Memory Lane

by Vella Munn

  And just before dawn, together, they fell asleep.

  About the Author

  Vella Munn’s idea for using a reconstructed town as the setting of her ninth Harlequin American Romance was inspired by the author’s love of living among the treasures of the past in the historic town of Jacksonville, Oregon. Though the town of Camp Oro and its inhabitants are totally imaginary, Memory Lane offers an intriguing glimpse into the special pleasures and predicaments involved in living in such a town. She loves to hear from readers at www.vonnaharper.com

  Look for these titles by Vella Munn

  Now Available:

  Wild and Free

  Wanderlust

  Memory Lane

  River Rapture

  Coming Soon:

  That Was Yesterday

  Touch a Wild Heart

  Swept away in a torrent of need…

  River Rapture

  © 2012 Vonna Harper writing as Vella Munn

  When Michon volunteers to chaperon a group of teenagers on a canoe trip, she knows her appearance could be held against her. Her exclusive department store job requires her to look model-perfect, and she aches to break free of the constant pressure.

  She never expected to find someone who understands her inner restlessness, much less in the form of rugged river tour guide Chas Carson. Yet the walls around his heart are almost as high as her own, and there's only one way to breach them. Prove herself.

  Chas is equal to all of life’s challenges, at peace in the wilderness, and at peace with himself. Michon touches a lonely place in him, stirring a fierce need to protect her from harm. Much as he admires the city woman's willingness to stand up to anything nature throws at them, one thing is certain. Once the trip is over she'll go back to her safe, secure life. And he'll become a memory.

  But when the river takes control, Michon and Chas find themselves facing the greatest challenge of all. For their hearts—and their lives.

  Enjoy the following excerpt for River Rapture:

  The phone was ringing as Michon unlocked the door to her apartment. She dropped her purse on the floor and hurried over to grab it.

  “Where have you been? I just about gave up on you,” Paul Shields was saying in the tone he used whenever he was dissatisfied.

  “I ate dinner before coming home,” Michon tried to explain, around the excited barking of the little mutt she’d rescued from a city street six months ago. Michon sank onto a stool next to the kitchen phone and lifted Worthless onto her lap, shrugging as his claws caught her leather belt. “I thought you had a client to entertain tonight.”

  “I do.” Paul lowered his voice. “Look, he wants to check out some of the night spots. And he doesn’t want just me to talk to. Do you think…well, a young woman in tow would sweeten the pot, if you know what I mean.”

  “I know what you mean, Paul.” It wasn’t the first time Michon had been asked to act as informal hostess for one of his clients. She didn’t particularly enjoy fending off advances from slightly tipsy men and told Paul so, but that didn’t stop him from continuing to ask her to “help me out just this one last time.” “I’m tired,” she gave as excuse. “It’s been a long day and Worthless needs a little attention.”

  “So do I, honey. Who means more to you—that mutt or me?”

  Tired and confused as she was, Michon was in no mood to debate that with Paul. “I have to change my clothes.”

  “We’ll be there in fifteen minutes. What about that new long dress of yours? The one with the slit. Knock his eyes out.”

  Paul hung up before she had time to respond. Michon returned the receiver to its cradle and held Worthless against her. “‘Knock his eyes out,’” she parroted sarcastically. “Show him a little flesh. Worthless, I don’t think I’m going to like this.” For a moment she rubbed noses with the delighted pup. “You’ve got it made, old boy. If I were smelly and ugly like you, no one would ever want to take me out. Come on. Keep me company while I try to find something to cover up my bones.”

  Worthless trotted after Michon and jumped up on the bed as she peered listlessly into her closet. She hadn’t been lying. Her feet ached from wearing high heels all day, and there was nothing she’d like better than to sprawl in a chair. If she spent the evening in her apartment with no one except Worthless to talk to, she might have too much time to think…about a kiss and a man who didn’t smell like expensive cologne. But she didn’t want to think about something he’d said. He once thought he had everything he wanted. How deeply had that affected him and the relationships he formed?

  Michon shimmied out of her new jumpsuit and carefully hung it up. In undergarments she went into the bathroom and washed her face and applied fresh moisturizer. Paul had said they’d be there in fifteen minutes. It didn’t give her much time to apply fresh makeup. Automatically she dumped out the contents of her cosmetic bag and reached for foundation.

  Then she stopped. Ten girls would be going on that river trip with Chas. Not one of them would bother to adorn herself with war paint. It had been so long since Michon had gone out without her public working face that she wasn’t sure she’d recognize herself. But tonight she was in a mood to try. It took her less than a minute to apply a little eyebrow pencil, a touch of mascara and a few quick strokes of green eye shadow. She stepped back, surveying herself in the mirror.

  “Not bad, Worthless. I forgot I had those freckles on my nose. I wonder if Paul knows.”

  Worthless wagged his approval of her freshly scrubbed cheeks and the slight shine on her nose. Michon used her fingers and palms to fluff her hair but didn’t bother to capture it with spray. She felt reckless and devil-may-care. So Paul wanted a female to escort around, did he? She just hoped he wasn’t counting too much on a talking mannequin. Tonight the real Michon was in a mood to present herself.

  “Haven’t you picked out anything for me to wear?” she asked Worthless as she padded barefoot back into the bedroom. “If I wear that thing with the slit I’ll have to put on panty hose, won’t I? Ridiculous invention, panty hose. They make me feel like I have something painted on my legs.”

  Michon laughed softly at her choice of words and grabbed at a long white skirt and a pale blue blouse with a high lace collar. Once dressed she had to admit she looked like a rather feminine takeoff of a frontier woman. She slipped into flat sandals and wiggled her toes in delight because they weren’t hampered by hose. “I think I like you better like this,” she told her image in the bedroom mirror. “I wonder if Chas Carson would approve?”

  Hearing Chas’s name spoken aloud instantly changed Michon’s mood. She sank onto the bed, unmindful of any wrinkles that might form in her skirt. She lay back, flattening her hair on the pillow, rubbing Worthless’s head absently. She was too young for a midlife crisis…so what was the matter with her? First she was getting sick to her stomach just thinking about spending another year making polite conversation with Chantilla’s wealthy customers. Then she’d started talking to squirrels. And now she was remembering how the world stood still when Chas Carson kissed her.

  He was right. They were different. Totally different. She honestly didn’t know there were men like him left in the twentieth century. A river guide? Did men really still do that kind of thing?

  They must. Obviously that was how Chas made his living. He was a man’s man in the old-fashioned tradition. He was experienced in search-and-rescue, lived the majority of his life out-of-doors, and by his own admission felt like a bull in a china shop in the city. Michon, for her part, had grown up on the city’s limits in a standard tract home paid for by working parents. She’d gone to college because that’s what all her friends were doing, had gone after the job considered “in” at the time, had found herself a modern apartment, drove a nearly new car, dressed in the latest fashions.

  She also had pulled her car over to the side of the road one evening, darted through commuter traffic, and hugged a frightened, half-starved mutt to her breast and brought him home to live with her.
<
br />   “What is it?” she asked Worthless softly. “Am I going through an identity crisis? I wish you could meet Chas. You’d like him.”

  And Chas would like Worthless. She didn’t have to see the two of them together to know that. Paul barely tolerated the enthusiastic, ugly, floppy-eared mutt who had won Michon’s heart. He frowned when Worthless curled up on her bed and booted him aside when the little dog scampered too close to his legs. So far Michon had been able to ignore Paul’s attitude toward Worthless, but in her present mood she found herself siding with her dog against the man who was going to show up in a few minutes to take her out on the town.

  “What do you think?” Michon asked as Worthless licked her neck. “Think I’d come back alive if I tackled the John Day River?”

  Worthless’s answer was lost in the sound of the doorbell. Michon sighed, scratched his head one last time, and got to her feet. As she reached for the doorknob she frowned. Copper sheen nail polish didn’t go with a frontier-style skirt and lacy blouse.

  Paul’s quick frown as he stepped in matched her own. “You aren’t ready,” he said.

  “Yes, I am,” Michon responded quickly. “This is as good as it’s going to get.”

  Suspicion and danger. Can two hearts survive?

  Prairie Cry

  © 2012 Vella Munn

  When Montana game warden Hayden Conover comes across the body of a man lying next to a dead antelope, he can think of only two suspects with rap sheets long enough to lead to such a heinous crime. Al and Hoagy Metcalf.

  Except they’ve broken out of jail and disappeared into the wilderness. Reluctantly he turns to Tomara Metcalf for help. He barely knows her, doesn’t trust her, but he needs her to bring her murderous relatives to justice. Once that’s done, he can put his confusing attraction to her behind him for good.

  Though Tomara distanced herself from her hard-knock clan a long time ago, she’s sure of one thing. Metcalfs don’t murder. This certainty gives her the courage to help Hayden in the search for her wayward father and brother, if only so the fools can clear their names.

  As the search wears on, Hayden and Tomara’s attraction becomes as deep and elemental as the wild, desolate plains. And Tomara finds herself longing to convince the unforgiving lawman that desire, hot and sudden as a prairie fire, can be as precious and healing as a desert spring.

  Warning: Contains a stubborn hero who’s rock hard in more ways than one! And a heroine who must decide where her heart lies—clan loyalty, or the chance for true love.

  Enjoy the following excerpt for Prairie Cry:

  At five minutes past nine in the evening, Montana game warden Hayden Conover banked the helicopter he was piloting, his eyes drawn to a spear of light on the Richland county plain below him. Hayden had been in the air since a little after dawn counting antelope before the opening of hunting season. Although it was dark, he was still at work, now looking for poachers. If he was closer to civilization he might have discounted the light as belonging to camping Sioux or Assiniboin Indians, but this particular rugged area was too remote. His “antennae,” honed by five years of being a game cop, kicked into high gear.

  Hayden nosed down. What he saw when he switched on the spotlight forced out a grim oath. A battered Jeep of indeterminate color with its headlights on was parked perhaps ten feet from an antelope carcass. Two men were squatting, not by the slain animal, but over a form that looked suspiciously human.

  The sound of the approaching helicopter startled the men. They sprang to their feet and dove for the Jeep. Seconds later the four-wheel-drive vehicle was bucking across the open country. Hayden could have given chase. He could have pulled out his bullhorn and ordered them to surrender, but he did neither of those things. For one, confronting two men who were probably armed on the Montana plains wasn’t the sort of thing an intelligent thirty-four-year old man would do if he wanted to go on living. Second, he’d seen the fleeing Jeep’s license number and committed it to memory.

  Hayden lowered the helicopter gradually until he found clear spot among the rocks and sagebrush and landed. He cut the engine and stepped out of the cockpit when he was certain the Jeep wasn’t going to circle back.

  He went first to the antelope. A quick look told him it had been dead for hours. Then, knowing that tonight was going to be different from any other he’d spent since leaving Los Angeles, Hayden made his way slowly to the inert form that had commanded the men’s attention. The still-whirling helicopter blades stirred the night air but did nothing to dissipate the cold sweat on the back of Hayden’s neck. Except for the dying sounds of the machine, the night was silent.

  The man was, Hayden guessed, somewhere in his early forties. He was clean-cut and soft in the middle. He was wearing new boots, a flannel shirt that probably hadn’t been washed yet, jeans not yet molded to his body. One hand was clamped around a clump of grass. He’d been shot in the back.

  After a minute spent squatting next to the man, Hayden returned to the helicopter. He switched the spotlight back on and pulled out his camera. Then he made contact with district headquarters. “I’ve got a body here,” he explained tersely. “I’d say whoever did it used a rifle. I’ve got a license number. I’d appreciate it if you’d get someone to run it down for me. Yeah. I’m all right. Yes. I will.”

  After taking a deep breath, Hayden was able to put his emotions on ice. He’d seen death while working in L.A. He could handle it again. He got back out of the helicopter and walked around the body until he had the best angle for taking pictures. It was only an educated guess at this point, but Hayden would be willing to bet his three-year-old Bronco that the man hadn’t known what hit him. Hayden was also willing to bet that he hadn’t been dead as long as the antelope.

  He’d taken his pictures and was jotting down a description of the man’s clothing when his radio squawked to life. Hayden returned to the helicopter and picked up the receiver. The first time, he’d called in, the night dispatcher was on the line. She’d been replaced by the regional supervisor. “You all right out there?” he asked on the tail of Hayden’s brief explanation of what had happened. “Are you sure you’re alone?”

  “No, I’m not sure I’m alone.” Again cold pricked at the back of Hayden’s neck. “The only other vehicle I’ve seen is the Jeep that hightailed it out of here.”

  “They could have left someone behind.”

  “What are you trying to do, scare me?”

  “I don’t need you dead, Hayden. Look, I’ve got the name of the Jeep’s registered owner. Metcalf. Al Metcalf.”

  “Metcalf?”

  “You know them. Old man Metcalf and his son have been running on the wrong side of the law as long as I’ve been working for the state. The old man’s been in jail God knows how many times and the kid one or two times himself. Cattle theft. Drunk and disorderly. Poaching. A lot of poaching. Maybe that’s what this all boils down to. Metcalf shot himself an antelope out of season and then did in the joker who stumbled on them.”

  “Maybe.” Somehow Hayden didn’t think it was that simple. “How long do you think it’ll take for someone to get out here?”

  “Hopefully less than an hour. I’ve already talked to Jay and the state police. You hold tight. Sorry, Hayden. So much for peace and quiet.”

  “Yeah.” Hayden bit down on the word.

  Tomara Metcalf was getting ready to climb a telephone pole on West Sunnyside Road in Idaho Falls when the call came over the walkie-talkie. “He didn’t say who he was.” The office woman relayed the message. “All I know is, he says he’s a lawyer from Copper, Montana. He wants you to get in touch with him as soon as possible.”

  Copper. History. Dead and gone. Or at least it should have been. Although her long chestnut hair was caught in a practical braid, Tomara reached for the strands that had clung to her neck all the time she was growing up. Angry at herself for the gesture, Tomara pulled her hand away and stared at the offending limb. There was a half-healed cut at the base of her thumb, compliments of th
e way she earned her living. It would have been little more than a scar by now if she’d had stitches taken, but Tomara couldn’t be bothered with trips to a doctor. Instead she’d slapped a tight butterfly bandage around it. The bandage was gone now, she noticed. “Do you have a number?”

  The woman explained that she’d already placed it on Tomara’s desk. “He said he’d be in his office until the middle of the afternoon. I thought you should know. What is it? I didn’t know you knew anyone in Montana.”

  I don’t, Tomara wanted to say. But that wasn’t true. She might have been able to put hundreds of miles between herself and the past, but she couldn’t exorcise that past. “Look, I’m coming in now,” she said, although making that particular phone call was the last thing in the world she wanted to do.

  “But you’ve got two more service calls to make before lunch.”

  “They’ll have to wait. This won’t take long.”

  Fifteen minutes later Tomara was back in the telephone company office. Because she knew the woman’s curiosity would get the better of her, Tomara slipped in the back way, waiting until the linemen’s room was empty before picking up the receiver. She asked the operator to bill her home phone and then waited, the years sliding away into nothing while the connection was being made.

  Leonard Barth, attorney-at-law. She hadn’t seen the man in six years. Tomara accepted the reality of his call with the same stoicism as she would have had had the call been from the coroner’s office. She doubted that Leonard’s office had changed since she’d packed two boxes and caught a bus out of town. He’d still be sitting at his desk, staring at Copper’s main street, watching life plod by, taking note of the changing seasons, storing up gossip to spread at the post office or in Mandy’s Saloon.

  “Tomara. I didn’t think you’d get back to me this soon. Had a hell of a time running you down.”