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A Father, Again
Mary J. Forbes
THE GUY NEXT DOORJon Tucker was doing just fine living by his lonesome, steering clear of pets and people. Until his neighbor's cat gave birth to kittens on his favorite shirt. But after returning the new family to its rightful owner, Jon was finding it hard to stay away from Rianne Worth. In fact, ignoring the alluringly petite mother of two would be downright unneighborly.The sexy guy in faded jeans who charged onto her land was no stranger to Rianne. Beneath the ex-cop's gruff manner was the same boy who'd awakened the sweetest yearning in her schoolgirl heart. Now the single father was back in Misty River…and Rianne knew that this time, her very adult feelings might prove impossible to resist….
“Why are you weeding in the dark, Rianne?”
“It soothes me when I feel hemmed in.”
“Something happen at work today? The kids?”
She looked toward the hedge. Her shoulders drooped. She shook her head.
He didn’t know why it hurt, but it did. He wanted her trust. Trust. Belief. Support. Yeah, he wanted the combo. He wanted to offer comfort. Which would mean touching more than her hands. Not wise, Jon. Except, wisdom and want were at a draw and he was all out of referees.
“Come here.” He tugged her forward until her shoulder leaned into his chest. For her comfort, he told himself, and wrapped his arms around her. “Shh. We’re okay,” he murmured into the crown of her hair. Holding her loosely, waiting until the tension left by degrees.
She felt great in his arms. Small, warm, soft.
A surge to claim her rushed up, stunning him….
Dear Reader,
Well, we hope your New Year’s resolutions included reading some fabulous new books—because we can provide the reading material! We begin with Stranded with the Groom by Christine Rimmer, part of our new MONTANA MAVERICKS: GOLD RUSH GROOMS miniseries. When a staged wedding reenactment turns into the real thing, can the actual honeymoon be far behind? Tune in next month for the next installment in this exciting new continuity.
Victoria Pade concludes her NORTHBRIDGE NUPTIALS miniseries with Having the Bachelor’s Baby, in which a woman trying to push aside memories of her one night of passion with the town’s former bad boy finds herself left with one little reminder of that encounter—she’s pregnant with his child. Judy Duarte begins her new miniseries, BAYSIDE BACHELORS, with Hailey’s Hero, featuring a cautious woman who finds herself losing her heart to a rugged rebel who might break it…. THE HATHAWAYS OF MORGAN CREEK by Patricia Kay continues with His Best Friend, in which a woman is torn between two men—the one she really wants, and the one to whom he owes his life. Mary J. Forbes’s sophomore Special Edition is A Father, Again, featuring a grown-up reunion between a single mother and her teenaged crush. And a disabled child, an exhausted mother and a down-but-not-out rodeo hero all come together in a big way, in Christine Wenger’s debut novel, The Cowboy Way.
So enjoy, and come back next month for six compelling new novels, from Silhouette Special Edition.
Happy New Year!
Gail Chasan
Senior Editor
Silhouette Special Edition
A Father, Again
Mary J. Forbes
www.millsandboon.co.uk (http://www.millsandboon.co.uk)
To Karen, for loving Jon Tucker the way I did.
Thanks to Tom Lindmark for his descriptive e-mails
on the geography and history of the Clatskanie area.
Any errors are entirely mine, not his.
MARY J. FORBES
grew up on a farm in Alberta amidst horses, cattle, crisp hay and broad blue skies. As a child, she drew and wrote about her surroundings, and in sixth grade composed her first story about a lame little pony. Years later, she was an accountant and worked as a reporter/photographer for a small-town newspaper and attained honors degrees in education. She has also written and published short fiction.
Today, Mary—a teacher by profession—lives in the Pacific Northwest with her husband and two children. A romantic by nature, she loves walking along the ocean shoreline, sitting by the fire on snowy or rainy evenings and two-stepping around the dance floor to a good country song—all with her own real-life hero, of course. Mary loves to hear from readers. You can contact her at www.maryjforbes.com.
May 4
Certain moments in life go beyond the casual flickering of memory in your mind’s eye. I call these moments “crystals.” They let your palm and fingers relearn the cool curve of the doorknob. They let your bare soles recall the comfort of the mat’s ragged braids. They let your nose remember the difference between the oatmeal cookies in the oven behind you, and the sap in the trees across the yard. But above all, you see, again, how shadow and light stroke cheek and jaw. And you recognize the hurried cadence of your heart.
Today I embraced a crystal moment.
—Journal entry of Rianne Worth
Contents
Chapter One
Chapter Two
Chapter Three
Chapter Four
Chapter Five
Chapter Six
Chapter Seven
Chapter Eight
Chapter Nine
Chapter Ten
Chapter Eleven
Chapter Twelve
Chapter Thirteen
Chapter Fourteen
Chapter Fifteen
Chapter One
Damn the woman and her cat.
Jon Tucker trotted down his back veranda steps and strode across his weed-blooming yard. Under his arm, the cardboard box rustled. It wasn’t that he resented cats. He didn’t like them touring his yard, was all. He didn’t like anyone on his property.
What he did like—prized—was his solitary life.
That’s why he’d bought this quiet, street-end property with its decrepit Victorian and two acres of woods.
His brothers knew the score, even though they didn’t relish it, even though they had tried to change his mind more than once. Heck, after his twenty-two-year absence, who could blame them?
He could forgive Luke and Seth.
He wouldn’t forgive his neighbor.
The woman just didn’t get it. Cats roamed. The orange lady in the box was an expert. He’d chased her off his land time and again since moving back to Oregon’s Columbia County two weeks ago. Now, she’d had the gall to birth three kittens on his shirt. His favorite shirt. The last of his police-academy attire, the last tangible link to the force that had been his life, his blood, for two decades.
The last link to his memories.
His nightmares.
The neighbor woman would pay. Damn straight she would.
He sidled through the narrow gap in the ten-foot juniper hedge dividing their backyards. Most likely, when it was planted years ago the owners had been on more friendly terms. Their kids, dogs—and cats, no doubt—had beat this path through it. Well. He’d call the local greenhouse the instant he dumped off the wailing felines and order another shrub to fill in the spot. What did it matter, his mounting costs?
Shifting the box, he climbed the three back steps of the cottage’s porch. His boot heels rapped the slats of its deck. His knuckles rapped the door.
The place needed an overhaul. A big paint job. In contrast, the yard would scoop the blue ribbon at the local fair. Dethatched turf; daffodils and tulips nodding from borders; the apple tree blossoming in the May sunshine; bedding frames in a porch corner.
He knocked again.
Where was she? He’d seen her old red Toyota in the carport.
The door cracked open.
A woman stood in a rectangle of muted light.
He stood tongue-tied, impassioned rants gone.
She was tiny. Lower than his shoulder. Auburn hair. Ratty blue sweatshirt. Small, bare feet. Maroon-stained toenails.
“Yes?”
One word. It locked his gaze to her caution-filled, flax-brown eyes; an instant later, she blinked and sucked in a quick breath.
A small meow tore through his trance.
C’mon, Jon. You’re here for a reason. Thrusting the box forward, he said, “Your cats.”
She grabbed the unwieldy carton; the door swung wider and he saw a child, a girl a bit younger than Brittany, hovering near the kitchen table, big-eyed behind round lenses, pinky in her mouth.
“Cats?” The woman frowned. “We only have one. Sorry. We try to keep her in the house, but sometimes she slips out the door behind us.”
“Now you have four,” he said gruffly. “Kitty had a litter.”
Her eyes widened. She peered under a flap. “Oohhh,” she exclaimed softly. “Sweetpea… No wonder you were so fat.”
Sweetpea?
His neighbor looked up. His throat tightened. Hers was an honest face, a gentle face. Life’s not honest, he wanted to tell her. It’s cruel. Callous. Unjust.
A shy half smile. “My daughter Emily—” she glanced back at the child “—found her in an old tub of dried sweetpea vines inside our garden shed a month ago, thin as a rail and shaky with hunger. I don’t think she’d been fed in two weeks. We put ads in the paper, but so far no one’s claimed her.”
Jon stared at the woman. Green and gold dappled her irises. He turned on his heel.
“Wait—” She followed him across the porch. “Where did you find Sweetpea?”
“On my shirt.” In the shadiest corner of his back deck, to be exact. Where he’d tossed his sweatshirt on the Adirondack chair when the temperature broke the eighty-degree mark while he’d been hammering in a new railing. He trotted down her steps and headed for the chink in the hedge without a backward look.
“Sweetpea,” he muttered. More like sourpuss. The claw marks on his hands proved it.
He’d get that extra juniper in before the sun went down.
Rianne Worth watched the broad back of her visitor disappear.
Jon Tucker.
Heavens, when had she seen him last? More than twenty years ago, at least. She hadn’t recognized him. Not until he’d looked directly at her, demanding she keep her cats off his land. Those eyes, oh, she’d remember them in any decade! Eyes she still saw every so often in her slumbering dreams. Inscrutable, more than a little perilous.
“Who was that man, Mommy?”
Rianne turned to the child at her side. Her shy angel-girl. One day—soon—Emily would shout and laugh and charge into rooms like any normal eight-year-old. You will, Em. I promise. “Our new neighbor, pooch.”
“He looks mean.”
Rianne couldn’t deny it; he had looked mean. And angry.
What had the years done to shroud him in that aura of arctic barrenness? The Jon Tucker of her youth flashed across her mind. Rough-and-tumble black hair, leather jacket, souped-up yellow pickup. Tough and grim. Kind in heart.
“Is he like Daddy?”
God forbid. “No, honey he’s not like your father.” At least not the Jon she remembered. “He doesn’t like to be bothered, that’s all,” she said, trying as always to look for the good, the decent. She knelt and held open the box flaps. “Come see what he brought.”
“Oh, Mom-meee!” Emily breathed reverently. “Sweetpea’s got babies!” She reached in a tiny finger.
“Careful, honey. Don’t touch the kitties for a week or so.”
“I know. We learned that in science.”
Rianne touched her daughter’s hair. “Smart girl to remember.”
“They’re so cute.”
