Heard It Through the Grapevine

Heard It Through the Grapevine
Teresa Hill

THE STICK TURNED BLUE!Preacher's daughter and wholesome "good girl" Cathie Baldwin knew better than to find herself unwed and pregnant. But what miracle could save her and her family from the ultimate shame now?MARRY ME…SORT OFAs if in answer to a prayer, in walked Matt Monroe, former bad-boy turned millionaire businessman. Dark, dangerous, yet blessedly familiar, Matt proposed a temporary marriage of convenience. The brooding loner had always tugged Cathie's heart by invisible strings, yet even now her elusive husband could not be tamed. Would her greatest moment of need reveal the true depths of Matt's feelings for his beloved family?

“I love you, Matt.

“For what you’re doing for me and the baby,” Cathie rushed on breathlessly.

Matt understood what she meant but found himself remembering the last time he’d heard those words. They’d come from Cathie then, too. She’d been sixteen.

He’d thrown the words back in her face as if they hadn’t meant a thing to him. Love seemed to come so easily to her. It was one of the things that had fascinated the crazy, half-wild boy he used to be.

He wanted to tell her there was nothing to love. That it was all an illusion.

But her words now rolled oddly around inside him, his brain, his chest and the pit of his stomach.

I love you, Matt.

Just words. They’d scared him to death all those years ago. Yet they sounded so different to him now….

Dear Reader,

Welcome to more juicy reads from Silhouette Special Edition. I’d like to highlight Silhouette veteran and RITA

Award finalist Teresa Hill, who has written over ten Silhouette books under the pseudonym Sally Tyler Hayes. Her second story for us, Heard It Through the Grapevine, has all the ingredients for a fast-paced read—marriage of convenience, a pregnant preacher’s daughter and a handsome hero to save the day. Teresa Hill writes, “I love this heroine because she takes a tremendous leap of faith. She hopes that her love will break down the hero’s walls, and she never holds back.” Don’t miss this touching story!

USA TODAY bestselling and award-winning author Susan Mallery returns to her popular miniseries HOMETOWN HEARTBREAKERS with One in a Million. Here, a sassy single mom falls for a drop-dead-gorgeous FBI agent, but sets a few ground rules—a little romance, no strings attached. Of course, we know rules are meant to be broken! Victoria Pade delights us with The Baby Surprise, the last in her BABY TIMES THREE miniseries, in which a confirmed bachelor discovers he may be a father. With encouragement from a beautiful heroine, he feels ready to be a parent…and a husband.

The next book in Laurie Paige’s SEVEN DEVILS miniseries, The One and Only features a desirable medical assistant with a secret past who snags the attention of a very charming doctor. Judith Lyons brings us Alaskan Nights, which involves two opposites who find each other irritating, yet totally irresistible! Can these two survive a little engine trouble in the wilderness? In A Mother’s Secret, Pat Warren tells of a mother in search of her secret child and the discovery of the man of her dreams.

This month is all about love against the odds and finding that special someone when you least expect it. As you lounge in your favorite chair, lose yourself in one of these gems!

Sincerely,

Karen Taylor Richman

Senior Editor

Heard it Through the Grapevine

Teresa Hill

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

To everyone at St. Mary’s and all of our friends in Greenville, South Carolina.

Thanks for making our ten years there wonderful.

TERESA HILL

lives in South Carolina with her husband, son and daughter. A former journalist for a South Carolina newspaper, she fondly remembers that her decision to write and explore the frontiers of romance came at about the same time she discovered, in junior high, that she’d never be able to join the crew of the U.S.S. Enterprise.

Happy and proud to be a stay-home mom, she is thrilled to be living her lifelong dream of writing romances.

Contents

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 One

The stick turned blue.

Cathie Baldwin sank down to the floor of her tiny bathroom. Taking stock of her situation as objectively as possible, she decided she’d never been this afraid, this upset or this ashamed of herself.

She was twenty-three, certainly old enough to know better, and they’d been careful, darn it. So careful.

Of course, as mothers had no doubt been telling their daughters for decades, the only truly safe sex was no sex at all. Which was what she’d had for years. No Sex. She’d waited so long, and now that she’d finally found someone she’d thought was special enough to share her bed…now this.

She looked at the test stick again, just to be sure. If anything, it looked bluer than before.

Fine. Tears welled up in her eyes, and she let them fall.

No one had ever cried forever, had they?

She feared she might set a record in the event. Olympic Gold, Longest Crying Jag in History, Laura Catherine Baldwin, the preacher’s daughter. The good girl. Pregnant college dropout who horrified her father’s entire congregation, shamed her parents, infuriated her four overgrown, overprotective brothers, shocked a dozen aunts, uncles and cousins too numerous to count and generally messed up her life.

And her baby’s.