Catherine Lanigan - Family Of His Own

He’s ready to settle down...with or without her

Scott Abbott has always loved Isabelle Hawks. And he’s always been her rock. Patient, dependable, strong. But lately, she’s been acting like that rock is weighing her down. With her art career taking off, Isabelle has been spending less and less time in Indian Lake...and with him. Scott isn’t even sure what they are to each other anymore. They might be friends with a history, but it sure doesn’t feel like a future. Maybe it’s time for Scott to set her free and focus on his own dreams. A real home. A family. All the things he had hoped to share with her...

“Isabelle, I came here tonight to ask you something.”

A sense of foreboding settled over her. “Scott, I don’t think...”

“Hear me out. We’ve always been best friends. We know each other inside and out. I want us to move forward with our lives.” He squeezed her hand earnestly.

“We are moving forward,” she said reflexively.

“I mean together. I realize that writing articles for the local paper is not going to make a difference in this world. But I can change the future for these kids. I can take something horrible and make it happy. It’s my hope that you’d do that with me.”

All Isabelle could do was stare at him. “You just got through saying we were best friends, but you don’t know me at all. I just won the chance of my lifetime. A shot at a gallery show! The one thing I’ve worked for since high school.” Her voice cracked. Her palms were sweating and her heart rammed against her chest. “You are not asking me this right now.”

“Oh, but I am,” he replied quietly.

Dear Reader,

If you have read all of the Shores of Indian Lakes books, you will be familiar with Scott Abbott and Isabelle Hawks. Scott has had a crush on Isabelle for years. However, Isabelle has been hyper-focused on her art.

From the get-go I wanted Isabelle to be that kind of painter who is truly gifted, but the world hasn’t discovered her yet. Her intuition and inner guidance have told her that if she simply keeps trying, working and believing, she will make it someday.

The problem is that Scott wants to begin his life with Isabelle. When she turns him down, choosing her art over him, Scott takes matters into his own hands and becomes a foster parent to two small children.

Isabelle is the oldest of six children and because her mother became a widow at a young age, Isabelle had to mature fast and be a parent to her siblings. Isabelle’s thwarted childhood is one reason she pursues her portraits of faeries and water sprites—and motivation for embracing her freedom now.

What Isabelle hasn’t realized is that she’s been avoiding living her life all for the sake of art. Through Scott’s growing relationship with his foster kids, Isabelle comes to see her choices with a new palette of colors. Finally, she must learn that without love in her life, her art will never flourish. Neither will her heart.

I hope you like Family of His Own. Please contact me on Facebook, Twitter ( @cathlanigan), www.catherinelanigan.comand heartwarmingauthors.blogspot.com. Look for chapters on Wattpad.

Happy reading!

Catherine Lanigan

Family of His Own

Catherine Lanigan

www.millsandboon.co.uk

CATHERINE LANIGANknew she was born to storytelling at a very young age when she told stories to her younger brothers and sister to entertain them. After years of encouragement from family and high school teachers, Catherine was shocked and brokenhearted when her freshman college creative-writing professor told her that she had “no writing talent whatsoever” and that she would never earn a dime as a writer. He promised her that he would be her crutches and get her through his demanding class with a B grade so as not to destroy her high grade point average too much, if Catherine would promise never to write again. Catherine assumed he was the voice of authority and gave in to the bargain.

For fourteen years she did not write until she was encouraged by a television journalist to give her dream a shot. She wrote a six-hundred-page historical romantic spy thriller set against World War I. The journalist sent the manuscript to his agent, who then garnered bids from two publishers. That was nearly forty published novels, nonfiction books and anthologies ago.

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This book is dedicated to my late husband,

Jed Nolan, my hero and best friend. I will love you to the moon and back, and throughout all the galaxies and universes.

Acknowledgments

This story is all about family. The ones we were born into and the ones we come to create. My years with the entire staff at Harlequin Heartwarming, as well as my Heartwarming author sisters, have woven a strong bond of family between us.

For an author, working with an editor should be the best expression of our thoughts and art.

I have again had the extraordinary pleasure to meld ideas with my editor, Claire Caldwell, and together we have extracted the deepest desires and dreams from both Scott and Isabelle about what they truly want from life.

I greatly appreciate Victoria Curran’s guidance in keeping our stories filled with enough heart to warm our readers. Our characters, stories and uplifting style are needed now in the world like never before. Kudos to you, Victoria, and all the team for all your hard work, genius and the long hours it takes to make Harlequin Heartwarming an exceptional line of romance novels.

And to Lissy Peace, my agent, always: I love you and honor our decades of working together.

Contents

Cover

Back Cover Text

Introduction

Dear Reader

Title Page

About the Author

Dedication

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

CHAPTER EIGHTEEN

CHAPTER NINETEEN

CHAPTER TWENTY

CHAPTER TWENTY-ONE

CHAPTER TWENTY-TWO

CHAPTER TWENTY-THREE

CHAPTER TWENTY-FOUR

CHAPTER TWENTY-FIVE

CHAPTER TWENTY-SIX

CHAPTER TWENTY-SEVEN

CHAPTER TWENTY-EIGHT

CHAPTER TWENTY-NINE

CHAPTER THIRTY

Extract

Copyright

CHAPTER ONE

THE SOUND OF gunshots cracked through snow-dusted tree branches and split the brittle December air. A flock of honking Canada geese veered away from the blasts, their wings thudding amid the rippling echoes.

Scott Abbott reloaded his GLOCK, aimed and fired at the paper target in the shape of a person a hundred yards from the plexiglass-protected shooting stand. His shots were all over the place. Only one came close to the heart. Still, he was vastly improved over last month when he stood here in the icy rain shooting through pea-soup fog. Night-vision gear wouldn’t have helped. Scott needed more practice if he wanted to be as good as his friends.