Harlequin Superromance May 2018 Box Set
Page 28
Mavis trembled. She placed her hands on the strength of his arms, melding into the line of his heat.
“I know what it is I want to be again because of you,” he went on. “I know we’ll be all right.”
She nodded. “More than all right.”
“Yeah,” he said on a laugh. “Things will be more than all right. Do you know how long it’s been since that was my truth?”
“It’s true now,” she replied, soaking in every inch of his resolve. She felt infinite under the glide of his bicolored gaze. “I’ve known you my whole life. When you came back…some part of me knew. It was overwhelming, like suddenly understanding all the unanswered questions in life. Why we’re here. What we live for. I’ve never had the answers. But I want more than to know them—I want to live them. You make me feel alive. I never knew how much I wanted to feel that way until…” She licked her lips, eyeing his. “Until I kissed you.”
“So it was you who came on to me?”
She closed her eyes and smiled, remembering. “Maybe.”
“Maybe you should do it again,” he suggested.
Focusing on him and all the sure things he’d come to mean to her, she closed the small gap between them until her boot-clad feet were nestled between his. Trailing her fingertips up his arms, she brought them up to his shoulder, scaling the fine hairs on the back of his neck. She clasped them over the back of his head and bowed him to her.
She kissed him until he was as breathless as her. He kissed her back until his heat had become her own.
“Damn,” he said, coming up for air. “I don’t have a ring.”
“Don’t need one,” she said with a quick shake of her head. She took his mouth again, branding it for her own. “I don’t need one,” she said again.
“You’ll have mine,” he said.
Mavis wasn’t sure her feet met the floor. “Only if you’ll have mine, too.”
“Okay.” His cheek pressed against hers. She felt his smile as sure as she felt her own and she knew what it was like to be flooded with light. “Can we go back to the river? Can we make our own life there—the three of us?”
Lovingly, she turned her lips to the tender place beneath his ear and murmured, “I believe we’ve already started.”
* * * * *
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ISBN-13: 9781488085680
Navy SEAL’s Match
Copyright © 2018 by Amber Leigh Williams
All rights reserved. By payment of the required fees, you have been granted the nonexclusive, nontransferable right to access and read the text of this ebook on-screen. No part of this text may be reproduced, transmitted, downloaded, decompiled, reverse engineered, or stored in or introduced into any information storage and retrieval system, in any form or by any means, whether electronic or mechanical, now known or hereafter invented, without the express written permission of the publisher, Harlequin Enterprises Limited, 22 Adelaide St. West, 40th Floor, Toronto, Ontario M5H 4E3, Canada.
This is a work of fiction. Names, characters, places and incidents are either the product of the author’s imagination or are used fictitiously, and any resemblance to actual persons, living or dead, business establishments, events or locales is entirely coincidental. This edition published by arrangement with Harlequin Books S.A.
® and ™ are trademarks of the publisher. Trademarks indicated with ® are registered in the United States Patent and Trademark Office, the Canadian Intellectual Property Office and in other countries.
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Call of the wild
Game ranger Seth Logan’s peaceful life is thrown into chaos the second Emma French bangs on his door. The fiery blonde clearly doesn’t know the first thing about country living…or its dangers. She’s illegally fostering baby skunks—and worse, she has Seth aiding and abetting her!
Never one to turn his back on a woman or an animal, Seth agrees to break the rules to help Emma—but only until the skunks are old enough to return to the wild and Emma goes back to her life in Memphis. Yet as they care for the babies, Seth finds himself breaking another rule, one that he knows will only lead to heartbreak: never fall for a woman who doesn’t want to stay.
“Aren’t you going to get in trouble over my skunks?”
“You shouldn’t think of them as your skunks, Emma, or you’ll hate letting them go even more. Yes, I can get into trouble, but I can ask forgiveness.”
“As opposed to permission?”
He rinsed out the sink and hung the dish towel on its hook. And yawned. “Sorry.”
“Go home. Go to bed.”
She followed him to the front door.
He turned, took one step, swung back and reached for her.
It might have started out as a meet-the-new-neighbor kiss, but it got out of hand—fast. She wasn’t used to being lifted off her feet. When he wrapped his arms around her, she felt as if she was being hugged by that bear in the honey tree.
He set her down, let her go, wheeled around and almost ran across the street.
Dear Reader,
City girl Emma French gets fired from her job and dumps her unfaithful fiancé the same day. She moves to the country to recover, but instead, she finds herself rearing three orphaned baby skunks. Although it is illegal in Tennessee to foster skunks, she persuades her neighbor, Seth Logan—a tough, by-the-book game warden—to help her.
Emma knows nothing about animals, and she doesn’t plan to stay in Tennessee—and certainly not with a game warden, even one as sexy as Seth. Although she rocks his world the first time he meets her, Seth realizes she absolutely cannot fit into his life.
They’ve both suffered pain and loss, but with the help of three cuddly baby skunks, they may find their way to one another and to the love that is waiting for them.
I hope you enjoy Emma and Seth’s story and will look for the next book in the series. This is a work of fiction. I hope I got things right, but if I made mistakes, they are my fault.
Carolyn
Tennessee Rescue
CAROLYN McSPARREN
RITA® Award nominee and Maggie Award winner Carolyn McSparren has lived in Germany, France, Italy and “too many cities in the US to count.” She’s sailed boats, raised horses, rides dressage and drives a carriage with her Shire-cross mare. She teaches writing seminars to romance and mystery writers, and writes mystery and women’s fiction as well as romance books. Carolyn lives in the country outside Memphis, Tennessee, in an old house with three cats, three horses and one husband.
Books by Carolyn McSparren
HARLEQUIN SUPERROMANCE
The Wrong Wife
Safe at Home
The Money Man
The Payback Man
House of Strangers
Listen to the Child
Over His Head
His Only Defense
Bachelor Cop
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This book is dedicated to that remarkable group of volunteers called animal rehabilitators who spend a lot of time and money looking after wounded, abandoned and displaced animals. There is even a specially trained group that works with wounded raptors—eagles, owls and hawks.
Each state has its own licensing requirements, but all require that these hardworking folks know what they are doing. The animal doesn’t have to be cute. Turkey buzzard or baby bunny—if it’s in trouble, they help.
Good for them!
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 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
CHAPTER TWENTY-FIVE
CHAPTER TWENTY-SIX
EPILOGUE
CHAPTER ONE
“I HAVE SKUNKS in my pantry,” Emma French said.
The man who opened his front door to her wore the green uniform of a Tennessee Wildlife officer. At least according to the emblem on his mailbox down by the road. Skunks were wildlife, so he should be able to deal with the three in her pantry. She had no intention of touching them. He, on the other hand, looked as though he wrestled moose on weekends—not that there were moose in Tennessee. Skunks should be only a small distraction.
She had obviously interrupted him in the middle of his dinner. He still held a napkin. But this was an emergency, drat it. She expected him to grab a cage or gloves or a net and follow her out into the downpour at once. Instead, he lifted one eyebrow and said, “Interesting. And you are?”
“I’m Emma French, the one who inherited Martha’s house across the street. I just moved in this afternoon and found them.”
He stuck out a hand. “I’m Seth Logan. Moved in here after Miss Martha had to go into assisted living, so I never knew her, but I’ve heard good things about her. Since the last renters left six months ago, everyone in the neighborhood figured the property was up for sale.”
“My rental agent hasn’t located any new renters for me way out here. Can you come get the skunks? Isn’t that your job?”
“Not precisely, no. How big are the skunks? How old?”
“I have no idea how old they are.” She held her thumb and middle fingers apart. “They’re about this size, I guess. Little bitty.”
“Excellent. At that age, they can’t ‘skunk’ you. Their scent glands don’t function.”
“Great. Then you’ll be safe when you pick them up.”
He didn’t move or even ask her in out of the rain. Good grief! The last thing she needed was a useless muscle-bound stud in a snappy uniform living across the road. Judging by that lifted eyebrow and the quirk at the corner of his mouth, she’d bet he had to beat women off with a stick. Assuming he wanted to.
The man was laughing at her! “Sir, I am formally requesting your assistance in getting the wildlife—” she pointed to the insignia on his khaki shirt “—out of my house and back into the wild. Thank you in advance for your assistance.”
Then he really did laugh. Well, more of a snort, but he obviously considered her amusing. She was not amusing. She was a serious executive—okay, a currently unemployed executive—moving into the shambles of a house she’d inherited in the middle of nowhere. She’d expected grime and peeling paint. She hadn’t expected live creatures inside. Definitely not skunks.
As long as they were in residence, she didn’t plan to be. Either they’d have to go or she would. But where? She couldn’t afford to live in a motel for very long, even the rent-by-the-hour place close to the interstate. She had to shepherd her savings and severance pay, in case she didn’t get a new job right away. She’d rather die than ask her father and stepmother for money to tide her over, although they’d gladly help her out if she was desperate. She didn’t plan to ask them unless or until she was desperate.
She’d expected that after three years of renters and six months standing empty, Aunt Martha’s house—her house now—would have problems, but skunks? Ridiculous.
It might take months to find another job as good as the one she’d just been fired from. Until then, she needed to live as frugally as possible. It made no sense to live in a motel while she owned a three-bedroom house on five acres; she’d inherited the place from her aunt Martha with taxes paid and no mortgage. It was empty and urgently needed renovation, but it had a roof and working plumbing. Good enough. She was a stranger here. She wouldn’t have to deal with personal questions.
Aunt Martha’s inheritance was the only thing that did belong to her free and clear at the moment. She still owed money on her SUV, and her little town house in Memphis still carried a hefty mortgage. She didn’t want to sell it. She’d told her agent to try to rent it furnished on a short-term lease.
Okay, so she was escaping. She simply had to get away from all the damned sympathy! Who loses both a job and a fiancé in twenty-four hours?
Living in the boondocks near the Tennessee River was strictly a stopgap. She was a city girl. Period. She’d loved her childhood summers up here with her aunt, but Martha was gone and Emma wasn’t a child anymore. In those long-ago summers she’d come here to a place and a person she loved, someone who’d cared about her, too. Now she wanted sanctuary. She was lucky she had this sanctuary.
“Does your pantry have a door?” Mr. Wildlife asked. Finally, he stood aside to let her in.
She stayed under the porch overhang. No sense in dripping all over his living room floor. “Yes, why?”
“Shut the door on the skunks and forget them. Either they have a way out and will leave on their own, or you can let them out tomorrow morning in the daylight.”
“With all this rain? They’ll freeze.”
“Probably not.”
“Then they’ll starve! Will they find their mother?”
He sighed. “Wish I could say yes, but skunk mothers don’t abandon kits. I suspect she’s roadkill.”
“Oh, no! Then I’ll have to look after them!”
He shook his head. “Not in Tennessee you don’t. It’s illegal to foster abandoned skunks.”
“Why on earth?”
“In east Tennessee they can be rabid. Here in west Tennessee we haven’t had a rabid skunk in a hundred and fifty years.”
“But the law still applies throughout the whole state? So you’re just going to let them starve or get eaten by coyotes? No way!” She turned on her heel. “Thank you, Mr. Officer, sir. Go enjoy your dinner. I’ve got this.”
She could feel his eyes on her back as she stalked down his front path, across the road and through her front door. She didn’t exactly slam it behind her, but she gave it a hard shove. She’d left all the lights on, so she could see her way among the boxes she’d brought with
her. She brushed the rain off her short hair, tiptoed through the kitchen and stuck her head in the pantry.
Toss them out to die? Not in this lifetime! The heck with the laws of Tennessee. She’d find a vet to give them rabies shots, then she’d hide them from Mr. Big Lawman if she had to. But what on earth did baby skunks eat?
Inside the pantry, she found the three babies cuddled on the fluffy towel she’d folded up for them and stuffed in a corner. For a second they were so still she was terrified they’d died. Then she saw three furry little tummies rise and fall gently and blew out a breath in relief.
She got a shallow bowl from a kitchen cupboard, half filled it with water and set it carefully beside the towel. One tiny paw waggled at her, almost like a greeting. She had to admit they were about the cutest babies she’d ever seen. Skunks. Who knew?
How long had they been without their mother? Was she dead or trying desperately to get into the house to to reach them? How had they gotten inside in the first place? And, more important, as their foster parent, how was she going to keep them alive and teach them to live in the wild?
She had no intention of living with three skunks with functioning scent glands, but they seemed to have no scent yet. When she finally turned them loose, she wanted to release three skunks proficient in survival skills. Not pets. She’d never owned a pet, and she wasn’t about to start with skunks.
* * *
SETH LOGAN STOOD by his front door and watched his new neighbor march from his house back to hers, then disappear inside. The last thing he needed was a crazy city neighbor with a do-gooder mentality and the practical knowledge of a newt.
At least she wasn’t beautiful. Shoot. On reflection, he decided that when she dried off she might well be beautiful. Not many women reached his six-foot-four-inch height, but she didn’t miss six feet by much, and he suspected she spent hours of city time in a fancy gym to keep what, even in jeans, he could tell was a sleek body.