In The Stranger's Arms

She allowed herself a moment’s indulgence to study him.

Awareness sizzled through her, followed by a shiver of caution. A man like him bore a warning label as clearly as if he’d had Danger embroidered across his rear in red. She hadn’t noticed that he had turned to watch her over his shoulder, but now his grin was smug.

She had been wrong about one thing. Being strongly attracted to him wasn’t the worst thing that could happen.

Having him know it was.

To Frank, my own romantic hero, who supports

and inspires me each day, and to everyone

who reaches out to the rest of us with tolerance,

acceptance, kindness and love.

PAMELA TOTH

USA TODAY bestselling author Pamela Toth has written romance for over twenty years. She was born in Wisconsin but has spent most of her life near Seattle, where she’s raised two fantastic daughters, Erika and Melody, and a parade of Siamese cats.

Pam is married to her school sweetheart, Frank. They live in a home with a view of Mount Rainier. When she’s not writing, she enjoys travelling and antiquing with her husband, reading, quilting and doing counted cross-stitch. She’s been a member of Romance Writers of America since 1982.

Fans may write to her at PO Box 436, Woodinville, WA 98072, USA or visit her at www.specialauthors.com.

Dear Reader,

The Pacific Northwest, where I’ve spent most of my life, has been blessed with some of the most beautiful scenery on earth. One of my favourite places to explore is the Olympic Peninsula, with its craggy mountains and rocky beaches, rain forests and tidal pools. There are Victorian B&Bs and lavender farms, Indian casinos and antique malls, aircraft carriers and car ferries. The coastline is bordered on three sides by an ocean, a foreign country and a crowded metropolis.

It’s here that I’ve set the small town of Crescent Cove, filled with residents whose stories I hope to relate in this and future books.

Before I started writing, I was a dedicated reader of romance novels with two growing daughters and dreams of my own. The ways that people with their quirks and imperfections relate to each other, romantically and otherwise, have always fascinated me. When it comes to heroes, Prince Charming was never as compelling as the lion with the thorn in his paw, the beast who must learn to trust and to love.

My characters are not unlike the people we all know: our neighbours, family and friends. They have hopes and dreams and flaws, needs that must be met, problems that must be overcome and empty spots in their lives that must be filled. It is my pleasure and my passion to tell their stories in order to entertain my readers and, hopefully, to tug at their heartstrings.

Pam Toth

PAMELA TOTH

MILLS & BOON

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Chapter One

Pauline Mayfield tossed and turned in her darkened room as the late spring storm howled outside her house. The Victorian structure had withstood similar storms for more than a century, she reminded herself silently, and it would stand up to this one, as well. As the rain battered her bedroom windowpane like pellets from a shotgun, she pulled the covers over her head and tried to sleep.

Suddenly there was a loud cracking sound from outside, followed by an explosive crash. Her eyes flew open and she sat bolt-upright, afraid to breathe, but all she could hear was the wind and the rain.

Heart thudding, she hurried to the window. Her breath fogged the glass, making it impossible to see into the night. Worried that a tree might have flattened her SUV, she threw on her bathrobe. When she reached the hall, another door opened and an elderly woman poked her white head out from her bedroom.

“What was that horrible noise?” she demanded, her British accent more pronounced than usual. “For a moment I thought I was back in the blitz.”

“It’s okay, Dolly.” Pauline barely paused to give her a reassuring smile. “I’ll check outside.”

“Take an umbrella so you don’t get soaked,” Dolly replied before she shut her door.

When Pauline reached the laundry room, she thrust her bare feet into a pair of rain boots. Muttering a quick prayer, she flipped on the outdoor light. From the back porch, she saw her undamaged SUV, but her relief was short-lived.

She grabbed the flashlight from its hook inside the door and clumped down the steps, clinging to the porch railing so the boots wouldn’t trip her.

The strong wind blew open her robe, and the rain soaked the front of her thin nylon gown. The wet fabric pressed against her bare skin, chilling her as she belted her robe. Shivering, she fumbled with the latch on the backyard gate.

Her boots threatened to slip off her feet with each step she took, and the wind blew her wet hair into her eyes as she aimed her flashlight beam at the garage. A fallen limb from the towering cottonwood tree lay sprawled on the roof.

Pauline felt as though a ball of yarn had risen into her throat. Swallowing hard, she told herself that the damage to the former carriage house might not be as bad as it appeared.

Assessing the damage or tarping the roof before morning was more than she could manage. Meanwhile, she was getting soaked for nothing. Fighting back tears of frustration, she returned to the house, where she struggled with dripping hair and stubborn boots.

Dolly appeared in the kitchen doorway and handed Pauline a towel. “Could you see anything?” she asked.

Thanking her, Pauline wrapped the towel around her head. “A limb fell onto the garage roof,” she said through clenched teeth. “I’ll call Steve Lindstrom in the morning and see if he can check it out.”

“You’re soaked,” Dolly exclaimed. “Go take a hot shower while I make you some tea.”

Pauline doubted she could swallow anything, but she didn’t want to be rude. “Good idea,” she replied. “Thanks.”

To Dolly, tea was a sure cure for just about anything. But Pauline just wanted to wake up and find out this was all a bad dream.

Early the next morning Pauline stood in her driveway and shielded her eyes against the May sunshine that seemed to mock her with its brightness. She watched as her contractor buddy, Steve Lindstrom, stepped down off the ladder he’d propped against her garage. He’d come right over when she’d phoned him even though he must have gotten a dozen other calls.

“I hope you’re going to tell me the damage isn’t as bad as I thought and that it won’t cost me a big bag of money,” she implored, exhausted from her sleepless night.

Steve picked up his clipboard and straightened, towering over her in his heavy boots. His solid build might have been intimating if she hadn’t known him since high school, when he and her little sister had been a hot item.

Pauline had always been immune to the younger man’s hunky charm. His sun-streaked hair—badly in need of a trim, as usual—poked out from under his red baseball cap. Beneath his thick mustache, his smile was sympathetic. “You know, I wouldn’t be doing my job if I lowballed the cost,” he replied. “Have you called your insurance agent?”

“He promised to stop by later, but he warned me a while ago that I was underinsured,” she admitted.

“I don’t suppose you listened,” Steve guessed.

Pauline shook her head. “Worse than that, I jacked up the deductible to save a few bucks on the premium.”

“By how much?” he asked.

When she told him, he whistled softly. “Oh, boy, that bites. But you know I’ll do the best I can to be fair.”

“I know you will,” she told him as she led the way through the side garage door.

He looked around carefully, muttering to himself and making notes with a pencil stub, while she trailed after him. Perhaps the damage looked worse than it really was.

“What’s the bad news?” she asked as soon as they got back outside.

He studied his clipboard with an unreadable expression. “Remove the limb and haul it away, repair the roof, fix the water damage to the inside, repaint…”

“I’ll do the painting and whatever else I can,” she said quickly. The last thing she needed right now was a huge bill eating up the money she had painstakingly scraped together.

He jotted down another note before sticking the pencil back into the pocket of his faded flannel shirt. “This is really rough, you understand. I’ll have a better idea after I make some calls and run the numbers, but replacing those cedar shakes won’t be cheap. You know they won’t match the rest until they have a chance to weather. There are some composite shingles on the market that look authentic, if you want to put on a new roof instead.”

He glanced toward the street. “No one would really notice, not with the garage sitting this far back.”

“I’d notice,” Pauline replied. “Just figure the cost of patching it, okay?”

“Sure thing.” He scratched his chin and named a figure that unhinged her jaw and made it drop. “If I find more damage behind that soggy plasterboard, the cost will climb,” he cautioned.

She groped for something positive to head off her mounting hysteria. “At least I can burn the wood.” Heating oil was expensive, but the big old house was blessed with working fireplaces in nearly every room.

“Sorry, hon, but cottonwood burns too hot for an indoor fire,” he replied. “It wouldn’t be safe.”

Muscles flexing in his arms and shoulders, he loaded the metal ladder onto the white truck that was parked in the long gravel driveway. Lindstrom Construction, it said on the door in plain black letters, followed by a local phone number.

Already the sun had dried up the puddles she’d stepped over earlier.

“Figures,” she grumbled, fiddling with her chunky beaded bracelet. This setback was only temporary, but she wouldn’t let it derail her plans.

He closed the tailgate and walked around to the cab. “I gotta tell you up front that I don’t know when I can get to it.”

When he opened the door of the truck, she noticed that the passenger seat was littered with papers. An empty coffee cup sat in the holder on the dash and a badly faded tassel from two years behind her own graduation dangled from the rearview mirror. “I’m slammed with work and I just lost my best guy to a builder in Bremerton,” he added.

Anxiously Pauline scanned the horizon for signs of another storm moving in from the Strait. All she could see was an endless expanse of bright blue sky. But dark rain-swollen clouds could roll off the Olympics or blow down from Canada at any time, just as they had last night.

Steve must have noticed the direction of her gaze. “I’ll send someone over to tarp the roof. Be sure to open the windows so the inside will dry out.”

“I can’t thank you enough,” she said as he tossed the clipboard into the truck and got behind the wheel.

She wondered whether he ever thought of Lily now that he was divorced. He never asked Pauline about her—not that she would have much to tell him if he did.

“Either Brian or the new guy I hired will be over later,” he said through his open window.

Brian was a gangly teenager who had mowed her lawn every summer until he’d graduated from the local high school and begun working full-time for Steve.

He started the engine, then glanced around at the garage. “Don’t you worry about the money.” He flicked the point of his shirt collar with his finger. “Maybe you could monogram these for me in trade.”

The idea of a monogram on the faded material made her smile. “I’d be happy to.” She glanced at her watch. “I’ve got a class in half an hour, so I’d better get going. Thanks so much for coming.”

“No problem.” With a wave, he pulled out his cell phone as he went back down the driveway and turned onto the street.

Pauline thrust aside her concerns and hurried across the gravel to her SUV. The last thing she needed was a group of cranky old blue-hairs clustered on the sidewalk in front of her shop, bad-mouthing her for her lack of punctuality.

Wade Garrett had just driven straight up from San Francisco to Crescent Cove. Nearly swaying from fatigue, he was in no mood for jokes as he stared down at the short man with the bad comb-over who stood fidgeting in front of him.

Wade fixed Kenton Wallingford with a look he’d been told was intimidating enough to make an enemy spy rat out his own mother. “What did you just say to me?” Wade asked softly.

Wallingford took a step back as the toothpick in his mouth bobbed from one corner to the other. “I, uh, I said I can’t rent you the cabin after all.” The slack muscles in his wrinkled neck quivered visibly when he swallowed. “My sister showed up a couple of days ago with her two kids and a black eye,” he whined. “What was I supposed to do, send her back to that bum I warned her not to marry ten years ago, so’s he can knock her around some more?”

Frustrated, Wade rubbed his temple where a headache had begun keeping time with the throbbing bass pouring out of a car stereo idling out on the street. He felt like marching over and ripping it out with his bare hands.

“How long will they be here?” he asked with a longing glance at the cabin he’d leased over the Internet and where he’d planned on sleeping tonight. A kid’s tricycle was parked in the driveway next to a pair of tiny sneakers.

Jeez, maybe he could rent a motel room for a few days.

“Until my sister gets on her feet or that no-good husband of hers sweet-talks her into going back to him.” Wallingford lowered his voice. “Between you and me, I’m betting on the latter. Carol’s too damned lazy to support herself.”

His dry chuckle made Wade want to haul him up by his greasy collar and shake him. It was probably a good thing Wade didn’t have the energy left for anything that strenuous.

“Good luck finding a room anywhere around here, what with the Arts Festival this weekend.” Wallingford hitched up his sagging pants. “Busiest damn time of year, and I’m not collecting a dime in rent,” he added morosely.

Wade couldn’t scare up a lick of sympathy for the little toad’s plight. All he wanted was to shower off the travel dust, fall into bed and sleep for fifteen hours. “Life isn’t fair,” he drawled.

Suddenly he remembered the folded paper in his shirt pocket and his mood brightened. “Well, I’m sorry about your sister,” he said, fishing it out, “but you faxed me a signed copy of the lease. I sent back a deposit.”

Wallingford’s smile turned crafty. “Read the fine print,” he replied around the toothpick as he jabbed a finger at the form. “Like I already said, it’s a family emergency.”

Wade skimmed the lease. When he reached the cancellation clause at the bottom, he swore under his breath.

It was uncharacteristic for him to ignore such important details, but he wasn’t used to dealing with such an annihilating defeat as he’d recently experienced. All he had wanted when he’d left California was to put the ruins of everything for which he had worked so hard behind him. Apparently he was paying the price for his haste.

“Look, I’m not fussy.” The desperation and the resignation he could hear in his own voice made him wince. “Can’t you find me somewhere to bunk, at least for tonight?”

Maybe Wallingford had a couch that pulled out or a damned lounge cushion on his back porch that Wade could borrow. At six-two, he was too damned tall to sleep in his car.

“You can deduct it from what you owe me,” he added. Had Wallingford hoped Wade might forget about the healthy deposit he’d paid? Not a chance.

The other man spread his hands in a gesture of helpless regret. “I’d put you up in the spare room for nothing, I swear, but my daughter’s home from Wazoo, over in Pullman.” He cleared his throat nervously. “Concerning the refund of your deposit—”

“I know,” Wade cut in, smothering a yawn. “Read the fine print. Now you read my fine print and hand it over.”

As soon as Wallingford pulled out his wallet and handed over a stack of bills, Wade jammed them and the useless rental agreement back into his pocket. He stalked back to his car, wondering if he should buy a sleeping bag and camp on the beach.

He was about to open his car door when Wallingford called out to him. “There’s a garage apartment behind one of those old Victorians on Cedar, a couple of blocks over. I didn’t hear of it being rented out.” He pointed in the direction of a stand of tall firs. “The house is blue with purple trim and a big weeping willow tree in the front yard. You can’t miss it.”

Wade felt a twinge of hope. “Have you got the address?”

By the time Pauline had closed up her needlework shop on Harbor Avenue and driven back up the bluff to her house, her earlier anxiety had turned to dull resignation. She had no choice but to have the damage repaired as soon as Steve was available, no matter what the ultimate hit on her precious nest egg.

Mayfield Manor had been in her family for three generations before she and her younger sister had inherited it. Even though Lily had obviously abandoned the family home as well as her only living relative, Pauline felt a deep obligation to maintain it. In addition to her strong affection for the old house, she still clung to her dream of someday replacing her female boarders with a family of her own.

When she came around the corner of her street, she saw the bright-blue tarp covering the corner of the garage roof. Except for some sawdust and a few drag marks in the gravel of her driveway, all signs of the fallen limb were gone.

As soon as she emerged from her Honda with her purse and her laptop, a dusty black car with out-of-state plates pulled into the driveway behind her. Her elderly boarder, Dolly Langley, was perched in the passenger seat next to an unfamiliar man wearing sunglasses.

As Pauline waited, he got out from behind the wheel, moving with surprising stiffness for someone with such an athletic build. Nodding to Pauline, he circled the car and opened Dolly’s door. As spry as a little white-headed bird, she hopped out, holding on to his hand.

“Pauline, wait till I tell you what happened,” she chirped in the British accent that all her years on this side of the pond had failed to eradicate. “I found this nice young man on my way home from the market.”

Her satisfied smile stopped Pauline cold. Widowed a decade before, Dolly insisted that a woman of Pauline’s age could be neither happy nor complete without a man to share her life. Had Dolly brought him home for her, in the same way a cat might offer a dead mouse?

“I appreciate the endorsement,” the stranger said in a husky voice as he bowed over Dolly’s hand, “especially from a lady as lovely as you.”

Dolly’s wrinkled cheeks turned a delicate shade of pink, and she patted her tightly permed hair with her free hand while Pauline studied him with mixed wariness and curiosity. His black hair was cut short above his lean face. Even dressed as he was in a blue chambray shirt and jeans, stubble darkening his angular jaw, he would certainly be called a prize catch by most women.

Still clinging to his hand, Dolly tugged him forward, her eyes twinkling behind her trifocals. “Come and meet my landlady. She’s the one I told you about.”

Oh, Lord. Pauline’s mind reeled at the possibilities her chatty boarder could have disclosed.

Maintaining an air of quiet dignity might have been easier if Pauline’s blouse hadn’t been streaked with dust from digging through freight, if her makeup hadn’t completely worn off and her hair hadn’t been restyled by the breeze blowing through her open car windows on her drive home.

As the man slipped off his sunglasses and tucked them into his pocket, she met his gaze squarely. Without the tinted lenses, his eyes were a startling shade of silver that contrasted sharply with his dark lashes. The intensity of his expression sent a shiver of awareness through Pauline as unwelcome as it was startling.

“This is Wade Garrett, fresh from San Francisco,” Dolly said, releasing his hand. “Wade, Pauline Mayfield, my landlady.”

Despite the polite smile that transformed his expression from intimidating to innocuous, Pauline hesitated before offering her hand.

She was being silly. As a member of the Waterfront Business Association and a candidate for the Crescent Cove city council, she had learned to cloak her shyness. Even so, his firm grip sent a jolt of reaction up her arm. Before she could identify the sensation, he released her.

“It’s nice to meet you,” he said with no indication that he, too, had felt the momentary shock.

“You, too,” she replied automatically, relieved that she could speak without stammering. “And it was kind of you to give Dolly a ride.”

“I was walking back from the market, and the strap on my grocery bag broke,” Dolly interjected as he reached into his car, a luxury model beneath the road dust. “The oranges rolled right into the street, but he pulled over and chased every one of them down for me.”

He held out the damaged bag to Pauline, who managed to take it without touching him again.

Dolly patted his bronzed forearm. “Where are you staying?” she asked him. “I’ll bake you some nice banana bread. You aren’t allergic to nuts, are you?” She glanced at Pauline. “I wouldn’t want to be responsible for putting such a helpful person in the hospital.”

“You don’t have to do that,” he protested, hooking one thumb into his wide leather belt. “I was actually on my way here when I stopped.”

“Here to this house?” Dolly asked. “Well, isn’t that nice.”

He must have spread the tarp earlier, Pauline realized, wondering how he’d transported a ladder. Perhaps he had a truck, too.

“Let me show you the apartment above the garage,” she said, reaching into her purse for her keys. “I keep the door locked.”

His thick brows shot upward. “Did Wallingford call you already?” he asked. “That was quick.”

Perplexed, Pauline hesitated. “Kenton Wallingford?” If Wade was connected with that no-good scam artist, she wasn’t sure she wanted to have anything to do with him.

Wallingford had a reputation for get-rich-quick schemes that inevitably failed, taking other people’s money in the process. “I don’t know how you heard about me,” she added, “but if you think the two of you can go around undercutting Steve Lindstrom’s prices, you’re sadly mistaken.”

Wade held up his hands, palms outward as though to ward off a blow. “Whoa, hold on,” he exclaimed. “I don’t know about any damage and I have no idea who Steve might be—unless he’s trying to rent the apartment from you, too.”

“Rent it!” she echoed, shaking her head in confusion. “Why would Steve want to rent from me when he’s got a perfectly nice house of his own? If you aren’t here to repair the damages to my garage, why are you here?”

Dolly’s bemused gaze shifted back and forth between them as though she were watching a tennis match on the telly, as she called it.

Wade narrowed his gaze. “My only connection to that slimy scum-sucking weasel, Wallingford, is that after he took my deposit money and then broke the lease I had with him, he said you might have a vacancy over your garage.”