Mary Brady - Silver Linings

Fate has reunited them…but for how long?

Life took a detour when Delainey Talbot became a mother. There’s no better job but that doesn’t mean she isn’t excited about finally becoming a lawyer—a dream she’s this close to fulfilling. So when the partnership at Bailey’s Cove’s only law firm goes to Hunter Morrison, she’s devastated.

Hunter and Deelee haven’t seen each other since their ill-fated romance ended suddenly—he doesn’t even know about six-year-old Brianna! Deelee wants him out of her town and her job. Too bad her heart says this could be their chance at the life they were meant to have.

“Shamus told me you got accepted to law school. Congratulations.”

Delainey didn’t look up. She didn’t smile as he thought she would.

“What’s the matter?” Hunter asked when she didn’t say anything either.

“Straight and unvarnished?”

“Straight and unvarnished.”

She pinned him for several seconds with her smoky gray eyes and nodded once. “You took my job. Shamus was supposed to stay for a few more years. Harriet would take over and I’d step in on the bottom rung and someday, I’d be able to buy into the practice.”

“I can see from the active cases there isn’t much use for a third attorney at that office.”

“I have to live, eat, take care of my daughter and repay college loans. I won’t be in a position to open an office or to work in one that can barely pay me.”

“I’m leaving.”

She stiffened. “Of course, you are.”

Dear Reader,

We’re back in Bailey’s Cove, Maine!

For Delainey Talbot many things are true. She is a great mother. She will be a great attorney if she just gets the chance to go to law school. Bailey’s Cove, Maine, is the best place to raise a child and she’ll live there forever.

When Hunter Morrison, now a high-powered, big-city lawyer comes back into town, the rock-solid truths of Delainey’s life are shattered.

I hope you enjoy Delainey and Hunter’s romance as they face their past and find silver linings neither could have ever imagined.

And is there truly a treasure long ago buried by the pirate Liam Bailey?

I’d love to hear from you. Visit my website at www.marybrady.netor write to me at mary@marybrady.net.

Enjoy the Harlequin Superromance authors blog at www.superauthors.com. Comment and you just might win treasures.

Thank you so much for reading my books.

Warmest regards,

Mary Brady

Silver Linings

Mary Brady

www.millsandboon.co.uk

ABOUT THE AUTHOR

Mary Brady lives in the Midwest and considers road trips into the rest of the continent to be a necessary part of life. When she’s not out exploring, she helps run a manufacturing company and has a great time living with her handsome husband, her super son and one cheeky little bird.

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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

CHAPTER SIXTEEN

CHAPTER SEVENTEEN

CHAPTER EIGHTEEN

CHAPTER NINETEEN

CHAPTER TWENTY

Extract

CHAPTER ONE

THE BLUSTERY WINTER morning had started well...

But when Delainey Talbot let herself into the side entrance of the old redbrick building of Morrison and Morrison Attorneys, the office was eerily quiet. No morning chatter greeted her. No clicking of keys or rustling of papers—not even the smell of coffee.

Since her workday didn’t start until she dropped off her daughter at school, there should be at least five people here by now.

The excitement of her long-awaited acceptance into law school faltered as she crept forward in the unnatural silence, and a sharp edge of worry seeped into her joy.

Then she heard quiet murmuring from behind the closed door of the office Carol and Shirley, two of the legal assistants, shared.

She tapped on the door and opened it slowly. Five people stood in a clump in front of Carol’s desk, and as one, they looked at her with a mix of sadness, insecurity and maybe hope.

That was not helpful.

“What? What’s going on?” Delainey asked, directing the inquiry to Carol.

“Shamus is retiring,” cried Patty, the gray-haired sixtyish receptionist, as she rushed over, not quite teary but close, and grabbed Delainey’s arm. “We hoped you’d know what’s happening. Why would he do that to us?”

Since Patty’s reaction was usually to panic first and seek information second, Delainey decided to remain calm. “He’s been making those plans for years. He’s going to start pulling back in a couple of years and be gone in three or four.”

Patty just looked at her.

“Today,” said Shirley, red haired, the youngest office employee and granddaughter of the retiring Shamus Murphy.

“He’s retiring today?” Delainey looked at each of them. “That can’t happen.”

“He was here when I arrived, sitting right here drinking that awful tea he likes,” said Carol as she leaned back against her desk. “He didn’t say he was quitting soon and not even today. He said yesterday was his last day as partner.”

“He’s just stepping down.” A rush of dread made Delainey’s muscles ache and her chest tighten. “He’ll still be here, right?”

Leaving couldn’t be on the table. He had to keep the position open for her until she finished law school.

Until she finished. Oh, that sounded selfish, even if it was just inside her head. But if she was going to provide for her daughter, she needed to give up being a paralegal and become the lawyer she had planned on becoming six years ago.

“‘Stepping out,’ he called it. He’ll be available for consultations for ongoing cases for a while, but he’s retiring. Harriet is now senior partner,” Patty added, and the words felt like a door slamming loudly.

“But how? Who will be the other partner?” How would they get enough work to keep fourteen full-and part-time people busy with only one attorney? There needed to be two lawyers in the office, at least from a get-the-jobs standpoint. Shamus had to stay.

“Shamus left for the airport in Portland.” Carol held up a hand. “Said he’d be back after lunch with his replacement.”

Replacement?

In her head, Delainey saw this replacement arrive, sit down at the desk that was to have been hers in three years—and the world tilted on one dangerous edge.

Think. She had to think, not stand there and pull all her hair out with her coworkers watching.

“I have to get to my office,” Delainey said as she raced out the door, leaving, she was sure, the whole bunch gaping after her.

She fled to her second-floor office at the back of the building. A lesser ten-by-ten-foot space tucked between two storage rooms. Two walls were blank. The door in one wall was offset from the two main offices on the other side of the hallway, so even if the doors stood open, they could not easily see into each other’s offices. The back wall had two lovely windows, windows that should have a view of the ocean, but they looked out at the fire escape, the parking lot and the dilapidated abandoned warehouse across the alley. But the office suddenly became indispensable to her, a den of retreat.