Laurie Paige - Second-Time Lucky

Jeff swished a carrot into the pepper dip and tasted it. “Spicy and delicious,” he murmured. He was pretty sure he was playing with fire. Ask him if he cared.

For months—years—he’d been cautious about involvement. Suddenly he wanted closeness…intimacy…touching…

“Don’t,” Caileen said hoarsely.

“Don’t what?”

“Look at me like I’m Red Riding Hood and you’re the wolf.”

Her husky laughter was shaky, and he was pretty sure she knew exactly what he was thinking. He took a long drink of sangria. It didn’t cool his fevered thoughts one degree.

“That’s what I feel,” he admitted, then laughed again. If he could joke about it, he could control the impulse.

Maybe.

When she looked directly into his eyes, he was pretty sure he couldn’t….

Dear Reader,

My family jokes that they can always tell where I’ve been because my next books are located there. Okay, I confess—I went to the Grand Canyon last year, also Monument Valley, Four Corners, Mesa Verde, Chaco Canyon and the high desert region. My husband, two grandsons, Shasta, our dog, and I camped along the way, sleeping in a tent and cooking over a campfire, feeling like real pioneers. When I wrote the Seven Devils series I knew I had to do the stories of the three runaways in Trevor and Lyric’s book. The stories of those orphans, all grown up, the wounded vet who took them in (and whose heart is as big as the western sky) and the awesome landscape of our western deserts came together for me during that trip.

Best,

Laurie Paige

www.millsandboon.co.uk

“One of the nicest things about writing romances is researching locales, careers and ideas. In the interest of authenticity, most writers will try anything…once.” Along with her writing adventures, Laurie has been a NASA engineer, a past president of the Romance Writers of America, a mother and a grandmother. She was twice a Romance Writers of America RITA ®Award finalist for Best Traditional Romance and has won awards from Romantic Times BOOKclub for Best Silhouette Special Edition and Best Silhouette in addition to appearing on the USA TODAY bestseller list. Recently resettled in Northern California, Laurie is looking forward to whatever experiences her next novel will send her on.

This book is for Ryan, Kevin and Shasta, three great

traveling companions. Thanks for the s’mores when

dinner over the campfire turned into a disaster.

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

Jefferson Aquilon manhandled the crate into place beside the cabinet, took a deep breath and wondered, for the hundredth time in the past hour, if he was doing the right thing.

Actually, it was a bit late to be thinking like that. Everything he owned had been moved—lock, stock, barrels and sculptures—from Boise to this small ranch near the county seat of Council, Idaho. All his hopes and plans hinged on making it in this new place.

Worry hit him like a sluice of icy water from a mountain spring. He’d made the move for the orphans in his care. Eighteen-year-old Jeremy, who’d taken on a man’s responsibility while still a boy, was his nephew. Thirteen-year-old Tony, who’d almost forgotten how to laugh, and Krista, who was ten going on thirty, weren’t blood relatives, but they were his second brother’s stepchildren, and Jeff was their only surviving relative.

Both his brothers had died young. Lincoln, father of Jeremy and the oldest of the three Aquilon boys, had had a heart attack at thirty-nine. That had been a shocker.

Six months before that, Washington, the middle son, had rolled his truck on an icy road one night and was dead by the time he was found and brought to the hospital. He’d married Tony’s and Krista’s mom when the kids were still toddlers. Although no adoption records had been found, the two children had taken his last name.

Jeff grimaced. Around the same time, he’d lost his left foot to a land mine while on a tour of duty in Afghanistan.

Life had continued to hand the Aquilons a raw deal. Nearly two years ago, the do-gooders at the Family Services Agency had taken the younger children away from him, saying his two-bedroom trailer wasn’t big enough, and put them in foster care.

The foster father had beaten the children until they’d come to Jeremy for help. The three had run away and hidden in the Lost Valley area until found last fall by the Dalton family, who had a ranch there.

Jeff clenched his hands into fists as anger buzzed through every nerve. He forced himself to relax and unpack the crate of woodworking tools.

Things were working out, he assured himself. While his family name may not have been enough to convince the juvenile court judge that the orphans would be fine in his care, the Dalton name had. A First Family of Idaho and all that, they’d come through for him and the kids and for that he was grateful.

Moreover, one of the Dalton wives was manager of a private charitable foundation. She’d convinced the directors to supply the down payment for the modern ranch-style home with a bedroom for each child—as Family Services insisted they must have—and that, along with the money he’d saved while in the army, had enabled the move.

Due to high demand for land in the city, he’d sold his place in Boise for top dollar and bought sixty acres adjoining the highway that led to one of the prime vacation spots in the area. The Daltons had helped pack and load his household goods onto a rented truck. They had also repaired the old barn on the property, making it into a shop for his salvage-and-recycle operation, which earned him a living, and his sculptures, which didn’t.

So, here he and his little improvised family were, less than a year after the custody hearing, settling into their new home, the kids enrolled in the local school system and the spring season—it was the last day of March—erupting into daffodils and birdsong.

His heart rate went up while an odd emotion skittered around inside him. He paused while unloading a box of old estate ogees he’d recently purchased and analyzed the feeling. Surprise caused a smile to tug at his lips.

Hope. Anticipation. An expectation that everything, at last, would be right with their world.

And what planet would that paradise be on? the doubting part of him inquired.

Something his mother had once said while she’d hidden him and his two brothers from their father, who’d been in a drunken rage at the time, came to mind.

“Shh,” she’d murmured at their whimpers. “Someday you’ll grow up and make your own life, one that will be much better than what your father and I have given you.”

Going outside to retrieve another box, Jeff squinted into the bright afternoon sunlight while recalling his determination to make a decent life for himself. He’d finished high school and joined the army, becoming a Ranger. However, nothing had turned out quite as planned.

A car turned into the lane leading to his place, interrupting the relentless flow of memories. A woman was at the wheel. Putting aside the lingering worries, he left the workshop and started for the house as the woman parked and headed for the front door.