Man With A Miracle

Man With A Miracle
Muriel Jensen

Sometimes a girl needs a miracle…Beazie Deadham is alone and on the run. She witnessed the murder of her boss in an underground parking lot in Boston, and accepted an incriminating tape from him, which he told her to deliver to "Evan" in Maple Hill. Now the perpetrators of the crime are after her as well as the tape.This man has one!Evan Braga has moved to quiet Maple Hill, Massachusetts, to escape his past as a big-city cop. He's also trying to sort out the guilt he feels over his brother's death. He's not looking for all the trouble that gorgeous redhead Beazie Deadham drops on his doorstep. Especially once he discovers that Beazie was mixed up with his brother, and his brother might have been mixed up with the tape Beazie's trying so hard to unload.But when the Boston thugs track Beazie down, Evan–and his family, who show up unexpectedly at Christmas–would go to the ends of the earth to protect her!

“What are you doing?”

He grabbed her under the arms and tried to haul her up. She struggled against him and they both went down. This time her head collided with his arm as she fell, dislodging her watch cap. What he saw in the glow of the headlights made him stare in shock and anger.

Her luxurious red hair had been cut off so that it was barely longer than his, and it was…purple.

“I’m leaving!” she said, swinging at him with her plastic bag.

“Beazie!” Her name escaped him in a kind of gasp. He couldn’t believe she’d done it, though he realized it was probably her most recognizable feature.

He forced his attention away from the atrocity perpetrated against her hair, handed her the hat so she could put it back on and made himself focus on the more important issue.

“To go where?”

“Anywhere a cab will take me!” she replied. “I got the tape to you, so my job is done.”

“Beazie, your life is in danger.”

“Not anymore. Now you have the tape….”

Dear Reader,

Happy Holidays from Astoria, Oregon, where it rains at Christmas rather than snows. Still, the Christmas spirit is alive in our hearts and visible everywhere. Though Astoria does not have a town square, it resembles my description of Maple Hill, with Christmas lights, garlands stretched across the main street from sidewalk to sidewalk and wreaths circling the old-fashioned globe streetlights. One Christmas bonus Astoria has that’s missing in Maple Hill is a parade of boats strung with lights from stem to stern.

In the light of day, Astoria is a very different setting from Maple Hill. We’re positioned at the mouth of the Columbia River, on a fairly steep slope that runs down to the water. Many artists and writers live here, claiming the river to be a creative source.

I love it here. Rain never drowns out our enthusiasm. In fact, we have umbrella parades to honor it. For the most part, people are warm and loving, and because we’re a small town, we’re a community of friends. That warmth supports and sustains me every day, and makes it easy to sit in my second-floor office in the middle of a monsooning February and create a Christmas atmosphere.

I wish you all the blessings of the season, and your own personal Astoria.

Muriel

Man with a Miracle

Muriel Jensen

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

CONTENTS

PROLOGUE

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

CHAPTER FOURTEEN

CHAPTER FIFTEEN

CHAPTER SIXTEEN

PROLOGUE

June 10, 2001

EVAN BRAGA WIPED HIS FACE with a towel as he hurried into the locker room of the Hatfield Gym, remembering belatedly that he’d promised to trade shifts with Halloran tonight. Someone else would have to host the Sunday-night poker game of the Boston PD’s Cambridge Division. He went to the bench where he’d left his gym bag and stopped in confusion when he found nothing there. Then he spotted the bag under the bench and yanked it out. Ripping open the zipper, he pushed his sweatshirt aside and reached in for his cell phone.

His hand stopped. His heart stopped. His brain stopped. He was paralyzed.

Only his eyes seemed to be working, and he couldn’t believe what he was seeing. Cash. Lots of it, neatly bundled in banded packets. One-hundred dollar bundles. Five-hundred dollar bundles.

He felt his mouth open, but no sound came out.

He was alone in the quiet room. He could hear the ticking clock, the sound of someone in the showers on the other side of the wall, shouts and laughter from the gym floor.

He had zipped the bag closed and was trying to figure out what in the hell was going on, when he saw the plastic tag looped around the handle of the bag. New England Insurance, it read. This was Blaine’s bag. Their parents had given them identical gym bags and matching sweatshirts last Christmas, but his younger brother was the one usually mixing them up—not Evan.

His heart lurched uncomfortably. He knew Blaine and Sheila had been having financial problems, but what was his brother doing with banded bills in large denominations, in his insurance business?

He felt a sort of fraternal panic, and the only thought in his head that made sense told him to get the bag and Blaine out of there as fast as he could.

Jerking open his locker, he threw on a pair of blue sweats, grasped the handle of the bag firmly and headed for the gym.