Kathleen Creighton - One More Knight

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The second book in the Sisters Waskowitz series, 1998

Dear Reader,

Winter’s here, so why not curl up by the fire with the new Intimate Moments novels? (Unless you live in a warm climate, in which case you can take your books to the beach!) Start off with our WHOSE CHILD? title, another winner from Paula Detmer Riggs called A Perfect Hero. You’ve heard of the secret baby plot? How about secret babies? As in three of them! You’ll love it, I promise, because Ian MacDougall really is just about as perfect as a hero can get.

Kathleen Creighton’s One More Knight is a warm and wonderful sequel to last year’s One Christmas Knight, but this fine story stands entirely on its own. Join this award-winning writer for a taste of Southern hospitality-and a whole lot of Southern loving. Lee Magner’s Owen’s Touch is a suspenseful amnesia book and wears our TRY TO REMEMBER flash. This twisty plot will keep you guessing-and the irresistible romance will keep you happy. FAMILIES ARE FOREVER, and Secondhand Dad, by Kayla Daniels, is just more evidence of the truth of that statement. Lauren Nichols takes us WAY OUT WEST in Accidental Hero, all about the allure of a bad boy. And finally, welcome new author Virginia Kantra, whose debut book, The Reforming of Matthew Dunn, is a MEN IN BLUE title. You’ll be happy to know that her second novel is already in the works.

So pour yourself a cup of something warm, pull the afghan over yourself and enjoy each and every one of these terrific books. Then come back next month, because the excitment-and the romance-will continue, right here in Silhouette Intimate Moments.

Enjoy!

Leslie Wainger

Executive Senior Editor

From the diary of Charlene Elizabeth Phelps Private-do not read on pain of death-this means you!

April 13, 1978

Dear Diary,

Today I am leaving this God Forsaken place forever. Aunt Dobie says everything that happened to me is the Will Of God, and that He must have something important in mind for me to do and that’s why He’s testing me so.

Well, if He does, I’m just going to have to do it in California, because that’s where I’m going. And if I never set foot in Mourning Spring Alabama again in this lifetime, well, that’s all right with me.

Thought for the Day: A place doesn’t necessarily have to be ugly to be God Forsaken.

June 4, 1977

Dear Diary,

This is so dumb, writing to a book like it was a real person, but Aunt Dobie gave it to me and she says that’s how you’re supposed to do, so I guess I have to. Not that anybody will ever know, since it’s supposed to be private, and it had better be.

Anyway, today is my sixteenth birthday, and I’m really tired of people asking me if I’ve ever been kissed, haha. Like I would tell them! Personally, unless it’s John Travolta or his twin, I’m not interested. Tonight Colin and Kelly Grace and I are going to see Saturday Night Fever again. I have seen it six times so far. I swear, I could see that movie sixty more times and never get tired of it. That John Travolta is just such a fox.

Aunt Dobie says I should write down some kind of thought for the day every day, so here it is: since there’s nobody in Mourning Spring that even comes close to looking like John T., I guess that means if I never get out of here I will go to my grave unkissed.

The sign caught Charly off guard, since it was half-obscured by creeping honeysuckle vines that had managed to elude the highway department’s mowers. She rounded a bend and there it was: Mourning Spring City Limit.

A quarter of a mile or so beyond that sign she came to another that said Scenic Overlook, with an arrow pointing to the right. She pulled her rented Ford Taurus into the paved, crescent-shaped parking area and turned off the engine. She had the place to herself; dogwood season was well past and it would be a long, muggy summer before the leaves turned again in the northern Alabama hills.

She didn’t get out of the car but sat for a few minutes and stared through the Taurus’s windshield at the mountains marching off toward Tennessee, a soft June mist draped like a feather boa across their shoulders, and at the town nestled in among the cow pastures and copses of oaks in the valley at their feet. She could count five church spires from where she sat.

She’d forgotten how beautiful it was.

“Oh, God, how I hate this place.” Those words she breathed aloud, gripping the steering wheel helplessly while her throat filled and the tears welled up and ran down her cheeks.

Godforsaken. She’d called it that once, hadn’t she? Oh, yes, she had, long ago, the day she’d left it-she’d thought-forever.

If there was one place on earth Charly Phelps had planned never to set foot in again, it was Mourning Spring, Alabama. And as far as she was concerned, the fact that she was here on this lovely June afternoon was all Mirabella Waskowitz’s fault. Last Christmas her best friend in all the world had lost her mind, not to mention any sense of taste whatsoever, and had gone and fallen in love with the redneck Georgia trucker who’d delivered her baby on a snowbound Texas interstate. So now, if Charly wanted to be her best friend’s maid of honor and godmother to that sweet little Amy Jo-and she did, in the worst way-men there was just no getting around it; she had to come back to the South. She wasn’t about to call it home.

Only thing was, Mirabella’s wedding was in Georgia, and a whole week off at that. Charly couldn’t as easily explain what had possessed her to book her flight to Atlanta a week early without telling anyone, then rent a car and go driving off west to Alabama.

But then, Charly didn’t believe in explaining herself to anybody. Even herself. She’d sworn off that a long time ago.

She sat up straight, wiping her cheeks and checking her eyes and nose in the rearview mirror for telltale signs of her momentary lapse of control. Then she took a deep breath, turned the key in the ignition and pulled slowly out of the scenic overlook and onto the winding highway that, sure as God made little green apples, was going to return her to the town she’d run away from more than twenty years before. Call it Fate, or call it lunacy…she was going back to Mourning Spring.

“Are you sure?” Mirabella was asking for the third or fourth time. “I think we should go over it once more just to be on the safe side. Now, I want to make absolutely sure the ceiling fan switch and the lights are on that side of the cabinet. The intercom-”

“Marybell, honey.” Jimmy Joe’s patient drawl drifted up the stairs. “Come on, now, and leave the man alone. Twenty years in the navy, I think he probably knows how to follow orders.”

“I am not ordering,” said Mirabella.

Up on the ladder, her soon-to-be brother-in-law watched in silent appreciation as she bristled the way only a drop-dead-gorgeous redheaded woman can get away with doing.

“I’m just trying to make it clear, that’s all. After all, we’re not going to be here if he has any questions. I want to be sure-”

Troy grinned and touched his temple in a mocking salute. “Yes, ma‘am, and you can be. Swear t’ God, it’s all up here, and clear as a bell. You two just go on along, have fun in Atlanta, now, y‘hear? By the time you get home Sunday night, it’s gonna be all taken care of. Nothin’ to worry about.’

Mirabella had her hands on her hips and was staring up at him, giving him the look that always reminded him of a little cock robin. He watched it melt into a smile that would have just about knocked him off that ladder if it hadn’t been on the face of the woman who was about to make his baby brother the happiest man on earth.

“Troy, you are a lifesaver to be doing this. With the wedding only a week away, and Charly coming, I just have to get this nursery project finished. I cannot believe that contractor, flaking on me like that. Gets it halfway finished and just…disappears!’

“Well, now, you know, these things happen,” said Troy soothingly. Especially, he admitted to himself, in the South.

“Not to me,” snapped Mirabella, getting that feisty-robin look again.

Jimmy Joe appeared in the doorway with Amy Jo’s carrier seat in one hand and a suitcase in the other, and kind of a harassed look on his face. The look seemed to melt away the moment he set eyes on Mirabella, however, to be replaced by something that could only be described as a glow. It was a phenomenon Troy had observed before, and in a strange way, was beginning to envy.

“Hon, we need to be goin’. J.J.’s out in the car, and Mama’s waitin’ on us over at the house. We don’t want to be hittin’ Atlanta at rush hour.”

“Coming…” Troy noticed that Mirabella’s voice, which was normally California crisp and sort of bossy, had gone all husky and breathless, and that the smile she turned on Jimmy Joe was different from the one she’d dazzled him with. Softer, kind of misty. Then her gaze dropped to the carrier seat where her baby girl, having just recently found out what a terrific source of amusement a tongue could be, was raspberrying merrily away in a puddle of drool. The look on Mirabella’s face was a lot like the glow that had just lit up Jimmy Joe’s. It was almost embarrassing, Troy thought, watching those three together, as if he was intruding on something intensely private, some rare intimacy he could never share.