The Secret Wedding Wish. Cathy Gillen Thacker

      

      Out of the shower and into the fire…

      Thad winked at Janey flirtatiously. “And here you thought I was just a dumb son of a gun who tells jocks how to push a puck around the ice.”

      “I don’t think you’re dumb,” Janey said as he slid off the stool and shut off the stove.

      “You don’t?” He slanted a questioning glance at her.

      Janey climbed off her stool and went to stand next to him. “A dumb guy couldn’t have gotten me out of my clothes and into his shower within the first fifteen minutes of my arrival tonight.”

      Thad grinned as he leaned back against the counter, folded his arms and gave her the sexy once-over. “You do look rather nice in my robe,” he allowed in a low tone.

      “And,” Janey said recklessly, opening it and letting it fall to the floor as her romantic notions about Thad Lantz took over full force, “I look even better without it.”

      Dear Reader,

      From the moment of conception, a mother feels a fierce desire to protect her child and ensure that child’s happiness. Guys love watching and playing and learning about sports. And therein lies the rub, because all sports carry with them the threat of disappointment and injury.

      Janey Hart Campbell grew up with five boisterous brothers and she knows firsthand how much joy athletics bring to growing boys. She has also seen the destructive side of unrealized ambition and crushed dreams and she fears her son’s overriding interest in hockey is not just hurting his schoolwork and causing a rift between the two of them, but also taking him into dangerous territory….

      The last thing professional hockey coach Thaddeus Lantz wants to do is get in the middle of a mother-son conflict, but when twelve-year-old Christopher pours out his heart to Thad and asks for his help, Thad can’t say no. He makes it his business to talk to the feisty Janey. And as they say, life is never the same again….

      I hope you enjoy The Secret Wedding Wish as much as I enjoyed writing it. For more information on my novels, you can visit my Web site at www.cathygillenthacker.com.

      Sincerely,

      Cathy Gillen Thacker

      The Secret Wedding Wish

      MILLS & BOON

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      This book is for Jacob Talmadge Gerhardt.

       Hero material. Definitely.

       Welcome to the family, little one.

      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 One

      Janey Hart Campbell saw the Hart family posse coming as she turned the Closed sign in the window of Delectable Cakes. Knowing full well the last thing she needed was an emotional confrontation with all five of her very big and very opinionated brothers about her excessively sports-minded twelve-year-old son, Christopher, she ducked back out of sight of the old-fashioned plate glass windows and hightailed it to the back of her bakery. Grabbing purse and keys, she dashed out the back door, and ran right smack into the tall man standing on the other side of the threshold.

      Immediately, Janey became aware of several things. The wall of testosterone she had just crashed into was a lot taller than she was. Probably six foot four or so to her five-foot-nine-inch frame. Not to mention all muscle, from the width and breadth of his powerful chest and shoulders, to his trim waist, lean hips and rock-hard thighs. He was casually dressed, in expensive sneakers, old jeans and a short-sleeved white cotton polo shirt that contrasted nicely with his suntanned skin. He smelled awfully nice, too, like a mixture of masculine soap and fresh-cut Carolina pines. His dark brown hair was the color of espresso, thick and curly, shorn neatly around the sides and back of his head. Longer on top, the three-quarter-inch strands brushed at the top of his forehead.

      Individually, the features on his long, angular face were strong and unremarkable. But put together with those long-lashed electric blue eyes, don’t-even-think-about-messing-with-me-jaw, and the sexy mustache that topped his sensually chiseled lips, the midthirty-something man looked good enough to put even someone like Mel Gibson to shame. More curiously yet, the handsome stranger was staring down at her as if he had expected her to come bursting out of her shop and run headlong into him.

      “They said you were going to do this,” he murmured with a beleaguered sigh.

      Finally, Janey had the presence of mind to step back a pace, so there was a good half a foot of space between them. “Do what?” she demanded, aware her pulse was racing as she stood staring up at him.

      He planted a big hand on her shoulder. “Run.”

      “And we were right, weren’t we?” Dylan Hart said in the same know-it-all tone he used during his job as TV sportscaster, while he rounded the corner of the century-old building.

      “Pay up,” Fletcher Hart insisted, as he entered the alley that ran behind Main Street and sauntered up to the stranger.

      “Don’t forget. You owe me a beer.” Cal Hart—who was still wearing his physician’s badge from the medical center—grinned victoriously.

      Janey glared at Cal. “Don’t you have a surgery to perform or an athlete somewhere who needs your sports medicine expertise?”

      “Nope.” Cal smiled. “I’m all yours. For the moment, anyway.”

      “Great,” Janey groused. Just what she needed after an entire day spent baking wedding cakes for this weekend’s weddings.

      Mac Hart shook his head at Janey. For once, he was without his Holly Springs Sheriff uniform and badge. “When are you going to learn you can’t avoid your problems by running away?” Mac chided.

      Janey folded her arms in front of her. Just because she had fled North Carolina once, in her teens, did not mean she was going to do it again. At thirty-three, she knew what she wanted out of life, and it was right here in Holly Springs, North Carolina—the town she had grown up in.

      But not about to admit that to her nosy, interfering brothers, she sassed right back. “I don’t know. Seems to me I’ve been doing a pretty good job ducking all of your phone calls.”

      “And look where it’s gotten you,” Joe Hart pointed out disapprovingly. Clad in running shorts and a T-shirt bearing the Carolina Storm insignia, her only married brother looked as if he had just come from one of his summer conditioning workouts.

      The