Chasing Dreams

He pushed through the small gathering and stood before her.

“Are you all right?”

Jessica must have bumped her head harder than she thought. She felt suddenly paralyzed, as if she couldn’t breathe. “I’m f-f-fine,” she managed to stammer.

“Jessica King?”

“How did you know?”

Lucky guess. Did she detect dryness in his tone? He scowled and, without warning, touched the corner of her lip.

Intellectually, Jessica supposed she had known life could change—completely, irrevocably, permanently—in a split second. She supposed she had always had a peripheral awareness that fate and the most well-planned of lives were sometimes on a collision course. What she had not believed was that something as innocuous as a chance meeting, a rough finger laid on the delicate skin of her upper lip, could bring on this sensation.

That everything about her reasonable and well-ordered life had just changed.

Dear Reader,

After looking at winter’s bleak landscape and feeling her icy cold breezes, I found nothing to be more rewarding than savoring the warm ocean breezes from a poolside lounge chair as I read a soon-to-be favorite book or two! Of course, as I choose my books for this long-anticipated outing, this month’s Silhouette Romance offerings will be on the top of my pile.

Cara Colter begins the month with Chasing Dreams (#1818), part of her A FATHER’S WISH trilogy. In this poignant title, a beautiful academic moves outside her comfort zone and feels alive for the first time in the arms of a brawny man who would seem her polar opposite. When an unexpected night of passion results in a pregnancy, the hero and heroine learn that duty can bring its own sweet rewards, in Wishing and Hoping (#1819), the debut book in beloved series author Susan Meier’s THE CUPID CAMPAIGN miniseries. Elizabeth Harbison sets out to discover whether bustling New York City will prove the setting for a modern-day fairy tale when an ordinary woman comes face-to-face with one of the world’s most eligible royals, in If the Slipper Fits (#1820). Finally, Lissa Manley rounds out the month with The Parent Trap (#1821), in which two matchmaking girls set out to invent a family.

Be sure to return next month when Cara Colter concludes her heartwarming trilogy.

Happy reading!

Ann Leslie Tuttle

Associate Senior Editor

Chasing Dreams

A Father’s Wish

Cara Colter

www.millsandboon.co.uk

MILLS & BOON

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Books by Cara Colter

Silhouette Romance

Dare To Dream #491

Baby in Blue #1161

Husband in Red #1243

The Cowboy, the Baby and the Bride-To-Be #1319

Truly Daddy #1363

A Bride Worth Waiting For #1388

Weddings Do Come True #1406

A Babe in the Woods #1424

A Royal Marriage #1440

First Time, Forever #1464

*Husband by Inheritance #1532

*The Heiress Takes a Husband #1538

*Wed by a Will #1544

What Child Is This? #1585

Her Royal Husband #1600

9 Out of 10 Women Can’t Be Wrong #1615

Guess Who’s Coming for Christmas? #1632

What a Woman Should Know #1685

Major Daddy #1710

Her Second-Chance Man #1726

Nighttime Sweethearts #1754

†That Old Feeling #1814

†Chasing Dreams #1818

Silhouette Books

The Coltons

A Hasty Wedding

CARA COLTER

shares ten acres in the wild Kootenay region of British Columbia with the man of her dreams, three children, two horses, a cat with no tail and a golden retriever who answers best to “bad dog.” She loves reading, writing and the woods in winter (no bears). She says life’s delights include an automatic garage door opener and the skylight over the bed that allows her to see the stars at night. She also says, “I have not lived a neat and tidy life, and used to envy those who did. Now I see my struggles as having given me a deep appreciation of life, and of love, that I hope I succeed in passing on through the stories that I tell.”

Contents

Prologue

Chapter One

Chapter Two

Chapter Three

Chapter Four

Chapter Five

Chapter Six

Chapter Seven

Chapter Eight

Chapter Nine

Chapter Ten

Epilogue

Prologue

“That insolent young pup!” Jake King slammed down the phone. He was eighty-three years old, he was one of the wealthiest and most respected businessmen in America and he was dying. He had a right to have his wishes granted!

They were simple wishes: happy marriages for the three daughters born to him so late in his life and a perfectly refurbished 1923 Rolls-Royce Silver Ghost Oxford Open Tourer for himself.

Things had been going rather well in the wish department. Just last weekend he had attended the wedding of his oldest daughter, twenty-six-year-old Brandgwen, to one of his most cherished business associates. The happiness and love shining in Brandy’s eyes—just the way he had planned it—had made Jake overly confident. It had made him think he could have whatever he wanted, that God granted wishes to dying men.

Or maybe acquiring the Rolls had seemed like less of a challenge than trying to save his middle daughter, Jessica, from herself.

Jake sighed. Jessica announcing her engagement to Professor Mitch Michaels at Brandy’s wedding had put a black spot on the whole event.

A black spot on his life.

Possibly he was trying to erase it with the Rolls.

He glared at the picture of the car on the Internet, and particularly at the disgustingly handsome young man who leaned beside it, grinning confidently, dark hair falling over eyes so like his grandfather’s had been. Dark, snapping with defiance.

“I should have known he wouldn’t sell me the car,” Jake muttered. There was bad blood between the Blakes and the Kings. It hadn’t always been that way. No, far from it. That insolent young pup’s grandfather, Simon, had been Jake’s business partner, way before the phenomenal success story of Auto Kingdom. And it might have remained that way, if Simon’s son, Billy, hadn’t been such an arrogant ne’er-do-well.

Billy would have sold him the car, Jake thought cynically. He would have sold it in a flash, just like he had sold everything else. But the grandson was a different story. Inner toughness shone from his eyes.

Garner Blake had made something of himself, despite the horrendous debts he’d inherited as a result of his father’s runaway grandiosity. It seemed Garner shared his grandfather’s passion for cars. He brought old beauties back to life. He did it better than anyone else in the business.

Jake knew these things. A man was smart to keep track of his enemies.

The door to his office burst open, and his assistant, Sarah, came in with his new son-in-law’s baby, Becky, riding on her hip. Becky was staying at Kingsway while her dad and new mommy honeymooned.

“Do you want to go see Grandpa Jake?” she asked the child.

The baby’s weight settled against him, and he allowed himself to appreciate the miracle and the marvel of her. When he had found out he was dying he had wished for a grandchild. For happiness for his daughters. He had wished he could show them, somehow, that only one thing really mattered.

Love.

Okay, love and good cars, but mostly love.

He had succeeded with his eldest daughter, succeeded beyond his wildest dreams at his first awkward attempt at matchmaking.

But Jessie, his second daughter, was different. Jessie was disconnected and intellectual. Given those defects, Mitch Michaels was simply unsuitable. The good professor, while obviously an honorable and stable man, could only bring out those qualities in her. Her beauty would remain forever hidden under layers of prim control that Mitch actually seemed to encourage.

Poor Jessie. The girl was twenty-four years old. She had no business acting so old. She always seemed to have her head down, in a book. She needed a man who could show her how to look up, dream a little, touch the sky.

He mulled over the surprising poetry of those thoughts while the baby pulled at his nose and his ears.

Really, especially after his episode with the Blake lad, it was beginning to feel like too much for him. What did he know of poetry and passion? Where could he find such things for his daughter? His energy was waning, his light dimming, and so much more quickly than he had expected.

“Look what I found,” Sarah said. She looked like Brandy. And sometimes there was a lilt in her voice that reminded him of a time long ago.

She plunked a picture down in front of him. Over the objections of his secretary, James, and just about everybody else in this household, he had given Sarah a job. She was sorting through mountains of photos and assembling memory albums, one for each of his daughters. Sarah was good at it, and he was glad he had hired her to put together a suitable memento for the daughters who had no idea that soon they would be looking at their father only in picture albums.

“I didn’t quite know what to make of it.”

Jake studied what she had placed before him. It was an old photo, sepia, the edges curling. It was a picture of himself as a young man, his arm looped casually around the shoulders of his best friend, Simon Blake. Jake felt a slight tremble in his hand. How odd that he had just hung up on Garner Blake and now this picture would be presented to him.

Or perhaps not odd at all…The veil between the worlds of the seen and the unseen were thinning. Perhaps all things were linked in ways he had never allowed himself to believe before.

He studied the photo of the two happy young men. Behind them, draped in a grand opening banner, was a building that couldn’t have possibly been big enough to hold all their youthful hopes and dreams. K & B Auto, the humble beginning of the Auto Kingdom empire in Farewell, Virginia.

And the beginning of the end of something far more precious than all the successes he had ever enjoyed.

The beginning of the end of his lifelong friendship with Simon. Not Simon’s fault. Simon’s son, Billy’s. Billy had managed to squander every single thing his father had worked for. In the end, Billy owned only his half of that small shop. No doubt he would have lost that, too, had Jake ever been willing to sell his share.

Jake felt the sharpness of regret.

Had he been too hard on Simon’s son? Probably. It was not until he had children of his own, long after Billy had grown, that he understood the complete helplessness of that love, the compulsion to overindulge.

He recalled his conversation with Garner. Hadn’t he heard the stamp of Simon’s own resolve in that young man’s strong, confident voice? Yes. And he’d heard more. A fierceness of spirit that reminded him of who he himself, Jake King, had once been. Plus, that love of cars, passed to Garner straight from Simon.

Jessie’s love of cars remained, too, under all that intellectual frou-frou.

Jessie and Simon’s grandson. Was it possible? Could Jake repair his mistakes of the past and manipulate his daughter’s future in one fell swoop? A shiver traveled the length of his spine.

Perhaps the gods would take pity on a man with so much to do, and so little time left. He snorted. This kind of thought had to be contained, or next he would be consulting his daily horoscope and reading crystals to find direction.

Of course, where he was going, who was to say where the direction would come from? Perhaps hunch and instinct and all those nebulous things came from heaven’s door. Meanwhile, he had a lot of homework to do on Mr. Garner Blake before Jake would cross the young man’s path with that of his beloved Jessie.

Reluctantly, he passed the baby back to Sarah. “Tell James I need to talk to Cameron McPherson, at once.”

Did she color at the mention of that name? Ah, yes, he recalled. She had danced with Cameron at the wedding. He saw the longing flash through her eyes. Too bad it wouldn’t be so easy with Jessie.

Three days later, with a thick folder in front of him, Jake redialed that number in Farewell, Virginia. He knew everything there was to know about Garner Blake. And he liked what he had found out. Garner was tough, but innately decent. What was best about his grandfather had survived in him. He had been nominated Citizen of the Year by the town of Farewell, and Jake’s sources told him Blake would win.

He let none of what he was feeling—excitement and hope—show in his voice. Instead, Jake King informed Garner Blake, coldly, that his daughter would be coming to work at K & B Auto for the summer, to fill the long-vacant position of office manager.

“Have you been spying on me?” Garner asked, his voice hard and incredulous.

Jake chose not to answer. Instead, he reminded Garner that he owned half the business and was, according to the legal documents he was looking at, entitled to hire and fire employees.

There was the faintest veiled threat in his statement. He knew from the dossier in front of him that Garner Blake hired good men to work for him and he was intensely loyal to each of them. Jake also knew one of those men had just had a baby, another had just bought a home. They were men who needed their jobs.

There was a long silence on the other end of the line.

Then Garner said, “Is this about the car?”

“If it was, would you change your mind?”

“No.”

“That’s what I thought.”

Jake hung up the phone thoughtfully. He hadn’t broken it to Jessie that he’d found her a summer job. He had a feeling she wasn’t going to be any happier about the arrangement than Garner Blake was.

She had just completed a master’s degree in science and she was contemplating beginning her Ph.D. She was brilliant and academically successful and she wasn’t going to want to work the front counter of an auto repair shop.

She could refuse. But he doubted she would. If he was dealing with her younger sister, Chelsea, he would have to threaten the trust fund, the allowance, the car and the credit cards. But Jessie was not Chelsea. She had always wanted to please him. He recalled, affectionately, the soft worry in her green eyes when she looked at him, even as a child.

Despite his treachery in playing with his unsuspecting daughter’s well-ordered life, he decided to call her immediately and smiled when he heard her voice on the other end of the phone. It was all for the greater good, after all.

Chapter One

The wedding gown was designed by Dior. The bride was slender and radiant. Her bouquet held pure white French Lace floribunda roses, flown in from Oregon.

The groom waited at the end of the aisle. He was turning toward her—

The daydream ended with a bang. Literally.

Jessica King’s head flew forward and hit the steering wheel. After a stunned moment, she stared at the crumpled hood of the car she had rented earlier this morning after flying into Harrisonburg, Virginia. Beyond the damaged front of the car was the parking meter she had hit, and beyond that was the rather dingy cream stucco storefront of K & B Auto.

Steam hissed out of the hood of her damaged Cadillac, and a small crowd began to gather.

“That’s what dreaming will get you,” Jessie admonished herself.

Embarrassed rather than hurt, Jessie took a deep breath and stepped from the car. Emerging from the air-conditioning into the steamy heat of an early-summer morning took her by surprise. But not as much as being watched by half a dozen or so people, their interest in her unabashed. There was really nothing she hated quite so much as being the center of attention.

Odd then that she had been imagining her wedding day instead of paying attention to what she was doing. Was there a day where a person was more the center of attention than that one? Of the King girls, she was the practical one, the pragmatic one, the nondreamer.

“For good reason,” she muttered, surveying the damage to the car. It had been a beautiful car, undeserving of her carelessness.

She was not a careless person! Not the least ditzy! And yet, after overcoming her initial surprise at Mitch’s announcement of their engagement at her sister’s wedding only two weeks ago, she was astonished to find a romantic hidden within herself, a romantic who simply could not get enough of daydreaming about every detail of her big day.

“I’m sorry,” she mumbled to the onlookers. “I just didn’t see the meter. Over the hood. I don’t usually drive a car with such a large hood…”

Her voice trailed off as the front door of K & B Auto swung open and a man emerged.

The last residue of her wedding fantasy faded.

Her entire former life faded.

The man had huge and undeniable presence. He was big, six feet or better, and every inch of that frame was muscular and spare. She could see power in every line of him, from the way his faded jeans clung to the large muscles in his thigh to the way the short-sleeved white T-shirt hugged the hard curve of a bicep and the washboard smoothness of his stomach. His hair was as dark as devil’s food cake, a little too long at the collar. His facial features were clean and chiseled, but the hardness in the line of his body was repeated in the stamp of his face—in the faint whisker-roughness of cheekbones and chin, in dark slashes of brows arrowing downward, in the line of lips that appeared stern and forbidding. How was it that the fullness of those lips made him sensual in a way that overrode his obvious ill temper? His eyes were animal dark, brown bordering on black, and a light snapped in them that was fierce, frightening, compelling.

He pushed through the small gathering and stood before her.

“Are you all right?”

She must have bumped her head harder than she originally thought. It was only four small words grouped together to form a question, and there was no sincere compassion in that question, either. In fact, the man seemed to be bristling with impatience. And yet she felt suddenly paralyzed, as if she couldn’t breathe.

“I’m f-f-fine,” she managed to stammer.

“Jessica King?” His gravel-edged voice scraped across the delicate skin at the back of her neck like a physical touch.

“How did you know?”

“Lucky guess,” he said. Did she detect a certain dryness to his tone? Then his scowl deepened. Without warning he reached out and touched the corner of her lip.

Intellectually, Jessica King supposed she had known life could change—completely, irrevocably, permanently—in a split second. She supposed she had always had a peripheral awareness that fate and the most well-planned lives were sometimes on a collision course. She had heard about such things: the decision to fly instead of to drive, a right-hand turn instead of a left one, and poof, a life changed for all time. What she had not believed was that something as innocuous as a chance meeting, a rough finger laid on the delicate skin of her upper lip, could bring on this sensation, not unlike drowning, that everything about her reasonable and well-ordered world had just changed.

What she had not believed was that such a thing could ever happen to her.

Lives forever altered by chance, by the whimsy of the gods, happened to other people, perhaps to people more spontaneous than she was or those more willing to take chances. She had lived with the happy illusion that fate had a much better chance of toying with people less organized, less in control, less dedicated to routine and precision than Jessica King.

His finger left her lip, and she returned to her well-ordered world with a pop, though she could not quite shake the sensation that there might remain a scorch mark where he had touched.

The devil will do that, she told herself. And the man was a devil, so at ease in his body, radiating self-assuredness. He had a roguish, untamed quality that was damnably sexy.

And he was no doubt exactly like every other man who was damnably sexy. He would know it and play it.

Jessica King would not be like her deceased, and rather infamous, mother. Not ever. She despised women who were helpless against the raw power that radiated from certain kinds of men.

This kind of man.

“Keep your mucky fingers to yourself,” she said, bristling with annoyance. He had come out of K & B Auto, likely a mechanic. His fingers would, of course, be mucky. Her eyes trailed to his hand. A big hand, the knuckles grazed, the back corded with a powerful network of vein and sinew. No ring. No muck.

He seemed unmoved by her annoyance, if he’d even had the good manners to notice it. Instead, he was studying the finger that had touched her lip. She noted, stiffly, it appeared to have muck on it.

“I thought it was blood on your lip,” he said. “But it’s not, is it?”

His eyes met hers, and a hint of laughter overrode his bad temper. Then he grinned, a small gesture, a tilting of firm lips. The grin changed everything. It was the sun glimpsed in the midst of a storm. The warrior cast of the face was momentarily transformed and he looked young and boyish and even more irresistible than he had before.

She shook her head. Now that was the real world. Men like this laughed at girls like her, girls who wore glasses and never got their hair quite right and were a teensy bit overweight. Never mind that the brief spark of laughter lighting the darkness of his eyes was more seductive than…

“Chocolate,” he said, and a small ripple of laughter went through the crowd, which was beginning to drift away now that the car was evidently just going to sit there hissing and not blow up.

He didn’t join in the laughter, and she was sorry he wasn’t having a laugh at her expense. A good defense against a man like him would be pure, unadulterated hatred.

“And you are?” she demanded. She resisted an impulse to tug at her skirt, which suddenly seemed binding around her hips.

How much weight had she gained since her sister’s wedding? Seven and a half pounds, as if she didn’t know exactly. You would think a person would have to work at gaining that much weight in such a short period of time, but she had no idea how—

“Garner Blake.”

She closed her eyes, just briefly, praying for strength. This was the man she was going to be working for?

“Oh, no.” It slipped out.

“My sentiments exactly,” he said.

She opened her eyes and glared at him. “Then why am I here?”

“Because your father wanted you to be. And for the most part, it would seem that what Jake King wants, Jake King gets.”

That for the most part seemed loaded with satisfaction.

Her father had told her that he was part owner in an obscure little business called K & B Auto that needed an office manager for the summer. He had told her he wanted her to get a taste of the real world.