Montana Secrets

He couldn’t remember the bomb that had almost killed him, but he doubted its impact had been greater than the news he’s just assimilated.

He was a father. Catherine Erickson had borne his child.

Stunned by the knowledge, overwhelmed by a myriad of emotions—joy, surprise, pride—he couldn’t move, couldn’t breathe.

You have to think like Trace Gallagher, damn you, or you’ll ruin everything!

His daughter. Damn, he couldn’t keep the tears from his eyes.

Hot anger flooded him suddenly and seared the tears away, and he crushed the fate that kept him from acknowledging his identity to the woman he loved more than life and to the daughter he hadn’t known existed.

Dear Harlequin Intrigue Reader,

The summer is here and we’ve got plenty of scorching suspense and smoldering romance for your reading pleasure. Starting with a couple of your favorite Harlequin Intrigue veterans…

Patricia Rosemoor winds up the reprisal of THE MCKENNA LEGACY with Cowboy Protector. Yet another of Moira McKenna’s kin feels the force of what real love can do if you’re open to it. And not to be outdone, Rebecca York celebrates a silver anniversary with the twenty-fifth title in her popular 43 LIGHT STREET series. From the Shadows is one more fabulous mystery coupled with a steamy romance. Prepare yourself for a super surprise ending with this one!

THE CARRADIGNES come to Harlequin Intrigue this month. The Duke’s Covert Mission by Julie Miller is a souped-up Cinderella story that will leave you breathless for sure. This brawny duke doesn’t pull up in a horse-drawn carriage. He relies on a nondescript sedan with unmarked plates instead. But I assure you he’s got all the breeding of the most regal royalty when it counts.

Finally, Charlotte Douglas brings you Montana Secrets, an emotional secret-baby story set in the Big Sky state. I dare you not to fall head over heels in love with this hidden-identity hero.

So grab the sunblock and stuff all four titles into your beach bag.

Happy reading!

Sincerely,

Denise O’Sullivan

Associate Senior Editor

Harlequin Intrigue

Montana Secrets

Charlotte Douglas

ABOUT THE AUTHOR

Charlotte Douglas has loved a good story since learning to read at the age of three. After years of teaching that love of books to her students, she now enjoys creating stories of her own. Often her books are set in one of her three favorite places: Montana, where she and her husband spent their honeymoon; the mountains of North Carolina, where they’re building a summer home; or Florida, near the Gulf of Mexico on Florida’s west coast, where she’s lived most of her life.

CAST OF CHARACTERS

Ryan Christopher—A handsome and courageous marine lieutenant working undercover to fight terrorism, who loses more than his memory.

Trace Gallagher—Ryan Christopher’s alter ego…and determined to protect the Eriksons at any cost.

Catherine Erickson—A pretty schoolteacher and the love of Ryan’s life.

Megan Erickson—Catherine’s four-year-old daughter.

Gabriel Erickson—Catherine’s father.

Marc Erickson—Catherine’s brother, a marine who’s Ryan’s best friend.

Colonel Wentworth—Head of counterterrorism at the Pentagon.

Snake Larson—Town bully and troublemaker. This time he may have committed a much more serious crime.

Derrick Hutton—Head of the terrorist group Righteous Sword, and the man responsible for too many deaths.

Dear Reader,

Montana Secrets was completed in August 2001, one month before the September 11 terrorist attacks on the World Trade Center and the Pentagon. While the story is total fiction, some elements of it are eerie predictors of what was to come—Middle Eastern terrorists launching an attack against the United States.

In addition to those sinister elements, however, this story of U.S. Marine Lieutenant Ryan Christopher and his fiancée, Catherine Erickson, contains examples of all that is best in America. When their country is threatened, both Ryan and Catherine place the safety of the nation and the protection of its freedoms above their personal safety and desires. In the end, good triumphs over evil, and, in the best Harlequin tradition, Ryan and Catherine find happiness together.

Montana Secrets is dedicated to those who lost their lives on September 11, to those at home and abroad who deter and fight terrorists who attempt to cripple our nation and destroy our freedoms, and to the courage, tenacity and union of the American people.

Sincerely,

Contents

Prologue

Chapter One

Chapter Two

Chapter Three

Chapter Four

Chapter Five

Chapter Six

Chapter Seven

Chapter Eight

Chapter Nine

Chapter Ten

Chapter Eleven

Chapter Twelve

Epilogue

Prologue

Lieutenant Ryan Christopher closed the file on his desk, rubbed his tired eyes with the heels of his palms and swiveled his chair toward the third-floor picture window of his embassy office.

Below him stretched Bahira, capital of the Middle Eastern Emirate of Tabari, white and sparkling beneath the merciless desert sun. Minarets of ancient buildings mixed with pleasant symmetry among the gleaming glass of modern skyscrapers, towering date palms and the colorful blossoms of oleander. Even in the scorching heat, the narrow cobbled streets of the bazaar teemed with traffic and pedestrians.

North of the city shimmered the endless desert, its monotonous, undulating sands dotted with oil wells that provided the tiny country’s immense wealth. To the south stretched the Arabian Sea, its surface presently as calm as a single-faceted aquamarine, exactly the rich blue hue of Catherine Erickson’s eyes.

Ryan smiled at the memory of the devilish sparkle in those baby blues, a quality he’d noted the first time he’d met her six years ago. Marc, his college roommate and Catherine’s older brother, had invited twenty-year-old Ryan to spend the summer on their Montana ranch, and Cat, as her family called her, had been only sixteen. Like Marc, Ryan had considered the gangly teenager with a dusting of freckles across her nose and flyaway blond hair barely tamed by braids a major pest.

Young Cat had been interested in only two things—horses and spending every possible minute with her older brother, for whom she had a bad case of hero worship. Believing themselves sophisticated college men above socializing with a mere child, he and Marc had avoided her. Cat had retaliated by making Ryan’s life miserable every chance she found, from leaving pebbles in his boots to short sheeting his bed.

Over the following years, Ryan had visited the ranch several times, but not until after he and Marc had graduated from officers’ candidate school, received their commissions in the Marines and were on leave before their first assignment had he noticed Cat Erickson’s amazing metamorphosis. The skinny teenager had been replaced by a tall, willowy young woman with luxurious blond hair, endless legs and a perfectly sculpted face whose high cheekbones recalled her Scandinavian bloodline. The only trace of the pesky kid sister remaining was the teasing gleam in her unforgettable blue eyes.

Blindsided by Cat’s amazing transformation, Ryan had fallen instantly in love, aware not only of her beauty but also her wonderful qualities, which he’d either ignored or taken for granted. He’d learned to treasure her warm personality, her sense of humor, her sharp intellect and her loyalty to her family. And he’d stopped referring to her as the Pest, Marc’s nickname for his sister. Instead, he had dubbed her Kalila, an Arabic name meaning “dearly beloved.”

Now, two years after being struck by that thunderbolt, he didn’t have to consult his calendar to know that in ten months, three weeks and four days his current tour of duty would end and he’d see his Kalila again. Not only see her, but marry her, too. When that day arrived, he’d gladly shuck the military spit-and-polish, the chain of command and the taut nerves and constant vigilance of his covert assignment to the United States Embassy in Tabari.

Ever since his childhood as an orphan running wild on the rough streets of Chicago, he’d longed for a home, yearned for a family of his own. Until a few years ago, he’d thought the Marine Corps could take the place of that family. He’d joined up with high hopes of a stellar career with a meteoric rise to the upper echelons of command.

On his last leave, however, after having fallen hard for Cat, he’d realized the military was a poor substitute for fulfilling his dreams of a home of his own. He wanted to make a life with Cat, to have a real family, a wife and children. Now he dreamed of his upcoming marriage and a peaceful life with Cat, running her family’s ranch with his best friend and current undercover operative, Marc Erickson.

Ryan turned from the window as Marc stepped into the office from the adjoining bathroom.

Ostensibly, Ryan and Marc were assigned as translators to the contingent of Marines who guarded the embassy. In reality, they were a crack duo of counterterrorists under orders from the Pentagon to locate and identify the antinationalist terrorists who’d threatened not only the American embassy but Prince Asim Barakuh Ben Yaman, the sovereign leader of Tabari.

The translators’ office, in a corner of the top floor of the embassy appeared as a simple clerical operation to anyone who entered. Only Ryan, Marc and their commanding officer, Major Barker, knew of the high-tech equipment hidden behind panels and the secret passage that allowed them unobserved and unfettered entrance to and exit from the building.

Marc had changed from his Marine uniform to the flowing robes and burnoose worn by the men of Tabari. With his skin darkly tanned by the desert sun, only his eyes, the same color as his sister’s, pegged him as a foreigner. Once he’d navigated the dark tunnel to reach the street below, sunglasses would hide that flaw.

“Sneaking out to see that belly dancer you met last weekend, cowboy?” Ryan asked. “What was her name? Fatima?”

“Faridah. What a woman,” Marc said with a rueful grin and lustful sigh. “And I’m tempted. But duty calls. Our suspect’s on the move.”

“Derrick Hutton?” Ryan raised his eyebrows in sudden interest. “How do you know?”

“Heard him telling his buddies in the cafeteria he has the afternoon off and plans to spend it shopping in the bazaar. I’m tailing him in hopes he meets his terrorist contact. If he does, we’ll know for sure that Hutton’s our man.”

“I’ll come with you and watch your back,” Ryan offered.

“No, thanks. This is just routine surveillance. I’ll leave you here to finish the dirty work. Your Arabic is better than mine.” Marc nodded to the documents awaiting translation on Ryan’s desk.

Ryan grimaced at the stack of papers, then turned to his friend. “Call me if you need me.”

“Shouldn’t be any problems, but I’ll stay in touch.” Marc grabbed his cell phone from his desk drawer, shoved it into a pocket beneath his robes and slipped through the cleverly hidden doorway.

Ryan returned to the papers on his desk. Although the embassy had a full office of translators on the second floor, he and Marc were responsible for interpreting all sensitive documents related to military or classified matters. The work before him would take the rest of the afternoon. Resigned to the drudgery, he grabbed the top sheet, an arms agreement between the United States and the Tabarian governments, and began typing an Arabic translation into his computer.

Less than an hour later, he stood and stretched, rolled the cramped muscles of his back and thought longingly of the fresh coffee always brewing in the embassy cafeteria. If he was lucky, they’d have some of those special almond cakes, too. He was halfway to his office door when the phone rang. With a curse of regret, he returned to his desk and grabbed the receiver.

“There’s a bomb in the embassy!” Marc’s winded voice shouted in his ear.

“You’re certain?” An attack was what he and Marc had feared, had worked to prevent, but Ryan still couldn’t believe their suspicions had actually materialized.

“Our suspect told his contact the explosives are in place. They’ll blow any minute. Prince Asim is visiting the ambassador. Get them both to safety.”

Ryan didn’t argue. He and Marc had been fully briefed—the death or injury of Prince Asim would create an international crisis and strain the United States’ relations with the other Arab states. “I’m on it.”

“I’ll call Major Barker to implement the emergency evacuation plan. I’m on my way back to the embassy now.” From the jolting of Marc’s voice, Ryan could tell he was on the run.

Ryan slammed the receiver into its cradle. Years of training and discipline enabled him to shove terror and visions of carnage and destruction aside. Adrenaline pumping, he sprinted for the door. He raced past the elevator into the stairwell and descended the steps three at a time.

On the ground level, he burst out of the stairway and dashed along the marble-floored hallway toward the ambassador’s office. Outside the massive double doors, two uniformed Marines snapped to attention and saluted at his approach. Two strangers in dark suits and native head coverings, Asim’s bodyguards, stirred uneasily at his advance.

Ryan ignored them all and slammed through the doors without knocking. The ambassador, a tall, scholarly-looking man, glanced up from behind his desk in surprise.

“Code Red, sir,” Ryan announced.

The ambassador’s face paled, and he shoved quickly to his feet. “Has the rest of the embassy been notified?”

“Yes, sir.”

“What is happening?” Asim, obviously annoyed at the intrusion, glared at Ryan.

“No time to explain.” Ryan grabbed Asim by the elbow and jerked the sovereign of Tabari from his seat. “We have to get you back to your palace immediately, Your Highness. The embassy is not safe.”

With an imperious gesture, Asim shook his arm free. The prince, however, was no fool. When the ambassador rounded his desk and motioned for the prince to follow, Asim didn’t hesitate. He fell immediately into step behind the ambassador, who was hurrying for the double doors.

Ryan dogged the prince’s footsteps. As an afterthought, he pulled the solid wooden doors closed behind him as they left the office. If he could get the prince to his car and away from the embassy, then he could concentrate on conducting a search for the—

A massive concussion shook the building.

In the same instant, Ryan flung himself on the prince’s back, forced him to the floor and covered the sovereign’s body with his own.

The huge marble tiles lifted beneath him, and the corridor exploded around him. A flash of phosphorescent fire blinded him, and collapsing rubble crashed into his back. A heavy object grazed his forehead, and the coppery taste of blood filled his mouth. Dust and smoke saturated the air, and he couldn’t breathe. He attempted to rise, but a falling beam caught him between his shoulder blades and knocked him flat once more.

Won’t have to look for the bomb, he thought woozily and would have laughed if his lungs hadn’t hurt so badly and had held enough air. Looks like the bomb found me.

With every nerve ending screaming with pain, he drifted into merciful darkness.

Chapter One

Five years later

Buttoning her suede jacket against the early evening chill, Catherine Erickson stepped onto the broad front porch of the ranch house and stared at the snow-capped peaks along the Montana-Canada border.

Although the air was cool, the angle of the sun hanging high above the western mountains even this late in the evening heralded the approach of summer. Wrapping her hands around a mug of hot coffee, she settled into one of the rough bark chairs, propped her boots on the porch rail and, lost in memories, gazed across the rolling upper pastures of High Valley Ranch.

She missed Ryan.

Catherine always missed Ryan, but somehow in summer she missed him more, when the dull, ever-present pain transformed into a sharp, unbearable ache.

Instead of focusing on the cattle feeding on the tall lush grass or, beyond them, the river swollen with melted snow, she saw in her mind’s eye a tall, muscular figure striding toward her up the front walk, his mahogany-colored hair and khaki-brown eyes glinting in the sun, his broad grin accentuating the cleft in his strong, square chin, his arms open wide in greeting. His nose, broken once in a boyhood brawl, was his handsome face’s only imperfection, but even that flaw added to his rakish appeal, and she had never been happier than when those strong arms closed around her and lifted her off her feet and his deep, smooth baritone voice sounded her name.

Her smile at the recollection grew wistful. He hadn’t always been so glad to see her.

When Marc brought his college roommate home for the summer the year she was sixteen, Ryan had followed her brother’s lead, yanked playfully at her braids and called her the Pest. Cat, on the other hand, had immediately been smitten. She’d always thought Marc hung the moon, but his handsome young friend from Chicago had been the perfect manifestation of all her adolescent fantasies. Ryan, however, seemed unaware that she existed most of the time.

Not that he was ever inconsiderate or rude. His innate good manners made him the perfect guest. He arrived with books or candy for her and a bottle of fine whiskey or a box of hand-rolled cigars for her father. And unlike Marc and her dad, who considered the kitchen women’s territory, Ryan insisted on helping her with the washing up after meals.

“You don’t have to do this,” she’d protested that first night when he’d entered the kitchen, picked up a dish towel and begun drying the skillet she’d just scrubbed. “Marc and Dad wouldn’t be caught dead in here.”

“Everybody pitched in where I grew up,” Ryan had said with an easy grin. “Made the work go faster.”

His hand grazed hers when she passed him a pan, and the unexpected contact had sent her teenage heart into a wild flutter. She pivoted quickly toward the sink to hide her blushing cheeks.

Ryan chatted constantly as they worked, but always about the ranch. His curiosity about their way of life had seemed insatiable.

“What’s a quarter horse?” he would ask, or, “How did your dad choose which breed of cattle to raise?” or, “How many head can your acreage support?”

He’d posed plenty of questions about the ranch and Montana, all right, but never any about her. Cat had soon accepted that Ryan didn’t even think of her as a girl, much less a woman. When he wasn’t teasing her or helping out in the kitchen, he’d treated her as if she were a fence post. Which wasn’t surprising. Why should he notice her? A fence post was the ideal description of her feminine attributes. She’d never bothered with how she looked. And she’d been too tongue-tied with awe to converse wittily with their handsome visitor.

Until the summer she’d turned twenty.

Before Ryan and Marc arrived to spend their leave prior to their first overseas posting, she’d carefully planned her campaign and laid her trap like the best military strategist. Ryan hadn’t visited the ranch in over a year, and in that interval, Cat had learned to show off her best features. Choosing well-cut and properly fitted clothes instead of wearing Marc’s cast-offs made even her usual jeans and plaid shirts alluring.

With an art close to magic, Madge Kennedy down at the Kut ’n Kurl in town had trimmed Cat’s untamed hair into an attractive shoulder-length style that showed off her heart-shaped face to best advantage. Adding subtle makeup, a killer sky-blue dress that emphasized her shapely figure and matched her eyes and sporting strappy heels that showed off long legs formerly hidden beneath denim and boots, Cat had paced nervously in her bedroom until Ryan’s arrival.

She usually waited for her brother and Ryan on the front porch, then ran flying down the path into Marc’s arms for a bear hug upon their arrival, but that day she delayed, holding back until she heard them enter the spacious living room. Then she made her entrance.

When Marc spotted her, his jaw dropped and his eyes widened. “Who are you, and what have you done with the Pest?” he demanded, circling her for a closer inspection and shaking his head in amazement.

Her attention darted immediately to Ryan, who had dropped his bag, crossed his arms over his chest and leaned one shoulder against the doorjamb, his expression serious but his eyes shining. “Looks like your little sister is all grown up now, cowboy.”

She reveled in the obvious approval in Ryan’s voice but said nothing, afraid she’d spoil the effect she’d worked so hard to create.

“Man, oh, man.” Marc blinked in disbelief. “If I’d known you’d turned into such a hot number, Pest, I’d never have brought this ladykiller into the house.”

“Ladykiller?” Cat experienced a moment of panic. Somehow she’d neglected to consider the possibility that Ryan already had a girlfriend. Marc had never mentioned one. Fixing her anxious gaze on Ryan, she was glad he couldn’t hear her heart pounding beneath the scooped neckline of her dress. He met her glance, but his expression remained inscrutable.

“Yeah, the women are wild about him,” Marc explained with the fraternal grin that made her tingle with happiness to have her brother home again. “Everywhere we go, women are always throwing themselves at him. Many a time I’ve had to sacrifice and place myself between him and harm’s way.”

“Sacrifice?” Ryan said with a wry laugh. “So that’s what you call it.”

Marc shrugged. “You’ve never seemed interested in any of the female attention. I was just trying to save you the aggravation.”

Ryan stared at Cat with a laser look that heated her from head to toe. “I think,” he said in a deliciously languid tone, “my interest has just been piqued.”

Inwardly savoring the possibility of victory, Cat remained outwardly cool. “I’m sure plenty of girls will be happy to hear that at the dance tonight.”

“What dance?” Marc asked.

“You’ve been away too long, brother dear,” Cat said. “How could you forget the annual Territorial Celebration at the town hall?”

Marc turned to Ryan. “The music’s kind of hokey, but the food’s always good. Want to go?”

“If you guys are too tired,” Cat said quickly, “I have a casserole I can heat for your supper before I leave.”

She held her breath, waiting for their reply. She’d dreamed for months of dancing with Ryan, wondering how his arms would feel around her, dying to talk with him alone without Marc claiming all his attention.

“I don’t know about you, cowboy,” Ryan said, “but I think you’ll be taking a chance letting Cat go alone looking like that. She’ll need the Marines to keep the locals at bay.”

“You could be right,” Marc agreed.

Ryan nodded. “We’ll have to volunteer.”

Yes!

Cat called on every ounce of self-control to keep from pumping her fist in victory. Ryan had noticed her at last, but she’d have to take care not to appear too interested. If he guessed how strongly she felt about him, he’d hit the Libby highway running and never look back. The last thing she wanted was to scare him off by seeming too eager.