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Montana Miracle
Mary Anne Wilson


Marooned In MontanaWhy had handsome, celebrated Dr. Mackenzie Parish vanished at the height of his career? Jaded writer Katherine Ames sensed a story, and headed into the wilds of Montana to find him. But when a blizzard trapped Katherine, Mac found her. Thinking her just a stranded traveler, Mac brought Katherine home….The doctor had become a gruff, unsmiling cowboy–and a daddy. Snowed-in on Mac's ranch with man and child, Katherine found a completeness she'd never known–and learned the secrets Mac had disappeared to keep. He guarded his privacy as fiercely as his heart. Could he forgive her deception after trusting her with both?









The instant he held her, Mac felt something in him that he’d been trying to keep at bay


He’d known Katherine an hour, tops, and his heart ached from a fear that came from knowing what could have happened to her out in the storm. That fear caught at his middle and made him hold her even tighter. This woman with the incredible green eyes was threatening the foundation of his carefully constructed new life.

Fear. Real fear. It was hash and unwelcome. “What in the hell were you thinking?” he demanded with more roughness than he intended. “I told you to stay in the truck. That I’d be back.”

“Looking for…you,” she said in a voice so unsteady and low that he almost couldn’t make out her words.

He held her away from him and saw her chin trembling. “You could have been seriously hurt.”

“Oh, Mac,” she gasped. “I thought…” She shuddered violently. “I never meant…”

He knew then that once Katherine left, being alone would never feel right again.


Dear Reader,

Things get off to a great start this month with another wonderful installment in Cathy Gillen Thacker’s series THE DEVERAUX LEGACY. In Their Instant Baby, a couple comes together to take care of an adorable infant—and must fight their instant attraction. Be sure to look for a brand-new Deveraux story from Cathy when The Heiress, a Harlequin single title, is released next March.

Judy Christenberry is also up this month with a story readers have been anxiously awaiting. Yes, Russ Randall does finally get his happy ending in Randall Wedding, part of the BRIDES FOR BROTHERS series. We also have Sassy Cinderella from Kara Lennox, the concluding story in her memorable series HOW TO MARRY A HARDISON. And rounding out things is Montana Miracle, a stranded story with a twist from perennial favorite Mary Anne Wilson.

Enjoy all we have to offer and come back next month to help us celebrate twenty years of home, heart and happiness!

Sincerely,

Melissa Jeglinski

Associate Senior Editor

Harlequin American Romance


Montana Miracle

Mary Anne Wilson






www.millsandboon.co.uk (http://www.millsandboon.co.uk)


For my dad, Herb Bignell

My hero

I miss you




ABOUT THE AUTHOR


Mary Anne Wilson is a Canadian transplanted to Southern California, where she lives with her husband, three children and an assortment of animals. She knew she wanted to write romances when she found herself “rewriting” the great stories in literature, such as A Tale of Two Cities, to give them “happy endings.” Over a ten-year career, she’s published more than thirty romances, had her books on bestseller lists, been nominated for Reviewer’s Choice Awards and received a Career Achievement Award in Romantic Suspense. She’s looking forward to her next thirty books.




Books by Mary Anne Wilson


HARLEQUIN AMERICAN ROMANCE

495—HART’S OBSESSION

523—COULD IT BE YOU?

543—HER BODYGUARD

570—THE BRIDE WORE BLUE JEANS

589—HART’S DREAM

609—THE CHRISTMAS HUSBAND

637—NINE MONTHS LATER…

652—MISMATCHED MOMMY?

670—JUST ONE TOUCH

700—MR. WRONG!

714—VALENTINE FOR AN ANGEL

760—RICH, SINGLE & SEXY

778—COWBOY IN A TUX

826—THAT NIGHT WE MADE BABY

891—REGARDING THE TYCOON’S TODDLER…* (#litres_trial_promo)

895—THE C.E.O. & THE SECRET HEIRESS* (#litres_trial_promo)

899—MILLIONAIRE’S CHRISTMAS MIRACLE* (#litres_trial_promo)

909—THE McCALLUM QUINTUPLETS “And Babies Make Seven”

952—MONTANA MIRACLE










Contents


Prologue (#ueb72858e-64e0-5bfc-a3dd-f852bd1aba58)

Chapter One (#ud94b6175-ffc6-583d-855b-2836b9be23d7)

Chapter Two (#udf701e67-d53d-507c-a77b-97c979e1c84f)

Chapter Three (#u8f5e3500-085c-568f-a8a4-015ec27072c9)

Chapter Four (#u063bc21c-a586-5682-bfff-867132e6aadf)

Chapter Five (#litres_trial_promo)

Chapter Six (#litres_trial_promo)

Chapter Seven (#litres_trial_promo)

Chapter Eight (#litres_trial_promo)

Chapter Nine (#litres_trial_promo)

Chapter Ten (#litres_trial_promo)

Chapter Eleven (#litres_trial_promo)

Chapter Twelve (#litres_trial_promo)

Chapter Thirteen (#litres_trial_promo)

Chapter Fourteen (#litres_trial_promo)

Chapter Fifteen (#litres_trial_promo)

Epilogue (#litres_trial_promo)




Prologue


He looked around the party in the glass-and-steel house high in the Hollywood Hills and saw nothing but emptiness. The women and men, partying as if there were no tomorrow, didn’t exist for him at that moment. Nothing existed for him. Not even himself. Dr. Mackenzie Parish. That man was gone. Gone.

Mac set his champagne, untouched, on the marble table by massive glass doors opened to the terrace and the night beyond. A blanket of city lights lay far below, a city as unreal to him as he felt at that moment. He turned from it, pushed his hands into the pockets of his leather bomber jacket and headed for the spiral metal stairs that went down three flights to the garage level.

He was down two flights when he heard someone call out, “Doc? Hey, Doc!” the sound echoing off the stairwell walls, which were splashed with modern art.

He looked up, and on the top landing someone was waving to him. Clarisa? Marissa? He couldn’t remember the name of the woman he’d met when he’d walked into the party less than an hour ago. An actress of some sort, he thought, although he’d never seen her in the movies. A woman who hung out at parties like this, a woman who did whatever it took to be close enough to fame to rub shoulders with it.

She hung over the railing, dangerously close to coming down without using the stairs. “Where you going?” she called, a bit tipsy now, no surprise, the way she’d been drinking champagne. Blond, busty, tattooed on one shoulder, a snake or something, poured into a dress a size too small. Pretty, if one looked at her with unprofessional eyes. But he could see where she’d been “nipped and tucked,” and although it was done well, she wasn’t anywhere near the twenty-something she was pretending to be.

“See you,” he called out, and started down again.

“Hey, I’ll go with you!”

He would have taken her up on the offer three months ago, but now he rejected it out of hand. If he’d still been Mac Parish, doctor to the stars, he would have motioned for her to come on down. She would have been thrilled to be with him. A genius at plastic surgery, a man who worked on the best and brightest, wealthy, famous in his own right. But he ignored her offer now and hurried out of her sight.

He reached the garage level, pushed open the outer door and met the valet, a man probably working as a valet while he waited to be “discovered.” He was young and good-looking, obviously worked out and had a megawatt smile. “Ready to leave, sir?” he asked brightly.

“Yes.” Mac handed him his tag and the guy nodded.

“Be right back, sir,” he said as he set off.

Mac stood alone and took a breath. He must be real. He could feel the chilly October air rush into his lungs, could hear the drone of voices and the music drifting from the multistoried house. But he still didn’t feel real. He took out his wallet for a tip to give the valet and stopped when he saw the only picture he carried in the slender leather holder.

It was a small photo of three people, a softly pretty woman, a sleeping baby in her arms, and a man in his early thirties. The man was Mac’s mirror image. Almost a dead ringer, but the man in the picture had shorter hair, no razor cut, but just as thick and sandy blond. Hazel eyes squinted into bright sunlight, eyes set in a face with rugged features that seemed to be all planes and angles. His skin was tanned but not from sets of tennis in the California sun at private clubs. It was from hard work in the outdoors.

The look on the man’s face was something Mac almost didn’t remember ever feeling, the look of a man who had everything he ever wanted. The delicate blond woman at his side smiled at him as if he was the center of her world. The baby in her arms, swaddled in a blue blanket, linked them forever.

“You have nothing, Mac. You stopped existing a long time ago.”

Mac shoved back the memory of those words as headlights arced up the driveway, blinding him for a moment. Then the low throb of the Porsche’s engine vibrated in the air as the car slid to a stop in front of him. The valet got out and took the bill Mac offered him in exchange for the keys. Mac got in, and he drove down the winding driveway to the street below.

“You can’t go on like this. I won’t let you.”

The words rang in his memory as he headed south toward Hollywood Boulevard. “You’re lost. You’re so lost.”

He reached for his cell phone, hit a number and waited for two rings. A woman answered in a sleepy voice. “Yes?”

“It’s me. I’m coming back. I’ll be there tomorrow.”

“We’ll be waiting,” she said.

Mac flipped the phone shut, tossed it on the empty passenger seat and took the last curve so fast that the tires of the sports car squealed on the pavement. When he reached the boulevard, he never looked back. He concentrated on what was ahead of him, and what he had to do.

“You’re lost, so lost.”

He was going to find Mac Parish. He wasn’t sure he’d like what he found at the end of his search. But if he was going to try to find himself, that meant going back.




Chapter One


Katherine Ames stood in the cramped office of James Lowe, the features editor at the Final Word, a Los Angeles-based magazine that fed into the public’s need to know anything and everything about celebrities and would-be celebrities. She was watching edited video on the largest of five television monitors set on the far wall. “Why am I watching this?” she asked, never looking away from the screen that showed arrivals of the stars and celebrities at a movie premiere.

“Watch, Kate, just watch.” James said. Lights flashed, and a white limo drew up to the curb at the end of the red carpet. A banner scrolled across the bottom of the screen—Dr. Mackenzie Parish—at the same time James spoke again. “There he is.”

The limo stopped and the door was opened. The scroll on the bottom of the screen changed to The Doctor to the Stars as the man himself stepped out onto the carpet and into a sea of lights, microphones and interviewers. Fans were held back by security guards and velvet ropes.

Kate had seen the doctor the way most of the public had, his face plastered all over the gossip pages, filling a lot of space in magazines like theirs, a man with as much “presence” as a lot of his clients, the beautiful and the famous. Now he was standing on the carpet, a tall, lean man, with sandy hair, in a well-tailored tuxedo, smiling, waving, offering his arm to his companion, a tall, leggy blonde with more hair than dress.

“Look at that guy. He had everything,” James murmured.

Kate saw Parish turn and for a fraction of a second, he looked right at the camera. His dark eyes narrowed slightly at the glare from the lights. His face sharply angular with a strong jaw, he was clean-shaven and had just enough lines around his eyes and mouth to make him ruggedly appealing.

He was a striking man, attractive in a definitely male way, with a deep, even tan that set off the color of his longish hair, brushed straight back from his face. The blonde waved and giggled, holding on to his arm as if he were her personal trophy.

“Yeah, he had everything,” Kate said, slightly taken aback when he smiled at the woman with him. A half smile, really, but enough to crinkle the skin at the corners of his eyes, lifting his lips in what was almost a seductive manner. The man was sexy. Damn sexy. He was listening to a bimbo starlet as if she was telling him the secret of life. Right then James paused the picture, freezing that frame, and the smile.

“He sure as hell did,” James said. “Everything.”

“Where’s this going?” Kate asked, turning from the image and feeling oddly uneasy. “This tape’s at least two years old.”

James was still looking at the monitor, and his pale-blue eyes, even paler in his deeply tanned face, narrowed thoughtfully. With his shock of blond hair styled to a T and his fashionably rumpled look, he definitely looked like a thirtysomething man on the way up. Any way he could get there.

James finally turned his gaze to Kate. “The question everyone’s tried to answer is, why did he walk away right when he was at the top? He was the best nip-and-tuck man in the city, privy to the inner circle of this town. He had any woman he wanted. Why did he leave and go to some blip on a map in the middle of nowhere and drop out of sight?”

She shrugged. “Drugs, women, rock and roll? Malpractice, gambling? You name a vice, and I’m sure someone’s thought about pegging him with it. But the fact is, no one’s been able to peg anything on him, no matter how hard they try.” She looked at James. “Are you saying you’ve got something on him?”

“There, finally a question. I was wondering if your famous curiosity was fading. The one thing that’s always fascinated me about you is the way you keep at something until you have all the answers. That’s why you’re damn good at this business.”

“You didn’t answer my question.”

He exhaled. “Actually, it’s the same thing that makes it impossible to be around you for very long.”

Right then she remembered why she’d stopped seeing James six months ago. He’d been just as impossible to be around for any length of time as she’d been for him. Any relationship between the two of them ended up being almost all business and no fun. “Same back at you,” she murmured. “Now, answer my question. Do you have some new facts on this?”

“Facts? No, but I’ve got an idea.” He studied her for a long moment, then said, “From where I’m sitting, I’m looking at someone with a brain who knows how to go for the jugular, a woman who is definitely the type the good doctor favors. A tall, leggy blonde.”

“James, what the—”

“You heard me. You’re a hell of a reporter and you’ve got that extra something that can make the difference. In this business, you know you need every edge you can get.” Without warning he was out of his chair, coming around to take her by her arm.

He ignored the way she tried to get free of his hold and took her over to a mirrors. He got behind her and made her face the reflection.

“There. Look. You’re what’s going to make this happen.” His hands rested on her shoulders, his fingers tightening slightly. “Everyone’s tried everything and gotten nowhere. A cement wall. And I got to thinking, the man has to have a weakness, something that will get to him, and from everything I’ve seen, that weakness is beautiful blondes.”

“I knew I broke up with you for some reason,” she muttered.

“You also know I’m right,” he said from right behind her. “Take a good look.”

She stared at herself, at Katherine Ames, twenty-seven years old, tall, blond and leggy. That much was right. But at five feet ten inches, she was gangly. Her blond hair was very blonde, almost silvery, but straight and long and worn the way she had it now, in a single braid that ended halfway down her back. She wore little to no makeup, had freckles across her nose and what she thought was a very sharp chin.

She tended to wear what she had on then, simple slacks and a plain shirt, navy and white today. There were no tight miniskirts or plunging necklines, no bronzed skin, no big hair, and she had never been called voluptuous. She wasn’t flat, but one of her dates had called her figure “boyish”—not the greatest compliment. No, she wasn’t Parish’s type, no matter what James thought.

“I’m not looking at some starlet bimbo,” she said, meeting his gaze with a frown. “No makeup, no false lashes, no implants.” She’d never thought of herself as beautiful. Rather, growing up as the only child of two selfish, self-centered people, had helped foster her strengths. She’d developed a fertile imagination to keep her occupied when she’d been alone, a desperate need to write so she could connect to something when she was by herself, and an insatiable curiosity about the outside world. Those were her credentials as a writer, what made her good at what she did, not any physical attributes. “I’m too thin, too tall and too pale, and I’ve got freckles.”

James frowned at her over her shoulder. “Boy, your self-image is miserable,” he said. “If you’d stop scowling like that and put on a bit of makeup, maybe let your hair loose, with those green eyes you’d stop traffic on Sunset Boulevard.”

She twisted around to face him and he drew back. “If you want me to go after this story, give it to me.” That familiar tingle of excitement was starting to grow in her at the challenge of getting to a subject and getting him or her to talk when no one else could. “The thrill of the hunt,” James had called it. “If it’s possible, I’ll get it. But let me figure out what tack to use.”

“Hey, sure, absolutely.” His pale eyes flicked suggestively over her, then he met her gaze again. “You’re a hell of a writer. I’ve always said that, and that’s why you’re here. So it’s yours. Go for it.”

Even his compliments sounded compromising to her, but she wasn’t going to take the bait that easily. “Okay, give me details.”

He went back to his desk, reached for the folder and held it out to her. “Here’s everything we have.”

She crossed to take it from him, a thick manila folder with “Dr. MacKenzie Parish” in bold type on the right edge, then a list of names and dates on the cover, others who had checked it out of Research and the dates it had been in use. Lots of interest in the man. She opened the cover and shuffled through several glossies, magazine tear sheets and newspaper clippings.

Two of their own articles were mixed in with an impressive group of stories on the man. The headlines ran the gamut from Sexy Doc Nips & Tucks His Way To Fame, Partying Is A Science For This Doctor, to Merry-Go-Round Stops For Famous Surgeon and The Doctor Has Left The Building.

And in every picture that wasn’t a head-and-shoulders shot, he was with a woman. A star, a wanna-be star, a nobody. But always a beautiful woman. He definitely liked tall blondes. “He partied hard,” she murmured, not bothering to hide her distaste for his lifestyle. She sank into the chair facing the desk, closing the folder and resting it in her lap. “So where is this place he ran off to?”

“Montana, a ranch outside the tiny town of Bliss, and from all accounts, he seldom leaves it.”

“No favorite haunts, no daily schedule in here?” she asked, tapping the folder.

“Sorry, if it were that easy, someone would have done the story by now.”

“Okay, there has to be a way to make him stick his head out of the bunker. Then the trick is to get him to talk.”

He sat forward. “Getting him to talk is the easy part for you. You could get a monk to break a vow of silence. Look what you did with the Blanchard story.” He smiled at her. “She wouldn’t talk to anyone, and you got her to do an exclusive for us.”

“That’s different. I went to the same deli she did and saw her there all the time, and she recognized me.”

“See what I mean? You use what you have to get what you want. Only you could turn a trip to the deli into a great interview with a woman who had just been acquitted of murdering her husband. You had an ‘in’ with her, and like it or not, you’ve got an ‘in’ with Parish.”

She hated it when he was right. But he was. If the man’s weakness was blondes, she’d have to factor that into the equation, whatever she did. “Bliss?” she asked.

“Bliss as in a podunk town out in the middle of nowhere. Bliss for the gophers and cows, I guess.”

“Maybe for the doctor, too,” she said.

“That’s what you’ll find out, won’t you?” he asked, stretching his arms over his head.

“I hope so.”

“Also, the bonus for an exclusive kicks in, and that can’t hurt, either.”

She could use the money, but more than that, she loved this part of the job. The hunt, the discovery. She pressed her hand on the closed folder. “What’s the deadline?”

“I can give you a week, maybe a bit longer if it looks really good after you get there, but that’s about all the budget will bear. Also, it’ll give us time to make the semiannual special issue, too, if you come in around then.” He took a thick envelope out of a side drawer. “Here’s your packet.”

She took it, and said, “Okay, I’ll give it a shot.”

“Just be prepared. From what’s in the research, Bliss is a tight little community where the townspeople don’t talk and won’t even give directions to Parish’s place.” He tapped the envelope. “That’s what county assessors are for. There’s a map in there of his place.” He studied her. “So, any ideas how to get to him?”

She didn’t think, despite James’s optimism about her looks, that putting on a skimpy silver dress and walking the streets would work. “Something will come to me. By the way, is there anyone living with him?” The man never seemed to be alone in L.A., so there was no reason to think he suddenly became a monk in Montana.

“No ranch hands this time of year, but there’s a housekeeper, or a friend of some sort who keeps the house, and a little boy. Word is it’s his dead brother’s child, but there isn’t a birth certificate on him in that county. Maybe the kid’s his?” He glanced at the envelope. “You’ve got an air ticket for tomorrow out of LAX in there, car rental and your per diem. Sign off for the folder and read it on the plane.” He scrounged around and passed her a pen.

As she signed the folder front and dated it, she asked, “What about a place to stay?”

“There’re no hotels or motels listed in Bliss, but there’s a bed-and-breakfast called Joanine’s Inn. You’re expected tomorrow evening by seven, under your own name. I wasn’t sure about getting you a place to stay because of the holiday.”

“Holiday?”

“Thanksgiving, Kate, remember?”

“I remember,” she muttered.

“You come from a strange family, Kate. I’ve never heard of a family who ignores holidays the way yours do.”

“They’re a waste of time,” she said, echoing her mother’s words from years ago when she’d asked why they didn’t do anything for Christmas. She’d stopped caring about holidays around the same time she stopped asking about them. “We never noticed them very much.”

“By the way, how are Frank and Irene?”

“I haven’t heard from them since…” She had to think about that one. Contact with her parents was rare. They left, and when they thought about it, they called. Kate was used to it. She’d been on her own since she was a teenager. “I guess it was in July sometime. They were in Borneo working on some irrigation project.”

He sat back in the chair. “Fascinating people,” he said. “Lousy parents.”

She didn’t argue with that. “They are what they are, and it’s not important,” she said, cutting off that discussion as she stood holding the folder and envelope.

“Kate?” he said when she would have left.

She turned to look at him. “Something else?”

“I’m not expecting miracles on this, but anything you can find I’ll use.”

She nodded and as she crossed to the door, she glanced at the still-frozen image on the monitor, the man and that smile. A real challenge. She tossed over her shoulder, “Keep that spot in the special open.” She looked back at James before she went out the door. “Maybe the cover.”

SNOW WAS BEAUTIFUL in pictures and on greeting cards, but that was the only experience Kate had ever had with the white stuff. She had no idea that in real life it could be blinding, even in the early evening, or that it could be driven by wind so hard that it shook a car and made it tremble, even though the car was a sturdy sedan she’d rented at the airport two hours before.

She had no concept of cold bone-chilling it penetrated the car windows while the heater fought fiercely to defeat it. Between cursing the weather and cursing herself for driving out here without checking the weather first, she maneuvered the car along the winding, hilly road that climbed into the Montana wilderness. The last sign for Bliss had said twenty miles, and the longer she drove, the more she thought a man like Dr. Parish couldn’t possibly be anywhere near this godforsaken place.

The man was used to fast cars, luxury, pampering, leggy blondes. None of which would be out this way. At least not a leggy blonde with any sense at all. The idea made her laugh. She was beginning to feel like a dumb-blonde joke. She squinted at the road ahead. She was the punch line. All for a story. Then again, she would do just about anything for a good story. Her parents went to some primitive place to build water systems. She went to some primitive place for a story. She was more their daughter than she’d realized.

As she frowned at that thought, the car skidded slightly to the left. Before she could panic, it found traction again on the curve and settled on the road. Another sign for Bliss was caught in the headlights—ten more miles. She glanced at the clock on the dash. Five-thirty, yet it was so dark it might as well have been the middle of the night, and road visibility was almost nil.

The snow she’d driven into fifteen minutes ago had been falling in this area long enough to drift high on both sides of the highway. Now it was building up on the channel of the windshield wipers with each swipe.

She should have stopped at the first sign of snow and found a motel, then waited this out in warmth and safety. Parish wasn’t going anywhere, but she’d been anxious to get to Bliss. That excitement for a new assignment had been building on the plane while she went over the Parish file in detail. Now she was convinced there was a dynamite story hidden in the Montana wilderness. Mac Parish hadn’t just left: he’d gone into hiding.

Kate sensed it wasn’t just a case of Mac’s going back to his birthplace or being a glorified baby-sitter for the kid. He had no adult family left. Both parents were long gone and his only brother had died in an accident months ago. None of that added up to motivation for what he’d given up.

A house in Malibu on the cliffs over the ocean had been sold. His collection of sports cars was gone. His spot in the high-end cosmetic-surgery practice had been filled by another doctor within a month of his leaving. He wasn’t coming back. He’d wiped out everything that would have brought him back.

The car skidded again on the icy road and seemed almost to float, as if the back of the car was about to trade places with the front. She hit the brakes at the same time she remembered reading that she shouldn’t hit the brakes, but just steer into the slide. By the time she figured that out, it was too late.

The car spun the snowy road in a full circle, a slow-motion ballet of weirdness. Slowly, ever so slowly, it miraculously stopped dead in the center of the road and facing the right direction. Kate exhaled a shaky sigh of relief, until she realized that anyone who came around the corner was going to hit her. She was a sitting duck if she stayed there, but she was afraid to drive any farther.

She sat forward, swiping at the rapidly fogging windows. Beyond the laboring windshield wipers all she could see was the reflecting of the headlights in the snow.

She stretched to her right as far as the seat belt allowed to brush at the foggy side window. She was almost certain she could see a dark shadow out there, maybe ten feet away. A bank of snow? It had to be the side of the road. Carefully she inched the car toward it, until she was pretty sure she was off the main part of the road, then stopped.

She put on her flashers and sank back in the seat with relief. The heater was working while the car idled, and her clothes were keeping her snug enough. The corduroy jacket, shirt and jeans were fine, and her boots kept her feet warm. She could wait a bit, see if the snow let up and then go on to Bliss. Just wait. That was all she had to do.

She turned on the radio, hoping to get a weather report, but there was little to no signal. Every station was filled with static, and when she gave up, it hit her that the snow might not be stopping any time soon. What if it got worse? What if she was stuck here indefinitely? What if she was stranded in the high country of Montana in a blizzard? Her gas wouldn’t last forever. One glance at the gauge and she knew that was true. Just under a quarter of a tank.

Her cell phone. She could call for help. She released her seat belt and reached for her purse sitting on top of the reading material about Dr. Parish. She found her phone and flipped it open. Her heart sank when she realized there was no signal.

“Great, just great,” she muttered, then hugged herself and stared out the windshield at the blinding storm. What was it the car-rental agent had said when Kate told her she was heading up here? Snow flurries, that was it. Even Kate knew that this beyond flurries.

She sat back at the same time a light came out of nowhere behind her. The glare of high headlights almost blinded her in the rearview mirror as she tried to make out who or what had arrived. The heavy throb of a big engine vibrated in the air, and she shifted, twisting, trying to see something. Was it a snowplow? Maybe a tow truck? Did they cruise around here in bad weather, knowing that someone would get stuck sooner or later? That made sense to her.

But what also made sense was people prowling these roads, looking for stranded motorists. She’d read enough stories about people who thought they were getting help and ended up robbed, beaten or dead, or all of the above. And she was alone. Completely alone. Unable to run. Then she saw someone out there, a large shadow cutting through the glare of the lights. She turned around, and just as she hit the button to lock all the doors, someone knocked on her window.

The shadow. A huge dark shadow was out there. And any relief was gone. She reached for her purse again, fumbled in it and closed her hand around a small cylinder of pepper spray, thankful that she’d thought to move it from her checked luggage to her purse when she left the airport in the rental car.

She held it tightly as she touched the button for the window with her other hand. As soon as the window started down, icy air rushed into the car’s interior and she stopped it before it went lower than an inch or two. She squinted into the night, still unable to make out the features of the hulk out there.

Then a deep, rough voice demanded, “Are you alone?”




Chapter Two


Kate gripped the pepper spray so tightly it made her fingers ache. “No, of course not,” she said without thinking. “I’m not alone.”

She saw movement and the stranger got a lot closer, blocking some of the cold and wind behind him with his bulky body. A light flashed on, blinding her momentarily until it shifted to the seat behind her. “Is someone else in there with you?”

She used her free hand to shade her eyes. “Could you put that light out?” When the light was gone, and she dropped the pepper spray into her lap and grabbed her phone. She held it up so he could see it. “I meant, I was about to call someone.” That was it. She was calling someone, and for all he knew, it was a man, a man who knew where she was, a man who could be on his way right then. “I’m going to call—” She grabbed the first name that came to her “—James. I’m calling James to let him know I’m on my way and let him know where I am and what I’m doing,” she said as she turned the phone on. “He’ll take care of this.”

“If you say so,” the stranger said, and he was gone.

Kate put the window back up and looked at the phone, a bit unnerved that her hand was less than steady. The throb of the idling truck behind her was still there, but the man wasn’t by her car. She looked at the phone, pressed the search button for roadside service, saw it flash on the screen, then pushed the send button, praying the call would go through someway.

When she pressed the phone to her ear, she was startled by a sharp beeping sound. She pulled it back and looked at the phone’s LED readout. The “no signal” caution flashed in red on the screen. She turned the phone off, uttered a very unladylike expletive and sank back in the seat. “Damn it all,” she muttered, wondering if she’d end up a statistic.

The truck. It was still there, the engine rumbling and the reflection of headlights in her rearview mirror shining in her eyes. He hadn’t left yet, and maybe she could get his attention before he took off. If he’d been intent on robbing or killing her, he would still be at the window, trying to get her to open the door.

She dropped the phone onto the seat and hit the horn, once, twice, then again for one long, extended blare. In moments he was at her window, knocking on the glass. The pepper spray was in her lap, and she had the doors locked. She opened the window a crack and shivered at the sudden blast of frigid air.

“What’s going on?” he asked. “Your James isn’t coming?”

She clutched the pepper spray tightly as she stared at the hulking figure that was beginning to get a bit of definition. A heavy jacket with a high collar and what looked like a cowboy hat pulled low for protection.

“There isn’t any signal,” she admitted reluctantly.

“I would have been surprised if there was out here in this weather,” the man said.

“How far is it to Bliss?”

“That’s where you’re heading?”

“Just how far is it?”

“Too far for you to make it in this thing,” he said.

That feeling of no control when the car head slid on the road was transferring to no control over anything at the moment. “If the storm lets up a bit, I could do it, couldn’t I?”

“Maybe, if you have chains.”

She wouldn’t know what to do with chains even if she had them on the seat beside her. “I don’t know if I have any,” she said.

“Pop your trunk,” he said as he headed to the rear of the car.

She found the lever by her seat and waited while the man checked the trunk. Moments later she heard it slam shut. Then the stranger was back by the window. “No chains.”

She sank back in the seat. “No driving.”

“No driving,” he echoed.

“Were you going into Bliss?”

“Through it.”

“Could you send someone back with chains or something so I can get going?”

“There’s a garage. They might have chains.”

“Perfect. I’ll just wait here.” She reached for the window button, but the man stopped her, gripping the top of the window with one hand.

“Not so fast,” he said, and she stared at his bare hand. A very large hand with strong fingers, short nails and weathered skin. And no rings. “You can’t just sit here while I go off to get help. That could take a long time, and unless you’ve got a full tank of gas, it’s going to be a long, cold wait.”

“Would it take you that long?”

“Who knows on a night like this?”

If he was trying to scare her, he was doing a good job. She had visions of being found when the spring thaw came, clutching the useless phone and frozen solid. “You think it’s that bad tonight?”

“You can see it yourself. This car isn’t going anywhere.” She heard him exhale. “I don’t think you have any option but for me to give you a lift. My truck’s a four-by-four and can get there. I can drop you at the garage and they can bring you back with chains.” He paused. “And you can call your James from there so he’ll know you’re safe and sound.”

Her James? She regretted the spur-of-the-moment lie, but didn’t bother to correct it. What she regretted was that she’d put herself in a situation where she had little to no choice about accepting a ride from a stranger. That wasn’t in her comfort zone at all, but sitting in this car in the storm, wasn’t anywhere near her comfort zone, either. She choose the lesser of two evils.

“Are you coming?” he asked.

She exhaled. “I’m coming,” she said, turning the car off. She dropped the keys in her purse, along with her phone and charger, but kept the pepper spray in her hand. She looked around, saw the files she’d read on the plane and decided to leave them on the passenger seat. She wouldn’t be gone that long. Gripping the suede straps of her purse with the same hand that held the spray, she reached for the door. She’d barely clicked the lock up before the man jerked the door open, letting in a blast of cold that almost took her breath away.

She climbed out and the instant she was standing, she knew that her clothes weren’t much protection from the cold. The driven snow stung her face, and she ducked her head into the collar of her jacket, but nothing helped against the chill that was robbing her of body heat at an alarming rate.

Hugging the purse to her chest, she turned and the stranger was there. He looked to be a couple of inches over six feet, but she barely caught more than a glimpse of a dark cowboy hat, before she walked toward his truck. That feeling of being out of control came back with shattering force as she headed away from her car and the known, and toward the truck of the stranger and the unknown.

Her feet sank deeply into the drifting snow, her leather boots offering no protection and no traction at all. She moved cautiously toward the headlights and was very aware of the man following her. As she stepped around toward the passenger side of the cab, the snow seemed deeper.

Just then her feet shot out from under her. She went flailing wildly, grasping for anything to stop her fall. Her right hand hit hard metal, sending a stinging pain up into her arm, then she was falling backward, only to be stopped with jarring suddenness. It took her a second to realize that she’d hit a hard body, that arms were going around her and circling her just under her breasts, and keeping her on her feet.

She suddenly felt safe as the stranger pulled her back against him. “Whoa there,” he murmured by her ear as if soothing a skittish horse.

Kate felt the heat of his breath on her skin before he released her. The cold was there full force again and she quickly reached for the hood of the truck to steady herself. The throb of the engine vibrated under her hand in the warm, damp metal hood.

“You okay?” the stranger asked from somewhere behind her.

“Sure, fine,” she said, and meant it until she realized that both her hands were pressed palms-down on the warm metal—her empty hands. No purse and no pepper spray. “Oh, shoot, my purse and my…” She twisted around and saw the stranger hunkered down in the snow with his back to her. In the bright lights she saw a dark suede jacket pulled taut over broad shoulders and fur at the collar. A huge man.

Her pepper spray was all she had to protect herself. She’d never taken those karate classes she’d promised to take years ago. All she had for self-defense was that little cylinder of spray, and it had flown off into the snow when she fell. She moved toward the man in the snow, frantically looking around in the brilliance of the headlights, but not seeing anything but snow and more snow.

Suddenly the man was standing and saying, “Found it,” and turning around to face her. She knew he had her purse in his hand, but all she could do was stare at the man caught in the brilliance of the headlights. The harshness of the glare cut deep shadows at his eyes and mouth, the hat adding its own shadows, but for a second she was certain she was looking at a rough, unkempt version of Dr. Mackenzie Parish.

No Gucci loafers or Armani suits, but the lines and angles of the face were there the way she remembered from the photos. That frozen moment in time on the tape in James’s office. The same face, but different. There was roughness there now. Then again, maybe snow caused hallucinations. Maybe she’d been staring at his pictures so much on the flight out here that she was imagining it now.

Was she imagining this huge man was the famous, playboy doctor to the stars? She had to be. Those hands, large hands, blunt fingers. Not the fingers of a surgeon. She blinked into the driving snow, and the man moved. The shadows claimed his features again as he pulled his hat brim lower to hold the driving snow at bay. “Here,” he said, coming closer.

Hallucination. It had to be. She took the purse, the chilly dampness of snow all over the suede, and clutched it to her as she turned away from the man. A moment later she was startled by his touching her upper arm to urge her toward the side of the truck. She moved quickly, getting away from the contact, and wondered if she should just go back to her car.

She didn’t turn back. Instead, she slogged through the deepening snow, feeling the coldness go up the legs of her jeans and into the tops of her boots. Finally she got to the passenger side of the large truck, and the man was there, pressing against her back to reach around her, grab the handle and pull the door open.

He didn’t have to tell her to get in. She scrambled up and into the high cab of a very old, very used pickup truck. The plastic seats were cracked, the interior showing more metal then upholstery, but the luxurious wave of warmth from the heater was inviting. She slipped onto the seat and the door slammed shut behind her.

She watched through the windshield as the man walked through the beams of light. Dr. Parish? What a joke. She held her purse tightly to her chest. Nothing about the man matched the doctor. Not the clothes, not the ruggedness, not this truck. Parish’s last car in L.A. had been a Porsche, and not just any Porsche, but a prototype delivered straight from Germany. This truck had to be twenty years old and worth maybe a thousand dollars.

She turned as the driver’s door opened and the man climbed in behind the wheel, then turned and took off his hat. As he dropped it on the seat between them, whatever she’d passed off as a hallucination took on hard reality. She met shadowed eyes under a slash of brows, a strong chin and high cheekbones set in an angular face. Mackenzie Parish? Twenty pounds lighter, appearing older than his pictures, more rugged and weathered, with flecks of gray in hair that was carelessly brushed back without any attempt to style it?

Could she really be sitting next to the man she thought she’d have little to no chance of finding out here? Was this the famous doctor wearing the rough clothes of a stablehand? She tried to reconcile his appearance with the pictures she’d seen, but then the door slammed shut and the light was off before she could do so.

She turned, closing her eyes, but keeping that image in her mind. Almost, she could almost believe it was him. It was the right place, just the wrong circumstances. And far too much of a coincidence that he’d stumble on her in a storm. She exhaled a shaky breath. Far too unbelievable that the “doctor to the stars,” in a storm, in some godforsaken area of Montana, had found her.

Her mind raced. If it was him, she had to be very careful and figure this out before she said or did anything that could jeopardize her assignment. He couldn’t be a twin. There weren’t any relatives. The brother had died. She stared out at the night, instead of at the man a foot away from her. But she was totally aware of everything he did. The shifting on the hard seat, putting the truck in gear, carefully inching to the left and away from her car, which was slowly being covered by the drifting snow.

The logical thing to do was introduce herself. Then he’d introduce himself. Then she’d know. Simple. She braced herself, then turned and looked at him. “I’m Katherine.”

He twisted to look over his shoulder and away from her, then they were on the road and the old truck gained traction, along with some speed. The man didn’t say a thing. Maybe he hadn’t heard her? She cleared her throat and repeated herself. “I’m Katherine, but my friends call me Kate.”

His only response was an abrupt question. “What are you doing here?” He looked straight ahead as he spoke.

She blinked at his profile, and it never occurred to her to tell him the truth, that she was here looking for a man who looked remarkably like him. She’d thought about what to say, what her cover would be, and she went with the story she’d thought up on the plane. “I was going to go to Shadow Ridge, and I thought—”

“You’re hell and gone from Shadow Ridge,” he said. “You’re more than a little lost.”

She’d been going to say that she was going to Bliss to spend some time alone before heading out to the ski resort. People in a small town wouldn’t doubt that someone from the city would want to get away for a bit, to take a breather. But he’d made that part of the lie unnecessary. He thought she was lost. So she’d be lost. “I asked the man at the car rental at the airport for directions.” That was the truth, but the directions were for Bliss, not for the ski resort east of here.

“You should get your money back,” he muttered.

“I must have taken the wrong turn after I left the airport.”

That did make him cast a quick, shadowy glance her way, and for a minute she saw the man in the pictures. The softness of the dash lights hid the deeper lines on his face, the tightness in his mouth and eyes. Soft shadows etched the almost movie-star-handsome features, and in that moment she was stuck hard by the same innate sexiness she’d noticed in the freeze frame on the video. In a closed truck cab, that look was more disturbing than she’d imagined it would be. She’d found Mackenzie Parish, and judging from what she’d seen so far, there was plenty to write about him.

“You didn’t even make a turn,” he said, the image gone as he looked back to the road.

Her heart was racing. Luck was ninety percent of life, she’d always been told, and she’d just had a stroke of luck. Dumb, stupid luck, but she’d take it any day. “I guess I didn’t,” she said, trying to think of something to keep him talking so she could ask questions. “You live in Bliss?”

“No.”

A single word. Nothing else. Just no. “You aren’t from around here?”

“Born and raised.”

“But you said you weren’t from Bliss.”

“I said I didn’t live in Bliss.”

It shouldn’t be this hard to get simple information out of him. All he had to say was “a ranch outside of town.” Simple, but she had the feeling that nothing was simple with this man. “Just where do you live?”

“Around.”

Damn him. He wasn’t just in hiding, he was shut down completely. And that only made her more curious. “Around where?”

“Bliss,” he muttered, and shifted gears.

She needed to take a new tack. She felt in her purse, found the phone and cord and pulled them out. “Can I plug my phone into your cigarette lighter to charge it?” May as well be sure it wasn’t dead once she did get a signal. Plus it gave her something to do, for a moment.

He waved at her. “Go for it.”

She shifted, pulled the lighter out and plugged in the phone. “Thanks,” she said, sitting back as she laid the phone by his hat on the seat.

They hadn’t been going terribly fast, but now they were almost crawling along the dark, snowy road. She turned from the man and looked ahead. There were lights, faint and almost swallowed up by the snow, but lights to the right and to the left. “Is this Bliss?”

“Main Street,” he said.

She could barely make out the surroundings, except for a few neon lights that managed to penetrate the storm and night. The Alibi Diner & Bar was to the right; Lou’s Seed & Feed was to the left; then an orange ball that seemed suspended high in the night was to the right. Gas. The truck slowed even more, then swung toward the sign and stopped.

“Carl’s garage,” he said as he put his hat on and exited the truck, leaving the engine idling.

Kate braced herself, gripped her purse, then opened her door to jump out of the cab. She felt herself sink into almost knee-deep snow and saw the man ahead of her, a dark silhouette against the weak light coming from high, leaded windows in a sprawling building that was almost lost in the night. She hurried after him, then a door opened and more light spilled out. She made her way toward it and stepped into warmth that was heavy with the scent of oil and grease.

The door closed behind her and she was in a room divided by a counter, with auto supplies at the back, hubcaps lining the walls near the ceiling, tires stacked by the door and a potbelly stove in one corner sending off wonderful waves of heat. A man stood behind the counter in greasy gray overalls. He was a pale man, with freckles, thinning reddish hair and bright blue eyes. When he saw the two of them, he grinned.

“Hey, Kenny, what’s happening?” the man said.

Kenny? She looked at the man she could’ve sworn was Dr. Mackenzie Parish.

“Hey, Carl. The lady’s car’s stuck south of here and needs chains. Compact car, fourteen-inch tires, two-wheel drive.”

Carl looked at Kate. “You were out on a night like this in something like that?”

She stuck with the story Parish had given her. “I thought I was going to Shadow Ridge and ended up here.”

“Well, you’re way off the track for Shadow Ridge.”

“Hell and gone from it,” she murmured.

“I’d say so. Now you hold on, and I’ll check in the storage room for the chains,” he said as he stood.

She turned to the man by her, the man she knew was Mac Parish, despite the fact that Carl had called him Kenny. He was taller than she imagined from the pictures, just one more discrepancy in her preconceived ideas about the man. Then again, he’d always been with tall women.

“So, you’re Kenny,” she said, not speaking until he glanced at her so he couldn’t pretend he hadn’t heard her.

He shrugged. “To some.”

“And to others?”

“Whatever they want to call me,” he said, and deliberately turned from her to get closer to the counter. “Carl, I have to get going. I’ll see you later,” he called out to the man in the back room.

“You do that,” the disembodied voice responded.

Then he turned to her, his eyes, a deep, rich hazel. The color she expected. He touched the brim of his hat. “Good luck,” he murmured, and would have moved right past her, out into the night and storm to be gone forever, if she hadn’t acted instinctively and touched his arm.

The rough material of the heavy coat didn’t hide the sudden tensing in him at the contact, and on some level it pleased her. He wasn’t as closed and indifferent to her as he was acting. Whatever, she wasn’t going to let him just walk out after Fate had dropped him in her lap. “I didn’t thank you,” she said quickly, staying firmly between him and the door.

“No need,” he said, then broke their contact to move around her.

The only thing she could have done to stop him right then was throw herself at the door to block his escape. She didn’t think that would be a good idea with this man. Instead, she had to watch him tug his hat lower, pull up the collar of his jacket, then, flashing a glance at her, walk out the door.

“Great, just great,” she muttered, considering running after him for something…anything.

“Bolted, didn’t he,” Carl asked from behind her.

She closed her eyes for a long moment when the headlights of the truck flashed on. He was leaving. She turned to Carl, the only connection she had to Parish now. “He’s in a hurry.”

Carl shrugged. “I’m surprised he stopped to help you.”

She moved closer to the counter. Carl was obviously friends with Parish. He’d know something. “I’m glad he did.”

“The Kenny I grew up with would have helped anyone just like his dad did. But he changed after he came back.”

“Came back?”

“He left for a while, went to California.” Carl shrugged. “And when Kenny came back to that mess…” He exhaled. “That’d change anybody.”

That mess? She’d struck gold. “What happened?”

Before she could ask anything else, the door swung open and cold air rushed into the shop. “Talk of the devil,” Carl murmured as he looked past her. “That was fast.”

Kate turned as the door slammed shut. Parish was there, snow on his Stetson and shoulders. She felt like jumping up and down for joy, but one look at his face, and she knew he wasn’t happy at all. But she’d do whatever it took to keep him right here.




Chapter Three


Mac stood in the middle of the room, cold and wet, clutching the cell phone and charging cord that Katherine had left in the truck. He’d almost driven off, but it had fallen on the floor when he’d started out. Now he was back where he didn’t want to be. Involved. He worked at not being involved. His life was involved enough to keep him busy without any outside force intruding on it. Something in him felt as if with one slip on his part, this woman could be very involving. He’d make this fast and get out.

It was the first total look he’d had of Katherine, tall and leggy in a blue corduroy jacket, slim-fitting jeans and boots that would probably fall apart in snow, not any sort of protection. He looked up and met her gaze.

That was another thing he’d hadn’t seen in the truck. Her eyes. They were the greenest eyes he’d ever seen, thickly lashed, set in a finely boned oval face. There were freckles on the small, straight nose. Just a few. He hadn’t noticed them before, either. And her hair, an almost silvery blond, wasn’t done in any fancy way, just pulled straight back from her oval face into a single braid that fell down her back.

It had been a long time since he’d noticed a woman. And now wasn’t the time to start. He held out the phone to her, and when she didn’t step forward to take it, he moved closer to put it in her hand. The heat was there, on the fingers that brushed his, and he jerked, almost dropping the phone. Then she had it and stepped back, stirring the air around him.

Over the grease and hint of gasoline in the shop, he caught a whiff of something that had been there in the truck. A fragrance from somewhere in his past, but he had no memory to pin it on.

“Boy, I’m glad you came back,” Carl was saying, and Mac forced his gaze from the woman to the man. “I don’t have chains to fit her car. Not one set,” Carl said.

All Mac wanted to do was get out of there and go home. “I guess you’ll have to order them,” he said, then looked at Katherine. “Have a safe trip.”

She frowned at him. “Have a safe trip? You…you’re the one who told me I can’t drive anywhere without chains, so I guess a trip is out, isn’t it, safe or otherwise.”

For some reason she seemed angry at him, as if he controlled the weather or Carl’s chain supply. He should have driven right past her car in the first place. And he wasn’t going to argue with her now. “That was just a pleasantry, not a command.”

Her frown deepened. “Easy for you to joke about this,” she muttered.

When had this shifted to an argument with a woman he didn’t even know? He was leaving. But before he could turn and walk away, Carl was speaking. “Without chains, she’s stuck, Kenny. She ain’t going farther then right here.”

Now Carl was acting as if he should have answers for this. What was he supposed to do? She had someone named James who could work this out for her, and neither Carl nor Katherine needed his input. “Use Carl’s phone and call James.” The words were too abrupt, too harsh, but he didn’t try to soften them. “Let him figure it out for you.”

That logic didn’t seem to help at all. “What can he do?” She shook her head as she pushed her phone and cord into her purse. “He couldn’t get here.”

“Maybe he can send a rescue party.”

“A rescue party?” Any anger was gone, blotted out by a sudden smile that put light in her green eyes and curved her pale lips upward. “What’s he going to send out?” she asked, her voice slightly husky now. “A St. Bernard with a keg of brandy around his neck? I need chains, not brandy.”

He could have used a drink right then.

“I can get your chains tomorrow or the next day,” Carl said from behind the counter. “Depends on the delivery service. But definitely not tonight.”

She shrugged, and the smile was gone. “Oh, my,” she breathed. “What a mess. I didn’t expect this to happen.” The woman changed her emotions with a speed that left Mac slightly off balance. “I don’t know what to do,” she said, her finely defined eyebrows lifting slightly as she looked at Mac. “I’m at a loss.”

She was looking at him as if he had the answer. He hadn’t had answers for anyone for a very long time. “You’re in a mess,” he murmured.

“You’ll have to stay around here for tonight,” Carl interjected.

Her eyes widened. “Oh, sure, a hotel.”

Mac wished it was that simple. “There’s no hotel here.”

“A motel?” she asked, still sounding hopeful.

“Nope,” Carl chimed in.

“The diner?” she asked Mac. “I could stay there if it’s open all night?”

“Nothing stays open all night around here,” Carl said.

She turned to Carl then, and the air stirred again, bringing that scent with it. Soft and provocative. You, that was what it was called. You. He didn’t inhale too deeply as she spoke. “You don’t have a room with a cot that I could rent for the night?”

“Sorry, miss, I don’t even have a real back room. Just shelves and storage for automotive supplies.”

“But not chains,” she said.

“But not chains,” he agreed with a frown.

She looked back at Mac and drew him into the mess again with another smile that exposed a dimple. “Don’t you have any ideas?” she asked.

Any idea he had at that moment wouldn’t help in this situation at all. Not when it centered on wondering why that James guy didn’t have this woman with him in Shadow Ridge in front of a roaring fire. Heat and pleasure. The man was obviously a fool. “No, no, I don’t have any ideas,” he lied.

“Hey, how about Joanine?” Carl asked.

That drew her attention away from him again, and as he took a deep breath, the perfume tangled with the air that went into his lungs. “Joanine?” she asked.

“She runs a boardinghouse, well, what they call a bed-and-breakfast. I can call and see if she’s got a room.”

“Good idea,” Mac said. “I’ve got to get going. I’m late as it is.”

“You drive carefully, Kenny,” Carl said, then reached for the phone.

Katherine touched him the way she had before, and he realized why his nerves were so raw at the moment. A pretty blonde. A needy woman. A touch. A look. This woman was bringing back a past he’d buried. That was enough of a reason to get the hell out of there.

“What?” he asked, not even bothering to be polite about how he pulled his arm away from her touch.

“I’ve still got a problem,” she said, not reacting to his abrupt severing of the contact.

He didn’t want to hear about any problems from her. He had enough of his own. “What now?”

“How do I get to her place?”

Carl cut in right then. “Good news, people. Joanine’s got space. She’s opened up for someone coming around seven, and she figures that a second guest wouldn’t be too much trouble.”

“Terrific,” Katherine said without looking at Carl. “So how do I get there?” she asked Mac again.

“I’ll leave it to you and Carl to work out the finer points,” he said, glancing at Carl. “Your truck’s a four-by-four, so I think you’re all set.”

“Well, I can’t leave for at least an hour or so. Dave’s not working tonight. Why can’t you drop her off on your way?”

Why not indeed? he thought. Anything he could come up with not to take her with him wasn’t worth saying out loud. He knew he’d hesitated beyond a polite period to consider Carl’s suggestion when he saw color rise in her cheeks, emphasizing the delicate bone structure. “Forget it,” she said in a low voice. “I can’t ask you to take me any farther.” There was no smile now and he missed it. “I…I can just call a cab.”

“Never has been a cab service in Bliss,” Carl said.

Mac looked at her, and he knew when he’d been backed into a corner, neatly and tightly. All he had to do was take her to Joanine’s, drop her off and keep going. Simple. So why didn’t it feel simple? “I think you’re out of options,” he said, but meant he was out of options too.

“Is that an offer of a ride?” she asked, the frown shifting to what might have been a hint of that smile again.

“I guess so,” he murmured.

The smile was back. “Then I accept.”

He nodded, then headed to the door with a wave to Carl. “Take care, Carl,” he said as he reached the door.

“You, too, Kenny,” Carl replied.

The cold cut into the office like a knife as he pulled open the door. “I’ll call Joanine’s when I find the chains,” Carl called after them.

“Okay, thanks,” Katherine said. Mac could feel her presence behind him as he trudged toward the truck. By the time he got to the passenger door and opened it, she was there.

She reached past him to grip the door frame and pull herself up into the cab, her purse in her other hand. Oddly, he noticed her hand then, oval nails with no polish, and slender, ringless fingers. Then she was inside, and he swung the door shut as the wind all but pulled it out of his hand.

He hurried around the hood closing out the storm as he got in behind the wheel, tossed his hat on the seat by him and started the engine. Warmth filtered into the cab from the heater, and the windshield wipers groaned under the effort of keeping the snow from clumping on the window.

“Can I ask you something?” Katherine said as he inched out onto Main Street.

“Depends,” he murmured.

“On what?”

“On what you ask. It’s been my experience that when someone says they want to ask something, it’s usually none of their business in the first place.”

There was a soft laugh that added to the warmth in the cab of the truck. “You’re right…ninety-nine percent of the time.”

“So, is this that one percent?” he asked, chancing a quick glance at her. She was sitting with her back partially to the door so she was almost facing him. It made him feel uncomfortable to be under anyone’s scrutiny, and with her, he felt even more uncomfortable. “Or is it in the ninety-nine percent group?”

“That’s a matter of opinion, I think,” she said softly.

If this had been any other situation, he would have thought she was coming on to him. That softness in her voice, that sense of being the full focus of her attention. But that was ludicrous. He had no trappings of money and power out here. And he liked that. He liked the old truck and the rough clothes. Not exactly a turn-on. This wasn’t a game between them, just a conversation. That was the old Mac trying to sneak back, but this Mac knew better. “Everything is in this life.”

“Exactly. So why don’t I just ask, then you can decide if you want to answer it?”

That seemed safe enough. “Okay.”

“Good. But there’s a question I need to ask before I ask the real question.”

It was a game of some sort. “What are you talking about?”

“First, who am I talking to and driving with and being rescued by? That man, Carl, he called you Kenny. So, is it Kenny? I really need to know before I ask the question.”

It wasn’t discomfort he was feeling, it was more like confusion. “First of all, that’s hardly one question,” he muttered, not sure if his name would mean anything anymore to anyone, especially this woman, but he wasn’t going to offer it up to see. “For what it’s worth, Kenny’s fine.”

She hesitated, then, “So, your name’s Kenny or is that a nickname?”

“Where are the rubber hoses and bright lights?” he asked.

“Oh, come on,” she said, her words tinged with soft humor. “I just asked your name. It’s polite if someone introduces himself, which I did a long time back, for that other person to respond with, ‘And my name is—’”

“Miss Manners?”

“What?”

“That’s what your name really is, isn’t it?”

She laughed again, and the sound only added to his confusion. “Sorry, no, I’m just polite, and my last name is Ames, Katherine Ames. And your name is…”

He found himself smiling a bit, an easing of the tension that had been a huge part of his life for the past year or so. “Okay. You shamed me. My name’s Mackenzie, a name my mother used when I was in trouble as a kid. Kenny is what I got saddled with because my father was named Mackenzie, too. That meant I was young Mac, small Mac. My Dad got big Mac most of the time, but he hated old Mac. It was easier to call me Kenny, then he was just Mac. I’ve also been called jerk. That’s pretty self-explanatory. So the choice is yours.”

“Mackenzie,” she said softly. “Kenny, Mac, Jerk.”

“Those are the choices.”

“What’s your middle name?

She never stopped. “Ashton, and before you ask, that was my mother’s maiden name and her name was Ruth.”

“Hmm,” she said. “I guess you wouldn’t go by your initials, then, would you?”

“What?”

“You know how people get called B.J. or J.R.?”

The easing grew in him as he manuvered on the snow-choked road. “No initials.”

“Is your father still alive?”

“No, and what does that have to do with anything?”

“I was just asking, because if he was still around, calling you Mac would be confusing. You said so yourself.”

“He’s dead, but even if he wasn’t, he wouldn’t be at Joanine’s, so there wouldn’t be any confusion.”

“Good point,” she said. “Okay, Mackenzie Ashton…”

Her voice trailed off and he could feel her gaze on him. No last name. There was no reason for there to be a last name. She’d be out of the truck in ten minutes, and that would be that. “Oh, just call me Mac.”

“Okay, that’s settled,” she murmured.

Why in hell did he feel relieved to have that settled? “Okay, and with you it’s Katherine.”

“Fine by me. Although, Katherine sounds pretty formal and I’ve been called a lot of different things, less formal and maybe you should—”

“Enough,” he said, cutting her off. “It’s Mac and Katherine for the next ten minutes. Then it’s goodbye.”

“Now, can I ask you that question, Mac?”

There had been no women around in the past year or so, besides Natty, and maybe he was out of practice. Or maybe he’d never really talked to any woman just to talk. Katherine was for talk. That was all. “Okay, Katherine, what is it?”

“Were you really going to leave me there at Carl’s?”

Yes, he was way out of practice. “I was leaving, period. If you hadn’t left your phone in the truck, I would be long gone.”

“You would have made your escape?”

“Call it what you will, I’d be someplace else.”

“I’m sorry for inconveniencing you so much.”

Now she was making him feel like a jerk. There was no way she’d know, and no way he’d tell her, that just about anything that kept him away from the ranch since he’d come back to salvage his life felt like an intrusion and an inconvenience. “Forget it. I’m going that way…sort of, so it worked out.”

“And it’s only going to be for the next ten minutes, anyway,” she said, echoing his words from earlier.

He glanced at her and found her staring intently ahead of them now. “Yeah, ten more minutes,” he said.

She sighed softly. “I never expected to get stuck in this place.”

“Next time you’ll bring chains.”

“There won’t be a next time. No snow, no storms, not again.” He sensed her shift, stirring the air and bringing him that scent again. “I’ve got another question.”

“You never stop, do you,” he murmured.

“Sorry, I tend to be the curious sort, too.”

“I’d say you are,” he said, slowing to find the entrance to Joanine’s property. It was around here somewhere, but the snow was drifting so heavily that it was almost obliterating the old landmarks. Add to that the total darkness beyond the headlights, and he wasn’t certain if he’d passed it or even if he was on the right road.

“Sorry,” she said again, but didn’t sound all that sorry. “I just wondering why you’d live around here.”

That brought some of the tension back. “Why not?”

“Oh, I’m not knocking it. I hate it when someone comes to visit or someone’s passing through, and all they do is knock where you live. I didn’t mean that. But, well, just look outside. It’s like another world.”

It was another world from what he was used to. “You get used to it.”

“How long does it take?”

He actually felt that smile surfacing again. “A life-time.”

The smile died when she said, “Carl told me you left for a while. I can understand why.”

Carl talked too much. “Most of the residents leave now and then. It’s called freedom. Some actually come back.”

“So you came back. Why?”

Just as the tension returned, Mac spotted the entrance to Joanine’s. The heavy stone pillars that marked the end of the drive that led up to the old farmhouse had been refashioned by the drifting snow to look like misshapen snowmen. “Now, that’s one of the ninety-nine percent. It’s none of your business.”

“Well, you’re blunt, aren’t you.”

He slowed more and turned right onto Joanine’s property. “Why I’m here is no one’s business except mine. I live here. Period. And you talk too much.”

He’d meant to stop her in her tracks with a rebuke that he was certain would offend her enough to get to Joanine’s and get her out of the truck in silence. But he was wrong again. She was actually agreeing with him. “I do talk too much. I’ve always been curious and, I’m sorry to say, I always will be. It’s sort of a curse, I think. That need to know everything about everything around me. You know, the mysteries of life? And one of those is why anyone who’d escaped to California would come back to a place that gets this cold and this snowy and is this isolated. You don’t even have a hotel, for Pete’s sake.”

Carl had told her far too much. Even that he’d been in California. He was getting her out of the truck just in time. “I won’t dispute Bliss’s lack of amenities. We don’t have time. This is Joanine’s, at least it is in about half a mile up her drive.”

Before she could respond, there was a sound unlike any other sound he’d heard and it seemed to shatter the night. A falling, cracking, thudding, earth-shaking sound that made him hit the brakes and pray they wouldn’t skid into whatever was happening. Snow was everywhere, but not just falling snow. It was exploding upward, too, only to be driven up and off by the fierce wind.

“What was that?” Katherine gasped as she grabbed his right arm with surprising strength. It startled him, almost as much as whatever had happened outside the truck.

She wasn’t just a talker, she was a toucher. The type of person who always seemed to need to make physical contact with people. He’d never been comfortable with that, which was why he shocked himself when he had to stop himself from covering her hand with his and telling her everything was okay. He didn’t touch her, and even if he had, he couldn’t have reassured her, because he didn’t know what in hell had happened.

Instead, he reached for his hat and tugged up his collar. “I don’t know what’s going on. You stay in here, and I’ll go see.” He opened the door, ducking against the bitter cold and called, “I’ll be right back.” Then he got out into the knee-deep drifts by the truck, and lowered his hat to protect his face.

“Stay put,” he said above the roar of the wind, then shut the door. He went through the snow, into the line of the headlight beams, his progress slow in the deepening drifts. He got near the end of the illumination, stepped to one side out of the light into the dark, and as his eyes adjusted, he knew they were in real trouble.

KATE STARED HARD in front of her, the windshield wipers barely keeping the snow off the glass and doing little to obliterate the crusty patches of frost forming in the corners. Mac had been there in the light, then he was gone. The dark and storm had swallowed him up.

A sense of total aloneness such as she hadn’t felt for years assailed her. As a child she’d felt it, but back then she’d read or written or played make-believe to ignore it. But now reading and writing were out, and making believe that she was at home, snuggled in bed, warm and safe, didn’t work. Not when the truck shook from the wind and Mac’s place on the bench seat was empty.

So she concentrated on why she was here while she sat forward, staring out into the night, willing Mac to come back. She’d found him. No, he’d found her, but either way, she was on a roll. She couldn’t have begun to pull off a meeting like this. In a truck, alone with the man. Talking to him. And she knew, if she had enough time, he’d talk.

He hadn’t left her at Carl’s. She’d had to work on that, but he’d caved in. It hadn’t been easy, and she’d hated pulling out some female tricks, but it had worked. He’d resisted talking, resisted giving her any information, but just before they’d been stopped, he’d started answering her. Sort of. Although she’d almost bit her lip when she’d let California slip. She wasn’t supposed to know that, but he hadn’t called her on it. She’d be more careful when he came back.

If he came back. She was uneasy watching the storm outside. She was losing precious time with him, too. The ten minutes he’d mentioned were ticking away. Soon he’d be gone. She’d be at Joanine’s, and she wouldn’t see him again. She knew that without a doubt. Nothing beyond a great catastrophe would keep him from dropping her here and heading away.

She strained to make out anything beyond the storm, but there was no movement that wasn’t from the wind and snow. A vaguely panicky feeling was starting to take over that aloneness. Mac should have been back by now. He should be here with her, telling her what was going on. She took off her seat belt and reached for the steering wheel to tug herself across the bench seat until she was behind the wheel.

She knew that part of her ability to get a story was her unwillingness to sit still and wait for things to happen. It was also one of her worst flaws. Getting stranded in the snow was evidence of that. But it had turned out great. Right now, she wanted to make something happen. She hit the horn, its blare cutting through the night. She hit it again. Then waited. Nothing.

It was then her imagination kicked into full gear. What if Mac was out there and couldn’t get back? What if he’d fallen and was trapped somehow? Something had happened. Something bad. Should she try to drive farther to find him? Or back out and try to get help? Neither made any sense because she couldn’t see anything.

What she could do was get out and look for Mac. She pulled her jacket more tightly around her, flipped up the collar, then opened the door. The cold air made her gasp, and the snow stung her face when she tried to look up. She hunched more deeply into her, grabbed the door frame and stepped down. The snow immediately penetrated her jeans and boots.

Then the wind snatched the door out of her hand, slamming it with a resounding crack. She turned toward the front of the truck, toward the light, trying to shield her eyes with her hand. But the cold made her bare hand ache, so she pushed it into her pocket and squinted into the night.

“Mac?” she called, but her voice was lost in the wind. “Mac?” she yelled again.

Only the howling of the wind answered her. She started forward, but stayed to the side of the light, trying to let her eyes adjust to the darkness beyond the beams. Pushing her chin down into the collar, she concentrated on trying to see Mac’s footprints. But all she saw was snow and more snow as she went.

It was then it hit her that Mac might have made the trek to Joanine’s. He’d said it was less than half a mile ahead. He could be there now, warm and dry, getting ready to come back to get her. She looked up then, shocked to find that she hadn’t been going in a straight line, parallel to the lights. She’d wandered off to the right, putting a good twenty feet between herself and the glow. She turned to go back to the lights, but the snow caught at her feet, tripping her, sending her falling.

But this time there were no strong hands to stop the fall, and she went sideways into cold wetness, which went down her neck, up her sleeves, into her nose and mouth. For a split second she wondered if a person could drown in snow.

She couldn’t find anything to hold on to, to push off from, to get back to her feet. The darkness and cold were overwhelming, and she was gasping, flailing, totally off balance. In the middle of the madness, she knew she should have done what Mac had told her. She should have waited. She wished she had. Then she heard something as she hit the icy ground with her hand. The horn? Yes! She screamed, “Mac! Mac!”




Chapter Four


Mac found the problem—an ancient pine, more than twenty feet tall, weighted by the snow. It had snapped and fallen right across the road to Joanine’s. He went farther, past the tree, checking things out, and finally decided that he and Katherine could walk to Joanine’s. Once he got her there safely, he could go back to where he belonged.

As he began to retrace his steps to the truck, he heard something, and even over the wind, he recognized the blare of the truck’s horn. Then it came again. He knew that Katherine had to be getting antsy. She wasn’t born and bred to this life. This sort of weather did strange things to people, even those who were used to it.

When at last he reached the truck and opened the door, he found the cab empty. She hadn’t just panicked, she’d left the truck. He should have made his orders clearer, made her promise not to move. But she’d left in that flimsy jacket and designer boots, regardless of what he’d said.

“Damn it all,” he muttered as he turned to look around him, into the night and storm. “Katherine!” he shouted into the wind. He cupped his hand at his mouth and tried again. “Katherine!”

He reached back into the cab and hit the horn, holding it down for a couple of seconds before letting up to listen. At first he thought there was nothing, then he heard a voice. He wasn’t sure if he’d just imagined it until he heard it again.

“Mac!”

He took off in the direction of the sound, stumbling through the snow, but going as fast as he could. There was darkness all around, then he thought he saw something. A shadow in the swirling snow, crazy movement, thrashings, then Katherine crying, “Mac!”

He headed for her, his progress slow, then he was there. He grabbed her hand, pulling and tugging, lifting her, then grasped both her hands. And without thinking he pulled her to him, and the next instant, her arms went around him, hugging him tightly, her face buried in his chest.

The instant he held her, he felt something in him that he’d been trying to keep at bay. He’d known her an hour, tops, and his heart ached from a fear that came from knowing what could have happened to her. That fear caught at his middle and made his hold on her tighten for a moment. God, he’d never been good at being a Boy Scout, doing good deeds. Especially with a woman with green eyes who was threatening to make his carefully constructed new life show signs of weakness in its foundations.




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