Mary Anne Wilson - Holiday Homecoming

Holly would have stood, but he was right there, and any move she made would have propelled her straight into him. She didn’t want to touch him, not now. “Please, this is ridiculous” was all she told him, sure she sounded as panicked as she felt. “I just need to go. Forget that I said anything. It doesn’t matter, not at all. Not anymore.”

“You bet it does,” he said, the harshness in his words almost making her flinch. “You know, all my life people have accused me of things that they thought I did. From the start. Back at the orphanage. Right on through the rest of my life.” His eyes narrowed as he looked at her. “I hate the idea of you doing that, too. I really hate it.”

She did flinch at that. She heard her own voice, but it sounded distant and odd.

“Then we’re even, aren’t we?”

Dear Reader,

Cain Stone has always been a gambler and a risk taker. But when he goes home to Silver Creek and meets single mother Holly Winston, he realizes from the start that the gamble he takes getting close to her and her tiny daughter has higher odds than anything he’s ever known.

Holly isn’t into taking chances. She’s tried it and paid for it. At this stage in her life, opening her heart to anyone is a risk she won’t take—until Cain Stone walks into her neatly arranged world.

I’ve always been intrigued by the concept of opposites attracting, and when the stakes are high, this is even more compelling. In Holiday Homecoming, the third installment in my RETURN TO SILVER CREEK four-book series, opposites not only attract, they find themselves in a world neither has entered before. It’s all about love and all about trust, the very elements that neither has experienced.

I hope you enjoy the journey of Holly and Cain as they find each other and each takes the biggest gamble of their life.

www.millsandboon.co.uk

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For Joe Geisler

For being part of our family,

For being a terrific father.

Love, Mary Anne

HARLEQUIN AMERICAN ROMANCE

1003—PREDICTING RAIN? *

1005—WINNING SARA’S HEART *

1009—WHEN MEGAN SMILES… *

1062—DISCOVERING DUNCAN †

1078—JUDGING JOSHUA †

Prologue

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

Epilogue

Las Vegas, Nevada

One month earlier

“I’m not going back to Silver Creek,” Cain Stone said. “I don’t have the time—or the inclination to make the time. Besides, it’s not my home.”

The man he was talking to, Jack Prescott, shook his head, then motioned with both hands at Caine’s sterile penthouse. It was done in black and white—black marble floors, white stone fireplace, white leather furniture. The only splash of color came from the sofa pillows, which were various shades of red. “And this is?”

The Dream Catcher Hotel and Casino on the Strip in Las Vegas was a place to be. The place Cain worked. The part of the world that he owned. His place. But his home? No. He’d never had one. “It’s my place,” he said honestly.

Jack, an angular man, with almost shoulder-length dark hair peppered with gray, who was dressed as usual in faded jeans, an open-necked navy shirt and his well-worn leather boots, leaned back in the semicircular couch to face the bank of windows that looked down on the city sprawling twenty stories below. “Cain, come on. You haven’t been back in years, and it’s the holidays.”

“Bah, humbug,” Cain said with a slight smile, wishing that the feeble joke would ease the growing tension in him. A tension that had started when Jack had first asked him to return to Silver Creek. “You know that for people like us there are no holidays. They’re the heavy times in the year. I look forward to Christmas the way Ebenezer did. You get through it and make as much money as you can.”

Jack didn’t respond with any semblance of a smile. Instead, he muttered, “God, you’re cynical.”

“Realistic,” Cain amended with a shrug. “But is it so important to you that I go to Silver Creek now?”

“Like I said, it’s the holidays, and that means friends. Josh is there, and Gordie, who’s at his clinic twenty-four hours a day. We can get drunk, ski down Main Street or take on Killer Run again. Whatever you want.”

Jack, Josh and Gordie were as close to a family as Cain had had as a child. The orphanage hadn’t been anything out of Dickens, but it hadn’t been family. His three friends were. The four of them had done everything together, including getting into trouble and wiping out on Killer Run. “Tempting,” Cain said, a pure lie at that moment. “But no deal.”

“I won’t stop asking,” Jack said.

Cain stood and crossed to the built-in bar by the bank of windows. He ignored the alcohol and glasses and picked up a pack of unopened cards, one of several. He caught a glimpse of himself in the mirrors behind the bar before he turned to Jack. He was tall, about Jack’s height at six foot one or so, with dark hair worn a bit long like Jack’s, and brushed by gray like Jack’s. His eyes, though, were deep blue, in contrast to Jack’s, which were almost black.

Cain was sure he could match Jack dollar for dollar if he had to, and just as Jack didn’t look like the richest man in Silver Creek, Cain didn’t fit the image of a wealthy hotel-casino owner in Las Vegas. Few owners dressed in Levi’s and T-shirts; even fewer went without any jewelry, including a watch. He had a closet full of expensive suits and silk shirts, but he hardly ever wore them. Still, he fit in at the Dream Catcher Hotel and Casino. It was about the only place he’d ever fit in. He didn’t fit in Silver Creek. He never had.

He went back to Jack with the cards, broke the seal on the deck, and as he slipped the cards out of the package, he said, “Let’s settle this once and for all.”

“I’m not going to play poker with you,” Jack told him. “I don’t stand a chance.”

Cain eyed his friend as he sat by him on the couch. “We’ll keep it simple,” he murmured. He took the cards out of the box, tossed the empty box on the onyx coffee table in front of them and shuffled the deck. “We’ll cut for it. I’ll even let you pick high or low to win.”

“What’s at stake?” Jack asked.

“If you win, I’ll head north to Silver Creek for a few days around the holidays.”

Jack took the deck when Cain offered it to him. He shuffled the cards again, then put them facedown on the coffee table. But he didn’t cut them. He cast Cain a sideways glance. “How much time does this cover—your not returning to Silver Creek?”