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That Old Feeling
Cara Colter
Of all the favors her beloved father could ask, helping Clint McPherson was the only one Brandy King wanted to refuse. Of course, her dad didn't know his right-hand man had once rebuffed her kiss. Well, that was then. This was…No different.Somehow Clint's allure had improved! And he'd added a secret weapon to his arsenal of charm: a toddling baby girl in need of mothering. Well, Brandy was nothing if not brave. She'd make diaper changing her first conquest. Then she'd show this stoic single father that she was woman enough to handle what had always been between them.
Clint McPherson in the flesh.
He straightened suddenly, and she knew his instinct had warned him he was no longer alone. He swung around.
Brandy sensed two things immediately.
Her father had been right. Something was wrong. The light that had always flared in Clint’s eyes, brilliant and fierce, had an element in it she did not understand. It was as if ice and fire battled within him, and ice was winning.
And the second thing she could not ignore was that her skin was tingling treacherously. She loved Clint McPherson in some primal way she was not sure she could ever tame.
Nonsense, she told herself, utter hogwash.
She had been taming the untamable her whole life!
She was here on assignment for her father. And herself. She would lay her childish heartbreaks and hopes to rest. She would see Clint McPherson through the eyes of a mature woman…and tame that thing inside her that wanted him.
Dear Reader,
Just as the seasons change, you may have noticed that our Silhouette Romance covers have evolved over the past year. We have tried to create cover art that uses more soft pastels, sun-drenched images and tender scenes to evoke the aspirational and romantic spirit of this line. We have also tried to make our heroines look like women you can relate to and may want to be. After all, this line is about the joys of falling in love, and we hope you can live vicariously through these heroines.
Our writers this month have done an especially fine job in conveying this message. Reader favorite Cara Colter leads the month with That Old Feeling (#1814) in which the heroine must overcome past hurts to help her first love raise his motherless daughter. This is the debut title in the author’s emotional new trilogy, A FATHER’S WISH. Teresa Southwick concludes her BUY-A-GUY miniseries with the story of a feisty lawyer who finds herself saddled with an unwanted and wholly irresistible bodyguard, in Something’s Gotta Give (#1815). A sister who’d do anything for her loved ones finds her own sweet reward when she switches places with her sibling, in Sister Swap (#1816)—a compelling new romance by Lilian Darcy. Finally, in Made-To-Order Wife (#1817) by Judith McWilliams, a billionaire hires an etiquette expert to help him land the perfect society wife, and he soon starts rethinking his marriage plans.
Be sure to return next month when Cara Colter continues her trilogy and Judy Christenberry returns to the line.
Happy reading!
Ann Leslie Tuttle
Associate Senior Editor
That Old Feeling
A Father’s Wish
Cara Colter
www.millsandboon.co.uk (http://www.millsandboon.co.uk)
To Krista Casada, with thanks for all the “bubbles” you blow my way: friendship, inspiration, laughter.
Books by Cara Colter
Silhouette Romance
Dare To Dream #491
Baby in Blue #1161
Husband in Red #1243
The Cowboy, the Baby and the Bride-to-Be #1319
Truly Daddy #1363
A Bride Worth Waiting For #1388
Weddings Do Come True #1406
A Babe in the Woods #1424
A Royal Marriage #1440
First Time, Forever #1464
* (#litres_trial_promo)Husband by Inheritance #1532
* (#litres_trial_promo)The Heiress Takes a Husband #1538
* (#litres_trial_promo)Wed by a Will #1544
What Child Is This? #1585
Her Royal Husband #1600
9 Out of 10 Women Can’t Be Wrong #1615
Guess Who’s Coming for Christmas? #1632
What a Woman Should Know #1685
Major Daddy #1710
Her Second-Chance Man #1726
Nighttime Sweethearts #1754
† (#litres_trial_promo)That Old Feeling #1814
Silhouette Books
The Coltons
A Hasty Wedding
CARA COLTER
shares ten acres in the wild Kootenay region of British Columbia with the man of her dreams, three children, two horses, a cat with no tail and a golden retriever who answers best to “bad dog.” She loves reading, writing and the woods in winter (no bears). She says life’s delights include an automatic garage door opener and the skylight over the bed that allows her to see the stars at night. She also says, “I have not lived a neat and tidy life, and used to envy those who did. Now I see my struggles as having given me a deep appreciation of life, and of love, that I hope I succeed in passing on through the stories that I tell.”
Dear Reader,
My life partner, Rob, is an adventurer. He knew how to use a rifle before he knew how to spell Mississippi. I, on the other hand, was raised with swimming lessons, story time at the library and meat that came in nicely wrapped packages from the grocery store. Because of having Rob in my life I have found myself in places where it is possible to be charged by a grizzly bear—and I was! Quite frankly, I’m happier at home with a book, but being thrown completely into an alien world, where I’m uncomfortable, awkward and frightened, forces me to be more than I was before.
This series, A FATHER’S WISH, begins with a delightful what if. What if three young women, who had been indulged their entire lives, were put in situations that required more of them than had ever been required before? Though my three heroines don’t leave civilization (though they might argue that point) the challenges they face are grizzly bears to them! And, of course, they have the most remarkable heroes to antagonize them, challenge them, protect them and guide them.
I invite you to come with me as Brandy, Jessie and Chelsea—one brave, one brainy, one beautiful—find out life and love have plans for them that are beyond their wildest dreams….
Sincerely,
Cara Colter
Contents
Prologue (#ubf4e3c23-e656-57c5-82ab-ce3df36aa6c3)
Chapter One (#uf5c22642-88a5-5dec-aea1-a50f6cddd04a)
Chapter Two (#u4f0b4d71-532e-5162-80f7-5677210a670e)
Chapter Three (#litres_trial_promo)
Chapter Four (#litres_trial_promo)
Chapter Five (#litres_trial_promo)
Chapter Six (#litres_trial_promo)
Chapter Seven (#litres_trial_promo)
Chapter Eight (#litres_trial_promo)
Epilogue (#litres_trial_promo)
Prologue
Two letters sat on his desk, both unopened, both marked Personal and Confidential. One was typed, the return address familiar to him. The second was addressed in handwriting, the feminine script of one not yet mature. He did not recognize that name or the return address. His hand hovered, and then he chose, hope and dread mixed within him.
Moments later, Winston Jacob King put down the typed letter and pinched the bridge of his nose between bony fingers. He felt shocked, all over again, though the letter only confirmed what his doctor had told him earlier in the week.
Dying.
He shouldn’t be shocked. He was eighty-three years old. Had he really thought he was going to live forever?
The short answer? Yes.
Jake got up from behind his desk. A fire roared in the hearth, though it was a mild day. He was always cold, now.
He crossed the room, which was furnished in an eclectic mix of antiques. A thick Persian rug covered the aged oak floor, and Degas, Pissaro, Monet hung on the walls. But he noticed none of what it had taken him a lifetime to collect. Instead, he looked out the huge bay window.
His Southampton estate, Kingsway, lay before him. Tulips and daffodils splashed the spring beds with color. A gardener pruned the rosebushes. Beyond him were lush pastures and a Hanoverian mare, muscled and shiny, grazing contentedly while her foal frolicked.
The doctor had said he might have a year left, if they managed everything perfectly.
For some reason, as Jake looked out over his fields, a line from that haunting Johnny Cash song, played in his head.
“My empire of dirt,” Jake murmured out loud. Once upon a time it had made him so proud that he—a man who had begun as a mechanic from the backwoods—had accomplished all this. In a recent issue of Success Magazine, Jake’s company, Auto Kingdom, had been called the Costco of the automobile aficionado. Ridiculous, since he predated Costco by forty years.
Jake did not feel afraid of dying. No, what he felt was a sharp sense of sadness for his children, his three daughters. None were married, and he longed for the miracle of a grandchild.
“That’s what you get for marrying so late in life,” he berated himself. He’d been fifty-seven when his first daughter was born.
He went to the wall that was hung, window to window and ceiling to floor, with photographs of his princesses. His true treasures.
The wall documented the lives of his three daughters. Wasn’t it just yesterday he had stood in front of the hospital, beaming so proudly, with Brandgwen, his firstborn, in his arms? Wasn’t it just a moment ago that Jessica had sat on that fat Welsh pony? Didn’t only a breath separate him from the day he’d stood in the shadow of the Eiffel Tower with his baby Chelsea’s small hand in his?
He felt such a rush of tenderness looking at their faces, the stamp of their personalities surviving the march of time. Brandy always looking faintly mischievous and lovely as a leprechaun, Jessica, looking studious, her green eyes huge behind those glasses, and his baby, Chelsea, twenty-two already, gorgeous and self-assured, always posing.
Brave, brainy and beautiful, his three daughters. Long ago, playing on his name and the American public’s yearning for royalty, the press had dubbed his daughters princesses, and it had stuck for all these years.
The photographs showed lifestyles that might have been envied by real royalty. His throat ached as he looked at all his efforts to make them happy. The wall documented his daughters, at various ages, jumping their ponies, riding gondolas on the canals in Venice, skiing the slopes of the Alps. It documented the cars, the lavish birthday parties, the trinkets, the diamond tiaras, the gowns.
Oh, yes, Jake had gone into overdrive trying to insure the happiness of his daughters, after the scandalous death of his very young and very beautiful wife, more than twenty years ago.
There was no picture of Marcie on this wall. She had died when Brandy, their oldest daughter, had been six.
Brandy did not have her mother’s looks—her face had always been impish rather than gorgeous. Dark sapphire-blue eyes were her only inheritance from her mother. She had hair as his own had once been—brown, thick, and just wavy enough to make it impossible to tame. Who knew where the freckles had come from? She had never outgrown them. She had been, to her mother’s distress, happiest in overalls down at the stables. Brandy had a reckless streak in her, and it glittered in her eyes. The press had dubbed her the tomboy princess.
She was twenty-six, now, still as lithe as a young boy. And still a thrill seeker. Her bravery was legend. The King fortune had allowed her to pursue one adrenaline rush after another, and he had indulged her.
A mistake. Her latest “hobby” was BASE jumping. Her last jump had been from the top of the highest waterfall in the world, Angel Falls in Venezuela, every heart-stopping moment of it recorded by her faithful press. She’d always been like that, reckless.
But in light of his own news, he seemed to be seeing Brandy differently. She risked everything—except her heart.
Behind the dancing darkness of her eyes he could see the wariness in her.
Well, why wouldn’t she be wary of love? She would have some memory of her mother’s colossal indifference to her, the storminess of her parents’ relationship.
He shifted his attention from Brandy to his other daughters, and with newfound depth, he felt the cruel weight of failure.
For all his efforts, were any of his princesses really happy? Not one of his daughters seemed to have a goal, a dream, a quest. Not one of them seemed to understand that love was everything.
Jessie, Jessica, his second daughter. She had hurtled through high school and entered university at seventeen. She was twenty-four now, and he had lost track of what degree she was working on. She talked of things he did not understand. Jessie seemed to be intellectual and disconnected. Despite having some kind of boyfriend—a fuddy-duddy professor who seemed about as exciting as day-old porridge—Jake saw heartbreaking loneliness in the lovely green of her astonishing eyes. Eyes hidden behind hideous glasses, and her gorgeous wheat-colored hair tucked into a prim bun that made her look like a spinster.
And then there was his baby, Chelsea. Ah, she was the darling of the press. Her picture was in some paper or magazine every time he went by a newsstand. She was the most like Marcie in looks, her beauty absolutely breathtaking. Her eyes were hazel, an exact mix of Marcie’s blue and his own brown. Her hair floated nearly to her waist in a shiny wave of platinum blond. Her features were perfect, her mouth wide and generous.
She had her own staff—a hairstylist and a dresser who were so important to her she traveled with them. She kept such a high profile she had to have a bodyguard. Jake had indulged her, too, her every whim satisfied.
