Trading Secrets. Christine Flynn

       “Are you all right?”

      Greg could only imagine what must be going through Jenny’s mind—if she was even able to think at all. She looked shell-shocked.

      Jenny gave her head a slow, negative shake.

      “I didn’t think you were.”

      He murmured the words. He’d never seen anyone look as lost and alone as she did at that moment. Or, if he had, he’d never allowed the depth of that awful helplessness to register. It wasn’t as if he allowed it now. It simply happened as he knelt there, touching her.

      Something twisted inside him. Something that made him feel what she felt, and left him feeling as vulnerable as she looked in the moments before he scrambled for the protective detachment that came so automatically with everyone else….

      Dear Reader,

      Celebrate those April showers this month by curling up inside with a good book—and we at Silhouette Special Edition are happy to start you off with What’s Cooking? by Sherryl Woods, the next in her series THE ROSE COTTAGE SISTERS. When a playboy photographer is determined to seduce a beautiful food critic fed up with men who won’t commit…things really start to heat up! In Judy Duarte’s Their Unexpected Family, next in our MONTANA MAVERICKS: GOLD RUSH GROOMS continuity, a very pregnant—not to mention, single—small-town waitress and a globe-trotting reporter find themselves drawn to each other despite their obvious differences. Stella Bagwell concludes THE FORTUNES OF TEXAS: REUNION with In a Texas Minute. A woman who has finally found the baby of her dreams to adopt lacks the one element that can make it happen—a husband—or does she? She’s suddenly looking at her handsome “best friend” in a new light. Christine Flynn begins her new GOING HOME miniseries—which centers around a small Vermont town—with Trading Secrets, in which a down-but-not-out native repairs to her hometown to get over her heartbreak…and falls smack into the arms of the town’s handsome new doctor. Least Likely Wedding? by Patricia McLinn, the first in her SOMETHING OLD, SOMETHING NEW… series, features a lovely filmmaker whose “groom” on celluloid is all too eager to assume the role in real life. And in The Million Dollar Cowboy by Judith Lyons, a woman who’s fallen hard for a cowboy has to convince him to take a chance on love.

      So don’t let those April showers get you down! May is just around the corner—and with it, six fabulous new reads, all from Silhouette Special Edition.

      Happy reading!

      Gail Chasan

      Senior Editor

      Trading Secrets

      Christine Flynn

      

www.millsandboon.co.uk

       CHRISTINE FLYNN

      admits to being interested in just about everything, which is why she considers herself fortunate to have turned her interest in writing into a career. She feels that a writer gets to explore it all and, to her, exploring relationships—especially the intense, bittersweet or even lighthearted relationships between men and women—is fascinating.

      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

       O nce a person hit bottom, the only way to go was up.

      Not sure if she felt encouraged or depressed by that thought, Jenny Baker absently rubbed beside the sore abrasion on her forehead and unpacked another dish from the cardboard box. The house she would now call home was practically falling down around her. Paint peeled from the cabinets. A crack in the window over the chipped porcelain sink distorted the rain-grayed view of a weed-choked garden. But at least she had a roof over her head.

      A pot on the floor caught drips from the ceiling.

      Even the weather had turned on her.

      Mid-August in northern Vermont was usually warm and sunny, a lovely respite between the harsh winters and the brilliance of the autumn to come. This far north the leaves were always the first to change, and that change would soon begin. In a few weeks, lush green would turn to shades of crimson and burnished gold. The leaf-peepers would arrive in droves. The loons and crows would fly south. But, for now, late summer reigned.

      Jenny had always loved Vermont this time of year. The velvet green of the meadows, the farms and the rolling hills, the way the birch and maple leaves shimmered in the sunlight. It had all been exactly as she’d remembered, too, as she’d left the interstate for the slower, winding drive deeper into the country, heading toward Maple Mountain and home.

      Unfortunately, the little black cloud that had hovered over her life for the past month had apparently followed her from Boston. Within an hour of prying off boards from a few downstairs windows and unloading her car—the latter of which had taken less than fifteen minutes now that her possessions had been reduced to little more than her luggage and four cardboard boxes—clouds had rolled in, dusk had descended and a summer thunderstorm had put a major damper on her new beginning.

      Despite the rain, the optimist in her struggled to surface. Bemoaning her fate wouldn’t change it, so she focused on the good news—which was that the two oil lamps she’d found in the pantry provided plenty of light to see.

      The not-so-encouraging part was that the storm had nothing to do with the lack of electricity. She wouldn’t have power even after the clouds passed. The house had sat vacant for years.

      One of the lamps glowed from a beige Formica countertop. The other cast its circle of light from the pot-bellied stove that provided heat during the long, snow-bound winters. Not wanting to think about winter any more than she did the rain, Jenny set her bright-red cereal bowls on a fresh sheet of shelf liner and ignored the rhythmic plink of water into the pot. She had bigger problems than no electricity, no phone and a roof that leaked.

      Until a little after ten o’clock that morning, she had lived in a charming brownstone in a trendy little neighborhood in Boston. She’d been within walking distance of a fabulous Italian deli, chic restaurants and great bars she and her girlfriends sometimes frequented during happy hour so they could fill up on free appetizers for dinner. She’d become acquainted with the woman at the corner news kiosk where she’d bought the newspaper for an elderly neighbor who sometimes didn’t feel like navigating her stairs. She’d come to know the guy who worked the flower cart during the summer and who slipped a few extra tulips into the bouquets she occasionally bought, just because he liked her smile.

      She’d had good neighbors. She’d had a good life.

      Until a month ago, she’d even had a good job.

      Armed with her associate’s degree and the same dogged determination that had gotten her out of Maple Mountain, she’d worked her way up from the general secretarial pool of a major brokerage house to administrative assistant to a senior vice president. The man had depended on her for everything from keeping him supplied with antacids to handling the confidential correspondence, paperwork and computer accounts of clients with more money than some small third-world countries. Her job had been exciting, interesting and filled with all the opportunities Maple Mountain had lacked.