Blackberry Winter

Blackberry Winter
Cheryl Reavis

Mills & Boon Silhouette
I am illegitimate. But this was never a problem for me–it was just me and my mother against the world.Mother never told me much about her past, and after a couple of unanswered questions in childhood, I stopped asking. Now, Mother is sick, and she's decided to revisit the past–literally–by taking an unexpected trip to the mountains where she was born.I was worried; I was scared. I followed her. And my mother's journey became my journey, too. I discovered that I have a father–and my parents are still in love. Their life together just took a detour that lasted over forty years.Their relationship was like a blackberry winter…the colder the weather, the sweeter the berries in spring. And now that I've found the truth, will I have the strength to make it through my own blackberry winter?

Ain’t nothing but a stray away…

Loran had only just heard the quaint expression while she was waiting in the checkout line at the little discount store in the North Carolina mountains. Two old women had been talking about someone’s granddaughter, one who frequented places where she had no business being. And it wasn’t that the girl “hadn’t been raised” and didn’t know better, they had assured each other. It was that she apparently was just like Loran’s mother. Maddie knew better—but she did it anyway.

“Mother—”

“Loran, stop worrying. I’ll feel much better after I shower and eat something.”

“I wish I could believe you—you have no idea what it’s like having such a liar for a mother,” Loran said, and Maddie laughed.

“Ah, well. We all have our heavy burdens to bear.”

Loran kept driving. They weren’t far from the B and B now. Maddie did seem better. She was sitting up a little straighter, at any rate.

“You know what they say—if you don’t sow your wild oats when you’re young, you’ll sow them when you’re old.”

“Couldn’t you have picked someplace a little closer to home?”

“Home is a state of mind, my darling.”

Cheryl Reavis

Cheryl Reavis is an award-winning short-story and romance author who also writes under the name of Cinda Richards. She describes herself as a late bloomer who played in her first piano recital at the tender age of thirty. “We had to line up by height—I was the third smallest kid,” she says. “After that, there was no stopping me. I immediately gave myself permission to attempt my other heart’s desire—to write.” Her Silhouette Special Edition novel A Crime of the Heart reached millions of readers in Good Housekeeping magazine. Her books, The Prisoner, a Harlequin Historical title, and A Crime of the Heart and Patrick Gallagher’s Widow, both Silhouette Special Edition titles, are all Romance Writers of America/RITA

Award winners. One of Our Own received the Career Achievement Award for Best Innovative Series Romance from Romantic Times BOOKclub magazine. A former public health nurse, Cheryl makes her home in North Carolina with her husband.

Blackberry Winter

Cheryl Reavis

www.millsandboon.co.uk (http://www.millsandboon.co.uk)

For my editor, Tara Gavin, and my agent,

Maureen Moran. Thank you both

for bringing shovels.

With appreciation to Dawn Aldridge Poore,

fellow writer and my “mountain friend,”

who graciously answered all my questions

about the Appalachian experience.

Any mistakes are mine, not hers.

And special thanks to Linda Buechting and

Janet Wisst, and to Pat Kay, Lois Dyer,

Julia Mozingo, Myrna Temte, Lisette Belisle,

Laurie Campbell, Chris Flynn and

Allison Davidson—for their wisdom,

encouragement and boundless generosity.

CONTENTS

PROLOGUE

CHAPTER 1

CHAPTER 2

CHAPTER 3

CHAPTER 4

CHAPTER 5

CHAPTER 6

CHAPTER 7

CHAPTER 8

CHAPTER 9

CHAPTER 10

CHAPTER 11

CHAPTER 12

CHAPTER 13

CHAPTER 14

CHAPTER 15