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A Montana Homecoming
Allison Leigh
MAYBE LAUREL RUNYAN WAS CRAZY…At least that's what everyone seemed to think in Lucius, Montana, when she'd suffered a breakdown after her father supposedly murdered her mother. Now, after a twelve-year absence, she'd returned to bury her estranged father…and her past. But discovering that her first love, Sheriff Shane Golightly, was her new neighbor wasn't the mark of a sane woman. Particularly when just the sound of his molasses-smooth voice recalled the one and only time they'd made love–and reopened old wounds. Laurel vowed she'd just make Shane recognize the strong, independent woman she'd become and move on, but the sheriff seemed determined to make Laurel give Lucius–and him–a second chance….
“I’ll be close by,” he said, letting go of her hand and pointing. “Because we’re neighbors.”
She stared.
The house on the hill was his.
The house that was so incredibly beautiful. She’d spent more than one night watching the wooden and stone lines of it sleep in the moonlight when she hadn’t been able to find any such rest.
“You lived behind my father.”
“Yes.”
She didn’t know what to do with her hands. One was still tingling. The other felt cold.
She forced them to remain at her sides, fighting the burgeoning need to ring them together. “Who built the house?”
“I did.”
“You?”
“I’m capable, too,” he drawled, his voice impossibly dry.
She ignored the small jab, not doubting his capabilities for a second. The man undoubtedly exceeded “capable” on every front.
Dear Reader,
Well, we’re getting into the holiday season full tilt, and what better way to begin the celebrations than with some heartwarming reading? Let’s get started with Gina Wilkins’s The Borrowed Ring, next up in her FAMILY FOUND series. A woman trying to track down her family’s most mysterious and intriguing foster son finds him and a whole lot more—such as a job posing as his wife! A Montana Homecoming, by popular author Allison Leigh, brings home a woman who’s spent her life running from her own secrets. But they’re about to be revealed, courtesy of her childhood crush, now the local sheriff.
This month, our class reunion series, MOST LIKELY TO…, brings us Jen Safrey’s Secrets of a Good Girl, in which we learn that the girl most likely to…do everything disappeared right after college. Perhaps her secret crush, a former professor, can have some luck tracking her down overseas? We’re delighted to have bestselling Blaze author Kristin Hardy visit Special Edition in the first of her HOLIDAY HEARTS books. Where There’s Smoke introduces us to the first of the devastating Trask brothers. The featured brother this month is a handsome firefighter in Boston. And speaking of delighted—we are absolutely thrilled to welcome RITA
Award nominee and Red Dress Ink and Intimate Moments star Karen Templeton to Special Edition. Although this is her first Special Edition contribution, it feels as if she’s coming home. Especially with Marriage, Interrupted, in which a pregnant widow meets up once again with the man who got away—her first husband—at her second husband’s funeral. We know you’re going to enjoy this amazing story as much as we did. And we are so happy to welcome brand-new Golden Heart winner Gail Barrett to Special Edition. Where He Belongs, the story of the bad boy who’s come back to town to the girl he’s never been able to forget, is Gail’s first published book.
So enjoy—and remember, next month we continue our celebration….
Gail Chasan
Senior Editor
A Montana Homecoming
Allison Leigh
www.millsandboon.co.uk (http://www.millsandboon.co.uk)
For my girls, Amanda and Anna Claire.
I’m so very proud of you both.
Love, Mom.
ALLISON LEIGH
started early by writing a Halloween play that her grade-school class performed. Since then, though her tastes have changed, her love for reading has not. And her writing appetite simply grows more voracious by the day.
She has been a finalist in the RITA
Award and the Holt Medallion contests. But the true highlights of her day as a writer are when she receives word from a reader that they laughed, cried or lost a night of sleep while reading one of her books.
Born in Southern California, Allison has lived in several different cities in four different states. She has been, at one time or another, a cosmetologist, a computer programmer and a secretary. She has recently begun writing full-time after spending nearly a decade as an administrative assistant for a busy neighborhood church, and currently makes her home in Arizona with her family. She loves to hear from her readers, who can write to her at P.O. Box 40772, Mesa, AZ 85274-0772.
Dear Gram,
Coming home to Lucius after twelve years hasn’t been easy. I’d forgotten what it’s like to live in a small town. Everyone wants to know if I’m here to stay, if I’m going to sell Daddy’s house, if I’ll take a job at the local school. And then there’s Shane Golightly. He’s the town sheriff now, and he lives next door. He’s really been looking out for me—even though sometimes I feel like he’s just being overprotective, it’s been nice to have him around. I can’t even seem to get a good night’s sleep anymore unless he’s nearby. I think I might be falling for him again but I’m so afraid—afraid of getting hurt, afraid of hurting him, but mostly just afraid of facing the past I left behind. I wish you were here, Gram. I miss you.
Love,
Laurel
Contents
Prologue
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 Sixteen
Chapter Seventeen
Epilogue
Prologue
“What do you mean you’re leaving?” Laurel sat up, clutching her cotton dress to her chest. Her bare back felt itchy from straw that only a half hour earlier had felt like the sweetest of mattresses. And there was a horrible hole yawning open inside her.
Shane didn’t look at her. He yanked his T-shirt over his head. His thick hair looked more brown than blond in the dwindling light of the ancient barn and was messy, as much from her fingers as from the shirt. “I have classes.” His deep voice was clipped.
“Starting tomorrow?” She couldn’t hide her disbelief. She knew good and well that Shane’s graduate school classes weren’t beginning for another few weeks. She knew, because he’d told her so himself.
His gaze finally slanted toward her, and he crouched next to her, leaned toward her—making her heart stop with hope that he really couldn’t be serious about leaving her, not like this, not now, after they’d—
He plucked his sock from the straw beside her, and his hand brushed her bare thigh as he pulled back, straightening. He didn’t even bother to sit on one of the hay bales. Simply balanced easily on one foot and drew on the sock, then did the same for the other, then shoved his feet into his scuffed athletic shoes.
Her eyes burned. “Did I do something wrong?”
He made a low sound. Shoved his hands through his hair. “Laurel—”
Laurel. Not songbird, which he’d been calling her for weeks now.
It had been her first time. But not his. “I didn’t cry because it hurt, Shane, I—”
“God, Laurel.” He kicked the bales of hay so hard that suddenly the top one tumbled off the stack and landed with a thud. A cloud of dust and bits billowed out, making her wince and squint against the shower of debris.
He swore again, which made Laurel’s eyes burn even more, because Shane just didn’t swear.
“I should never have touched you. I’m twenty-three. You’re barely eighteen.”
“But I am eighteen.” Her voice was thick with tears, which wasn’t at all the way she wanted to sound. She scrambled to her feet, awkwardly pulling her dress over her shoulders and fumbling with the buttons that ran all the way down the front. But her fingers couldn’t seem to match up any of the buttons with the proper holes and she finally just clutched it together at her waist. “And we love each other.” Didn’t they?
He looked pained, his gaze fastened on her white knuckles. He took a step toward her. Then another.
She nearly stopped breathing.
He put his hands over hers and slowly unclenched her fingers from the pale-yellow fabric.
Then he just stood there, staring down at the hands he held. Her dress, soft from too many summers and too many washings, parted a little.
He swallowed. She saw it work down his strong, tanned throat. Then he squeezed her hands just a little and released them. And reached for the top of her dress.
Her knees—not particularly steady after what they’d just done, anyway—felt like her mama’s strawberry jam left out on a sunny counter.
His fingers were so long. A little bony, and a lot callused. He might be a preacher’s son, but he’d spent the summer working for old Hal Calhoun right here on his farm.
“Shane.” His name was barely a whisper on her tongue. She loved his name. She loved him. He was tall and good and golden and so incredibly gentle.
“I shouldn’t have touched you,” he said again. And as deliberately as he’d unbuttoned each and every one of those tiny white buttons, he began doing them up again. “I’m sorry, but it was a mistake. It’s my fault. So go ahead and hate me all you want.”
By the time he reached the hem, just below her knees, the tears were crawling openly down her cheeks. The bleeding from her heart, broken wide, wasn’t visible at all.
He rose.
She was glad that he didn’t bother hunting around for her bra or panties. She could see them from the corner of her eye, tossed carelessly aside near her sandals.
“I’ll drive you home.”
She didn’t want to go anywhere. She wanted to stay there in Calhoun’s barn with Shane. She wanted him to put his arms around her again, to press his lips to hers, to breathe softly against her ear and make her feel as if everything in life was good and fine.
They’d barely had a summer together, but it had been the best summer of her life.
“I’d rather walk,” she said quietly.
“Laurel, I’m not leaving you here—”
“Yes, you are,” she interrupted, feeling a curl of anger nip at the yawning pain inside her. “That’s exactly what you’re doing.”
He shoved his hands in his front pockets. She could see the shape of them, fisted against the worn-white denim. “I never made it a secret that I was going back to school.” He looked away for a moment, and she saw the muscle in his jaw flexing. “You’re starting college classes soon, too, dammit.”
“Preachers shouldn’t swear,” she murmured.
He snorted and looked back at her, then pointedly looked at the bed of straw, then her underwear. “I have no business becoming a preacher, either.”
Despite her cracking heart, she reached out to him. “Don’t say that, Shane.” He had plans. Wonderful, admirable plans. He wanted to be like his father, to help people however best he could. On someone else, those plans would just be dreams. But Shane would make it happen. He was just that way.
His lips twisted. “Get the rest of your things. You can’t walk home. It’s nearly dark.” He ignored her outstretched hand and walked to the barn door, sliding it open enough to walk out. A moment later she heard the rumble of his old truck engine cranking to life.
Dashing her hands over her cheeks, she snatched up her panties and yanked them on, balled up her bra into her pocket and shoved her feet into her sandals.
She didn’t look at him as she joined him in the cab of his truck. But she had to close her eyes against a fresh rush of tears when he silently reached over and pulled a long piece of straw from her hair.
Then he put the truck into gear and drove her home.
Chapter One
Who was inside the old Runyan house?
The car—dark blue and dimmed by a thick layer of dust—was still parked in the cracked, uneven driveway when Shane drove past. It hadn’t been there when he’d gone to the station in the morning. But it had been there when he’d driven out to his brother’s place that afternoon. And it was still there this evening on his way home for the day.
He could have kept on driving. Instead he pulled in to the rutted driveway and parked behind the small blue sedan.
