." It was a sighing answer, a mixture of defeat and exasperation. "Haven't I paid enough, Mara? Jocelyn was killed in the crash that did this to me. I'm permanently crippled. The doctors have even warned that as I grow older, my condition may deteriorate to the point where I won't even be able to get around in a wheelchair."

As the fight went out of his voice, Mara's fiery anger left, too. An icy calm stole through her, cooling her features into a frozen mask and freezing her senses to his plight. She walked to the oven where the curling peaks of the pie's meringue were the color of golden toast.

"If you're attempting to arouse my pity—" with a pot holder, Mara took the pie from the oven and set it on a wire rack to cool "—you're wasting your time."