Laurie Paige - Something To Talk About

Jess digested the news. “Why?”

“Because we’re dangerous to each other’s peace of mind. Because you’re going to be here another three weeks and I’m not sure I can hold out that long.”

“No,” he said.

She glared at him in frustration.

“I’m not going to run, Kate. You’re afraid of what’s between us. So am I. But we’re adults. We can handle it.”

“But what if, some night, we’re weak at the same time?”

Following an impulse stronger than common sense, he sat beside her then laid his hand along her jaw and turned her face to his. “Is this what you mean?”

Claiming her surprised mouth, he held the kiss to gentleness when everything in him clamored for urgency and hot, wild sharing.

“See?” Jess said, his breath coming more rapidly. “No problem.”

Dear Reader,

May marks the celebration of “Get Caught Reading,” a national campaign the Association of American Publishers created to promote the sheer joy of reading. “Get Caught Reading” may be a phrase that’s familiar to you, but if not, we hope you’ll familiarize yourself with it by picking up the wonderful selections that Silhouette Special Edition has to offer….

Former NASA engineer Laurie Paige says that when she was young, she checked out The Little Engine That Could from the library fifty times. “I read it every week,” Laurie recalls. “I was so astounded that the library would lend books to me for free. I’ve been an avid reader ever since.” Though Laurie Paige hasn’t checked out her favorite childhood storybook for a while, she now participates in several local literacy fund-raisers and reads to young children in her community. Laurie is also a prolific writer, with nearly forty published Silhouette titles, including this month’s Something To Talk About.

Don’t miss the fun when a once-burned rancher discovers that the vivacious amnesiac he’s helping turns out to be the missing Stockwell heiress in Jackie Merritt’s The Cattleman and the Virgin Heiress. And be sure to catch all of THE CALAMITY JANES, five friends sharing the struggles and celebrations of life, starting with Do You Take This Rebel? by Sherryl Woods. And what happens when Willa and Zach learn they both inherited the same ranch? Find out in The Ties That Bind by Ginna Gray. Be sure to see who will finish first in Patricia Hagan’s Race to the Altar. And Judith Lyons pens a highly emotional tale with Lt. Kent: Lone Wolf.

So this May, make time for books. Remember how fun it is to browse a bookstore, hold a book in your hands and discover new worlds on the printed page.

Best,

Karen Taylor Richman

Senior Editor

www.millsandboon.co.uk

In loving memory, to “Big Sis.”

You were always there for us.

says, “One of the nicest things about writing romances is researching locales, careers and ideas. In the interest of authenticity, most writers will try anything…once.” Along with her writing adventures, Laurie has been a NASA engineer, a past president of the Romance Writers of America (twice!), a mother and a grandmother (twice, also!). She was twice a Romance Writers of America RITA Award finalist for Best Traditional Romance, and has won awards from Romantic Times Magazine for Best Silhouette Special Edition and Best Silhouette. Recently resettled in northern California, Laurie is looking forward to whatever experiences her next novel will send her on.

Dear Reader,

Sometimes a book is born from a sentence or phrase I hear, or the lyrics of a song. Once it was an incident I read in a magazine while sitting in the dentist’s office. The Windraven Legacy was born while hiking in the Wind River region of Wyoming. After a hard climb on a trail that led up over a ridge, I stopped at the top and simply stared. Before me was a magnificent vista—deep blue sky, a mountain carved into a cirque by a glacier that had passed that way thousands of years ago, gleaming snow lying in the hollow scoured into the granite and a lake formed by the melting snow, all within a perfect postcard of a valley blooming with wildflowers and lined with pine and fir trees.

In this valley, now owned by the National Forest Service, I found an abandoned house, once part of a prosperous ranch. I sat on the porch steps and ate lunch while the wind whispered through the trees. I could almost hear the voices from the past, murmuring of love and happiness, of loss and despair. In a cottonwood along a nearby creek, a raven cawed. Another answered. Their calls were indescribably lonely. The story of the Windoms and Herriots took shape in my mind….

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

Jess Fargo parked his pickup under the cool green shadow of a live oak arching over the gravel driveway and shut off the engine. The sheer bliss of not watching the road or squinting into the hot June sun lasted about two seconds.

Then the pain in his leg kicked in.

He cursed silently and long, but words didn’t ease the shower of hot needles aimed at a spot directly under his left kneecap. He willed the pain into submission.

“You want to stay here or go in?” he asked Jeremy.

“Stay here,” Jeremy answered in the shorthand of youth.

His son. Ten years old. Rangy as a winter deer. Silent. Resentful. A sackcloth-and-ashes martyr to parental whims.

His ex hadn’t wanted to let him see his son at all when they’d divorced five years ago. Then, two weeks ago, she shows up at the apartment, announces she’s getting married again and she can’t handle his son, so he’ll have to take the boy.

Bingo! He’s a full-time father again…with a shattered knee and uncertain prospects about his future.

Washed up. Has-been. He squashed the descriptive words as they seared across his brain.

Since he’d put in his twenty years and had been injured in the line of duty, he would have a pension from the Houston PD, so all was not lost.

Wasn’t life just too damn wonderful? Jess thought as he climbed down from the truck.

Standing on the springy grass, the dappled, afternoon light shifting in soft patterns across the green, he studied the house and gardens.

His years as a cop had taught him to ask another cop when he needed information. The house was precisely as described by the police detective in Wind River, Wyoming, where he’d stopped to inquire about a place to stay. Its location couldn’t be better for his purposes.

The yellow Victorian had black shutters and white trim. Its posts and spindles were graceful but sturdy. A porch, with a white wooden swing hanging from its rafters, wrapped across the front and disappeared around the side of the building.

The house, the valley, the snow-tipped mountain peaks poking at the sky—the whole area looked like the set for one of those ideal-family TV shows where the major sin was using someone else’s hairbrush without asking. On “mean street,” as cops called the ones where violence reigned, that could get a person diced into salad-size bits real quick.