Holiday Homecoming

Holiday Homecoming
Mary Anne Wilson

Point Of No Return–Or Starting Point?A bet brings Cain Stone–or Stone Cold, as they call him in Las Vegas–home for the holidays. But after a few days of skiing and reminiscing, he plans to leave Silver Creek and all its painful memories of life in an orphanage behind him for good.Then he runs into Holly Winston.The little girl who used to yell at him to stay off her mountain has grown into a gutsy woman with a temper to match. Unfortunately, she holds him responsible for her family's ruin.Risk-taking Cain is lucky in business–but since seeing Holly, luck in love is what's on his mind. But is Holly a woman who can forgive and forget?

“How could I have destroyed your life?” Cain wanted to know

Holly would have stood, but he was right there, and any move she made would have propelled her straight into him. She didn’t want to touch him, not now. “Please, this is ridiculous” was all she told him, sure she sounded as panicked as she felt. “I just need to go. Forget that I said anything. It doesn’t matter, not at all. Not anymore.”

“You bet it does,” he said, the harshness in his words almost making her flinch. “You know, all my life people have accused me of things that they thought I did. From the start. Back at the orphanage. Right on through the rest of my life.” His eyes narrowed as he looked at her. “I hate the idea of you doing that, too. I really hate it.”

She did flinch at that. She heard her own voice, but it sounded distant and odd.

“Then we’re even, aren’t we?”

Dear Reader,

Cain Stone has always been a gambler and a risk taker. But when he goes home to Silver Creek and meets single mother Holly Winston, he realizes from the start that the gamble he takes getting close to her and her tiny daughter has higher odds than anything he’s ever known.

Holly isn’t into taking chances. She’s tried it and paid for it. At this stage in her life, opening her heart to anyone is a risk she won’t take—until Cain Stone walks into her neatly arranged world.

I’ve always been intrigued by the concept of opposites attracting, and when the stakes are high, this is even more compelling. In Holiday Homecoming, the third installment in my RETURN TO SILVER CREEK four-book series, opposites not only attract, they find themselves in a world neither has entered before. It’s all about love and all about trust, the very elements that neither has experienced.

I hope you enjoy the journey of Holly and Cain as they find each other and each takes the biggest gamble of their life.

Holiday Homecoming

Mary Anne Wilson

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

For Joe Geisler

For being part of our family,

For being a terrific father.

Love, Mary Anne

Books by Mary Anne Wilson

HARLEQUIN AMERICAN ROMANCE

1003—PREDICTING RAIN? * (#litres_trial_promo)

1005—WINNING SARA’S HEART * (#litres_trial_promo)

1009—WHEN MEGAN SMILES… * (#litres_trial_promo)

1062—DISCOVERING DUNCAN † (#litres_trial_promo)

1078—JUDGING JOSHUA † (#litres_trial_promo)

Contents

Prologue (#u86b29981-d4c9-511d-b0da-2285bfc90081)

Chapter One (#u29b6535e-6303-59b5-b626-98729b4c2932)

Chapter Two (#u3780767c-e523-50fd-bf50-7cc57c36e919)

Chapter Three (#u72694a61-fcdf-58ec-8f5c-0af1a3a0787e)

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)

Chapter Twelve (#litres_trial_promo)

Chapter Thirteen (#litres_trial_promo)

Chapter Fourteen (#litres_trial_promo)

Epilogue (#litres_trial_promo)

Prologue

Las Vegas, Nevada

One month earlier

“I’m not going back to Silver Creek,” Cain Stone said. “I don’t have the time—or the inclination to make the time. Besides, it’s not my home.”

The man he was talking to, Jack Prescott, shook his head, then motioned with both hands at Caine’s sterile penthouse. It was done in black and white—black marble floors, white stone fireplace, white leather furniture. The only splash of color came from the sofa pillows, which were various shades of red. “And this is?”

The Dream Catcher Hotel and Casino on the Strip in Las Vegas was a place to be. The place Cain worked. The part of the world that he owned. His place. But his home? No. He’d never had one. “It’s my place,” he said honestly.

Jack, an angular man, with almost shoulder-length dark hair peppered with gray, who was dressed as usual in faded jeans, an open-necked navy shirt and his well-worn leather boots, leaned back in the semicircular couch to face the bank of windows that looked down on the city sprawling twenty stories below. “Cain, come on. You haven’t been back in years, and it’s the holidays.”