Love Me or Leave Me. Gwynne Forster

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Love Me or Leave Me

      Love Me or Leave Me

      Gwynne Forster

       www.millsandboon.co.uk

      Dear Reader,

      I hope you enjoy reading Love Me or Leave Me, the story of Drake Harrington, the third and youngest of the three Harrington brothers, and the people who make up this delightful family. Many of you have written to me asking about this series, and I am so pleased that Harlequin is reprinting this and previous Harringtons books. I hope that you like the story of the most handsome, and yet disarming, of the Harrington men, and the woman who captured his heart.

      If you enjoyed reading about strong, dependable and loving Telford (Once in a Lifetime), the handsome and fiery Russ (After the Loving) and their cousin—tender, powerful and tenacious Judson Philips-Sparkman (Love Me Tonight)—you will fall for Judson’s best friend, Ambassador Scott Galloway, a man who takes his own sweet time to find romance. You’ll read Scott’s story in A Compromising Affair, which Kimani Arabesque will release later this year.

      I enjoy hearing from my readers, so please email me at [email protected] or leave a message at my website at www.gwynneforster.com. If you want to write by postal mail, you can 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, at [email protected].

      Warmest regards,

      Gwynne Forster

      ACKNOWLEDGMENTS

      I am indebted to Mrs. Linda Biney,

       wife of the Ghanaian diplomat to the United Nations

       and member of the distinguished Fanti tribe, who

       discussed with me Ghanaian culture and loaned me

       video tapes that depicted the slave castles, other

       notable landmarks and a re-enactment of the ways

       in which people were sold into slavery. My thanks,

       also, to all of the Ghanaians in New York and in Ghana

       who I have been privileged to know and associate with.

      A special thanks to my husband who creates most of

       the promotional materials designed to support this book,

       and to my loyal readers who urged me to write.

      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 1

      Drake Harrington loped down the broad and winding stairs of Harrington House, his ancestral home, and made his way to the back garden, his favorite place to sit and think or to swim on early summer mornings. He stopped and glanced around him, the familiarity of all he saw striking him forcibly. He surmised that he’d looked at that same evergreen shrub every day—when he was at home—for as long as he’d known himself. He sat down on the stone bench beside the swimming pool, spread his long legs and rested his elbows on his thighs. He had slept in the same room for thirty-one years, from his days in a bassinet to the king-size sleigh bed he now used. Wasn’t it time for a change?

      His long, tapered fingers brushed across his forehead, their tips tangling themselves in the silky wisps of hair that fell near his long-lashed eyes, giving him a devil-may-care look. He liked to measure carefully the effect of a move before he made it, but he wasn’t certain as to the source of his sudden discontent, so he was at a loss as to what to do about it. He loved his brothers and enjoyed their company, and he liked the women they had chosen for their mates, but he recognized a need to make headway in his own life, and that might mean leaving his family. A smile drifted across his features, features that even his brothers conceded were exceptionally handsome. He couldn’t imagine living away from Tara, his stepniece, or Henry, the family cook who—with the help of his oldest brother, Telford—had raised him after the death of his father when he was twelve years old.

      As he mused about his life as he saw it and as he wanted it to be, he began to realize that because his older brothers had found happiness with the women of their choice, he was pressuring himself to decide what to do about Pamela Langford. He dated several women casually, including Pamela, but she was the one he cared for, though he hadn’t broadcast that fact, not even to her—and he often sensed in her nearly as much reluctance as he recognized in himself. He had been careful not to mislead her, for although he more than liked her, he was thirty-one years old and a long way from realizing his goal of becoming a nationally recognized and respected architectural engineer, and he was not ready to settle down. When he did, it would be with a woman who—unlike his late mother—he could count on, and he had reservations that a television personality such as Pamela fit that mold. He’d better break it off.

      Hunger pangs reminded Drake that he hadn’t eaten breakfast. As he entered the breakfast room, the loving voices of Telford and his wife, Alexis; Tara, their daughter; his older brother, Russ; and Henry welcomed him. He took his plate, went into the kitchen, helped himself to grapefruit juice, grits, scrambled eggs, sausage and buttermilk biscuits, and went back to join his family.

      “I said grace for you, Uncle Drake,” Tara said, “and that’s four times, so you’ll have to take me to see Harry Potter.”

      He turned to Russ, who had spent the weekend with them at the family home in Eagle Park, Maryland. “We’re looking at a six-year-old con artist, brother. She decides who’s to say grace, and she decides there should be a penalty if that person doesn’t say it. She also metes out the punishment.”

      “Yeah,” Russ said. “That’s why I get down here before she does.”

      “You notice she never dumps it on the cook?” Henry said, obviously enjoying his health-conscious breakfast of fruit, cereal, whole-wheat toast and coffee.

      “That’s ’cause I don’t want to eat cabbage stew,” Tara replied. “I’m ready, Dad,” she said to Telford. “Can I call Grant and tell him to meet us, or are we going to his house to get him?”

      Telford drank the last of his coffee, wiped his mouth, kissed his wife and took Tara’s hand. “We’re going to Grant’s house. His dad can take you and Grant fishing. I have some urgent work to do.”

      Drake relished every moment he spent with his family, but was a stickler for punctuality, hated to wait on others and rarely caused anyone to wait for him. He excused himself, dashed up the stairs and phoned Pamela. He didn’t believe in procrastinating. He wouldn’t enjoy what he had to do, but he couldn’t see the sense in postponing it and stressing over it.

      “Hello.” Her refined, airy voice always jump-started his libido, but that was too bad.

      “Hi. This is Drake. Any chance we can meet for dinner this evening? I’ll be working in Frederick today, and I can be at The Watershed at six-thirty. You know where it is—right off Reistertown Road at the Milford exit.”

      “Dinner sounds wonderful. See you at six-thirty.”

      Pamela finished her third cup of green tea for that morning—she had substituted green tea for the five or more cups of black coffee she used to drink every day, thankful that she’d never taken up smoking. Being