TITLE|SERIES|IN_SERIES|COVER|PUB|ISBN|PUB_DATE|CO_AUTHOR|BLURB|NOTES|EXCERPT Hi Honey, I'm Home|||HiHoneyImHome.jpg|Multnomah Publishers Inc.|1576735567|February 1999||Kathyrn Sinclair needs to sit down--quickly! She'd answered her front door expecting her boss and his wife. Instead she found herself face-to-face with the one person she never expected to see again: her supposedly deceased husband! An obsessive journalist who put his job before everything else, Nick Egan was reportedly killed in a terrorist attack five years ago. But there he stands, as impressive as ever, ready and waiting to take up life where he left off. Well, Kathryn isn't interested! She's done just fine without him, thank you. And Nick Egan is not getting back into her life. But Nick, and their precocious boys, have other ideas. They're determined to prove to Kate that God has truly changed Nick's heart--no matter what it takes! A funny, heartwarming tale that's a delightful cross between Mr. Mom and The Parent Trap!|Beacon Award Winner|Chapter 1

Friday night traffic on the beltway was typical, but nonetheless horrendous, particularly if one had a deadline. Kathryn Sinclair did. A glance at the clock on the dash told her she had exactly one hour to deliver her prodigal son to the neighbor's home. Then she had to make like the devil for her own, where her assistant manager was putting the final touches on their promotional brain child - an intimate open house to display the Emporium's latest imports. At seven, not only would her choice customers fill the spacious living room of her historical Georgian manor, but her employers would be among them.

One dilemma at a time, Kathryn decided with a sidelong glance at her small companion. Despite herself, she couldn't help drumming her manicured fingers on the steering wheel and inadvertently rocking forward, as if that would speed up the long line of red brake lights ahead of her moving at a snail's pace. Beside her, eight-year-old Jason Egan stared at the menagerie of cars, trucks, and multipurpose vehicles as though the red glow had lured him into some sort of trance.

Kathryn thought he was shaken by the parent-teacher conference, which was making his mother late for her business engagement. At least, she hoped he was! It was hard to tell. Jason was like his late father in that respect. He tacked off to more neutral ground, rather than dwell on a troublesome matter. Drawing him back to the subject at hand required vicegrips She shoved a thick lock of dark hair behind her ear, checked the side mirror, and pulled over to the right lane where traffic was coming to a stop.

"There will be no television this weekend. I expect you to make up all the homework you excused yourself from."

The computer-generated note, allegedly from her to his teacher, was a gem. He hadn't even used the spell check!

"You already said that, Mom." Jason also possessed his late father's uncanny knack for undermining her momentum, which was amazing, considering he'd spent a scant three years with the man. Most of the time Nick Egan had been a TV shot for thirty seconds here and there, hardly the real father a little boy needed and certainly not the husband she herself had hoped for when she'd fallen head over heels in love with him. She married Nick, but Nick married his job.

Kathryn mentally shook herself, refusing to be drawn back into the past when her future was about to become stalled on I-95. She resisted the urge to blow her horn as others were doing. It accomplished nothing, except to irritate those about her all the more. With her luck, some nut would break out a pistol and start taking pot shots at them.

She stepped up the speed of the automatic delayed wipers instead. The wet snow that splashed on the windshield was coming down faster now, as if it hadn't made up its mind whether to make a liar out of the forecasters or not. Scattered showers was the prediction, not snow and freezing rain. But the roads were clear so far, Kathryn noted, hoping the bad turn in the weather wouldn't cut down on attendance. Last year's first show had been such a success!

"I did know all the material, Mom. Even Mrs. Himes said that," Jason reminded her, taking a stab at his defense. No afternoon cartoon show was a serious penalty.

"Jason, you have to follow certain accepted rules." Kathryn held back the unlike your father which flashed through her mind and remained on the subject at hand. "Even if you know the work, you must do your homework!"

"Maybe if I had a reason to do it," the boy began, cutting cinnamon-hued eyes at her from beneath a forelock of sandy brown hair. It was the same color Nick's had been in his boyhood pictures, before it turned darker with maturity.

It was also shaggy again and needed cutting, Kathryn noticed, although when she'd find the time for a trip to the salon was another story. From Thanksgiving to Christmas was the store's busiest time of year. She reached over and brushed the boy's bangs back, only to have them stubbornly resume their comfortable sprawl. Jason was so like Nick, even down to the dark, distinguishingly long lashes that set off his eyes in a way a woman would die for. They had a lazy, pensive look at the moment, one Kathryn recognized as well from the past.

She felt a familiar anguish tear at her chest as she looked away from the mirror image of her late husband. Although their divorce was almost final when Nick was killed in a terrorist explosion in some third world city she couldn't pronounce, she hadn't been prepared for the grief that overtook her. After all, she'd been about to have him legally removed from her life.

At least, that's the way it appeared. Actually, she'd prayed that asking for a divorce would shake Nick up enough to make him realize how he was neglecting her and Jason. Good as her intention was, it backfired. When he agreed to it without a fight, she'd been so hurt and angered, that she let it coast on its own momentum, against heart and reason.

Then he was taken from her forever. Nick's sudden death only drove home that there was a part of her that would always love Nick. He was her first, her only love, and God took him or allowed him to die, maybe in punishment for her foolish attempt to get her husband's attention.

She swallowed back the sudden rise of bitterness from the past. Somewhere she'd read that the human memory tended to erase the bad memories and highlight the good. While she'd contest the first part, the last she found to be true. Sometimes, when she was tired and off guard, a glance at Jason could wring the sweet ones from the past and leave her undone.

Tonight, she could not afford that regression. Nick always invaded her thoughts more at Christmas. She'd married him and said her final goodby to him three years later, both on Christmas Eve. With the same resolve with which she'd reassembled her life, born Nick the second son he never knew about, and established herself as one of the lead import buyers on the east coast, Kathryn willed the gnawing ache away. She never wanted her son to know the anguish he innocently brought her with his resemblance to his father.

"I can think of a reason to do all that work," Jason spoke up, bring Kathryn back to the conversation at hand. He didn't look at her. Instead he concentrated on brushing away the crumbs of a snack he'd devoured while Kathryn met with his teacher.

He was obviously up to something, but that sudden emotional blast from the past dulled her intuition. She remained cautiously silent, wishing she had a windshield wiper for her brain.

"Soccer," the boy informed her when she glanced at him expectantly.

"I should have known," Kathryn thought aloud in a cryptic tone. Jason also had Nick's tenacity, the ability to go after what he wanted if it took days, even weeks, until she either gave in from exasperation or forgot her initial objection. It had made his father one of the top network reporters. He always got his story.

"I'm a tough kid, Mom and soccer's not as rough as football. I won't get hurt like Grandma says."

"You're too little! And what if you break your fingers? How will you play the piano?"

Jason was a gifted musician, according to Madame Tremaine.

"I won't break my fingers! We're not allowed to touch the ball!" the child responded in grating condescension at her ignorance of the sport. "Dad was a football captain. He could have gone pro! I want to be like him, but I'll settle for soccer . . . too late for football anyway."

Double wham! If Jason were any more like his father, she'd not be able to bear it! He had a sturdy build for an eight-year-old and could hold his ground like a rock according to Jim Anderson, their neighbor and pony league coach. Then there were those dark brown eyes with volatile flecks of gold that could flash with anger or dance with mischief. They'd drive some girl crazy some day.

"Jason, you know I can't take you to and from soccer practice this time of year. My time is limited even more by business." If only she wasn't so worn out from getting ready for the show, she'd be quicker on her feet. As it was, Nick - no, Jason, she amended - had the advantage. "We'll discuss this later, okay?"

Kathryn would have closed her eyes in despair were the thinning cars ahead not approaching her turn.

"An' what am I going to do while the guys watch TV tonight?" Jason lamented, switching tactics smoothly. "I can't even go to my own room in my own house because of that dumb old party."

Why had she ever told the boys the house was really theirs, held in trust from their late father's estate? Dr. Spock never had a chapter on this situation.

"But I am in charge of the house until you and Jeremy are twenty-one. Then you can kick me out and do what you will with it!" Kathryn reminded him impatiently.

Her knuckles whitened from her grasp on the steering wheel as she turned onto a county road boasting several swanky developments. Since Jason had gone into the third grade, he'd become more and more disagreeable and difficult to handle. He was learning exactly where her strings were and which ones to pull.

"In the meantime . . . " She broke off upon feeling her son's small hand close about her arm.

"I'd never kick you out, Mom. You know that."

The stricken look on Jason's face tugged at her heart. She could feel it melting beneath the contrition of his gaze.

Kathryn wanted to let go the wheel and drawn him into her arms. Instead, she shot into the right lane and passed a service van loaded with workmen. They'd obviously started their weekend celebration early, judging from the way they swerved over the line.

Her destination was just ahead. The name Brighton Heath was outlined in colonial blue and gold against a wood-planked background and illuminated by soft spotlights. Small white Christmas lights adorned the impeccably manicured plantings in the median dividing the entrance and exit to one of the metro areas more elite subdivisions.

"I know, Jason," she answered softly, reaching out to squeeze the boy's hand, as she passed off-shooting streets marked with plaques bearing old English names of the same design as the entrance. "And you do have a point. A lot of the books you need to finish your homework are in your room."

"Does that mean I can play with the guys and watch TV?"

"Only if you give me your solemn promise to spend the rest of your weekend at home working on your catchup work," Kathryn conceded. "Can you do that?"

She drew her free hand back to the wheel to turn into Meadow Green. As she did so, she gently tested the brakes. The car didn't lose traction, which meant that, so far, the wet snow wasn't sticking or freezing.

"Cool!" the boy exclaimed in relief.

The Andersons' two story home, designed in a French motif, was aglow with Christmas candles in each window and beribboned swags of evergreen on the sills. As Kathryn maneuvered into the driveway, Karrie Anderson, clad in her typical battle of the bulge regalia - a sweat suit, sweat band, and running shoes - opened the wreathed front door and waved, a steaming cup in hand.

"New tea!" she shouted. "Guaranteed to take off pounds! Not bad either!"

"As if you need it!" Kathryn teased through the open electric window of the car. Her neighbor was always on some diet or exercise kick, despite a slim figure.

With the Andersons' two boys of six and eight, she supposed it was too much to hope for the younger Jeremy Egan to poke his little face through the open door in greeting. Jason, however, did deign to give her a hasty peck on the cheek.

"Thanks, Mom! Hope you have a good party!" Bundled in a down-filled jacket, he practically rolled out the car door and dashed for the front door.

"Good luck tonight!" Karrie called out to her, backing against the glass storm to let Jason barrel past.

"Thanks!" Kathryn shouted back. "And thanks for keeping the boys. I'll pick them up as soon as the trucks take the goods back to the store!"

Karrie's cheerful "Take your time!" faded as she stepped inside and drew the door to behind her.

Grateful for good neighbors like the Andersons, Kathryn backed out of the drive and headed toward the far end of Brighton Heath's boundary where the original homestead, which belonged to the Egan family lay on the remaining four acres still in that name.

With the impending divorce, Nick bequeathed everything to his offspring, having changed his will just before leaving on his last news assignment. Since their separation had been one of mutual agreement and not bitter, at least on the surface, he appointed Kathryn as a trustee of the minors' estate along with their long time friend and attorney, Paul Radisson. As trustees, she and Radisson felt it was in the boys' best interest to develop the land, which more than quadrupled the value and resulted in a considerable fortune to invest for the minors' future.

It was hard to believe that five years ago all this was farmland and the house was a cold brick monster, isolated amidst overgrown shrub and woods. Nick's parents had bought the run down place and worked it, but with their passing, the fields were rented for a pittance and the house became an oversized, under-modernized bachelor pad until she and Nick were married.

Her mother was appalled at their living conditions, as Nick's career had not yet taken off and money to restore the house was not to be had.

Development had been a good decision, Kathryn thought as she turned into the large circle dubbed Egan Court. There the now stately family home stood in all its Christmas splendor, as it might have appeared nearly two hundred years earlier when it had originally been built.

Unlike its original state, however, it was insulated and boasted the latest indoor plumbing amenities as well as heating, and air-conditioning. As one appraiser had put it, it was a two hundred year old new home by the time Kathryn had finished restoring and remodeling it with some of the profits from the development.

Ordinarily she'd have taken time to appreciate the spacious yard, which was landscaped with its original ancient oak and walnut, as well as professionally restored beds and gardens.

Egan Court had been featured in more than one of the house and garden magazines and now stood on the historical register as well. The restoration was a dream she and Nick had once shared come true, even if Nick had not survived to see it. No doubt, if he'd lived, he'd have spent more time reading about it than actually living in it.

Ah, no matter what was written about only good memories surviving a loved one's loss, the bitter still rose with the sweet from time to time, Kathryn mused dourly. She pulled her mini-van into the garage, an addition built on in the form of a carriage house. It was connected to the main manor by a long mud/utility room. The last of the items they intended to show were packed in boxes in the back of the car, but her assistant David and housekeeper Ruth Ann would have to get them out. She had to shower and dress in less than forty-five minutes!

In the mad rush into the house, Kathryn didn't take time to seek out her partner in this unconventional show scheme. Knowing David was efficiently devoting his time to the great room, she told her housekeeper to advise him of her arrival and the items in the car. While she hated delegating authority, there were some times when it was unavoidable and, thanks to Jason, this was one of them.

The scent of the Cajun blackened prime rib and its accompanying dishes being prepared by the caterers followed her as she scrambled up the servant's stairwell to the master suite. It reminded Kathryn that she'd missed lunch. Lying across the bed, a la David, was one of the Parisian designs she'd purchased for Mrs. Whitehall's fashion department at the Emporium. It was still in its protective plastic. Coordinating shoes, purse, and gloves, as well as a short matching velvet cape were beside the dress, although Kathryn doubted she'd need the cape or purse inside the house. Maybe she'd display them on the coat rack in the hall, since, with the rush she'd been in, she was in an overheated lather as it was.

Fortunately, she wasn't one to linger in the tub or shower. Life did not allow her the luxury of using the porcelain pedestal tub with the slanted back in the light of the flickering electric sconces hanging on the walls. Instead, she showered in a tiled cove adorned with stylish curtains to match those hanging over the shuttered window, making quick work of lavishing scented bath gel on her smooth skin. Upon drying with the thick coordinated towels, she rushed through her after bath toilette and recklessly dried her shoulder-length auburn locks, since she was going to wear her hair up anyway.

The dark green velvet of the dress fitted her tall supple figure like a royal sheath. By the time Kathryn drew on the matching long silk gloves, she looked quite the princess, especially after she fastened a jeweled velvet-clothed comb in her hair to hold her upswept locks in place.

With one last breathless look in the mirror, she dabbed on a touch of new perfume imported from Demonde of the Virgin Islands and hurried down the main staircase just as the walnut grandfather clock in the central hall struck six.

Six! But it should be seven! Kathryn stopped halfway in her descent and stared at the face of the elegantly carved Swiss time piece in confusion, until it dawned on her that she'd been running on the schedule of the clock in the dash of her car. It had not yet been set back for daylight-saving time. She was an hour ahead of schedule!

With a breath of mixed relief and exasperation over her unnecessary tizzy, she started downward again. Although thick oriental carpet on the grand staircase cushioned her footfall, her descent drew the attention of the two well-dressed men conversing in the doorway of the great room. Kathryn instantly recognized her assistant manager David Marsh and Paul Radisson, her attorney and fellow trustee of the children's estate. The preparations must be completed or David would still be flitting about like a flustered hummingbird.

"David, you're a lifesaver!"

She stopped at the bottom of the steps to reseat her foot in the sequin buckled high heels before she pulled a Cinderella act and left it in her wake. They were supposed to have been eights, not eight and a half, but it was too late to do anything about it. They were designed to complement the rest of her ensemble. Both men moved forward to steady her as she wrestled with the errant slipper, but David reached her first. "And you, Kathryn, are a work of art, not to mention an hour ahead of schedule! I take it you've solved the case of the prodigal son to the school's satisfaction?"

"For the time being, although this single working mother bit drives me batty at times.

I'm only an hour early because I was rushing by a clock I hadn't set back yet," Kathryn admitted candidly.

"I'm willing to come to your rescue anytime," Paul Radisson spoke up. "Especially if you wear that dress! I'll wager that if the women coming tonight think they can look like you in it, you can't possibly have ordered enough of them."

"Only one of each style, dear," Kathryn reminded her friend warmly. "It wouldn't do to have two ladies appear at the same function in the same dress." Aside from her, there would be models circulating among the guests for an additional peek at the new holiday apparel arrivals.

"As for coming to my rescue, you already have by agreeing to act as my co-host. David and I will be frantically involved with sales, if this works out the way we plan."

Radisson had been Nick's best man at their wedding and for a while, he and his wife and Kathryn and Nick had socialized together. If only time could have stood still then, when they were all newlyweds and, although struggling to make financial ends meet, so much in love.

However, when Nick took the job of foreign correspondent and Paul graduated from law school to join his father's firm, the two couples drifted apart.

Upon her husband's violent death, Kathryn discovered that Paul had divorced his wife, although it didn't come as a complete shock. Word drifted down along her mother's grapevine that Paul had become something of a silver-tongued devil with the women in the elite social circles about D.C. He'd tried his charm on Kathryn, but to no avail. . . yet.

Even if he had truly had enough of his freedom as he claimed, she was not ready for a relationship beyond the one they had as friends and as occasional escorts to thwart well-intentioned matchmakers like her mother and friends. Sometimes Kathryn wondered if she'd ever be receptive to another man.

She humored Paul with an absent smile as he made a gallant show of lifting her hand to his lips. While Nick had fallen short of her ideal of a husband, Paul was closer to it than any man she'd ever met. Maybe she was too picky, as her mother accused, but once burned, twice shy, as the saying goes. The most important requirement was that the man she chose be good father material for the boys, someone she and they could count on. They were the only men in her life that really mattered.

"Since I've a moment to catch my breath, I'd love a cup of the imported punch before the hoards arrive."

She withdrew her hand when he held it a noticeable moment longer than necessary. Paul would be perfect, but for his discomfort around children.

"The alchohol free English wassail," she requested with a wistful smile. "I'm saving the spiced ciders for dinner."

"At your service, madame." Radisson broke into a toothsome one and winked. He'd given away excellent tickets to attend the symphony with his senior partners without complaint to be at her side. Kathryn couldn't help but appreciate his attentiveness and dedication.

"You're a dear for putting up with me."

"Us," David injected at her side as Paul retreated to the bar set up in the front parlor. "I was in such a dither, I asked him to help unpack the Venetian glassware."

Kathryn grinned at the last resort implication in David's voice. Like her, he was very particular and preferred doing things himself. Still, she couldn't imagine having to put the show together without her employer's nephew.

David joined the firm upon graduating from a European art school three years ago and seemed to soak up the knowledge she had to offer like a sponge. There was no doubt in her mind that the Whitehalls would leave the business to their only nephew, having no children of their own.

Then her assistant would become her boss, a prospect that didn't bother Kathryn in the least. The two of them operated on the same wave length and with the same devotion to their trade. Too often they teased each other about being married to imports and not having time to seek personal relationships. David would no doubt make some young woman a delightful husband someday, if he ever left the store and import warehouses to find her.

Even then, the girl would likely need a four hundred year old necklace displayed on her chest to catch his attention, just as a man would need some similar trappings to capture hers.

They were a pot and kettle, if there ever was such a pair.

"Kathryn, you must see the table!" the young man went on in an enthusiastic burst. "The Canton is exquisite! Imagine finding it packed in a barrel of straw, untouched for two hundred years! I'll wager Jacob Witherby will purchase it before the night's out at top price!"

"No way!" Kathryn laughed, taking the crystal cup of waissail Paul Radisson handed her upon rejoining them. "I know better than to risk good money against your instincts."

David's eyes twinkled with mischief and delight. "Why, Kathryn, I believe I'm flattered, considering my aunt thinks you the mistress extraordinaire of profitable intuition."

She stirred the steamy concoction with the cinnamon stick garnish, checking to be certain the mandatory apple slice was there in the bottom. Both came with the ready mix, which tasted as heavenly as if it were simmered on some ancient stone hearth.

Knowing her clientele, it was a certain sell to the Sharmas, whose parties were well known in the capital's diplomatic social circles. Kathryn sipped it slowly, while visually inspecting in the tastefully displayed items from all parts of the world. A showroom couldn't possibly display them to their best advantage, not like a real home.

Each piece looked as if it had been purchased for its particular space in the scheme of decor. From the authentic Queen Anne banquet tables, now set elaborately for twenty of the Emporium's most prestigious buyers on hand-embroidered Irish linen, to the carved rosewood occasional tables flanking richly upholstered furniture of Eastern design, there was an atmosphere of intimate elegance.

"David, it's perfect!" Kathryn declared, beaming at her proud assistant. Before she could follow her comment through with an appreciative hug, the front bell rang.

Adrenalin pumped. "You start the music, I'll get the door," she ordered, her face flushing with anticipation.

Ruth Ann was too busy with the caterers in the kitchen to worry with admitting guests tonight, another reason Paul had been asked to co-host.

"It's probably the Whitehalls," she called over her shoulder as she walked into the marbled hall, her heels clicking crisply on the polished surface not covered by Turkish area rugs.

"After this, you can take over," she added, realizing she'd promptly assumed her co-host's assigned task.

Paul touched his heels together in mock salute. "Yes, mein madame! It's now my one goal in life to be your man."

Kathryn let the innuendo slide. It was hard to tell when Paul was serious or teasing, although David told her the man only fell back on the teasing angle to avoid her rejection and save his ego.

"Crazy!" she accused playfully, allowing Paul that out. Could she ever bring herself to take him seriously?

Brandishing a brilliant smile to wash away her doubt, she opened the front door. The wind had picked up and the icy air rushed in to assault her back and shoulders, bared by the halter design of her gown. Instead of her employers, however, she found herself face to face with only one individual. He stood, shoulders hunched in a beige topcoat. His brown hair whipped about his face, while his breath fogged the air before a mouth frozen in a thin white line.

Somehow an incredulous "Nick!" escaped her tightening throat as Kathryn stared at the mature version of her son Jason. Were it not for the fact that her heart had stopped the blood flowing through her veins cold, the expectant whiskey-colored gaze fixed upon her would have negated the icy air rushing in and warmed her from head to toe as it always had.

But it couldn't be, Kathryn reasoned. Her strength drained as quickly as the blood from her face, leaving a pinpricked trail of disbelief. Nick was dead! They sent home a few of his charred belongings, his body having been destroyed in the explosion beyond retrieval, much less identification. She buried them in his place. Pregnant with his second son, the one she hadn't told him about during the divorce negotiations, she wept at the small gravesite with guilt and grief until she could cry no more.

The memory re-emerged with a terrible blow. Staggering a step backward, Kathryn blinked as if to erase this bizarre visitation of the ghost of Christmas past from her sight, but he remained there, studying her with an enigmatic gaze.

Suddenly, he spoke, his voice as real as he appeared to be, the solemn line of his lips breaking in a poor attempt at humor. "Hi, honey, I'm home." Unlikely Angels|||UnlikelyAngels.jpg|Multnomah Publishers Inc.|1576735893|November 1999|, Barbara Jean Hicks, Annie Jones, Diane Noble|In this anthology of four novellas,(three proven favorites and one new delight), "animal attraction" gains a whole new meaning! Four couples discover love thanks to unexpected, sometimes hilarious, and always entertaining assistance. In Cupid's Chase, Reid and Carina try to sabotage the ridiculous romance between her father and his mother -- but Carina's grandmother and her insightful cat have other ideas. A rescued greyhound helps a sociology professor decide if love deserves a second chance in Fool Me Twice. Two bird-watching retirees take on more than they bargained for to save a historic park in Birds of a Feather. And in A Season for Love, an orphaned young woman reluctantly returns to her childhood home to find, with the help of a playful mare, a surprising love.||Chapter One

"Does this mean what I think it means?"

Nurse Audra Anderson couldn't believe the giant hunk of diamond, surrounded by a cluster of smaller precious gems nestled in its satin lined case. With a wry twist of her lips, she glanced up at the handsome doctor who presented it to her. It was best to make a joke of it, just in case. She and Mark had been dating six months. Their colleagues said they were the perfect couple. Audra almost felt that way, save one twinge of insecurity. Dr. Mark Chadwick was from an old Southern Maryland family-- blue bloods; Audra was an orphan who'd changed bedpans to support herself through medical school.

"Well, it's phase one of what I think you think it is. I am asking you to marry me, Audra." Mark's smile stretched white against his golf-course tanned face, revealing a perfect row of teeth. Dr. G, the nurses called him behind his back, short for Dr. Gorgeous. He was sure of himself, sure of the ring, and knew her answer.

Well, not quite. Audra gave him a quizzical look. "Phase one?"

Mark slipped a reassuring arm about her waist as they stood on the balcony of her apartment, surrounded by the glittering lights of the city. "This is a pre-engagement ring," he explained. "According to Chadwick tradition, my sweet, sealing the agreement between the prospective bride and groom. You don't get the official one until it's been formally announced by our families."

"Oh. For a minute I was afraid I'd have to get a blood test," she teased.

Must be nice to have old family traditions. If Audra had them, she knew nothing of them, even though her father had come from an old Virginia family as prestigious as Mark's. His family, who had disowned him for marrying beneath his station, had never accepted his orphan as anything more than a burden. Audra's blood was tainted with that of a New York soap actress.

Mark lifted one brow and gave a wounded grunt. "This isn't exactly the reaction I expected."

Audra shook off the invasion of past insecurity, determined to savor the joy of the present. She'd come a long way from being an unwanted burden to her father's family. "Yes! Yes! A thousand times yes!"

"Wait, put on the ring first. Then we'll seal this deal properly."

"Sounds like a contract." Audra snickered.

"It is," Mark slipped the ring on her finger. It fit perfectly.

"Well, half a contract," she amended.

Mark put aside the empty box and turned her into his arms. "Don't worry. My folks adore you. The fact that you hail from the Harvest Home Andersons doesn't hurt, but they'd love you anyway...just like me."

His whisper died as he drew Audra fully into his embrace and sealed the agreement with a fervent affection. Audra's discomfiture at the reference to her being of the "right" family melted. Dr. Mark Chadwick loved her, with or without her pedigree. This was what she'd prayed for on many a lonely, abandoned nightÑacceptance for who she was and, in later years, the perfect man for her. Love was good. Life was good. God was good.

So what was that annoying noise bleeping in the background of her rush of happiness? Mark pulled away abruptly with a muttered oath. Reaching inside his designer dinner jacket, he withdrew his beeper and read the bright red numbers flashing across the mini-screen.

"Of all the nights!"

Ah, the beeper. The curse of private life for anyone in the medical profession. Yet, not even that could dim the light shining in Audra's gaze. She pointed toward the telephone hanging in the kitchenette, which was part of her living room, and noticed for the first time since their arrival from the osteopathic department's dinner party that Mark was not the only one with a blinking red light demanding attention. Her answering machine signaled she had waiting calls.

Mark was needed at the ER for a pedestrian versus compact car case requiring surgery. With a reluctant smile and gallant kiss on the hand now boasting the expensive cluster of jewels, he took his leave.

It wasn't until Audra closed and bolted the door that she floated over to the answering machine and pushed the button. The weight of the ring felt foreign to her left hand. Next time she exercised, she could leave the wrist weights off that one, she thought, grinning from ear to ear. God was so good! Not Exactly Eden|||NotExactlyEden.jpg|Multnomah Publishers Inc.|1576734455|June 2000||When debutante Jenna Marsten breaks off her engagement a week before her wedding, she's sure life can't get any worse. But among the gifts to be returned is a strange statue...one that came anonymously. Further investigation reveals the statue is from a remote tribe of the Amazon rain forest- and that it came from Jenna's supposedly deceased father! Soon Jenna finds herself in Peru, seeking the love of the father who abandoned her and meaning for her fractured future. And Dr. Adam DeSanto-a handsome, bitter widower who helps her father run a jungle hospital, and who happens to loathe "women like Jenna"-is only complicating matters. Then Jenna's life is put at risk. Helpless to save her, Adam cries out to the God he rejected at his wife's death. God hears and answers in ways neither Adam nor Jenna could imagine, finally resolving their pain and renewing their faith in Himself, the future-and each other.||Prologue

"I knew this would happen! It's deja vu! I feel like I'm saying good-by for the last time!"

Jenna Marsten put a comforting arm around her aunt's shoulder and handed her a tissue. Outside the chauffeured limousine, the by passes and road signs flashed by, a concrete blue interspersed with highway green. With the airport as their destination, this was Violet Winston's last ditch effort to keep Jenna from making the mistake of her life and the woman was giving it all she had.

"Aunt Vi, just because my mother was killed in a jungle plane crash doesn't mean I'll be! Planes and airports have improved over the last few decades in South America, I'm sure!"

It wasn't that her aunt was just being her usual dominant self and didn't care. She did. Violet Winston and her late husband Ben raised Jenna as their own daughter, giving her the best life one of Boston's blue blood families had to offer. Her debut into society was one of the most publicized cotillions ever held at the country club. Having gone to all the right schools, here and abroad, Jenna was now assistant Director of the Fine Arts Foundation. According to her aunt, she was tossing all away to go into the same tropical wilderness that had killed her parents... or at least one of them.

"I wish you'd never seen that ugly little Indian thing. If I'd only been thinking, instead of stewing over the cancellations, you never would have..." her aunt fretted, trailing off with a tremulous sigh.

"I'm glad you were distracted! I had a right to know my father is alive, even if he did want nothing to do with me. But let's not go there again," Jenna added, wanting to avoid yet another emotional conflict.

She knew in her heart that Aunt Violet only sought to protect her. From what remained to be seen. From further rejection? Jenna couldn't... wouldn't think about it. All she knew is it was something she had to do.

Who'd have guessed that returning gifts from a broken wedding engagement would lead her to discover the truth about the accident, which had left her believing she was an orphan? Her aunt tried to dismiss the crudely wrapped package as coming from one of Jenna's eccentric circle of associates at the art foundation where she worked, someone who'd forgotten to include a card. The return address of Ichitas, Peru and the newspaper in which the carved figure was wrapped, however, told another story.

"Didn't Benjamin and I love you enough?" Violet added the used tissue to the increasing wad she twisted with manicured, jeweled fingers beginning to draw with arthritis. "Why do you have to go look up a father who'd rather stay in the jungle than raise his only daughter? He took your mother away from us and now he's taking you!" Jenna's heart twinged, nailed twice by a spear of guilt and one of angst. It wasn't like she was doing this to hurt the woman. Why couldn't her aunt look beyond her intense dislike of her brother-in-law and see this? If she truly wanted to help, she'd not add to the doubt Jenna was trying so desperately to ignore - that her father might not want her to find him.

Jenna pushed the lock of honey blonde hair that she'd been toying with behind her ear before she started to chew on it, a telltale sign of suppressed anxiety since her childhood.

"Aunt Vi, please don't do this. You and Uncle Ben have been the only parents I've ever known. I love you dearly, but I have to go. I've always felt there was a part of me that was missing and now I know why. I want to meet my father."

One of the foundation's experts identified the figure as an enigma of South American Indian origin. The stone was fashioned from was quite old, indigenous to the Amazon. An ensuing investigation as to how it came to her at least distracted Jenna from the trauma of Scott Pierson's choosing a lucrative position in a Middle East oil conglomerate and postponing their wedding. At least she knew where she stood in the ambitious engineer's priorities.

"I think Scott actually did me a favor, postponing the wedding." God, please make the events leading to this no accident. I'm flying blind here. I don't want to look my father up for the wrong reason, running from this recent rejection to another. I just feel like nothing in my life is as I thought, my family, my engagement...

"I could wring that young man's neck, choosing to work halfway around the world, when he had a perfectly good job here! It wasn't like he needed the money."

The Piersons were one of Boston's older families. Scott's mother and Violet attended boarding school together, as well as an exclusive women's college. The match was made in heaven as far as they were concerned. Jenna and Scott were the picture perfect couple, both fair and attractive, with promising careers and all the right contacts. Like all of Jenna's life, their future was put together in a neat little package, adorned with approval. Maybe that's what bothered Scott... and, in retrospect, Jenna herself.

"Better to find out where I stand now than later. Besides, marriage isn't totally out of the question. It's just been put off for a while."

Jenna, at least, was over the stage of anger. The sudden decision still hurt, but now that she had found peace and hope with it through her faith and the Scripture so prevalent in her mother's diaries, she was determined to be relieved.

We are troubled on every side, yet not distressed; we are perplexed, but not in despair.

This had happened for a good reason. Neither she, nor Scott, were as ready for a lifetime commitment to each other as they and everyone else thought. Besides, Jenna consoled herself in the belief that God could take disappointments and turn them into opportunities. The mysterious figurine had to be part of His plan.

She leaned back against the plush upholstery of the limo as the driver turned into the airport.

"You just don't know what you're getting into!" Aunt Violet went on by her side. "Lord knows, I've tried to protect you from it. Your mother's journals paint a pretty picture, but she was looking at the world through love struck eyes."

Jenna had read the yellowed pages over and over through the years in an attempt to get to know Diana Marsten. She knew of her mother's rebellion against the family's wishes to become a nurse, and worse yet, to marry beneath her station, even if Robert Marsten was a doctor. She'd felt her mother's excitement as she and the man she loved ventured off into the Amazon to set up a clinic and study jungle medicine. Diana Marsten wrote with the heart of a woman who knew where she was going and why - a heart with a purpose.

"And like your mother, you're just as stubborn."

For the first time in her life, Jenna felt like she too had a purpose. No longer was she slipping into slot after convenient slot. Long suppressed, her inherited rebellious nature had finally found freedom. Yes, she was going to meet the father she'd never known, the father who'd handed her over to the Winstons and never looked back, at least until he's somehow heard about her wedding plans. This journey, however, was something more than looking up her father. What she couldn't say. All she knew was that it was one she had to make.

"But I can tell you right now, dear," Aunt Violet said, placing her hand over Jenna's and squeezing it with genuine affection. "I've been there and it's no tropical paradise."

Jenna returned the gesture in earnest. "But I'm not looking for paradise, Aunt Vi. I'm looking for my life."

Not Scott's, not her aunt and uncle's, not her father's nor her mothers- her life. Maire|Fires of Gleannmara Series|Book One|Maire.jpg|Multnomah Publishers Inc.|1576736253|October 2000||In an age of darkness comes a flame that will change the Isle of Erin and her people forever...

Ireland. 5th Century A.D. An ancient land of timeless mystery, where, in the Age of the Saints, the spark of Christianity spread like wildfire among kings, scholars, and poor alike. And nowhere is the impact greater than among the druids, where the light of Christ divides those seeking truth from those seeking power.

Against this backdrop of passion and change, two warriors stand firm: Rowan ap Emrys, reformed mercenary, leader of his tribe, and Maire, warrior queen of Gleannmara.

When they finally join together, lifting their swords to unite their squabbling tribes against the evil druid Morlach and his forces of darkness, they discover the true cost--and joy--of following the One True God and His Christ.|Now in reprint! Winner of the Dorothy Parker Award of Excellence from Reviewers International Organization.|A Foreword, as it 'twere, from Erin's heart . . . .

Gleannmara. Ah the sound of it warms me to my earthy core. 'Tis one of me favorite parts, nestled as it was between me mist shrouded Wicklows and the Irish Sea. See, the Romans once dubbed me island Scotia and me people the Scots, which is why some of me children took that name to Scotland later on, but I digress. I am the Emerald Isle of Ireland -- Erin for short.

Since creation, I've had all kinds of names, Hibernia bein' the first on record, and sure, I've seen all manner of mankind come and go. Before the Great Flood were some Greeks and after, well the list is considerable. Descendants of Noah's sons, Japeth and Seth/Cham were the first, the first a settling group and the later a troublesome lot of pirates. Aye, at the base of me bloodlines are the Hebrews. Then came the Greeks, Parthelan at Tallaght-the graves are there to this day, and Nemedh-whose people fled the pirates for the North, for Greece, and to Britain, which is named for one of the leaders, Briotan Maol.

But the love of my God-graced green mountains and plains was never forgotten and my children came back, like hungry babes to a mother's breast. The Firbolgs returned first from Greece and, later, so did the Tuatha de Dananns from the North. After a terrible clash, the latter emerged triumphant, what with their superior powers.

Now there's them that believed this group to have the powers of magic. I meself think the Tuatha de Dananns were not magicians, but the forefathers of today's scientists. They were gifted with an intimate knowledge of God's earth and its workins. Such advanced learnin' as they had could easily be mistaken by a more primitive people for magic power as opposed to God given knowledge.

No matter how much they knew, tho', the Dananns were no match for the coming of the sons of Milidh and me last colonization at about 3500 years before Christ. These Milesians come by sea from what's now Spain, no small feat for that time. Here, as in the days of my creation, I saw the work of the Almighty's hand, for the Milesians' ancestors were none other than Phoenicians, a sea-lovin' race blessed by the Almighty for a deed of their Scythian forefathers back in the time of Moses.

Josephus writes of how they were from a Red Sea settlement called Chiroth and gave aid and supplies to the Hebrew children fleeing Egypt with Moses, thereby invitin' the Pharoah's wrath. 'Twas no escape but by their vessels which the Lord blessed them. He sent 'em an east wind to carry them to the Iberian Peninsula to become the greatest navigators of the ancient world -- the Phonecians.

'Twas no wonder that their descendants, the Milesians, were able to land on my shore and defeat the Danann's in battle, despite a tempest, which some say the Dananns conjured with their mysterious powers. How could even those as learned as the Dananns know this was a seafaring people blessed by the Hand of the Creator centuries before? To this day, some folk think the conquered Dananns shape-shifted into spirits and now live in the Other World as fairies and such. I was even called Erienn after one of their queens.

Me own account, howsome ever, is that the Dananns that got away hid themselves in the hills where they lived as hermits and continued their studies of the earth and stars, as such. For all that, they remained as much in darkness as their victors, still worshippin' the Creations, instead of the Creator. . . that is until the comin' of the Gospel Light.

It's thought the Apostle Paul referred to me in his letters as the green island to the north, lightin' the first spark, which gradually was fanned into a Pentecostal fire by the teachers of the Truth who followed and verified by the pagan druid history of the Star of Bethlehem and the darkness on the day of Christ's crucifixion. Some think the Magi themselves might have been druid astrologers and kings who knew something was amiss by the signs.

The way me children embraced that Light made me proud enough to bust. Druids and kings who sought Truth and Light, gave up their wealth and prestige to become servants of the One God. No other country in the history of the world produced more missionaries than meself. And, if I might say so meself, 'tis me man today credits for saving civilization when the rest of the earth sank into the dark age of the barbarians.

Now the tale I'm fixin' to tell is about the comin' of God's word to the hills and vales of tuatha Gleannmara. The spark of the Gospel kindled there to burn to this very day in the hearts of its children, despite the tribulations of corruption and invasion, spawn of the prince of darkness his own self. Make yourself comfortable and read the story of Rowan, who introduced Christianity to the tuath of his birth, and of Maire--pronounced 'moyra'-- the pagan warrior queen who found love in his arms and salvation in his God through Christ. Riona|Fires of Gleannmara Series|Book Two|Riona.jpg|Multnomah Publishers Inc.|1576737527|June 2001||NO CHOICE...

Kieran, the proud warrior-king of Gleannmara was once rejected by the lovely Riona of Dromin, but this time the willful lady will have no choice in accepting him. He promised his dying best friend, her brother, to give Riona his protection as her lord and husband.

GOD'S WILL?

Her attachment to three orphans of the plague lead Riona to doubt her chosen future in the Church, especially when she suspects the motives of the couple who intend to adopt them. She can not adopt a family, not without a husband. When the arrogant Kieran of Gleannmara rides through the abbey gate, Riona can not believe this is the answer God sent to her prayers.

LED BY A CHILD...OR THREE?

Their options disappear after they stumble upon a treasonous plot and Kieran is framed for the murder of the abbot. Incapacitated by a wound, the prideful warrior becomes a fugitive, fleeing for justice at the high king's court and dependent on the faith and wit of a would-be nun and her prodigal band of homeless waifs in an adventure of faith, hope, and love.|Christy Finalist and winner of the National Readers Choice Award, Inspirational Romance Readers Award, American Christian Romance Writers' 2002 Best Book of the Year Award, Colorado Romance Writers of America Aspen Gold Award, RWA Laurel Wreath for Best Inspirational, and Affair De Couer Readers Poll.|A Foreword, from the Heart of Erin...

I greet you a free soul, good friend! Sure, it’s been a long time and ye’re a joyful sight for these sore eyes. All the while I’ve been collectin’ me memories of me sixth century after the death of our Lord Jesus, and the second hundred years of my children’s enlightenment of God’s Word. My heart leaps like a mountain spring over a fall with excitement and pride, for them seeds of knowledge the good Lord planted the century before took root and grew beyond the ken of the angels themselves.

I am none other than Erin--the blessed Green Isle to the North of history and legend alike; Thomas Cahill’s savior of civilization; motherland to warriors and bards, kings and saints, magic and miracle. Ye read as much, did ye not, in the first of me series of stories, Maire, Fires of Gleannmara? Aye, ‘twas there ye saw the first flame of Christianity kindled in me heart.

Now, in the wake of Patrick and his likes, a new Erin emerges, where secular and clerical schools have grown to quench me children’s thirst for knowledge, while churches multiply to nourish their souls. I’m proud to say that public education began right here on me shores.

But what would ye expect in a place where literacy was near a religion in itself? Why in one generation, me children mastered Greek, Latin, and some Hebrew. And their own Irish was so pure there was no dialect, no matter where ’twas spoken. When they weren’t mastering a language, they was inventin’ one, like that secret one, Hisperica Famina, made up as it were of bits o’ Latin. And books, my heart, they were turnin’ ‘em out the likes of which was unheard of. Sure, I lay claim to bein’ the world’s first publisher. What with libraries fallin’ to barbarian flames all over the continent and in Rome itself, there were me priests and druidic bards preservin’ history and culture alike on pages for all time. And, I might add, fit as I am to bust me britches, that in the process of savin’ such masterpieces of the past, their whimsical doodles and witty commentaries jotted in the margins come to be admired as an art form in itself.

Alls I can say is, it’s time, well enough, for the world to recognize me Celtic forefathers as far more civilized than their asterperious Greek and Roman counterparts gave ‘em credit for. No culture copycats among us! Our poems and tales, preserved by word of mouth, are purely our own dear Irish--a delight to the eye as well as the ear.

Plagiarism was not tolerated, as demonstrated when our precocious, but no less dear, Saint Columcille, copied a rare and coveted psalter that his teacher, Ninian of Moville, had just brought back from Rome. High King Diarmott decreed “to each cow, it’s own calf,” and the disgruntled student had to give back his copy. By me mother’s own milk, ’tis true!

Meanwhile, me feisty lads o’ the cloth made a few o’ their own rules, like confession. Ye see, Rome would have a body confess his transgressions afore all, public-like. Instead me saints adopted their ancestral custom o’ sharing a soul’s innermost fears and secrets with an anmchara or soul friend. In Patrick’s time and afore, ’twas said, “Anyone without a soul friend is like a body without a head.” Me children looked for the likes of wisdom, holiness, generosity, loyalty and courage in an anmchara, and in Columcille’s time, me saints took to this private confession like fleas to a plump, hairy hound.

Aye, lads and lasses, whilst the rest of Europe was plunged in darkness by the barbaric hordes, I glowed like a lamp to the world, drawing seekers of truth from black-hearted throes of destruction. Offerin’ men and women alike refuge from oppression. I was an America o’ the Dark Ages, there to share mercy and light, both within and beyond me shores.

Unlike elsewhere in the world, me daughters held social, political, and spiritual sway as queens, entrepreneurs, and abbesses. Me saintly sons gave up their greatest earthly love–the love of their mother country and people--to take God’s Light and Word into the barbarous blackness beyond me surroundin’ waters. Evidence o’ their travels as far away as Iceland and the Americas exists to this day. Just take a gander at St. Brendan and the Milesians in the back o’ this book if ye’ve a notion so see their wonderful accounts. Blessed so, how on God’s green earth could I not turn out more missionaries for Christ than any other nation in time? Shame on the soul who takes such a gift as the Gospel and doesn’t use it to the Glory of Him that gave it.

Yet, for all their best intentions and piety, my children were still troubled by temptation. They took the bounty for granted, no different than God’s chosen in Scripture. If something went awry, like spoilt prodigals, they blamed God for their failin’ faith, not themselves. Greed for power and wealth turned clan against clan and, sad to say, clergy against clergy at times. Such, ye see, is the power of worldly corruption. Aye, me children have their faith, thanks to the fifth-century saints, but hanging on to it will require all their courage and stubbornness, heart and spirit. Thankfully, among the Irish, there’s no lack of such virtues.

So against this illustrious settin’, I give ye me second Gleannmara story, that of Kieran, the great-great grandson of Queen Maire and King Rowan , whose faith has fallen more on his sword than his God, and of the gentle Riona O’Cuillin of Dromin, the lady he’s sworn a blood oath to protect.

So, I pray ye, sit back and savor each word as a tempting morsel of a grand feast for yer heart, yer mind, and yer soul.

May the good Lord take a likin’ to ye. It Had to Be You|||ItHadToBeYou.jpg|Multnomah Publishers Inc.|1576737659|June 2001||Collision Course. Troubled Waters Ahead!

Rancher Dan Jarrett, a true stickler for tradition, doesn't believe in the love-at-first-sight bug that bit his widowed mom. In fact, he's sure the man she met and married on a seniors' cruise is a fraud, out to break her bankbook and her heart. Dan's mission? Endure a family holiday cruise till he gets enough proof to expose his stepfather for the scoundrel he is. But is his ticket to success a walking accident-waiting-to-happen with an infectious smile?

Nurse Fix-It to the Rescue!

Sunny Elders is determined. True, being paired with Dan Jarrett-time after time after time-might result in disaster, but it's no coincidence. The recent loss of her parents and her nurse's training make it impossible to ignore the obvious: This bull-headed cowpoke and his folks need help. Enter Sunny: a woman with a mission. But can she twist Dan's Stetson without tripping over her heart?

One thing is certain: Before this hilarious high-seas adventure is over, these two stubborn hearts will hit the unfamiliar waters of trust-trust in each other and in the One who orders our steps, who knows better than we ever could exactly what-and who-we need to be whole.|Tied for First Place for the Inspirational Romance Writers’ Choice Award.|From Chapter 1

"When I flirt with a cowboy, you'll know I'm flirting."

Contrary to what the driver said, the bus started before she sat down. She'd no more than spotted an empty place when the vehicle lurched forward, throwing Sunny into the seat. On her way down, she glimpsed a long, denim-clad leg curled in a lazy sprawl. Sunflower hat clashed with Stetson, both knocked askew. Sunny scrambled in an attempt to get out of the startled man's lap, accompanied by the echoes of concern and amusement surrounding them.

"You again." The disgruntled cowpoke folded his legs in front of him. He shifted and wedged his knees against the back of the next seat to make room for her. Annoyance all but erased his drawl.

"Yep, it's me. . . the ma'am," she mimicked, venturing a toothy grimace. "Sorry I held everyone up. I had to get my things put under the bus and--"

"I shouldn't have been sprawled over two seats. My fault."

By golly, he almost smiled. A sensation akin to striking her crazy bone rushed through Sunny, the same jolt she'd felt when he'd smoothed the snag of her blouse over her shoulder. Disconcerted, Sunny forced a grin to her suddenly stiff features.

"And I wasn't flirting. If I was flirting, you'd know it."

"Say what?" The man clearly had no idea what she was talking about. He'd been in a world of his own--until she fell on him.

"My niece just accused me of flirting with you--" a tinge of embarrassed heat was creeping up her neck--"and I told her that if I'd been flirting with you, everyone would know it."

The more she said, the more ridiculous she sounded.

The corner of the man's mouth twitched, while the sunlight did a little dance in his eyes. They were brown, no, more than that. Flecks of amber gave them an added warmth. She supposed the color befitted the slight reddish cast of his dark brown hair.

"Oh, how's that?"

She felt like hiding beneath her seat. Instead, she volleyed back without hesitation. "I'd grab you, throw you down, and give you a kiss." After retrieving her hat from the floor, she leaned against the seat. "Yes, sir--" she tugged it John-Wayne fashion over her forehead, so that she had to look down her nose to see--"when I mean business, pardner, you'll know it."

"Hey, there, cowboy," one of the seniors sitting behind them teased, tossing Daniel's runaway hat back into his lap. "I think you've met your match."

Buoyed by the laughter surrounding them, Sunny raised the brim of her straw bonnet and cut Daniel a sharp look. "You married?"

"Nope."

"Me, neither." She leaned over and lowered her voice. "Them youngun's up there belong to my sister, but she lends 'em out every once in a while, kinda like watchdogs. They don't bite, mind you, but they do make a lot of noise."

This time he laughed, right along with the half dozen or so couples who'd been eavesdropping. Outrageous always worked when she was backed into a corner.

"Lady, you are a real piece of work."

Sunny nodded solemnly, her lips twitching with the urge to join in. "Yep, an' I aim to keep it that'a way."

Looping her thumbs in the belt of her slacks, she sank against the seat in retreat. Her face was probably as red as her knit tank top, now that she'd managed to make a total fool of herself in front of a complete stranger. She couldn't help it. That's just the way she was when she was on edge--and there was something about this guy that made her feel as though she were on the brink of a very large leap...or fall. Deirdre|Fires of Gleannmara Series|Book Three|Deirdre.jpg|Multnomah Publishers Inc.|1576738914|March 2002||A Saxon pirate prince, loyal to neither God nor country, is skeptical of his Christian mother’s predictions about his birthright...until he captures a devout princess with the key to both heavenly and earthly kingdoms. What his mother said about his true birthright seems possible after all, even when his newfound faith is battered by storms of betrayal that wash him and his half-drowned bride upon the seaswept shores of Gleannmara. Deirdre, the third heroine in the Fires of Gleannmara series, is an Irish princess wed to a heathen thief. Although she is a reluctant heroine, compassion becomes her shield, prayer her sword, and God’s Word her direction.||A Foreword from me heart to yours....

Dear anmcharas (that’s soulmates for them what forgot the term from me stories o’ Maire and Riona), ‘tis a sheer delight to chew the proverbial fat with ye again as I look back at yet another time dear to my heart in the annals o’ my children. The followin’ pages take us into the seventh century of me Golden Age to find me saints lookin’ eastward, where their British kin hold fast to the Cross against the flood tide o’ Anglo-Saxon heathens. Driven into the hills o’ north and west Albion (the Scotland and Wales o’ today’s Great Britain), the Christian Romano-Britons bitterly struggle to muster and reclaim their lost land for Christ by the sword, but one sword, no matter how worthy its cause, will unify them like the Word O’ God.

Armed with this, their Irish and Scottish Dalraidi cousins sally forth to Albion to clear the way for the salvation of Albion’s barbarian conquerers with a message that, instead o’ takin’ the edge off their weapons, softens the heart behind them until there is no desire for the use o’ steel or spillin’ o’ blood. Faith, the likes o’ magic and miracle bring back stirrin’ memories o’ me own fifth century, when Christ first entered the hearts o’ me own offspring. In a wink o’ the good Lord’s eye, the Britons–most educated upon Erin or Scotia Minor’s (Scotland’s) shores--are caught up in the fight for souls.

The biggest threat, dear hearts, came from within. Me Celtic children, separated a century and a half from Rome and the church growin’ elsewhere in the world, enjoyed a spontaneous faith unencumbered by ritual and organization. Their monasteries were crudely built, all gifts bein’ distributed to the needy after example o’Christ. Their missions were spontaneously set upon, relying on God alone to supply them the meager needs to which they disciplined themselves according to St. John in the wilderness. They incorporated the customs of the barbarians which did not run contrary to the Scripture into the faith, converting pagan temples and celebrations to those devoted to the One God of All.

Perhaps t’was the reason for their unprecedented success in keeping and carrying The Light into the dark ages. Perhaps a new age approached when this passionate helter-skelter for Christ needed to become organized and unified. Mind ye, I’m not takin’ a stand for one or the other, for both have withstood the test o’ time. Sure, one man’s meal is but a morsel to another. But Rome, ascribing to their interpretation of Peter and Paul’s vision, had built cathedrals and set into place rituals and decorum appropriate to the royal promise of Christ’s heritage, while me children lived in earthly example of the Savior Himself and St. John, his cousin.

Fittin’ enough, the clash was settled a in prayerful and peaceful debate among these saints in the Synod (conference) of Whitby. Oddly enough, t’was decided a Northumbrian king, who at least the service of ‘is tongue, was a Christian, whilst many of his actions begged to differ. Let’s just say, Oswald didn’t want to offend God, just in case He was more powerful than the pagan gods he hadn’t quite dismissed. With other ambitious Anglo-Saxon kingdoms grudgingly sharing Albion’s shores, ole Oswald was for whoever, or whatever, won him the most power. No doubt the man genuinely feared for his soul, but political power he understood. Faith he did not. Like many o’ Erin’s kings in the fifth century who first accepted the Cross, he erroneously conceived that the two were the same. (More’s the pity, his black-hearted son and heir, Ecfrith, would calculatingly use one to advance the other.)

Regardless, Oswald ruled for the Roman Church after hearing one of Jesus’s metaphors–the one where Christ intimates that Peter, upon whom the Church of Rome was founded, had the keys to heaven. Beware, friends, that this was time when images or metaphors carried more weight in winning pagan souls, that talk o’ the invisible spirit. Even Christ himself used these to reach the common multitudes. If Oswald wanted in Heaven after his death, this Peter was the man at Heaven’s gate with the keys, not St. John.

And so began a controversy that later divided the Christian Church over and over–the conclusion o’ which I leave to the good Lord to lay upon yer hearts, for men far more faithful and learned than meself have never satisfied all, much to the sufferin’ o’ many innocent souls.

But I say all this to paint a picture o’ the world of Oswald and Ecfrith and of the Irish Celtic and Roman Celtic saints, who unite, despite their differences, to save Albion’s lost souls and abolish the sellin’ of captives into slavery. This is century I give to me darlin’ Deirdre, the strong-willed, yet faithful, princess of Gleannmara and her captor Alric, a pagan pirate prince, who knows she’s the key to an earthly kingdom denied him by his illegitimate birth, but not that she is also the means to an eternal kingdom as well. And the key, dear hearts? Why t’is love. May it bless ye each and every one.

(Oh, and don’t be forgetting the glossary/reference in the back for help with names and terms strange to yer tongue, as well as tidbits of interest to them with a Celtic heart.)

Prologue

Northumbrian kingdom of Galtstead in the year of our Lord 657

The small dwelling next to the King Lambert’s hall was no guest house like the others nearby, but had been built for its beloved occupant many years ago after the birth of his son. Though the mother was Lambert’s slave, Orlaith was no ordinary one. She’d been a princess of the Dalraidi Scots to the north, captured by their Northumbrian enemies and purchased by Lambert the moment the Saxon king laid eyes upon her. His love for Orlaith was no secret, not to his queen Ethlinda, nor to the people. Some thought the king’s eyes shone a little brighter for Alric, the Christian slave’s son, than for his elder half-brother Ricbert, the legitimate heir to Galtstead.

Alric, still in his travel clothes after riding from his ship straight for his father’s home at the news of his mother’s waning condition, stood at her side. The fever that ravaged her body bled her face of color as it bled her body of strength. She was as white as the fine linens on which she lay.

“Alric.” Orlaith tried to raise her hand to him, but weakness would not allow it.

Her golden hair was only beginning to silver. Surely this couldn’t be happening, Alric thought as gathered the slender hand in his own. “Mother, I came as soon as we put in.”

Orlaith drew in a shallow breath through her nostrils. “You smell of the sea. I believe it has bewitched you.”

“It has. But you should rest, mother. Save your strength.”

“God will give the strength I need to say what I must.” She turned to Abina, who’d been Orlaith’s handmaid at the time of their capture. Lambert bought Abina for his lovely royal captive, but the two were more like soul mates than mistress and servant. “Leave us, dear friend.”

Unashamed tears bright in her eyes, Abina gave her mistress a kiss on the forehead and rose to leave. “She’s held on for you, son,” the stooped servant mouthed to Alric, her words less than a whisper.

He nodded solemnly. The woman still acted his nursemaid, even though he was man now in his twenties.

“Abina has a slight limp,” He said as he watched her leave.

The surprise in his voice caused Orlaith’s lips to twitch. “None of us are as we were.”

And he was away so much, he’d not noticed. While his mother didn’t say it, Alric knew it hovered at the edge of her mind…and his.

“Seeking my fortune has blinded me to it,” he admitted. “But I don’t want a share of Ricbert’s birthright.”

Lambert wished Alric to establish an estate on the sea coast, given his son’s love of it, a part of the kingdom the elder legitimate son would inherit. While a generous offer, Alric had graciously refused. He would seek his own fortune and either win or purchase the land. His son would have a legitimate birthright. He would not know the ridicule and contempt that Alric had suffered . The very thought of it tasted of bile in his mouth.

“Your birthright lies beyond the sea, my son. God has shown it to me.”

Not wishing to upset her, Alric held back his response. Her Christian God had allowed her to be taken from the royal womb of her home in the north. Pampered and loved as she’d been, she was still Lambert’s property.

“It is not here in Galtstead.” She shook her head wearily, the limp strands of her perspiration darkened hair falling away from her ashen face.

Alric needed no holy vision to know that. By law, it would not be among his father’s people any more than among Orlaith’s Dalraidi kin. The only way he’d accept a Celtic kingdom was to take it by force.

Once King Oswald, bretwalda of Northumbria, chose the Christian faith for himself and all his sub-kingdoms, the newly baptized Lambert finally succumbed to Orlaith’s pleas for her and her son to visit her family and see that Alric was properly educated according to his noble bloodlines. It was not unheard of for Saxon princes to seek a universally esteemed Irish education. While Lambert’s belief in Oswald’s new Christian God was not that strong, his faith in Orlaith’s promise to return to him was.

Orlaith’s family had received the returned princess and her son as Celtic hospitality demanded, but Alric and his mother were treated worse there, than among the Saxon heathens. Alric’s sword arm grew stronger defending his mother’s honor, than with practice, until his Celtic cousins dared not challenge him. He strove just as hard to surpass them in academic study, until his wit was as keen as his blade--

“You are a prince, my son, and your true kingdom will be won by faith, rather than by the sword.”

“Ah, the kingdom of Heaven.”

Alric tried to suppress the bitterness with which he usually responded to what he saw as another sermon coming. For her sake, he hoped she would inherit that kingdom when her last breath was spent...unless He rejected her the same way her family had. She deserved such a place for all she’d suffered in this life. Although, even the cold grave was a relief from the broken heart that he believed sapped away his mother’s health and gave this fever its lethal teeth.

And it was her own people, Christians, who’d broken her heart.

“But God also revealed to me your earthly kingdom.”

His mother’s hold on Alric’s hand slackened, but the light that shone in her eyes would have shamed the sun. Or was it fever? Still, the mention of an earthly kingdom reached up through his drowning ocean of anger and grief and pricked at his curiosity.

“Oh?”

“It’s colors are the royal blue of a sky lighted by the moon and its full consort of stars.” She licked her dry, cracked lips to no avail. Death was drawing breath and water from her body by the moment. “And the gold of your hair.” She’d always marveled at his warrior’s mane with motherly pride.

With a pang of guilt, he leaned closer that she might touch his hair once more as she oft did. He could give her that, even if words of comfort eluded him. Anguish had cut them from his tongue and held it hostage, for his mother was the only truly good thing he knew in this life. Her only ambition was to love.

“And the symbol on the cloak I made for you. You will know it by that.”

“Enough of kingdoms, mother. Save your strength.”

No longer caring to hear of kingdoms or birthrights, Alric held her hand so that she could finger one of the natural curls that gave her such pleasure. She straightened it and let it go, smiling as it sprang back into its shape.

“My murnait,” she sighed.

Beloved. She hadn’t called him that since he was a weanling.

“Always your muirnait,” he assured her softly. It felt as if stones enough to build a wall round his father’s kingdom had been laid upon his chest. There was so much he wanted to thank her for, so much love he needed to declare, but never had he known the right words to do so. The one thing he believed in could not be measured. Nothing could hurt so much and not be real.

“And your earthly kingdom, son, will be won by love.”

Not this love. It was reserved only for Orlaith. Then there was the poet’s game to be played upon the fairer sex or the mutual respect he and his father held for each other, but the love his mother spoke of–

“I’ve seen her.”

Alric’s furtive musings stumbled. This was something different from Orlaith’s Scripture-based prophesy, which was vague on the now and certain only after death.

“Her namesake is sorrow, yet she will bring you great joy. Her chatter will be like birdsong to your heart.”

He cleared his throat. “Have you a name?” Why he asked, he didn’t know. Certainly he didn’t believe these feverish mumblings.

Whether she did or didn’t, Orlaith closed her eyes and took a deep, shaky breath. In a whisper, it escaped her lips. “God be with your, muirnait, until we meet again.” Her chest dropped, ever so slowly, as if death’s unseen hands pushed the last remnant of air from her body. The hand in Alric’s grew limp. His mother was gone and with her, the only real love he’d ever known.

Desperate to hold onto her warmth until death took that away from him as well, Alric gathered his mother’s hand up and pressed it to his cheek. The blades of anguish and anger that held his tears at bay, shredded the words he spoke into it “This I vow to your memory, maithar, that I will not repeat the crime my father committed against you. She who bears my son will be my lawful wife.” Along Came Jones|||AlongCameJones.jpg|Multnomah Publishers Inc.|1590520327|March 2003||SPARKS FLY WHEN BIG APPLE GAL MEETS BIG SKY GUY or LOVE IN A GHOST TOWN?

Framed for embezzlement and on the run from cops and crooks, Deanna Manetti is run off the road by a wild mustang and rescued by a rugged outfitter named Jones. If being stranded in a Montana ‘ghost town turned ranch’ with a guy who hangs dead animal heads on his wall can be considered rescue to the diehard Fifth Avenue ad exec. At least if she doesn’t know where she is, no one else does either.
Instinct tells ex-U.S. Marshall Shep Jones that this comely Duchess of Disaster to hearth and barn is on the run and that the sparks kindling between them are going to blow up in his face. He ought to turn her in before her past catches up with her, but Shep never shied from putting his life on the line before. The only difference this time is that his heart could go down with it.||Chapter 1

“Easy, ma’am! Are you all right?”

Someone squeezed Deanna Manetti’s shoulder, drawing her from the numb shock that suspended her somewhere between awareness and unconsciousness. What had happened? The question floated in her mind, calling her dazed senses into a defensive formation until she knew if the warm hand thawing the ice encasing her awareness belonged to a rescuer or a captor.

One minute she was making good time down this road to nowhere and the next, this. Through the blur of confusion, she made out a ditch bank beyond the crinkled hood of her car. A sharp pain reported in from the side of her head. Her car had careened off the road, but why? Had she blacked out?

A large face edged into her line of vision. Deanna squinted through the glare on the dirt-spattered windshield to see a one-eyed horse staring back at her. Wait, it was white, splotched with black, one such patch obscuring the missing eye.

She closed her eyes, trying to separate whimsy from reality. A memory clip of a horse dashing across the road in front of her played for her. She hadn’t blacked out! The beast bolted across the road like a streak of fire against the Big Sky landscape. Not the ordinary animal staring at her through her windshield, but a magnificent red —truly worthy of any silver screen hero with a golden mane and tail flying in the breeze.
Or were they both hallucinations? Had the same ones who’d killed her boss caught up with her as well? Of late, reality and nightmare were impossible to separate. Deanna took a deep breath, fighting a wave of dizziness, and peeked again through the windshield. Old One Eye was still there, but dare she trust her senses yet? It had been three days since she’d had a decent meal—since she’d fled the thugs who ransacked her apartment. Maybe she had blacked out and was still dreaming. Maybe…

“Ma’am, where are you hurt?” The voice aggravated her aching head, invading her surreal world.

Deanna groaned. She hurt, and pain had no business in this hallucination…if indeed that’s what it was. And hallucinations didn’t talk either. She turned her head in the direction of an alarmed masculine voice. Like shaken snow in a glass dome, her senses began to settle. She wasn’t alone with a one-eyed horse. There was a man as well—or a man and a half. Gradually the images of her faceless companion merged into one against the blue sky beyond him.

Straight from one of those backwoods horror films was a character as unsettling in appearance as her circumstances—scruffy beard, dusty leather and denim—even his horse was patched. Whatever happened to those clean-cut, pistol-wielding heroes in the Westerns she’d watched with her dad as a child in Brooklyn? That was what she needed now, not some backwoods nature freak in a beat-up Stetson—or someone even worse. She noted the long and lethal-looking knife sheathed on his thigh. Serial killer came to mind.

Get a grip, girl. You’ve watched one too many horror films.

“Ma’am?” Although he seemed to be a polite serial killer. The concern etched on his shaded forehead by two arched brows seemed genuine. But were those rusty-looking stains on his worn jeans and shirt blood?

Deanna’s voice squeaked through the noose of anxiety constricting her throat. “I…I’m fine.”

This was not what she’d come west to find. But then, nothing in the seemingly green pastures of Montana’s Big Sky country had been what a city born marketing consultant once dreamed of from her office. Certainly not the smooth-talking weasel in an Armani suit and flawlessly shaped Stetson who’d lured her like a sheep to the slaughter from Manhattan to his Great Falls business with promises of advancement mixed with romantic innuendo. But if C. R. Majors had been a weasel, what kind of homegrown varmint had she stumbled across now?

“Can you move?”

Deanna shook her head. She wasn’t moving anywhere with him. She glanced beyond the man to where his ink-blotched horse nuzzled him from behind. Hanging from a sling on its saddle was a gun, a high-powered looking thing that… She closed her eyes to still the of alarm unsettling the tentative balance in her stomach. Was he one of those gun-hoarding militia fanatics with six wives and three dozen children? Where’s the ATF when a gal needed it?

At the touch of his fingers over her eyelids, Deanna bolted toward the passenger side of her small car, but her seat belt cut off her startled gasp.

“Hey, take it easy. I’m not gonna hurt you. I thought you’d passed out on me.”

“Not a chance.” Deanna summoned what reserve she had left and settled in the driver’s seat, loosening the nylon garrote. “I’m okay, just a little stunned. You wouldn’t have a cell phone, would you?”

He grinned, nodding toward his horse. “Nope, Patch here didn’t come equipped with one.”

Duh, Deanna mused in self-recrimination. Why would a guy whose transportation was a horse have cell phone? At least he had all his teeth. And on closer look, his eyes twinkled beneath the dusty brown bush of his brow. The effect was disarming. Serial killers didn’t have twinkling eyes, did they? Criminals leaned toward those wild, elevator-doesn’t-go-all-the-way-to-the-top eyes. And their hair didn’t lie in rakish curls around their collar.

“I’d feel a whole lot better,” he said, taking advantage of her confusion and tilting her face toward him for further study, “if you’d just step out of the car. I’d like to see you stand on your own. Think you can get out? Or do you want me to unload my guns first?”

“Like in more-than-that-one-hanging-on-the-saddle guns?” she quipped before she could catch herself. The same wry wit and ready tongue that had propelled her up the corporate ladder could be a curse on occasion.

To Deanna’s embarrassment, the cowboy-extremist-serial killer, or just plain ordinary Joe, roared with laughter. Her blood rushed warm and ebbed cold at the same time as he drew a pistol from beneath his vest and ejected the cartridge. With a patronizing smirk surrounded by a week’s worth of stubble, he laid it on the hood of her car. White teeth flashing as he untied the leather thong of his hunting knife, he put her in mind of a young Clint Eastwood—before a bath, shave, and a much needed curbing of his swagger.

Galled into action, Deanna swung her legs around to get out. Bloodstains or not, she hadn’t gotten where she was—or rather, where she’d been until three days ago—by cowering. He might strangle her or heaven knew what, but she was not going to be laughed at. Just short of her feet reaching the ground, she was jerked back into her seat by the belt she’d forgotten in her addled state.

“It helps to unfasten this,” her rescuer drawled, reaching in and releasing the restraint with annoying amusement.

Deanna endured his ministration, her abdominal muscles contracting in further retreat as the back of his work-roughened fingers pricked warm against the thin silk of her blouse. As he helped her out of the vehicle, whatever bravado she’d accumulated in her once bright career had abandoned her like everything else she once depended upon.

Even if this man had been clad in a police uniform, she had every right to be rattled. She’d just been run off the road by a runaway horse and wrecked her car in a ditch. The crumpled, blue hood of the import looked as if it had taken a giant bite out of the dirt bank that had stopped it. The fact that she still owed money on the indulgence rolled her stomach.

“This is all I need,” she muttered through clenched teeth to hold back an overwhelming rise of despair. Instead, it struck her across the back of the knees, buckling them beneath her weight.

“Whoa there!”

Before she knew it, her companion swept her off her feet and eased her back against the car seat with surprising gentleness. He examined her head. “Looks like you took a nasty bump.”

“So much for the air bag.” As far as Deanna could tell, it still was neatly packed in the steering wheel. “If there really is one in–“

“Just relax,” her rescuer said as she drew away from his tender touch. “I’m unarmed and harmless.”

The muscles in his sun-bronzed forearm contradicted his claim to be harmless, but Deanna ached too much to protest his tender attention to her aching head. Instead, she leaned against the leather headrest while the man wiped her brow with a red bandana he pulled from his slouch hat.

“Just a little cut on that lump there,” he murmured, all business as he tied it over the lump swelling just within her hairline. The bandana was damp from having served as a sweatband, yet she was surprised to feel nothing of her initial revulsion.

She’d reached her limit. Nothing else could faze her, not after what she’d been through. For the last three days she’d been a fugitive, running from trumped up charges from the law and for her life from someone—or some ones—who’d wrecked her apartment in search of heaven only knew what. Dare she hope that her luck—if she could call it that—was changing?

“It’s bleeding a little.” He backed away to inspect his handiwork. “You got a name, ma’am?”

Okay, she might hope, but she wouldn’t trust.

“Manetti,” Deanna ventured. “Deanna Manetti.” At least she still knew who she was, much as she’d like to forget it.

“Can you tell me what happened, Miss Manetti?”

The questions were getting harder already. Her head throbbed worse, now that the man had pointed out the swelling. She felt as though she were about to lose her brunch, a mini-candy bar devoured hours earlier. She closed her eyes and replayed the short clip of what she recalled.

“A horse raced out in front of me and ran me off the road. A red horse.” Fourteen years since she got her driver’s license in New York City and not once had she had an accident. Instead, she’d traveled across the United States to have a run-in with a horse. She almost laughed at the absurdity, but her throat merely squeaked.

“How about some water? I have some in my canteen.”

Of course a cowboy would have a canteen, she mused, daring to nod in cautious assent. If he even was a cowboy. She was so tired and hungry that she’d grown slaphappy.

Her companion approached the spotted horse, removed a canteen from its saddle, and returned to her with long booted strides. In a wink, he uncapped it and handed it to her.

Deanna didn’t go for the idea of drinking after anyone, but under the dire circumstance, the water was like nectar from the gods…and cold too! Upon closer examination, she discovered the container was insulated. Thermoses had gone west, if not cell phones.

“Best swish that about in your mouth and spit it out. Then swallow the next sip.”

“You a dentist too?” Her paltry attempt at humor made her wince. She didn’t understand the reasoning behind his odd request, but he was in his element—dirt, rocks, smelly horses, and leather. She was out of hers—diesel smut, skyscrapers, swerving taxis, and tailored executive fashion.

“No, but I’ve been up all night with a horse that took too much sand. Gives ’em a bellyache.”

Uncertain as to whether or not he was pulling her leg, Deanna followed his instructions. When in Rome... She swished and spat as delicately as possible. To her horror, it landed on his dusty boots.

“I’m sorry!”

“S’okay. It takes practice.” He scuffed them in the dirt, more intent on her than her poor aim.

Never in her life had she expectorated in front of anyone. Along with the rule about not drinking after others, her mother had drilled that lesson into her head as well. Toothbrush time at the bathroom sink summed up Deanna’s entire experience with spittle aim.

What she wouldn’t give to go back to those days, but they were gone. Her parents had died in a traffic accident shortly after her high school graduation. Deanna sold their modest apartment in the city when she made the big move to Montana. After all, she’d had no reason to stay, no relatives to speak of, and no one special in her life.

“What brings you to Buffalo Butte, Miss Manetti?”

Ambition was on the tip of her tongue. Romance flashed through her mind. That was why she’d left the city and come west. C. R. embodied both, but all he’d led her to was disaster. And now she was in no-woman’s land.

“Where did you say I was?”

“Actually Buffalo Butte’s the nearest town. You’re on Hopewell, my ranch,” he said. “You’ve been on it for the last four miles, since you ran out of paved road.”

“I made a wrong turn.” It was true. She never should have turned west on the interstate from New York, and she certainly didn’t know where she’d turned in these Montana hills. She was lost. Worse, she was glad of it. If she didn’t know where she was, no one else did either.

“Where were you headed?”

“Do you ever run out of questions?”

“Got a whole hat full,” her rescuer shot back with a grin. It was one of those wide, lazy grins his kind had invented.

“Have you a name in it as well?”

He shoved the dusty brim off his face in a cordial manner. “Shepard Jones, but most folks call me Shep.”

Shepard. Heaven knew she needed one about now.

“I was just sightseeing,” she lied, before adding an element of truth to salve her guilt. “Guess I made a wrong turn. I didn’t know this was private property.” And technically, she had been seeing sights, all unfamiliar.

“Was it a sorrel…the horse that caused this?” Shep asked, pointing to her buckled hood.

“No, it was red.”

“Sorrel is red, Slick.” At Deanna’s astonished expression, he explained the nickname away. “I saw those New York license plates and figured you to be a city slicker.”

“There are horses in New York,” she reminded him, bristling at his condescension. “Even in the city.”

“Wherever they are, red ones are still sorrel.”

Okay, he was teasing her, but how could a girl complain when it was done with a grin, bracketed by lines that betrayed a longtime sense of humor. “So you know the horse?” she returned with a wry tip of her lips. For the first time, Deanna felt as though the uncomfortable shoe had been switched to Shepard Jones’s foot.

He looked away for a moment and nodded. “’Fraid so. He’s one of mine.” Pulling his hat down lower, as if shifting down to business, he returned his attention to her. “Looks like I owe you. Think you can walk now?”

“Walk? Walk where?” Deanna stalled, not the least bit certain she could. Besides, she felt as if her head might fall off if she stood again.

Instead of answering, Shep pulled her to her feet with a firm grip on her upper arms. This time, it was Deanna who shouted, “Whoa!” as she grasped the front of his shirt to keep from falling.

In an instant, his long arms were under her, lifting her into the air with little effort. She fell hard against his chest with a gasp, still clinging to the loose-fitting front of the garment as if to choke him.

“What do you think you’re doing?”

“Why, rescuing you. Isn’t that what us cowboys do?”

So he really was a cowboy…and a bit of a smart aleck. She refrained from complaining that he was three days too late to be of any real help to her. This little fender bender was the least of her worries. Just as she started to relax, Deanna realized they were approaching the spotted horse, which had moved a short distance away and stood patiently, awaiting its master.

“You’ve got to be kidding!” Her eyes widened with a dubious alarm. “I…I can’t ride.”

Shep’s chuckle shook her. “You won’t have to. All you have to do is sit still and look pretty in the saddle. I’ll do the riding.”

Before she could say another word, he placed her in the worn saddle as easily as a carnival man puts a child upon a painted carousel steed. She wasn’t overweight by any means, but her five-foot-eight height made her self-conscious around most men. Now that she’d seen him stand up full height, she realized that even in heels, she wouldn’t intimidate this guy. With that rumpled hat of his, he looked to be at least six-six. Most of it was man rather than topper. He wasn’t the slump-shouldered Neanderthal she’d first taken him for, but strapping Montana prime.

“If you swing your leg over and ride astride, you’ll be more secure, not to mention comfortable.”

Glad that she wore linen-flax trousers instead of a skirt, Deanna complied. The horse acted as if it had women slung over its back every day, even ones who were so stiff with apprehension that they grazed its ears with a heel while trying to mount.

“Take it easy; I gotcha.” His grasp on the belt of her slacks was as unrelenting as her fear that the animal might dash off with her.

“So does he,” she managed in a shaky voice. Without taking her eye off the horse’s now laid back ears, she sought the stirrups with the toes of her kiltied pumps.

“He is a she, and I’ll be needing that.” Shep moved her left foot forward, just as she seated it in the stirrup. “Her name’s Patch, for obvious reasons.”

“Why not Spot?” Certain the saddle would be crowded, Deanna eased toward the pommel as her companion slipped his boot into the stirrup to swing up behind her, settling on the horse’s back to the rear of the saddle. Reaching to either side of her, he picked up the reins from where they rested on the horse’s neck. At the soft click of his tongue, Patch turned toward the blazing bright horizon.

“Oh, my purse.” The glaring spectacle assaulted her eyes. “And my sunglasses.They may have fallen on the floor during the accident.”

Shep reined the horse in and slid off its back without the formality of stirrups.

Frozen at the idea of being abandoned on what seemed to be a ton of snorting horseflesh, Deanna watched statue-still as he rummaged through the car and found her things. Her purse was intact, but the glasses were snapped in half at the bridge. He handed her the first and tossed away the latter. Then, with a running start, he vaulted up on Patch’s back, Indian fashion.

The black and white horse took a step forward and Deanna’s derisive, “Show off,” erupted on a note of alarm.

“Easy, gal…both of you,” he consoled in an easy drawl she heard movie cowpokes gentle animals with.

It worked on the horse, but Patch was in her element. Deanna wasn’t.

She started again when her companion slapped his hat down on her head, shading her eyes from the sun. “Thanks,” she murmured, ashamed of her skittishness. But then, how would Shep fare on the subway?.

Probably just fine. He struck her as the sort of man who, while comfortable in the saddle, could take the city in stride. She sucked in a breath as he slipped his arm snugly about her waist while taking up the reins with his free hand.

“Ready, Slick?”

Ready? That was a joke. Nonetheless, she answered, “Yes, but where are we going?”

“Home. A good meal and a bath will make a world of difference in how you feel.”

And how you smell, she thought, keeping her opinion to herself. Rakish and disheveled was one thing, but Shepard Jones’s horse smelled better.

“In fact, I’m looking forward to both. A week in the high country’ll make a man offend his own nose.”

“I hadn’t noticed,” she lied politely, so as not to wind up abandoned in the wild by offending her rescuer. Like she could miss that mingle of horse, sweat, and leather. Stranger still, it wasn’t entirely offensive, but rather made her aware of his raw masculinity.

“Well, you’re still dazed.” He urged the horse forward with his knees.

Deanna’s fingers tightened on her purse as the movement drew attention to the stains on his knees, her wariness assuaged by his easy-going charm returning. Cowboy or not, this was a total stranger who could be taking her anywhere for any reason.

“Why not take me into town?”

“Because, Slick, town is an hour’s ride by car. On four feet, it’s a half day’s ride.”

“So take me in your Jeep.”

She felt his arm relax against her. “If that’s what you want,” he told her, confirming her guess that he owned such a vehicle. It fit his image. “We can report this to the authorities. My insurance will pay for it, of course, but I can tell you, it’ll take a while to order parts for that fancy rig of yours.”

Deanna felt the blood leave her face. Report the accident to the authorities? But then she’d be right back where she started from—in a brimming kettle of trouble that was not of her own making.

What had she done to deserve this? It wasn’t as if she’d been a bad person since she stopped going to her parents. She’d just been busy building a career in marketing.

“If you’d like to keep this off the record, for the sake of my insurance rates as well as your own, I happen to know a good mechanic who might be able to get you back on the road with used parts and a little body work. He’s a shade-tree genius.”

“A what?” The brush of an unshaven cheek against her ear as Shep leaned forward to see her face snatched her out of her reflection.

There was that grin again. This close, it was toe-curling and smelled of mildly redeeming spearmint. Was this guy a scruffy angel or yet another trap waiting to spring on her?

“I said I have a friend who might be able to get your car back on the road. I’ll pay him and put you up until he’s done. That way nobody needs to be called, and my premium will remain affordable.”

Nobody needs to be called. Deanna sighed. “That’s fine with me,” she heard herself saying, even as anxiety began to demand to know if she’d lost her mind, agreeing to stay overnight with a complete stranger.

But then, what was she going to do with no money, no car, and more important, no food? She tried hard to concentrate on her predicament rather than acknowledge the uncomfortable jarring between her temples with each step the horse took.

So far, Shepard Jones had been as gallant, if not as polished, as his movie counterparts. And he was a rancher. Somehow, she didn’t think serial killers lived double lives as Montana ranchers who worried about insurance rates. Maybe his name was no coincidence. Maybe God had listened to her plea for help and sent a shepherd—even though it had been a long time since she’d been her parents’ version of P.C.—practicing Christian. Politically correct had been more her lifestyle since their deaths. Was this guy the kind of shepherd she needed, or God’s way of getting even for her neglect?

Deanna clenched her purse against the pommel of the saddle as if her life depended on them both. The pepper spray in the purse gave her small comfort. For now, she had a place to stay, which was more than she’d had before she wound up in the gully by the side of the dirt road. There was nothing left to do but ride off into the sunset with her rumpled Montana cowboy and trust not him but God.

Even if he looked like a movie star when he was freshly scrubbed and in clean clothes, she’d keep her eyes wide open. Deanna had been taken in by a man just once, but it was one time too many. This time she intended to live up to her new nickname—Slick. Paper Moon|Moonstruck Series|Book One|PaperMoon.jpg|Westbow Press|0785260625|January 2005||Two single parents agree to chaperone their teenage daughters' trip to Mexico, but who will chaperone the parents?

The owner and director of her own day care facility, Caroline Spencer approaches life with humor and child-like faith, but Blaine Madison, a hardened workaholic, seeks success and results. Yet in spite of herself, Caroline finds him irresistible.
Caroline and Blaine quickly discover Mexico's romantic and surreal qualities, which, to Caroline, makes the full moon above seem like a perfect paper cutout. Romance quickly turns to danger, however, as their daughters are caught in a smuggling ring and kidnapped. Caroline turns to God for help, but Blaine turns to anger. Will they find their way by the light of the moon?||CHAPTER 1

The high whine of a blow-dryer gnawed at Caroline Spencer's last nerve. Why on earth had she agreed to let Annie have her friend over for the night, when they all had to be at the airport by 5:00 a.m. for check-in? The girls, too wired with excitement to sleep, had giggled up to the sound of the alarm. Now they primped and preened and monopolized the bathroom, while Caroline fidgeted outside the door.

"Annie, honey, please hurry. I have to dry my hair," she called.

"Karen's in there," her daughter replied from behind her.

"Sorry, Miz C. Be right out," Karen called, cutting the dryer off.

"Mom, you don't have to dry your hair. That's the whole point of your new perm." Annie fluffed the wet ringlets of Caroline's red hair with her fingers. "That's why that old salon woman called it wash-and-wear."

"Stylist," Caroline corrected, feeling the ringlets rearrange themselves the moment her daughter let them be. "Old" salon woman indeed. "And Sally is just a few years older than I am."

"Whatever."

"Just what I need, a sixteen-year-old know-it-all at three in the morning. Besides-" Caroline yawned and recovered, "that's what the tag said about this shirt too, but guess who's been ironing while you gals scarfed down your breakfast burritos?"

The bathroom door flew open, revealing Annie's counterpart, her enviably dry shoulder-length hair pulled up in a ponytail with a sparkling band.

All those kilowatts, not to mention precious minutes, just for that?

"Oh, no, Miz C," Karen said, looking at Caroline's crisp safari print top as though the cheetah on it had bared its teeth. "You've got to wear the T-shirt Señora Marron handed out." She cut her gaze to Annie. "Like, you did give it to her, didn't you?"

Annie smacked her palm to her forehead and spoke, preempting the snap of Caroline's one remaining nerve. "I totally forgot. I'll get it right now."

Lord, lead me not into this melodrama, Caroline thought as she followed the girls into her daughter's bedroom.

"Here ya go, Mom. The bigger one's yours."

Caroline stared at the neon orange garment in her hand.

"Oh my."

On the front was the Edenton Christian High School mascot perched on a banner that said "Go Eagles."

"What's the Spanish word for clash?" she asked.

"Mom, you will be totally cool, trust me . . . and everyone is wearing them."

"Well, we certainly won't lose anyone with these on," Caroline conceded. "Guess I'll pack my safari shirt for-"

The phone rang, launching Annie into overdrive. "I'll get it!"

As Caroline changed her shirt, she heard Karen's voice from the next room.

"What do you mean he's not there? He's gotta be. Gram . . ." she whined, as if she stood on the deck of Star Trek's Enterprise and the future of all mankind was hanging in the balance. "I knew something would go wrong. He didn't want to go to start with. All he cares about is work, work, work."

"What is it, Karen?" Caroline called out.

Caroline knew that Karen's trip had been touch-and-go since her grandmother fell and her father volunteered to go in Gram's place. The trip rules, designed to promote family togetherness, required that every child have at least one parent or relative along.

"Dad's not come home yet from Toronto, so Gram is going to take his suitcase to the airport. I'll just die if he doesn't make it." Look out, William Shatner. The princess of drama is rising.

Caroline let out her breath in a mingle of relief and annoyance. She should have known better. Since Karen had enrolled in Edenton several months earlier and become Annie's friend, Caroline had seen the girl become melodramatic over something as simple as cold fries.

"Honey, calm down. It's just a change of plans. I'm sure that if your father misses this flight, he can catch up with us in Mexico City."

"But if he doesn't go, then-"

"Honey, he's going . . . bought and paid for." Caroline had helped Señora Marron coordinate the trip and had personally taken care of the last-minute change in the airline bookings.

"Besides," she said, zipping up her toiletry bag. "You're staying with Annie and me anyway, so if your dad misses the first night in Mexico City, it won't be the end of the world. With all that's going on in airports these days, delays are common."

From what Caroline had gathered in bits and snatches from Karen and chitchat with Karen's grandmother at the women's Bible study, Karen's father was a widower, away a lot on business.

"Hey, at least your dad is more than a support check," Annie consoled her friend. "My dad replaced us with a whole new family."

Caroline said a quick prayer for the hurt and cynicism in her daughter's voice. Frank Spencer had left Caroline for a colleague, claiming that Caroline, who ran a daycare at home to put him through law school, was no longer his intellectual match. Annie had been six at the time and never understood why Daddy remarried and moved to the West Coast, much less why he never visited.

But this was no time to dwell on what she might or might not have done to make it easier on them both. Taking up the blow-dryer, Caroline stared in the mirror, bemused by her unaccustomed curls. She'd worn her hair in a single braid for so long that she had no idea how to attack this shorter, wilder, shoulder-length job. In desperation, she snagged a pair of Annie's barrettes to pull it off her face.

With the jeans and tee, she could almost pass for one of the kids instead of the owner of Little Angels Daycare Center. At least until someone got close enough to see the bags under her eyes. Not enough makeup in the Cover Girl empire to hide those babies- especially at this hour of the morning.

"Mom, are we supposed to be leaving at four?" Annie said, sticking her head in the doorway. "Cause it's quarter till."

In disbelief, Caroline glanced at her wristwatch and shifted into high gear.

"Okay, troops. It's time to zip and load," she announced. There was no time to dry her hair now. She'd have to trust in her hairdresser and go as she felt at the moment-washed and worn

.
#

The Philly airport reminded Blaine Madison of an ant colony, hundreds of individuals busily making their way through the network of intersecting corridors. He claimed a generic black piece of luggage from the conveyor belt and checked the ID tag. Not his. With an aggravated grunt, he tossed it back onto the moving platform to snake its way around the bend. Maybe he should have put some ridiculous marker on the handle to make it stand out-like the neon pink pom-poms on the case claimed by the older lady next to him.

"Cute bear," the woman said, referring to the stuffed toy under his arm.

"My daughter collects them," he explained, without taking his attention from the endless stream of black nylon cases. "I try to bring her one from every place I travel."

It was something he'd done since Karen was old enough to appreciate the toy more than the box it came in. He'd picked up this bear-which sported a T-shirt with a Canadian maple leaf superimposed over crossed hockey sticks-at the Toronto airport during the delay caused by a security check. He'd missed his connecting flight and had to catch a later one. He'd be lucky if his bag even made it.

The lady leaned over and picked up a smaller bag bedecked with matching pom-poms while Blaine checked the tag on another black nylon case. He let it go and shoved frustrated fingers through his dark brown hair. He didn't have time for this.

"Here," the lady said, handing him a pink slip of paper. "Take a look and take a breather."

Blaine glanced at it, but on seeing the header "Psalm 127:1-2" he shoved it into his pocket. Why do these self-appointed evangelists force this stuff on people? If he wanted to get spiritual, he'd go to church. And he'd seen no point in doing that in a very long time.

"Thanks," he said with polite indifference. "I could use a breather."

Not that chaperoning the Edenton Christian High School's class trip to Mexico was his idea of a break. It meant time with his daughter, and he'd begun to wonder if his little girl had been abducted and some moody clone left in her place. No more ribbons and lace. The new clothes she wore looked like rags. She had no concept of time or commitment, except when it came to meeting her friends at the mall. And despite the private schooling that Blaine worked hard to afford, he hadn't heard her complete a sentence in months. Now he was boarding a plane with a whole group of similarly clothed, idly chattering, high-strung, attention deficient creatures and their holy-roller parents.

He grabbed another likely-looking suitcase and flipped the tag. Bingo. And by the time he hoisted it off the conveyor and lifted the pull handle, the tract-passing pom-pom lady was gone. At least she hadn't tried to save him on the spot. Maybe his luck was changing.

With a stab of guilt at the antagonism he felt toward basically good people, he took up the briefcase at his feet. Blaine had no quarrel with religious people, as long as they kept their faith to themselves. He hadn't the time for a God who had ignored his prayers one time too many.

Hurrying to the security checkpoint, he almost ran into his mother who was hobbling with a cane toward him.

"Thank God you made it," she said. "Karen checked in your bag for the orphanage. Here's your vacation bag."

"Sorry you had to bring it." Blaine leaned over and gave his mom a kiss on the cheek. "Don't know what I'd do without you."

"Karen was in such a stew. She was just positive you wouldn't make it on time."

His daughter always seemed to be in a stew of some sort. "The flight from Toronto was delayed," he explained. "Then I missed my connection. But I think we won the bridge contract."

"You're just like your father." His mother's observation was framed with concern. "Don't do what he did, son. Take some time out for yourself."

Blaine knew what she was getting at. His dad had burned out by the time his retirement came and he could turn the business over to his children. Blaine's "baby" sister, Jeanne, had become a successful marine archaeologist. His younger brother Mark supposedly helped him with the business but spent more time at play than at work. If Blaine wanted the business to succeed, he had to see to it himself.

"How's the ankle?" he asked, changing the subject. Until Neta had twisted her ankle in the garden three days ago, she was supposed to accompany her granddaughter on the trip.

His mother let it go, but her frown spoke volumes. "Never mind me, just give me the bear and get on that plane. Karen won't forgive you if you embarrass her by giving her a teddy bear in front of her friends."

Blaine grimaced. He hadn't thought of that. The idea that his little girl had outgrown teddy bears from her daddy stung somewhere deep inside. He gave his mom a hug and a hasty kiss on the cheek and handed over the stuffed animal.

"Thanks, Mom. You take it easy while we're gone. I mean it." He put a hand on her shoulder, lightly tanned from early morning hours spent in her garden. With a little help from boxed hair color and a complexion that defied time, she hardly looked her sixty-two years. She'd always been blessed with good health, and he was blessed with her. She had rented out the home she and her late husband had shared in Florida and moved back to Edenton to take care of Karen after Ellie's untimely death.

"Now if that's not the pot calling the kettle black," she snorted, "I don't know what is."

"I don't know what I'd do without you," he repeated in earnest.

"Me neither." Neta gave him a gentle but firm shove. "Now get going. I promised Mark I'd meet him for dinner tonight."

"If he's not there by the end of happy hour, I wouldn't wait for him," Blaine called over his shoulder.

At the gate, Blaine handed the ticket clerk his boarding pass.

"Welcome aboard, Mr. Madison." A bright-eyed miss in uniform flashed a picture-perfect smile.

"Thanks for waiting." Not that it was her decision.

Some of the other travelers were not as tolerant, given the scowls cast in Blaine's direction. Scanning the seats, he spied a block of passengers wearing the orange-and-green colors of Edenton. In their midst, his daughter stood, waving frantically to get his attention.

"I didn't think you were going to make it," she accused.

"I was beginning to wonder myself. My earlier plane was delayed by a security alert. It made me miss my connec-"

"Here's your shirt."

"What?"

"We're all wearing the same T-shirts so we know who is in our group." Karen enunciated carefully, as if he had the wit of a Neanderthal.

"I'll put it on later . . . although, you realize, it clashes with my tie," he said, hoping to lighten the mood.

With a roll of her eyes, she dropped into her seat.

Blaine hesitated a moment. The only seat open in the group was not beside his ponytailed daughter, but behind her.

"I was supposed to sit with you, but when you didn't get here, I swapped with Miz C so I could sit with Annie," Karen told him.

"Hi, Mr. Madison," said a perky blonde-haired clone beside Karen, her braced teeth gleaming through her smile.

So much for father-daughter quality time.

"Annie, good to see you again." He vaguely recognized her.

Karen rarely had friends over and, if she did, they stayed locked up in her room as if adult exposure might be contagious.

"Sir, please take your seat and stow your briefcase." The flight attendant gave him a tightly fixed smile.

"Sorry." He slid into his seat.

"I have you checked in, Mr. Madison. Glad you could make it," a woman with a clipboard and heavy Spanish accent announced from across the aisle. Wearing dark-rimmed wire glasses, and with her equally dark hair knotted in the back and skewered by what looked like short wooden knitting needles, the lady dropped the board into a briefcase and shut it with an authoritative click. Blaine wasn't certain if it was the taut coiffure or heavy eyeliner that gave her coal-dark eyes the illusion of a slant.

"Thank you, Miss-" What was the name on the permission slip he'd signed? He finished with a smooth "Marron."

"Mah-rrrown," the Spanish teacher corrected, rolling her r's with a sharp purr. "Señora Mah-rrrown, por favor."

"Señora Mah-rrrown," Blaine repeated. "Sorry . . . er . . . lo siento."

"We could switch back, if you'd rather sit with your daughter," said a voice to his right.

Distracted from his impromptu Spanish lesson and Karen's notso- empathetic grin, Blaine turned to the young woman next to him. Clad like the teens in denims and the green-and-orange shirt, she didn't look old enough to have a daughter Annie's age. Blaine searched his memory, wondering if Karen had mentioned in passing that Annie had a big sister.

"Aw," the girls moaned in collective dismay.

"Now, girls, this is a family trip."

No, she was a mother. Moms were masters of that steeled-velvet intonation.

"Thanks," Blaine said, "but I can take a hint. This is fine." He shoved his briefcase in the floor space in front of his seat. Once he was settled, seat belt fastened, he turned to his neighbor. "Miss . . . um . . . Señora C, I presume?"

"Caroline." She offered him a firm, friendly handshake. "Caroline Spencer." The Brides O' The Emerald Isle Anthology|Featuring: Of Legend and Love||EmeraldIsle.jpg|Barbour Publishing|1593106319|April 2005|, Pamela Griffin, Vickie McDonough, Tamela Hancock Murray|When the little town of Ballymara's tourism is threatened by a cynical journalist, Moyra Rose O'Cullen challenges him. Tracing history back in time, she uncovers the roots of the local legend of the pledging stone at the door to the chapel and learns three stories of how her ancestors' bonds of love were formed over the ancient stone: Conn and Sorcha in 500 AD, Ardghal and Breanda in 1366, Nick and Keely in 1895. Can she convince the modern world that the legends are true? Will she form her own match over the stone?||He that loveth not, knoweth not God; for God is love. -- 1 John 4:8

Chapter One

Moyra Rose O'Cullen stood before the dressmaker's mirror, struck with horror. "I look like an over-ripe ripe eggplant!" She'd have expounded on her horror further, but her lip was still stiff from dental anesthesia. Of all the days for her to lose a filling--a fitting from Mars, or some such place, and the most important-alright her first-international media interview in her new career as tourism director of Ballymara coming in on the Bus Eireann from Dublin.

Always the tactful one, aren't you, Moyra?" her sister Katie observed from one of the chairs in the fitting room.

Moyra turned first one way, then the other, trying her utmost to find an attractive angle. It was futile. The dark purple garment ballooned from its fitted bodice out and around her hips like…well, a balloon.

"If only it flared," she observed, her R's slurring. But some male sadist, considering himself suited to design clothing for women had cinched it at the knee.

"I followed the pattern just as it said," the dressmaker commiserated.

"I'm schure you did, Nora." S's were a challenge to her anesthetized mouth as well.

"It's the rage, Aunt Moyra," her style-challenged niece told her. "And you've the height to carry it. You look like a runway model."

Moyra's hard glare softened, not from the blarney, but because she loved her elder sister's daughter. It wasn't every day that an aunt was asked to be the bride's maid of honor. But then, as wry Katie was quick to point out, it wasn't every day the aunt wasn't married at the age of twenty-nine.

"For you, Peg," Moyra told her niece, "I'll strut about looking like I just stepped off a Star Trek set."

Peg's beaming smile was worth the sacrifice. Besides, Moyra thought, glancing at the rack where the other bridesmaids' dresses hung, better an eggplant than a pink pig's bladder. Peg and her young beau had met at one of those Trekkie conventions, but since both were grounded enough to have finished school and become working professionals, Moyra allowed for their eccentricities.

"How's your jaw?" Katie asked, as Moyra changed into a tweed skirt and matching sweater.

Moyra worked it. "Schtiff as paddy in the grave," she moaned. "And I have-" Her V's weren't too clear either. "-to be at the bus schtation by noon."

"A poor plan, if you ask me…and us with the wedding only two weeks away." To hear Katie talk, one might think World Travelogue of New York had purposely set out to undermine Pegeen O'Callan's wedding to Ned McCarthy by sending one of its writers to do a story on Ballymara and the Pledging Stone.

The couple planned an out of this world wedding, but vowed their love before the ancient stone that brought couples from near and far to wed in Ballymara's little church. But then love makes fools of us all…or so they say. Moyra wasn't exactly to the brim with firsthand experience. That would require leaving the village of her heart, for she knew every eligible man within miles and had talk crops and livestock till she was blue.

"You've a heart torn between wanderlust and your roots like your da," Gran Polly told her. "Till you come to terms with one or the other, it's alone you'll be, Moyra Rose." As alone as Moyra had been when her parents died in a car crash touring Germany and Gran took the twelve-year-old fledgling in.

"I'd best be getting back to the Publick House," Katie announced to no one in particular. "Gran'll be needing help in the kitchen with the lunch crowd."

Gran's Publick House was the village gathering place for those so inclined to mix chat with music and without the alcoholic spirits. Originally a Victorian hotel and pub that covered the entire block, it was now a small coffee shop with a mostly unused dining room, bed and breakfast, and home to Moyra, her widowed sister's family, and her grandmother.

Moyra shoved her arm through the sleeve of her camel wool blazer, peeking at her watch. "Ooch, I've got to push off. Grand job of it, Nora," she consoled the dressmaker. Gathering up her handbag and slinging it over her shoulder, she called back to the others, as she exited the shop. "Tell Gran and Pat I'll be there in a jiff with our guest. And save us the corner wall booth."

Katie's answer followed her to the Landrover parked by the door on the cobbled street, more dour than reassuring. "Only the best for himself, the writer."

Lips pursed-at least from what Moyra could feel on the one side-Moyra fastened her seatbelt and started the vehicle. Her sister-in-law had a dear heart, no clue how big this visit was for Ballymara. A prestigious magazine as World Travelogue featuring the Pledging Stone and chapel was the biggest opportunity since the veneer factory outside of town opened in the nineteen-sixties and sure to save the dear couple who'd just bought the bankrupt Ballymara Castle.

Pierce and Mary Brennan had already spent a fortune on bed and breakfast part and now worked on the hall, which was perfect for wedding receptions. Ballymara Castle was the ideal mate to Pledging Stone Chapel, where couples came from all over Ireland to be married. If Moyra could infect this Jack Andrews with the same passion she had for Ballymara and the romantic Pledging Stone, there was no telling what might lie in store for her beloved town.

#

The grass was green, the sky was bright and the wind tried its best to strip the yellow petals from the forsythia blooming everywhere as far as Jack Andrew's cynical could see. It was spring and he could feel the goosebumps on his flesh huddling beneath his trench coat. Between the damp chill and exhaustion, all Jack wanted was a comfortable bed with clean linens and a good day's-or was it night's?-sleep.

While the passengers in first class on the airline slept peacefully, tucked in their lounge chairs with flannel blankets and pillows, Jack had the misfortune of sitting in the midst of a group of high school band students who were badly in need of a Ritalin dip. Not that sleep had been so easy of late, what with rumors of layoffs at the office circulating.

As a junior writer, he could see the handwriting on the wall. They'd keep that ageing, pot-bellied king of florid prose and show Jack the door. Just as his ex-fiance had-- may her new husband rest in lack of peace. A sardonic smile twisted Jack's lips as the Dublin mountains, blanketed in spring violet, gave way to hillsides specked with small clumps of farm buildings.

He didn't need her, or anyone for that matter. The muse was his passion. Travel was his middle name. No roots, no ties. That's just the way he wanted it. The only catch in that dream was the means to afford such a life.

And that was why this assignment had to be more than good-it had to be outstanding. No nonsense about promises made over some stone in a church being unbreakable-anyone could write that. But disproving the legend, now that would put muscle in his article-Ballymara: Quaint, Charming, and Fake. All he had to do was figure out how, he thought, studying the overdone brochure put out by its tourism department. The way it read, Ballymara was all but the spot of the Second Coming.

After a while, the bus slowed, groaning as though giving birth. Jack looked up to see where the driver was taking them. Ahead was a petrol/market at a crossroad. An official looking sign identified the route number that they were on, although under it was tacked a homemade affair defining the highway as the Killbog-Ballymara Road. Jack stuffed the brochure in h