Tracy Kelleher - Family Be Mine

Sarah knew better.

It was all Hunt. She liked him. More than liked him. She hadn’t come looking for it, and she’d certainly tried to avoid it. But no matter what, she couldn’t kid herself any longer.

Maybe she was attracted to him because it proved that she was still a desirable woman. And maybe he was attracted to her because it proved an inner potency, a life force that had been restored.

If it was mutually self-serving, so be it. But it was also no use pretending any longer that something wasn’t happening between them. And that something was inevitable, as well.

So what did she say after such a revelation?

“Gee, that was a novel way to wrap up a prenatal visit” was the best she could come up with.

“You think that wraps things up?” he asked.

“You and I both know it doesn’t…” she replied with a wink.

Dear Reader,

Welcome back to Grantham and back to school! Ever since writing Falling for the Teacher, I have wanted to tell Sarah and Hunt’s story. Sarah intrigued me because on the surface she looked like someone in control. But I had a feeling there was more lurking underneath. What I found was a woman like many of us, someone who has made choices in life, but still wasn’t sure where she was going. In short, she was in search of her story. By contrast, Hunt was someone who had his life all figured out, only to find it pulled out from under him. He realized he needed to change direction, but to where and for how long? In essence, he questioned his future. Together, then, Sarah and Hunt were just too good to leave in the background!

Lastly, cancer has an insidious way of touching many families. This book deals with the impact of lymphoma. For those readers seeking more information about blood cancers, the Leukemia and Lymphoma Society provides helpful and unbiased information at www.leukemia-lymphoma.org.

Best,

Tracy Kelleher

www.millsandboon.co.uk

Tracy sold her first story to a children’s magazine when she was ten years old. Writing was clearly in her blood, though fiction was put on hold while she received degrees from Yale and Cornell, traveled the world, worked in advertising, became a staff reporter and later a magazine editor. She also managed to raise a family. Is it any surprise she escapes to the world of fiction?

Many thanks to Dr. Morton Coleman for sharing his expertise and understanding.

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

CHAPTER TWENTY-ONE

CHAPTER TWENTY-TWO

CHAPTER TWENTY-THREE

CHAPTER TWENTY-FOUR

CHAPTER TWENTY-FIVE

May…

“YOU KNOW, SARAH DEAR, today’s blessed event makes up for that whole Brooklyn calamity…” Penny Halverson bit her bottom lip. “No, I promised I wouldn’t bring that up. What I mean to say is that you having a wedding in the Grantham University Chapel is…is…like a dream come true. To think that a member of our family is about to be married in a place like that! It’s practically like being in England! Or Disney World!”

Penny dabbed the corner of her eye with the all-cotton hanky that she had ironed just before packing her suitcase for the flight from Minneapolis to Grantham, New Jersey. Even within the confines of the church vestry, the mullioned windows and ornate woodwork conveyed the Gothic grandeur of the Ivy League university chapel. But the fact that Penny’s face shone with a rosy hue had nothing to do with the light piercing the stained glass windows. It was the glow of a mother’s joy—and maybe unexpected heat of this early May day.

Outside, visible through an open door, were beds of Rembrandt tulips edging the green of the courtyard. Their variegated petals flopped in exhaustion. They had managed to survive the ravenous appetite of the local deer population, perhaps a show of respect by the animal kingdom for this hallowed spot, but they were now succumbing to the heat.

“Oh, I know I promised, but I can’t help it.” Penny pursed her lips and squinted her eyes in a mixture of remorse and pride. “It more than makes up for the embarrassment that your father felt when you…ah…when you…ah.”

“When I was living with Earl? Is that what you’re trying to say, Mom?” Sarah Halverson rolled her shoulders backward and worked at adjusting the neckline on her strapless wedding dress. The fitted bodice tapered to hug her long torso a tad too tightly for comfort. “I know you and Dad didn’t approve, and I’m sorry. But, you know, it’s really not a crime,” she said as she yanked at the stays under her arms and hunched her shoulders together to try to get all the pieces to work in harmony.

“Practically everybody I know is doing it or has done it at one time.”

Actually, that wasn’t true. Take her two best friends. Katarina had come back to Grantham to recuperate from a terrible shooting, found the love of her life, and was now happily married to financial wizard Ben Brown. Ben pretended to be cantankerous but was really a pussycat, a pussycat with a teenage son. Besides acquiring a family, Katarina had also started a new business of advising retirees on total financial and lifestyle planning.

And her other best friend Julie was a dedicated obstetrician, way too busy to form any lasting relationship—or so she claimed. More likely, she was too tall for most men and too…well…frank. “I’m not brutal, merely blunt,” Julie would protest over her third Rolling Rock. Julie pooh-poohed high-priced beers, describing microbrews as “fancy labels for dilettante, candy-assed drinkers.”

Sarah, who cherished Julie more than most, found that proclamation more than blunt. After all, her fiancé and very-soon-to-be husband, Zach, thought of himself as something of an expert on high-end beers. He regularly lectured Sarah on the pros and cons of various Belgium brews. “I’m just trying to expand your horizons,” he was fond of saying after a typical fifteen-minute discourse.

Not that Sarah minded. Because while she might chide her mother about her parochial concerns, the truth of the matter was, Earl had been a deadbeat. Back in her callow youth, Sarah had thought Earl was a rebel who had needed to burst the bonds of rural Minnesota to pursue a rock music career. But Earl hadn’t been a rebel. Just lazy. He had demonstrated a congenital failure to expend any effort at anything that required work, including his music. And as Sarah quickly found out, “bursting the bonds” for Earl corresponded to an inability to maintain anything close to a monogamous relationship.

Zach, on the other hand, represented everything that was good and decent in Sarah’s opinion. He was a yoga instructor, a terrific one given his ardent following. Not content to improve his employer’s business, he had bravely struck out on his own six months ago, forming Grantham Yoga and Wellness Center. He knew the uncertainties, especially in the weak economy, but he had a solid business plan and was determined to reach for his dream. As part of his holistic approach, he had also brought in a nutritionist as a partner, and working as a team they had seen their clientele steadily increase. Then, once his finances had started to stabilize, Zach had proposed.