Temptation

Amanda Sites, a 19-year-old card dealer on a riverboat, enjoys a profitable evening in a private poker game, winning half ownership of a horse farm in Kentucky from a stranger named Tad Gardner. The flourishing farm is managed by its co-owner, Tad's elder brother Grant, who greets the strong-willed, gaudily dressed card sharp as sourly as he would a case of thrush. While Grant matches ``Amanda's vision of the sublime male,'' he's all but engaged to Anabelle Foster, a ``hateful little twit.'' Amanda, resolved to keep the first real home she has had in years, won't be bought out and demands to learn the business. Shattered by revelations of Anabelle's true nature and frustrated by his attraction to his business partner, Grant challenges Amanda to a card game: the winner gets the whole farm and the loser stays on as manager (Grant) or as a mistress (Amanda). Grant and Amanda's aversion for and growing attraction to each other are the same old story, but Hart ( Tempest ) tells it well enough to satisfy readers, even if awk to use `but' and `though' one after the other the characters' inability to recognize the only possible culprit in a string of dangerous ``accidents'' makes them seem willfully obtuse. (May)