Marriage Is Just The Beginning

Cover Page

Excerpt

Dear Reader

Title Page

Dedication

About the Author

Chapter One

Chapter Two

Chapter Three

Chapter Four

Chapter Five

Chapter Six

Chapter Seven

Chapter Eight

Chapter Nine

Chapter Ten

Copyright

“You may kiss the bride.”

The words echoed in the sudden silence. Grant turned to face her and Sharon tilted her head, then grinned and winked.

This was Grant, her best friend, offering nothing more than a friendly kiss to seal a bargain, Sharon told herself as he slowly lowered his head. Her eyes fluttered shut; her breath caught as his lips settled against hers.

The soft, gentle kiss ended far too quickly.

She opened her eyes to meet his gaze—a puzzled gaze that clung to her lips like a touch and had her heart hammering wildly. A shimmering awareness seemed to hang between them.

Then Grant cleared his throat and stepped back.

And the moment died so quickly, Sharon wondered if she had imagined it.

Dear Reader,

Welcome to another wonderful month at Silhouette Romance. In the midst of these hot summer days, why not treat yourself (come on, you know you deserve it) by relaxing in the shade with these romantically satisfying love stories.

What’s a millionaire bachelor posing as a working-class guy to do after he agrees to baby-sit his cranky infant niece? Run straight into the arms of a very beautiful pediatrician who desperately wants a family of her own, of course! Don’t miss this delightful addition to our BUNDLES OF JOY series with Baby Business by Laura Anthony.

The ever-enchanting award-winning author Sandra Steffen is back with the second installment of her enthralling BACHELOR GULCH miniseries. This time it’s the local sheriff who’s got to lasso his lady love in Wyatt’s Most Wanted Wife.

And there are plenty of more great romances to be found this month. Moyra Tarling brings you an emotionally compelling marriage-of-convenience story with Marry In Haste. A gal from the wrong side of the tracks is reunited with the sexy fire fighter she’d once won at a bachelor auction (imagine the interesting stories they’ll have to tell) in Cara Colter’s Husband In Red RITA Award-winning author Elizabeth Sites is back with a terrific Western love story centering around a legendary wedding gown in The Rainbow Bride. And when best friends marry for the sake of a child, they find out that real love can follow, in Marriage Is Just the Beginning by Betty Jane Sanders.

So curl up with an always-compelling Silhouette Romance novel and a refreshing glass of lemonade, and enjoy the summer!

Melissa Senate

Senior Editor

Silhouette Romance

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

Marriage Is Just the Beginning

Betty Jane Sanders

www.millsandboon.co.uk

To Lee, always.

BETTY JANE SANDERS

With the publication of His Secret Son, a 1994 Golden Heart winner, Betty’s dream of becoming a published author had come true.

Betty has lived in Alaska since 1980, with her husband of twenty-plus years. Her hobbies include spending time with her husband, skiing, snow machining, walking her dog (a springer spaniel named Brittany), hiking, biking, boating, scuba diving, reading, writing, drawing and painting.

Chapter One

Six-year-old Cassie’s giggles spilled down the hall, easily reaching the kitchen. Sharon paused, a plate in hand, to savor the sound. Brittany barked—a puppy yelp. It was followed by a sudden splash of bathwater. Cassie squealed, Brittany barked again and Sharon cringed. She quickly put the last of the plates in the dishwasher, then hurried down the hall.

Fragments of bubbles floated in the bathwater. Cassie had soap in her hair and brows, while foam clung to her chin like a small goatee. Brittany lay in the tub in front of Cassie, a puff of soap perched atop her head. Sharon groaned. The puppy cocked her head and cracked her jaw in a doggie smile.

Sharon fought a grin and dropped her hands to her hips, trying to scowl fiercely. “Cassie Parker! What am I going to do with the two of you?” She arched a brow at the little girl, and Cassie laughed in answer—a bubble of pure joy that filled the room. Laughing was something the child hadn’t done often enough the past few months. Warmth flooded Sharon’s heart at the sound.

“I didn’t tell her to, Sharon. Honest. She just jumped in when I wasn’t looking. All by herself.”

Sharon shot a stern look at the nine-month-old springer spaniel. The dog’s long ears floated on top of the water. With her bright eyes, she appeared anything but repentant. “You are hopeless, the both of you. I can’t even turn my back on you for a minute,” she mock-scolded.

Brittany reached over, licked the soap goatee from Cassie’s chin and barked, bubbles spilling from her mouth. Cassie sputtered with laughter, then she grabbed the liverand-white puppy to her bare chest in a hug.

“Don’t be mad, Sharon. Brittany didn’t mean to be bad.” Her shining eyes—Grant’s eyes—begged forgiveness. Just as his had countless times throughout the years, and just as easily melted Sharon’s heart.

Perhaps it was her destiny to be won over by those thickly lashed Parker eyes, so dark blue they bordered on black, be it father’s or daughter’s. She shook her head with a sigh, leaned against the door frame, arms crossed, and just watched, as a rush of love flooded her.

“Brittany is my very best friend. I love her,” Cassie declared, pink coloring her cheeks. Black hair the exact shade of Grant’s slipped from where it was pinned at the top of her head.

Sharon smiled, then went to kneel next to the tub and tuck a strand of hair beneath a pin. “Well, best friends or not, we had better get her out of the tub and dried. Otherwise you won’t be able to have her on the bed tonight.”

As if she understood, Brittany leaped from the tub, then shook herself, spraying water and soap every direction. “Brittany,” Sharon gasped.

Brittany ducked her head and woofed. Cassie snorted and choked, trying to swallow her laughter, while Sharon rolled her eyes, then grabbed a towel and began drying the pup. Then she turned to Cassie, fresh towel in hand. “Your turn, little goose.”

Cassie giggled and climbed out of the tub with a splash of water and a flurry of slim arms and legs. Bittersweet warmth spiraled through Sharon at the way the little girl snuggled into the thick bath towel and leaned against her, hungry for contact from a woman and for a hug or a kiss, which Sharon happily gave. The child needs a mother, she thought with a sudden ache of heart. An ache that lessened only slightly when she squeezed Cassie.in a tight hug, as if she were able to somehow make up for the loss.

If only she could.

She slowly released the girl and reached for a soft, flannel nightgown that swallowed Cassie, the little girl’s bony ankles poking out below the hem. She stood and turned, and came face-to-face with herself in the steam-rimmed mirror.

Her thick, russet curls corkscrewed in every direction, as usual, heedless of attempts to tame them. Her round cheeks were flushed, her brown eyes wide and full of suppressed good humor.

At one time she would have grimaced and wrinkled her freckled nose in despair, but now she just shrugged with a grin. She had long accepted that no one would ever beat down the door to put her on the front of a glamour magazine, and that there were worse things in life than being plain.

Two bedtime stories and one damp pup later, Cassie raced from the living room to the spare bedroom, Brittany galloping at her heels. They jumped into bed as one as Sharon entered the room. Cassie turned with outstretched arms for a soap-scented hug and a slightly wet kiss that wrapped an iron-clad fist of love around Sharon’s heart and promised no relief.

She wanted no relief.

A little over a year ago her childhood friend, Grant, had returned to Valdez with his wife, Catherine, a tall, elegant blond beauty with a cool manner. Everything that Sharon was not. And with them was their tiny daughter, Cassie, the image of Grant when he was young.

Sharon had fallen in love with Cassie, as she had fallen in love with Grant years ago. But this time it was a love eagerly returned, making Sharon ache with happiness and long with all her heart for a little girl, a child of her own. And mourn once again the fact that she would never be a mother.

She pushed the dark thought away and dropped one last kiss on Cassie’s warm cheek. She left the little girl, covers pulled to her chin, whispering to Brittany, who snuggled next to her and was doing her utmost to hog the pillow.

Sharon probably shouldn’t let the dog sleep there, but Brittany had been a highlight in Cassie’s life in the several months since Catherine’s death from cancer. So much so that Sharon had considered giving Brittany to Cassie as a gift. But her own heart had been so totally won by the puppy that she couldn’t bear to part with her. Instead, she made sure that Cassie had lots of time to spend with the dog. Sharon refused to deprive Cassie of anything that made her happy.

Wind moaned around the eaves as Sharon paused at the living room window. Snow swirled and danced in the night, captured by streetlight, while naked tree branches bent and swayed with the storm.

Not the best of nights to be driving back from Anchorage, she thought, and hoped that Grant would get in soon. Three hundred miles of often winding, steep roads made more dangerous by darkness and thickly falling snow. It was hard not to worry.

He could probably make the drive with his eyes closed, she reminded herself, then pulled the drapes, able to shut the storm out but not her concern. No doubt because she had been worrying about Grant most of her life, off and on. She shook her head at the thought. Old habits were hard to break.

She flipped the front porch light on, then padded down the hall to check on Cassie. The house seemed warmer, snugger, more a home with the child there. Cassie lay on her side, one hand folded beneath her cheek, the other nesting on Brittany’s neck. Nose to nose, sharing the pillow.

When she was fourteen, Sharon had dreamed of doing this very thing, except the child she would be checking on would be her own. And the father, Grant, would be at Sharon’s side.

Stuff that fantasies were made of, little to do with reality, she thought with a soft smile. Even as a teenager she should have known better. It hadn’t taken long to figure out that Grant, with his dark good looks, was not interested in his childhood friend. Hope died hard, but a few years later she finally accepted that he never would be hers, and she settled for friendship, instead.

Sharon shrugged memory aside and turned back toward the living room to curl on the couch in a puddle of lamplight. She pulled an afghan over her lap, book in hand, to listen to the groan and whisper of the storm at the windows. And to wait for Grant.

Thick snow swirled through the black of night, quickly adding depth to the eight inches on the ground, coating the windshield almost faster than the wipers could push it aside. A gust of wind rocked the four-wheel drive. Grant slowed his speed. January. The heart of another dark Alaskan winter that had settled with a vengeance over the land.

Not that it mattered to him. Seasons and weather were something out of his control. He had learned, while growing up, that winter in Valdez meant short days, long evenings, delayed or canceled flights, which was why he was driving back from Anchorage. There would be over three hundred inches of snow by spring if Valdez got her average snowfall. They were well on their way to the average. All a fact of life that no amount of complaining could change.

He used to look forward to winter, the first snow, skis waxed, snow machines tuned. Now the skis were covered with dust, the snow machines untouched, and likely to remain that way.

He wheeled the pickup into town, streetlamps casting light and shadow along empty streets. A neon pink-andyellow sign flashed from a bar window, washing brilliant color across the snow. The grocery store was darkened, the parking lot vacant except for one lone, battered sedan quickly being covered with fresh snow.

Sharon’s front porch light reached through the darkness in welcome. The soft glow of a lamp behind the living room curtain told him she was probably up, waiting, though he had told her not to. He should have known to save his breath.

Grant smiled in spite of himself, tension easing as he pulled into the driveway and cut the engine. He slid from the pickup, weariness fading as he strode to the front porch. The door swung open as he reached for it.

“Grant.”

Sharon’s voice was soft, her hair a riot of curls. Baggy gray sweats hung from her slender frame.

“You made good time. Come in. Come in.”

She pulled him through the door, snow swirling behind. And reached for his coat even as he shrugged out of it, an action for both them as natural as breathing.

“Would you like some hot chocolate? I just put some on.”

“Got any chocolate chip cookies?” he asked. She grinned, eyes warm with humor, pulling a smile from him in answer. She always baked cookies when Cassie was around. And they were always chocolate chip, both his and Cassie’s favorite.

They headed into the kitchen together. There Sharon filled stoneware mugs while Grant piled a plate high with fresh-baked cookies. She settled across the table from him, and a comfortable silence surrounded them, broken by the murmur of the storm outside, the steady tick-tick of the kitchen clock, Sharon sipping her hot chocolate.

Grant could close his eyes and re-create the familiar scene. The sounds. The scent of her house. Sharon’s soft, red-brown curls framing winter-pale skin sprinkled with freckles; the darkness of her velvet brown eyes.

Eyes he suddenly realized were fixed on him, a frown creasing her brow. He put down his mug, recognizing that look.

“Problems?” he asked, not certain he really wanted to know.

She started to shake her head, then stopped, setting her mug aside. “I’m worried about you.” She held out a hand when he started to protest. “You work too much, Grant. When do you have time for fun anymore? When was the last time you wanted to have fun?”

The words spilled from her faster than he could stop them.

“Two sitters in three months. I know it’s not your fault these women seem to think Cassie is a way into your bed and your heart, but what are you going to do, Grant? I know you are still grieving, but—”

He placed a finger against her lips. A brief touch that stopped the flow of words better than argument could.

Grieving? Yes and no, but he wasn’t about to correct her. There were some things he couldn’t talk about, even with Sharon.

“I know you worry, Mom,” he teased gently. “Things should slow down at work one of these days, and I will find a sitter.”

As for Catherine…

The clock chimed twelve times. He hesitated, then shrugged and scooted the chair back. “I had better get Cassie and head home.”

Sharon studied him briefly, shook her head with a sigh.

He knew the argument was not over. Sharon never gave up that easy.

“It’s too late to argue. I’ll bag some cookies for you to take,” she finally said.

Grant nodded, then left her to the task.

The bedroom was dark except for the faint illumination from a night-light washing across Cassie. She was sleeping on her back, mouth slightly parted, one arm flung to the side, the other wrapped around Brittany’s neck.

The pup cracked an eye, head nestled across Cassie’s chest. Her tail began to thump, slow, then fast and faster, as Grant walked into the room.

He knelt by the bed and reached to touch Cassie’s cheek. A soft, reverent touch. This child of his, so tiny and perfect, with a fragile beauty and a hold on his heart so strong that it sometimes terrified him.

“Daddy?” Her eyes fluttered open.

“Hello, pumpkin,” he whispered.

He gently lifted her, her thin arms squeezing round his neck in a vise-grip hug that defied efforts to breathe. Breathing wasn’t important. Nothing was important except for the little girl in his arms. He closed his eyes, bathed in her scent and reveled in the silken cheek pressed against his, in the warmth that rushed through him. The feeling of coming home, of rightness, when he held his daughter.

He finally relaxed the hug, then sat on the bed, Cassie in his lap, to greet Brittany, who wiggled and whined with impatience. She leaned into Grant, head planted in Cassie’s lap, while he scratched behind a silken ear.

“Brittany is my best friend,” Cassie said sleepily against his chest. “Except for Sharon. I love Sharon the best—no, I love you the best, Daddy. And then Sharon. And then Brittany.”

Grant swallowed hard. “I know you do, pumpkin,” he said in a husky voice.

Sharon waited in the living room, Cassie’s small suitcase standing by the door. “I put the cookies in the suitcase, she said. Cassie bent toward Sharon, hooked a small arm around her neck and dragged her against Grant’s shoulder for a goodbye kiss, while Brittany leaned into his legs.

Sharon’s head stopped at his jaw. She was no taller than she’d been in ninth grade. She smelled of soap and lemon-scented shampoo, and her warmth burned through his jacket.

“I love you, Sharon,” Cassie whispered loudly.

Sharon hugged back with a gentle laugh, then disentangled herself. “I love you, too, little goose.” She handed Grant a blanket to wrap around Cassie. .

Grant finished the task, then reached to ruffle Sharon’s curls. “I owe you, once again.”

Sharon pushed his hand away with a grin. “Hey, you know I spent hours fixing that do! And you know you don’t owe me anything except…well, maybe dinner out next week. Chinese?” Her grin faded. “Seriously, Grant, you know I don’t mind helping out. It’s all part of being friends.”

“Yeah, well, you’ve been pretty friendly lately,” he said softly. “And I will be grateful if I want to.”

He turned toward the door and picked up Cassie’s suitcase. “Call me tomorrow,” Sharon said, then pulled the door open and ushered them out. She stood in the glow of the porch light, shivering, watching until they pulled out of the drive and started down the road.

Though it was only a few miles, Cassie was asleep by the time they drove up the hill to the house. The house he had built to try to make Catherine happy. And now lived alone in with his daughter.

Not that he could blame Catherine for her death; even he could not be so heartless. But before—

Steely resolve clamped a fist on the thought and squashed the life from it before it was completed. Grant did not have time to wallow in the past. Streetlights washed the other lots, empty except for four feet of snow, before finally capturing his house at the end of the cul de sac, standing alone in the shoulder of the mountain overlooking town.

The few lights on in the town below seemed to flicker, one or two here, a handful over there. Startled bursts of yellow-white against the swirling snow, which was now slowing, thinning to a mere flurry. Light from the Alyeska Pipeline Marine Terminal reached from across the arm of Prince William Sound. A faint light that stretched upward with long, buttery fingers to brush at the dark shadows of snow-filled mountains slowly materializing as the clouds began to lift.

The door to the three-car garage slid open. The far stall was filled with snow machines, snow blower and an assortment of skis and garden tools, bicycles, gas grill and lawn chairs, fishing poles and hip-waders that had cracked from age and disuse. The other two stalls were unoccupied until Grant pulled the pickup in.

They were a reminder the house was empty, as if he needed one. That he alone was responsible for the health and welfare of the tiny girl slumped against his side in sleep. And once again, that he was without a baby-sitter.

Frustration swept him, so sudden and strong that he wanted to slam a fist against the steering wheel. What did he have to do to find someone who wasn’t more interested in him than his daughter? Instead of abusing the pickup, he pushed the automatic opener and listened to the door grumble to a close. Taking a deep breath, he gathered Cassie in his arms and made his way into the cool, silent house to her room.

He pulled blankets close up under her chin, then brushed a knuckle against her silken cheek. He had to find another baby-sitter, one who would fill their needs without wanting to occupy his bed. In the meantime, Cassie would keep on going to day care during the day. And he would continue to rely on Sharon for help.

Three days later, Grant learned he needed to go to Southern California for a week. He called on Sharon once again.

“Of course I will watch her,” she immediately agreed.

“I’m sorry to have to be a bother—”

“Don’t be silly, Grant. You needn’t worry about me. It’s Cassie you should be worried about.” She paused, then quietly added, “You’re spending too much time away from her.”

“I have to go,” he said, and wasn’t sure whom he was trying to convince.

“I don’t want you to.”

Cassie’s lower lip was thrust out, trembling, when he told her that evening. Pain squeezed his heart at the sight of tears shimmering in her eyes. “Hey,” he said softly, drawing her to him with a hug. “You’ll get to be with Sharon for a whole week. Plus your buddy Brittany. And I’ll bring you something really special.”

She brightened a little at that, but still cried when he dropped her off at Sharon’s Sunday evening.

Guilt clung to him like a dark shroud as he flew from Valdez to Anchorage, then Seattle and on to Irvine. Guilt that once again he was asking Sharon for help, and once more he was leaving Cassie behind.

Yet his job as construction manager demanded it. This very job allowed him to provide Cassie with anything she needed and then some. He would give his daughter the world if he could, and if that demanded sacrifice, he would sacrifice.

A fact his father-in-law was quick to point out the following evening.

“We both know without question that you are trying, that you are doing the best you can for Cassie…under the circumstances.” Hugh leaned into the restaurant table toward Grant, while the murmur of voices filled the air around them.

“I appreciate that,” Grant answered as a prickle of apprehension raced along his spine. Perhaps it was the way that Hugh reached for Dorothy’s hand, as if to reassure her or maybe gain support. Perhaps it was the way that Dorothy would not meet Grant’s gaze, but instead nervously toyed with the linen napkin. Or maybe it was the unbidden memory of how they had pushed him away during Catherine’s illness. Whatever, Grant suddenly wished he hadn’t told them he was going to be in town for business. He should have dissuaded them from driving up from San Diego to meet him for dinner.