Nadia Nichols - A Family For Rose

She’s the prodigal daughter...

But can she truly go home?

Shannon McTavish returns to her father’s Wyoming ranch with her child, Rose, but it’s hardly the haven she expected. Her father and rancher Billy Mac are embroiled in a battle with a powerful wind company. Billy wants Shannon to stay. But is he asking because he needs her help to save the land—or because he wants to give Shannon and Rose a home?

NADIA NICHOLSwent to the dogs at the age of twenty-nine and currently operates a kennel of twenty-eight Alaskan huskies. She has raced her sled dogs in northern New England and Canada, works at the family-owned Harraseeket Inn in Freeport, Maine, and is also a registered Master Maine Guide.

She began her writing career at the age of five, when she made her first sale, a short story called “The Bear” to her mother for twenty-five cents. This story was such a blockbuster that her mother bought every other story she wrote and kept her in ice-cream money throughout much of her childhood.

Now all her royalties go toward buying dog food. She lives on a remote solar-powered northern Maine homestead with her sled dogs, a Belgian draft horse named Dan, several cats, two goats and a flock of chickens. She can be reached at nadianichols@aol.com.

Also By Nadia Nichols

Across a Thousand Miles

Montana Dreaming

Buffalo Summer

A Full House

Montana Standoff

Sharing Spaces

Everything to Prove

From Out of the Blue

A Soldier’s Pledge

Montana Unbranded

Discover more at millsandboon.co.uk

A Family for Rose

Nadia Nichols

www.millsandboon.co.uk

ISBN: 978-1-474-08587-8

A FAMILY FOR ROSE

© 2018 Penny R. Gray

Published in Great Britain 2018

by Mills & Boon, an imprint of HarperCollins Publishers 1 London Bridge Street, London, SE1 9GF

All rights reserved including the right of reproduction in whole or in part in any form. This edition is published by arrangement with Harlequin Books S.A.

This is a work of fiction. Names, characters, places, locations and incidents are purely fictional and bear no relationship to any real life individuals, living or dead, or to any actual places, business establishments, locations, events or incidents. Any resemblance is entirely coincidental.

By payment of the required fees, you are granted the non-exclusive, non-transferable right and licence to download and install this e-book on your personal computer, tablet computer, smart phone or other electronic reading device only (each a “Licensed Device”) and to access, display and read the text of this e-book on-screen on your Licensed Device. Except to the extent any of these acts shall be permitted pursuant to any mandatory provision of applicable law but no further, no part of this e-book or its text or images may be reproduced, transmitted, distributed, translated, converted or adapted for use on another file format, communicated to the public, downloaded, decompiled, reverse engineered, or stored in or introduced into any information storage and retrieval system, in any form or by any means, whether electronic or mechanical, now known or hereinafter invented, without the express written permission of publisher.

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www.millsandboon.co.uk

Version: 2018-08-31

“You think me and Rose would be happy here. I think you’re crazy, cowboy.”

“Crazy about you, Shannon, that’s for sure, even if you are way out of my league.”

“I wish you’d quit saying that.” Shannon rose to her feet. “I have to tuck Rose into bed.”

“You could come back afterward,” Billy said. “Watch the stars shine down.”

She smiled, a sweet curve of her lips in the gathering twilight. “You really need to get some rest.”

“What I really need to do is kiss you.”

For a moment he thought she was going to leave. Just turn and walk away and leave him sitting there, like a rejected fool. Just as she had ten years earlier. But she didn’t. She bent over him, her fingertips touching his shoulders, her lips barely touching his. The gentlest of kisses, and far too brief.

Dear Reader,

This was a tough story to write. I left my home in western Maine seven years ago when the mountain where my father’s ashes were scattered was leveled to make way for twelve industrial-scale wind turbines. Several years later I went back to visit my old mountain haunts, but nothing was the same, and I didn’t stay long. John Muir said, “Going to the mountains is going home,” but I’ve since learned that mountains are not renewable, and going home can be a painful thing.

The characters in this story share many of the same experiences I did, viewed from opposite sides of the fence. Shannon McTavish believes wind power is green and good for the planet. Billy Mac sees it as an environmental disaster. To complicate matters, Billy works for Shannon’s father, who’s the only holdout among the major landowners who stand to make big bucks leasing their land to the wind power company. Battle lines are drawn, but there’s a whole lot more at stake than the outcome of a wind project. Hearts are on the line, as well as the future of Shannon’s little girl. Shannon has to decide whether to walk away, or try harder to protect what turns out to be the two most important things to all of them: home and family.

I love to hear from my readers. Contact me at nadianichols@aol.com and check out my author’s page on Amazon.com.

Nadia Nichols

For my father, who once told me that one of the hardest decisions we ever face in life is choosing whether to walk away or try harder.

Contents

Cover

Back Cover Text

About the Author

Booklist

Title Page

Copyright

Introduction

Dear Reader

Dedication

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

EPILOGUE

Extract

About the Publisher

CHAPTER ONE

WYOMING WAS A far stretch from Nashville, but Shannon McTavish hadn’t forgotten the way home. Ten years had passed since she last drove down this long, lonesome stretch of road, but she remembered every curve, every hill and every gully. She knew the names of the mountains she was driving toward—Whiskey and Wolverine, Wolf Butte and Wind River. She knew the names of the creeks she crossed and how sweet the wind would taste when she rolled her window down to fill her lungs. She remembered the sound of the soul-deep thunder that the wind made when it blew across the wild wide open.

This was a big, empty land that looked as if nothing had changed, yet everything had. When Shannon left, her future had seemed so bright and she’d been so in love. Ten years ago she’d vowed never to return to the lonesome place on the edge of nowhere, yet now she couldn’t wait to get there.

Each mile brought her closer, but there were two more obstacles to overcome—and they had nothing to do with the miles or the mountains in between. Her father didn’t know she was coming home, and he was unlikely to welcome her.