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A Kiss In The Moonlight
Laurie Paige
LYRIC GIBSON FELT LIKE A VERY UNWELCOME GUESTWhen she'd agreed to accompany her aunt Fay to Seven Devils Ranch, Lyric hoped that the invitation was at the request of Trevor Dalton–a man who had stirred her desire from the moment she'd laid eyes upon him. But from the instant she arrived in Idaho, the independent Texan knew her hunch had been utterly wrong. Trevor would hardly acknowledge her existence!Lyric had always mesmerized Trevor, but she had pushed him away before…for a fiancé that he hadn't even known existed. Could Lyric make him understand the truth behind her deceit–and unleash the passion and love that burned in them both?
“She-Devil…”
“Is that what you think of me?” Lyric asked.
Trevor set his hat more firmly on his head. “Let’s just say that I don’t think much of a woman who kisses one man while engaged to another.”
“Lyle needed me—especially after the accident.”
“The car wreck wasn’t all that serious,” Trevor said with undisguised bitterness. “It didn’t maim him or call for a life-or-death operation, did it?”
Lyric hesitated. “No,” she said. “It didn’t.”
“Would you have broken the engagement and come to me…if I’d asked?”
Lyric thought of endless nights at the hospital, Lyle thinking that he was going to be all right, not realizing he was slipping further and further away…
Studying the strong, healthy man beside her, she sighed. “No. I couldn’t have come then.”
Trevor’s face hardened. “Then why the hell did you come now?”
Dear Reader,
It’s hard to believe that it’s that time of year again—and what better way to escape the holiday hysteria than with a good book…or six! Our selections begin with Allison Leigh’s The Truth About the Tycoon, as a man bent on revenge finds his plans have hit a snag—in the form of the beautiful sister of the man he’s out to get.
THE PARKS EMPIRE concludes its six-book run with The Homecoming by Gina Wilkins, in which Walter Parks’s daughter tries to free her mother from the clutches of her unscrupulous father. Too bad the handsome detective working for her dad is hot on her trail! The M.D.’s Surprise Family by Marie Ferrarella is another in her popular miniseries THE BACHELORS OF BLAIR MEMORIAL. This time, a lonely woman looking for a doctor to save her little brother finds both a healer of bodies and of hearts in the handsome neurosurgeon who comes highly recommended. In A Kiss in the Moonlight, another in Laurie Paige’s SEVEN DEVILS miniseries, a woman can’t resist her attraction to the man she let get away—because guilt was pulling her in another direction. But now he’s back in her sights—soon to be in her clutches? In Karen Rose Smith’s Which Child Is Mine? a woman is torn between the child she gave birth to and the one she’s been raising. And the only way out seems to be to marry the man who fathered her “daughter.” Last, a man decides to reclaim everything he’s always wanted, in the form of his biological daughters, and their mother, in Sharon De Vita’s Rightfully His.
Here’s hoping every one of your holiday wishes comes true, and we look forward to celebrating the New Year with you.
All the best,
Gail Chasan
Senior Editor
A Kiss in the Moonlight
Laurie Paige
www.millsandboon.co.uk (http://www.millsandboon.co.uk)
LAURIE PAIGE
Laurie has been a NASA engineer, a past president of the Romance Writers of America, a mother and a grandmother. She was twice a Romance Writers of America RITA
finalist for Best Traditional Romance and has won awards from Romantic Times for Best Silhouette Special Edition and Best Silhouette in addition to appearing on the USA TODAY bestseller list. Recently resettled in Northern California, Laurie is looking forward to whatever experiences her next novel will send her on.
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 One
Lyric Gibson felt the headache as a throb centered behind her eyes. She tried to consciously relax the tension that tightened the muscles of her forehead and those across her shoulders. That worked as long as she concentrated, but she was looking for road signs, and her attention was on that task.
“Have we passed it, do you think?” her great-aunt, Fay Gibson, asked in slightly querulous tones.
Lyric flinched as guilt joined the other emotions that swirled through her innermost self. She should have stopped in Boise for the night. Her aunt was sixty-eight years old and, although usually cheerful and persevering, much too tired from the long hours they’d spent on the road.
But it had been early afternoon—not quite four—so there’d been hours of July daylight left when they’d driven through the city. The mountain town of Lost Valley was only an hour north of there, according to her information, so she’d pushed on. They’d found the town without a problem.
The Seven Devils Ranch, their hoped-for destination, was supposed to be less than an hour west of Lost Valley, so they should have arrived by six at the latest.
It was now half past eight.
She had no idea if they were any closer to their destination now than they’d been an hour ago. Glancing at the western sky, she fought worry and the headache that accompanied it. She was no longer sure where they were. The back roads of Idaho all looked the same, and she’d obviously taken a couple of wrong turns. Or three or four.
Maybe this whole trip was a mistake. She’d been stunned when her great-aunt had delivered the invitation that had included her. Then she’d been elated. Now she was simply unsure.
“It’ll be dark soon,” Aunt Fay said, then gave an impatient tsk. “I’m sorry, Lyric. I shouldn’t have said that. I know you’re concerned about me, but this wouldn’t be the first time I’ve been lost and slept in a car.”
Lyric managed a confident laugh. “We’ll find it. We’re bound to be close. We passed a sign that said He-Devil Mountain was thataway.” She pointed toward the west. “The ranch is supposed to be within sight of the peak. We’re just taking the scenic route.”
A shiver ran over every nerve in her body as she recalled a dark-haired, blue-eyed, tall, handsome cowboy who’d once told her about his family’s ranch and its splendid view, its crystal streams and lakes, the majestic sweep of the land.
She’d longed to explore the mountains and valleys with him, but fate had intervened, temporarily at any rate.
Trevor had listened to her rushed, disjointed explanation of why she’d had to leave, first in disbelief then with growing anger. With his jaw set as hard as stone, he’d nodded as if he understood, but then he’d left. Without a word. Without a backward glance.
That had been almost a year ago.
During the endless fall and winter, through storms that brought floods to much of the southwest, she’d waited, sure he would write. But he hadn’t contacted her, not even when she’d sent a note that explained more fully. She’d given up hope. Then out of the blue came an invitation to visit the ranch. That had to mean something.
She put the shaky elation and haunting doubts aside to concentrate on finding the right road. She didn’t want to make another wrong turn.
“I see a trail of dust,” she said, peering through her driving glasses at this welcome indication of another vehicle. It was on a side road off to the right of the county road they traveled, which was also a gravel surface. The other driver had probably seen her dust, too.
The earlier concern eased a bit. “We can stop the driver and get directions.”
“He’s coming awfully fast. Be careful. He may be a rustler or something.”
Lyric cast her aunt a partly amused, partly exasperated glance at this bit of advice.
Rustlers? Ask her if she cared.
She slowed in anticipation of flagging the oncoming vehicle at the intersection of the two roads. “At present, I’d face down the devil himself if he would help get us to our destination.”
Her aunt laughed at the quip. The older woman was like a grandmother to Lyric and her two younger brothers. Aunt Fay had never married, but she’d taken in her nephew, Lyric’s father, years ago when his parents had died in a traffic accident. She’d always treated the family as if they were her children.
“Oh!” the spinster gasped.
Lyric swung the steering wheel hard to the right as a truck tore out of the gravel side road at breakneck speed and nearly hit them. She felt the compact station wagon graze a large rock as they careened into a shallow ditch at the side of the road.
The back tires slid sideways. She turned into the skid and took her foot off the brake. The rear skittered back and forth on the loose gravel. As the tires regained traction and she had the car under control once more, a pile of stones encased in a section of fence to form a corner post loomed before them.
“Oh, no,” she said.
They hit the stones with a resounding thud.
Air bags blossomed on each side of the front seat. Lyric spared a worry for her relative as the bag hit her face, smothering her for a few seconds and pressing her glasses painfully onto her nose.
Dizzy and frightened, Lyric remembered to turn the engine off, then she thrashed her way free of the collapsing air bag and turned to her aunt. After pushing the plastic aside, Lyric searched the older woman’s face for damage.
“Aunt Fay?” she said.
The other woman didn’t answer, didn’t move.
“Hey, are you okay in there?” a male voice asked.
“My aunt,” Lyric said. “I think she’s hurt.” She snapped open the seat belt and reached for her aunt’s wrist to check her pulse.
“Don’t move her,” the man ordered.
He went around the station wagon and opened the door. With a competence that was reassuring, he checked the unconscious woman after removing her glasses, which by some miracle weren’t broken, and sticking them in his pocket.
Lyric watched his hands run gently over Aunt Fay’s head, down her neck, where he paused to check her pulse, then continue over her shoulders and along her arms. His fingers were long and slender, the skin evenly tanned to where the white shirtsleeves were rolled up on his forearms. A hat hid most of his face. He bent farther into the car and examined her aunt’s knees and legs.
Lyric looked, too, and saw red marks indicating the bruises that would be forming soon.
He raised his head. “Ms. Gibson?” he said. “Can you hear me? Can you open your eyes?”
Lyric’s heart stopped, then pounded with a fierce, staccato beat. She gasped like a heroine in a melodrama as she studied the man in disbelief.
“Trevor?”
He faced her then, his eyes, which she knew to be as blue as the summer sky, appearing dark as midnight in the fading glow of the sunset. “Yeah, it’s me.”
They stared at each other in silence, a thousand questions and memories wrapping around their frozen forms. One thing for sure—there was no welcome in his gaze.
Aunt Fay opened her eyes and focused on one, then the other of them. “Where are my glasses?”
“Here,” Trevor said. He slipped the thin gold frames gently onto the older woman’s face.
“Are you all right?” Lyric asked, searching her beloved relative’s face for signs of pain.
“I’ve felt better,” her aunt said, then gave the man a smile. “Hello, Trevor. How are you?”
“I’m okay…other than feeling like a heel. There isn’t usually much traffic out this way.”
“I’m sure,” her aunt agreed with dry humor.
“Let me check the damage to your car, then we’ll see if it’ll run. It’s only a couple of miles to the ranch.” He paused and looked at Lyric. “How did you get on this back road, anyway?”
“A seriously wrong turn, I think.”
He nodded, his face grim but otherwise without expression. After getting a flashlight from his truck, he looked over the front end of the station wagon. “A badly dinged bumper and a slightly crumpled nose, but otherwise it looks okay. The radiator seems intact. I don’t see any fluid leaking out. Crank it up and let’s see if she’ll run.”
Lyric turned on the key. The engine purred to life at once. Trevor returned to the front of the vehicle. He nodded in her direction, indicating everything looked fine.
“Back up,” he said, coming to her window. “Keep the wheels straight.”
She cautiously backed onto the road. Trevor gave the car a push when one tire slipped on the gravel and dirt in the shallow ditch.
“Okay,” he called when she was clear. “Follow me.”
After he turned his truck around, she fell into place behind him, far enough back that his dust didn’t choke them. In less than five minutes they pulled up before a horse rail in front of a sprawling ranch house, its center portion made of massive logs, the wings on either side more modern structures of stone and wood.
Trevor honked his horn, then climbed out of the truck and came to the passenger side of the station wagon. “Watch your step now,” he said to Aunt Fay. “Careful. Lean on me while we see if your legs are okay. You have pain anywhere?”
“I’m not sure,” the older woman said. “I seem to be numb at the moment.”
With the gentlest of care, he escorted her aunt toward the house. The door opened and an older man peered out. His hair gleamed silver in the light from the room behind him. He was as tall as Trevor and had the same lean, rangy frame.
