Sharon De Vita - Doctor's Orders

Beau was just a man, for goodness’ sake. She’d dealt with many men in her life. There was certainly no reason to get all flustered every time this one looked at her.

Still, there was something very different about Beau that made her very aware of her own feelings and emotions. It was just a tad unnerving, since she truly thought herself immune from any kind of man.

Her experience with Sofie’s father had left a bitter taste in her mouth and scared her off all men. As far as she was concerned, she couldn’t trust her own judgment when it came to men, so she simply kept her distance. Besides, she was far too busy trying to support herself and her daughter to worry about impressing some man or squeezing time out of her hectic life to accommodate him.

But now, with Beau, Cassie simply couldn’t fall back on her usual routine of indifference. Like it or not, she needed his help and so did her daughter. So she was going to curb her own feelings and put Sofie’s needs ahead of her own. She wasn’t about to jeopardize anything because of one gorgeous man. No matter how charming he was.

Dear Reader,

April is an exciting month for the romance industry because that is when our authors learn whether or not their titles have been nominated for the prestigious RITA® Award sponsored by the Romance Writers of America. As with the Oscars, our authors will find out whether they’ve actually won in a glamorous evening event that caps off the RWA national conference in July. Of course, all the Silhouette Romance titles this month are already winners to me!

Karen Rose Smith heads up this month’s lineup with her tender romance To Protect and Cherish (#1810) in which a cowboy-at-heart bachelor becomes a father overnight. Prince Incognito (#1811) by Linda Goodnight features another equally unforgettable hero—this one a prince masquerading as an ordinary guy. Nearly everyone accepts his disguise except, of course, our perceptive heroine who is now torn between the dictates of her head…and her heart. Longtime Silhouette Romance author Sharon De Vita returns with Doctor’s Orders (#1812), in which a single mother who has been badly burned by love discovers a handsome doctor just might have the perfect prescription for her health and longtime happiness. Finally, in Roxann Delaney’s His Queen of Hearts (#1813), a runaway bride goes from the heat and into the fire when she finds herself holed up in a remote location with her handsome rescuer.

Happy reading!

Sincerely,

Ann Leslie Tuttle

Associate Senior Editor

www.millsandboon.co.uk

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Silhouette Romance

Heavenly Match #475

Lady and the Legend #498

Kane and Mabel #545

Baby Makes Three #573

Sherlock’s Home #593

Italian Knights #610

Sweet Adeline #693

**On Baby Patrol #1276

**Baby with a Badge #1298

**Baby and the Officer #1316

†The Marriage Badge #1443

††Anything for Her Family #1580

††A Family To Be #1586

My Fair Maggy #1735

Daddy in the Making #1743

Doctor’s Orders #1812

Silhouette Special Edition

Child of Midnight #1013

*The Lone Ranger #1078

*The Lady and the Sheriff #1103

*All It Takes Is Family #1126

†The Marriage Basket #1307

†The Marriage Promise #1313

††With Family in Mind #1450

††A Family To Come Home To #1468

Daddy Patrol #1584

Rightfully His #1656

About the Boy #1715

Silhouette Books

The Coltons

I Married a Sheik

a former adjunct professor, is a USA TODAY bestselling, award-winning author of numerous works of fiction and nonfiction. Her first novel won a national writing competition for Best Unpublished Romance Novel of 1985. With almost three million copies of her novels in print, Sharon’s professional credentials have earned her a place in Who’s Who in American Authors, Editors and Poets as well as the International Who’s Who of Authors. In 1987, Sharon was recipient of Romantic Times BOOKclub’s Lifetime Achievement Award for Excellence in Writing. Sharon and her husband, a retired military officer, currently make their home in the Southwest; they have four grown children and look forward—eagerly—to grandchildren. Sharon is hard at work on her next book.

To all who’ve been touched by Hurricane Katrina, good thoughts and prayers are with you, as well as with our heroic men and women in uniform who once again have stepped up to the plate and helped those who can’t help themselves. I’m forever grateful to live in a country where help is always—always just a helping hand away.

Chapter One

Chapter Two

Chapter Three

Chapter Four

Chapter Five

Chapter Six

Chapter Seven

Chapter Eight

Chapter Nine

Chapter Ten

Cooper’s Cove, Wisconsin

Mid-February

Something was wrong.

Cassie Miller’s version of a mother’s “early warning system” squealed in alarm as she glanced out the large plate glass window of her beauty salon, scanning Main Street and the crowd of kids for her six-year-old daughter, Sofie.

School had let out almost half an hour ago, and kids bundled in heavy winter clothes romped along the snow-packed street, dodging fresh snowflakes, ignoring the frigid cold, laughing and joking, grateful to be set free for another day.

But Sofie wasn’t with them, Cassie realized nervously.

The school was less than two blocks away, and her twelve-year-old nephew, Rusty, was supposed to walk Sofie from school to the shop every day after school.

But they were now almost half an hour late.

And it wasn’t like Rusty or Sofie to just not show up or to not call if they were going to be late. Both were incredibly bright, responsible kids and knew the rules and how their mothers’ worried about them.

Something was wrong.

Being a single parent, Cassie had worked hard to curb her instincts to overprotect her precious only child, but Sofie was a smart little girl who’d never given her a moment’s worry.

Until now.

Cassie would have closed the shop and gone looking for Sofie herself, but she still had one more appointment this afternoon. She had just purchased the salon and was trying to garner all the business she could, and closing in the middle of the day without notice wasn’t exactly a sound business practice.

Nervously gnawing on her lip, Cassie forced herself to take a deep breath. Okay, Cass, get a grip here, she scolded herself, closing her eyes for a moment to calm down. Sofie’s fine.

She was worrying needlessly. After all, Cooper’s Cove, Wisconsin, was the real-life version of Mayberry where everyone knew everyone else, and where she herself had grown up.

The move back home to Cooper’s Cove a month ago hadn’t been impulsive, Cassie reminded herself, and Sofie had been as excited about the move as she.