Kathleen O'Brien - The Secrets of Bell River

Always an outsider…

Armed with only her suitcases and secrets, Tess Spencer arrives at Bell River Ranch. She’ll work temporarily at their spa and never tell the Wright sisters her true connection to them. Meeting gorgeous carpenter Jude Calhoun challenges those plans, however. Strong and capable, Jude makes Tess want to share the burden of what she knows….

That confession may come sooner than she wants when her past intrudes at the ranch. But if she reveals the reasons she’s here, she will definitely be the outsider—unwelcomed and alone. And leaving Bell River could cost her the one man she wants….

He wasn’t going to do this

Jude could read the expression on Tess’s face. She wanted him. More than that, he wanted her. Wanted to see where comfort took them.

But no. He wasn’t even going to think about doing this.

It probably would have been much, much smarter to let Tess go on believing he was a married man, a picked peach with a helpless infant depending on him. Because they wouldn’t be lovers, tonight or ever.

He’d felt the years of deprivation in her body, more skin-and-bones than slender. He’d felt the terrible, lifelong isolation that left her shocked that anyone was willing to catch her when she fell.

And he felt the hunger, far deeper than a lack of food. A chronic lack of love that made intimacy frighten her so much she fought it even when she was unconscious.

But no. He had sworn off wounded birds. And this beautiful little sparrow was as broken as they came.

Dear Reader,

When I started writing The Sisters of Bell River Ranch series, I knew I wanted to include at least one sister who came to the family by an indirect route. I’ve known so many loving, loyal families who bring each other great comfort and happiness—but who weren’t “born” to one another the old fashioned way. I wanted, somehow, to honor those wonderful bonds.

The heroine of The Secrets of Bell River, Tess Spencer, is illegitimate—her very existence one of the biggest secrets of all. She’s a half sister to some, no blood relation at all to others, and yet she finds her way straight into their hearts.

In the end, sisterhood is not just blood, or even growing up in the same house. It’s about sharing tears and dumb jokes, and circling the wagons against common enemies. It’s about seeing the world the same way. I’m lucky enough to have had a sister in the conventional method, but through the years life also granted me friends who were such kindred spirits that they claimed a sisterhood of the heart. One came to me as a childhood friend, but another I found much later in life—something I hadn’t imagined was possible. All of them are gifts beyond measure, and I know I’m not the only one who has what I call “like sisters”—the women who have, indeed, become “like” sisters. It makes for a rich life, indeed.

In fact, the only thing a woman needs after that is…a hero of her very own. And that’s where the gorgeous, wounded Silverdell carpenter, Jude Calhoun, comes in.

I hope you enjoy their story! And if you, too, have sisters and “like sisters,” I hope you’ll hug them today.

Warmly,

Kathleen O’Brien

P.S.—Stop by and say hi at www.facebook.com/KathleenOBrienAuthor, or visit me at www.kathleenobrien.com!

The Secrets of Bell River

Kathleen O’Brien

www.millsandboon.co.uk

ABOUT THE AUTHOR

Kathleen O’Brien was a feature writer and TV critic before marrying a fellow journalist. Motherhood, which followed soon after, was so marvelous she turned to writing novels, which could be done at home. She believes the true friend is the one you trust with your secrets—even if it’s just that embarrassing thing about popcorn and reality TV. The best friends are the ones who love you because of those secrets, not in spite of them.

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To Chaela, Celie, Ann…and, of course, Renie.

My “sisters” of the heart, whether you like it or not.

Contents

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

Extract

CHAPTER ONE

IN TWENTY-SEVEN YEARS, Tess Spencer hadn’t ever felt like she truly belonged anywhere, and it took only one look at the snow-covered perfection of Bell River Ranch to know she didn’t belong here, either.

So what if the women who owned it were technically her “family”? She didn’t know them—hadn’t even heard of them until two months ago, when, on her deathbed, her mother had dropped the bombshell about Tess’s paternity.

The Wright sisters didn’t know Tess, either. Not even that she existed.

And they probably never would.

She’d left Los Angeles, where she’d lived all her life, and she’d come to Silverdell thinking she might, just might, tell them. That had been her mother’s dying wish—to leave a safety net for the only child she was leaving too soon. In Tess’s imagination, introducing herself to Rowena, Brianna and Penelope Wright had seemed possible. Terrifying, but possible.

But now that Tess saw the beautiful ranch, nestled in its rolling winter landscape like a warm brown egg in a silver-white fairy nest...

How could she tell these elegant, successful strangers—her “sisters”—anything? According to Tess’s mother, the three women seemed to be decent people. They’d known plenty of heartache as well as privilege. They probably wouldn’t even be terribly shocked to learn about Tess. Their dad, Johnny Wright, had done a lot worse in his life than take a mistress and father one secret illegitimate baby.

Eighteen years ago, he had killed his wife. Their mother.

Tragic, but...still. Soaring Greek tragedy and low, dirty squalor weren’t the same problems. Tess Spencer and the legitimate Wright sisters didn’t speak the same language. One was a struggling, divorced massage therapist who had lived in crummy apartments all her life, hand to mouth—and that was on a good day. On bad days, she went hungry. The Wrights were landowners, Colorado heiresses who, in spite of their childhood calamity, had always possessed every tree, rock, building and animal they could see.

The gap between their worlds was as wide as the gap between earthlings and martians.

Besides, though they might not be shocked to meet a secret sister, they would undoubtedly be dismayed. Obviously Bell River Ranch was working very hard to leave its scandalous past behind. Nothing proclaimed civilized and unsullied more than this well-kept, orderly cluster of buildings with sweet blue smoke curling out of chimneys and sunshine sparkling off pristine windows.

“Sorry, Mom,” Tess muttered as she parked the car beside the charming wood-and-glass building that housed the spa. “A bastard of Johnny Wright would be about as welcome here as a hole in a lifeboat.”

She killed the engine and regrouped. Okay, no thrilled surprise family reunion. She’d always known that was greeting-card schlock, anyhow, not real life.