Cara Colter - The Heiress Takes A Husband

But then again, this was Miracle Harbor, Brittany thought. What if it was him at the door? The one. Her own Prince Charming to escort her to the ball, and through life ever after.

She opened the door, her breath stopping in her throat at the man who stood there. “You.”

Was he going to show up every single time she contemplated wedded bliss? Did that mean something?

He looked down at her, and for a moment she was so mesmerized by his eyes that she was frozen. They were a shade of blue that reminded her of a sleepy ocean on a hot day.

“I’m Mitch Hamilton,” he said, in that voice.

A voice that could make a perfectly proper girl like her think very naughty thoughts of what exactly it meant being married…

Cara Colter 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.’

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Prologue

Chapter One

Chapter Two

Chapter Three

Chapter Four

Chapter Five

Chapter Six

Chapter Seven

Chapter Eight

Chapter Nine

Chapter Ten

February 15

Brittany Patterson, who considered herself to be unshockable, was in shock.

It was everything she could do to keep her hands calmly folded on her lap, instead of wrapping her arms around herself and hugging, hard and long. It was everything she could do to keep the hot tears that smoldered behind her eyes from falling.

Sisters.

She, who had always been alone, was no longer alone.

Brittany wanted to scoff at her own sentiment. She hadn’t been alone, precisely. She’d had her adoptive parents. Friends.

And yet when she glanced again at the faces of her sisters, so eerily similar to her own, she felt as if she had been lonely all her life, her heart waiting for something it knew.

Not just sisters. But triplets. Brittany Patterson had just found out she was one of triplets. She wanted to gaze at them, drink in their features, marvel at the quirk of Abby’s mouth, Corrine’s toss of her hair, mannerisms she possessed herself.

Instead, she forced herself to listen to the silver-haired Jordan Hamilton, hoping the lawyer would say something that would unravel the mystery of why they had not always been together.

Instead the mystery deepened.

He did not know why they had grown up apart, each unaware of the existence of the others. He knew only that they had been reunited, here, in his office by a person he would not name. And that same person had bestowed a gift on each of them.

Vaguely she registered her sister, Abby, had received a house. Vaguely she registered conditions. And then her own name penetrated the warm, misty fog of her brain, and she listened, some part of her alert, while the other still swam in the warmth of her discovery. Sisters.

“…the gift of the Main Street Bakery, 207 Main Street, Miracle Harbor, Oregon, on the condition that Miss Patterson reside in Miracle Harbor for a period of one year, and that she marry within that time period.”

Brittany drew in her breath sharply, landed solidly on Planet Earth, and eyed the distinguished, silver-haired lawyer, waiting for him to laugh.

But he wasn’t laughing.

“Mr. Hamilton, my parents are behind this, aren’t they?” she said. She supposed they were regretting that they had taken such a firm stand after her car accident. They probably had found out, somehow, she had sold the beautiful Fabergé tennis bracelet just last week. In a way, their plot was brilliant.

“Your parents?” Jordan Hamilton asked. He seemed genuinely astonished.

“You know,” she said, “buy me a career and get me married off in one fell swoop.” She said this lightly, as if it didn’t matter one little bit to her that her parents did not think she was capable of looking after herself. Not that that assessment would be completely unfair.

Six months had passed since they had cut the purse strings, right after she had wrecked her beautiful apple-red Corvette and wound up in the hospital. Their terms were brutally simple. No allowance, no loans, no credit cards, no access to the bank account. They had told her they were not going to pay for her to kill herself, that it was time for her to join the real world, learn to be a responsible adult, make her contribution to the human race.

Six months, and Brittany had yet to find a job. Even though she was trying so hard.

“But what about us?” one of her sisters, Corrine, asked. “How could your parents manufacture us?”

“Why would your adoptive parents give me a house?” Abby chimed in.

Brittany started, and looked again at the other two women in the room. It was the strangest and somehow the loveliest feeling she had ever had.

She smiled, amazed at how much relief she felt that her adoptive parents weren’t behind the fact she was sitting in this lawyer’s office. Couldn’t possibly be behind it.

“I guess,” she said thoughtfully, “not even Mr. and Mrs. Conroy Patterson are rich enough to clone people. Not that I think they’d want to clone me.”

“Why not?” Abby, the one in the navy blue dress that looked like something a nun would choose, asked with mild indignation.

So, Brittany thought, and nestled deeper into the warmth creeping through her, this is what it meant to have a sister. Abby didn’t even know her, and it was evident she chose to believe the best of her, anyway.

But about getting married—

The door to the lawyer’s office whispered open behind her. Brit glanced over her shoulder, and felt her eyes widen.

If that’s what appeared when you even thought about getting married in a place called Miracle Harbor, then she was all for it, after all.

He was gorgeous. The proverbial tall—at least six feet of him—dark—crisp black hair and olive-tinted skin—and handsome—slanting brows, straight nose, sensual lips and strong chin. Add to that the fact that his conservative clothing did nothing to hide a lean body that rippled with easy male strength.

Then she noticed his eyes and felt her heart would tumble from her chest. They glittered wickedly, an impossible shade of blue, almost aquamarine, framed in a sooty abundance of spiky lashes.

Those eyes met hers, and held, coolly professional, and yet just beneath that look lurked something else. Something wildly intriguing…a hint of the untamed, a suggestion of potent male strength, a shadow of leashed sensuality.