Allison Leigh: A Montana Homecoming

She stared.

The house on the hill was his.

The house that was so incredibly beautiful. She’d spent more than one night watching the wooden and stone lines of it sleep in the moonlight when she hadn’t been able to find any such rest.

“You lived behind my father.”

“Yes.”

She didn’t know what to do with her hands. One was still tingling. The other felt cold.

She forced them to remain at her sides, fighting the burgeoning need to ring them together. “Who built the house?”

“I did.”

“You?”

“I’m capable, too,” he drawled, his voice impossibly dry.

She ignored the small jab, not doubting his capabilities for a second. The man undoubtedly exceeded “capable” on every front.

Dear Reader,

Well, we’re getting into the holiday season full tilt, and what better way to begin the celebrations than with some heartwarming reading? Let’s get started with Gina Wilkins’s The Borrowed Ring, next up in her FAMILY FOUND series. A woman trying to track down her family’s most mysterious and intriguing foster son finds him and a whole lot more—such as a job posing as his wife! A Montana Homecoming, by popular author Allison Leigh, brings home a woman who’s spent her life running from her own secrets. But they’re about to be revealed, courtesy of her childhood crush, now the local sheriff.

This month, our class reunion series, MOST LIKELY TO…, brings us Jen Safrey’s Secrets of a Good Girl, in which we learn that the girl most likely to…do everything disappeared right after college. Perhaps her secret crush, a former professor, can have some luck tracking her down overseas? We’re delighted to have bestselling Blaze author Kristin Hardy visit Special Edition in the first of her HOLIDAY HEARTS books. Where There’s Smoke introduces us to the first of the devastating Trask brothers. The featured brother this month is a handsome firefighter in Boston. And speaking of delighted—we are absolutely thrilled to welcome RITA ®Award nominee and Red Dress Ink and Intimate Moments star Karen Templeton to Special Edition. Although this is her first Special Edition contribution, it feels as if she’s coming home. Especially with Marriage, Interrupted, in which a pregnant widow meets up once again with the man who got away—her first husband—at her second husband’s funeral. We know you’re going to enjoy this amazing story as much as we did. And we are so happy to welcome brand-new Golden Heart winner Gail Barrett to Special Edition. Where He Belongs, the story of the bad boy who’s come back to town to the girl he’s never been able to forget, is Gail’s first published book.

So enjoy—and remember, next month we continue our celebration….

Gail Chasan

Senior Editor

www.millsandboon.co.uk

For my girls, Amanda and Anna Claire.

I’m so very proud of you both.

Love, Mom.

started early by writing a Halloween play that her grade-school class performed. Since then, though her tastes have changed, her love for reading has not. And her writing appetite simply grows more voracious by the day.

She has been a finalist in the RITA ®Award and the Holt Medallion contests. But the true highlights of her day as a writer are when she receives word from a reader that they laughed, cried or lost a night of sleep while reading one of her books.

Born in Southern California, Allison has lived in several different cities in four different states. She has been, at one time or another, a cosmetologist, a computer programmer and a secretary. She has recently begun writing full-time after spending nearly a decade as an administrative assistant for a busy neighborhood church, and currently makes her home in Arizona with her family. She loves to hear from her readers, who can write to her at P.O. Box 40772, Mesa, AZ 85274-0772.

Dear Gram,

Coming home to Lucius after twelve years hasn’t been easy. I’d forgotten what it’s like to live in a small town. Everyone wants to know if I’m here to stay, if I’m going to sell Daddy’s house, if I’ll take a job at the local school. And then there’s Shane Golightly. He’s the town sheriff now, and he lives next door. He’s really been looking out for me—even though sometimes I feel like he’s just being overprotective, it’s been nice to have him around. I can’t even seem to get a good night’s sleep anymore unless he’s nearby. I think I might be falling for him again but I’m so afraid—afraid of getting hurt, afraid of hurting him, but mostly just afraid of facing the past I left behind. I wish you were here, Gram. I miss you.

Love,

Laurel

Prologue

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

Epilogue

“What do you mean you’re leaving?” Laurel sat up, clutching her cotton dress to her chest. Her bare back felt itchy from straw that only a half hour earlier had felt like the sweetest of mattresses. And there was a horrible hole yawning open inside her.

Shane didn’t look at her. He yanked his T-shirt over his head. His thick hair looked more brown than blond in the dwindling light of the ancient barn and was messy, as much from her fingers as from the shirt. “I have classes.” His deep voice was clipped.

“Starting tomorrow?” She couldn’t hide her disbelief. She knew good and well that Shane’s graduate school classes weren’t beginning for another few weeks. She knew, because he’d told her so himself.

His gaze finally slanted toward her, and he crouched next to her, leaned toward her—making her heart stop with hope that he really couldn’t be serious about leaving her, not like this, not now, after they’d—

He plucked his sock from the straw beside her, and his hand brushed her bare thigh as he pulled back, straightening. He didn’t even bother to sit on one of the hay bales. Simply balanced easily on one foot and drew on the sock, then did the same for the other, then shoved his feet into his scuffed athletic shoes.

Her eyes burned. “Did I do something wrong?”

He made a low sound. Shoved his hands through his hair. “Laurel—”

Laurel. Not songbird, which he’d been calling her for weeks now.

It had been her first time. But not his. “I didn’t cry because it hurt, Shane, I—”

“God, Laurel.” He kicked the bales of hay so hard that suddenly the top one tumbled off the stack and landed with a thud. A cloud of dust and bits billowed out, making her wince and squint against the shower of debris.

He swore again, which made Laurel’s eyes burn even more, because Shane just didn’t swear.

“I should never have touched you. I’m twenty-three. You’re barely eighteen.”

“But I am eighteen.” Her voice was thick with tears, which wasn’t at all the way she wanted to sound. She scrambled to her feet, awkwardly pulling her dress over her shoulders and fumbling with the buttons that ran all the way down the front. But her fingers couldn’t seem to match up any of the buttons with the proper holes and she finally just clutched it together at her waist. “And we love each other.” Didn’t they?