Cathryn. Shannon Waverly

      

      “I’m going out,” Cathryn announced

      “What?”

      “Out. I don’t want to stay in tonight. I don’t want to be—” she looked around her living room with the eyes of a hateful stranger “—here.”

      “Where are you going?” Tucker expected her to say Lauren’s or Julia’s, but instead she just shrugged.

      “Out,” she repeated, heading for the bathroom. She returned a short while later with her makeup repaired. “It’s Saturday night, and I’m tired of playing by the rules. Why should I? No one else has.” Including my ex-husband, she might have said—but didn’t.

      Uh-oh. Tucker’s eyes swept over her for about the thirty-seventh time, and a premonition of disaster hit him. “Maybe that’s not such a good idea.”

      “Don’t try to stop me, Tuck.”

      Tucker knew she was angry and in a hell-raising mood. But then, why shouldn’t she be? She had a right to rage for a night. And actually, a bit of rage might do her some good.

      As long as she had someone to watch over her.

      He lifted his hands in surrender. “No, I wouldn’t do that. I just want to go with you.”

      Dear Reader,

      During the writing of Cathryn, several people asked me how I could possibly create a romance novel featuring an overweight, happily married stay-at-home mom whose hobbies include square dancing, sewing and choir. That was the Cathryn McGrath they knew from her brief appearances in Julia and Lauren (published in November 1998 and December 1999 respectively). Each time I was asked, my response was a rather smug “You’ll see,” accompanied by a slightly dirty laugh.

      I knew something, or rather someone, they didn’t—Tucker Lang, bad boy extraordinaire, who drops into Cathryn’s life needing to change his ways just when Cathryn needs to change hers. From the very first line of the book, I recognized the potential within such a situation. With that line I also began my most enjoyable writing experience to date. I absolutely loved being with these two buoyant people.

      Cathryn concludes CIRCLE OF FRIENDS, my series about a group of people who share the unusual experience of having grown up together on a small fictional island off the coast of Massachusetts. I hope you enjoy it.

      My best to you always,

      Shannon Waverly

      Cathryn

      Shannon Waverly

       www.millsandboon.co.uk

      To Paula, who took a chance on me fifteen books ago. For your always-judicious editing, lofty standards and human understanding (especially each time I was late with a manuscript), thank you.

      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

       CHAPTER SIXTEEN

      CHAPTER ONE

      TUCKER LANG wasn’t the sort of guy good girls cared to be seen with. Not if they valued their reputations. Good girls went out with clean-cut, law-abiding guys, the ones who stayed in school and went to church and had plans for the future.

      Being with Tucker Lang was another matter, however—as long as no one found out—and by the time he left Harmony at the age of twenty-one, not many girls remained who hadn’t joined him for a walk on the wild side. Tucker was trouble, all right, and nothing was more alluring than trouble.

      Tucker even looked like trouble, from his long black hair to his scuffed biker’s boots, which he wore both winter and summer and even to the beach. He also favored shark-tooth jewelry, black leather jackets, and sleeveless T-shirts, to display his sinewy musculature.

      The vehicles he drove, both of which he’d rebuilt himself, looked like trouble, too. The first was a big, loud Harley-Davidson; the other, a Trans-Am with flames painted on the sides. Auto repair was, in fact, his trade while he lived on Harmony, one he’d stumbled into simply because it happened to be the family business. His great-uncle Walter, who’d brought him to the island from the Bronx when he was thirteen, operated the island’s only garage, Lang’s Auto Repair.

      To the distress of Walter and his wife, Winnie, trouble ran deeper than just appearances with Tuck, right from the get-go. He set off stink bombs in school, encouraged his classmates to smoke and swear, and pilfered candy and magazines anywhere he found them for sale.

      Another reason the Langs turned gray so fast, beyond the fact that they were both sixty when they took Tucker in, was that he seemed perpetually involved in dangerous activities, usually on a dare. One day, for instance, he dived off Little Harbor Bridge—nothing unusual for island kids, except that in Tucker’s case his hands were tied behind his back. He once camped out all night in Morgan’s Hollow, where if the ghosts didn’t get you, the deer ticks would. But the incident that made Tuck an irrevocable Harmony legend was his getting struck by lightning, a gigantic bolt that passed right through him, yet left him totally unharmed.

      Tucker was combative, too, a trait that became more prominent as he grew older and began hanging out in bars. He wasn’t the largest or strongest guy on the island, but he was arguably the toughest, and he never backed down from a fight.

      In addition to all this, Tucker drank hard, swam nude, danced dirty and spent more than his fair share of nights in jail paying for his sins, the sum of which, alas, only added to his appeal and, in turn, the sullying of even more female reputations.

      Not mine, though, thought Cathryn McGrath a bit smugly as she drove across Harmony on a slushy, colorless Valentine’s Day. She was on her way to attend the afternoon visitation at D’Autell’s Funeral Home where Walter Lang was laid out. Cathryn’s virtue had remained intact—although, to be honest, Tucker had never tested it.

      For