Bravo Unwrapped (25 page)

Sierra Star Pumpkin Muffins

(with very special thanks to Barbara Ferris)

Prep time: 15 min. Cook time: 25 min. Servings: 12

1
½
cups flour

1 tsp baking soda

½
tsp baking powder

¾
tsp salt

¹
/
₈
tsp nutmeg

½
tsp cinnamon

1
½
cups sugar

½
cup vegetable oil

2 eggs

1 cup canned pumpkin

¹
/
₃
cup water

12 walnut halves

 

Instructions:

Preheat oven to 350
^°
F. Combine dry ingredients in mixing bowl. Mix in oil, eggs and pumpkin. On low speed, gradually mix in water until well blended. Pour batter into greased (or use paper cups) muffin pan.

Chastity Bravo's Special Hints:

I mix mine by hand. I use a flat whip in a clear bowl so I can see that I've mixed everything thoroughly. A large can of pumpkin is 3 ½ cups. I triple the recipe and it makes 3 dozen muffins and a small loaf, too (bake the loaf close to 1 hour). There will be a little of the pumpkin left in the can. I do keep the muffins refrigerated after baking. They also freeze well. I use this recipe to make small loaves of bread, too. For bread, bake for 50 minutes to an hour.

Note to readers: The notorious and now deceased Blake is the father of several Bravo heroes, including Buck, the hero of
Bravo Unwrapped.

Harry and Blake Bravo were the sons of privilege, born to Jonas Bravo, a multimillionaire who made his money in a number of big land deals in Southern California in the 1930s and 1940s. Harry, the oldest, was a good boy, the favored son. And Blake was the troublemaker, a boy born to end up on the wrong side of the law.

By the time Blake was twenty, his father had had enough. Jonas disinherited Blake. For a number of years Harry gave Blake money whenever his ne'er-do-well brother showed up with his hand out. But then Blake ran into their father one day when Blake came to try to talk
his softhearted older brother into another “loan.” Jonas ordered him out. Blake physically attacked his father, beating him badly. Harry came to his father's aid and won the fight, trouncing Blake soundly.

Blake's attack on their father was the final straw for Harry. He told Blake he never wanted to see his face again—and he never did. Neither did their father, Jonas, who died a couple of years later.

A year after Jonas Sr. died, Blake murdered a man with his bare hands in a barroom brawl. To evade capture and trial and a lengthy imprisonment, Blake faked his own death in an apartment fire. To this day, it is not known whose body was found in the smoldering ruins of the fire—or how Blake managed to falsify dental records so that the body's records matched his own.

But Blake was not finished with the family that had scorned him. Five years after Harry threw Blake out of the Bravo mansion for the last time, Blake heard of the birth of Harry's second son, Russell (later called Dekker Smith and hero of
The Marriage Conspiracy
). Blake hatched a plot to kidnap the baby and hold him for ransom. He talked a gullible girlfriend,
Lorraine, into falling in with his scheme. They broke in to the nursery late at night to snatch the child—running into a problem when the baby's older brother, Jonas (named after his grandfather and six at the time; hero of
The Bravo Billionaire
), woke in the room next door and caught Blake and Lorraine in the act. Blake grabbed the six-year-old and clamped a gloved hand over his mouth. Jonas fought valiantly to get away, while Blake told Lorraine they'd just have to take
both
children.

Lorraine freaked. She started arguing. She never should have agreed to do this. A baby was one thing, but how was she going to keep a six-year-old quiet while they waited for the ransom demands to be met? As the two kidnappers argued, Jonas kept struggling. Finally Blake knocked the child unconscious and he and Lorraine took off with the baby. Jonas suffered a concussion, was comatose for several hours—and ended up with amnesia when it came to the events of the night his brother was taken.

Blake dropped Lorraine and the baby off at a secret location and went about negotiating for the two-million-dollar ransom, which he demanded be paid in diamonds, as they are
compact and easy to carry. Harry and his wife, Blythe, paid, as instructed, getting the diamonds from a diamond dealer. Still completely unaware that his own brother had taken his baby son, Jonas had the police in on the whole transaction in hopes of catching the kidnapper if there was a single slipup.

Blake didn't slip up. He got away clean. And once he had the diamonds, Blake decided it would be unwise to return the baby; it would be only another opportunity to get caught. In the meantime, Lorraine, who was unable to have children herself, had developed a powerful attachment to the child.

For a year Blake, Lorraine and the baby lived under a series of aliases, keeping a very low profile, never staying in one place too long. During that year Harry died of a heart attack, leaving Blythe to suffer a mental breakdown and his older son, Jonas, without a father or a brother—or, essentially, a mother for a number of years, until Blythe recovered.

As time passed and Blake became more and more certain he had gotten away with his revenge, Lorraine began making “settling down” noises. She wanted them to get their own little house in a nice town and live like a family. Blake had
little interest in spending his life with Lorraine and his dead brother's kidnapped child. He had zero intention of playing the family man.

They were living in Oklahoma City at that point. Since it was obvious Lorraine really cared only about the boy, Blake saw his chance to get rid of both the woman he'd tired of and the child who had, to him, been only a means to an end. Through his various nefarious connections, he sold off a few diamonds and set Lorraine up with a new identity, complete with birth certificate that “proved” the baby was hers. Thus she became the widowed single mother Lorraine Smith, living in Oklahoma City, raising her “son,” Dekker, alone.

Blake himself, confident by then that he'd pulled off his revenge and gotten away scotfree, started using his own name again. He took up with a Norman, Oklahoma, woman, whom he married when she became pregnant (with Marsh, hero of
The Marriage Agreement
).

For three decades Blake kept the bulk of the diamonds stashed away, knowing if he ever tried to sell off too many of them, he'd be likely to get caught. Marsh's mother died when Marsh was sixteen, leaving the teenage Marsh at the mercy of the abusive Blake. But Blake
was gone a lot. And while he was gone, he took more than one unsuspecting woman as a lover. He even “married” these women, which made him a polygamist on top of all his other crimes.

When Blake Bravo finally died for real, of heart failure, in
The Marriage Agreement,
Marsh found the missing diamonds and, with the help of his long-lost cousin Jonas, uncovered the truth about baby Russell's kidnapper. Since then, more than one illegitimate Bravo has discovered his Bravo family ties.

THE NINE-MONTH MARRIAGE—Cash Bravo and Abby Heller

MARRIAGE BY NECESSITY—Nate Bravo and Megan Kane

PRACTICALLY MARRIED—Zach Bravo and Tess DeMarley

MARRIED BY ACCIDENT—Melinda Bravo and Cole Yuma

THE MILLIONAIRE SHE MARRIED—Jenna Bravo and Mack McGarrity

THE M.D. SHE
HAD
TO MARRY—Lacey Bravo and Logan Severance

THE MARRIAGE AGREEMENT—Marsh Bravo and Tory Winningham

THE BRAVO BILLIONAIRE—Jonas Bravo and Emma Hewitt

MARRIAGE: OVERBOARD—Gwen Bravo McMillan and Rafe McMillan

(Online read at www.eHarlequin.com)

THE MARRIAGE CONSPIRACY—Dekker (Smith) Bravo and Joleen Tilly

HIS EXECUTIVE SWEETHEART—Aaron Bravo and Celia Tuttle

MERCURY RISING—Cade Bravo and Jane Elliott

SCROOGE AND THE SINGLE GIRL—Will Bravo and Jillian Diamond

FIFTY WAYS TO SAY I'M PREGNANT—Starr Bravo and Beau Tisdale

MARRYING MOLLY—Tate Bravo and Molly O'Dare

LORI'S LITTLE SECRET—Tucker Bravo and Lori Lee Billingsworth Taylor

Here's a sneak peek…

 

BRAVO FAMILY WAY

by

Christine Rimmer