The Rebel's Return. Beverly Barton

had taken her years after the divorce to forgive her father for breaking up their family, and in time she had even learned to like her stepmother. But she’d never been able to reestablish the kind of relationship with her father that she’d wanted, mostly due to the fact that her mother expected her to choose sides.

      Illumination from the town brightened the dark night like soft lights on a Christmas tree. Often she stood out here and drank in the serenity of Mission Creek in slumber, peaceful and beautiful, the cares of the day laid to rest for a few brief hours. She couldn’t help thinking about all the families in all the houses in town and on the surrounding ranches. Men, women and children living perfectly normal lives and never realizing how lucky they were.

      Don’t do this! An inner voice commanded. Stop wallowing in self-pity.

      What was wrong with her? She had a wonderful life. She was rich—filthy rich—and relatively young and quite attractive. She had a job she enjoyed. Being the country club’s events manager might have started out as a lark, but over the years, it had become an integral part of Maddie’s life. After all, a person could be a guest at only so many social functions, head up only so many charitable organizations, take only so many holidays abroad.

      Besides, with far more knowledgeable people than she taking care of Delarue, Inc., people she trusted as her father had trusted them, Maddie needed a real job of some kind. Otherwise, she would have been available twenty-four hours a day for her mother’s never-ending succession of crises.

      Then again, as Nadine had said, if she had several grandchildren to dote on, to spoil rotten, then maybe she’d have something else to concentrate on other than herself.

      So, what are you going to do, Maddie, marry some money-hungry Don Juan just so your mother can have grandchildren? The very thought turned her stomach. What about artificial insemination? What about adoption? Neither solution required a husband.

      Off in the distance an ambulance siren wailed. It struck a sad, sobering note in the stillness of the night. Illness? Death? Another life with problems far more serious than hers? She felt almost guilty for wanting more when she already had so much. Far more than most people. But was it too much to ask for a man who would love her and her alone? Out there somewhere, there had to be a guy, rich and successful in his own right, who could look beyond the huge Delarue fortune and see the woman who longed to be loved and cherished. A man who would teach her to trust again, to believe in the happily ever after that had eluded her parents.

      Where are you? Maddie whispered. Where’s the man who will sweep me off my feet and carry me away with him? Where’s a guy like Dylan Bridges when you need him?