Her Mysterious Houseguest. Jane Toombs

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      “If I ask you about last night, will you be honest?”

      Rachel tensed at Mikel’s question. “I shouldn’t have let that happen,” she finally said.

      “Why? You enjoyed it as much as I did.”

      She looked at him. “My reasons are my own. And private. There won’t be another such…occurrence.”

      “Oh, won’t there?” Mikel growled. And he pulled her to him, his mouth coming down hard on hers.

      Rachel’s first impulse to thrust him away vanished as heat rose in her to answer the passion in his kiss. Why did it have to be this man, of all men, who evoked such a deep, yearning need she didn’t dare satisfy?

      If only this kiss could last forever. If only she had no past. If only things were different and there was a chance that Mikel…

      But Rachel had used up all her “if onlys” long ago.

      Dear Reader,

      When Patricia Kay was a child, she could be found hiding somewhere…reading. “Ever since I was old enough to realize someone wrote books and they didn’t just magically appear, I dreamed of writing,” she says. And this month Special Edition is proud to publish Patricia’s twenty-second novel, The Millionaire and the Mom, the next of the STOCKWELLS OF TEXAS series. She admits it isn’t always easy keeping her ideas and her writing fresh. What helps, she says, is “nonwriting” activities, such as singing in her church choir, swimming, taking long walks, going to the movies and traveling. “Staying well-rounded keeps me excited about writing,” she says.

      We have plenty of other fresh stories to offer this month. After finding herself in the midst of an armed robbery with a gun to her back in Christie Ridgway’s From This Day Forward, Annie Smith vows to chase her dreams…. In the next of A RANCHING FAMILY series by Victoria Pade, Kate McDermot returns from Vegas unexpectedly married and with a Cowboy’s Baby in her belly! And Sally Tyler Hayes’s Magic in a Jelly Jar is what young Luke Morgan hopes for by saving his teeth in a jelly jar…because he thinks that his dentist is the tooth fairy and can grant him one wish: a mother! Also, don’t miss the surprising twists in Her Mysterious Houseguest by Jane Toombs, and an exciting forbidden love story with Barbara Benedict’s Solution: Marriage.

      At Special Edition, fresh, innovative books are our passion. We hope you enjoy them all.

      Best,

      Karen Taylor Richman

      Senior Editor

      Her Mysterious Houseguest

      Jane Toombs

       www.millsandboon.co.uk

      To Bror and Evy and their black barn

      JANE TOOMBS

      was born in California, raised in the upper peninsula of Michigan and has moved from New York to Nevada as a result of falling in love with the state and a Nevadan. Jane has five children, two stepchildren and seven grandchildren. Her interests include gardening, reading and knitting.

      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

       Epilogue

      Chapter One

      Though not heavy, the cold, persistent rain hadn’t let up since he’d crossed the Mackinac Bridge, entering Michigan’s Upper Peninsula from the lower one. Mikel Starzov grimaced. Great way to spend his two-month vacation—in the rain. And in the wilderness, besides, since towns had proved to be small and far between. Having been raised in and around New York City, he felt more at home in people places rather than places surrounded by trees.

      Not that he regretted the promise he’d made to his colleague, Henderson, on his wedding day. He’d find Steve’s bride’s missing sister, just as he’d told both Victoria and Steve he would. He might not have expected the search to lead him into such a desolate area, but he meant to live up to his nickname at headquarters, where they called him “Nemesis” because he’d never failed to track down his quarry. This time would be no exception.

      The picture he had of Renee Reynaud at thirteen showed a wiry, thin-faced, undeveloped girl with bright red hair, wary amber eyes and freckles. He’d had the computer expert at headquarters make him a composite of what she might look like now, fourteen years later, but the guy had cautioned him about possible variations since puberty tended to bring about impossible-to-predict changes.

      If she was still alive, that is. Always a possibility she wasn’t. His hunch, though, told him she was still walking the earth. His hunches made him uneasy because he felt following them wasn’t professional. And, by damn, a special government agent needed to stay professional at all costs. Still, he and Steve both had survived a couple of times only because he’d paid attention to a hunch.

      At the moment he’d better pay attention to where he was. The sign coming up read Ojibway, the village he was looking for. By the time he reached the town, the rain had diminished to a fine mist. Pulling into the first gas station he came to, he filled the tank before asking directions. Buy something and it makes people less suspicious of questions, he thought.

      “Aino Saari’s?” the man at the inside counter repeated. “That’s easy. Just go down this here street till you come to the bridge on your left. Cross over the river and go a couple miles. Keep looking for a black barn to the left. Old Aino’s a joker. Some guy told him no farmer ever painted a barn black and so Aino goes and paints his black as the inside of a cow. Well, you find that barn and there you are.”

      As he drove on, Mikel realized he’d actually never seen a black barn before, not anywhere he’d been. Saari’s would be a first. And, he hoped, the end of his search.

      At the same time as the blue pickup ahead of him signaled for a left turn, he spotted the landmark barn and turned into the private driveway behind the pickup, stopping a short distance behind the truck. He watched the driver, an older man, open the door and climb down, coming alert when he saw the man stagger and clutch at the side of the truck. Drunk? Or in trouble? Not waiting to find out, Mikel leaped from his car and hurried to the pickup.

      “Are you okay, sir?” he asked when he reached the gray-haired man, whose cap had fallen onto the wet ground.

      “Can’t make my legs work right,” the man gasped.

      Mikel slung his arm around the guy’s shoulders, close enough now to smell alcohol if liquor was the cause of the problem. When he didn’t detect that telltale odor, and the man slumped against him, he decided this was an emergency situation. “Think you can make it to my car?” he asked. “I’ll get you to a hospital.”

      As he half carried the man to the nondescript older car he was driving, a dark-haired woman rushed out of the nearby house, crying, “Aino, what’s wrong?”

      “Help me get him into my car,” Mikel ordered when