Down from the Mountain. Barbara Gale

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      “Are you going to try to seduce me?” Ellen whispered, her throat tight with uncertainty.

      “Do you want me to?” David asked, his own voice a husky rasp.

      “Yes, I do believe I do.”

      It was a struggle to keep his composure. “Then I guess I will.”

      “You guess? If you want me, really want me, you’ve got to tell me, David. I need to hear you say so.”

      Her face was strained and white beneath the pier light, and he knew it cost the earth for her to say these things.

      Lifting her onto the hood of the car, he let her feel the heat of his arousal. Towering above her, aching with passion, he was incredulous at her doubt, and put it off to her blindness. But even if he’d never told her, hadn’t she noticed how he could hardly keep his hands to himself?

      Dear Reader,

      It’s that time of year again—when every woman’s thoughts turn to love—and we have all kinds of romantic gifts for you! We begin with the latest from reader favorite Allison Leigh, Secretly Married, in which she concludes her popular TURNABOUT miniseries. A woman who was sure she was divorced finds out there’s the little matter of her not-so-ex-husband’s signing the papers, so off she goes to Turnabout—the island that can turn your life around—to get her divorce. Or does she?

      Our gripping MERLYN COUNTY MIDWIVES miniseries continues with Gina Wilkins’s Countdown to Baby. A woman interested only in baby-making—or so she thinks—may be finding happily-ever-after and her little bundle of joy, with the town’s most eligible bachelor. LOGAN’S LEGACY, our new Silhouette continuity, is introduced in The Virgin’s Makeover by Judy Duarte, in which a plain-Jane adoptee is transformed in time to find her inner beauty…and, just possibly, her biological family. Look for the next installment in this series coming next month. Shirley Hailstock’s Love on Call tells the story of two secretive emergency-room doctors who find temptation—not to mention danger—in each other. In Down from the Mountain by Barbara Gale, two disabled people—a woman without sight, and a scarred man—nonetheless find each other a perfect match. And Arlene James continues THE RICHEST GALS IN TEXAS with Fortune Finds Florist. A sudden windfall turns complicated when a wealthy small-town florist forms a business relationship—for starters—with a younger man who has more than finance on his mind.

      So Happy Valentine’s Day, and don’t forget to join us next month, for six special romances, all from Silhouette Special Edition.

      Sincerely,

      Gail Chasan

      Senior Editor

      Down from the Mountain

      Barbara Gale

       www.millsandboon.co.uk

      For Jonah, who sat beside me

      during so much of the writing of this book.

      BARBARA GALE

      is a native New Yorker. Married for over thirty years, she, her husband and their three children divide their time between Brooklyn and Hobart, New York. Ms. Gale has always been fascinated by the implications of outside factors, including race, on relationships. She knows that love is as powerful as romance readers believe it is.

      She loves to hear from readers. Write to her at P.O. Box 150792, Brooklyn, New York 11215-0792 or visit her Web site at www.barbaragale.com.

      Dear Reader,

      It is an honor to introduce two very special people blindsided by life.

      Having lost her vision early on in childhood, Ellen Candler has lived most of her life sequestered on a Montana mountainside. Facially scarred in an auto accident, David Hartwell is a forest ranger who patrols the New York State Adirondack Park in solitary isolation. Feeling their differences keenly, they have each, in their own separate ways, withdrawn from the world. When circumstance obliges them to spend three months together, they are confronted with hard choices. They can remain sequestered in their comfortable but lonely worlds, or they can challenge themselves, confront their demons and struggle toward a greater happiness.

      Perhaps Ellen and David will offer you the comfort of their own story, as you carve out your own destiny.

      Much good fortune,

      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 One

      David softened his death grip on the steering wheel, wincing as he rubbed his pounding temple. He hoped the rental agency didn’t inspect its cars too closely because countless deep ruts had kept him bouncing as he careened up the rough Montana mountainside. Forced to reduce his speed to five miles an hour, it was all he could do to take it slow and not bottom out on the isolated dirt road, dusty with July heat. Peering through the windshield, he tried to recall where the potholes were, but he’d been gone too long, and the light was fading, getting on to twilight.

      Still, the evergreens were as tall as he remembered, casting the same deep canopy of shade that had made him so uneasy as a child. Even now, twenty years later, and he a grown man, they seemed ominous and forbidding. Interesting how the lush evergreen forests of upstate New York, where he now lived, didn’t make him feel this way at all. Another mile up the mountain, a darting jackrabbit or two, and a house—a veritable mansion—finally came into view.

      His childhood home.

      David shivered, surprised that after all these years it could still affect him so, this dark pile of brick that belonged on some lonely moor in England, not sculpted into the side of an obscure mountain in the Midwest. Well, he thought as he sighed, no one ever denied that the law was a lucrative profession, and his father had certainly been a most successful lawyer. All this was history; now John Hartwell was dead. Hard to believe, that. John had thought he would go on forever, had warned everybody he would, joked about it all the time, although it had never seemed funny to David.

      And leave it to dear old dad to have the last laugh, David thought wryly, the way he’d up and died during the first vacation David had allowed himself in years. A vacation that forestry headquarters had practically forced upon him, insisting that it wasn’t healthy for a lone man to take on so much. Finding himself scuba diving in Antigua, sipping margaritas, dozing on a hot, sandy beach—things he’d never done before—David had thought maybe they’d been right. So it was frustrating to get a telegram insisting he fly home, until he realized that it was for his father’s funeral. To settle John’s estate, as it turned out, because it had taken so long for headquarters to track him down that he’d missed the actual burial.

      But he was home, now, staring up at the towering, grand house that John had built, homage to a beloved wife who hadn’t lived long enough to enjoy it. Mullioned windows, elaborate turrets, opulent gardens… David shrugged away memories that haunted him still. It was all so long ago, but now…

      Now he was stalling, he realized ruefully. Taking a deep breath, he forced himself to climb from the Jeep and, sailor-like, hoist his duffel bag over his