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Surprise Package
Joanna Wayne
Isabella Trueblood made history reuniting people torn apart by war and an epidemic. Now, generations later, Lily and Dylan Garrett carry on her work with their agency, Finders Keepers. Circumstances may have changed, but the goal remains the same.LostAny chance Kyle Blackstone might have of a relationship with his gorgeous neighbor Ashley Garrett. He kept flirting, but she just wasn't buying.FoundOne baby girl. By Ashley Garrett. Outside Kyle's apartment. He'd actually fathered a baby and didn't know it? Or he'd unintentionally hit on a surefire plan to involve Ashley in his life? She had a career…standards…rules! But the baby was irresistible. Unfortunately, despite everything, so was Kyle!Finders Keepers:bringing families together
Isabella Trueblood made history reuniting people torn apart by war and an epidemic. Now, generations later, Lily and Dylan Garrett carry on her work with their agency, Finders Keepers. Circumstances may have changed, but the goal remains the same.
Lost
The joy of motherhood. Skylar Diamond was a successful fashion designer now, but the regret she harbored at the long-ago decision to give up her baby haunted her still.
Found
A grown-up daughter and an overprotective father. Sheriff Noah Beaufort didn’t appreciate a high-society type nosing around his town, watching his daughter, Lauren. Then Lauren took a fancy to the woman, and in spite of himself, so did Noah. But he was too good a lawman to trust her motives. Something was definitely suspicious....
“Come in, if you dare.”
Ashley peeked around the edge of the door. “I can come back later if this is a bad time.”
“Don’t even think about it.” Kyle walked out of the kitchen, a glass of water in one hand, Casey riding the opposite hip. He was barefoot, unshaven, dressed in a stained T-shirt and a pair of gym shorts adorned with fuzz from Casey’s new baby blanket. But Casey was smiling at him and clenching her fingers about his nose. He pried her fingers loose and tickled her tummy. She laughed out loud and then poked a thumb into her mouth and rested her head on Kyle’s shoulder.
Something tightened in Ashley’s chest and she found it difficult to breathe. “I know I look like something Mikasa dragged in from beneath the stairwell,” he said, “but you don’t have to stare at me like that.”
She kept staring, mesmerized. She’d never seen him look worse. She’d never wanted a man more. The feeling scared her to death. She took a step backward.
“Do I look that bad?”
“No, you look—fine.”
“Now you’re lying for sure. But lie all you want. Just don’t leave, unless you want to hear a grown man cry.”
Dear Reader,
I was thrilled when I was invited to be part of the Trueblood, Texas continuity project, and it turned out to be as much fun as I expected. Not only did I team up with some great writers, but I got to help create the wonderful Garrett family. They reminded me so much of some of the warm and close-knit Texas families I know. It was easy for me to understand how growing up as a Garrett would have a profound effect on forming my heroine’s character. I loved watching Ashley Garrett unfold and change as she interacted not only with her family, but with her sexy but complex neighbor and the precious, abandoned baby girl. By the time the story concluded, they had all walked off the pages and into my heart. I hope the characters in Surprise Package touch you as they did me.
I love to hear from readers. You can contact me through my website, joannawayne.com. (http://www.joannawayne.com)
Joanna Wayne
Surprise Package
Joanna Wayne
www.millsandboon.co.uk (http://www.millsandboon.co.uk)
THE TRUEBLOOD LEGACY
THE YEAR WAS 1918, and the Great War in Europe still raged, but Esau Porter was heading home to Texas.
The young sergeant arrived at his parents’ ranch northwest of San Antonio on a Sunday night, only the celebration didn’t go off as planned. Most of the townsfolk of Carmelita had come out to welcome Esau home, but when they saw the sorry condition of the boy, they gave their respects quickly and left.
The fever got so bad so fast that Mrs. Porter hardly knew what to do. By Monday night, before the doctor from San Antonio made it into town, Esau was dead.
The Porter family grieved. How could their son have survived the German peril, only to burn up and die in his own bed? It wasn’t much of a surprise when Mrs. Porter took to her bed on Wednesday. But it was a hell of a shock when half the residents of Carmelita came down with the horrible illness. House after house was hit by death, and all the townspeople could do was pray for salvation.
None came. By the end of the year, over one hundred souls had perished. The influenza virus took those in the prime of life, leaving behind an unprece-dented number of orphans. And the virus knew no boundaries. By the time the threat had passed, more than thirty-seven million people had succumbed worldwide.
But in one house, there was still hope.
Isabella Trueblood had come to Carmelita in the late 1800s with her father, blacksmith Saul Trueblood, and her mother, Teresa Collier Trueblood. The family had traveled from Indiana, leaving their Quaker roots behind.
Young Isabella grew up to be an intelligent woman who had a gift for healing and storytelling. Her dreams centered on the boy next door, Foster Carter, the son of Chester and Grace.
Just before the bad times came in 1918, Foster asked Isabella to be his wife, and the future of the Carter spread was secured. It was a happy union, and the future looked bright for the young couple.
Two years later, not one of their relatives was alive. How the young couple had survived was a miracle. And during the epidemic, Isabella and Foster had taken in more than twenty-two orphaned children from all over the county. They fed them, clothed them, taught them as if they were blood kin.
Then Isabella became pregnant, but there were complications. Love for her handsome son, Josiah, born in 1920, wasn’t enough to stop her from grow-ing weaker by the day. Knowing she couldn’t leave her husband to tend to all the children if she died, she set out to find families for each one of her orphaned charges.
And so the Trueblood Foundation was born. Named in memory of Isabella’s parents, it would become famous all over Texas. Some of the orphaned children went to strangers, but many were reunited with their
families. After reading notices in newspapers and church bulletins, aunts, uncles, cousins and grand-parents rushed to Carmelita to find the young ones they’d given up for dead.
Toward the end of Isabella’s life, she’d brought together more than thirty families, and not just her orphans. Many others, old and young, made their way to her doorstep, and Isabella turned no one away.
At her death, the town’s name was changed to Trueblood, in her honor. For years to come, her simple grave was adorned with flowers on the anniversary of her death, grateful tokens of appreciation from the families she had brought together.
Isabella’s son, Josiah, grew into a fine rancher and married Rebecca Montgomery in 1938. They had a daughter, Elizabeth Trueblood Carter, in 1940. Elizabeth married her neighbor William Garrett in 1965, and gave birth to twins Lily and Dylan in 1971, and daughter Ashley a few years later. Home was the Double G ranch, about ten miles from Trueblood proper, and the Garrett children grew up listening to stories of their famous great-grandmother, Isabella. Because they were Truebloods, they knew that they, too, had a sacred duty to carry on the tradition passed down to them: finding lost souls and reuniting loved ones.
Joanna Wayne is acknowledged as the author of this work.
I’d like to give special acknowledgment to Rick Redmann for his valuable input on the business of advertising. I’d also like to thank Emilie Richards, who taught the creative writing class that got me started writing romance suspense and remains a wonderful friend. And to Wayne, always.
Contents
CHAPTER ONE (#u433fdd32-e69c-5712-85a1-8da49860ee77)
CHAPTER TWO (#u4c17ae58-e245-5e48-9168-cb5220cbe035)
CHAPTER THREE (#uc0b4cd72-30b7-5e6a-8dc2-44ccc2217d52)
CHAPTER FOUR (#ue8fd30da-18b6-59dc-a0f9-7b1c957e7b0f)
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)
CHAPTER TWELVE (#litres_trial_promo)
CHAPTER THIRTEEN (#litres_trial_promo)
CHAPTER FOURTEEN (#litres_trial_promo)
CHAPTER FIFTEEN (#litres_trial_promo)
CHAPTER SIXTEEN (#litres_trial_promo)
CHAPTER SEVENTEEN (#litres_trial_promo)
CHAPTER EIGHTEEN (#litres_trial_promo)
CHAPTER ONE
COWBOYS. Ranchers. Cattle. Beef.
Ashley Garrett typed in the words, Times New Roman font, eighteen point, and ran them across the page in the shape of a galloping horse.
Her mission was to put them all together and come up with an ad campaign and a slogan that was so terrific it would be on the lips and in the minds of every Texas citizen. In the process, she would put her name on the map—along with the Texas Ranchers Association, of course.
This was her biggest account to date, a chance to leap a few rungs up the advertising success ladder and put her one step closer to some swanky office on Manhattan’s famed Madison Avenue. Let other women marry and cook pot roasts. She’d influence what their kids wore, the kind of car they drove and where they’d buy their groceries.
But for now, it was sell the Texas Ranchers Association. Sell beef. Sell an image. The task had seemed so easy when Mr. Clintock of Clintock, Mitchum and O’Connell had offered her the plum account. Four days later, she was drowning in insipid, languishing in schmaltz, when what she needed was a spark of genius. Of course, she’d let the Creative Department guys in on the fun eventually, but she wanted to be the mind behind the idea, not just a facilitator.
Stretching her fingers and placing them back on her trusty keyboard, she prepared herself for another go at releasing a rush of ingenious juices. When in doubt, start with a cowboy. They were sexy, virile, rugged, totally masculine. Except for the ones who were dirty, sweaty and smelled of cattle droppings.
“Wrong mind-set, Ashley Garrett.”
Talking to herself again—a sure sign she’d been punching keys and staring at the screen on her computer too long. Fingering her favorite silver bracelet, she glanced at the chrome office clock on the wall over her file cabinet. Six-thirty. No wonder the office was so quiet.
Everyone else had gone back to their cozy suburban homes, where, according to someone’s statistics, they could enjoy their four bedrooms, two baths, two and a half children, one dog, one cat and two goldfish. Or else they’d headed over to happy hour at the hotel bar across the street so they could fortify themselves to face their mate and two and a half kids. To each his own.
She had a session scheduled with her personal trainer at seven. She loved saying that. It sounded so impressive. Not that she could afford him on a regular basis, but after one session, she’d been so excited about the results that her brother Dylan had made exercise her Christmas present. He was springing for three months of sessions, two per week. She had six weeks to go, and she could already see progress. By summer, she’d be able to do great things for a bikini.
In a matter of minutes, she’d flicked off her monitor, turned her daily calendar to the next day’s page and straightened her desk, readying it for the morning. Organization was a key factor in maintaining the level of professional excellence she demanded of herself.
Standing, she ran a hand down her skirt, ironing the pleats with her fingers so that they lay straight. The suit was teal, the fabric a silk blend, the workmanship exquisite. The price tag had blown her budget to heck and back, but she couldn’t resist it. Work was her passion, but clothes ran a close second.
The phone rang just as she grabbed her briefcase and threw the leather strap over her shoulder. She considered ignoring it, but thought better of it. It might be her pregnant sister Lily, and who knew what a woman with a stomach the size of a bloated beach ball might need?
“Clintock, Mitchum and O’Connell, Ashley Garrett speaking.”
“So this is where you spend your evenings. What a waste.”
The voice was male and unfamiliar. “May I ask who’s calling?”
“Guess I didn’t make as much of an impression on you as you did on me this morning. I’d recognize that soft, feminine voice of yours anywhere. This is Jim Bob McAllister.”
“Mr. McAllister?”
“Yes ma’am. It’s me.”
The Mr. McAllister from the Ranchers Association. She hadn’t recognized his voice, but she’d make it a point to the next time he called. “What can I do for you?”
“I’ve been thinking about what we talked about in our meeting, you know, about how to help folks see beef in a new, much more acceptable light. Anyway, I made a few notes this afternoon and I’d like to toss them around with you.”
“Great. You know what you want. I’m just here to put your desires into a total image package. I can see you tomorrow, any time that’s convenient for you.”
“I’d rather make it tonight.”
Yuck. She’d spent an hour with him this morning, and enough was enough. “Are you still in town?”
“Afraid so. I had hoped to drive back to the ranch this afternoon, but my business took longer than I’d planned. So, since I’m still stuck here, how about talking over dinner? My treat.”
“That’s not necessary.”
“It is to me, little lady. I don’t cotton to women taking out a wallet when they’re out with Jim Bob McAllister.”
Little lady! Gag me with a spoon. But if he wanted to talk business, she couldn’t very well turn him down. “Are you sure you wouldn’t rather fax me your ideas? That way you could spend your evening in town with friends and not devote it to business.”
“No, once I get something galloping around in my mind, I just can’t let it go till I’ve put the horse in the stall.”
Which meant there wasn’t an easy way out of this. It could be worse. She’d met him on several occasions before today, mostly at Ranchers Association functions that she’d attended with her dad.
He was a respected rancher and around the same age as her father. Surely he wouldn’t grope her thigh under the table like the last client had after he’d insisted she join him for dinner to discuss the scope of the campaign. She’d told him as nicely as the situation allowed just what he should do with his scope.
“Dinner would be fine, Mr. McAllister, if we can make it around eight-fifteen. Can I meet you somewhere?”
She wrote down the name and address of the restaurant. The office was quiet as she locked up and headed toward the elevator. The parking lot would be even quieter, almost deserted this time of night. It never used to bother her, but ever since her self-acclaimed secret admirer had started leaving cards and flowers attached to her windshield, she was a bit uneasy when leaving the office alone.
Not that she was afraid. It hadn’t happened all that often and the cards were harmless enough, probably someone’s idea of a joke. Besides, her brother Dylan was an ex-cop and he had made sure she was well-trained in the art of self-defense. Pity the poor mugger who mistook her for an easy target.
Still, she walked to her car quickly, anxious to get to the health club as soon as possible so she could finish her session before she met Mr. McAllister.
* * *
ASHLEY PUSHED the breath from her lungs as she pulled her body up in yet another stomach crunch.
“That’s the way,” Bernie encouraged. “Use the stomach muscles, no stress on the back and neck.”
“How many more?” she gasped between breaths.
