Nicole Foster - Sawyer's Special Delivery

Maya saw where he was headed. “Sawyer—”

“I apparently need a babysitter—” he grimaced over the word “—to make sure my headache doesn’t get worse and that I slap ice on my shoulder periodically. You need a place to stay for a while. I’ve got a spare room I never use. You’d be doing me a favor.”

What other options did she have? She wanted to be with her son, and that would be difficult at best in a hotel room. It could take weeks to find an apartment.

“So, what do you say?” he asked. “Are we going to be roommates, you and me and Joey?”

Maya hesitated. “Okay, but this is very temporary, just until you’re back on your feet and I find a place to live.”

“Temporary, right,” he said, still smiling. “Got it.”

But seeing the satisfaction on his face, Maya wondered if he did.

Dear Reader,

Well, as promised, the dog days of summer have set in, which means one last chance at the beach reading that’s an integral part of this season (even if you do most of it on the subway, like I do!). We begin with The Beauty Queen’s Makeover by Teresa Southwick, next up in our MOST LIKELY TO… miniseries. She was the girl “most likely to” way back when, and he was the awkward geek. Now they’ve all but switched places, and the fireworks are about to begin….

In From Here to Texas, Stella Bagwell’s next MEN OF THE WEST book, a Navajo man and the girl who walked out on him years ago have to decide if they believe in second chances. And speaking of second chances (or first ones, anyway), picture this: a teenaged girl obsessed with a gorgeous college boy writes down some of her impure thoughts in her diary, and buries said diary in the walls of an old house in town. Flash forward ten-ish years, and the boy, now a man, is back in town—and about to dismantle the old house, brick by brick. Can she find her diary before he does? Find out in Christine Flynn’s finale to her GOING HOME miniseries, Confessions of a Small-Town Girl. In Everything She’s Ever Wanted by Mary J. Forbes, a traumatized woman is finally convinced to come out of hiding, thanks to the one man she can trust. In Nicole Foster’s Sawyer’s Special Delivery, a man who’s played knight-in-shining armor gets to do it again—to a woman (cum newborn baby) desperate for his help, even if she hates to admit it. And in The Last Time I Saw Venice by Vivienne Wallington, a couple traumatized by the loss of their child hopes that the beautiful city that brought them together can work its magic—one more time.

So have your fun. And next month it’s time to get serious—about reading, that is….

Enjoy!

Gail Chasan

Senior Editor

www.millsandboon.co.uk

is the pseudonym for the writing team of Danette Fertig-Thompson and Annette Chartier-Warren. Both journalists, they met while working on the same newspaper, and started writing historical romance together after discovering a shared love of the Old West and happy endings. Their seventeen-year friendship has endured writer’s block, numerous caffeine-and-chocolate deadlines, and the joyous chaos of marriage and raising the five children between them. They love to hear from readers. Send a SASE for a bookmark to PMB 228, 8816 Manchester Rd., Brentwood, MO, 63144.

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 Thirteen

Chapter Fourteen

Chapter Fifteen

Chapter Sixteen

Chapter Seventeen

Chapter Eighteen

This was not the way it was supposed to happen.

None of it—the wind and sleet, the rotten, rain-slicked mountain road, the idiot driver swerving into her lane, forcing her to yank the wheel hard to avoid a collision. The baby coming.

Definitely not the baby coming,

Not now, not here and not six weeks early. Another contraction gripped her, and Maya Rainbow clenched her fingers around the musty car blanket she’d been clutching like a life preserver, fighting the fear that was threatening to become full-blown panic.

“Are you okay? Maya, are you still with me?”

The contraction eased slightly. Taking a shaky breath, Maya managed to fumble her cell phone close enough to answer the dispatcher who’d stayed on the line after she’d called out the paramedics. “I’m still here.”

She didn’t have much choice. Short of crawling out the window—and right now she doubted she’d be able to do anything more gymnastic than sit up straight—she couldn’t get out. Her ancient Jeep Cherokee had skidded off the road, sideswiped a pine tree and ended up almost on its side in a narrow ditch. She’d blacked out. And when she’d come to, bruised and shaken, she’d managed to untangle herself from the seat belt only to discover the driver’s-side door was jammed and the passenger door was wedged against a tree.

Before Maya could call 911, she also realized her baby was coming.

“The paramedics are on their way. They should be there in a few minutes. Try to stay calm and remember your breathing,” the dispatcher’s voice was saying in her ear. “Tell me when you have another contraction.”

“I’m telling you now,” Maya gasped.

It had to be the fifteenth time in the last ten minutes the woman had coached her to breathe, to stay calm, and if she hadn’t been about to give birth sitting in the front seat of her wrecked car, Maya would have laughed. She’d spent the last seven years teaching others to cope with pain without medication, to release their stress and find an inner calm. For months she herself had been practicing all those focusing and pain-control techniques she’d touted to her clients.

But now all she wanted to do was scream, I don’t want to breathe! I’m not calm! It’s too early, my baby isn’t supposed to be this early. And where are those paramedics? It’s been hours. They should have been here by now.

What if they couldn’t find her? She hadn’t seen any lights from passing cars, nor did she know what had happened to the other driver other than his car had run off the opposite side of the road. She didn’t know if they could even see her Jeep, wedged as it was in the ditch. In the cold darkness, with the rain battering the roof and whipping against the windows, Maya had never felt more alone.

“Less than two minutes apart,” she heard the dispatcher say. “Hang in there. The paramedics should be there anytime now.”

The tears she’d been holding back slid down her face as all the worry and hurt and fear that had been building up for months now crashed her defenses. If only she hadn’t stupidly decided to drive home tonight, if she’d just waited until after her baby was safely born, none of this would have happened.

At the time it seemed the perfect solution, a welcome escape from the stress of Evan’s relentless campaign to force her out of the apartment they’d shared. It was less than a two-hour drive from Taos to her parents’ house in Luna Hermosa. The weather had been clear when she’d left. She’d had a trouble-free pregnancy and she wasn’t due for six weeks. It seemed nothing could go wrong.

And then everything had.

There was never a cat stuck in a tree when you needed one.

Sawyer Morente glared at the ringing cell phone he’d tossed on the desk beside him and, seeing his brother’s number flash on the screen, wished he’d had enough sense to turn it off. Right now he’d rather talk to anyone but Cort—even elderly Mrs. Garcia, who summoned the paramedics nearly every week, always making sure she suffered her chest pains on a day when Sawyer was on duty because she said she liked the way he took her pulse. At least he’d have a reason not to talk to his brother.

Tonight, though, had been unusually quiet for a Friday, especially after a week of what seemed like almost back-to-back calls. Apart from the small electrical fire keeping the three-man fire crew busy for the last hour, there hadn’t been any alarms at the main engine house centered in Luna Hermosa. The early-spring storm rumbling down across northern New Mexico from the Sangre de Cristo Mountains seemed to have kept most people off the roads and out of the kind of trouble Sawyer got called to handle.

His partner, Rico Esteban, slouching in one of the office chairs, his feet propped on Sawyer’s desk, glanced up from the Sports section. “You gonna answer that? It’s getting annoying.”

“Tell me about it,” Sawyer muttered. It was the fourth time Cort had called this week, and Sawyer was getting tired of telling his little brother he didn’t want to talk about the letter—the one that lay in a mangled ball somewhere in the vicinity of his kitchen trash can. Cort, for some reason Sawyer couldn’t fathom, wanted to answer it.

The only response Sawyer wanted to communicate to the letter writer was, Go to hell. After twenty-six years without a father, I don’t need one now.

On the fifth ring, Sawyer jabbed the talk button on his cell phone. “Go away, Cort.”

“Nice to talk to you, too, buddy,” Cort said, his voice slightly distorted by static.

Another streak of lightning slashed the sky, giving Sawyer hope that they’d suddenly be disconnected. “You know, it’s no surprise you’re the sheriff’s golden-boy detective. I’d take jail time over being hounded by you any day. Isn’t there someone else you can irritate this week?”

“Just you. And you’ve been doing your best to avoid me. Why bother having a house if you’re never off duty?”

“Obviously not my best or I wouldn’t be talking to you—again,” Sawyer said, ignoring the familiar jab about his working hours. Already restless with the conversation, he pushed away from his desk and paced to the office window. “And I wouldn’t be avoiding you if you would just let this go.”

“You can’t ignore it forever,” Cort said, repeating the same argument he’d been making since Monday, when they’d gotten the letters.

Sawyer wanted to ask him why, but the question would be wasted on Cort. Instead his brother would patiently drive him crazy until Sawyer either finally gave in or relocated and changed his identity.

“Sooner or later, we’re going to have to deal with this.”

“I am dealing with it,” Sawyer snapped. Rico looked up from his paper, then pretended he hadn’t when Sawyer scowled in his direction. Sawyer turned his back on him to stare out the window. “I’m dealing with it just like he dealt with us all those years after he finally got tired of knocking us around. I’m pretending he doesn’t exist.”

Despite the static, Cort’s frustration came through loud and clear. “The man only lives a few miles out of town. He does business here. Hell, we went to school with his son. Although if things had been right, Rafe wouldn’t have grown up a Garrett—”

“Don’t go there,” Sawyer interrupted. “We had nothing to do with that.”

“My point is, Garrett’s not going away.”

“Maybe that’s where you inherited it from.” Sawyer gave up trying to argue his point with Cort. Their father had never wanted them from the beginning. Big and rough, with a nasty temper made nastier by his love affair with Jim Beam, he’d made Sawyer the target of his rages early on. Then when Sawyer was seven and Cort barely five, he’d kicked them off his ranch and out of his life completely without a word of regret or explanation.