The Heart of Hill Country

by Sherryl Woods

  The Littlest Angel

  Angela Adams refuses to have anything to do with her unborn baby’s father, especially after his less-than-enthusiastic reaction to her news. And while Clint Brady admits he could have been more supportive, the thought of baby bottles and diaper pins rattled him. But now that the shock has passed, Clint is determined that nothing will come between him and fatherhood—not even Angela herself!

  Natural Born Trouble

  Veterinarian Dani Adams decided she was done with men. Instead, she’d devote her time to caring for the sick animals brought to her veterinary practice and find fulfillment—without the heartache. Then Duke Jenkins and his adorable twins moved to town. In spite of their complicated lives, Duke is quickly melting her resolve. But is Dani heading for another disappointment…or down the aisle to meet her groom?

  Praise for #1 New York Times bestselling author Sherryl Woods

  “During the course of this gripping, emotionally wrenching but satisfying tale, Woods deftly and realistically handles such issues as survival guilt, drug abuse as adolescent rebellion, and family dynamics when a vital member is suddenly gone.”

  —Booklist on Flamingo Diner

  “Woods is a master heartstring puller.”

  —Publishers Weekly on Seaview Inn

  “Once again, Woods, with such authenticity, weaves a tale of true love and the challenges that can knock up against that love.”

  —RT Book Reviews on Beach Lane

  “Woods…is noted for appealing character-driven stories that are often infused with the flavor and fragrance of the South.”

  —Library Journal

  “A reunion story punctuated by family drama, Woods’s first novel in her new Ocean Breeze series is touching, tense and tantalizing.”

  —RT Book Reviews on Sand Castle Bay

  “A whimsical, sweet scenario…the digressions have their own charm, and Woods never fails to come back to the romantic point.”

  —Publishers Weekly on Sweet Tea at Sunrise

  Also by Sherryl Woods

  Chesapeake Shores

  Lilac Lane

  Willow Brook Road

  Dogwood Hill

  The Christmas Bouquet

  A Seaside Christmas

  The Summer Garden

  An O’Brien Family Christmas

  Beach Lane

  Moonlight Cove

  Driftwood Cottage

  A Chesapeake Shores Christmas

  Harbor Lights

  Flowers on Main

  The Inn at Eagle Point

  The Sweet Magnolias

  Swan Point

  Where Azaleas Bloom

  Catching Fireflies

  Midnight Promises

  Honeysuckle Summer

  Sweet Tea at Sunrise

  Home in Carolina

  Welcome to Serenity

  Feels Like Family

  A Slice of Heaven

  Stealing Home

  Molly DeWitt Mysteries

  Island Storms

  Seaside Lies

  Bayside Deceptions

  Troubled Waters

  Nonfiction

  A Small Town Love Story: Colonial Beach, Virginia

  For a complete list of all titles by Sherryl Woods, visit www.sherrylwoods.com.

  Sherryl Woods

  The Heart of Hill Country

  Table of Contents

  The Littlest Angel

  Natural Born Trouble

  Excerpt from The Cowboy and His Baby by Sherryl Woods

  (Book Two of Winter’s Proposal)

  This one is for all the readers who’ve embraced my characters and stories through the years. You’ve been such a blessing in my life and I treasure the friendship you’ve offered.

  The Littlest Angel

  Contents

  1

  2

  3

  4

  5

  6

  7

  8

  9

  10

  11

  12

  13

  14

  15

  Epilogue

  1

  Angela hadn’t wanted to come home like this, with her belly the size of two watermelons, and not one single proud accomplishment she could claim. She’d always meant her return to be triumphant, proof that she could succeed on her own without relying on the Adams name that meant so much in one little corner of West Texas. She’d envisioned a banner across the porch and a barbecue in her honor in the backyard and her name in lights, if Grandpa Harlan had his way.

  Instead, it was the dead of night and no one even knew she was coming. Until she’d driven down the last stretch of deserted highway, anticipation mounting with every mile, she hadn’t known for sure herself if she would have the courage to face her family. The car had settled that for her. It had conked out less than a mile from home. She sat in the rapidly chilling air and shivered, wondering if fate was on her side this time or just out to humiliate her further.

  Home. The word had always conjured up a barrage of images for her, some good, some bad. Over the last six years the bad ones had faded until only the special memories remained. With her birthday tomorrow and Christmas just a few days away, it was no surprise that it was the holiday memories that came back to her now in a flood.

  The celebrations always began early and lasted through New Year’s, with everyone—aunts, uncles, cousins—traipsing from home to home for one party or another, but always, always ending up at White Pines. Grandpa Harlan insisted on it. He claimed he could spoil his grandkids rotten in his own home on Christmas Day if he chose to, while anywhere else he might have to show some restraint.

  Rather than feeling deprived that her birthday was so close to Christmas, Angela had always felt as if all of the holiday trimmings made the day more special than it would have been at any other time of the year. Other kids got cakes and a single party. Angela’s celebration included a huge tree, blinking colored lights, endless music and nonstop parties that went on for days.

  She’d missed that while she was away, missed it when she’d noted the occasion all alone in a college rooming house already deserted by students who’d headed home for the holidays. Last year she’d almost forgotten it herself. She was too caught up in love, too excited about sharing her first Christmas with a man who really mattered to her.

  Now, though, the memories were as vivid as if she’d never left. Even from her stalled car way out here on a lonely Texas highway she imagined she could see the lights twinkling on the ceiling-scraping Christmas tree, smell the aroma of Consuela’s fresh-baked sugar cookies and bread mingling with the scent of fresh-cut pine. She could almost hear the sound of carols being played at full volume, while her dad chided her mom that she was going to deafen all of them.

  She sighed as she remembered the angel of shimmering gold that was ceremoniously placed on top of the tree each and every year and the pride she’d felt when that duty had been given to her. At five she’d been too small to reach the top, so her father had hoisted her up on his broad shoulders so she could settle that frothy angel onto the tree’s highest branch. Then and only then, in a room that had been darkened for the ceremony, did they switch on the lights, always too many of them, always so magical that she and her mom had gasped with delight, while her dad had grinned tolerantly. The same ceremony had been repeated at White Pines, where as the oldest grandchild she’d always been the one who’d put the angel on her grandfather’s tree.

&nb
sp; So many wonderful traditions, she thought now. How could she have run away from all the warmth and love in that house? she wondered in retrospect.

  Rebellion, pure and simple. She had chafed at all the bright expectations and what she now suspected had been imagined pressures. Like all families, hers had only wanted what was best for her.

  It was just that the Adams men, particularly Luke and her grandfather, had a tendency to think they were the only ones who knew what was best. No two men on earth could be more mule-headed once they’d charted a course of action, for themselves or someone they loved.

  Ironically, they had rarely agreed on what that course should be. One plan would have been hard enough to fight, but two were impossible. Angela had wanted to decide her future for herself, and leaving—choosing a college far from Texas where the Adams influence didn’t reach—had been the only way she’d seen to do it. She’d limited contact to occasional calls, an infrequent e-mail to her computer-literate father.

  Now, with snow falling in fat, wet clumps and the roads turning into hazardous sheets of ice, she sat in her idled clunker of a car less than a mile from home and wondered if anything else could possibly go wrong. Even as the thought crossed her mind, she glanced quickly heavenward.

  “Not that I’m tempting fate, You understand,” she said wearily. “But even You have to admit my life basically sucks these days.”

  She was twenty-two, unmarried, unemployed and no more than a week or two from delivering a baby. She was virtually back on a doorstep she’d vowed she wouldn’t cross again until she’d made something of herself and done it totally on her own without the Adams power and influence behind her. If she’d taken one thing away from Texas with her, it had been the fierce Adams pride, the determination to buck everyone and chart her own path.

  She supposed, in a manner of speaking, that she had. She had made a royal mess of things. No other Adams that she knew of had gone so far astray. She’d skated through college with grades no higher than they had to be. She’d lied about who she was and run away more times and from more places than she could count. Rather than upholding the noble Adams tradition, she’d thumbed her nose at it. Oh, yes, she’d made something of herself, all right, but she wasn’t especially proud of it, and this was hardly the triumphant homecoming she’d once envisioned.

  The only thing she had going for her was the absolute certainty that the two people inside would welcome her back with open arms and without making judgments. Luke and Jessie Adams accepted people for who they were, flaws included. That went double for their only child, the daughter they adored. They would be relieved that she’d finally realized that her heart and her identity were all wrapped up with the tight-knit family who’d been patiently waiting for her all this time.

  As she huddled in the rapidly cooling car, she recalled the oft-told story of the joy with which she’d been welcomed into the world twenty-three years ago tomorrow. She had been born in the middle of a Texas blizzard with no one around to assist her mother except Luke Adams, her uncle at the time and the man who became her father. Luke had been blind drunk that night, but he’d sobered in a hurry when faced with the immediacy of those shattering labor pains. He had risen to the occasion like a true Adams hero.

  From an early age Angela understood that they both considered her to be their Christmas blessing, a miracle on a cold and bitter night. With her natural father dead, her birth had brought Luke and Jessie together, helped them to overcome the anguish and guilt they’d felt at having fallen in love even before her father’s fatal accident. Just as her name implied, she was their angel. Living up to such a lofty label had been daunting.

  Admittedly, though, their expectations for her probably hadn’t been half as exalted as she’d imagined them to be. She hadn’t done a lot of listening before breaking the ties with home. At the first opportunity, she had fled Texas, first to attend college, then to roam the country in search of herself. It was time, she had thought, to do something totally outrageous, to discover what she was truly made of. Being angelic was a bore. She wanted to be wicked or, if not actually wicked, at least human.

  Unfortunately, even after four years at Stanford and a year on her own the answers still eluded her. Over the past few months she’d had plenty of empty nights to examine her past. She was human, all right. The very human mistakes were mounting up.

  She’d made the worst miscalculation of all in Montana with a rancher named Clint Brady, a low-down scoundrel if ever there was one, she thought bitterly. Her mound of a belly was testament to that. She wasn’t looking forward to the hurt and worry that her parents would try their best to hide when they saw her and realized just how much trouble she’d managed to get herself into. She hated the thought of the heartbreak she would read in their eyes.

  She was less worried about the reaction of her incredible grandfather, Harlan Adams. When it came to family, he was thoroughly predictable. He would probably set off fireworks to celebrate the birth of his first great-grandbaby. If he had questions about the baby’s conception, he’d keep them to himself.

  For the time being, anyway, she amended. As meddlesome as he was capable of being, he wouldn’t be silent for long. By year’s end he’d probably have a lynch mob searching for the baby’s father, assuming he could get Angela to name him, which she had no intention of doing. Not even Clint Brady deserved to face the rancor of the Adams men, once they’d been riled up.

  In addition to Luke and her grandfather, there were Cody and Jordan. They might be wildly different in some ways, but they all shared the Adams gene for pure cussedness and family loyalty. Clint wouldn’t have a prayer against the four of them. He’d be hog-tied and married to her before he could blink. She would have no more say in the matter than he did.

  To her chagrin, just the thought of Clint and her wild and reckless behavior in Montana made her blood run hot. Until she’d met him, she’d had no idea that passion could be so overwhelming, so completely and irresistibly awe inspiring.

  Nor had she known how quickly passion could turn to hatred and shame.

  She was glad now that she’d lied to him, that she’d faked a whole identity so that she could pretend for just a little while that she wasn’t Luke and Jessie Adams’s little angel. It had been liberating to pretend to be Hattie Jones, a woman with no exalted family history to live up to, a woman who could be as outrageous as she liked without regrets.

  The decision to lie had been impulsive, made in a darkened country-western bar where she’d stopped to ask about a waitressing job that had been posted in the window. Clint had had the kind of lazy smile and sexy eyes that made a shy, astonishingly innocent college graduate imagine that all sorts of forbidden dreams were hers for the taking.

  The job had been forgotten as she’d succumbed to newly discovered sensuality she hadn’t even been tempted to test with the boys she’d met at Stanford. By the end of the night they were lovers. By the end of the week, she had moved in with him. She supposed that there was yet more irony that after all her running, she’d wound up with a rancher, after all.

  More than once in the blissful days that followed she had regretted the casual lie she’d told when they met. More than once she had vowed to tell him the truth about who she was and where she came from, but Clint had been the kind of man who lived in the here and now. He didn’t talk about his own past. He never asked about hers.

  As weeks turned into months, it seemed easier to live with the lie. She liked being devil-may-care Hattie Jones, who flirted outrageously and never gave a thought to tomorrow. She liked the way Clint murmured her name in the middle of the night, as if he’d never before heard a word so beautiful.

  In Clint’s arms she was ecstatically happy. His ranch was a fraction of the size of her father’s or her grandfather’s, the days were long and exhausting, but none of that mattered, not at night when they made magic together. She found peace on that tiny Montana spread and s
omething she had thought was love.

  Then she’d discovered she was pregnant, and all of the lies and secrets between them—most of them admittedly her doing—had threatened to come unraveled.

  When Clint had reacted in stunned silence to the news they were expecting a baby, that famous Adams pride had kicked in with a vengeance. She’d shouted a lot of awful, ugly things and he’d responded in kind. Even now the memory of it made her shudder.

  If he’d been that furious over the baby, she couldn’t imagine what his rage would be like once he discovered that she’d lied to him from the start. In her entire life, no one had ever made her feel so low. Nor had she ever before wanted to hurt a person so deeply that he would never recover from it. Words were their weapons and they had used them well.

  Angela hadn’t waited for tempers to cool. She’d loaded up her car and hit the road before dawn, determined to put Clint Brady and Montana far behind her.

  That had been nearly seven months ago. She’d been in a lot of cities since. Few of them had even registered. She had no more than vague memories of cheap hotels and back-road diners.

  She wasn’t exactly sure when she’d realized that Clint was following her. It had been almost a sixth sense at first, a nervous knotting in the pit of her stomach, a prickly sensation scampering down her spine. She was too hurt, too sure that she’d been wrong to get involved with him, too ashamed of her age-old predicament to let him catch her. What was the point of one more argument, anyway? It was best to put him in the past, along with all the other mistakes she’d made. A fresh start beckoned from around every curve in the road.

  To her surprise, Clint hadn’t given up easily. He’d nearly caught up with her in Wyoming, cutting short the part-time waitressing job she’d taken to get gas money to move on. Warned about the man who’d been in earlier asking questions about her, she’d slipped out the diner’s back door just as Clint came through the front.

 
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