Laurie Paige - The Other Side Of Paradise

A winter alone with Jonah could prove too dangerous.

“I’m not going to pounce on you,” he said quietly, a flicker of humor in the words. “That doesn’t mean I don’t want to, but I won’t.”

She stared at him, mouth agape.

He laughed, another temptation in itself, his voice smooth and luxuriously deep. “Drink up, cowgirl, then go to bed. You’ve had a long day. By morning, you’ll have all your fences in place again.”

“This is so strange,” she said, talking more to herself than to him.

His eyes roamed over her face as if memorizing its planes and shapes. “Not so strange. You’re a very lovely woman. And I still have warm blood flowing through my veins….”

Dear Reader,

Well, it’s September, which always sounds like a fresh start to me, no matter how old I get. And evidently we have six women this month who agree. In Home Again by Joan Elliott Pickart, a woman who can’t have children has decided to work with them in a professional capacity—but when she is assigned an orphaned little boy, she fears she’s in over her head. Then she meets his gorgeous guardian—and she’s sure of it!

In the next installment of MOST LIKELY TO…, The Measure of a Man by Marie Ferrarella, a single mother attempting to help her beloved former professor joins forces with a former campus golden boy, now the college…custodian. What could have happened? Allison Leigh’s The Tycoon’s Marriage Bid pits a pregnant secretary against her ex-boss who, unbeknownst to him, has a real connection to her baby’s father. In The Other Side of Paradise by Laurie Paige, next up in her SEVEN DEVILS miniseries, a mysterious woman seeking refuge as a ranch hand learns that she may have more ties to the community than she could have ever suspected. When a beautiful nurse is assigned to care for a devastatingly handsome, if cantankerous, cowboy, the results are…well, you get the picture—but you can have it spelled out for you in Stella Bagwell’s next MEN OF THE WEST book, Taming a Dark Horse. And in Undercover Nanny by Wendy Warren, a domestically challenged female detective decides it’s necessary to penetrate the lair of single father and heir to a grocery fortune by pretending to be…his nanny. Hmm. It could work….

So enjoy, and snuggle up. Fall weather is just around the corner….

Happy reading!

Gail Chasan

Senior Editor

www.millsandboon.co.uk

has been a NASA engineer, a past president of the Romance Writers of America, a mother and a grandmother. She was twice a Romance Writers of America RITA ®Award finalist for Best Traditional Romance and has won awards from Romantic Times for Best Silhouette Special Edition and Best Silhouette in addition to appearing on the USA TODAY bestseller list. Recently resettled in Northern California, Laurie is looking forward to whatever experiences her next novel will send her on.

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

Mary McHale checked the directions on the sheet of paper, then studied the road again. There was no indication of a one-lane bridge on the quickly sketched map at the bottom of the brochure, nor of a creek.

Before retracing her tracks to the main county road, she perused the evergreen forest rising up the steep slope of the mountain, listened to the sound of the quietly burbling creek under the wooden bridge, then wondered if the water was pure enough to drink.

Not that she would risk taking a sip, but the woodland scene looked so peaceful and inviting it was difficult to imagine danger lurking there, whether germs or other kinds.

A place to lose yourself. Or maybe, she mused, a place to lose the world and find yourself.

The deep quiet called to her, but she had obligations and, as some poet had once said, miles to go before she slept.

With a sigh, she wheeled the old SUV and horse trailer in a tight arc and started back the way she’d come. At the main county road, she headed north once more and continued her search for the Towbridge ranch.

Three miles farther on, another gravel lane forked to the left. She spotted the sign informing her that the place she sought was seven miles west and made the correct turn.

Relief wafted through her. The shadows were long, she was tired and Attila needed food, water and exercise.

Nearly twenty minutes and seven miles later, she pulled up before the main building, a timber structure built rather like a large hunting lodge. A sign over the front porch declared the place to be the Towbridge Ranch, Est. 1899.

The gravel driveway continued on and circled a wooded area dotted with three or four picnic tables. Around the western perimeter of the driveway, she spotted camp sites through the firs and pine trees. RVs filled most of the parking spaces.

Well, it was the first Monday of September. Labor Day. Families were enjoying their last weekend in the mountains before winter set in, she supposed.

After parking before an old-fashioned horse rail, obviously new, she picked up a postcard from the passenger seat. It showed the seven peaks that formed a semicircle along the eastern border of Hells Canyon and gave the area its name. Seven Devils Mountains.

The peaks were west of the camp-ranch-resort where she was to be employed as a wrangler-hiking guide-whatever. The sun was setting behind the mountains in a near replica of the scene on the postcard she’d impulsively bought in LostValley, Idaho, the small town where she’d gassed up and which was an hour’s drive down the winding, dusty mountain roads she’d just traveled.

Observing the pink, gold and magenta streaks of the sunset and the mysterious shadows of the forest, she experienced the oddest sensation—that of a weight settling on her spirit. A forlorn sadness accompanied the heaviness, as if something vast and terrible impinged on her soul…a tragedy…

The emotion puzzled and irritated her. Seven Devils. The name was almost a premonition, a black cloud lurking on the horizon. Maybe she’d been here in a past life.

Yeah, right, and maybe she’d been Cleopatra in another.

A soft neigh from Attila, reminding her of his needs, pulled her out of the introspective mood. She had things to do and people to see.

After backing the horse out of the trailer, she snapped a lead rope on his halter and tied it at the end of the railing so he could munch the fall grass while she went inside to report to her new bosses, Keith Towbridge and Jonah Lanigan.

The lodge was empty. She surveyed the quaint main room, which had a high ceiling, a huge fireplace and rustic furniture made from alder and white cedar.

To her left was an office with a counter separating it from the great room. An archway to the right disclosed a small store stocked with canned goods and camping gear. A staircase gave access to rooms on the second floor while a hallway led to the nether regions on the main level of the sturdy building.

According to the brochure she’d picked up in town, the place was advertised as an adventure destination in the real West, which apparently meant hunting, fishing and paramilitary games for those “wanting to break out of the ordinary routine of life.” That idea would appeal to the deskbound executive, she supposed.