Would he ask her to stay? Her resignation was typed and ready. But Joan was strangely reluctant to submit it to Brandt. Her resolve that she was doing the right thing had not wavered, but Brandt’s unexplained actions raised hopes she could not entirely shrug aside. Then everything changed with Brandt’s words. “Miss Somers,” he said curtly, “I’m prepared to accept your resignation. And please make it clear to the agency that this time I want someone older and married. Someone I can rely on not to be carried away by ridiculous flights of fanciful imagination.” Janet Dailey, who passed away in 2013, was born Janet Haradon in 1944 in Storm Lake, Iowa. She attended secretarial school in Omaha, Nebraska, before meeting her husband, Bill. The two worked together in construction and land development until they “retired” to travel throughout the United States, inspiring Janet to write the Americana series of romances, setting a novel in every state of the Union. In 1974, Janet Dailey was the first American author to write for Harlequin. Her first novel was No Quarter Asked. She has gone on to write approximately ninety novels, twenty-one of which have appeared on the New York Times bestseller list. She won many awards and accolades for her work, appearing widely on radio and television. Today, there are over three hundred million Janet Dailey books in print in nineteen different languages, making her one of the most popular novelists in the world. For more information about Janet Dailey, visit www.janetdailey.com.
