Sandra Field - Untouched

“You and I are alike—we’re both risk takers, Jenessa!” “You and I are alike—we’re both risk takers, Jenessa!” Then Finn reached out for her, his arms hard around her waist. This time his intention was quite clear: he was going to kiss her. “Don’t, Finn—please don’t. You’re changing everything, and I don’t want that.” “You can’t fool me—you don’t play it safe any more than I do.” “There are some risks I choose not to take. Getting involved with you is one of them!” Title Page Untouched Sandra Field 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 EPILOGUE Copyright

“You and I are alike—we’re both risk takers, Jenessa!”

Then Finn reached out for her, his arms hard around her waist. This time his intention was quite clear: he was going to kiss her.

“Don’t, Finn—please don’t. You’re changing everything, and I don’t want that.”

“You can’t fool me—you don’t play it safe any more than I do.”

“There are some risks I choose not to take. Getting involved with you is one of them!”

Although born in England, SANDRA FIELD has lived most of her life in Canada. While she enjoys traveling, and passing on her sense of a new place, she often chooses to write about the city that is now her home. Sandra says, “I write out of my experience. I have learned that love with its joys and its pains is all-important. I hope this knowledge enriches my writing, and touches a chord in you, the reader.”

Look out for Sandra Field’s next book,

HONEYMOON FOR THREE, next year!

Cory wanted a baby—no strings attached! Her exhusband had done more than enough to convince her that men were surplus to requirements. Apart from one basic detail—she needed a lover. Someone who would make a baby...then a convenient exit. Slade Redden fulfilled all her criteria. But their lovemaking had left him wanting...more! He didn’t want a one-off deal—he wanted Cory for always. It took only one night to make a baby. Slade had nine months to make a wife!

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Untouched

Sandra Field

www.millsandboon.co.uk

CHAPTER ONE

JENESSA REED swung her four-wheel-drive Toyota into Ryan’s driveway and turned off the ignition. What she needed was a hot shower, a home-cooked meal and ten hours of sleep. In that order. Picking up her haversack from the passenger seat, she climbed out of the van and for a moment surveyed Ryan’s house with rueful affection.

The architecture, she had long ago decided, could only be labelled Newfoundland Eccentric. The core of the house was square, two-storey and altogether unremarkable, but over the years Ryan had added two porches, a sunroom, a root cellar, a studio where he did folk art that sold like hotcakes to the tourists, and a couple of balconies from which to survey a view that was far from inspiring. Some of these additions had been painted, some not. Two were askew. The overall effect expressed perfectly Ryan’s innate exuberance and his total lack of interest in what his neighbours might think.

‘I’m home,’ Jenessa called, heading for the back porch.

The door opened. ‘About time,’ Ryan grumbled, taking her haversack and urging her indoors. ‘And me with a new job all lined up for you.’

‘Oh, no,’ Jenessa groaned, ‘I’ve got to recover from the last one first.’

He poured two mugs of ink-black tea from the pot that sat all day long on the stove and said unsympathetically, ‘A wild-goose chase makes more sense than tryin’ to sight whales in late August.’

She had been guiding a small group of German tourists, who under her tutelage had bagged their limit of Atlantic salmon and had then requested to be shown whales. ‘I drove the entire length of the northern peninsula, just about froze to death out on the ocean and was seasick twice.’ Jenessa grinned. ‘But we saw fin whales, humpbacks and porpoises—so my clients were happy.’

‘Hope they tipped good.’

‘Enough so I don’t need another job right away.’

‘You’re to meet some guy by the name of Finn Marston tomorrow night on the late flight. Said he’d explain what he wanted when he got here.’

‘How long does he want me for?’ she said in a resigned voice.

‘Didn’t say. Forceful kind of guy—didn’t give me much chance to get a word in edgeways. Plus it was a lousy connection—he was callin’ from some place in Indonesia.’

Anyone who could prevent Ryan from taking his fair share of the conversation had her instant respect. ‘Indonesia...did he speak good English?’ she asked. She had spent ten days in July trying to teach the intricacies of fly-fishing to three admittedly very handsome but unilingual Spaniards.

‘Yeah... he’s Canadian, by the sound of him.’

‘I wonder why he’s coming?’ Jenessa said. ‘I suppose he wants to catch the last of the fishing season ... I’ll tell you one thing—he’d better not have ocean-going mammals on his list.’

She levered the lid off the can sitting on the table and helped herself to one of Ryan’s molasses cookies. ‘You made these because you knew I’d be back today, didn’t you?’ she added, smiling across at Ryan. He never hugged her when she came home, but he would make sure she had all her favourite things to eat.

‘Gotta put some flesh on your bones,’ Ryan muttered. He was a small man, no taller than her five feet eight, and wiry as a fox, his beard and hair still showing vestiges of their former fiery red, his eyes a snapping brown. He was her one tie to a life that had fallen apart when she was thirteen; Jenessa valued him both for that and for himself. Father-surrogate and true friend—not a bad combination, and one she knew she was fortunate to have.

Taking another cookie, she said with a caution that in the past had often been justified, ‘You did tell this Finn Marston that I’m a woman, right?’

Ryan dunked his cookie in his tea. ‘Well, now, not sure I did. Like I said, I didn’t get much chance to talk. This guy’s more used to givin’ orders than listenin’ to other people, I’d say.’

‘Ryan, I wish you wouldn’t do that to me,’ Jenessa complained. ‘I hate turning up at the airport when someone’s expecting a six-foot hunk of brawn in a red flannel shirt and what they get is me instead. All you have to do when you’re talking to them is use the correct pronoun—she. One short word and that does it.’

Ryan and she had had this discussion before. ‘And lots of them wouldn’t hire you then; you know that as well as I do, Jenny. I keeps my mouth shut, they get the best guide this side of Gander airport—and we’re all happy.’

Jenessa rolled her eyes. ‘You’re the best guide this side of anywhere—maybe you should go to the airport to meet the forceful Mr Marston.’

‘I taught you everythin’ I know and I’m too old to go crashin’ around in the woods.’ He leered at her. ‘More interestin’ things to do round home.’

Not all his interests lay in the areas of folk art and home improvements. Another of them was the widowed Mrs McCarthy, whose lemon meringue pie could have graced any restaurant in Toronto. ‘How’s Grace?’ Jenessa said on cue.

‘She’s fine,’ he answered airily. ‘Want some more tea?’

Ryan’s tea, taken in any quantity, would corrode a moose hide. ‘I’m going to clean up,’ Jenessa said. ‘Any messages for me?’