Kristin Hardy - Vermont Valentine

“Well, then, I must be doing well,” Celie said. “From what I hear, impressing you isn’t easy.”

“Sounds like people have been doing way too much talking altogether,” was Jacob’s comment.

“Don’t worry. I’m a scientist. I prefer to collect data on my own.”

“Are you planning to collect data on me?” Jacob asked.

Celie glanced laughingly back over her shoulder at him. “I don’t know. Do you mind?” She reached over to shut off the lights.

Their hands landed on the switch at the same time.

It was just a touch, hand to hand, but the effects ricocheted through his system. Her eyes were shadowed as she looked back at him. He could see her profile, her generous mouth. “Time to go,” she said softly.

It might, Jacob thought uneasily, be long past time.

Dear Reader,

Well, if there were ever a month that screamed for a good love story—make that six!—February would be it. So here are our Valentine’s Day gifts to you from Silhouette Special Edition. Let’s start with The Road to Reunion by Gina Wilkins, next up in her FAMILY FOUND series. When the beautiful daughter of the couple who raised him tries to get a taciturn cowboy to come home for a family reunion, Kyle Reeves is determined to turn her down. But try getting Molly Walker to take no for an answer! In Marie Ferrarella’s Husbands and Other Strangers, a woman in a boating accident finds her head injury left her with no permanent effects—except for the fact that she can’t seem to recall her husband. In the next installment of our FAMILY BUSINESS continuity, The Boss and Miss Baxter by Wendy Warren, an unemployed single mother is offered a job—not to mention a place to live for her and her children—with the grumpy, if gorgeous, man who fired her!

“Who’s Your Daddy?” is a question that takes on new meaning when a young woman learns that a rock star is her biological father, that her mother is really in love with his brother—and that she herself can’t resist her new father’s protégé. Read all about it in It Runs in the Family by Patricia Kay, the second in her CALLIE’S CORNER CAFÉ miniseries. Vermont Valentine, the conclusion to Kristin Hardy’s HOLIDAY HEARTS miniseries, tells the story of the last single Trask brother, Jacob—he’s been alone for thirty-six years. But that’s about to change, courtesy of the beautiful scientist now doing research on his property. And in Teresa Hill’s A Little Bit Engaged, a woman who’s been a bride-to-be for five years yet never saw fit to actually set a wedding date finds true love where she least expects it—with a pastor.

So keep warm, stay romantic, and we’ll see you next month….

Gail Chasan

Senior Editor

www.millsandboon.co.uk

has always wanted to write, starting her first novel while still in grade school. Although she became a laser engineer by training, she never gave up her dream of being an author. In 2002, her first completed manuscript, My Sexiest Mistake, debuted in Harlequin’s Blaze line; it was subsequently made into a movie by the Oxygen network. The author of twelve books to date, Kristin lives in New Hampshire with her husband and collaborator. Check out her Web site at www.kristinhardy.com.

Thanks go to Dennis Souto, Mark Twery and

Kathleen Shields, of the USDA Forest Service;

George Cook of the University of Vermont; Joe Doccola

of Arborjet Inc.; and to Doug and Barbara Bragg of the

Bragg Farm (www.braggfarm.com), the inspiration

for the Trask Family Farm.

And as always, to Stephen,

a fine ambassador for the human race.

Prologue

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

Vermont, November 2005

“You want me to do what?” Jacob Trask stared at Kelly Christiansen, the teenaged cashier of the Trask Family Farm gift shop.

Kelly shifted and pushed a lock of her blond hair behind her ear. “You know, help out with our fundraiser. Our cheerleading squad qualified for the national championships in February but we need money for our travel. We need your help.”

Jacob reached back for his wallet, relieved. “I think I can see my way clear to—”

“No, I’m not asking for money. It’s like…” She stood hip-shot and stared at the ceiling. “…have you ever seen that cable show where those five stylists fix up a clueless straight guy?”

“No.” And he wasn’t at all sure he was following.

“Well, we’re going to do a hometown version called Teen Eye for the Eastmont Guy. Except we put up five possible makeover victims and invite everyone to vote for the one that they’d most like to see made over by donating.”

He was beginning to get it. “And?”

“And we want to get you.”

“Clueless straight guy?” he repeated dangerously.

She turned beet-red, all the way to the roots of her pale hair. “No, um, you look great, Mr. Trask. We just need someone with…” She flapped her hands at his thick beard and black ponytail. “You know, someone who’ll look really different when we cut everything off. The town paper’s going to put the before and after of the winner on the front page.”

Just what he needed, to be the town entertainment.

Kelly’s embarrassment was fading as she warmed to her subject. “We’re going to put jars with the candidates’ pictures on them in every store in town. It runs through New Year’s Day and then we count the money and announce the winner.”

Perfect. “When’s the makeover?”

“A week later. Don’t worry, we won’t do it ourselves. We’ve got stylists all set up in Montpelier. You’ll be in good hands. It’d just be some of your time.”

Time, something that was at a premium on this, the first year he was working the maple sugar farm after the death of his father. Every hourcounted and so did every dollar. “I don’t think—”

“We really want to get to the championships,” she pleaded. “This is the only way we can think of to get the money. Won’t you help us, Mr. Trask? Please?” Kelly risked another glance. Over her shoulder, Jacob’s mother, Molly Trask, watched him from the gift shop’s café, her arms crossed.

“Can’t I just donate a hundred bucks and call it good?” Jacob asked with a tinge of desperation.

“Oh, with your help we can raise a lot more than that,” Kelly said in a tone that suggested she knew she had him beat. “We polled the local storekeepers to see who they wanted to see done over and your name came up most often. You’ll get us lots of votes.”

And he could just imagine the amusement it would stir up in the maple-sugaring community.

“I think it sounds like an excellent idea,” Molly put in briskly. “It’s been almost fifteen years since I last saw your face, Jacob. It’ll be a nice change of pace.”

He didn’t need a change of pace. Steady and predictable, that was what Jacob wanted. He didn’t need one more thing to worry about.

He liked things just the way they were.

Vermont, January 2006

Celie Favreau muttered an impatient curse and dragged her fingers through her short brown hair. Trees, trees and more trees: beech, ash, birch, the occasional startling green of a pine, and maples, always maples, as far as the eye could see. Sugar maples, Vermont’s state tree.