The Perfect Gift. Lenora Worth

      “Thanks again, Rory.

       For everything,” Goldie said.

      He stared at her for a moment, then waved goodbye and left.

      Goldie closed her eyes and remembered the hominess of Rory’s rambling farmhouse, the cute grins of his two boys—wait, the cute grin of the youngest boy, since the older one had seemed a bit sad—and the way Rory’s eyes crinkled when he smiled. And she imagined the kind of woman who could be part of that lovely picture. The kind of woman who baked cookies and kept the house neat and played kick ball with the boys in the backyard. That kind of loving, caring, motherly type of woman.

      And then she reminded herself that she’d come to Viola, Louisiana, to help her grandmother, not get involved with yet another man who probably didn’t know the meaning of the words trust and commitment.

      No matter how kind Rory Branagan had been, and no matter how much her heart was telling her that this man might just be different from all the rest.

      MILLS & BOON

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      LENORA WORTH

      has written more than thirty books, most of those for Steeple Hill. She also works freelance for a local magazine, where she had written monthly opinion columns, feature articles and social commentaries. She also wrote for the local paper for five years. Married to her high school sweetheart for thirty-three years, Lenora lives in Louisiana and has two grown children and a cat. She loves to read, take long walks and sit in her garden.

      The Perfect Gift

      Lenora Worth

      Every good and perfect gift is from above, coming down from the Father of the heavenly lights, who does not change like shifting shadows.

      —James 1:17

      To the Unity Sunday School class—

       for all their good and perfect gifts.

      Contents

      Prologue

      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

      Questions for Discussion

      Prologue

      The man and the two little boys stared down at the disheveled woman asleep on the big Ultrasuede couch in their living room.

      “Is she a princess, Daddy?” six-year-old Tyler asked, his dark eyes going wide. “My friend Emily is always talking about princesses. She’s a girl, though.” He shrugged. “I don’t know much about that kind of stuff.”

      “She’s not a princess, silly,” his older brother, Sam, answered with ten-year-old authority. “And she shouldn’t be here. Isn’t it illegal to enter someone’s house when they’re not at home, Dad? Besides, she’s ruining our couch with her wet clothes.”

      Rory, still in shock from finding the woman there in the first place, stopped staring and went into action. “It’s okay, Sam. She looks hurt.” He gently nudged at the woman’s arm. “Ma’am, excuse me? Wake up, okay?” When the woman didn’t move, he panicked. “Lady, can you hear me?”

      “She’s asleep,” Tyler pointed out. “Maybe she needs a blanket.”

      Rory pushed away the blanket his son offered. “Let’s make sure she’s all right first.” He bent and carefully rolled the woman over from her stomach to her back, then felt for a pulse along her neck. She had a pulse. That much he knew. He could feel it through the softness of her skin. And she was wearing an intricate gold-chained square locket that fell across her V-necked sweater with each movement of her breath.

      “Is she dead?” Sam asked, his curiosity with all things crime-related making Rory wince. The kid had been that way since his mother had been killed three years earlier in a convenience-store robbery.

      “No, son. She’s breathing. But something is definitely wrong.”

      Rory carefully examined the woman for broken bones or any other signs of injury, then turned her face around so he could inspect it. And that’s when he saw the blood matted in her dark blond hair just above her left temple.

      “She don’t look so great,” Tyler remarked.

      “No, she doesn’t,” Rory replied, grabbing his cell out of his pocket. He immediately called 911 and explained the situation. “We found a woman in our house, unconscious and bleeding from a head wound. She needs medical attention.”

      After giving his address to the dispatcher, Rory hung up and turned to his two quiet, curious sons.

      “Now you can hand me the blanket, Tyler.”

      His son shoved the plaid comforter toward him, the boy’s big eyes wide with wonder—and a keen interest. “Daddy, if she lives, can we keep her?”

      Chapter One

      Two hours earlier

      Icy rain pounded the windshield then fell away like tiny diamonds from a broken necklace.

      “It never sleets in South Louisiana!”

      Goldie Rios hit her hand on the steering wheel of her compact vehicle, wondering how a perfectly good Saturday in early December had gone from a day of Christmas shopping and a late dinner to driving down this dark, deserted road all by herself.

      Nervous and tired, she grabbed the locket she always wore, clutching it briefly with one hand before taking the wheel of the car back with a tight grip. Oh, yes. She remembered with belated bitterness how her day had gone from bad to worse. She’d just dumped another loser of a boyfriend, and right in the middle of a swanky uptown restaurant at the mall near Baton Rouge. The whole place had gone silent, the only sound Goldie’s seething response to Loser Number Five’s whining excuses for being seen with another woman one hour before he’d met Goldie for dinner.

      The woman was not his sister, his mother, his aunt or his niece. And Goldie was pretty sure she wasn’t his grandmother, either, since the cute blonde clung to him in a way that bespoke intimacy rather than family bonds.

      She should have listened to her friend Carla—before Carla called her from the other end of the mall and told her to casually walk by the pet store. She’d warned Goldie that this one