Kathleen Creighton
The Black Sheep’s Baby
A book in the Into The Heartland series, 2002
Dear Reader,
July is a sizzling month both outside and in, and once again we’ve rounded up six exciting titles to keep your temperature rising. It all starts with the latest addition to Marilyn Pappano’s HEARTBREAK CANYON miniseries, Lawman’s Redemption, in which a brooding man needs help connecting with the lonely young girl who just might be his daughter-and he finds it in the form of a woman with similar scars in her romantic past. Don’t miss this emotional, suspenseful read.
Eileen Wilks provides the next installment in our twelve-book miniseries, ROMANCING THE CROWN, with Her Lord Protector. Fireworks ensue when a Montebellan lord has to investigate a beautiful commoner who may be a friend-or a foe!-of the royal family. This miniseries just gets more and more intriguing. And Kathleen Creighton finishes up her latest installment of her INTO THE HEARTLAND miniseries with The Black Sheep’s Baby. A freewheeling photojournalist who left town years ago returns-with a little pink bundle strapped to his chest, and a beautiful attorney in hot pursuit. In Marilyn Tracy’s Cowboy Under Cover, a grief-stricken widow who has set up a haven for children in need of rescue finds herself with that same need-and her rescuer is a handsome federal marshal posing as a cowboy. Nina Bruhns is back with Sweet Revenge, the story of a straitlaced woman posing as her wild identical twin-and now missing-sister to learn of her fate, who in the process hooks up with the seductive detective who is also searching for her. And in Bachelor in Blue Jeans by Lauren Nichols, during a bachelor auction, a woman inexplicably bids on the man who once spurned her, and wins-or does she? This reunion romance will break your heart.
So get a cold drink, sit down, put your feet up and enjoy them all-and don’t forget to come back next month for more of the most exciting romance reading around…only in Silhouette Intimate Moments.
Yours,
Leslie J. Wainger
Executive Senior Editor
Prologue
December 20-Los Angeles, California
S he woke in the milky twilight that passed for darkness in the city, knowing she’d dreamed of Susan again. As always, she couldn’t remember much about the dream-no details, not even a face. Just a voice-Susan’s voice, childish and frail, calling to her. Calling her, pleading with her. Help me…help me, Devon. Please…don’t leave me. Help me…
She threw back the covers and rose, paced barefoot to the window. She stared out across the glittering jeweled carpet that stretched all the way to the sea, squinting hard to hold back angry tears. How was I supposed to help you, she thought, when I didn’t even know where you were? You ran away, damn you. It’s not my fault. It’s not my fault!
She held herself tightly as she shivered, and swallowed hard, once, then again. A tear ran warmly down her cold cheek.
Susan had been fourteen when she’d run away-almost a woman. But the voice in her dream was that of a little child.
Help me, Devon…
Dammit, Susan, she thought, angry and weary at the same time. I am helping, can’t you see that? I’m sorry if I let you down, but I’m trying to make it up to you now, the only way I know. Isn’t that enough?
She brushed at her cheek and jerked away from the window. The luminous numbers on the clock portion of the built-in entertainment center beside her bed glowed green-gold in the gray twilight-2:14 a.m. Way too early to even think about leaving for the airport. And yet she knew better than to try to go back to sleep. Calm, now, and resolute, she went to her walk-in closet and took her rolling overnighter from its shelf. She lifted it onto the bed, unzipped it and began, carefully and methodically, to pack.
December 20-On I-80, Somewhere in Nebraska
His eyes wanted to close-insisted on doing so, in fact, in spite of his strenuous arguments against it. That, plus an inarguable need for fuel, forced him off the interstate.
He chose an exit somewhere east of Grand Island that promised half a dozen motels and at least that many restaurants. He bypassed all of them, though his stomach had been complaining for the last fifty miles, and pulled instead into a gas station where he could pay at the pump. While unleaded gasoline gushed into the tanks of his six-year-old Dodge, he stood with shoulders hunched and hands in his pockets, rocking himself in the bitter Nebraska wind and reflecting on how the California winters had spoiled him.
Just beyond the roof of the gas station’s convenience store he could see a big green Holiday Inn sign, like a beacon summoning his exhausted mind and body into a safe harbor. But as much as he yearned for rest, as much as he knew he needed rest, he also knew that right now there was only one harbor in the world that would feel safe to him.
“We’ll be there by tonight,” he told his passenger, sound asleep in the back seat. “Five more hours…”
The fuel nozzle clicked off. He replaced it in its cradle, climbed back into his car and, after a moment’s indecision, pulled across the parking lot and up to the drive-through window of the fast-food place next door. He ordered a double cheeseburger and a jumbo coffee and a short time later was back on the interstate, heading east toward evening.
In his rearview mirrors he could see, reaching toward him out of the west like menacing fingers, the dark purple clouds of the oncoming storm.
Chapter 1
I t was the week before Christmas, and Lucy was sorting laundry.
She acknowledged that fact with a sense of mild astonishment-and not-so-mild vexation, for Lucy Rosewood Brown Lanagan was not a person to whom the adjective “mild” could normally be applied. At least, not often or for long.
“It’s too quiet to be Christmas!” she declared loudly, though more to herself than to her sister-in-law, Chris, who was sitting at the kitchen table thumbing through magazines, looking for recipes.
“This looks good,” Chris said without looking up. “Walnut squares…”
“Eric’s allergic to walnuts.”
Lucy said it without thinking, an automatic response-which she realized a moment later when Chris looked up and eagerly asked, “Oh, is he going to be here for Christmas this year?”
A familiar pain made Lucy’s voice uncharacteristically light when she replied with a shrug, “Haven’t heard from him.” And a moment later asked, “What about Caitlyn?”
Chris’s eyes jerked away, shifting back to the magazines spread out on the table in front of her as she said in a tone as artificially cheery as Lucy’s, “She doesn’t know for sure. Says she’ll try her best to make it, at least for Christmas dinner.” And a poignant little silence fell between the two women, fraught with empathy and unvoiced yearnings.
“It’s too quiet-” Lucy began again, just as, with faultless timing, a door banged sharply and loud thumping noises started up out on the back porch.
Chris gave a gurgle of laughter. She and Lucy both looked toward the kitchen door as it burst open to admit their menfolk along with a gust of freezing wind. Lucy knew the smile in Chris’s shining eyes was only a reflection of her own, though it gave her as much embarrassment as satisfaction nowadays to admit, even after more than thirty years, that the sight of her husband’s face could still give her that seasick feeling under her ribs.
“Getting colder,” the man himself announced as he ducked into the service room across the hall to wash up in the laundry tub. “That storm’s on its way. Be here before morning.”