Dawn Atkins - Home to Harmony

Desire built inside Christine, like a wave slamming again and again. She could feel how much Marcus wanted her, too, could sense his struggle, and she was so aroused she felt like she’d levitated.

He put his arms around her and pulled her against his chest, inundating her with the delicious smell of cologne mixed with sundried cotton. His fingers pressed into her back, kneading her muscles, starting up a trembling in them both.

He broke off the kiss. “Christine,” he whispered near her ear as if he’d been dying for this moment. He pressed her face against his. He kissed the side of her neck, tucking his hand beneath her hair to cradle her head.

Oh, she wanted this. Needed it. His arms around her, his desire obvious, his struggle for restraint obvious in the tension and quiver of his every muscle.

A white-hot ribbon of desire twisted through her body. She wanted more, much more of him burying his mouth in her neck. “I want us to try.”

Dear Reader,

What makes a home a home, a family a family and love love? The question fascinates me. In this story, Christine Waters gets surprising answers to each. This book has special significance to me. I’ve worked on it off and on for several years, so I’m thrilled to finally see it on the shelves.

The journey home to Harmony turned Christine’s expectations and beliefs about her mother, her father, her son, her lover, even her ex-husband upside down and backward before she’d finished sorting it all out. Her struggle with her teen son David was particularly difficult for me to write. What mother hasn’t lain awake at night wondering if she’s raised her child right?

Marcus was such a gift to Christine, helping her see clearly who she was and could be. Christine saved Marcus from the numb isolation he’d sunk into due to past tragedies. These two needed each other. I mean needed. As to physical chemistry, Marcus was lighter-fluid and cool water to Christine’s crackling bonfire, intensifying and soothing in exactly the right way. I was so happy when they earned their happily-ever-after.

I hope you enjoy Christine and Marcus’s story as much as I enjoyed writing it. Please visit me online at www.dawnatkins.com.

Best,

Dawn Atkins

Award-winning author Dawn Atkins has written more than twenty novels for Harlequin Books. Known for her funny, poignant romance stories, she’s won a Golden Quill Award and has been a several-times RT Book Reviews Reviewers’ Choice Award finalist. Dawn lives in Arizona with her husband and son.

To Wanda Ottewell,

who believed in this story from the beginning

and understood it better than I

A world of thanks to Laurie Schnebly Campbell and Laura Emileanne for sharing their therapy expertise.

Any errors, distortions or inaccuracies are completely my own.

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

CHRISTINE WATERS PARKED her sturdy Volvo in front of the main building of Harmony House, the commune where she’d grown up, her heart pinched as tight as her hands on the steering wheel, a spurt of panic overriding her determination.

What the hell was she doing back here? When she’d left this place at seventeen, it had been for good.

She knew why she’d come, of course. She had two good reasons: to give her fifteen-year-old son a fresh start and to help her mother recover from heart surgery.

Simple. Easy.

Except nothing about David, her mother or Harmony House itself was simple or easy. Ever.

David shoved off his ever-present headphones, which shut out the world—especially her—and jumped out of the car, enthusiastic for the first time since Christine had announced they would be here for the summer.

“It’s like an old-time hotel,” David said, surveying the two-story building surrounded by gardens, the clay works barn and the animal stable.

“It was a boarding house back in the thirties, I think,” she said, joining him. In the years she’d been gone—eighteen of them—the place had become stooped with age, the yellow paint gone as faint as cream and the different-colored doors were milky pale. The wraparound terraces looked as though they’d give way in a breeze.

This shocked and saddened her, like seeing a lively friend wan and weak in a hospital bed. She’d never liked the place, but it had always seemed bright and vibrant.

“Cool,” David said, nodding.

Cool? Christine hid her smile of relief. The one thing in her favor was that David’s girlfriend, who shaped his every opinion, approved of communes. Well, la-di-dah.

“Check out the school bus,” David said, indicating the ancient vehicle painted with hippie rainbows and peace signs.

“I can’t believe Bogie still has that monster. Wonder if it even runs.” She used to hate when it broke down on the winding road to town. Being late for school had been mortifying, not to mention all the stares at her homemade clothes. Christine was seven when Bogie had talked her mother into moving out of the cozy apartment in Phoenix to the commune in the middle of nowhere. To Christine’s young eyes, beyond the bright paint, the place was all mud, stink and chaos.

Now, weary after the four-hour drive from Phoenix, Christine peeled her sweat-drenched tank top off her back. The cooler air in the hills was a relief, at least, though there would be many hot hours in the clay works, as well as tending the gardens, the animals and the kitchen, helping out until her mother and Bogie were back on their feet. Bogie, her mother’s old friend and partner in the commune, was recovering from prostate cancer.

Absently, Christine scratched the back of one arm, then examined the itchy red bump. Mosquitoes already? The flying pests bred in stagnant irrigation water or at the nearby river’s edge and they’d eaten her alive as a kid.

As if on cue, both her legs began to itch, too. She bent down to scratch them. “Remind me to get bug spray in town.”

“No way. Too toxic. Just cover yourself up,” David said. He would say that, dressed in his usual flannel shirt over a ratty T-shirt and shapeless cords, all too hot for early May in Arizona.

“We’ll see. Grab a suitcase, okay?”

He went for the backseat, crammed with luggage, his too-long straw-colored hair hanging over his face, hiding his gorgeous eyes. Dragging out one of the bigger bags, he stumbled a little. The two inches he’d grown in the past year had made him as gangly as Pinocchio, not quite able to work the long limbs he’d suddenly gotten.

How she missed the old David. They used to be Team Waters against the world, as close as a mother and son could be. She’d been so proud of the way she’d raised him. She’d been open, direct, affectionate and accepting, and always, always talking things out. So different from the way she’d been raised, with all her questions unanswered, Aurora mute or dismissive.

From the moment she found herself pregnant she’d sworn to be a better mother than Aurora and she’d succeeded.

Until David slipped into puberty’s stew of hormones and hostility. After that, and so much worse, came Brigitte. Two years older and snottier than David, she’d wrapped him around her sexually active little finger in no time flat.

He was too young. Only fifteen. Too young for sex, for drugs, for dangerous friends, for any of it. Christine’s anxious heart lurched with sorrow.

Watching him drag the bag across the gravel, she made a vow: I will not lose you.

“What? What’s wrong?” he demanded, letting the suit case drop to the dirt. He assumed she was criticizing him.

“Nothing’s wrong,” she said, managing a smile. Not so far, anyway. Away from Brigitte and drugs, David’s head would clear. He’d get involved in the commune, finish his schoolwork, talk to a counselor and, eventually, to her, and gradually get back on track.

That was Christine’s plan, along with helping Aurora without damaging their fragile relationship.

Oh, and doing some ad agency projects on the side.

She would make this work. She had to.

A goat’s baa drew her attention to a side garden, where a man in a straw hat was pulling weeds, watched over by a black-and-white sheep dog perched on its haunches. Bogie?

She headed over to see, lifting her bag because of the gravel. When he shooed the goat with his hat, Christine saw the gardener wasn’t Bogie. Not at all. He was mid-thirties, not mid-sixties, and tanned, not leathery. He was also handsome.

Strikingly so.

The goat trotted past her and Christine caught the sour stench that had gotten her labeled “Goat Stink Girl” at New Mirage Elementary. Ah, the good times.

The sheepdog gave an excited woof and galloped at David as if he knew him. Once he got close, though, the dog drew back, turned and shot off toward the cottonwood grove.

“Did we scare your dog?” Christine asked.

“Lady’s shy. She tolerates me only because I feed her.” The gardener smiled at her so quickly she wasn’t sure she’d seen it, but when he looked at David his face went tight, as if in unpleasant recognition. Odd.

“I’m Christine Waters. This is David.”

“Marcus Barnard,” he said, whipping off a leather glove to shake her hand. He looked her over with cool green eyes that held a glimmer of masculine interest…or maybe that was a trick of sunlight. It hardly mattered. She was not about to reciprocate.

“You’re Aurora’s daughter,” he said, nodding. “She said you’d be coming.”

“How is she doing?” Bogie had told her the prognosis was good, but Christine was anxious to see for herself. The news that her mother was ill had hollowed her out. Aurora had always seemed indestructible.

“She seems weak, but managing. I’ve done whatever extra Aurora will allow.” He shot her a brief smile.

“Allow? That sounds like my mother. Bogie asked me to say I’m here because he needed help, not her.” She smiled, but she felt far from happy. If Bogie hadn’t called, she was certain Aurora never would have. That hurt deeply, though Christine told herself it was Aurora’s way and always would be.

“People as self-sufficient as your mother often find it difficult to accept help,” Marcus said.

“Self-sufficient, huh? That’s one way to put it, I guess.” It irked her that this stranger felt the need to explain her mother. Over the years, Christine had tried to bridge the chasm between them, but her mother hated questions and wasn’t much for phone calls. E-mail was out, too, since Aurora didn’t approve of computers. Christine sent cards and called, but made no headway.

“So how long have you been a guest, Marcus?” She figured him for a short-timer. He carried himself like a business guy dressed for a hike in a neat chambray shirt and newish jeans, not a bit like the grubbier, weather-worn and laid-back commune residents.

“Almost three months, I guess.” His eyes were piercing, but cool, lasering in, but warning you away at the same time.

As striking in demeanor as he was in good looks, he seemed wound tight, watchful, and there was a stillness about him….

Not a man easy to ignore. That was clear.