Dare the Devil Read online

  What fans and reviewers are saying about Elaine's updated eBooks:

  SPECIAL DELIVERY

  Five Stars – A lovely romance with a touch of steam

  Wistfulskimmus Book Reviews, Buckfastleigh, UK 1/17/2012

  This was a super little romance with just a wee bit of heat thrown in. I loved the slow burn of the relationship between Roxanne and Bram. The bickering and sparring back and forth made me laugh out loud in places. Then Roxanne's succumbing to her feelings in the end was just wonderful. It was all told very skillfully by the author. The characters were solid and believable and the pace of the story was just right.

  In short a great love story, set in the dead of winter, to warm the cockles of any readers heart!

  DOUBLE OCCUPANCY

  Five Stars - Hot & Humid,

  Stephanie Haddad – Love on the Bookshelf 12/27/2011

  In Double Occupancy, Chase does well by her characters, giving them room in their close-quartered villa to really express themselves and draw the reader into their love story. Their witty banter will have you laughing but their hot and steamy moments will have you begging for more. By isolating her hero and heroine like this, Chase has given the reader the chance to indulge in an R&R too, focusing on the budding relationship between Travis and Casey. Get lost in this story as though you're resting up in the villa for yourself... I found it pretty hard to put this one down and climb back into the real world, myself! The Three R’s: Rating: X for some smokin’ hot lovin’ and some pretty explicit word choices ahem, Travis.

  Recommendation: The perfect vacation getaway when you can’t actually go anywhere! Read this one during a snowstorm to keep warm.

  Re-read: Again, Revisit as needed!

  CALCULATED RISK

  Five Stars – Awesome & funny as heck!

  Luv2read – 11/29/2011

  The whole time I was reading this book I was thinking how good this could become one of those Hallmark channel romance story...without the steamy sex, of course. I adored both Quintin & Stevie the whole time they were making their plans, it was hysterical. Very good read & one you cannot go wrong…It was heartwarming

  LADY BE BAD

  Four hot cups of coffee – 7/2011

  Coffee Time Romance and More – Danielle

  LADY BE BAD is one of those novels that hook you from the first and Ms. Chase knows how to grab the reader's interest quickly. The interaction between Marlayna and her memories of Noah give us some insight into the way the relationship was before they split up and before she met up with her ex again. To top it off, you have the dynamic duo Paul and Sylvia who make this story so much better with their sarcastic air and dry sense of humor. The struggle that Noah has with his own self-image is a major obstacle in the novel, and I am happy to say it was a great balance; not quickly fixed, but not dragging on until the problem was beat to death. What really had me enjoying this novel was the fact that I misinterpreted who Marlayna was, seeing her as a weak woman who seems extremely needy when in reality she is a strong and vibrant woman who shows Noah she can help him heal if he will give her half a chance.

  VIDEO VIXEN

  Five Stars – Another belter

  Reviewer – Kim Fowler 1/29/2012

  This was another fantastic story by this author. This will be the third or fourth book of hers that I have read and they just keep getting better. Vikki tries to keep Daniel at arms-length by vamping it up as Vixen, she won't allow him to get close because of a secret in her past. All this does is intrigue him and strengthens the chase! What she didn't anticipate was falling in love with him. This was a lovely well written love story. The teasing back and forth between Vikki/Vixen and Daniel had me yelling 'Get on with it!' But the slow build up made the final get together all the more poignant and believable. This seems to be the author's style, slow build up and a heart stopping finale. I love it! If you like this author, this is a must. If you haven't read any before – give it a go, you'll be richly rewarded.

  DESIGNING WOMAN

  Five Stars – Was a Winner!

  Kayeoloha – 1/13/2012

  I've read all of Elaine Raco Chase's books and this is my absolute favorite. I loved the strong, smart, intellectual characters and the plot was well developed. Whenever I laugh right out loud - it's a keeper. And I laughed a lot. Even on the second & third reading it was still fun. A must read.

  DARE THE DEVIL

  Four Stars - Manic Reviewer: IvyD 12/2011

  Dare the Devil is a fun, fast paced, adventurous romance.

  Ms. Chase has a wonderfully descriptive style that brought the setting and characters to vivid life. I enjoyed everything about Dare the Devil.

  Cam is a stunt woman, not your run of the mill job. I love her independence, intelligence, individuality, loyalty, and humor. Cam ranks in my top 10 favorite heroines. I love her strength and willingness to say and do what’s necessary, even when it’s difficult. Love her!

  The conflict between Cam and Thor comes from the inside, quite a treat and change from other people and situations causing the trouble.

  RULES OF THE GAME

  Manic Readers – 4.5 Stars -2/2012

  "A good read for beach, fireside or poolside."

  Meet Camilla Stirling and Luthor Devlin in Dare the Devil

  The men were now only twenty feet away. A silent battle ensued. She stared at them. They stared at her. Astonishment, incredulity, and intrigue chased themselves over assorted sun-bronzed masculine faces.

  She decided to play dumb. Let them make the first move. Perhaps keep them guessing, keep them wondering, keep them off-balance – just until the others arrived.

  Her inherent sense of self-preservation and survival took over. She judged each man individually, assessing her own odds. The three teenage boys were quickly dismissed. Her eyes gauged the others. They varied in age from mid-twenties to sixties. Bodies matched faces – tough and strong, courtesy of hard, physical labor. She knew she could disable six of the wranglers rather quickly.

  Her gaze shifted to the man leading a wild-eyed buckskin stallion. Despite the fact that no one had violated the silence, she did not doubt that he was the boss. While the black hat he was wearing cast a shadow on his face, she easily recognized an unmistakable air of self-confidence and authority. It showed in his powerful build, in his walk and his impressive carriage.

  And if such nicely packaged masculine charms had been displayed in any other place and under any other circumstances, she would have been the first one to show appropriate feminine appreciation. But this was not the right time or the right place.

  She did, however, notice a subtle change in a few of the younger cowboys. It was her fault, she quickly acknowledged. The silence had gone on too long. While she had been assessing them, they had been assessing her. Caution and disbelief had been replaced by that old hormonal curse - lust.

  When she saw leers slant half-dozen lips, her thumb, and forefinger pressed into the cat’s neck. His wide mouthed, fanged snarl immediately sent the horses into hysterics and restored more respectful expressions on the men's’ faces.

  Her victory, however, was brief. One minute later, she heard the distinct snap of a bolt-action repeating rifle and found three of them aimed at the cat and a fourth at her.

  “Hold it, boys.” Devlin stepped between the guns and their targets. “Let’s keep calm. Buck, pull the horse’s way back. All right, relax, everybody. There’s no need to get trigger happy.”

  “Maybe she doesn’t understand English,” Nate piped, observing her moccasins. “Let me try some Blackfeet.” He cleared his throat and offered, “Kokipi sni menuah.”

  Devlin exhaled a painful groan. “Nate! I don’t think ‘do not fear, let’s take a bath’ is very appropriate!"

 
With one eye on the men, she lowered her chin and tried hard to control the laughter that threatened to bubble forth. Her left hand made a graceful gesture that shielded her smile and then moved on to straighten the bear-claw necklace at her throat.

  The instant the man called Devlin advanced two more steps toward her, she stiffened in wary attention. Fingers tightened on the cat’s leather collar, her left hand dropping against the ivory handle of the knife sheathed in her loincloth.

  Suddenly, he found himself facing two predators. He didn’t miss the lethal quality in her taut, ready-for-combat stance. Neither had the saber-toothed tiger. A growl rolled in his throat; powerful haunches were tensed for attack.

  Dare the Devil

  By

  Elaine Raco Chase

  Smashword Edition Published by Elaine Raco Chase

  Smashword eBook Edition License Notes

  This eBook is licensed for your personal enjoyment only. This eBook may not be re-sold or given away to other people. If you would like to share this book with another person, please purchase an additional copy for each person you share it with.

  If you’re reading this book and did not purchase it, or it was not purchased for your use only, then you should return and purchase your own copy. Thank you for respecting the author’s work.

  ©2011 by Elaine Raco Chase Updated with over 20 pages of new material

  ©1987 by Elaine Raco Chase Original Paperback Edition: Dell Ecstasy #499 ISBN 0-440-11759-3

  All of the characters in this book are fictitious. Any resemblance to actual persons, living or dead, is purely coincidental.

  Author's Note:

  A special thanks to my great friend, Janelle Taylor, for her knowledge of Blackfeet Kokipi sni menuah

  And to all the Glacier Park Rangers who helped bring Native American legends into my life.

  Chapter 1

  "I found ‘em! I found ‘em!" The youthful rider reined his pony so sharply that the brown and white pinto reared and made the other horses skitter sideways, snorting uneasily. “Wait’ll you see – you won’t believe – but it’s true – it’s real.” The boy’s words became tangled by his excitement. “Crazy but real. They’re there. I saw them.” He held up his palm. “Honest.”

  “Take it easy, son,” commanded a husky, authoritative voice. “Here, cool down with this.” A canteen was passed by twelve pairs of hands until it reached its mark. “Billy, you shouldn’t have gone off on your own. We were just about to turn ourselves into a search party.” Blue eyes watched in silent amusement while the thirteen-year-old’s face went through animated changes as he guzzled the canteen water with hearty abandon, finishing with a loud burp.

  Billy Campbell wiped the back of his hand across his mouth, mixing a dribble of water with dust that smeared a dirty path over freckled cheeks. “I – I’m sorry, Mr. Devlin, but,” he gulped, “wait till you hear what I found.”

  “Just what did you find?”

  “Tracks.” Billy yelped. “Big tracks. Biggest things I’ve ever seen.”

  “I knew it, Thor,” Nate Garvin interjected. “Those damn rustlers are usin’ trucks to steal the cattle.” He yanked down the brim on the sweat-stained raffia straw hat to further shade his eyes from the bright July sun. “Probably an eighteen-wheeler. Describe what you saw, boy.”

  “Not tire tracks,” Billy told the foreman. “Animal, Nate. Funny ones. Like this.” His arms formed a circle. “Cat tracks too. Big. Real big.”

  “Stop exaggeratin’ boy,” Nate demanded over the excited whispers of the two other teenagers who were riding with the wranglers. Saddle leather creaked under his lean weight as he turned to his boss. “What in hell was in your canteen, Thor?”

  “Just spring water.”

  “I knew you wouldn’t believe me!” Billy’s plaintive falsetto sliced through the chatter. Taking a deep breath, the teenager sat taller in the saddle. “Well, I saw more than just tracks,” he added stubbornly. “I heard –“

  “And just what did you hear, boy?” Nate spat a stream of tobacco juice at an untrampled anthill.

  Billy’s gaze didn’t waver. “Snarling. Lots of snarling and … trumpeting.”

  “Snarlin’ and trumpetin’?” The foreman gave a loud hoot that was echoed by the ranch hands. He closed one brown eye, and stared with cold contemplation at the surly youth. “Say, didn’t you boys stay up late last night watchin’ horror movies on Thor’s vid-e-o gadget? I say your ‘magination’s workin’ overtime. Maybe you had a … day mare.”

  “This wasn’t my imagination or a day mare either.” Billy shifted his gaze to Thor. “I – I saw one of ‘em, Mr. Devlin.” His dark eyes seemed to double in size, dominating his small face. “It was big. Big as a mountain. Covered with fur and tusks. Tusks long as a fence rail. It – it was…pre…prehysterical!”

  Thor studied the youth for a moment, then cleared his throat. “All right, Billy Campbell, lead on to this prehistorical find.”

  “Yes, sir!” Wheeling the pony left, Billy let out a war cry that he hoped would echo the twenty-two miles over the Continental Divide to the Blackfeet Indian Reservation.

  Forty-eight hooves thundered a path through the prairie grasses, trampling the pasqueflowers and slashing the blossoms on the yellow bells. The riders did not temper their heat-lathered horses until the towering aspen grew too thick in the groves to allow any speed.

  “The clearing’s comin’ up,” a breathless Billy yelled. “That’s where I first spotted all the tracks. I saw the – the beast at the base of the escarpment.”

  Thor’s hand signal halted the riders at the edge of the coppice. “Maybe we better take a long-distance look-see at your beast.” He reached into his saddlebag for binoculars.

  Nate shook his head. “Beast, huh? I’ll be damned if I don’t think your ‘magination is runnin’ like the boy’s.”

  “It goes with the territory,” came his boss’s grinning pronouncement. “Time seems to stand still here. Glacier Country has peaks so steep and remote they’ve never been climbed and contain virtually every predator and prey species since the Ice Age.”

  The foreman emitted a disgusted snort. “Yeah, but you don’t actually believe that Billy saw a…a…”

  “Stranger things, Nate.” His voice was oddly noncommittal. Thor focused on the vast eminence of jagged limestone mountains. The formidable landscape never failed to hold him in awe of Nature’s freezing hand that eons ago carved cirques, shaved peaks, and moved mountains. “I haven’t been in this area since I was a kid.”

  He stared at the tortuous escarpment. The dark, steep cliffs, gnarled precipices, and craggy summit haunted an otherwise sunny azure sky. The prevailing atmosphere on this pocket of ranch land was different. Disquieting. Eerie. Primeval. Prehistoric.

  A childhood memory stirred within Luthor Devlin’s brain. A long forgotten door slowly creaked open and released a ghost. He tried to shake off the mood but failed. It had been here, in this savage-looking place, where at the age of thirteen, he had met a beast.

  A beast that had attacked without provocation. Eight feet, eight hundred pounds of rogue black grizzly. Thor had lost his horse and nearly his life to the animal and for a long time, both day and night, fear became his constant companion. His thumb and forefinger massaged away beads of sweat that dampened his thick black mustache.

  “Godforsaken place,” Nate muttered, his body feeling chilled despite the heat. “Hell, there ain’t nothin’ here.” He added, “I’ve been foreman for forty-five years and ain’t never crossed this way. No need to. Cattle don’t stray here. Nor horses.” His head hunched between raised, protective shoulders. “Nothin’ but rocks and sky. Maybe a few mountain goats. But I’ll bet a week’s pay that there ain’t no beast. Probably just an oversized goat!”

  “I’ll take that bet,” Billy snapped. “Because I know what I saw and –“

  A groaning bellow erupted, an indescribable, continuous confusion of sound that shook the towering pines and sent rocks and sand dr
izzling from the crags.

  Suddenly silent riders tried to stabilize their excited horses.

  “There! I told you!” Came the teenager’s gleeful chorus. Then Billy sobered. “You don’t suppose that’s a cry of hunger?”

  “Don’t worry. We’re not here to be anything’s lunch.” Thor looped the binoculars around the saddle horn and reached to check the bullets in the breech of the .357 Magnum holstered at his waist. “Boys, I want you at least six feet behind the last man.” His voice was a cool assumption of command that eliminated any further comments. “Let’s go. Quietly. Carefully.” His boot heels cued the stallion into a cautious walk.

  Aspen, pine, and fir became less and less. Thor took silent note of the unusual rutted tracks in the clearing. Then the landscape again yielded to the limestone rocks and twisted-trunked evergreens that seemingly grew out of a thick foggy blanket.

  Thor stared at the tumbled and warped architecture of deathbed colors that surrounded him. “This isn’t right,” came his thoughtful murmur. “The land couldn’t have changed this much. And this thick mist. No, this definitely is not right. Nate, I –“ Thor stuttered into silence when visibility abruptly increased. There, in the distance, his eyes locked onto Billy’s beast.

  The first whispered words that tumbled from Nate’s lips were more prayer than blasphemy. “What in hell is that?”

  “Mammoth. A woolly mammoth.” Thor’s low tone echoed the expression of disbelief that had settled on his face.

  “Look at the size of that thing,” muttered five wranglers in unison. “What d’ya guess, boss?”

  “Fourteen feet. Four tons. Plus the tusks. Those curved pieces of ivory look to be a good twelve feet.”