Secret Dad

Excerpt Letter to Reader About the Author Title Page Prologue Chapter One Chapter Two Chapter Three Chapter Four Chapter Five Chapter Six Chapter Seven Chapter Eight Chapter Nine Chapter Ten Chapter Eleven Copyright

“Are you trying to prove something by taking care of me?” Charlie asked.

“That’s crazy,” he said, avoiding her gaze.

“Oh? You mean you might turn out to be a good guy after all?”

“I’m no saint,” he warned her.

She surprised him by reaching up to touch his cheek with her finger. “What are you, then?”

She was too close, too tempting. Moving on reflex, he grabbed her by the hair at the back of her head and forced her face an inch from his own. “I’m probably harder and rougher and less refined than any man you’ve ever been with, Charlie,” he told her, his voice a low rumble in his throat. “Don’t take this lightly.”

“I take you very seriously,” she told him softly, her voice pulsing with the excitement he was rousing in her blood. “You are the most serious thing that has happened to me in a long time.”

Dear Reader,

Happy Valentine’s Day! And what better way to celebrate Cupid’s reign than by reading six brand-new Desire novels...?

Putting us in the mood for sensuous love is this February’s MAN OF THE MONTH, with wonderful Dixie Browning offering us the final title in her THE LAWLESS HEIRS miniseries in A Knight in Rusty Armor. This alpha-male hero knows just what to do when faced with a sultry damsel in distress!

Continue to follow the popular Fortune family’s romances in the Desire series FORTUNE’S CHILDREN: THE BRIDES. The newest installment, Society Bride by Elizabeth Bevarly, features a spirited debutante who runs away from a business-deal marriage ..into the arms of the rugged rancher of her dreams.

Ever-talented Anne Mane Winston delivers the second story in her BUTLER COUNTY BRIDES, with a single mom opening her home and heart to a seductive acquaintance, in Dedicated to Deirdre. Then a modern-day cowboy renounces his footloose ways for love in The Outlaw Jesse James, the final title in Cindy Gerard’s OUTLAW HEARTS miniseries; while a child’s heartwarming wish for a father is granted in Raye Morgan’s Secret Dad. And with Little Miss Innocent? Lori Foster proves that opposites do attract.

This Valentine’s Day, Silhouette Desire’s little red books sizzle with compelling romance and make the perfect gift for the contemporary woman—you! So treat yourself to all six!

Enjoy!

Joan Marlow Golan

Senior Editor, Silhouette Desire

Please address questions and book requests to:

Silhouette Reader Service

U.S 3010 Walden Ave., P.O Box 1325, Buffalo, NY 14269 Canadian: P.O. Box 609, Fort Erie, Ont. L2A 5X3

About the Author

RAYE MORGAN favors settings in the West, which is where she has spent most of her life. She admits to a penchant for Western heroes, believing that whether he’s a rugged outdoorsman or a smooth city sophisticate, he tends to have a streak of wildness that the romantic heroine can’t resist taming. She’s been married to one of those Western men for twenty years and is busy raising four more in her Southern California home.

Secret Dad

Raye Morgan

Prologue

Robbie lifted his tousled head and listened. He could hear his mother talking and laughing softly with friends in the next room. The sound of her voice filled his almost-six-year-old heart with satisfaction and he snuggled down into his thick, soft covers, holding his teddy bear. He loved his mom.

“But where’s your dad?” his friend Billy had asked insistently that afternoon when they were playing in the mud at the edge of the lake. “Where is he, huh?”

He, frowned, remembering. It made him feel funny and hollow inside to think about it. Billy had a dad. He was big and loud and he took Billy fishing on Sunday afternoons. You were supposed to have a dad. Where was his dad?

His mother had said just tonight, “Your birthday is coming up, Robbie. Better start thinking about what you’re going to wish for.”

Could you wish for a dad for your birthday? He wasn’t sure. He didn’t want to say anything to his mom. He hated it when she looked sad and something told him asking for a dad would make her sad. So he would have to ask someone else.

Putting his hands together, he squeezed his eyes tightly shut and whispered, “Please, please. Could you bring me a dad? I promise I’ll sweep the porch every day and brush my teeth every night. So could you? Could you make him sort of big? I really, really need him.” He opened his eyes, then quickly closed them again, because he’d almost forgotten. “Thank you,” he added quickly. “Thank you very much. And God bless Mom.”

One

Denver McCaine winced as he climbed the trail to the cabin he’d rented for the month. His bruised, broken and thirty-eight-year-old body was rebelling, and he didn’t blame it. He’d wanted something remote, but if he’d known the cabin was going to be this hard to get to, he would have opted for something closer to the edge of the water.

“Go stay at Big Tree Lakes,” his coordinator, Josh Hoya had advised him. “You’ve had three rough assignments in a row. You’re not going to make it through another one without taking some time to heal.”

The casual onlooker might have thought Josh compassionate, but Denver knew better. Josh just wanted him ready for his next mission, and he wanted him in shape, just in case Denver had to pull the usual dangerous stunts he’d become known for during his almost twenty years as a government agent. But for the first time, Denver wasn’t sure he was going to be back when his R and R was over. For the first time, he felt a certain lack of will he’d never experienced before.

“You’re getting old,” he told himself, stopping to rest with his hand jammed against the rough bark of a pine to hold himself up. It might be time to consider changing to a desk job.

But that made him grin. A desk job—that would never happen. It just wasn’t his style. Still, this climb was destroying his right knee. He looked around for a better way to make it up to the cabin and his eye fell on an old streambed. That might give him better footing. He walked gingerly toward the rocky gully, cursing the foreign government soldier who had taken a whack at his leg with the butt of a rifle just three weeks ago—and the sniper who had put a bullet into his backside. All in all, he felt just this side of broken.

But he should have been paying attention to where he was placing his feet rather than cataloguing his pains. One misstep, then another, and he was falling, reaching out to try to catch himself on brush that came away in his hand, sliding down into the streambed on his back, wedged in between two boulders and twisted so that he knew right away it was going to be very difficult for him to get back up on his own.

A wave of pain swept over him and he closed his eyes for a moment, waiting for it to pass so that he could think straight. In the meantime, he uttered every curse word he knew, and some he’d only read in ancient books. This was so stupid, so avoidable. “See,” he muttered darkly to himself. “More evidence you’re losing your edge” He never made mistakes like this. What the hell was the matter with him?

Once he felt his strength coming back, he tried to leverage himself up into a sitting position, but he couldn’t get the traction he needed. His right leg was gone, completely unusable, and without it, he didn’t know how he was going to get up again.

He lay there, unbelieving, stream water soaking his pants. He was helpless. He—Denver McCaine, government agent, adventurer, sometime mercenary rescuer of damsels in distress, defender of the weak, the man who went where wise men feared to tread—here he was, flat on his back like a damn turtle. If he hadn’t felt so completely humiliated, he might have laughed.

“Hold on. I’m coming.”

The voice was female and he groaned. No woman should ever see him like this. This was not the face he usually presented to the world.

She came scrambling over the bank and toward him.

“Are you hurt? Do I dare move you? Or should I run into town and get a doctor?”

At first all he saw was a swirl of blond hair slashing through the sunlight above him, but as she bent over him, her face began to take shape and come into focus.

“I’m not really hurt,” he said gruffly, wondering just how he was going to explain. “I mean, I’m hurt, but it’s from an earlier incident. This isn’t bodily injury. It is, however, a definite wound to the spirit.”

She laughed softly, not taking him at his word as she quickly and gently tested his limbs for broken bones. “You seem to be okay,” she said, taking his hand. “You want to help me pull you up? I think I can do it.”

She set her feet against the rocks and locked her knees, tensing, and he set his jaw and willed her maneuver to work. Though she had to strain beyond what she’d expected, she soon had him back in a sitting position and out from between the two boulders.

“There,” she said, smiling at him and brushing her hands together as though she felt it had been a job well done. “How are you feeling?”

He didn’t answer. If he had been a normal man, his jaw might have dropped. But since he was a well-trained saboteur and warrior, he automatically hid his reaction to seeing her face-to-face. However, hiding was one thing—actually producing friendly chitchat was another. He was silent much too long for comfort, staring at her.

But he needed the time to soak in the vision before him, because she was not a stranger. This was a woman he knew. He remembered her from years before. Hers was not a face that was easy to forget. He placed her immediately, remembering the private boarding school he’d scrimped and saved and put his life on the line to send his little sister to. This woman had been his sister’s roommate, and everything about her had been indelibly branded into his brain.

“Uh...are you sure you’re okay?” she asked him, growing a bit anxious at the silence and searching his face.

He nodded, still struck dumb. She was more beautiful than ever, her hair a floating cloak the color of corn silk, her huge violet eyes soft as velvet, her hands fluttering like small birds. She wore white shorts and a blue halter top and her skin looked like butter, like cream, so smooth he could almost taste it. At first glance, she could still have been a girl, but another look showed a depth of experience in her sultry eyes. The lovely girl he’d admired years ago had turned into a woman.

“My name is Charlie Smith,” she said sunnily.

“The hell it is,” he muttered, surprised. Adrianna Charlyne Chandler was more like it.

“What?” she asked brightly, puzzled by him.

But he shook his head and didn’t repeat it, and she seemed to assume he was in pain from the sympathetic look on her face.

Charlie Smith indeed. That was a good one.

But wait. Suddenly he realized she must have gotten married since he knew her. After all, he told himself savagely, the rest of the world couldn’t sit around waiting for his adolescent dreams to clear up like a bad case of acne. Of course she was married, probably to some handsome stockbroker who wore double-breasted suits and talked on his cell phone all day—some normal but very wealthy man whom she adored and who was as different from Denver as night was from day. That was the way things worked, and he didn’t have to think very hard to know it might work that way for her.

“My name’s Denver,” he told her when he realized it was time to reciprocate. “Denver, uh...Smith.”

She laughed, delighted. “Not really? Isn’t that a scream? You’re a Smith, too?”

He nodded, frowning slightly and wondering if her name was as phony as his He’d rented the cabin under the name of D. Smith, more out of force of habit than anything else. The years had taught him to go incognito whenever possible, because his line of work was one that cultivated enemies and you couldn’t be too careful. And Smith was about as anonymous as you could get.

“What a coincidence,” she said, looking as though that really tickled her.

“Yeah,” he replied, hoping she didn’t catch the sarcasm in his tone. He was going to have to watch that. Sarcasm was all very well in his line of work, but it wouldn’t do around ladies like this.

He rose a little shakily and tried to walk, but the right knee was having none of it. It collapsed under him and she had to reach out quickly to help him regain his balance.

“Bad luck,” she murmured. “You’re not going to get far on that leg, are you?”

He didn’t answer. He was too busy experiencing the feel of her hands and taking in her honey scent as she helped him sit back down on a flat rock. He’d never been this close to her before. In fact, he didn’t think he’d ever spoken directly to her before. But he had certainly been aware of her existence.

“Where are you staying?” she asked him, standing over him with her hands on her hips.

He gestured in the direction of his cabin up the steep side of the hill.

She looked from the rugged terrain to his leg and shook her head. “You’re not going to make it up there under your own steam, that’s a cinch. We’d better call for a paramedic.”

“No,” he said quickly. “I can handle it by myself.”

She gazed at him frankly. “No, you can’t. Listen, my cabin’s not far, and it’s all downhill from here. You’d better come and rest there until we figure out what to do.”

“Forget it.” Rising, he lurched forward, almost falling again.

She was there in a flash, holding his arm, acting as his support. “Come on, tough guy. You’re coming home with me.”

He looked down into her mass of shiny hair. “Your husband...”

She stiffened. “I don’t have a husband. Only one little five-year-old boy, who is going to be thrilled to see you. Come on.”

He hesitated but she wasn’t taking no for an answer, and he’d lost the will to fight for the moment. His leg felt pretty bad. She was probably right. And for the first time since his mother had died, he meekly did what a woman told him to do.

Two

Charlie’s arm, stabilizing Denver, was sure and steady. She was stronger than she looked. He gritted his teeth and avoided her eyes. He wasn’t used to accepting this sort of help from anyone, and to think that he was dependent on this slender slip of a woman really stuck in his craw. But every time he tried to put any weight on his bad leg, the pain shot through him like the slash of a knife. There was no help for it. He was stuck with the situation, at least for now.

The going was slow at first, but once they got the hang of it, they started to move. His wet slacks slapped against his legs, getting colder and colder in the breeze. He felt very aggrieved. His life wasn’t supposed to go like this.

“Here we go,” she told him brightly, flashing him a smile. “My cabin’s just a little further. There it is, just above the boat ramp by the lake.”

He looked up and saw an austere-looking cabin just ahead. “That one?”

“No, that one belongs to my friend Margo and her husband.” Charlie grinned. “If she’s watching, I’m sure she’s on the phone to everyone we know. This must look quite a sight to her.” She nodded further on. “That’s my cabin, just to the left.”

He could tell right away that she’d lived in the little bungalow for some time. There were flowers on vines twining everywhere, in pots, creeping up porch posts, in beds alongside the path to the front door. Tiny buds of yellow and lavender and pink and white peeked from under leaves in every direction. It looked like a damn fairy-tale cottage or something equally sappy and that didn’t soften his mood. The hand-painted wooden sign over the door didn’t help either. Welcome Home, it said.

Home. Funny how that word resonated, even when you didn’t have a home.

“Aren’t you being a little free with your welcome?” he grumbled, gesturing toward the sign as he hobbled onto her porch. “After all, you never know who might decide to take you up on it.” He glanced at her, noting the way she was biting her lower lip as she struggled to help him through her doorway. “Can’t be too careful these days,” he added to cover up his own embarrassment at his predicament.

She didn’t respond, and once inside, he blinked, adjusting his vision to the interior gloom after the bright light outside. The place looked like more of the same cheerfulness he’d encountered on the porch—a clutter of handmade wall items, quilted throw comforters and copper pots and pans stacked neatly at the end of the breakfast bar. He might have said it looked like a Snow White cottage waiting for the Seven Dwarfs to come whistling in from the mines, except there wasn’t a sign that anyone masculine had ever been in the place. Anyone over five years old, at any rate.

For some reason, that annoyed him even more, and he frowned, leaning against the back of a wooden chair while she got the couch ready for him, fluffing pillows and moving a small stack of magazines. As she leaned down to work, her blond hair swung about her face, catching the light from the window. Her halter top gaped, showing a generous measure of flesh and exposing breasts just the size he liked them. He hadn’t remembered her with that much of a figure, but she certainly had made up for lost time since he’d seen her last.

“Okay, Mr. Smith,” she said brightly, turning toward him. “Give me your arm. We’ll get you settled on the couch.”

“I can handle it,” he said, pulling away from her and hobbling over on his own.

She watched him position himself to drop down on the cushion, and shrugged. “I’m going to call a doctor,” she said, starting for the phone.

“No, you’re not.” There was an element of command in his voice that stopped her in her tracks. He levered himself down onto the couch, wincing. “I don’t need a doctor.” He glanced up and met her gaze. “But I’m going to need you. You’re going to have to help me take my pants off.”

Charlie’s eyes widened and a bubble of laughter rose in her throat, but she managed to hold her composure. It was clear from his tone and from the look he threw in her direction that he thought the suggestion would shock her in some way. “You think I’m too prissy for a job like that, don’t you?” she accused him. “Well, you just watch, mister.” She came forward with no hesitation, her violet eyes challenging him. “Here’s a news flash. I take men’s pants off all the time.”

Her hands were on his belt before his were, and he lay back against the pillows and let her work. She slipped the belt off and undid the button, then yanked the zipper down.

“You going to help at all?” she asked him tartly.

He kept his mouth from curling but he couldn’t keep the grin out of his eyes. “I’ll do my best,” he said, and he braced himself on his elbows and lifted his hips so that she could tug the slacks down over his green plaid boxers and past his knees. Suddenly he wanted to hurry her along to get this over with before the evidence of how this was affecting him became all too obvious.

And it was affecting him. A hot, heavy pulse was beginning to beat in his veins. Feeling like this just wasn’t right—not for her, the woman he’d idolized for years. Oh hell, face it. She was the woman he’d lusted after for years. The woman he’d never thought he would get anywhere near. And now—here he was. And she was taking off his pants.

“How’s your shirt?” she asked, shaking out the pants and laying them near the fireplace.

“Just a little wet around the edges,” he said quickly. “It’s okay.”

She touched it and gave him a scornful look. “Hand it over,” she said cheerfully, turning to stoke her little fire “We might as well try, at least, to keep you from catching pneumonia.”

He pulled the shirt over his head and handed it to her, grabbing a throw that lay along the back of the couch and covering his semi-naked body with it just as she turned back to him.

“Wait a minute,” she said, sliding in to sit on the coffee table where she could have easy access to him. “I want to have a look at that leg.”

“Hey, no—” he began, but her small hands were already pushing back the blanket and beginning to gently probe around the joint.

“I can’t take the place of a doctor,” she told him as she worked. “But I do know something about this.” She glanced up and met his startled gaze. “I volunteer at the local hospital one day a week,” she explained with a quick smile. “That’s where I’ve been getting my practice at disrobing men.”

“Oh.” He couldn’t think of anything else to say. There she was, her beautiful face clouded with intensity as she tested his leg, her gorgeous breasts moving in that flimsy blue halter top as she worked, her warm hands on his rough skin. A feeling very near despair came over him. He felt like a man drowning in pure gold. Too much of a good thing couldn’t help but bring on disaster. Could it?

“I’ve had a lot of experience with sprains and breaks,” she went on as she probed. “In the winter, we get a lot of skiers. And skiers get a lot of leg injuries.”

He was speechless. He felt almost mesmerized by her touch on his leg, and he stared at her, heart thumping. What had happened? Had his fall taken him through the looking glass? Was this heaven or something? Was this woman an angel?

No. No angel’s touch would have stirred his blood the way her hands did. He moved restlessly, hoping she wouldn’t notice, and forcing himself to keep his mind from straying into forbidden territory. You weren’t supposed to think about angels like that.

“No kidding,” he responded lamely at last. “A candy-striper, huh?”

She nodded, a small frown of concentration puckering her brow as she evaluated his condition. He took a deep breath and tried counting backwards from a hundred, but he kept losing his place. All he could think about was Charlie, volunteer health worker, rescuer of damaged hikers. Angel or no angel, the woman seemed to be trying out for sainthood. Next she was going to tell him that she went around every morning and let wolves and foxes out of traps. Fed the starving. Let the homeless live on her porch. It was a bit much. He wasn’t sure why, but he halfway resented her goodness.

Maybe it was because all this altruism didn’t fit with the image he’d had of her years ago. She’d been lovely and appealing—but just as self-centered and snooty as most of the well-bred and overindulged girls at the private school where he’d seen her. Something had changed her. Either that, or she was putting up a very convincing front.

“I don’t think anything is broken,” she told him, still at work with her strong slender fingers. “But your cartilage is shot, isn’t it? And your patella...”

“Ow,” he muttered, jerking away as her hand found a raw nerve. His movement displaced the blanket and it slipped down off his chest. She reached automatically to straighten it for him, and he reached at the same time. She would have beaten him to it, but something stopped her, shocked her for a moment. He saw the stunned look in her eyes and he knew what it was. The blanket had uncovered the huge, jagged scar on his chest. She’d seen it, and now she was going to draw away in horror. It happened every time.

He pulled the blanket up and then he waited for it, holding his breath, and the tension grew tight as a drum. He forced himself to look into her eyes. If he saw even a hint of pity there...

“I bet you’ll have plenty of stories to tell your grandchildren,” she said lightly, reaching to cover his scarred leg as well. “You certainly seem to carry around a lot of reminders of adventures past.”