Cara Colter - Chasing Dreams

He pushed through the small gathering and stood before her.

“Are you all right?”

Jessica must have bumped her head harder than she thought. She felt suddenly paralyzed, as if she couldn’t breathe. “I’m f-f-fine,” she managed to stammer.

“Jessica King?”

“How did you know?”

Lucky guess. Did she detect dryness in his tone? He scowled and, without warning, touched the corner of her lip.

Intellectually, Jessica supposed she had known life could change—completely, irrevocably, permanently—in a split second. She supposed she had always had a peripheral awareness that fate and the most well-planned of lives were sometimes on a collision course. What she had not believed was that something as innocuous as a chance meeting, a rough finger laid on the delicate skin of her upper lip, could bring on this sensation.

That everything about her reasonable and well-ordered life had just changed.

Dear Reader,

After looking at winter’s bleak landscape and feeling her icy cold breezes, I found nothing to be more rewarding than savoring the warm ocean breezes from a poolside lounge chair as I read a soon-to-be favorite book or two! Of course, as I choose my books for this long-anticipated outing, this month’s Silhouette Romance offerings will be on the top of my pile.

Cara Colter begins the month with Chasing Dreams (#1818), part of her A FATHER’S WISH trilogy. In this poignant title, a beautiful academic moves outside her comfort zone and feels alive for the first time in the arms of a brawny man who would seem her polar opposite. When an unexpected night of passion results in a pregnancy, the hero and heroine learn that duty can bring its own sweet rewards, in Wishing and Hoping (#1819), the debut book in beloved series author Susan Meier’s THE CUPID CAMPAIGN miniseries. Elizabeth Harbison sets out to discover whether bustling New York City will prove the setting for a modern-day fairy tale when an ordinary woman comes face-to-face with one of the world’s most eligible royals, in If the Slipper Fits (#1820). Finally, Lissa Manley rounds out the month with The Parent Trap (#1821), in which two matchmaking girls set out to invent a family.

Be sure to return next month when Cara Colter concludes her heartwarming trilogy.

Happy reading!

Ann Leslie Tuttle

Associate Senior Editor

www.millsandboon.co.uk

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Silhouette Romance

Dare To Dream #491

Baby in Blue #1161

Husband in Red #1243

The Cowboy, the Baby and the Bride-To-Be #1319

Truly Daddy #1363

A Bride Worth Waiting For #1388

Weddings Do Come True #1406

A Babe in the Woods #1424

A Royal Marriage #1440

First Time, Forever #1464

*Husband by Inheritance #1532

*The Heiress Takes a Husband #1538

*Wed by a Will #1544

What Child Is This? #1585

Her Royal Husband #1600

9 Out of 10 Women Can’t Be Wrong #1615

Guess Who’s Coming for Christmas? #1632

What a Woman Should Know #1685

Major Daddy #1710

Her Second-Chance Man #1726

Nighttime Sweethearts #1754

†That Old Feeling #1814

†Chasing Dreams #1818

Silhouette Books

The Coltons

A Hasty Wedding

shares ten acres in the wild Kootenay region of British Columbia with the man of her dreams, three children, two horses, a cat with no tail and a golden retriever who answers best to “bad dog.” She loves reading, writing and the woods in winter (no bears). She says life’s delights include an automatic garage door opener and the skylight over the bed that allows her to see the stars at night. She also says, “I have not lived a neat and tidy life, and used to envy those who did. Now I see my struggles as having given me a deep appreciation of life, and of love, that I hope I succeed in passing on through the stories that I tell.”

Prologue

Chapter One

Chapter Two

Chapter Three

Chapter Four

Chapter Five

Chapter Six

Chapter Seven

Chapter Eight

Chapter Nine

Chapter Ten

Epilogue

“That insolent young pup!” Jake King slammed down the phone. He was eighty-three years old, he was one of the wealthiest and most respected businessmen in America and he was dying. He had a right to have his wishes granted!

They were simple wishes: happy marriages for the three daughters born to him so late in his life and a perfectly refurbished 1923 Rolls-Royce Silver Ghost Oxford Open Tourer for himself.

Things had been going rather well in the wish department. Just last weekend he had attended the wedding of his oldest daughter, twenty-six-year-old Brandgwen, to one of his most cherished business associates. The happiness and love shining in Brandy’s eyes—just the way he had planned it—had made Jake overly confident. It had made him think he could have whatever he wanted, that God granted wishes to dying men.

Or maybe acquiring the Rolls had seemed like less of a challenge than trying to save his middle daughter, Jessica, from herself.

Jake sighed. Jessica announcing her engagement to Professor Mitch Michaels at Brandy’s wedding had put a black spot on the whole event.

A black spot on his life.

Possibly he was trying to erase it with the Rolls.

He glared at the picture of the car on the Internet, and particularly at the disgustingly handsome young man who leaned beside it, grinning confidently, dark hair falling over eyes so like his grandfather’s had been. Dark, snapping with defiance.

“I should have known he wouldn’t sell me the car,” Jake muttered. There was bad blood between the Blakes and the Kings. It hadn’t always been that way. No, far from it. That insolent young pup’s grandfather, Simon, had been Jake’s business partner, way before the phenomenal success story of Auto Kingdom. And it might have remained that way, if Simon’s son, Billy, hadn’t been such an arrogant ne’er-do-well.

Billy would have sold him the car, Jake thought cynically. He would have sold it in a flash, just like he had sold everything else. But the grandson was a different story. Inner toughness shone from his eyes.

Garner Blake had made something of himself, despite the horrendous debts he’d inherited as a result of his father’s runaway grandiosity. It seemed Garner shared his grandfather’s passion for cars. He brought old beauties back to life. He did it better than anyone else in the business.

Jake knew these things. A man was smart to keep track of his enemies.

The door to his office burst open, and his assistant, Sarah, came in with his new son-in-law’s baby, Becky, riding on her hip. Becky was staying at Kingsway while her dad and new mommy honeymooned.

“Do you want to go see Grandpa Jake?” she asked the child.

The baby’s weight settled against him, and he allowed himself to appreciate the miracle and the marvel of her. When he had found out he was dying he had wished for a grandchild. For happiness for his daughters. He had wished he could show them, somehow, that only one thing really mattered.