RaeAnne Thayne - Light the Stars

Caroline winced. “I’m sorry. I understand you don’t want me here, but for the children’s sake, at least let me help for a day or two until you come up with another arrangement.”

Wade rubbed the ache in his temple again, the weight of his responsibilities cumbersome and heavy.

What would be the harm in letting her help for a day or two?

Like it or not, she was connected to him now by virtue of their parents’ hasty marriage. And this way he could at least keep an eye on her. If she and her father were cooking up some kind of scam together, then he might be wise to remember his brother’s favorite saying. Keep your friends close and your enemies closer.

What better way to keep her close than by having her right here in his own home?

www.millsandboon.co.uk

finds inspiration in the beautiful northern Utah mountains where she lives with her husband and three children. Her books have won numerous honors, including a RITA® Award nomination and several Romantic Times BOOKclub reviewer’s choice nominations. RaeAnne loves to hear from readers. She can be reached through her Web site at www.raeannethayne.com or at P.O. Box 6682 North Logan, UT 84341.

To Gail Chasan, for helping me reach my own dreams.

Many, many thanks.

Chapter One

Chapter Two

Chapter Three

Chapter Four

Chapter Five

Chapter Six

Chapter Seven

Chapter Eight

Chapter Nine

Chapter Ten

Chapter Eleven

Chapter Twelve

Chapter Thirteen

Chapter Fourteen

Chapter Fifteen

Chapter Sixteen

Chapter Seventeen

On his thirty-sixth birthday, Wade Dalton’s mother ran away.

She left him a German chocolate cake on the kitchen counter, two new paperback mysteries by a couple of his favorite authors and a short but succinct note in her loopy handwriting.

Honey,

Happy birthday. I’m sorry I couldn’t be there to celebrate with you but by the time you read this we’ll be in Reno and I’ll be the new Mrs. Quinn Montgomery. I know you’ll think I should have told you but my huggy bear thought it would be better this way. More romantic. Isn’t that sweet? You’ll love him, I promise! He’s handsome, funny, and makes me feel like I can touch my dreams again. Tell the children I love them and I’ll see them soon.

P.S. Nat’s book report is due today. Don’t let her forget it!

P.P.S. Sorry to leave you in the lurch like this but I figured you, Seth and Nat could handle things without me for a week. Especially you. You can handle anything.

Don’t take this wrong, son, but it doesn’t hurt for you to remember your children are more important than your blasted cattle.

Be back after the honeymoon.

Wade stared at the note for a full five minutes, the only sound in the Cold Creek Ranch kitchen the ticking of the pig-shaped clock Andi had loved above the stove and the refrigerator compressor kicking to life.

What the hell was he supposed to do now?

His mother and this huggy bear creature couldn’t have chosen a worse time to pull their little disappearing act. Marjorie knew it, too, blast her hide. He needed her help! He had six hundred head of cattle to get to market before the snow flew, a horse show and auction in Cheyenne in a few weeks, and a national TV news crew coming in less than a week to film a feature on the future of the American cattle ranch.

He was supposed to be showing off the groundbreaking innovations he’d made to the ranch in the last few years, showing the Cold Creek in the best possible light.

How was he supposed to make sure everything was ready and running smoothly while he changed Cody’s diapers and chased after Tanner and packed Nat’s lunch?

He read the note again, anger beginning to filter through the dismayed shock. Something about what she had written seemed to thrum through his consciousness like a distant, familiar guitar chord. He was trying to figure out what when he heard the back-porch door creak and a moment later his youngest brother stumbled into the kitchen, bleary-eyed and in need of a shave.

“Coffee. I need it hot and black and I just realized I’m out down at my place.”

Wade glared at him, seizing on the most readily available target for his frustration and anger. “You look like hell.”

Seth shrugged. “Got in late. It was ladies’ night down at the Bandito and I couldn’t leave all those sweet girls shooting pool by themselves. Where’s the coffee?”

“There isn’t any coffee. Or breakfast, either. I don’t suppose you happened to see Mom sneaking out at two in the morning when you were dragging yourself and, no doubt, one or two of those sweet girls back to the guesthouse?”

His brother blinked a couple of times to clear the remaining cobwebs from his brain. “What?”

Wade tossed the note at him and Seth scrubbed his bleary eyes before picking it up. A range of emotions flickered across his entirely too charming features—shock and confusion, then an odd pensiveness that raised Wade’s hackles.

“Did you know about this?” he asked.

Seth slumped into a kitchen chair, avoiding his gaze. “Not this, precisely.”

“What precisely did you know about what our dear mother’s been up to?” Wade bit out.

“I knew she was e-mailing some guy she met through that life coach she’s been talking to. I didn’t realize it was serious. At least not run-off-to-Reno serious.”

Suddenly this whole fiasco made a grim kind of sense and Wade realized what about Marjorie’s note had struck that odd, familiar chord. By the time you read this I’ll be the new Mrs. Quinn Montgomery, she had written.

Montgomery was the surname of the crackpot his mother had shelled out a small fortune to in the last six months, all in some crazy effort to better her life.

Caroline Montgomery.

He knew the name well since he’d chewed Marjorie out plenty the last time he’d balanced her checkbook for her and had found the name written on several hefty checks.

This was all this Caroline Montgomery’s fault. It had to be. She must have planted ideas in Marjorie’s head about how she wasn’t happy, about how she needed more out of life. Fun, excitement. Romance. Then she introduced some slick older man—a brother? An uncle?—to bring a little spice into a lonely widow’s world.

What had been so wrong with Marjorie’s life, anyway, that she’d needed to find some stranger to fix it?

Okay, his mother had a few odd quirks. Today was not only his birthday, it was exactly the eighteen-year anniversary of his father’s death and in those years, his mother had pursued one wacky thing after another. She did yoga, she balanced her chakras instead of her checkbook, she sponsored inflammatory little book-club meetings at the Pine Gulch library where she and her cronies read every controversial feminist, male-bashing self-help book they could find.

He had tried to be understanding about it all. Marjorie’s marriage to Hank Dalton hadn’t exactly been a happy one. His father had treated his mother with the same cold condescension he’d wielded like a club against his children. Once his father’s death had freed Marjorie from that oppressive influence, Wade couldn’t blame her for taking things a little too far in the opposite direction.

Besides, when he’d needed her in those terrible, wrenching days after Andrea’s death, Marjorie had come through. Without him even having to ask, she’d packed up her crystals and her yoga mat and had moved back to the ranch to help him with the kids. He would have been lost without her, a single dad with three kids under the age of six, one of them only a week old.