Muriel Jensen - Man With A Mission

He took several paces away from Jackie, as though he found her distasteful. “When? I don’t remember once in seventeen years.”

“Yes,” she replied. “I did… That day.” She struggled to maintain control, as everything inside her shook with emotion and old pain.

And new pain.

“I tried to explain why I couldn’t go with you,” she went on, “but you—”

“You said you thought it’d be better if you stayed behind,” he interrupted, taking several angry steps back to her. “You never once mentioned—”

“You talked over me,” she told him quietly. “You didn’t give me a chance. Then you stormed away.”

“Well, what about the seventeen years since?” he roared at her. “Why didn’t you call or write?”

Oh, God, she thought, steeling herself. Anguish squeezed her lungs and made air escape in a painful sound. She had to pull herself together. The hard part was coming….

Dear Reader,

Some women respond to the dreamer hero in romance novels, while others are attracted to the footloose wanderer. Many have an affinity for bad boys, and some want to make a home for the wounded man in need of a woman with just the right antibiotic.

Personally, I have a thing for the hero with purpose. I like the man who knows what he wants in a woman and goes after her with confidence, determination and just enough vulnerability to leave me wondering whether he’ll get her or not. In real life, I’d be offended if my husband behaved as though he had all the answers—particularly because I never seem to have any. Life is a mystery that confounds and confuses me every day. But in my dreams—or in my romantic fantasies—I love to think there’s a man out there to whom life is a clear, straight path to the woman he cherishes, and he’ll let nothing, including her confusion, get in his way.

This is your introduction to Hank Whitcomb, just such a man.

I wish you all good things.

Muriel

Muriel Jensen

P.O. Box 1168

Astoria, Oregon 97103

www.millsandboon.co.uk

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

HANK WHITCOMB STARTED backwards down the stairs in his office building, supporting one end of a heavy oak table that served as his desk. Bart Megrath, his brother-in-law, carried the other end.

“Whose idea was it to move your office anyway?” Bart asked. “And why is everything oak? Don’t you believe in light, easy-to-clean plastic?”

“The move was my idea.” Haley Megrath, Hank’s sister, brought up the rear with an old oak chair. “If he’s going to bid on City Hall jobs, he may as well conduct business from one of their new rental spaces in the basement instead of in this derelict old mill a mile outside of town.”

Hank was counting. Twelve steps—eight to go. “It was my own idea,” Hank insisted. Thirteen. Fourteen. “You just agreed that it was a good one.”

“I’m the one who told you the City had decided to rent spaces.”

“And when you told me, I told you that Evelyn Bisset had already called me about it.”

“So, the suggestion had more punch coming from Jackie’s secretary.” Haley’s voice took on a deceptively casual but suggestive note. He refused to bite. He would not discuss Jackie Bourgeois. He’d neither forgotten nor forgiven her. It was unfortunate that she was mayor at this point in time, but she was. Still, there was little chance they’d have to deal with each other. The city manager handled the bids on city hall repairs, so Hank would be doing business with him.

“Hey,” Bart said with a grunt. “Let Haley take the credit. Electrical power comes and goes in that ancient building, and the roof leaks. When the time comes that you regret moving Whitcomb’s Wonders out of Chandler’s Mill and into City Hall, you can blame your little sister.”

“Hey!” Haley complained. “How’d you like an oak chair upside your head?”

Hank had reached the bottom of the stairs, but the hallway was too narrow for him to put the table down so they could catch their breath. He turned the bulky piece of furniture onto its side and aimed himself carefully out the door, angling the table so that Bart could follow with the legs at his end.

Snow flurried from a leaden sky, and Hank was instantly assailed by the cold of a western Massachusetts March afternoon, its harshness blunted by the delicious freshness of the air. Old snow crunched underfoot as he headed for the dark green van he’d bought to start his new life.

“Is this going to fit in there?” Bart asked, their pace considerably quickened now that they were outside.

“I measured it.” A former engineer for NASA, Hank checked and rechecked even the smallest detail of any project he undertook. He put down his end, climbed into the van, then reached out to pull the table in. He’d removed all the van’s seats to make room and now backed his way toward the driver’s seat as Bart lifted up on his end and pushed the table under the hatch door.

It was a snug fit. Bart took the chair from Haley and slipped it sideways between the table legs.

“Is this it?” Bart asked. “We’ve got a little room under the table. What about those files you had in boxes on the floor?”

Hank climbed over the front seat and let himself out the passenger door. Bart and Haley came around the side. “No, I’ll take those tomorrow. I’ve got to clean them out tonight. You guys go back to work and I’ll meet you for dinner at seven at the Yankee Inn.”

“I told you you don’t have to take us out to dinner,” Haley protested.

Bart had an arm around her and his thumb, Hank noticed, was unconsciously stroking the curve of her shoulder. In jeans and a fleece sweatshirt, her dark hair in one long braid and her cheeks pink from four hours of helping haul his office furniture up and down stairs, Haley looked about fourteen.

Bart had been good for her, Hank thought, though when he’d sent his friend to get her out of jail last August after a crisis on a space mission prevented Hank from leaving, he’d never imagined that his best friend and his little sister would fall in love. Haley still had the fearlessness that had encouraged her to challenge a crooked mayor and end up behind bars.

The sweetness she’d lost that fateful night five years ago when she and her fiancé had been attacked by thugs and he’d broken free and ran, abandoning her to her fate, was finally back. Thanks to the timely arrival on the scene of an off-duty policeman, she’d been rescued, though not before she’d lost her faith in men. But Bart had restored it. Hank saw implicit trust in her eyes when she looked into Bart’s face—as well as a hot, almost embarrassing passion that made Hank green with envy.

The lack of a personal life was part of the reason Hank had decided to come home to Maple Hill. NASA had hired him right out of the University of Southern California, and he’d spent the next fourteen years devoted to assisting in the exploration of space. One day six months ago, after he’d been up seventy hours when one of their space missions encountered a control problem, then finally landed safely, he realized he had no one to celebrate with. There were co-workers who understood the engineering problem and could share his happiness and relief that the astronauts were safely home. But there was no one who really knew what was in his heart.