Anna Adams - Temporary Father

Beth hurried to continue, “Not that I’m comparing. But I’ve always promised myself I wouldn’t stop trusting other men because of him.” She blushed. “I guess I have, though.”

“You don’t know me well enough to trust me,” he said.

“We know each other too well for people who met last week,” Beth said. And she leaned in to kiss his cheek.

He drowned in her scent. Without thinking, he reached for her, turning her face. Her lips were heat and succor and irresistible.

Sighing, she pushed her hands into his hair. She tasted sweeter than hope. His body clamored for more, and he staggered with her in his arms.

When she felt the rail at her back she pushed him away.

“I can’t,” she said. “Eli… He needs me.”

“I need you, too, Beth.”

“But for how long?”

Dear Reader,

Sometimes when I’m driving, I see in another car a family, or maybe a mom and her children, or a dad, looking harried, staring into the rearview mirror instead of keeping his eyes on the road. I think how odd it seems that life in that car is just as vital as my own. We’re all heading somewhere, mixed up in do-or-die business—or plodding through one day to get to the next—but we don’t have a clue about each other.

I was washing dishes—seeing the first scenes in Temporary Father—and I thought about those cars. I wanted to know everything about all the lives in a small town. So welcome to Honesty, Virginia, where the houses are quiet, the town is growing, the people are caring and lives are changing.

A newcomer to Honesty brings heaven and hell to Beth Tully. She has one priority—getting her son, who’s behaving oddly even for a hormonal preteen, back into their fire-damaged home. Aidan Nikolas is recuperating after an unexpected heart attack, which is attributed to business stress. Secretly he blames it on guilt over his wife’s death. When he meets Beth and her son, he’s struck by need for the optimistic, hardworking single mom, but he reads all the worst signs in her son’s implacable sadness and sudden bouts of anger. Aidan cannot walk away from the boy, even as he tries to persuade Beth she has time to love him, too.

I’d love to hear what you think. You can reach me at anna@annaadams.net.

Best wishes,

Anna

www.millsandboon.co.uk

Anna Adams wrote her first romance story in wet sand with a stick. The Atlantic Ocean washed that one away, so these days she uses more modern tools to write the kind of stories she loves best—romance that involves everyone in the family—and often the whole community. Love between two people is like the proverbial stone in a lake. The ripples of their feelings spread and contract, bringing all kinds of conflict and “help” from the people who care most about them.

Anna is in the middle of one of those stories, with her own hero of twenty-seven years. From Iceland to Hawaii, and points in between, they’ve shared their lives with children and family and friends who’ve become family.

Mama and Grandpa,

I miss you too much.

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

AIDAN NIKOLAS TOSSED his bag onto the bed in the cottage’s main bedroom. He stood stock still on the wide-plank floor, breathing in the scent of cinnamon and apple, listening, feeling, believing his heart would beat one more time. And then again and again and again…

He was okay. He rubbed his chest, his left arm. No pain. No shortness of breath. No nausea. Bringing his things in from the car hadn’t killed him.

He laughed, with no real humor and certainly without pride. Staying in his friend, Van Haddon’s, cottage in the middle of Small-town, U.S.A., also known as Honesty, Virginia, might kill him if he didn’t stop dwelling on every flutter of his own pulse.

He shoved his bags across the bed, wrinkling the burgundy comforter. Forget unpacking. He was starving.

After a “minor” myocardial infarction, he’d spent two weeks at home, eating bland pap, living no life, with his parents treating him as if he hadn’t run the family business for eight years without their ham-fisted help. A heart attack. At the tender age of forty-two, even though he’d been in such good shape the trainers at his gym left him alone.

When he couldn’t stand another second of his parents’ tender loving smothering, he’d called Van and asked to borrow his cottage.

The big plan for his first night of freedom? Make some dinner. And listen to the wildlife in the woods of Honesty, population “just under ten thousand.” The “just under” must keep them from having to change the sign after each birth.

In the kitchen, a stainless-steel fridge and stove gleamed among granite counters and crystal-clear windowpanes. His box of farm market vegetables and organic groceries looked out of place.

God, this pretty little house closed in on a man.

Despite the chill of a late April night, he flung up the window over the kitchen sink.

It didn’t help.

Nothing helped except moving. He unpacked the groceries first. Hard to wait for another pile of steamed veggies, just like the ones they’d plied him with at the hospital. Maybe some “nice apple slices,” as the head nurse had suggested, twirling the plate as if it were a kaleidoscope.

Which left him wanting to kill the first cow that crossed his path and eat it raw.

A telephone rang. He followed the sound down the hall to the living room where the phone lay on its cradle beside a pile of magazines. Businessweek. Fortune. Business 2.0.

Aidan touched each cover with reverence. They’d denied him even the Washington Post in the hospital. And who knew who’d taken custody of his Treo?

The phone rang again. The old-fashioned receiver had no caller ID. “Hello?”

“Hey. It’s Van.”

“Thanks for letting me use the cottage.” He worked gratitude into his voice. If he hadn’t felt so much like a rat in a cage, he would have been grateful. With tall ceilings and cool white walls the living room should have been relaxing.

A faint scent of wood smoke emerged from the cold, blackened fireplace, before which fat couches and chairs squatted around a big square table. A TV sat behind the open doors of an antique armoire that had never been meant for the purpose it served now.

“I’ll come down tomorrow and show you the walking paths,” Van said.

Aidan stifled an urge to snap that he could find them even after a minor myocardial infarction. “Thanks, but I’ll wander until I see them.” Then he felt bad. Van, a wunderkind of finance, the one man who always knew which parties to bring to the table, was trying to do him a favor. Aidan dialed back his frustration. “I appreciate your help.”

“No problem.” Van hesitated. “Have you eaten dinner?”

“I stopped in town for supplies. I’m fine.” He wasn’t sure he could stand one more pair of watchful eyes, waiting for his heart to explode. There’d been patients in worse shape in the cardiac ICU, but his name and the fame of Nikolas Enterprises had garnered him more interest.

“Come up to the house any time,” Van said. “Let me know if I can do anything for you—if anything in the cottage needs work.”