Once in a Lifetime. Gwynne Forster

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Once in a Lifetime

      Once in a Lifetime

      Gwynne Forster

       www.millsandboon.co.uk

      Dear Reader,

      This has been a very busy and rewarding year. In my travels to conferences and book signings, I met many of you for the first time and enjoyed the camaraderie. Beginning in June, Kimani Arabesque released my first collection of wedding novellas in an anthology entitled Yes, I Do. And there’s especially good news for readers who are fans of the Harrington brothers and have asked me time and again to continue the series. In September, Love Me Tonight marked the first new book in the Harrington series in many years. Now, with the reissue of Once in a Lifetime, the very first novel in the Harrington brothers series, readers will discover how the eldest brother, Telford, found love and a ready-made family with Alexis Stevenson. Next year look for the second and third books in the Harrington series to be reissued—After the Loving and Love Me or Leave Me.

      The really good news is that the Harrington series will continue with at least one novel a year. And be sure to look for Scott Galloway, whom you met in Love Me Tonight, to find love with Pamela Harrington’s sister, in the fifth Harrington novel in September 2011.

      I enjoy receiving mail, so please email me at [email protected]. If you write by postal mail, reach me at P.O. Box 45, New York, NY 10044, and if you would like a reply, please enclose a self-addressed, stamped envelope. For more information, please contact my agent, Pattie Steel-Perkins, Steel-Perkins Literary Agency, email: [email protected].

      Warmest regards,

      Gwynne Forster

      Acknowledgments

      To my agent, Pattie Steel-Perkins who, like an angel parting the Red Sea, eases my writer’s path. I am fortunate to have an agent of such integrity and dedication to duty.

      Contents

      Chapter 1

      Chapter 2

      Chapter 3

      Chapter 4

      Chapter 5

      Chapter 6

      Chapter 7

      Chapter 8

      Chapter 9

      Chapter 10

      Chapter 11

      Chapter 12

      Chapter 13

      Chapter 14

      Chapter 15

      Chapter 16

      Chapter 1

      Alexis Stevenson had spent most of her thirty years doing what was expected of her. She managed not to fall in love until she met a man of whom her family would approve. Her father expected his girls to lead the pack, and she graduated at the top of her high school and college classes. Indeed, as a model student, her grades were such that her college and graduate schooling didn’t cost her wealthy parents a penny, although they provided her with a lifestyle that she neither needed nor wanted. But her academic successes came at the expense of a healthy social life. After she married Jack Stevenson, she exchanged her job as instructor in home economics at the State University for that of homemaker, spending most of her time either planning for or entertaining her husband’s business associates, smoothing his rise to the top of the corporate ladder.

      Her difficult pregnancy didn’t lessen Jack’s expectations of her as homemaker or as hostess to his never-ending parade of guests. Even when his boss’s daughter announced that she was pregnant and that Jack was the father, she did the expected and gave him a friendly divorce. But when he sought and subsequently obtained a ruling that would allow him to stop supporting their daughter, Tara, when she reached eighteen, Alexis balked.

      Now, two years after their divorce became final, two years of legal battling, she had what she wanted, custody of her child, though at an enormous cost—forfeiture of her entitlement to half of their joint property. But she would have given up everything she had for custody of Tara. However, she couldn’t revel in victory over a father who cared so little for his child as to give up all rights to her in order to retain all of his wealth. She had been a fool to cater to him in his quest for status and power. But she’d learned a lesson, and in Jack Stevenson, she had a master teacher. What she learned, she learned thoroughly; it would never happen again.

      No one, not her friends, her sister, her ex-husband or his relatives would believe her—daughter of a wealthy family and former instructor in home economics and health sciences at State University—capable of the decision she had just made. Too bad; from now on, she planned to live her own life, not anyone else’s. She put the money Jack sent her for Tara into a fund for the little girl’s education and prepared to support her child and herself.

      Alexis looked around the house she’d lived in for the past two years, took Tara’s hand and walked out, locking the door. All they would need she’d packed in her azure Oldsmobile Cutlass Supreme. She put her daughter in her special chair in the backseat, strapped her in, got in the car and drove off. Today is the first day of the rest of my life, she told herself, and put Sting’s “Brand New Day” in the tape deck, pushed the button, said good-bye to Philadelphia and headed for Eagle Park, Maryland.

      Four hours later, Alexis brought her Oldsmobile to a halt in front of number ten John Brown Drive, known for miles around as Harrington House. She put the car in Park, expelled a long, tired breath and stared at the sprawling white brick colonial house, its majestic setting proclaiming the status of its owners. An array of multihued pansies, irises, primroses, peonies and daisies along with well-spaced oak, birch and pine trees—green and fresh in the noonday April sun—gave the house a serenity and the appearance of a refuge. Well maintained, she thought, but not a human in sight.

      “Are we gonna stay here, Mummy?”

      Alexis glanced back at four-year-old Tara, the delight of her life. “I hope so, honey. I hope so.”

      Only the Lord knew what Telford Harrington’s reaction would be when he saw her precious Tara. He hadn’t asked, and she hadn’t told, because she knew that would be the end of the best job offer she’d received in three months of frantic searching.

      The picture before her beckoned, though she found the manifestation of wealth unsettling; she’d rather not return to the monied environment she escaped when she separated from Jack Stevenson almost three years earlier, but what choice did she have now?

      “Let’s get out. Can we, Mummy?”

      “In a minute, love.”

      Staring at the unknown, she felt compelled to savor what might be her last minutes as a person free to do as she pleased whenever she liked. When she walked through that door, she would be a servant, a full-time housekeeper. She didn’t mind it, nor did she resent it. She’d opened a new chapter in her life, and she looked on it as an opportunity, a lifesaver. A way to support herself and her child. State U now required all of its teachers to have a doctorate degree, which meant that, with only a master’s, she had to find other work.

      She got out of the car, took Tara’s little hand and walked with her up the winding brick path to the door. It opened slowly. “You must be the housekeeper.” The voice belonged to a dark-skinned graying man of indeterminate age who looked as if he might at one time have been a bantamweight prizefighter.

      “Yes.” She extended her hand. “I’m Alexis Stevenson, and this is my daughter, Tara.” The man didn’t fit the picture of Telford Harrington that she’d formed in her mind’s eye after her one brief conversation with him.

      “M’ name’s Henry, and I’m the cook. Come on…” He noticed Tara. “She’s yours?”

      Shivers