Rough Around the Edges

Dearest Reader,

How lovely of you to come to my one hundredth book! After all, you were there when it all began, and I certainly couldn’t have done any of this without you. It’s hard to believe that seventeen years have passed since I stepped out of the shower, seven months pregnant with my second child, to take a phone call from my agent that would change my entire life. She’d called to tell me I’d sold my first novel, Tried and True, to Silhouette Desire. The struggling writer had finally made it to the gates of the Promised Land. The rest, as they say, is history. A very long and fruitful history for which I never stop being grateful. Although I’ve had my favorites, I can truly say that I loved writing each and every story that found its way to the Silhouette imprint. I’ve tried to write the kind of stories that I’ve always enjoyed reading, stories with warmth and humor, and that leave me with a smile at the end. I sincerely hope they do the same for you and that they have found a place in your hearts the way they have in mine.

Now, if you’ll excuse me, I have to start on the second hundred. Thanking you from the bottom of my heart for always being there, I wish you happiness and love.

Sincerely yours,

Dear Reader,

You asked for more ROYALLY WED titles and you’ve got them! For the next four months we’ve brought back the Stanbury family—first introduced in a short story by Carla Cassidy on our eHarlequin.com Web site. Be sure to check the archives to find Nicholas’s story! But don’t forget to pick up Stella Bagwell’s The Expectant Princess and discover the involving story of the disappearance of King Michael.

Other treats this month include Marie Ferrarella’s one hundredth title for Silhouette Books! This wonderful, charming and emotional writer shows her trademark warmth and humor in Rough Around the Edges. Luckily for all her devoted readers, Marie has at least another hundred plots bubbling in her imagination, and we’ll be seeing more from her in many of our Silhouette lines.

Then we’ve got Karen Rose Smith’s Tall, Dark & True about a strong, silent sheriff who can’t bear to keep quiet about his feelings any longer. And Donna Clayton’s heroine asks Who Will Father My Baby?—and gets a surprising answer. No Place Like Home by Robin Nicholas is a delightful read that reminds us of an all-time favorite movie—I’ll let you guess which one! And don’t forget first-time author Roxann Delaney’s debut title, Rachel’s Rescuer.

Next month be sure to return for The Blacksheep Prince’s Bride by Martha Shields, the next of the ROYALLY WED series. Also returning are popular authors Judy Christenberry and Elizabeth August.

Happy reading!

Mary-Theresa Hussey

Senior Editor

www.millsandboon.co.uk

To Leslie Wainger and Pat Teal, with me at one and still with me at one hundred.

Thank you, with love and gratitude,

Marie

Praise for bestselling author

MARIE FERRARELLA

“Marie Ferrarella shines among the brightest stars….”

—Romantic Times Magazine

“Ms. Ferrarella has created another enchanting romance with style, passion, and unforgettable characters.”

—Rendezvous

“Ms. Ferrarella demonstrates a mastery of the storytelling art as she creates charming characters, witty dialogue and an emotional storyline that will tug at your heartstrings.”

—Romantic Times Magazine

“Ms. Ferrarella’s engaging style leaves readers wanting more.”

—Rendezvous

“As usual, Ms. Ferrarella finds just the right balance of love, laughter, charm and passion.”

—Romantic Times Magazine

Contents

Chapter One

Chapter Two

Chapter Three

Chapter Four

Chapter Five

Chapter Six

Chapter Seven

Chapter Eight

Chapter Nine

Chapter Ten

Chapter Eleven

Chapter Twelve

Chapter One

The wide, gregarious smile that had become his trademark faded the moment Shawn Michael O’Rourke stepped outside the Irish-style pub he’d discovered his second weekend in Bedford, California.

There was nothing to smile about and no reason to pretend any longer. There was no one to see him. His friends were all inside.

Ordinarily, meeting and sharing a pint or two at the Shamrock with his friends would smooth over whatever was troubling O’Rourke at the time. He wasn’t a happy-go-lucky man, but he met life head-on, facing what it brought and moving on. But this was no ordinary situation and he was worried.

Worried clear down to the bone, as his grandmother used to say.

The light showers that were falling when he’d entered the pub had turned into a full-fledged storm while he’d been inside. He turned the collar of his jacket up, but it did little to keep the March rain off his neck. He hunched his shoulders in. But it was more than the rain that was making him feel beaten down.

There had to be something he could do.

He knew that if he didn’t come up with a solution—and soon—everything he’d worked for these past few years, everything he’d dreamed of over these past ten years, would mean nothing. He’d be done for. It didn’t seem fair that a random act of birth could have such an effect on a man’s life, a man’s future and that of his family’s.

O’Rourke hurried to the rear of the building, to the postage-stamp-size parking lot that was filled to capacity tonight. He dug into his pocket for his car keys.

Had he been born on the other side of the Atlantic, today would have been just another day in his life, a day in which he was working toward the culmination of his dream.

Instead, it was one day less he had. One day closer to when he had to leave. Leave the country, leave his hopes and his dreams. Sure, he could attempt to start over again back home in Ireland. After all, the dream had begun there, in his head. But it was right here, in a converted loft in Bedford’s Industrial Plaza, that all the visible components were housed.

To Shawn Michael O’Rourke, America really was the land of opportunity. He’d found everything he’d needed on this side of the ocean: the education he required and the financial backers, both men of experience and dreamers like himself. Dreamers who weren’t content only to dream, but to do.

All that wouldn’t mean anything anymore come thirteen days from today. That was his deadline. In thirteen days, he was to be gone from these shores. To return home just another failed dreamer.

Muttering words under his breath he knew his late, sainted mother would have taken a very dim view of, O’Rourke got into his van. The rain followed him in, covering the steering wheel and everything else in its path with a fine layer of mist before he shut the door. He hardly noticed. He jammed his key into the ignition and turned it. The motor hummed to life, along with the CD he’d left in his CD player, a compilation of songs from the seventies and eighties. He loved everything American.

Gloria Gayner began extolling the need to find some “hot stuff” as he drove out of the parking lot. He didn’t need any hot stuff, he thought. He needed a miracle, pure and simple.

O’Rourke frowned as he looked out the windshield. It wasn’t the state of his brain but the rain that was beating down that made it hard for him to see. Had he imbibed enough at the Shamrock to cloud his mind, he would have happily continued until he would have gotten good and drunk.

No, he wouldn’t have, he thought, turning down another street. Drinking to the point where his problem no longer seemed important was only a temporary fix, one with a huge price tag on in. Namely the morning after. Tying one on with his friends would only bring him a huge headache and interfere with his being able to think.

He needed to be clearheaded. There were responsibilities weighing on his shoulders, people depending on him, both here and in Ireland. People he was going to let down in thirteen days. Not that anyone would say anything. But he’d feel as if he was letting them down.

Damn, there had to be a way.

Without realizing it, he fingered the St. Jude medal he wore, a last gift from his mother, as he waited for the light to change. St. Jude, patron saint of lost causes. That had been him, once, a lost cause, until something had brought him around, taking him away from a life of carousing to something far more steady. His mother swore it was her prayers to the saint whose medal he wore around his neck. He figured it was his finally coming to grips with his father’s death that had done it.

Maybe if he thought long enough and hard enough, he’d come up with a solution. One that would keep him from being sent back to his native Ireland with his tail between his legs now that his visa, and every single extension he could put on it, was finally up.

The streets he was driving through were close to being deserted, even though it was only a little after nine in the evening. On a night like tonight, people stayed in their homes.

And that’s where he should be, O’Rourke decided. Home. For as long as it still was home to him.

He noticed that the rain seemed to be coming down harder. Angel’s tears, his mother used to say. She also said the angels were shedding the tears because of him.

He could see her, even now, fixing him a look with those deep blue eyes of hers, her arms crossed before her as she watched him come staggering in in the wee hours of the morning. Following the same path his late father had before him.

“When are you ever going to amount to something, Shawn Michael? You’re my firstborn, boyo. What am I going to say to my Maker when the time comes to face him and let him know what I did with the life he sent me to guide?”

O’Rourke smiled now, his mother’s words echoing in his head as clearly as if she’d actually spoken them. “You died before I could show you, eh, Mum?” he murmured to the memory that existed in his mind. “Except, I guess I won’t be showing you at that, not if this fine government has its way,” he added with a sigh as he turned down the next block.

Kitt Dawson didn’t think the day could get much worse. But each time she had thought that today, fate, with its twisted sense of humor, had gone out of its way to prove her wrong.

Kitt gritted her teeth together, grabbing on to the steering wheel even though she wasn’t moving. Here it came, another one. Another killer contraction. She held her breath, praying for it to end.

The top of her head felt as if it was going to come off. And then the contraction ebbed away, leaving her shaken, sweaty and scared.

She loosened her fingers from around the steering wheel. The baby wasn’t due for another two weeks. The fact that it was coming didn’t really surprise her, not beyond the initial salvo of disbelief when her water broke fifteen minutes ago. Nothing was going the way it should have gone today, why should this be any different?

It was a day for the record books. She’d lost her job because the aerospace company she was working for had lost its contract. She’d come home, hoping for a word of comfort, only to discover that she’d lost the foundation of her life as well. Jeffrey, the man to whom she’d given her heart, not to mention half her apartment, had left. Cleaned out the apartment the way he never had while they were living together. He’d taken everything of worth, including the new car he was supposed to have taken in for an oil change today. Taken it and every single dime she had in the world. He’d cleaned out the joint bank account as neatly as he had the apartment.

It had been her bank account, really. She’d been the one to put the money in. The only time he touched it was to take money out. She’d made herself a million excuses, saying things would get better once Jeffrey was back on his feet again.

He’d found his feet all right, she thought now. Found them and used them to run off with her things and the leggy brunette down the hall.

She should have seen it coming, Kitt upbraided herself. Maybe she had at that, but had refused to acknowledge it because love was blind. And she had loved Jeffrey. Dearly.

And now she was paying for it. Also dearly.

Okay, so love was blind, but she was supposed to have brains.

She was also supposed to have an umbrella, she thought as she looked through the windshield of her dead car with mounting exasperation.

It was raining. Not drizzling the way the weatherman had laughingly promised, but raining. Building-an-ark-and-collecting-two-of-everything kind of raining. And her car, the second-hand lemon that had actually belonged to Jeffrey, had just died a few feet passed the intersection, refusing to come back to life.

Just like Jeffrey after he’d discovered that she was pregnant, she thought, struggling hard not to give in to bitterness.

Well, the car was not about to suddenly rise from the dead and the rain was not about to abate. She had no choice but to get out and walk.

“It just keeps getting better and better,” she muttered, snapping off her seat belt.

Opening the door, Kitt wiggled out from behind the steering wheel she was wedged against. Another contraction began to build. Kitt froze. The pain that ran through her felt almost lethal, stealing her breath away with a vengeance. She had to get to the hospital. Now. She was in no mood to give birth on the corner of MacArthur and Fairview.

The way her luck was running, the next thing that would happen would be a flash flood.

With growing despair, she looked up and down the street. Nothing.

Why didn’t they have cabs prowling the streets here? She’d heard they did that in the big cities, why was that a restricted practice? For that matter, where was a police car when you needed one? If she’d gone through that light, she bet one would have popped out of the ground with a pre-printed ticket on the dashboard.

Maybe that wasn’t fair, but she didn’t feel very fair right now. She felt angry and cheated and in pain.

The rain lashed at her from all directions, pushed around by the wind that went first one way, then another. Kitt struggled to keep her orientation. She started to feel dizzy.

Thoughts began to slip in and out of her head like pulses of lights on a faulty circuit.

Maybe she could find a phone and call 911. The police were bound to get here faster than any cab she’d call.

Now all she had to do was find a phone.

Now all she had to do was see in this godforsaken awful weather, she amended. It seemed as if actual sheets of rain were coming down, wiping out any visibility beyond two, maybe three feet. Squinting, Kitt could barely make out the traffic signal across the street.

A haloed green ball of light shone like a feeble beacon. Kitt stepped off the curb, praying she could get across the street before another contraction hit, incapacitating her. Biting her lower lip, her head down against the wind, she tried to cross the intersection as quickly as possible.

Her own bulk combined with the lashing rain slowed her down. The light turned yellow just as she’d made it hardly more than halfway across the street. Pushing herself, she strove to move faster. Her eyes were half closed, trying to keep the rain at bay.

The squeal of brakes from the oncoming vehicle had her screaming in response. The next second, there was water hitting her not just from above, but from the street as well, drenching her legs as her foot made contact with the sidewalk.

Everything started to swirl around in her head. Kitt reached out to steady herself, but there was nothing to grab onto. She vaguely thought she heard a man’s voice shouting at her.

Or maybe that was to her, she wasn’t sure. It didn’t seem important.

Her outstretched hands made contact with cement. Hard. Tearing at the fleshy part of her palms and making them sting.

She’d fallen.

The thought telegraphed itself through her brain at the same instant the pain registered. The next second, she felt someone cradling her.

“Are you all right?” There was a hint of a lilting accent in the deep voice. There was more than a hint of concern.

With effort, Kitt managed to bring the world back into focus. Some man she’d never seen was holding her against him.

“No, I’m not all right. I’m pregnant,” she snapped. Angry at the world at large and frightened, Kitt tried to sit up. She couldn’t. The man asking the stupid question was holding her.

My God, he’d almost hit a pregnant woman with his van, O’Rourke thought, trying to shake off the numbing fear the realization created. Rapidly pulling his wits about him, O’Rourke looked at her, searching for signs of bleeding.

“You came out of nowhere.”

“I came out of my car,” she contradicted him curtly. “And I was trying to cross the street. Didn’t anyone ever teach you how to drive?” She yanked her arm away from him and tried vainly to gain her feet. She felt like a turtle flipped onto its back. A huge, pregnant turtle.

“I didn’t hit you, did I?” Swiftly, O’Rourke ran his hands up and down her limbs, checking for any damage. “I mean—”

Where the hell did he come off, trying to touch her? What was wrong with him? Again she tried to get to her feet, but between the rain, her labor pains and the exhaustion that was sinking in, it was beginning to feel like an impossible feat.

“Look, I’m in labor.” At least she could manage to push his hands away, which she did. “I would really, really prefer if you didn’t try to cop a feel or mug me right now.”

O’Rourke sat back on his heels, ignoring the rain falling into his eyes. “I’m just checking for broken bones—” His mouth fell open. “Labor?”

She bit her lower lip, trying very hard to focus on something other than the pain. Trying very hard not to get hysterical.

“Yes, labor,” she ground out.

What the hell was she doing wandering around in her condition? “You shouldn’t be out on a night like this.” O’Rourke looked around, trying to spot someone who might have been with her. But there was no one on the street and only one car had passed since he’d darted out of his van. “Especially not alone.”

“Not my choice,” she bit off. Turning, she tried to get to her knees. The pain had her gasping. And then suddenly, just like that, in the middle of her contraction, she was airborne. The pain left. The surprise didn’t. The stranger had picked her up.

Rising to his feet, O’Rourke couldn’t help marveling at the woman in his arms. She didn’t feel as if she weighed enough to be having a baby, not even sopping wet. But there certainly was no arguing with the huge mound that met his eye. The woman was definitely swollen with life. Stepping back with her, he took momentary shelter under the awning of a shop that sold bridal gowns.

O’Rourke glanced down the length of the block. He saw a car, its hazard lights on, in the opposite intersection. “Is that your car?”

Kitt nodded her head. “It’s dead. I need 911. An ambulance,” she added when he said nothing.

The pain came again, harder and faster than before. Bent on breaking her in half from the inside out. Without realizing it, Kitt dug her fingers into his arm, squeezing hard.

Even through his jacket, he could feel the intensity of her grasp. For a little woman, her strength was surprising.

“How far apart are they?” She looked at him with wide, dazed eyes. “The contractions,” he prompted. “How far apart are you having them?”

Her breath and voice returned as the pain receded. She all but went limp in the stranger’s arms. “I haven’t timed them.”

“Guess.”

She said nothing, but grasped his arm again, harder this time.

“Okay, I’ll guess for you,” O’Rourke said, a sinking feeling taking hold of the pit of his stomach. “Not far apart at all.”

Released from the contraction’s viselike grip, Kitt began to pant. That had been an exceedingly hard one. How much worse was this going to get? She was afraid to find out. Really afraid.

“Good guess,” she rasped, trying valiantly to maintain a brave front. “Do you have a cell phone?”

“Not yet.” It was something he’d been promising himself to get. Now there didn’t seem to be any reason. Not if they deported him.

She closed her eyes, searching for strength. It only made the spinning in her head intensify. Kitt opened her eyes again, looking directly at the man who was still holding her.

“Great, the only other person in Southern California without a cell phone and I had to run into him.” She looked toward what she’d thought was a public phone from across the street. But there was an Out of Order sign taped across it. “We need to get to a phone. I need an ambulance.”

He heard the hitch of rising hysteria in her voice. And then she was clutching at him again, her nails digging into his chest this time. Less than one minute had elapsed between contractions. She was going to give birth any second.

“You need more than that, ma’am.” O’Rourke looked around, but everything looked closed for the night. “You’re having the baby.”

“That’s what I’m trying to tell you.”

“Now,” he emphasized. He saw panic beginning to etch its way into her features even though he’d only put into words what he knew she had to already be thinking. “Don’t worry, I’ll help you,” he promised.

There was no place else to go. He had to put her in the back of his van. At least she could lie down there. As long as he pushed back some of the computer equipment he’d packed on the van’s floor.

“Are you a doctor?” she asked warily.

Something else his mother had wished unsuccessfully. O’Rourke smiled as he shook his head.

“No, a brother.”

Her head was swimming again. Kitt desperately tried to make sense of what she was hearing. Rain was falling in her face again. They had moved out from under the shelter of the awning. Was that a good thing?

“You mean like some religious order?”

Leaning her against him, he did a quick balancing act and opened the rear doors of his van. “No, like a sibling who saw a fair number of his brothers and sisters come into the world.”

“This isn’t exactly a spectator sport,” she said.

As gently as possible, he lay her on the floor of his van, then hopped up in beside her. There was no blanket available. Stripping off his jacket, O’Rourke turned it inside out and bunched it up, creating a makeshift pillow for her head.

Lifting her head slightly, he slipped his jacket beneath her. “Don’t worry, I know what to do.” At least, he hoped he remembered. He gave the woman what he hoped was his most confident smile. “My mother used to give birth so fast, there was no time to get her to the doctor or have the midwife come to her.”

Kitt could feel another contraction taking root. She licked incredibly dry lips and wished she was six again. Six and sitting in her family room, watching cartoons. Or eighteen and taking her college boards. Any place but here, any time but now.

“So you helped?” she heard herself ask as she mentally tried to scramble away from the pain there was no escaping.

O’Rourke saw the look in her eyes and took her hand, holding it tight. She held it tighter. “I was the oldest of six.”

She felt as if she was in a doomed race. Kitt began to breathe hard. “You’re sure you’re…not some…weirdo who gets…off…on this kind of thing?”