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Fairy-Tale Family
Pat Montana
ONCE UPON A FAMILYOnce, Ellie Sander had believed in fairy tales…until her illusions were shattered and she found herself single mom to four cherubic–though sometimes challenging–children. For them, she had to be strong–and smart. No cads in Prince Charming clothes for her ever again!Gorgeous, gregarious, great with her kids–Mitch Kole arrived in Ellie's life like a knight in shining armor. But his stay was only temporary, while his bachelor status seemed permanent. Dare she dream that this man who'd claimed her heart and touched her soul could become her happily-ever-after husband…and a fairy-tale father?
Barely able to breathe, Ellie rose on tiptoe. Just one kiss...just magic for one night. That was all Cinderella had asked. (#u64930dfd-730d-5959-bf62-e53180a990cb)Letter to Reader (#u48d4a59d-96a0-535b-80a0-b2d79a1244d7)Title Page (#u3206c95f-fb9c-53e0-9d2a-2ba5bc8056b3)Dedication (#ub6b94295-33c8-581b-980c-0b629a1a393c)About the Author (#u344d9631-d8fb-5cbe-a3a8-a63f18bcb509)Prologue (#u9f0fa7a6-e385-567d-b76f-8d407ac72f02)Chapter One (#u6ca83164-4593-53b8-a2ec-f01aef6ba649)Chapter Two (#u39792f3f-97b1-5e2d-b433-6d148cfa9ab1)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)Chapter Nine (#litres_trial_promo)Chapter Ten (#litres_trial_promo)Chapter Eleven (#litres_trial_promo)Epilogue (#litres_trial_promo)Copyright (#litres_trial_promo)
Barely able to breathe, Ellie rose on tiptoe. Just one kiss...just magic for one night. That was all Cinderella had asked.
As if a spell were unwinding, Mitch kissed her, molding his mouth to hers, seeking entry to deepen the kiss. Like a sorcerer, he made her forget everything but him; like a wizard, he filled her with magic. But Mitch was a man, every hard, burning inch of him pressing against her.
She trembled at the quaking she felt in him. She savored his taste. She felt the thunder of his heart against her own.
Or was it the galloping race of time? For an instant she listened, knowing tonight the only things she and Cinderella had in common were a prince and a fatefully ticking clock....
Dear Reader,
As spring turns to summer, make Silhouette Romance the perfect companion for those lazy days and sultry nights! Fans of our LOVING THE BOSS series won’t want to miss The Marriage Merger by exciting author Vivian Leiber. A pretend engagement between friends goes awry when their white lies lead to a real white wedding!
Take one biological-clock-ticking twin posing as a new mom and one daddy determined to gain custody of his newborn son, and you’ve got the unsuspecting partners in The Baby Arrangement, Moyra Tarling’s tender BUNDLES OF JOY title. You’ve asked for more TWINS ON THE DOORSTEP, Stella Bagwell’s charming author-led miniseries, so this month we give you Millionaire on Her Doorstep, an emotional story of two wounded souls who find love in the most unexpected way...and in the most unexpected place.
Can a bachelor bent on never marrying and a single mom with a bustling brood of four become a Fairy-Tale Family? Find out in Pat Montana’s delightful new novel. Next, a handsome doctor’s case of mistaken identity leads to The Triplet’s Wedding Wish in this heartwarming tale by DeAnna Talcott. And a young widow finds the home—and family—she’s always wanted when she strikes a deal with a Nevada Cowboy Dad, this month’s FAMILY MATTERS offering from Dorsey Kelley.
Enjoy this month’s fantastic selections, and make sure to return each and every month to Silhouette Romance!
Mary-Theresa Hussey
Senior Editor, Silhouette Romance
Please address questions and book requests to:
Silhouette Reader Service
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Fairy-Tale Family
Pat Montana
www.millsandboon.co.uk (http://www.millsandboon.co.uk)
With love
to Joe and his fast feet,
and to Princess Maggie Rose
PAT MONTANA
grew up in Colorado, but now lives in the Midwest. So far, she’s been a wife, mother of four adopted daughters, and a grandmother. She’s also been a soda jerk, secretary, teacher, counselor, artist—and an author. She considers life an adventure and plans to live to be at least one hundred because she has so many things to do.
Some of the goals Pat has set for herself include being a volunteer rocker for disadvantaged babies and teaching in the literacy program. She wants to learn to weave and to throw pots on a wheel, not to mention learn French, see a play at the Parthenon in Greece and sing in a quartet. Above all, she wants to write more romances.
A FLAT FIT FOR A FAIRY-TALE FAMILY
Prologue
Someone was sleeping in her bed Ellie Sander hugged her daughter closer and backed carefully from the doorway of the moonlit room.
What should she do? Call the police? She’d have to wake Rafe to find the portable phone. Wake all three boys and try to herd them quietly downstairs? “Quietly” was not part of her sons’ little-kid vocabularies. Stand there and scream bloody murder? That was what she felt like doing.
She was so tired. Two minutes before midnight, and she’d just come upstairs from The Old King Kole Music Shoppe to find her four-year-old daughter sleeping with the dog—again. The day’s receipts from Kendall Kole’s store had refused to add up to the same total twice. She hadn’t even started studying for her final in her dental hygiene class at the community college. And since Kendall’s automobile accident four days ago, she and the kids hadn’t made it to the hospital to visit him—not even once.
Now some jerk had decided to break into all this mess—and catch a few winks on the job? What were the standards of breaking and entering coming to these days?
Ellie. tightened her hold around Seraphina’s sleepheavy little body and rested her cheek against her daughter’s head. Maybe, if she waited a second or two, some prince would come to their rescue.
Right. Except that all he would find were countrymouse kids and a frazzled mom fresh out of glass slippers. Hardly the makings of a fairy tale.
She let go a slow, silent sigh. Decision time again. Time to take some action. If she just weren’t so tired. Her gaze traveled to a jacket hung on the old desk chair. She squinted to make out the letters stitched across the back. Winterhaven, Colorado.
Ellie froze. Omigod.
The man in the bed mumbled through a snore.
She leaned forward to stare at him, careful not to step on the squeaky board just inside the door.
Darn, darn, darn. How could she have forgotten?
The man lay tangled in her daughter’s sheets, one arm flung across his face as if to ward off the moonlight flooding through the flimsy white curtains. But his arm didn’t hide his dark, wavy hair, tousled like wind-tossed midnight on Seri’s pillow. The same dark hair dusted his arms and the planes of his broad chest and tugged her reluctant gaze down the flat ridges of his stomach...to the folds of the sheet.
Ellie scrunched her eyes shut. Her heart pounded. She’d had no idea Mitchell Kole would look like this.
He was big. Bigger than his father. Kendall Kole was attractive for an older man, but his son? Darn, this man was truly handsome. In the moonlight he looked almost... magical.
The Prince! He’s come to rescue us! Ellie could imagine her daughter’s eager proclamation.
Something inside her stirred, something warm and wanting, feelings all but forgotten. As if, for just a moment, she were a woman again—not just an exhausted mother. Her heart thundered.
Whirling from the doorway, she hurried down the hall, carrying her child away from this new danger. She buried her face in the sweet warmth of her daughter’s wispy hair, but the scent only brought back painful memories.
Was it just a year ago she’d hidden her tears in her daughter’s hug on the most horrible night of her life? Her husband, her rock ‘n’ rollin’ husband, had rocked off the audition stage at Branson, Missouri, and right on down the highway...along with their ailing van and their pitiful savings. Peter had abandoned them! The realization still stunned her.
If Kendall Kole hadn’t offered her this job and a place to stay, she didn’t know what would have become of her and her kids.
Tiptoeing into the dormitory, she crept to the twin bed nearest the bathroom and nudged her six-year-old son.
“Rafe, go climb in with Michael,” she whispered.
The skinny little guy slid his feet to the floor and tugged down his oversize T-shirt. Clutching a portable phone, he curled into the middle bed next to his eight-year-old brother.
With a heavy heart, Ellie watched the two settle in together. It wasn’t the first time they’d had to share a bed. She hoped it would be the last.
In the past twelve years, the only good judgment she’d used had been trusting “King” Kole, she thought ruefully. That and the decision to stop crying over Peter—Peter who had thought playing parent was the same as doing a musical gig. When he was done playing, he just packed up and moved on.
Ellie lowered her four-year-old daughter into the stillwarm impression of her son, then turned to pull the sheet up over the two slender bodies in the middle bed, the small one light-haired, the other darker, like his father. Stealing to the far bed, she brushed a kiss on the forehead of her oldest son. A small black terrier grinned up at her from behind Gabe’s legs, tail thumping the blanket softly.
Ellie raised a silencing finger to the dog. “You are as bad as a doting grandma,” she whispered. She hurried back to the first bed, slipped out of her long skirt and oversize sweater and slid in beside her daughter.
A dog for a grandmother and a lonely shopkeeper for a benefactor and substitute grandfather. Things could be a lot worse. King had become her friend. She knew her kids loved him.
But now? With his son here, their futures were in jeopardy again. Mitchell Kole wouldn’t be happy when he discovered his Humpty Dumpty father had taken in a woman with so many kids she didn’t know what to do. And a dog who thought she was their nanny.
Ellie curled protectively around Seraphina. Seri might think Mitchell Kole was a prince, but this was hardly a fairy tale. Just plain old, nitty-gritty reality—four grubby kids, one single mom trying to give them some stability while she learned to clean teeth, and a kindhearted widower with more broken bones than she’d ever known existed.
Ellie didn’t believe in Tinker Bell. She didn’t believe in magic. And no matter how stirring Mitchell Kole looked in his sleep, she sure didn’t believe in Prince Charming.
Not anymore.
Chapter One
“Someone’s sleeping in my bed!”
Mitchell Kole squinted one eye open long enough to stop the ridiculous dream, the childlike voice that sounded a lot like Goldilocks accompanied by the distinct scent of peanut butter. He didn’t even like peanut butter.
Scrunching his eyes shut, he tugged the sheet up around his ears. Not Goldilocks. Just a very little girl with flyaway brown hair standing by the side of his bed in a pink tutu.
“What the...?” In one swift motion, he shoved up to a sitting position.
The child scurried to the foot of the double bed, her tutu bouncing like a tugboat in choppy waters. Leaning forward, she rested her elbows in the folds of the bright comforter, cupped her chin in the heels of her hands and stared back at him. The tutu popped up behind her like a limp peacock’s tail.
She couldn’t be more than—what? Three...four years old? What did he know about kids’ ages? Her fingernails, he noticed irrelevantly, glowed a bright green.
What the hell was a kid with green fingernails doing in his room? What was any kid doing here? He didn’t even like kids.
“Hello.” She studied him curiously, her big brown eyes framed by dark lashes. “I’m Seraphina. You’re sleeping in my bed. I slept with Bubba Sue last night.”
“I’m sleeping in your—?” Mitch stopped himself midoutburst, suddenly aware that everything around him looked...different. He hadn’t bothered to turn on a light last night after coming in so late. Too upset from his visit at the hospital. Incredibly none of the changes in the room had tripped him up in the dark.
“That’s my dollhouse.”
The kid pointed to a strange accumulation of stacked cardboard boxes filling the space next to the door where his electronic keyboard used to sit. Each box was decorated like a tiny room. They were all painted a headache-inducing shade of pink. Mitch resisted the urge to shade his eyes.
“Those are my animals.”
This time she pointed beneath the window where he’d kept his treasured first ski poles. A faded yellow tiger with one ear missing sat there now next to a teddy bear who looked as if he had the mange. Both of them hunkered down in a pile of crumpled tissue-paper flowers.
The kid must have decided he didn’t need help with the rest of the room, because she watched him silently while he took inventory. His Ski Aspen, Ski Vail posters were missing from the walls, replaced with pictures of figures he vaguely recognized as some of the new Disney characters. And the bed he lay on was afloat in more of the same. He had never slept in sheets covered with mermaids!
“Your room?” he mumbled, scraping a palm up the bristles on his cheek. Somewhere in the distance, children’s shouts overrode the steady chatter of morning TV cartoons. He dragged fingers back through his hair, struggling to get awake, searching to make some kind of sense of all of this...this mayhem. Through it all he caught the rich aroma of coffee.
Thank god. Evidence of adult-type beings. What were kids doing in his father’s place anyhow? Living here, from the looks of this room. What the devil was going on?
The little girl straightened. With a gesture that reminded him of a queen, she swept her thin bangs to one side.
“My name means angel,” she offered, as if she’d read his mind. “But really I’m a princess.” She studied him from the foot of the bed with those grave brown eyes.
She looked more like a waif. She was about as skinny as a puppet, and her mouse brown hair stuck out in feathery wisps from a pink thing on top of her head. On closer inspection, he saw that the netting of her tutu drooped, and the straps across her thin little shoulders had shed most of their shiny stuff.
Mitch eyed her warily. For a princess, this kid’s treasures looked mighty tattered. But she didn’t seem to know. She acted as self-assured and expectant as any royalty he’d ever entertained.
In spite of his growing annoyance, Mitch allowed himself a half smile. Such seriousness in one so little. Seemed to him that a kid her size ought to be giggling about something, not looking as if she carried the weight of a kingdom on her shoulders.
But what did he know about kids? Or care?
Grabbing the edge of the sheet, he held it against his bare middle and slid to the side of the bed. He hadn’t come all the way back to Missouri to be stalled by a little squirt’s solemn face. He had business to take care of. And a plane to catch back to Colorado this evening.
He’d told Jack he would be back in Winterhaven in two days—Jack Winter who’d taken him in when he’d been an angry, scared runaway of almost seventeen. Jack had given him a place to stay, a job. His wife, Josey, had given him the courage to call King and tell him where he’d run. Over the years, Jack had become his mentor—and his friend. Mitch wasn’t about to let him down.
So... Still clutching the sheet, Mitch swung his feet to the floor. One thing he’d learned teaching skiing at the Lodge: where there was a princess, there was bound to be a king or a queen. He needed to seek a royal audience pronto. Whoever was living with his father could be the answer to his problem.
“Okay, Princess, I’m...Mr. Kole, and I’d like to get up now so—”
“I know. You’re The Prince.”
“Seri? Where are you? You’d better not be bothering Mr. Kole.”
Hell. Mitch pulled the sheet of redheaded mermaids a little higher around him. If he remembered his fairy tales, princesses weren’t supposed to catch The Prince in bed naked.
“Seri, I told you not to—” A woman appeared in the doorway. “Oh...” At the sight of him her eyes widened.
Mitch watched color rosy the woman’s cheeks. Things were taking a decided turn for the better.
There could be no mistaking Seraphina’s mother. This woman promised everything the funny little princess would someday become. The kid was skinny, but her mother—now here was pleasure to behold. The kind of woman the word “petite” must have been invented for, with feathery hair the color of light ale brushing her shoulders when she moved.
In spite of her size, she acted about as regal as the kid. Even in that long, shapeless dress, and that brown sweater—which had to be a hand-me-down from her grandfather—she still didn’t manage to hide a figure that was...lush. It was the only other word Mitch could think of. Or wanted to.
Until he looked into her eyes. They were blue, the blue of Colorado skies. Of columbine flowers. Of deep, cool mountain lakes.
Or an Alaskan glacier. He tugged the sheets closer.
None of her daughter’s studious curiosity there. Instead he found wariness—and other feelings he recognized. Anger. Resentment.
She studied him as if he were some form of outer space alien, a very stupid alien who had witlessly landed in her daughter’s bed. A state of affairs she definitely didn’t approve.
“Go on now, Seri. To the kitchen.” She shooed the girl out the door.
Given the same circumstances in his bedroom at Winterhaven, Mitch would have stretched into a slow, sensuous yawn, given the woman a provocative grin...and stood up. But something about this woman made him hesitate.
