Love In Plain Sight
Page 1
Right in front of her eyes…
Former bounty hunter Marc DiLeo is not the guy social worker Courtney Gerard wants helping her. But finding a kid who’s been missing for a long time takes priority over her personal preferences. And if anyone can locate the child, Marc can—even with his injury. So she’ll overlook his attitude.
As they follow cold leads together, Courtney glimpses beneath his tough exterior to something surprising—caring, compassion…vulnerability. That softer side proves more irresistible than his good looks. An unexpected—and unexpectedly intense—attraction flares between them, making her wonder why she never saw this before. Suddenly the man she was determined to avoid is the only man she wants close!
Marc came face-to-face with Courtney
She stood in the living room, visible through the doorway as he emerged from the steamy bathroom.
Suddenly everything about her was a dare.
From the glossy black hair that would feel like silk to the touch to the clear eyes she raked down the length of him.
He stood wrapped in a towel.
Her gaze traveled the length of him again. There was surprise all over her face, her eyes widening, her lips parting.
But she didn’t look away. She only stood there for a protracted moment, a deer stunned by headlights. And by the time she’d rallied, mumbling something unintelligible and turning away, it was too late.
Marc had seen everything.
This felt normal. A beautiful woman looking at him like he was a man. A woman looking at him with want in her eyes.
Yet she turned away....
Dear Reader,
Life is love. It’s our chronic aspiration and the source of our greatest strength. Love inspires us to courage and moves us past selfishness to kindness and generosity.
Araceli would do anything to have love in her life.
Courtney fought hard to bring love to her foster kids’ lives, but she kept love in the periphery of her own.
Marc had run far away from love and allowed it only an occasional visit. It wasn’t until adversity forced him to stop running that he came face-to-face with how much of himself he had lost along the way.
When love brings these three together, they realize what was right before their eyes all along—with love, they can conquer anything.
Ordinary Women. Extraordinary romance.
That’s what Harlequin Superromance is all about. I hope you enjoy Courtney and Marc’s story. I love hearing from readers, so please visit me at www.jeanielegendre.com.
Peace and blessings,
Jeanie London
Love In Plain Sight
Jeanie London
ABOUT THE AUTHOR
Jeanie London writes romance because she believes in happily-ever-afters. Not the “love conquers all” kind, but the “we love each other, so we can conquer anything” kind. Jeanie is the winner of many prestigious writing awards, including multiple RT Book Reviews Reviewers’ Choice and National Readers’ Choice Awards. She lives in sunny Florida with her own romance-hero husband, their beautiful daughters and a menagerie of strays.
Books by Jeanie London
HARLEQUIN SUPERROMANCE
1616—FRANKIE’S BACK IN TOWN
1635—HER HUSBAND’S PARTNER
1699—THEN THERE WERE THREE
1716—THE HUSBAND LESSON
1739—NO GROOM LIKE HIM
1819—THE TIME OF HER LIFE
1843—RIGHT FROM THE START
HARLEQUIN BLAZE
153—HOT SHEETS*
157—RUN FOR COVERS*
161—PILLOW CHASE*
181—UNDER HIS SKIN
213—RED LETTER NIGHTS
“Signed, Sealed, Seduced”
231—GOING ALL OUT
248—INTO TEMPTATION
271—IF YOU COULD READ MY MIND…
*Falling Inn Bed…
HARLEQUIN SIGNATURE SELECT SPOTLIGHT
IN THE COLD
Other titles by this author available in ebook format.
To my beloved Pup.
You are a joy! You make life endlessly fascinating with your inspired interests, your enormous heart and your delightful friends! <3 YOU <3
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
Chapter Seventeen
Chapter Eighteen
Chapter Nineteen
Chapter Twenty
Chapter Twenty-One
Chapter Twenty-Two
Chapter Twenty-Three
Chapter Twenty-Four
Excerpt
PROLOGUE
Before Hurricane Katrina
PAPA ALWAYS SAID love changed lives. I knew what he meant because love was all around me.
Every morning, Mama packed Papa’s lunch. Always the same sandwich, container of leftovers from dinner, fruit and fresh-baked pastry. She stacked them in his lunch bag in the order he would eat them through the day.
A fruit for the morning to keep him healthy.
Leftovers for lunch with the sandwich, too, if he worked really hard. Sometimes he saved half for later.
He ate the pastry with his con leche in the afternoon when he needed a sweet for strength.
In between each layer would be a neatly folded napkin with a love note. One for every meal.
Hecho con amor para ti.
Gracias por nuestra hermosa vida juntos.
The love notes changed every day—all but one that read Te quiero siempre.
Mama did love him always.
She loved all of us. We were her family.
When I was old enough for school, I opened my lunch bag to find my own love notes. Mama would draw little hearts that would make me proud to be the beautiful daughter she loved so much. Or funny faces to make me laugh, because Mama did not have the family talent for drawing.
I never used my love-note napkins but always tucked them into my pocket, a secret reminder of how much I was loved no matter what happened through the rest of the day.
Paolo wasn’t too little to notice. He didn’t say anything because of his speech trouble, but I knew. He was quick-eyed for a little one. Mama counted on those eyes.
“Paolo, where did Mama set her keys?” she would ask. “Paolo, did you see where Mama lay her scissors?”
My baby brother would run right to where she had left whatever was missing.
Paolo wanted his own love notes. I knew because he would stick his chubby hand in my pocket and sneak mine. I told Mama one day, and the very next morning, my baby brother burst from our bedroom as I was readying for school with a love note he’d found under his pillow.
My life was filled with that kind of love. Every night after dinner, my family gathered in the living room. Some nights, I practiced stitches on scraps of fabric while Mama altered clothes to earn money.
Higher hems for the short ladies and expanded seams for the ladies grown too fat for their zippers....
Papa would sit
at his easel, telling stories from his day and drawing whatever he thought might sell on weekends when he sat in Jackson Square making caricatures for the tourists.
Weekend after weekend, through the Mardi Gras parades and the steamy days of summer, I would sit beside Papa at my own easel, smelling the Mississippi River, an apprentice practicing my sketches and learning from my beloved Papa.
I loved those weekends.
“You must read your subject to know how to please them,” Papa instructed. “Do not choose a feature they might feel shame for. Choose one that helps them laugh at themselves. Laughter is a gift, and if you please them, they’ll be generous with you. Americans are very generous. They appreciate talent and will reward you for using yours.”
I was eight when I drew my very first sketch.
My subject, an eccentric older lady who wore many big jewels, did laugh when she saw my finished product and gave me ten dollars. I felt such pride.
My second subject wasn’t so pleased. I got a dollar in quarters and not even one tiny smile.
Papa hugged me. “Can’t please everyone.”
But I worried. “Maybe I didn’t get the family talent.”
He scoffed, making a big sound that filled the steamy heat of that perfect summer. “You are learning to use your talent. Do you think to be as good as your papa without much practice?”
I could only shrug, feeling too much shame for words.
Taking my hand that held the graphite pencil, he lifted it to his lips for a kiss, his whiskers tickling my skin. “There. Now you have even more family talent. I share mine, for I have much to spare.”
That made me smile. A little.
“Love is the secret, Araceli. You must love this pencil,” he said, very serious. “And you must love your subject. But most of all, you must love your talent, for that is the only way you will learn to use it. You must try new things and make your talent sing inside you and flow out onto the paper.
“Remember this.” He smiled beneath his bushy mustache. “Love changes everything. It’s everywhere. You just have to look. Sometimes it hides, so you have to look hard. But open your eyes really big.” He shaped his fingers into circles and peered through them, looking silly. “It’s always there somewhere. I promise.”
CHAPTER ONE
Eight years after the hurricane
COURTNEY GERARD WENT on red alert when she glanced up to find her supervisor in the office doorway. She’d worked with Giselle since an internship in college. Courtney knew this look. Not good.
“What’s wrong, Giselle?”
Working for the Department of Children and Family Services could be emotionally demanding on the best of days. Children in difficult circumstances troubled caring people, and all the social workers in the New Orleans DCFS cared deeply about the kids they managed. Giselle’s expression promised this day wasn’t even close to the best.
“Are you okay?” Courtney tried again.
Giselle lifted a disbelieving gaze and stood rooted to the spot. Courtney was on her feet instantly, the impulse to do something preferable over the powerlessness of doing nothing. She’d barely circled the desk when Giselle gave her head a slight shake as if mentally rebooting.
“Yeah, yeah. I’m okay.” Sinking into a chair, she clutched a file folder as if her life depended on it. “We have a problem.”
We could mean the social services department or just the two of them. Courtney didn’t ask. Giselle was shaken, and struggling hard to maintain her professionalism right now. That much was obvious.
Leaning against the desk, Courtney braced herself. “Whatever it is we can deal with it. Right?”
Giselle didn’t answer—another bad sign. She set the file between them, an innocuous folder with a case number and name in an upper corner that read Araceli Ruiz-Ortiz.
The case hadn’t been Courtney’s for long. Only since a drizzly, cold February morning earlier this year, when one of their social workers hadn’t made it to work when expected. A multiple-car accident on Interstate 10 had robbed them of one of their team, a woman with a huge laugh and kind heart.
“Has something happened?” Courtney asked. “Is Araceli all right?”
Giselle opened the file, rooted through the documents and slid out a photo. “Who is this?”
The image was the most recent of the girl in question, which Courtney herself had taken on their first visit together. She’d snapped photos of all the kids in the cases she’d taken over, uploaded digital copies to the server and printed hard-copy files. Standard procedure. “That’s Araceli.”
“You’ve actually spoken with her?”
Adrenaline made the hairs along Courtney’s arms stand on end. “What kind of question is that? Of course I’ve spoken with her. She’s been my case since Nanette.”
Since Nanette.
The euphemism for the tragedy that had impacted everyone in their close-knit department in so many ways beyond increased caseloads.
“Any red flags?” Giselle asked.
Courtney frowned. She interviewed all of her kids, checked in with each of them monthly. Giselle knew all social workers followed the same procedure, so unless she was implying that Courtney had stopped doing her job properly... “What sort of red flags? Abuse? Drugs? Gangs?”
“Maybe. I don’t know. Did anything at all seem off to you? What were your impressions of the girl?”
Courtney scoured her memories, apprehension sabotaging her focus. “I have to work to engage her most of the time. She resents my intrusion in her life but has enough respect not to be overtly rebellious. She’s sixteen. You know how those last few years till majority can be for some kids.”
Giselle nodded. “When you get her talking, does she communicate well? How’s her English?”
Courtney considered the girl she was scheduled to visit again in just another week. “Accented but okay. I noted my first impressions in my report. Her guardians can be problematic.”
“How so?” Giselle latched on to that admission. “I need to know everything you can tell me.”
“The mother communicates in English better than the father, but he’s the one who likes to do the talking. He won’t allow me to talk to his wife and let her translate. A cultural thing, I think.” She shrugged, frustrated even thinking about how she could burn an entire afternoon going over every single thing once, twice, sometimes three times until satisfied she understood and had been understood.
“No hablo Español. Hablo muy poco de todos modos.”
Señor Perea didn’t seem to care that Courtney was the department go-to girl for all things French, including French-based Louisiana Creole and Cajun. Of course, there was a smattering of Spanish words in those dialects, so if he slowed down enough for her to catch the verbs, she could usually figure out the rest. “The situation was never optimal, Giselle. I’m not Nanette. She spoke Spanish fluently. You knew that when you assigned me this case.”
Giselle inhaled deeply, acknowledging imperfect reality in that one gesture. “But I knew I could trust you to put forth the effort to make sure these kids were properly cared for until I could get someone fluent in Spanish to replace you.”
What she didn’t say was that there were other social workers in the department who might be good and caring but who would also let the language barrier deter them.
Courtney was detail-oriented and thorough. Always. She would take the time to be clear, even if it meant derailing her schedule. Even if it meant she didn’t return to the office to start reports until after dark. Even if it meant she sacrificed a normal life to manage a caseload that had only grown in the years since the hurricane had leveled their entire agency.
They’d all been overworked before category-five winds had blown holes in the levees around Lake Pontchartrain, but since every record in every case they manag
ed had been obliterated, they’d all been burdened additionally with rebuilding the system. A new system that wouldn’t utterly and completely fail during a catastrophic natural disaster.
They’d all made sacrifices, were still making sacrifices, but some managed to juggle the additional workload better than others. Courtney didn’t have a husband or kids awaiting her at home every day. “Will you tell me what has happened? You’re flipping me out with this interrogation.”
“You have to promise you won’t panic.” Giselle was the epitome of self-restraint, but everything about her begged Courtney to manage her reaction.
Giselle’s need in that moment seemed impossible to meet. The best she could do was face her supervisor and close friend, and nod, hoping she could keep the promise.
Giselle held up the photo. “This is not Araceli.”
It took Courtney a moment to wrap her brain around that. And in that one surreal instant, she took action again, reaching for the photo and inspecting it carefully, unable to absorb the overwhelming implications passively.
Same glossy dark hair. Same melting brown eyes. Same smooth caramel skin.
“I’m not sure what’s going on, Giselle, but I promise you this is Araceli. I’ve met with her every month since Nanette.”
Giselle pulled out another document with two photos stapled to the corner and set it on the desk between them. One eight-by-ten was a group shot of a classroom of young kids. Mr. LeGendre’s third grade, according to the neat font imprinted along the bottom above the students’ names. The other photo appeared to be the sort of proof used by photographic companies. There was a name and number beneath the face in that photo. The child was young like the ones in the group shot, maybe seven or eight, with a jagged smile where adult teeth were growing in.
Courtney scanned the group shot. She spotted Araceli’s name but couldn’t pick out the accompanying face from among the smiling kids. Reaching for the proof, she inspected the girl in that photo.
Gold skin. Glossy black hair. Melting dark eyes.