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For His Son's Sake
Ellen Tanner Marsh
IT WAS LOVE AT FIRST KITE…From the moment Angus Calder's kite disrupted her beachfront nap, Kenzie Daniels was a goner. And the energetic seven-year old seemed just as smitten…unlike his heart-stopping, coolly conservative dad. Ross Calder obviously didn't want his son growing attached to Kenzie, so why was she still drawn to the vulnerable single father struggling to form a bond with the son he'd never known?The beach vacation was supposed to bring Ross and his unresponsive son closer, yet the free-spirited beauty was the one they were both forming an attachment to. While the levelheaded attorney couldn't deny his attraction, he wouldn't risk his son's heart breaking when they returned home and bid Kenzie goodbye. And Angus's heart was the only one at risk…wasn't it?
“You’re so scared of being hurt, you keep everyone at arm’s length, especially me.”
“Aw, Kenz—” Raw pain was in his voice, in his eyes, as he looked at her.
“I think there isn’t any need to keep me at arm’s length. I am not going to take your son away from you.”
“So you’re saying I shouldn’t keep you at arm’s length,” he went on slowly. Without waiting for her to answer, and before she could think of a suitable retort, he slid his hands over her hips.
“Know what?”
“What?”
“You’re right. That’s much too far away.”
“Ross,” she breathed as he brought their bodies oh so close.
“Know what else I think?” he added, his lips hovering barely an inch above hers.
“What?”
“That you are a threat. To my peace of mind. To my sanity…
“Let me show you what I mean.”
Dear Reader,
It’s spring, love is in the air…and what better way to celebrate than by taking a break with Silhouette Special Edition? We begin the month with Treasured, the conclusion to Sherryl Woods’s MILLION DOLLAR DESTINIES series. Though his two brothers have been successfully paired off, Ben Carlton is convinced he’s “destined” to go it alone. But the brooding, talented young man is about to meet his match in a beautiful gallery owner—courtesy of fate…plus a little help from his matchmaking aunt.
And Pamela Toth concludes the MERLYN COUNTY MIDWIVES series with In the Enemy’s Arms, in which a detective trying to get to the bottom of a hospital black-market drug investigation finds himself in close contact with his old high school flame, now a beautiful M.D.—she’s his prime suspect! And exciting new author Lynda Sandoval (look for her Special Edition novel One Perfect Man, coming in June) makes her debut and wraps up the LOGAN’S LEGACY Special Edition prequels, all in one book—And Then There Were Three. Next, Christine Flynn begins her new miniseries, THE KENDRICKS OF CAMELOT, with The Housekeeper’s Daughter, in which a son of Camelot—Virginia, that is—finds himself inexplicably drawn to the one woman he can never have. Marie Ferrarella moves her popular CAVANAUGH JUSTICE series into Special Edition with The Strong Silent Type, in which a female detective finds her handsome male partner somewhat less than chatty. But her determination to get him to talk quickly morphs into a determination to…get him. And in Ellen Tanner Marsh’s For His Son’s Sake, a single father trying to connect with the son whose existence he just recently discovered finds in the free-spirited Kenzie Daniels a woman they could both love.
So enjoy! And come back next month for six heartwarming books from Silhouette Special Edition.
Happy reading!
Gail Chasan
Senior Editor
For His Son’s Sake
Ellen Tanner Marsh
www.millsandboon.co.uk (http://www.millsandboon.co.uk)
ELLEN TANNER MARSH’s
love of animals almost cost her readers the pleasure of experiencing her immensely popular romances. However, Ellen’s dream of becoming a veterinarian was superseded by her desire to write. So, after college, she took her pen and molded her ideas and notes into full-length stories. Her combination of steamy prose and fastidious historical research eventually landed her on the New York Times bestseller list with her very first novel, Reap the Savage Wind. She now has over three million copies of her books in print, is translated into four languages and is the recipient of a Romantic Times Lifetime Achievement Award.
When Ellen is not at her word processor, she is showing her brindled Great Dane, raising birds and keeping the grass cut on the family’s four-acre property. She is married to her high school sweetheart and lives with him and her two young sons, Zachary and Nicolas, in South Carolina Low Country.
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
Epilogue
Chapter One
Love at first sight. If anyone had told Kenzie Daniels that it was about to happen to her she would have hooted with laughter.
Two people who’d never met before didn’t just take one look at each other and go all soft inside. Outside of the movies it didn’t happen like that. Not with a total stranger, not coming face-to-face in the middle of nowhere—and certainly not if the other person happened to be a seven-year-old boy.
But that’s exactly what happened, and in a place Kenzie would never have expected: on the beach not far from her house, while lying on a towel reading a magazine.
She’d been up most of the night before drawing—as an artist you worked when your muse was awake—so this morning she’d gone out after breakfast to lounge in the sun before heading to the grocery store to do her weekly shopping.
Crossing the dunes by way of the boardwalk, she spread her towel in the sand. The tide was low and the waves washed lazily onshore. One of the things Kenzie loved about the beaches that made up Cape Hatteras National Seashore was the fact that they were rarely crowded. This time of morning only a few anglers stood casting their rods into the shore break while a group of teenagers waxed up their surfboards nearby.
Of course, in a few hours families would come spilling from the houses lining the dunes behind her, loaded down with beach chairs, umbrellas and toys. After all, July was peak season on North Carolina’s Outer Banks, and every town from Nags Head south to Buxton, where Kenzie lived, was crowded with vacationers.
But the sheer length of the Outer Banks’ shoreline meant that there was always plenty of room for everyone. And for the time being few people were around to disturb the peaceful morning hours.
Taking off her shirt to expose the slim, one-piece swimsuit underneath, Kenzie rubbed on sunscreen, then stretched out on her back and reached for her copy of Newsweek. Already she could feel the tension in her neck and shoulders seeping away. She’d spent too long hunched over the drawing board again, but inspiration had struck just before bedtime and she now had two good drawings to show for the sleepless night.
How long had she worked anyway? At least until three o’clock. She grimaced ruefully, picturing her mother nagging her for keeping such hours. Good thing she wasn’t living at home anymore. And good thing she hadn’t heeded her mother’s advice by advertising for a roommate. This way she could burn the midnight oil as long as she wished, play the music as loud as she wanted, never worry that she was running afoul of someone else’s privacy, feelings or sleeping habits.
You were wrong, Mother. You, too, Brent. Living alone definitely has its advantages.
So did the fact that she and Brent hadn’t gotten married the way they’d planned.
Had that been the case, “I’d have gone out of my mind by now,” Kenzie muttered aloud. Better to be an artist out here on the isolated cape than surrounded by the people, the press, the staff and obligations that went with marrying someone like senator-to-be Brent Ellis.
Brent was definitely running for the senate this year, because her mother had told her as much the last time she’d called. Grinning, Kenzie tried to imagine herself as a senator’s wife but couldn’t. In fact, the only thing she knew for sure was that she would have made a lousy one. Not that she wasn’t well schooled in the ways that Washington’s political wheels turned. Heck, she’d practically come of age at Republican party fund-raisers and embassy receptions.
But she had never embraced the lifestyle her parents preferred, the one that Brent, now that he’d been made a full partner in her father’s prestigious law firm, intended to claim as his birthright. Lord knows she wasn’t cut out to play the obliging Washington hostess at his behest. To stand loyally at Brent’s side while he climbed the political ladder toward—what? A bid for the presidency somewhere down the road?
A vision of herself as First Lady made Kenzie snicker aloud. And at the same time wince, remembering a presidential campaign that she alone had brought to ruin a little more than a year ago.
Her heart cramped. No. No way she was going there with her thoughts right now. She’d promised herself during those awful days when the fallout was just beginning that she wasn’t going to dwell on something she couldn’t change, that she wouldn’t have changed even if she’d known in advance about the storm of controversy she was unleashing over her family’s heads.
As for her father…
“That’s enough, Kenzie!” No way was she going to let thoughts of her father screw up her morning off. Or drive her to talk aloud to herself the way little old ladies did when they’d been living alone too long.
She sighed deeply. Forced herself to relax.
At the moment she wanted nothing more than to lie here soaking up rays. Take a nap. Be left alone like Greta Garbo in—
“Look out!”
The warning yell came from right behind her. Startled, Kenzie lifted her head. A sharp, crackling sound came from high above, and in the next second something big and billowy fluttered down on top of her.
“Hey!” Kenzie flailed at the colorful nylon streamers tangled around her legs, at the brilliant green body of the kite that had crash-landed barely an inch from her head.
“Oh, no! I’m sorry! Are you all right?”
The kite’s owner was running toward her, rolling up the string as he went. A boy of no more than seven in bathing trunks that reached to his knees. “I’m only just learning. Did it hit you?”
Kenzie looked up into his face, preparing to give him an irritable lecture. But that was before she saw that his eyes were bright blue and his hair a thatch of black curls. He was chewing his lip apprehensively, but when their gazes met he grinned at her shyly. Dimples appeared in his cheeks, and his freckled, upturned nose crinkled charmingly.
Instantly, stupidly, Kenzie felt something inside of her melt. No doubt about it, the word cute had been invented for this little guy.
“No harm done. It barely touched me.”
“I thought for sure it was going to hit you on the head. I’m ever so relieved it didn’t.”
Not only was he cute, but she’d just noticed he had an accent. That, and his choice of words made him adorably grown-up and sophisticated sounding. Was he English?
Kenzie smiled at him. “I’m fine. Really.”
His grin widened in response, revealing a missing front tooth. “My name’s Angus. What’s yours?”
Angus. Even his name was adorable. She resisted the urge to tousle his curly black hair. “Kenzie.”
His brows drew together. “What sort of name is that?”
“Short for MacKenzie.”
He beamed. “Oh, that’s a proper Scottish name!”
She laughed. “Glad you approve.”
“I’m Scottish, too. At least my grandfather was. I was born in Norfolk.”
“Not the one in Virginia, I assume.”
He nodded approvingly. “Do you know where my Norfolk is?”
“That would be in East Anglia. Somewhere north of London, I think.”
Angus’s dimples deepened. “Not many Americans know that.”
Kenzie felt both flattered and amused by his obvious admiration. “Lucky for me I’ve traveled a bit. Are you renting a house in Avon, Angus?”
He pointed over his shoulder. “We’re staying in that one there.”
The rooftops of several beachfront cottages were visible over the dunes, but Kenzie didn’t bother turning to look. They were all pretty much alike: sturdy wooden dwellings built high off the ground to withstand the flood tides and storms that frequently lashed the Outer Banks.
Angus untangled the kite’s tail and picked it up from her towel. Kenzie saw that it was nearly as big as he was. “First time piloting one of those?”
Angus looked sheepish. “It’s hard to steer.”
“Piece of cake once it’s aloft. The trick is getting it airborne.”
“Do you know how?”
“Um, it’s been a while….”
The dimples reappeared, dazzling her. “Oh, please, could you show me?”
She glanced back toward the houses. “Your folks won’t mind you spending all this time out here alone?”
“My dad said I could come down, as long as I didn’t go in the water. Please, Kenzie?”
How could she refuse? “Hand me the string. Let’s give it a try.”
Ross Calder closed the cover of his laptop with a snap. Annoyed, he sat back on the couch, running his hands through his hair. While the Internet certainly made it possible to stay on top of his work while on vacation, it wasn’t the same as being at the office. Meeting clients face-to-face. Engaging in the dialogue with colleagues so important to an attorney with too many cases on his hands.
Lousy time to take a couple of weeks off, what with the Fitzpatrick trial rescheduled for early August, in addition to a thousand other, equally important cases and meetings and tiresome loose ends.
