An Unexpected Wife. Cheryl Reavis

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      Her Deepest Secret

      Giving up her out-of-wedlock son was the only right choice. Still, Kate Woodward aches that she isn’t part of his life. She can’t heal herself, but she can help former Confederate soldier Robert Markham rebuild his war-shattered life. But helping Robert is drawing them irresistibly close—even as Kate fears she can never be the one he deserves….

      Battlefield loss and guilt rekindled Robert’s faith and brought him home to Atlanta. And Kate’s past only makes him more determined to show this steadfast, caring woman that she deserves happiness. Now, with her secrets revealed and her child in danger, Robert has only one chance to win her trust—and embark on the sweetest of new beginnings….

      “Where is Kate?” Robert asked.

      “She is giving away most of the contents of our food basket to a woman with three hungry children,” Mrs. Kinnard said. “As she should. Now, about—”

      “Excuse me,” he said, pushing his way through the crowd again to get closer to the train.

      He stood waiting on the platform, watching Kate progress all the way until she finally appeared. She was so…beautiful to him and had been since the first time he saw her in the downstairs hallway of his father’s house.

      Maria was right. He did want Kate to be a preacher’s wife—his wife—and he didn’t see how their situation could be any more impossible.

      I love her, Lord.

      He didn’t know when it had happened, or how. All he knew was that it was so, that she was in his mind night and day—and now he was only moments away from breaking her heart….

      CHERYL REAVIS

      The RITA® Award-winning author and romance novelist describes herself as a “late bloomer” who played in her first piano recital at the tender age of thirty. “We had to line up by height—I was the third smallest kid,” she says. “After that, there was no stopping me. I immediately gave myself permission to attempt my other heart’s desire—to write.” Her books A Crime of the Heart and Patrick Gallagher’s Widow won a Romance Writers of America coveted RITA® Award for Best Contemporary Series Romance the year each was published. One of Our Own received a Career Achievement Award for Best Innovative Series Romance from RT Book Reviews. A former public health nurse, Cheryl makes her home in North Carolina with her husband.

      An Unexpected Wife

      Cheryl Reavis

       www.millsandboon.co.uk

      Be of good courage, and He shall strengthen

      your heart, all ye that hope in the Lord.

      —Psalms 31:24

      For my mother, in honor of her birthday—

      92 years and counting. Thank you, Mommy,

      for always being my biggest fan.

      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

       Epilogue

       Dear Reader

       Questions for Discussion

      Chapter One

      Kate Woodard stood looking out the parlor window, more than content to be in her brother’s finally empty house and do nothing but watch the falling snow. It was deep enough to drift across the veranda now, a barricade—she hoped—from any outside intrusion.

      The house was cold; a strong draft at the window made the lace curtains billow out from time to time. She could light a fire in the fireplace—if only one had been laid on the hearth and she knew how. When she made her impulsive decision to deliberately miss her train, she hadn’t for one moment taken into consideration that it was the dead of winter and she knew next to nothing about managing parlor fires, much less the one in the kitchen. Tomorrow she would do something about all that—hire someone or...something. Now she would savor the peace and silence of the house, and it would be enough.

      She had come to Salisbury, North Carolina, to visit her brother and his family in the hope that a change of scenery and the rowdy company of his adorable young sons—two adopted, one his by blood—would redirect her mind. She was so weary of living the false life that had been foisted upon her when she was hardly more than a child herself. She needed...respite. She needed the privacy to feel all the emotions she had to keep bottled up for the sake of propriety. She wanted to weep—or not to weep. She wanted to pace and fret, if that seemed more applicable to her state of mind. She wanted the freedom to think about her own son. Her lost son. He was thirteen now, and the web of lies surrounding his birth had held fast. No outsiders knew young Harrison Howe was her child and not the child of her parents’ closest friends, nor did they know his brother was not his brother at all.

      John.

      He had made a much better brother than father—at least before the war had changed him so.

      All these years Kate had lived on the fringes of Harrison’s life, watching him grow, being his friend but always carefully exercising the restraint it took not to make Mr. and Mrs. Howe or her own family think that she might be trying to get close to him. She was so good at it that she sometimes thought the people who knew the truth forgot that she was Harrison’s real mother.

      Her latest news of him was that he had been sent to a prestigious boarding school deep in the Pennsylvania countryside, the alma mater of many—if not all—the males in the Howe family and the one place Kate believed he would not thrive. He wasn’t like the Howe men—John—or the senior Mr. Howe. He was more like her father—and her—thoughtful and observant and studious, and the fact that he required spectacles would make him even more of a target for boarding school jibes and pranks.

      But there was nothing she could do beyond sending him small gifts of books and candy. He had sent her a carte de visite in return. She cherished it, but seeing his wistful young face staring back at her from the photograph only underlined her growing fear that he was miserable.