Anne Peters - Love, Marriage And Family 101

Cover Page

Excerpt October twenty-sixth marked Corinne’s fifteenth birthday. It fell on a Saturday. An afternoon at the beach, complete with a picnic supplied by Hally, was planned. Two nights ago, Corinne had made the final payback of the money she had “borrowed” from the cookie jar. She had earned it by cleaning Hally’s mother’s studio and washing her car every week, in addition to baby-sitting the kids next door every Monday after school. She was also getting paid now for doing chores at home. Mike owed it all to Hally. The woman was subtly, but inexorably becoming a major presence in their lives. A friend to his daughter. But what to him? It was a question that lately had been robbing him of sleep. Right along with, What did he want her to be to him?

Title Page Love, Marriage and Family 101 Anne Peters www.millsandboon.co.uk

About the Author ANNE PETERS shares her Pacific Northwest home with her husband, Manfred, and their aged dog, Adrienne. Anne treasures her family and friends, her private times, her creativity and, last but by no means least, her readers.

Chapter One

Chapter Two

Chapter Three

Chapter Four

Chapter Five

Chapter Six

Chapter Seven

Chapter Eight

Chapter Nine

Chapter Ten

Chapter Eleven

Copyright

It fell on a Saturday. An afternoon at the beach, complete with a picnic supplied by Hally, was planned.

Two nights ago, Corinne had made the final payback of the money she had “borrowed” from the cookie jar. She had earned it by cleaning Hally’s mother’s studio and washing her car every week, in addition to baby-sitting the kids next door every Monday after school. She was also getting paid now for doing chores at home.

Mike owed it all to Hally. The woman was subtly, but inexorably becoming a major presence in their lives. A friend to his daughter. But what to him?

It was a question that lately had been robbing him of sleep. Right along with, What did he want her to be to him?

www.millsandboon.co.uk

shares her Pacific Northwest home with her husband, Manfred, and their aged dog, Adrienne. Anne treasures her family and friends, her private times, her creativity and, last but by no means least, her readers.

Mr. Michael John Parker was fifteen minutes late.

Through the glass partition of her socalled office—the only private office available—Halloran McKenzie glared at the large clock on the far wall of the school gymnasium, fingertips doing an impatient drumroll on her battered metal desk. It was her opinion that since she’d been accommodating enough to agree to a meeting after school hours, the least Corinne Parker’s father could do was to show up on time.

It wasn’t as if she didn’t have plans of her own. This was the first day of her aerobics class and it was due to start in forty-five minutes. She owed it to her hips and thighs to be there. Not to mention that Garnet Bloomfield would think she’d once again reneged on her commitment to lose those saddlebags.

Impatience urged Hally to her feet. She paced the confines of her cubicle, thinking it was a good thing she’d at least had the foresight to change into her workout gear. This way she could be out of here and on her way the minute she was done laying down a few pertinent ground rules to the father of her truant young student. Provided he showed up within the next— Hello!

Hally’s dark thoughts careened to a halt as, through the glass in her door, her eyes homed in on the man dodging the junior varsity basketball team’s practice shots as he strode hurriedly toward her office in the back corner of the gym. Well, well.

If that was Mr. Parker—and who else would be bearing down on her office at this hour?—then he was everything she’d ever imagined a typical corporate army’s top general to look like: grim-faced and pulled-up socks to the max.

In other words, precisely the kind of father most redblooded teenagers would feel honor-bound to rebel against, not that that excused Corinne Parker’s absences and chronic tardiness. It did throw some light, however, on the girl’s penchant for grunge fashion and hacked-off bleached hair. No doubt she wanted to spite a father who expected his fourteen-year-old to wear pinafores and Mary Jane shoes.

Who should know better than she?

Hally pulled back from the glass a bit lest the man catch her watching his approach. She was appalled by the strength and instantaneousness of the antipathy she felt toward him, a man she’d never met It had been years, after all, since she had been a rebellious fourteen-year-old with a father whose only resemblance to the man approaching her office lay in the sternly set facial expression, the immaculate business suit and flawless haircut:

All of which, admittedly, provided quite a startling contrast to the sweaty group of scruffy adolescents he was skirting with preoccupied grace and agility.

And to their coach, too.

Oh, for heaven’s sake! Moving away from the door altogether, Hally impatiently chastised herself for that disloyal observation. After all, Gilbert Smith was her…well, “boyfriend” would do as well as anything else. And when he wasn’t in ratty sweats and red as a beet from yelling at his team, Gil looked quite presentable, too. She on the other hand…

Hally glanced down at herself dressed in workout clothes and was suddenly irrationally self-conscious about her appearance. She wished she hadn’t changed clothes, after all. More, she wished she already weighed five pounds less so that she wouldn’t look as if she were stuffed into her leotard like a five-foot sausage into its casing. And though she scolded herself for these unprecedented and idiotic thoughts and feelings, she frantically cast around for something with which to cover as much of her lessthan-perfect shape as possible.

She spotted a denim shirt and snatched it up. She had one arm in a sleeve when, after a cursory knock, the door opened.

“Ms. McKenzie?” It was the GQ cutout, of course. Entering at her distracted nod, he introduced himself. “Mike Parker. Sorry I’m late. Traffic…”

“That’s all right.” Struggling to appear composed, Hally fought to get her other arm into a maddeningly uncooperative garment.

“Here, let me…”

Mike Parker was helping her into the shirt with efficient courtesy before Hally could do more than stammer a flustered, “Th-thank you.”

Up close, the man was physically even more imposing than he had seemed across the gym. He towered over her by a good head. Heat radiated from him—it had been ninety degrees out at noon and now it was certainly hotter. He smelled of clean male, starched linen and crisp aftershave. Hally stepped away from him the instant her shirt settled across her shoulders.

Excruciatingly aware of the glance with which he swept her leotarded frame, she retreated behind her desk and sat, all the while bemoaning her uncharacteristic lapse in professional appearance and demeanor. Ordinarily, given her lack of physical stature and—to her—terminally cute blondness, to establish credibility she always strove to dress and conduct herself with reserved dignity during first meetings such as this.

Very much afraid that in this case she had totally blown it, she tried to regain some lost ground with a cool smile and a hand gesture that silently invited her visitor to sit, as well.