A Cold Creek Homecoming

A Cold Creek Homecoming
RaeAnne Thayne

She was the last person he ever expected to seeFifteen years later, Quinn Southerland still hadn’t forgiven Tess Claybourne for treating him like the dirt beneath her boots. But the widowed nurse tending his ailing mother was a world away from the spoiled homecoming queen Quinn had known.Yet she was just as achingly beautiful, still arousing the old bittersweet longing for something he could never have. Or could he? That fierce attraction still burned between them. This could be their second chance – if they let love lead them where their hearts longed to go…

“What did you wish?” Quinn asked,

a gruff note to his voice.

Tess made a face. “If I tell you, it won’t come true. Don’t you know anything about wishes?”

Right now, he could tell her a thing or two about wanting something he shouldn’t. That sensuous heat wrapped tighter around his insides. “I know enough. For instance, I know sometimes wishes can be completely ridiculous and make no sense. For instance, right now, I wish I could kiss you. Don’t ask me why. I don’t even like you.”

Her eyes looked huge and green in her delicate face as she stared at him. “OK,” she said, her voice breathy.

“OK, I can kiss you? Or, OK, you won’t ask why I want to?”

She let out a ragged-sounding breath. “Either. Both.”

He didn’t need much more of an invitation than that. Without allowing himself to stop and think, he stepped forward and covered her mouth with his.

Available in July 2010

from Mills & Boon®

Special Moments™

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Daddy by Surprise by Debra Salonen

A Kid to the Rescue by Susan Gable

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Then Comes Baby by Helen Brenna

The Sheikh and the Bought Bride by Susan Mallery

A Cold Creek Homecoming by RaeAnne Thayne

A Baby for the Bachelor by Victoria Pade

The Baby Album by Roz Denny Fox

A Cold Creek

Homecoming

BY

RaeAnne Thayne

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

RaeAnne Thayne finds inspiration in the beautiful northern Utah mountains, where she lives with her husband and three children. Her books have won numerous honours, including three RITA® Award nominations from Romance Writers of America and a Career Achievement Award from Romantic Times BOOKreviews magazine. RaeAnne loves to hear from readers and can be reached through her website at www.raeannethayne.com.

In memory of my dear aunt, Arlene Wood,

for afghans and parachutes and ceramic frogs.

I only wish I’d dedicated one to you before!

And to Jennifer Black, my sister and hero,

for helping her pass with peace and dignity.

Chapter One

“You’re home!”

The thin, reedy voice whispering from the frail woman on the bed was nothing like Quinn Southerland remembered.

Though she was small in stature, Jo Winder’s voice had always been firm and commanding, just like the rest of her personality. When she used to call them in for supper, he and the others could hear her voice ringing out loud and clear from one end of the ranch to the other. No matter where they were, they knew the moment they heard that voice, it was time to go back to the house.

Now the woman who had done so much to raise him—the toughest woman he had ever known—seemed a tiny, withered husk of herself, her skin papery and pale and her voice barely audible.

The cracks in his heart from watching her endure the long months and years of her illness widened a little more. To his great shame, he had a sudden impulse to run away, to escape back to Seattle and his business and the comfortable life he had created for himself there, where he could pretend this was all some kind of bad dream and she was immortal, as he had always imagined.

Instead, he forced himself to step forward to the edge of the bed, where he carefully folded her bony fingers in his own much larger ones, cursing the cancer that was taking away this woman he loved so dearly.

He gave her his most charming smile, the one that never failed to sway any woman in his path, whether in the boardroom or the bedroom.

“Where else would I be but right here, darling?”

The smile she offered in return was rueful and she lifted their entwined fingers to her cheek. “You shouldn’t have come. You’re so busy in Seattle.”

“Never too busy for my best girl.”

Her laugh was small but wryly amused, as it always used to be when he would try to charm his way out of trouble with her.

Jo wasn’t the sort who could be easily charmed but she never failed to appreciate the effort.