The Sheriff And The Impostor Bride

The Sheriff And The Impostor Bride
Elizabeth Bevarly

Letter to Reader (#u0db06ca9-49a4-5646-b009-cf2fb6ab6f8b)Title Page (#u451c5921-8e0d-5275-9f28-7c8ea4401c3b)Acknowledgments (#udcf6a3fd-2387-5c94-9b97-cef4ca3f7313)About the Author (#ue4582a05-b31c-563a-80e5-536a1164b5e1)Dedication (#ub9ac294c-4a32-595b-9845-2050a05a5031)Chapter One (#uff876570-4263-50fe-b408-706bb89bcdbe)Chapter Two (#u720bd302-b48d-5f82-beb6-0537c4764bd5)Chapter Three (#u2513dfe5-759a-5e3e-9b74-6344c51b7938)Chapter Four (#litres_trial_promo)Chapter Five (#litres_trial_promo)Chapter Six (#litres_trial_promo)Chapter Seven (#litres_trial_promo)Chapter Eight (#litres_trial_promo)Chapter Nine (#litres_trial_promo)Chapter Ten (#litres_trial_promo)Chapter Eleven (#litres_trial_promo)Teaser chapter (#litres_trial_promo)Copyright (#litres_trial_promo)

Powerful, prominent, proud—the Oklahoma Wentworths’ greatest fortune was family. So when they discovered that pregnant mom-to-be Sabrina Jensen was carrying the newest Wentworth heir—and had vanished without a trace—they vowed to...Follow That Baby!

Rachel Jensen: The wild twin with a penchant for scrapes, she’d always found gentle words and comforting hugs from Sabrina. But now her straight-and-narrow sister was alone—and expecting—so Rachel transformed herself into the take-charge twin whose only weakness was...

Riley Hunter: This small-town sheriff craved more than desk duty drudgery, so the prospect of a mom-to-be on the hoof was particularly enticing. But when he met the alleged runaway face-to-face, he discovered he was in way over his head....

Sabrina Jensen: With precious little time before her baby’s birth, Sabrina was still keeping mum about her mystery nest and keeping fit with Lamaze classes, where a fellow first-timer felt moved to alert the mighty Wentworths....

Don’t miss

THE MILLIONAIRE AND THE PREGNANT PAUPER

by Christie Ridgway, next month’s Follow That Baby

title, available in Yours Truly.

Dear Reader,

All of us at Silhouette Desire send you our best wishes for a joyful holiday season. December brings six original, deeply touching love stories warm enough to melt your heart!

This month, bestselling author Cait London continues her beloved miniseries THE TALLCHIEFS with the story of MAN OF THE MONTH Nick Palladin in The Perfect Fit. This corporate cowboy’s attempt to escape his family’s matchmaking has him escorting a Tallchief down the aisle. Silhouette Desire welcomes the cross-line continuity FOLLOW THAT BABY to the line with Elizabeth Bevarly’s The Sheriff and the Impostor Bride. And those irresistible bad-boy James brothers return in Cindy Gerald’s Marriage, Outlaw Style, part of the OUTLAW HEARTS miniseries. When a headstrong bachelor and his brassy-but-beautiful childhood rival get stranded, they wind up in a 61b., 12oz. bundle of trouble!

Talented author Susan Crosby’s third book in THE LONE WOLVES miniseries, His Ultimate Temptation, will entrance you with this hero’s primitive, unyielding desire to protect his once-wife and their willful daughter. A rich playboy sweeps a sensible heroine from her humdrum life in Shawna Delacorte’s Cinderella story, The Millionaire’s Christmas Wish. And Eileen Wilks weaves an emotional, edge-of-your-seat drama about a fierce cop and the delicate lady who poses as his newlywed bride in Just a Little Bit Married?

These poignant, sensuous books fill any Christmas stocking—and every reader’s heart with the glow of holiday romance.

Enjoy!

Best regards,

Joan Marlow Golan

Senior Editor

Please address questions and book requests to:

Silhouette Reader Service

U.S.: 3010 Walden Ave., P.O. Box 1325, Buffalo, NY 14269

Canadian: P.O. Box 609, Fort Erie, Ont. L2A 5X3

The Sheriff and the Impostor Bride

Elizabeth Bevarly

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

Special thanks and acknowledgment are given to Elizabeth Bevarly for her contribution to the Follow That Baby series.

ELIZABETH BEVARLY

is an honors graduate of the University of Louisville and achieved her dream of writing full-time before she even turned thirty! At heart, she is also an avid voyager who once helped navigate a friend’s thirty-five-foot sailboat across the Bermuda Triangle. “I really love to travel,” says this self-avowed beach burn. “To me, it’s the best education a person can give to herself.” Her dream is to one day have her own sailboat, a beautifully renovated older model forty-two-footer, and to enjoy the freedom and tranquillity seafaring can bring. Elizabeth likes to think she has a lot in common with the characters she creates—people who know love and life go hand in hand. And she’s getting some firsthand experience with motherhood, as well—she and her husband have a four-year-old son, Eli.

For Mom and Aunt Dot—

my favorite set of twins.

One

Lost in thought as he scribbled down his latest report on the notorious howling Barker family, Sheriff Riley Hunter jerked open the bottom right-hand drawer of his desk, felt around blindly, then frowned when his fingers encountered nothing but a stack of Louis L’Amour paperbacks. He pushed his chair away from the desk, shoved his ink black, razor-straight, shoulder-length hair out of his eyes, and gazed down at the drawer. The big empty space beside the battered novels, exactly the size of a box of Lorna Doone cookies, attested to the severity of the crime.

Theft, plain and simple, had come to Wallace Canyon, Oklahoma. What was the world coming to?

Who the hell had run off with his stash of Lorna Doones? Riley wondered, his anger compounding. Virgil, doubtless, he decided. His deputy sheriff had an even bigger sweet tooth than Riley had, and regardless of the fact that Virgil Bybee was sworn to uphold the law, he’d probably figured that a crime like Lorna Doone pilfering would go unnoticed in a dinky little community like Wallace Canyon.

And who had named it Wallace Canyon anyway? Riley wondered further, not for the first time since his self-inflicted relocation here six months earlier. There were no canyons in the Oklahoma panhandle. Wallace Flat would have been much more appropriate. Still, he’d learned almost right away that in Wallace Canyon, not a whole lot made sense. Mainly because not a whole lot happened.

“Virgil!” he called out as he unfolded his slim, six-foot frame from behind his desk. “Where the hell are my Lorna Doones?”

Riley cocked his head to listen for any incriminating sounds of cookie crunching or falling crumb, but the only thing he heard was the faint crackle of Rosario’s radio down the hall, tuned to the only country-western station—hell, the only radio station, period—within earshot of the tiny town. The soft, easy crooning of a female voice soothed him some. Patsy Cline, he realized with a fond smile when he listened harder. Wasn’t nobody singing today who could touch that woman. No, sir.

“Virgil!” he tried again, pushing the thought away.

The slow scuff of boots along the linoleum outside Riley’s office eventually found its way down the hall. Then Virgil Bybee’s head appeared in Riley’s doorway, halfway down, as if the younger man were bent at the waist and unwilling to reveal anything below the neck.

Incriminating behavior if ever there was such a thing, Riley decided, his instincts, as always, unimpeachable. He hadn’t survived almost ten years on the Tulsa PD because of his good luck and good looks alone, after all.

“You bellowed?” Virgil asked mildly.

“Where the hell are my Lorna Doones?” Riley demanded again without preamble.

“Shoot, Riley, how should I know?” But anxiously, Virgil swiped his fingers across his upper lip.

Riley reared his head back, settled one hand on a trim hip, the other on the butt of his pistol, and noticed that Virgil duly noted the stance. For one long moment, he said nothing. Then he stated with all the menace he could muster, “Virgil, I want those cookies apprehended and returned to my jurisdiction—namely this here drawer—” he pointed down at the cookies’ usual resting place “—no later than three o’clock this afternoon. You got that?”

Virgil nodded silently, his shaggy blond hair falling over his forehead with the gesture, his blue eyes widening at the warning. Then, before Riley had a chance to comment further, the deputy flung his arm out, rattling the piece of flimsy paper attached to his hand. “This came in over the fax a few minutes ago,” he announced as he straightened, fairly dancing with excitement.

Riley narrowed his dark eyes as he stepped around his desk. Not much came over the Wallace Canyon PD fax machine. Mostly things meant for other fax machines that the sender had misdialed. “What is it?”

“It looks like an APB,” Virgil said eagerly, finally moving fully into the doorway. “A regular manhunt.”

Riley took a moment to note that there was no evidence of cookie crumbs on the deputy’s uniform—identical to his own—of khaki shirt and trousers, but you never knew about some people. Although Riley’s trusting nature had gotten him into trouble on more than one occasion, he decided to give Virgil the benefit of the doubt on this one. The man’s agitation was clearly the result of the notice in his hand, and not some sugar-induced rush. Besides, Rosario, their receptionist-secretary-dispatcher was a notorious shortbread lover, herself. There was no end to the list of possible suspects.

“A manhunt?” Riley repeated, crossing the tiny office in a half-dozen long-legged strides.