Laurie Campbell - Wrong Twin, Right Man

Pros & Cons Of Staying Married/Getting Divorced.

What?

Rafe stared at it again, trying to come up with some reason—maybe she was helping a friend with a troubled marriage. But already his eyes were betraying him, racing down the list of pros and cons, and he felt a hollow ache creeping through his bones.

Beth’s life lay before him, and it looked like she hadn’t wanted him there. Because…

Lonely.

The word was a condemnation. He’d failed her worse than he realized, failed her right here in black and white.

No baby. No sharing. No time.

But he had tried, damn it! How could she say there was no sharing? No intimacy? He’d given Beth more of his heart and soul than he’d ever given anyone, and it still—

It still wasn’t enough.

And now it would never be enough.

Dear Reader,

It’s October, the time of year when crisper temperatures and waning daylight turns our attention to more indoor pursuits—such as reading! And we at Silhouette Special Edition are happy to supply you with the material. We begin with Marrying Molly, the next in bestselling author Christine Rimmer’s BRAVO FAMILY TIES series. A small-town mayor who swore she’d break the family tradition of becoming a mother before she becomes a wife finds herself nonetheless in the very same predicament. And the father-to-be? The very man who’s out to get her job….

THE PARKS EMPIRE series continues with Lois Faye Dyer’s The Prince’s Bride, in which a wedding planner called on to plan the wedding of an exotic prince learns that she’s the bride-to-be! Next, in The Devil You Know, Laurie Paige continues her popular SEVEN DEVILS miniseries with the story of a woman determined to turn her marriage of convenience into the real thing. Patricia Kay begins her miniseries THE HATHAWAYS OF MORGAN CREEK, the story of a Texas baking dynasty (that’s right, baking!), with Nanny in Hiding, in which a young mother on the run from her abusive ex seeks shelter in the home of Bryce Hathaway—and finds so much more. In Wrong Twin, Right Man by Laurie Campbell, a man who feels he failed his late wife terribly gets another chance to make it up—to her twin sister. At least he thinks she’s her twin…. And in Wendy Warren’s Making Babies, a newly divorced woman whose ex-husband denied her the baby she always wanted, finds a willing candidate—in the guilt-ridden lawyer who represented the creep in his divorce!

Enjoy all six of these reads, and come back again next month to see what’s up in Silhouette Special Edition.

Take care,

Gail Chasan

Senior Editor

www.millsandboon.co.uk

Thanks to my gifted friends on the Desert Rose

brainstorming loop, who always come through

with new possibilities, and to Lori De Jong and

Mary Rahrig, who help me keep God in the picture.

spends her weekdays writing brochures, videos and commercial scripts for an advertising agency. At five o’clock she turns off her computer, waits thirty seconds, turns it on again and starts writing romance. Her other favorite activities include playing with her husband and son, teaching catechism class, counseling at a Phoenix mental health clinic and working with other writers. “People ask me how I find the time to do all that,” Laurie says, “and I tell them it’s easy. I never clean my house!” She rarely cleans her mailbox, either, which makes it a special treat to hear from readers on her Web site at www.bookLaurie.com.

Chapter One

Chapter Two

Chapter Three

Chapter Four

Chapter Five

Chapter Six

Chapter Seven

Chapter Eight

Chapter Nine

Chapter Ten

Chapter Eleven

Epilogue

If only she could say he loved her, the toothpaste wouldn’t matter.

Neither would the late hours. Neither would the baby—

No, the baby mattered.

“I want a baby,” Beth told her sister. “It all comes back to that.”

“Write it down,” Anne ordered, turning over the dining-car flyer on their breakfast table and sliding the blank page across the white tablecloth. “If you want to straighten things out with Rafe, you need to know exactly what the problem is.”

He doesn’t love me!

But she couldn’t bring herself to say that aloud.

“He doesn’t want a baby,” Beth said instead. Which amounted to the same thing. “I know we agreed to wait until the legal clinic was up and running, but that’s taking a lot longer than I expected.”

“Write it down,” her twin repeated, handing over a pencil, and Beth dutifully jotted “doesn’t want baby” on the paper. “When was the last time you talked about it?”

“Friday. The night before I left to meet you.” The night before her and Anne’s annual “Sisters’ Vacation,” she had accused her husband of caring more about Tucson’s street kids than having kids of his own.

And he hadn’t denied it.

“What happened?” Anne asked, and Beth gritted her teeth against the tip of the pencil.

“Nothing. I was kind of hoping he’d get mad, get upset, say I was wrong.” If he had lost his temper, sworn at her in the same gutter-style Spanish he used with the former gangbangers who occasionally phoned the house, she could have taken comfort in knowing his emotions were fully engaged. “But he just said the clinic’s not all the way there yet, and we have plenty of time.”

“Twenty-six isn’t exactly over the hill,” her sister observed. “And Rafe’s, what, twenty-eight? But okay, there’s problem number one. What else?”

“Isn’t that enough?” Beth protested, just as the waiter arrived with their breakfast order. She wished they could send him away, finish this conversation without the distraction of mushroom omelets and rye toast, but of course the fun of eating in a dining car was why they’d taken the train from Los Angeles back to Tucson.

Back to the husband who didn’t want her.

Or at least not nearly as much as she wanted him.

“I still can’t believe you decided to leave your wedding ring home,” Anne told her, eyeing the claddagh ring she’d loaned Beth when she found her crying over the vacancy a few nights ago. “And didn’t even mention it! Bethie, you need to talk about things more.”

Maybe so, but she couldn’t expect her sister to fix her problems. Taking care of people was Beth’s strong point, while Anne took care of everything else.

Besides, she’d hoped that a week away from Rafe would settle the turmoil inside her.

“I just thought,” she muttered, “I could try pretending we’d never gotten married, and see how it felt.”

“But it feels sad, doesn’t it?”

Which pretty well summed up her problem. Leaving the wedding ring in her jewelry box had been a foolish gesture, and the loan of her sister’s ring hadn’t made her finger feel any less forlorn.

“You have to talk things out,” Anne continued. “Forget this new-look stuff, that’s not what you need. Not that you don’t look wonderful—”

“You’re only saying that because I look like you.”

Her sister grinned, acknowledging the point. With Beth’s brand-new haircut, they looked more alike than they had in years. “Strawberry blondes are better with short curls, that’s all there is to it. But anyway, talking to Rafe would be the fastest way to fix things. I mean, if you want to stay married.”