The Black Sheep's Baby. Kathleen Creighton
“I didn’t mean to startle you.
I came in late last night.
“In the storm…” Devon was talking too fast. Her voice kept bumping up against her galloping heart.
My God, what was this all about? She couldn’t be frightened—Devon O’Rourke didn’t scare easily. This was the man who’d been named as the father of her sister’s child. In spite of the harshness of Eric’s features, except for that brief flash of anger in his eyes, he didn’t look at all like someone capable of violence. In fact, there was something about him that was almost…oh, good heavens, the word sweet was the one that came the most insistently to mind, with that endearing distraction, the juxtaposition of a fuzzy pink-hatted head and tiny waving fist against a naked, muscled masculine chest…. Her heart gave another lurch.
She could be in no danger here, not from this man.
Not right this minute, anyway.
Dear Reader,
July is a sizzling month both outside and in, and once again we’ve rounded up six exciting titles to keep your temperature rising. It all starts with the latest addition to Marilyn Pappano’s HEARTBREAK CANYON miniseries, Lawman’s Redemption, in which a brooding man needs help connecting with the lonely young girl who just might be his daughter—and he finds it in the form of a woman with similar scars in her romantic past. Don’t miss this emotional, suspenseful read.
Eileen Wilks provides the next installment in our twelve-book miniseries, ROMANCING THE CROWN, with Her Lord Protector. Fireworks ensue when a Montebellan lord has to investigate a beautiful commoner who may be a friend—or a foe!—of the royal family. This miniseries just gets more and more intriguing. And Kathleen Creighton finishes up her latest installment of her INTO THE HEARTLAND miniseries with The Black Sheep’s Baby. A freewheeling photojournalist who left town years ago returns—with a little pink bundle strapped to his chest, and a beautiful attorney in hot pursuit. In Marilyn Tracy’s Cowboy Under Cover, a grief-stricken widow who has set up a haven for children in need of rescue finds herself with that same need—and her rescuer is a handsome federal marshal posing as a cowboy. Nina Bruhns is back with Sweet Revenge, the story of a straitlaced woman posing as her wild identical twin—and now missing—sister to learn of her fate, who in the process hooks up with the seductive detective who is also searching for her. And in Bachelor in Blue Jeans by Lauren Nichols, during a bachelor auction, a woman inexplicably bids on the man who once spurned her, and wins—or does she? This reunion romance will break your heart.
So get a cold drink, sit down, put your feet up and enjoy them all—and don’t forget to come back next month for more of the most exciting romance reading around…only in Silhouette Intimate Moments.
Yours,
Leslie J. Wainger
Executive Senior Editor
The Black Sheep’s Baby
Kathleen Creighton
KATHLEEN CREIGHTON
has roots deep in the California soil but has relocated to South Carolina. As a child, she enjoyed listening to old timers’ tales, and her fascination with the past only deepened as she grew older. Today, she says she is interested in everything—art, music, gardening, zoology, anthropology and history—but people are at the top of her list. She also has a lifelong passion for writing, and now combines her two loves in romance novels.
Contents
Prologue
Chapter 1
Chapter 2
Chapter 3
Chapter 4
Chapter 5
Chapter 6
Chapter 7
Chapter 8
Chapter 9
Chapter 10
Chapter 11
Chapter 12
Chapter 13
Chapter 14
Chapter 15
Chapter 16
Epilogue
Prologue
December 20—Los Angeles, California
She woke in the milky twilight that passed for darkness in the city, knowing she’d dreamed of Susan again. As always, she couldn’t remember much about the dream—no details, not even a face. Just a voice—Susan’s voice, childish and frail, calling to her. Calling her, pleading with her. Help me…help me, Devon. Please…don’t leave me. Help me….
She threw back the covers and rose, paced barefoot to the window. She stared out across the glittering jeweled carpet that stretched all the way to the sea, squinting hard to hold back angry tears. How was I supposed to help you, she thought, when I didn’t even know where you were? You ran away, damn you. It’s not my fault. It’s not my fault!
She held herself tightly as she shivered, and swallowed hard, once, then again. A tear ran warmly down her cold cheek.
Susan had been fourteen when she’d run away—almost a woman. But the voice in her dream was that of a little child.
Help me, Devon….
Dammit, Susan, she thought, angry and weary at the same time. I am helping, can’t you see that? I’m sorry if I let you down, but I’m trying to make it up to you now, the only way I know. Isn’t that enough?
She brushed at her cheek and jerked away from the window. The luminous numbers on the clock portion of the built-in entertainment center beside her bed glowed green-gold in the gray twilight—2:14 a.m. Way too early to even think about leaving for the airport. And yet she knew better than to try to go back to sleep. Calm, now, and resolute, she went to her walk-in closet and took her rolling overnighter from its shelf. She lifted it onto the bed, unzipped it and began, carefully and methodically, to pack.
December 20—On I-80, Somewhere in Nebraska
His eyes wanted to close—insisted on doing so, in fact, in spite of his strenuous arguments against it. That, plus an inarguable need for fuel, forced him off the interstate.
He chose an exit somewhere east of Grand Island that promised half a dozen motels and at least that many restaurants. He bypassed all of them, though his stomach had been complaining for the last fifty miles, and pulled instead into a gas station where he could pay at the pump. While unleaded gasoline gushed into the tanks of his six-year-old Dodge, he stood with shoulders hunched and hands in his pockets, rocking himself in the bitter Nebraska wind and reflecting on how the California winters had spoiled him.
Just beyond the roof of the gas station’s convenience store he could see a big green Holiday Inn sign, like a beacon summoning his exhausted mind and body into a safe harbor. But as much as he yearned for rest, as much as he knew he needed rest, he also knew that right now there was only one harbor in the world that would feel safe to him.
“We’ll be there by tonight,” he told his passenger, sound asleep in the back seat. “Five more hours…”
The fuel nozzle clicked off. He replaced it in its cradle, climbed back into his car and, after a moment’s indecision, pulled across the parking lot and up to the drive-through window of the fast-food place next door. He ordered a double cheeseburger and a jumbo coffee and a short time later was back on the interstate, heading east toward evening.
In his rearview mirrors he could see, reaching toward him out of the west like menacing fingers, the dark purple clouds of the oncoming storm.
Chapter