Truly Daddy
Cara Colter
TRULY A FAMILY?What was it that made rugged mountain man Garret Boyd so irresistible to Toni Carlton? Could it be the tenderness she'd glimpsed in his blue eyes whenever he swept his orphaned niece into his strong, sheltering arms? Or was it the heat Toni saw simmering in his gaze from the moment she'd come to his cozy home?In no time Toni had put a smile in Garret's heart–and a burning need in his wounded soul. And suddenly the brooding loner knew the only way to give little Angie a family was to believe that a strong, silent daddy and his vivacious new nanny were truly meant to be….
“I don’t suppose you’re a nanny, are you?” Garret asked (#u4c22abae-d00a-52ea-bdd6-666772a9250c)Letter to Reader (#u5fd13353-efdb-54a4-9dd1-f073be1b960a)Title Page (#ub79280c8-3a3a-5125-bdeb-984af38d1984)Dedication (#u82134c97-a068-559b-9caa-7610f130440e)CARA COLTER (#u6302f088-291d-534e-a7e9-fb2360a31aac)Chapter One (#u2a3cd13c-a2b1-5274-9bc4-a9ef44feb9b0)Chapter Two (#uccc6c297-0399-5cdb-bafc-3fca3ce94449)Chapter Three (#u2f209706-476f-5d2e-a046-6763dff2bb4b)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)Copyright (#litres_trial_promo)
“I don’t suppose you’re a nanny, are you?” Garret asked
A nanny? Toni thought. He must have a child—though it was difficult to imagine Garret with a baby.
He looked like the kind of man who walked alone. Like the cowboy who rode off into the sunset. Rugged. Independent.
Which was exactly the kind of woman she was. Well, maybe not the rugged part, but certainly independent. A husband wasn’t part of her immediate plans. And babies...babies were a far-off someday on her list.
Toni had just never been in love. She was beginning to suspect it was the fabric of fairy tales, that some women more imaginative than she were able to convince themselves that that ordinary guy in the suit and spectacles was really Prince Charming.
This was no Prince Charming glowering at her.
And yet she had the strangest feeling.
She was about to learn a good deal about love.
Dear Reader,
This April, Silhouette Romance showers you with six spectacular stories from six splendid authors! First, our exciting LOVING THE BOSS miniseries continues as rising star Robin Wells tells the tale of a demure accountant who turns daring to land her boss—and become mommy to The Executive’s Baby.
Prince Charming’s Return signals Myrna Mackenzie’s return to Silhouette Romance. In this modern-day fairy-tale romance. wealthy FABULOUS FATHER Gray Alexander discovers he has a son, but the proud mother of his child refuses marriage—unless love enters the equation.... Sandra Steffen’s BACHELOR GULCH miniseries is back with Wes Stryker’s Wrangled Wife! In this spirited story, a pretty stranger just passing through town can’t resist a sexy cowboy struggling to raise two orphaned tykes.
Cara Colter revisits the lineup with Truly Daddy, an emotional, heartwarming novel about a man who learns what it takes to be a father—and a husband—through the transforming love of a younger woman. When A Cowboy Comes a Courting in Christine Scott’s contribution to HE’S MY HERO!, the virginal heroine who’d sworn off sexy, stubborn, Stetson-wearing rodeo stars suddenly finds herself falling hopelessly in love. And FAMILY MATTERS showcases Patti Standard’s newest novel in which a man with a knack for fixing things sets out to make a struggling single mom and her teenage daughter His Perfect Family.
As always. I hope you enjoy this month’s offerings, and the wonderful ones still to come!
Happy reading!
Mary-Theresa Hussey
Senior Editor, Silhouette Romance
Please address questions and book requests 10:
Silhouette Reader Service
US.: 3010 Walden Ave., P.O. Box 1325. Buffalo, NY 14269
Canadian: P.O. Box 609, Fort Erie, Ont. L2A 5X3
Truly Daddy
Cara Colter
www.millsandboon.co.uk (http://www.millsandboon.co.uk)
To Mary, Louise and Dorothy,
teachers, real-life heroines
CARA COLTER
shares ten acres in the wild Kootenay region of British Columbia with the man of her dreams, three children, two horses, a cat with no tail and a golden retriever who answers best to “bad dog.” She loves reading, writing and the woods in winter (no bears). She says life’s delights include an automatic garage door opener and the skylight over the bed that allows her to see the stars at night.
She also says, “I have not lived a neat and tidy life, and used to envy those who did. Now I see my struggles as having given me a deep appreciation of life, and of love, that I hope I succeed in passing on through the stories that I tell.”
Chapter One
“This is the greatest coup of my career,” Toni Carlton said out loud, uncaring of the busy sidewalk she moved down. It was everything she could do not to hug herself and spin around in delight, Mary Tyler Moore-style.
“Lady, I’ll coo in your ear anytime.”
She flung a mass of red curly hair over her slender shoulder and narrowed her green eyes at the speaker, a complete stranger in an expensive three-piece suit.
Tall, dark and a jerk. Weren’t weirdos supposed to wear fatigue jackets and grotesque purple toques?
He must have gotten the message because he ducked his head, tucked his expensive leather briefcase under his arm and scurried hurriedly down the sidewalk.
She decided she loved Vancouver anyway. Loved Chinatown. And especially loved Martin Ying, who had just agreed to design an exclusive line of clothing for Madame Yeltsy’s, the quality clothing chain store that she was buyer for. This was her first solo trip, but Madame Yeltsy expected great things every time. The ordinary was not good enough.
Toni stopped in her tracks and turned slowly to the display window that had caught the corner of her eye. The humble storefront gave lie to the exotic Oriental pieces in jade decorating the front window.
They were absolutely original and took her breath away. What an incredible complement they could make to the Ying line!
She burst in the door. Her eyes had to adjust to the light.
A tiny Oriental man, who looked slightly older than her, perhaps in his late twenties, stood behind the counter, so focused on what he was seeing through the jeweler’s loupe he held to his right eye that he didn’t see her at first.
He glanced up at her in surprise, then tried to put the piece away. “Closed,” he said. “Forgot sign. Closed. Out. Out.”
With Madame Yeltsy’s expectations of greatness, Tom simply could not afford to be a woman easily intimidated. Besides, she stood five foot ten in her stocking feet and could woo a man with a blink of her thick, tangled lashes if she needed to.
Closed or not closed, she wanted some of that jewelry, and especially the piece he was trying to hide. She strode across the small tiled floor, took his hand firmly and pulled it back above the counter.
“Closed,” he said weakly, but he smiled, just a trifle hopefully as his dark eyes met her green ones.
A ring clattered from his clasp, and she scooped it up before he did.
She could not help but notice he was shaking slightly. She was used to a stir of male interest following in her wake, but she’d never made anyone shake before.
“It’s beautiful,” she breathed, rolling the ring over in her hand. She stated down at the ring. Exquisitely worked in silver and jade was a dragon pattern that matched that of the necklace in the window. She could look for another hundred years and not find accessories so completely compatible with Ying’s work.
“The ring means good luck, great happiness.” the little man offered, she could not help but notice, unhappily. His eyes slid to her bare ring finger. “Husband. Babies.”
Madame Yeltsy did not approve of women who made such matters a priority.
“Oh, brother,” Toni exclaimed in a tone that would have made her mentor proud, “did you design this? I want it I want more like it. I want—”
“No, no,” he squeaked. “Not for sale.”
She glanced up at her reluctant salesman. Little beads of perspiration were standing out on his forehead. He looked like he was about to faint.
Not a reaction even she had ever caused. In fact, he seemed to be looking uneasily past her left ear and out the window. She glanced over her shoulder. The street was absolutely thronged. But suddenly, among the bustle, her gaze was attracted to stillness. Three men were standing across the street, looking over at the shop. Were they noticeable because they were so large and Caucasian in a sea of people who were smaller and golden? Or was it because there was something vaguely menacing about them?
“Take the ring,” he said softly, folding his hand over hers. “Go now.”
“I can’t take the ring. I want to buy several of them. And that necklace--”
“Go now,” he said, his voice practically a whisper. “Go.”
“You don’t understand. I need—”
“Leave card,” he said firmly, almost ferociously. “Come back later.”
The man was going to jump out of his skin at any moment, so she slipped a card from her jacket pocket and scribbled her hotel and room number on it. She laid it on the counter.
He nodded. “Go.”
She started to leave the ring.
“Take,” he ordered.
She looked at him again and could almost smell his fear. Something was very wrong here, wrong enough to pierce her elation about Ying.
“Can I help?” she asked quietly. “What’s the matter?”
But whatever the matter was, she could see her persistence was making it worse. She thanked him uneasily, feeling his urgency, turned abruptly on her heel and left.
She moved into the throng and was jostled along for several yards. There was incredible energy on this crowded street, and she wished she had thought to bring her camera with her. Maybe she could get to her hotel room and come back before the light faded.
Though Madame Yeltsy frowned on hobbies and considered them frivolous, Toni knew her own tendency toward the artsy, her love of balance and her ability to pick out pleasing images, had helped to bring her to this position in the first place.
A noise made her glance back over her shoulder. The three men who had been on the other side of the street crossed, paused and then went hurriedly into the store she had just left.
A moment later she heard shouting. One of the men came back out of the store and was scanning the crowded street.
Intuitively, she knew, without a doubt, that he was looking for her. There was a flat, cold expression on his face that filled her with foreboding. The little shop proprietor came out, firmly in the grasp of a large thug. He was wailing. His eyes searched the crowded street, and then he pointed right at her!
All three men were on the sidewalk now, staring at her with dark menace in their eyes. Still holding the storekeeper firmly captive, the thug went back into the store while the other two men started pushing through the congested street toward her.
Her reaction was one of pure panic.
Instinct told her she had just become the hunted. What had she gotten herself into now, and how was she going to get out of it?
Crazy to think she could outrun them. She had on three-inch heels and a pencil-line skirt!
She had to outthink them. Her specialty.
First, she ducked. There was no sense being six inches taller than anyone else on the street. From behind her curtain of people, she thought frantically. She had only seconds.
She was crouched beside a car. She raised herself slightly and peered in the window. A child’s car seat was strapped in the back. An abandoned teddy bear leaned drunkenly on one ear.
Not even really thinking about it, she tried the handle.
The door whispered open.
She slithered onto the back floor, bemoaning only briefly the damage to her new gray skirt. She pulled the door gently shut behind her. There was a beautiful hand-quilted blanket on the floor.
She tugged it quickly over herself.
She could hear them approaching, calling out to each other.
“She was here just a second ago, dammit!”
“Well, she’s a flippin’ amazon, so she shouldn’t be too hard to find.”
Amazon! Under different circumstances she would have taken pleasure in setting him straight on that account.
The men seemed to have stopped right outside the vehicle. Her heart racing uncontrollably, she tugged one corner of the blanket down and peered up and out.
Her heart did stop then. A man who bore an unfortunate resemblance to a giant stood on the sidewalk, inches from the vehicle window.
But it never occurred to him to look in the car.
He moved on, face set in an angry scowl, and she breathed a sigh of relief.
She would wait five minutes. In fact, she would look at her watch right now and time it, because five minutes was going to seem like an eternity. She would wait five minutes, then sit up carefully, look around and, if the coast was clear, go back to her hotel and call the police.
And tell them what?
“One thing at a time,” she instructed herself tersely. She wasn’t anywhere near a phone yet.
She had to swallow a shriek when she suddenly heard the front door tested.
They’d found her!
She put her head back under the blanket.
Click. The door opened.
Make a run for it. No, wait.
A bag came tumbling over the back seat, followed by a second one. The springs of the front seat creaked as weight settled into them. A delicious aroma filled the vehicle—of sunshine and aftershave. A smell one hundred percent male.
What had she done? Jumped from the frying pan into the fire? He could be a serial killer. A rapist, a...
Calm yourself, she ordered silently. Surely fate would not put her squarely in the path of danger twice in one day.
Look at the car seat. And the teddy bear. This was somebody’s daddy going home after a hard day’s work to his wife and his baby. A serial killer wouldn’t smell quite so...heavealy.
The car purred to life.
With sudden relief, she realized she’d been given a better escape than she could have dreamed up herself. Daddy longlegs there in the front seat would drive her safely out to suburbia When he got out of the car and was safely in his house with his nice little wife and baby, she could make her exit. Find a phone booth, call a cab and be back at her hotel in no time. A call to the police and then, with a little luck on her side, she could probably make the red-eye flight back to San Diego tonight.
Luck. Wasn’t that what the ring was supposed to bring her?
The car pulled smoothly out into traffic.
A plump little man, she told herself firmly, in a slightly rumpled suit. Glasses, a few hairs combed over a bald spot
He turned on some music. A mournful voice sang about a renegade horse and a bad woman. He hummed absently along.
His voice reassured her, though it wasn’t a plump voice. It was definitely a daddy’s voice. Nice and deep and calm.
She noted the racing of her heart stilling somewhat. She pulled the blanket quietly back from her nose so it wouldn’t tickle. She tried to figure out where they were, but it was absolutely impossible, even if she had been familiar with the city, which she was not.
The minutes ticked by. She looked at her watch, reminding herself every minute would seem like an hour. But after an hour, she began to get a little nervous.
Large cities had traffic snarls, but where did he live? She couldn’t very well change her plan now. What was she going to do? Leap up from the back seat and say “Boo”? “Surprise”? She’d probably kill them both.
Half an hour more, she thought. That was it. Then she’d have to put plan B into action, if she had one by then.
She was exhausted even though the.tension continued to knot her shoulders as the car purred along, stopping and starting at lights, moving smoothly in and out of traffic.
It was bloody uncomfortable being crammed into that narrow space on the rear floorboard.
Her mother had always taught her to look for something to be thankful for, even in the bleakest moments. She felt quite bleak right now, being carried away to parts unknown, life suddenly wrested right out of her control.
Danger had been evaded. She shivered just thinking of those men, thinking of the little proprietor quaking in their grasp. She had escaped.
That was something to be grateful for.
That and the fact she didn’t have to sneeze. Or go to the bathroom.
She could have been trying to lie on the floor of a shrimpy little import car instead of this large and rather luxurious one.
Oh, her mother had taught her well. She felt a wonderful lassitude creeping through tense muscles. Daddy driver’s scent and his deep voice humming wrapped around her.
Please, God, she prayed silently, don’t let me go to sleep. Let us get to wherever we are going fast.
She absolutely could not go to sleep. Absolutely not... The last thing she remembered hearing was the radio announcer saying, “And now, Garth Brooks with ‘Unanswered prayers.”’
Garret Boyd resisted the impulse to honk at the little red sedan that cut him off.
It was the car seat in the back of the little car that made him curb the impulse to vent his temper with his horn.
He knew all about how small children could rattle a person. The harried mother driving that miniature car too fast was probably rushing to get to the day care.
Just like him, really. Except that his day care was ninety minutes away once he cleared the city, and it wasn’t officially a day care. Officially, it was taking advantage of the neighbor’s good nature.
Which he could only hope was going to hold, since his mission here had failed. Miserably.
He’d come to interview Mrs. Ching about the nanny position. Despite the language barrier when he’d spoken to her on the phone yesterday, he’d liked her. She’d sounded sweet and gentle and old.
She had been sweet and gentle and old. Her apartment, over some stores in busy Chinatown, had been impeccably clean.
Things had started to unravel when she introduced her granddaughter. Lily had been wearing a leather jacket and a leather miniskirt. She had a safety pin through her nose and a chain wrapped around her wrist.
Thankfully, she had looked every bit as horrified as he had when her grandmother nodded at her approvingly and announced she was the candidate for nanny.
The ensuing argument had taken place in Chinese, but he’d had a pretty good idea of what it was about. He’d slipped out the door at about the point the girl had said, in a sudden change to English, where her grandmother could put Eliza.
The town he came from. So small it probably would have fit.
Eliza. A little mountain village exactly in the middle of nowhere. On the edge of Garibaldi Provincial Wilderness Park, Eliza was reached by traveling over one hundred miles on the twisting, dipping, cliff-hugging, Sea-to-Sky highway from Vancouver. It was not quite close enough to the world-class and much acclaimed Whistler/Blackcomb resort area to be appealing.
Today, the first day of February, Vancouver was already in the throes of spring. Flowers blossomed and the grass was green. Eliza was still wrapped in its blanket of icy white. Snow would fly for at least another month. It was the perfect location to run a search-and-rescue school and to write articles for various professional journals on the finer points of mountain search and rescue.
But no one wanted to live there.
Garth Brooks came on the radio and started singing about unanswered prayers.
“Oh, tell me about it,” Garret breathed. He’d been looking for a nanny, frantically, for three months.
He’d been doing single-parenting duty for six.
Only six months since the call in the night that had changed his life forever.
His twin brother and his sister-in-law dead after their small plane had gone down in a heavy fog off the coast of Vancouver Island. His beautiful niece, Angelica, just turned five, suddenly as alone in the world as he was. And for a reason he would now never know, his brother and sister-in-law had appointed him her guardian.
Him. Garret Boyd. World-renowned expert in mountain search and rescue.
Garret Boyd, leader of more than a thousand successful rescues.
Garret Boyd. Hopelessly unqualified for kid duty.
Calm and unflappable in every crisis except this one.
Somehow they were getting through it, he and that tiny little being who looked so much like he did.
Somehow that sweet little girl, with her flash-fire moods, her chattering, her calls for her mommy in the night, was helping his heart mend in ways he had not thought possible.
When she first came into his life, he’d thought being her guardian meant do what was right for her. And to him that meant finding a wonderful child-adoring couple to raise her and love her.
But after a week, he came to the stunning realization that he could search the world over and never find another soul who could love her as deeply as he did.
And so he learned. About tears. And teddy bears. And skin so sensitive he had to buy special laundry soap. About Woody and Buzz, Chance and Sassy. About macaroni and cheese being considered edible by people under four feet high.
This month she wanted a French braid.
He sighed. He didn’t think he was ever going to get the braid right or ever quit trying to get it, either. Angelica had ended up with some pretty exotic hairdos while he tried to get his hands, which could tie a dozen kinds of knots with ease, to make her hair look like the hair in the picture.
The picture of her mom.
Juggling this plunge into fatherhood with a busy career was more of a challenge than getting a skier off a rock precipice with a helicopter in the middle of a blizzard. He had a four-day intensive rescue course coming in less than twenty-four hours.
When Angelica first arrived, she had come on a rescue with him, simply because every time he tried to part from her, she’d become hysterical Given that her loss was so recent and the situation so urgently required action, he’d broken the rules. She’d loved it—being the center of attention at rescue headquarters, trudging courageously up the Diamond Head behind him, taking turns being carried by various members of the search party. Luckily, it had been August and a straightforward search, if there was such a thing.
She’d loved it, but he had felt the intensity of his concentration diluted by her presence. Part of him was always looking after her when he needed to be one hundred percent focused on what he was doing.
But it had been Angelica who called to him to stop, said she had heard something on the lonely wind.
He’d heard nothing. No one had heard anything.
But she had scrambled down from his arms and begun to run.
He’d been so annoyed. Until she ran directly to a cave where a weary hiker lay very close to death. A hiker in no condition to make any kind of sound.
When he asked her how she’d found the hiker, she had just shrugged. “I don’t know. I heard something.”
By some twist of fate or luck, she had been an asset on the rescue. But he didn’t think he could count on that kind of luck to hold for the four intense and exhausting days of the school. She wasn’t exactly the kind of kid who would sit contentedly at the back of the class with a coloring book.
She called him Unkie, a particularly unflattering name that he loved when it came off her lips. A little less by the time he’d heard it for the hundredth time in one day. A lot less if he was trying to teach a class.
Candy would help him.
His good-natured next-door neighbor. Unfortunately, she had always looked at him with something a little more than just neighborly interest, and she was now shamelessly using his need for a sitter to try to get involved in his personal life.
Which she could not seem to believe was nonexistent. And that he liked it that way.
He could do worse. Candy was, as the name might imply, cute as a button and a little on the plump side. She was the single mom of two active preschoolers. If her conversation was limited to the daily soap operas she was able to bring in on the huge satellite dish that dominated her front yard, well, so what?
She actually liked the town of Eliza and had no wish to live anywhere else. She was able to do the ribbonsand-curls thing for Angelica. French braids were nothing to her. She could do amazing things with canned tuna and cornflakes.
He was thirty. Totally engrossed in his work. Marriage had never crossed his mind.
He was of these mountains. He understood them as much as any man ever would in all their lonely and harsh glory. The mysteries that remained called to him. They were magnificent mistresses and he had never needed another.
But Angelica needed something more.
A mommy.
A picture of coming home every day to Candy entered his mind. Everything in him rebelled against it. He couldn’t do it. Not even for love of Angelica.
“A nanny,” he said out loud, firmly, and sent a pleading look heavenward. “One small helper.” He snapped off the radio before Garth got to the part about the blessings hidden in unanswered prayers.
He had turned off the main highway and was only about ten minutes from Eliza when he heard the sound in the back seat. He wasn’t quite sure what it was. A breath. A whisper of clothing.
He was a man who relied on instinct far more than average men, and his hackles rose now on the back of his neck.
There was someone back there.
He knew it with such sudden force and certainty he wondered how he had not known it the whole time. But he did not let on that he knew, keeping his speed steady, his eyes checking the locks.
Both back passenger doors were unlocked.
He cursed his stupidity. In Eliza, a locked car door was unheard of. In Vancouver, he’d made a concession to the big city by locking the one he’d gotten out of. The rest of them had slipped his mind.
And now he had an unwanted passenger.
What he wasn’t going to do was drive a psychopath, possibly armed, right up in front of Candy’s house in Eliza, where it might endanger Angelica and Candy’s own children.
He made a split-second decision.
Smoothly, he pulled off the road onto the shoulder. He stopped the vehicle but didn’t turn off the engine.
He eased his pocketknife out of his blue jeans pocket. Then with lightning swiftness, he hurled himself over the back seat, whipped the blanket off the person huddled under it on the floorboard.
Shock rippled through him.
The woman looking at him with huge green eyes and red hair that spiraled wildly in every direction was absolutely beautiful.
Of course, it was very dark in the back of the car. Maybe he was mistaken. He reached up and turned on the dome light.
She blinked, if anything, more beautiful in the brighter light than she had been before.
He sighed uneasily and slipped the knife into his pocket.
The animal terror went out of her eyes.
“I don’t suppose you’re a nanny, are you?” he asked dryly. No, he’d asked for a small helper. The way she was crammed into that space, small she was not. In fact, she seemed to be kind of stuck, so he took her wrist and helped her, none too gently, onto the seat beside him.
She had on a very tight gray skirt and it rode up a long slender leg as she settled herself beside him. She saw the direction of his gaze and yanked it down.
“A nanny?” she asked weakly. “Like Mary Poppins?”
“Hmmm,” he said.
“Que sera, sera?” she said hopefully.
“That’s Doris Day.”
“Damn,” she said.
Even with his limited experience in such matters, he could tell her skirt and jacket were very expensive. Her blouse, though it was smudged, looked like silk the way it clung to her generous curves. Her makeup was understated and subtle.
This was no hippie who’d slipped into his back seat to have a nap. It was more like a damsel in distress.
His specialty. Rescues.
“Who are you, and what are you doing in my car?”
“It’s a long story.”
“Better get started,” he said, folding his arms over his chest.
“Where are we?” she asked, looking out into the blackness with trepidation.
“How about if you answer my questions first?”
“Do you think we could answer questions after?”
“After what?”
“After you deliver me to the nearest washroom.” She actually had the gall to smile at him. It was dazzling. “urgent”
Chapter Two
Toni had woken up when the car stopped. There was no momentary sense of confusion. She knew precisely where she was and how she had come to be there. Not geographically, of course, though she could tell from the unmarred blackness in the vehicle they were no longer in Vancouver.
The absence of light and sound told her that.
Danger tingled in the air.
She pulled the blanket over her face, as if that would help her. She was trembling so much he would probably feel the vibration.
It occurred to her she no longer had anything to be grateful for.
She was in danger.
She hurt all over.
And she had to go to the bathroom.
She heard him fling himself into the back seat, and a split second later, he had yanked back the blanket. She found herself staring into the most amazing blue eyes she had ever seen.
She had been planning to scream, but somehow it just died in her throat. Even the small knife in his hand didn’t seem to be invoking terror.
He was gorgeous. Blazing blue eyes. A dark shock of jet-black hair, a face made more handsome by the curves and hollows of the night shadows, the shadowing of his own whiskers.
He was not plump.
Or balding.
He looked exactly the way he sounded. And smelted. Sexy.
And ferociously angry.
He pulled her onto the seat beside him, and she could feel the strength in his hands, see the breadth of his shoulders underneath a faded jean jacket.
This is the man I’m going to marry.
It was the most ridiculous thought she had ever had.
She didn’t know where she was. She didn’t know who he was. Her career had just started, really.
Madame Yeltsy had been very clear about her expectations when she’d made Toni a buyer. “You have to want success more than anything. You have to be prepared to sacrifice everything. Love, husband, children. You have a more important role—to bring joy to thousands of women by making fabulous fashions available to them.”
“I don’t suppose you’re a nanny, are you?”
His voice, deep and sensual, chased the voice of Madame Yeltsy right out of her head. Toni noticed there was a glimmer of humor around the edges of the words that didn’t show in the piercing blue of his eyes.
A nanny? Of course. Presumably, from the evidence of the car seat, the blanket and the bear, he had a child. And it followed, a wife. He might as well have kept that knife out because it felt like it had plunged straight into her heart.
It was that ring, she decided, that was making her think such foolish thoughts.
The shopkeeper had said it brought luck or happiness or some such thing. A husband. Babies.
Those thoughts, followed so closely by terror, had all jumbled up in her mind. She had probably been dreaming confused dreams when this man had leaped commando-style over the back of his seat and exposed her.
He did look like a commando, she decided. A strong man, completely in control, used to being in authority.
It was very difficult to imagine him with a wife and a baby. He looked like the kind of man who walked alone. Like the cowboy who rode off into the sunset at the end of the story. Rugged. Independeat.
Which was exactly the kind of woman she was. Well, maybe not the rugged part, but certainly independent. A husband wasn’t part of her immediate plans. And babies...babies were a far-off someday on her list.
She loved her work. She’d started as a clerk in Madame Yeltsy’s smallest store when she was just seventeen.
And she loved dating, too, when she had the odd evening off. Movies. Dancing. Dinners. The thrill of meeting new people. She had just never been in love. She was beginning to suspect it was the fabric of fairy tales, that women more imaginative than she was were able to convince themselves that that ordinary guy in the suit and spectacles was really Prince Charming.
This was no Prince Charming sitting under the dome light glowering at her. And yet she had the strangest feeling. That she was about to learn a good deal about love.
She had a sudden urge to take that ring out of her purse and hurl it into the night before it ruined everything.
He reached over her and opened the rear door of the car. She slid out. How far from Vancouver were they? It was very cold out. Snow was mounded by the sides of the road. Huge trees loomed all around them, and beyond that mountains towered, one shade darker than the night.
He held open the front passenger door of the vehicle, and she knew she had no option but to get back in. She was already shivering. He went around to his side and got in. His mouth was set in a grim line, though he turned up the heat for her.
They passed a sign that welcomed them to Eliza. “Population what?” she asked him incredulously.
“Twenty-two,” he answered. “Twenty-three with Angelica.”
The firm, uncompromising set of his mouth discouraged her from asking who Angelica was.
He pulled through the whole town in about fifteen seconds. She saw an old general store and a service station, both closed. Golden light from several regal-looking old houses washed out across snowy yards. The town could have easily posed for Christmas cards. She wished for her camera.
Several seconds later, he turned the car up a dark lane lined with snow-laden trees.
“Christmas trees,” she couldn’t help saying.
He snorted. “Fir trees don’t grow this high up. Spruce. Lodgepole pine. Balsam.”
She slid him a look. If she was ever in a plane crash over the wilderness, he was the one she wanted with her.
The lane forked, and headlights glanced off a large tin Quonset building before illuminating a little log cabin. It stood on a rock foundation, pretty as a picture, with the snow surrounding it, drifting off the roof, capping the rock chimney. The covered porch held a rocking chair—no, two rocking chairs—one big and one small, and a neat pile of chopped wood.
It, too, would have made a beautiful photograph if it wasn’t so wrapped in darkness.
“Go in,” he said. “The door’s not locked. Bathroom’s on the right.”
She shot up the shoveled stone-lined pathway to the house. No little wife waiting to give him a kiss? Where was the baby?
It was very cold out, but despite that, she paused just for one moment, stooped and touched the snow. It was deliciously cold, and she scooped a handful and tasted it cautiously. It tingled in the most marvelous way, then turned to nothing on her tongue.
She became aware he was watching her over the open trunk of the car, and her behavior in the snow embarrassed her. She hurried up the few steps, across the porch and into the house. She groped for a switch and found it to the right of the door.
She had entered directly into the living room, and once again she itched for her camera. Hardwood floors and log walls gleamed golden. A river-rock fireplace dominated the cozy room.
Signs of a child were everywhere. A tub full of toys, a big rubber ball, a floppy dog with one button eye, a hamper full of clothes that needed folding.
But no sign of a woman. The furniture was placed at military angles. There were no curtains on the windows, no lace doilies, no pictures on the walls, none of those little things that spoke of a woman’s touch.
“He has a wife,” she told herself firmly.
She found the bathroom easily enough and again couldn’t help but notice a lack of feminine influence. No rug, no tank cover, no frilly shower curtain with matching priscillas at the window.
One toothbrush. No, two toothbrushes. One big and black and masculine. The other small and pink with a picture of the Tasmanian Devil dancing on the handle.
He was divorced. Obviously. Maybe his kid came to visit him on weekends.
She would have loved to take a quick snoop through the medicine cabinet, but she had given up that brand of voyeurism at a party where the hosts had filled up their bathroom cabinet with marbles. To this day, she was grateful that she hadn’t been the one to set off that particular avalanche.
“In here,” he called when she came out of the bathroom.
She followed his voice back into the living room and through a rounded archway into the dining room and the kitchen adjoining it. It was a small area, the hardwood floors and log walls again giving an illusion of coziness where there really was none.
No tablecloth over a scarred oak table. No tea cozy over a plain white pot. No oven mitts with pictures of cows hanging above a sparkling clean oven. No turnip and carrot magnets on the fridge.
Again the word “military” entered her mind. The room was spotless, and everything precisely in its place. The potential was incredible.
“This is a lovely home,” she said, noticing the French panes on the windows.
“Sit,” he ordered her.
He was feeding logs into a small black stove. He had left his jean jacket somewhere and was wearing a short-sleeved sport shirt that showed beautiful arm muscles that rippled effortlessly with each piece of wood he added to the fire.
“Is this how you heat?” she asked in amazement.
He looked at her as if she was from another world.
She was.
“Primitive,” she murmured under her breath. Watching the muscles play under his shirt as he hefted another log into the fire, she felt a pretty primitive feeling of her own.
“Well?” he said when he was done. He sat back on his haunches and folded strong arms over the hard wall of his chest.
She took a deep breath and started by introducing herself and telling him where she was from and how she had come to be in Vancouver. She told him all about Martin Ying and then her chancing upon the little jewelry shop.
She liked the way he listened, his head cocked slightly toward her, his eyes narrowing in all the right places, stopping her every now and then and asking a quick question that showed keen intelligence and good observation skills.
You like the way he listens. Oh, brother, she chided herself.
He closed the door of the stove and she could hear the fire crackling. He moved to the sink and filled a kettle.
And all the time she felt his focus never shift from her.
At the end of her narrative, she rummaged through her bag. For an awful moment, she thought the ring, which could prove her story, was gone. But there it was right at the bottom.
She set it on the table and then, as an afterthought, one of her business cards, too.
He came over and picked up the ring, turned it over in his hand. Strong hands, short, well-manicured nails.
Sexy hands. What about this man wasn’t breathtakingly sexy?
“Anyway,” she said, beginning to feel as awkward as a teenager in braces on her first date, “I’ve troubled you quite enough. I’ll just hop on a bus and be out of your hair. I don’t suppose there’s a plane leaving here, is there?”
“I’m calling the police.”
“There’s really no point involving yourself. I can call them when I get back to my hotel.”
She was suddenly overwhelmed by a feeling that she had to get out of this place. That the whole fabric of her life that she’d been weaving had just been wrenched from her control and if she did not grab it back now it would be too late.
She had experienced something like this only once before. She’d been seventeen. And the doctor had looked at her with sad eyes and given his head a small shake. Her mother dead, life as she’d known it was over.
She stood up abruptly. “The bus station?”
“I’m making coffee. Sit down.”
The kettle whistled.
“I don’t drink coffee.”
‘Hot chocolate, then.”
“I’m leaving.”
“No, you’re not.”
That last was said coolly, as a colonel to a buck private. She was not used to being addressed like this. When it came to men, she was accustomed to being the one with the upper hand.
“I don’t think you can stop me, really, Mr.—”
“Boyd. Garret.”
“Mr. Boyd. As I was saying—”
“I can’t stop you. That’s what you were saying.”
His eyes had narrowed to slits. He looked dangerous and strong. Everything about him said he could stop her in an instant
“If you’ll just show me in which direction the bus station is—”
“It’s probably ten degrees below zero outside right now. You’re not exactly dressed for a hike to the bus station.” His eyes rested meaningfully on the short hem of her skirt, drifted down her leg like a touch, then rested on her flimsy shoes.
She resisted the urge to tug the skirt down and tried to hide her toes. “Call me a cab, then.”
He sighed. “You said you left him your card. In exchange for the ring.”
“Yes, but—”
“And that you left the name of your hotel and your room number on it.”
“Well, still—”
“You might find a very nasty surprise waiting for you back at that hotel. Or even back in San Diego. I think you’d better talk to the police.”
She sank back onto her chair. He was right. She hated that. When other people were right.
She watched him move to the shrieking kettle and unplug it, scooping up a telephone receiver with his other hand. He dialed a phone number—she didn’t even know that kind of phone existed anymore—and spoke quietly into it for a minute.
He came back to the table, the steaming kettle in one hand, two pottery mugs in the other. He set them down, along with pouches of gourmet hot chocolate.
“Constable Frey will be here soon. Twenty minutes to half an hour.”
That was soon? “He’s not riding his horse, is he?”
He shot her a look that branded her unbelievably stupid.
“Royal Canadian Mounted Police,” she shot back at him. She’d seen postcards of Canada’s colorful police all over Vancouver. Always dressed in beautiful, flaming red jackets with Yogi Bear kind of hats, and always - on horseback.
“They drive cars these days. Except for ceremonial purposes. Hot chocolate?” he asked. “This one’s good.”
He showed her a packet labeled white chocolate and hazelnut.
She nodded numbly and the steaming cup was set before her. Don’t ask, she commanded herself. Toni, don’t you dare ask
“Where’s your wife?” she asked.
“I’m not married.”
Not married. If she was not mistaken, that ring, sitting in the middle of his solid oak kitchen table, had started winking like a neon sign.
His voice held absolutely no invitation.
She took a sip of the hot chocolate and nearly closed her eyes with pure pleasure. A man who could make this, not married?
Toni, she told herself, it came out of a pouch. “This is delicious,” she murmured.
“My favorite flavor.”
Already something in common! Don’t ask, she commanded herself again. Toni, don’t you dare ask.
“Divorced?” she asked, looking up at him over the rim of her cup.
He looked annoyed. “I’ve never been married.”
By the tone of his voice, he never planned to be, either.
Toni, I absolutely forbid you to ask him about the baby.
“The baby?” she asked.
Fleeting sadness passed through his eyes before they were hooded from her. “My niece. Who would kill you with a look for calling her a baby. A long story,” he said curtly. “I’m just going to turn on the TV. I’ve got to catch the weather forecast for the next few days.”
He didn’t want to talk to her! Another reaction she was not at all accustomed to.
He had a small TV mounted tastefully in a cabinet above his table. Not long after he’d turned it on, a knock came at the door. He got up and stretched. He had a great-looking body, put together like a man who worked hard and physically.
Don’t ask him what he does for a living, she told herself. And this time she didn’t. She could see the weariness in him.
He went to the door, and a moment later, Toni heard another male voice.
“Hey, where’s my angel?”
“Still at Candy’s. And she’s been a devil for the past few days. I don’t suppose you know anything about French braids, do you?”
It seemed incongruous that the stern, quiet man who had just shared this table with her was now discussing French braids with such deadly seriousness. She wanted to laugh but suppressed the urge.
“Sure,” the other voice said. “It’s a kind of bread.”
“Sorry I asked.”
“What did the doc say about her being so little?”
“It’s normal. She’s small for her age now, but it will probably all average out in the end”
“That’s what I thought. So, what’s going on?”
Toni could hear them moving toward her now. She suddenly felt rumpled and confused and like she was going to burst into tears at any moment.
Garret came back in the room trailed by a tall, young policeman who would have seemed gorgeous at any other time. But his blond good looks now paled beside the dark electricity of Garret Boyd.
“You’re not in red!” she protested, noting his rather drab uniform.
He laughed. “Where’d you say she was from, Garret?”
“She says San Diego.”
As if everything she said was open to question. She glared at Garret. He didn’t seem to notice.
“That explains it.” The policeman was open and friendly, and unless she was mistaken, at least a little bit flirtatious. He sat down across from her, Garret got him a hot chocolate, and she told the whole story again. “And this is the ring he gave you?” Constable Frey asked at the end of the interview.
She picked it up. “It is. He said it would bring great happiness.” She deliberately left out the husband and baby part “Had. So far, it’s brought me nothing but grief.”
As if in confirmation, the sound on the television seemed to jump out.
“And just to recap tonight’s top story,” the anchor said, “an art exhibit on loan to Canada from China was stolen en route to the museum in the early hours of the morning. Several pieces of missing jewelry are considered priceless, including this ring.”
A still photograph of the ring that was in her hand appeared on the television screen. Three pairs of eyes moved from her hand to the screen and back again. She looked at both their faces, first Constable Frey’s and then Garret Boyd’s.
There was no doubt abut it. They thought she was a thief!
She wanted to cry, but she had been in business too long to give in to the impulse. Instead, she made her face into a mask of indifference and sipped her chocolate.
“I’m going to make a few calls,” Constable Frey said, taking the ring and leaping to his feet.
Garret shot him a dirty look. Great, his expression said. Abandoned with an hysterical international jewel thief.
“I am not hysterical,” she insisted.
He said nothing.
“And I am not a thief.”
“I didn’t say you were hysterical or a thief.”
“I saw the look on your face.”
“Lady, I’m tired, okay? International jewel thievery aside, the most important thing on my mind is finding a sitter for Angelica so when twelve people descend on me less than one day from now to learn about search and rescue, I can devote myself to them.”
“I’m sorry. I didn’t mean to disrupt your life.”
Search and rescue. He found lost people in these foreboding mountains. He taught other people how to do it Every now and then, all too rarely, she’d meet someone ideally suited to his or her job. And he was one of those people. She wondered if she was and then felt annoyed with herself. Her job was her whole life. Of course she was suited to it.
“Not your fault,” he said gruffly.
Constable Frey rejoined them. “Things aren’t good,” he said.
She sighed. “Okay. Arrest me, then. Get me out of this poor man’s hair. I’m disrupting his search for a baby-sitter.”
I’m thanking about husbands and babies and whether I’m suited for my job. Get me out of here. Fast.
“The man who runs that jewelry store you were in today has been reported missing by his mother.”
“Oh, no!” Her hand flew to her mouth in genuine horror.
“And your hotel room has been virtually dismantled.”
“Is anything missing?” she asked.
He looked at her shrewdly. “Such as?”
“I have a camera. I saved two years to buy it—oh, never mind. How ridiculous to worry about my camera when that poor man is missing.”
“I’ll ask about the camera next time I call. Meantime, how would you feel about lying low for a while? Here.”
“Here?” she cried in unison with Garret.
“Somebody’s looking for you. The question is who? By now, they probably know more about you than your own mother. If these people are sophisticated, and it seems they are, the first time you use your credit card, they’ve got you.”
“But they’ll stop looking once it’s been made public the ring has been found. Won’t they?”
“This ring,” the constable said softly, “might be all that’s keeping that jewelry store owner alive.”
“Good grief!”
“Seems to me, the way you left town is almost providential. You vanished into thin air. You can’t be traced. Nobody is ever going to look for you in Eliza. Ever.”
She was gaping at him. So was Garret.
“There only appeared to be three or four houses in Eliza,” she pointed out. “You weren’t like, um, going to take me into protective custody or something, were you?”
“Nah. Garret’s got a spare room.”
Garret said something very rude.
“And,” Constable Frey added with a sweet smile, “he desperately needs a sitter for a few days.”
Toni said something very rude. “I don’t know anything about babies!”
“Neither did he a few months ago.”
“Angelica hates being called a baby. She’s sensitive about her size.” Garret said this absently, looking at her differently now that she might have some value to him.
He tried out a boyish grin on her. If he’d been handsome before, he was incredibly so when he put a little effort into it.
She gave him a look that could have curled steel rods.
“Ten minutes ago, you thought I was an international jewel thief and now you want me to look after your ba—child?”
“I never said I thought you were a thief.”
“I never thought you were a thief,” Constable Prey said with surprise.
“You don’t know anything about me,” she persisted desperately.
“You don’t have a criminal record,” Constable Frey offered helpfully. “I ran it.”
“Thank you very much,” she snapped.
“I’ll help you, and you help me. Just for a few days.” Garret’s voice was as smooth and sensual as silk.
“Do I really have a choice?”
“Not really,” both men informed her.
“I don’t have anything to wear.”
“My stuff will fit you.”
“That’s what I was afraid of.”
“I’ll go get Angelface,” Constable Frey said. “Let you two get to know each other.” He wagged his eyebrows fiendishly.
“Oh, brother,” Toni muttered.
“Ditto,” Garret said.
They both stared stubbornly at the flickering TV screen.
A few minutes later the door burst open. Constable Frey ducked so he wouldn’t knock off the passenger who rode high on his shoulders.
Even before Toni saw the girl, the whole room seemed to brighten.
When she looked up, her breath caught.
The child looked around three or four and was absolutely beautiful, the spitting image of her uncle, only in a more delicate form. Dark, tumbling hair, huge sapphire blue eyes.
She stopped midsentence when she saw Toni. “Down,” she commanded royally.
She crossed the room with a hop and a skip and then solemnly gazed at Toni before her whole face lit up with a smile.
“Hello, Auntie,” she said.
“What?” Garret asked. “What did you say?”
“I said hello,” the little girl said with a careless shrug.
“Didn’t you say ‘Hello again’? Do you know this lady?”
Angelica looked at her with mischief dancing in her eyes.
And Toni had the oddest sensation of indeed knowing this child. And of something deeper and more breathtaking, something like stepping off the edge of a cliff.
Looking into those wonderful shining eyes, she fell hopelessly in love.
Why had the little girl called her “Auntie”? And why had Garret heard something different?
“I thought she said ‘Hello, angel.’” Constable Frey said.
“What did you say, Angelica?” her uncle asked.
“I just said hello,” she replied easily. “That’s all. It’s snowing out,” she said with pleasure. “I have a new toboggan. Will you go with me tomorrow?”
A chubby hand crept into Toni’s.
“A toboggan?” Toni said uncertainly. “Like a snow sled?”
Angelica nodded vigorously. “I like to go really fast,” she warned.
Suddenly, Toni, who had never seen real live snow before tonight, wanted nothing more than to go really fast down a hill with this little girl.
Suddenly, this whole adventure seemed tinged with magic.
Four days here did not seem like prison but like something else entirely. Fate. Destiny guiding her back to something that had always been and always would be.
She looked into those shining blue eyes and then glanced at Garret’s, the same shade but his tinged with darker mystery, sternness, a hint of sexuality.
She shivered.
Hello again...
Chapter Three
Garret had started to feel differently about Toni when she’d looked at the trees in his driveway and, with almost childish delight, pronounced them Christmas trees.
And even more differently when she walked up the pathway to his house.
Until then, he could feel his defensive wall rise up. Way up. She was like a model, hair a tangled flame, eyes intensely jade, straight nose, full lips, peaches-and-cream complexion. She was long-legged and willowy, in a beautifully cut suit, the skirt short enough to make his mouth go dry.
She was perfect and beautiful in a way that made him dislike her. She was the kind of woman men made fools of themselves over, lined up to be with.
And he’d never been a fool or lined up for a woman and he wasn’t about to start.
But a brick had fallen out of that defensive wall when she called that scraggly line of balsams and spruces and lodgepoles Christmas trees. And then the wall had started to crack at the precise moment she bent over and picked up a handful of snow.
And it hadn’t been just because that short skirt had ridden up deliciously high on her thigh, either.
It had been because he’d glimpsed something else inside her—a heart behind the polished facade, a child within the sophisticated woman who could tie the male population in knots with a blink of her tangled lashes.
She had glanced back at him, caught with little flakes of snow around her mouth, and actually blushed.
It had made him feel vulnerable as hell.
Which was probably why she had jumped to the entirely erroneous conclusion that he believed her to be a jewel thief. Because when he felt vulnerable as hell, he hid behind a mask of icy remoteness.
He wasn’t really used to feeling vulnerable. Maybe he wasn’t really used to feeling, period. But the loss of his brother, Matthew, and his sister-in-law, Sarah, and having Angelica come into his life, made the region around his heart feel oddly tender all the time.
He was in no position to defend himself against an assault on his heart right now. As if she would, he told himself with an inner snort.
But he made the mistake of glancing at Toni’s face when Angelica had come through the door on Frey’s shoulders. Her whole face had softened, her green eyes lit from within with gentleness.
She was the kind of woman who could make a full frontal assault on a poor wounded heart without even knowing she was doing it.
What if she was everything she appeared to be? Gorgeous, inside and out? Not to mention here for four days?
“What did you say, Unkie?”
“What? Nothing!” But Frey was grinning at him like a cat that had swallowed a canary.
Angelica, with a final smile at Toni to ensure she had charmed her completely, came and settled herself on his lap.
That Angelica accepted him so absolutely, trusted her love to him so completely without question, never failed to amaze him and make him feel humble. What had he done in his life to deserve this?
“Did you bring me my cookies?”
“What cookies?” he asked, drawing down his brows in pretended puzzlement.
She didn’t buy it. “My cookies with the future in them. Where are they?”
He laughed. She knew too well her every wish was his command.
“Fortune cookies,” he told her. “By the front door.”
She came back a moment later, her eyes glittering expectantly at the huge sack of cookies. She politely offered the bag to everyone, then, taking her own chair, sat eagerly on her knees, broke open her cookie and moved her eyes back and forth as if she could really read her fortune.
“You first,” she told her uncle.
Garret read, “‘You will be richly rewarded for all your efforts.”’
He and his rescue buddies had always played a game in which they spiced up the fortune by adding the words “in bed” to the end of it He glanced at Miss California over there and couldn’t stop the thought from going through his mind. I wish.
He reminded himself sternly to be a proper daddy.
“You next,” Angelica ordered Frey, her adoring slave.
“You will catch many criminals and be a hero,” Frey deadpanned.
Angelica eyed him cynically. “Liar,” she proclaimed.
He laughed and read her the real one. “‘Leam to let go of past troubles. The future is bright.’”
“Now you,” Angelica said to Toni.
“‘You will know great happiness,’” Toni said, but the fortune did not seem to make her happy. A faint frown pulled at her lips and lowered her brows.
Garret added a silent “in bed” and his blood turned so hot he had to leave quickly to get more water for the cocoa.
“That’s almost exactly what the man in Chinatown said when he gave me the ring,” Toni mused.
Her voice was thick and rich, like whipped cream. Not that he wanted to be thinking about her and whipped cream in the same sentence.
“Read mine.” Angelica pressed hers into Toni’s hand.
He felt mildly annoyed. Replaced already? He told himself Toni was closer, that he was still over at the counter fussing with hot-chocolate things. Little old ladies fussed, he corrected himself. Men—what—managed?
An hour ago, he wouldn’t have been giving mere semantics so much thought. See? She was the kind of woman who changed things.
“‘People look to you for leadership,’” Toni read.
He chose that moment to turn from the counter with a stray laden with a kettle and more hot chocolate. He looked at his miniature niece, who was glowing prettily, and then at Toni, who had broken into the most beautiful smile. She had deep dimples when she smiled.
He bet she smiled often. He bet some men would make it a full-time job trying to coax that smile out of her.
He set everything back on the counter. Enough was enough.
“What does that mean?” Angelica asked.
“It means people follow you,” he told her. “Eat your cookie, and then we’ll all follow you to bed. It’s getting late.”
Angelica nibbled her cookie in painfully small bites while grilling Toni about where she lived.
“Is it hot in California all the time? Do you go to the beach every day? Do you wear a bikini?”
Another thought that made his mouth go dry. He’d been living like a hermit too damn long. She said she didn’t wear bikinis. He wondered why the hell not. If ever a woman was born for one, she was.
“Do you see whales? Dolphins? Kangaroos? Gophers?”
He recognized his darling niece was now using stall tactics to delay her bedtime despite the heaviness of her eyes. In a minute, her head would flop down on the table and she’d be asleep. Once, she had slipped from her chair and onto the floor so quickly, he hadn’t even realized what was happening.
“Angie, bedtime,” he said firmly. He scooped her up and went down the hall with her.
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