Kathleen Creighton
The Black Sheep’s Baby
A book in the Into The Heartland series, 2002
Dear Reader,
July is a sizzling month both outside
Eileen Wilks provides the next installment in our twelve-book miniseries, ROMANCING THE CROWN, with
So get a cold drink, sit down, put your feet up and enjoy them all-and don’t forget to come back next month for more of the most exciting romance reading around…only in Silhouette Intimate Moments.
Yours,
Leslie J. Wainger
Executive Senior Editor
Prologue
S he woke in the milky twilight that passed for darkness in the city, knowing she’d dreamed of Susan again. As always, she couldn’t remember much about the dream-no details, not even a face. Just a voice- Susan’s voice, childish and frail, calling to her. Calling her, pleading with her.
She threw back the covers and rose, paced barefoot to the window. She stared out across the glittering jeweled carpet that stretched all the way to the sea, squinting hard to hold back angry tears. How was I supposed to help you, she thought, when I didn’t even know where you were?
She held herself tightly as she shivered, and swallowed hard, once, then again. A tear ran warmly down her cold cheek.
Susan had been fourteen when she’d run away-almost a woman. But the voice in her dream was that of a little child.
Dammit, Susan, she thought, angry and weary at the same time. I
She brushed at her cheek and jerked away from the window. The luminous numbers on the clock portion of the built-in entertainment center beside her bed glowed green-gold in the gray twilight-2:14 a.m. Way too early to even think about leaving for the airport. And yet she knew better than to try to go back to sleep. Calm, now, and resolute, she went to her walk-in closet and took her rolling overnighter from its shelf. She lifted it onto the bed, unzipped it and began, carefully and methodically, to pack.
His eyes wanted to close-insisted on doing so, in fact, in spite of his strenuous arguments against it. That, plus an inarguable need for fuel, forced him off the interstate.
He chose an exit somewhere east of Grand Island that promised half a dozen motels and at least that many restaurants. He bypassed all of them, though his stomach had been complaining for the last fifty miles, and pulled instead into a gas station where he could pay at the pump. While unleaded gasoline gushed into the tanks of his six-year-old Dodge, he stood with shoulders hunched and hands in his pockets, rocking himself in the bitter Nebraska wind and reflecting on how the California winters had spoiled him.
Just beyond the roof of the gas station’s convenience store he could see a big green Holiday Inn sign, like a beacon summoning his exhausted mind and body into a safe harbor. But as much as he yearned for rest, as much as he knew he
“We’ll be there by tonight,” he told his passenger, sound asleep in the back seat. “Five more hours…”
The fuel nozzle clicked off. He replaced it in its cradle, climbed back into his car and, after a moment’s indecision, pulled across the parking lot and up to the drive-through window of the fast-food place next door. He ordered a double cheeseburger and a jumbo coffee and a short time later was back on the interstate, heading east toward evening.
In his rearview mirrors he could see, reaching toward him out of the west like menacing fingers, the dark purple clouds of the oncoming storm.
Chapter 1
I t was the week before Christmas, and Lucy was sorting laundry.
She acknowledged that fact with a sense of mild astonishment-and not-so-mild vexation, for Lucy Rosewood Brown Lanagan was not a person to whom the adjective “mild” could normally be applied. At least, not often or for long.
“It’s too quiet to be Christmas!” she declared loudly, though more to herself than to her sister-in-law, Chris, who was sitting at the kitchen table thumbing through magazines, looking for recipes.
“This looks good,” Chris said without looking up. “Walnut squares…”
“Eric’s allergic to walnuts.”
Lucy said it without thinking, an automatic response-which she realized a moment later when Chris looked up and eagerly asked, “Oh, is he going to be here for Christmas this year?”
A familiar pain made Lucy’s voice uncharacteristically light when she replied with a shrug, “Haven’t heard from him.” And a moment later asked, “What about Caitlyn?”
Chris’s eyes jerked away, shifting back to the magazines spread out on the table in front of her as she said in a tone as artificially cheery as Lucy’s, “She doesn’t know for sure. Says she’ll try her best to make it, at least for Christmas dinner.” And a poignant little silence fell between the two women, fraught with empathy and unvoiced
