Evening Hours. Mary Baxter Lynn

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      An excerpt from

      EVENING HOURS

      Life was good, and Kaylee had learned early to treasure such moments. After nearly losing her life at such a young age, nothing had ever been the same, and she never wasted one precious moment.

      That thinking gave her all the more reason not to waste one second contemplating a particular man. Her heart did a sudden somersault as she admitted to herself that she had thought about that cowboy off and on all night.

      Unsettling?

      Absolutely.

      Crazy?

      Absolutely.

      A waste of time?

      Absolutely.

      Lethal.

      Absolutely.

      So why couldn’t she get him off her mind?

      Evening Hours

      Mary Lynn Baxter

      

www.mirabooks.co.uk

      This book is dedicated to my

      friend and gym buddy Walter Bates who should be writing instead of running. Thanks for all your plotting expertise.

      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 Fourteen

       Chapter Fifteen

       Chapter Sixteen

       Chapter Seventeen

       Chapter Eighteen

       Chapter Nineteen

       Chapter Twenty

       Chapter Twenty-One

       Chapter Twenty-Two

       Chapter Twenty-Three

       Chapter Twenty-Four

       Chapter Twenty-Five

       Chapter Twenty-Six

       Chapter Twenty-Seven

       Chapter Twenty-Eight

       Chapter Twenty-Nine

       Chapter Thirty

       Chapter Thirty-One

       Chapter Thirty-Two

       Chapter Thirty-Three

       Chapter Thirty-Four

       Chapter Thirty-Five

       Chapter Thirty-Six

       Chapter Thirty-Seven

       Chapter Thirty-Eight

       Chapter Thirty-Nine

       Chapter Forty

       Chapter Forty-One

       Epilogue

      Prologue

      She looked dead.

      For a second Edgar Benton’s heart beat uncontrollably against his chest cavity. When he leaned forward and placed a trembling hand on the exposed arm and felt her warm flesh, a breath of relief seeped out of him. Thank God she wasn’t dead. Not yet anyway, he reminded himself as fresh tears dribbled down his face.

      This was the first time he’d seen his daughter since she’d been whisked away to surgery several hours ago. His precious sixteen-year-old lay like a beautiful corpse on the sterile hospital bed. Panic seized him and his knees buckled.

      He pulled a chair close to the bed, his eyes never leaving her face. Edgar took several deep gulping breaths, then whispered in a garbled voice, “Please, Kaylee, hang on. I can’t bear to lose you, too.”

      No response.

      His baby, his only child, remained unmoving and unresponsive. His tears kept coming. What had he, they, done to deserve such an awful tragedy? His twisted, angry face looked toward the ceiling, silently cursing God. He couldn’t fathom how he was going to survive without his wife. As he thought of her lying on a cold slab in a morgue, another onslaught of pain ripped through his gut.

      How would he tell his daughter that she might not ever walk again and that her body would always be scarred?

      “Oh, God, why?” Deep sobs racked his body.