Sharon Mignerey - Too Close For Comfort

Rosie turned around to face Ian, tipping her head back so she could meet his gaze.

He grazed the back of a finger down the side of her face, a touch he couldn’t have stopped if his life had depended on it. He bent and pressed a kiss against her temple. “Go get some sleep, Rosie. You’re safe, I promise.”

Her heart thudding, Rosie walked toward the ladder. She turned around and found his attention on the water ahead of them. She watched him, wishing she understood what had just happened between them.

Moments later she collapsed on the bed. More tired than she cared to acknowledge, she admitted how much Ian had made her relax. She would never have imagined he could be so gentle.

And so the day ended as unusually as it had begun, her thoughts on a stranger—a man who felt oddly safe in spite of all that he was.…

Dear Reader,

As always, Intimate Moments offers you six terrific books to fill your reading time, starting with Terese Ramin’s Her Guardian Agent. For FBI agent Hazel Youvella, the case that took her back to revisit her Native American roots was a very personal one. For not only did she find the hero of her heart in Native American tracker Guy Levoie, she discovered the truth about the missing child she was seeking. This wasn’t just any child—this was her child.

If you enjoyed last month’s introduction to our FIRSTBORN SONS inline continuity, you won’t want to miss the second installment. Carla Cassidy’s Born of Passion will grip you from the first page and leave you longing for the rest of these wonderful linked books. Valerie Parv takes a side trip from Silhouette Romance to debut in Intimate Moments with a stunner of a reunion romance called Interrupted Lullaby. Karen Templeton begins a new miniseries called HOW TO MARRY A MONARCH with Plain-Jane Princess, and Linda Winstead Jones returns with Hot on His Trail, a book you should be hot on the trail of yourself. Finally, welcome Sharon Mignerey back and take a look at her newest, Too Close for Comfort.

And don’t forget to look in the back of this book to see how Silhouette can make you a star.

Enjoy them all, and come back next month for more of the best and most exciting romance reading around.

Yours,

Leslie J. Wainger

Executive Senior Editor

To Anne, Judy, Robin and Steven

My own personal Fab Four

lives in Colorado with her husband and two dogs, Angel and Squirt. From the time she figured out that spelling words could be turned into stories, she knew being a writer was how she wanted to spend her life. She won RWA’s Golden Heart Award in 1995, validation that she was on the right path.

When she’s not writing, she loves puttering around in her garden, walking her dogs along the South Platte River and spending time at the family cabin in Colorado’s Four Corners region.

She loves hearing from readers, and you can write to her in care of Silhouette Books, 300 East 42 ndStreet, 6 thFloor, New York, NY 10017.

Chapter 1

Chapter 2

Chapter 3

Chapter 4

Chapter 5

Chapter 6

Chapter 7

Chapter 8

Chapter 9

Chapter 10

Chapter 11

Chapter 12

Chapter 13

Chapter 14

Chapter 15

Chapter 16

Chapter 17

Chapter 18

The touch of a cold, wet nose against Rosie Jensen’s neck brought her wide awake. In the next heartbeat, the telephone on the nightstand rang. She pushed the dog’s muzzle away and reached for the phone.

‘‘Hello.’’ She eyed the bedside clock. Four-seventeen. Only bad news came in the middle of the night. Sudden fear lodged in her throat. One of her sisters. Her parents.

‘‘Sorry to wake you,’’ came the calm voice of her close friend, Hilda Raven-in-Moonlight, over the line.

‘‘This better be good,’’ Rosie grumbled, the band of apprehension around her heart easing. Hilda was the island’s constable, not to mention head nurse of a tiny clinic, and the first to sound the alarm when a tourist got lost in the deceptively rugged interior of the island or tangled up with a bear. Tourists, however, wouldn’t arrive at this remote island in the Alaska inside passage for at least another month.

‘‘It is. A child has been reported lost.’’

Rosie cast the clock another glance. ‘‘At this time of night?’’ She sat up in bed. ‘‘Where? Whose?’’

‘‘That’s where this gets a little strange,’’ Hilda said after an almost imperceptible pause. ‘‘Apparently somewhere close to you. As for who—the man said they were from San Francisco. Yesterday, he somehow got separated from his little girl.’’

‘‘So why didn’t he get help then?’’

‘‘That’s what I asked,’’ Hilda returned. ‘‘The father said he just kept looking—that he didn’t want to think she was lost.’’

‘‘So you haven’t seen the guy. Just talked to him?’’

‘‘That’s right.’’

‘‘Which means we don’t have a specific scent.’’

‘‘Don’t tell me I’m asking the impossible. I know.’’

‘‘You haven’t asked anything. Yet.’’

‘‘If there’s a chance a child is lost…’’ Hilda cleared her throat. ‘‘It still gets pretty cold at night.’’

That was putting it mildly. During the first week in April, the nighttime temperatures regularly dropped to freezing. Rosie pushed the covers aside, got out of bed and peered outside, where dawn was still a promise.

‘‘We’ll have daylight in another hour. I’ll check along the road,’’ Hilda added.

‘‘Oh, sure,’’ Rosie quipped. ‘‘Leave me and Sly with the coastline. This is all pretty fishy, my friend.’’

‘‘Don’t forget your radio,’’ Hilda responded. ‘‘And take good care of you.’’

‘‘Don’t hang up yet,’’ Rosie said, vaguely alarmed that her friend hadn’t responded with the normal banter that lightened the tension of the job at hand. ‘‘What’s the kid’s name?’’

This time Hilda’s pause was long enough to heighten Rosie’s uneasiness another notch.

‘‘Annmarie,’’ she finally said.

The name wound through Rosie’s chest, leaving behind a gaping ache. No wonder Hilda hadn’t wanted to tell her. Memories washed over Rosie, the events of five years ago nearly as painful now as then. Three people alive knew the whole story—Rosie, her sister Lily and their mutual best friend since childhood, Hilda.

‘‘At least, that’s what it sounded like,’’ Hilda added. ‘‘The man had an accent, and he might have been saying Annie.’’

‘‘It’s probably just a stupid coincidence.’’

‘‘Yeah. Talk to you in a few.’’ Hilda broke the connection.

Rosie replaced the receiver on the phone and stared through the darkness for a moment. Lily’s daughter wasn’t the only Annmarie in the world. If there was ever a protective mother who wouldn’t have lost a child for the better part of a day, it was her sister Lily. Further, Lily’s husband had died two years ago, so no man would have lost her, either, accent or not.

Rosie padded through her dark house, Sly walking along beside her, his nails clicking against the hardwood floor. Rosie opened the front door and stepped onto the porch.

The air was chilly, and she rubbed her hands up and down her arms to banish the goose bumps. A hundred yards away the inlet glistened beneath a bright canopy of stars flung across the sky. She inhaled deeply, loving the scent of the rain-washed air. This simple pleasure was one of the reasons she had come to Kantrovich Island in the Alaskan inside passage just over three years ago. In the solitude she had found herself again and had regained a sense of purpose in her life.

To her surprise the dog didn’t step off the porch to do his usual middle-of-the-night thing, but stood next to her, his head cocked to one side, his nostrils twitching. The last traces of sleepiness left Rosie. This was Sly in his working stance. Someone was out there.

Even though she had seen him like this dozens of times since the two of them had embarked on this vocation two years ago, she still felt a thrill of appreciation. A novice at search and rescue herself, she had the luck of a great dog and a good teacher. Sly was no prize to look at, resembling a cross between a basset hound and a Border collie. His uncertain parentage had given him intelligence, acute hearing, a keen sense of smell and incredible perseverance. Most of all, he had uncanny instincts. Qualities that made him ideal as a search-and-rescue dog. Qualities she completely trusted.

She scanned the property from the inlet to the greenhouse to the nursery beyond, wishing daybreak was another hour closer. In the darkness her yard had an aura of mystery, reminding her that a couple of times yesterday she’d had the odd sense of being watched. Now, as then, she shook her head against that disquieting thought.

The night sounds were all ordinary. The barest rustle of a breeze through the trees, the faint lap of water at the shoreline. Next to her Sly sat with utter stillness, his nose lifted, twitching. A sense of urgency and deep uneasiness filled her, and she decided she couldn’t wait for daybreak.

Within ten minutes she was ready to go, dressed in jeans, a couple of layers of shirts, a waterproof jacket and flexible hiking boots. In the kitchen she clipped the radio onto her belt, picked up a backpack and slung it over her shoulder without checking the contents. She already knew it held everything she needed to administer basic first aid or even to survive in the forest for a couple of days, if it came to that.

Uncharacteristic indecision swept through her as she pulled the door closed behind her. The only time she locked the house was when she left the island—a deliberate habit she had cultivated as carefully as one of her fragile seedlings—proof that here she had nothing to fear.

Hers wasn’t an opinion shared by the man who’d built the house during the height of the cold war. The house was complete with a bomb shelter and a secret passage—whether to get in or get out without being seen, Rosie had never been sure.

Reclaiming control over her imagination, she deliberately stepped off the porch without locking the door and gave Sly a single command. ‘‘Search.’’

His long ears flapping, he took off at an easy lope toward the line of trees separating her meadow from the inlet. She loved working with the dog and knew that he wouldn’t stop searching until he had found his quarry. Who did he smell? The child? Someone else?

Rosie shook her head at the uneasiness that filled her over the mere thought of the name Annmarie. Before the day was over she would call, assure herself that her sister and Annmarie were just fine.

Rosie followed Sly closely, his black-and-brown coat making him nearly invisible in the predawn light, except for the flash of white at the tip of his bushy tail. Why had these people waited so long before reporting their daughter lost? Rosie wondered. She followed Sly past her nearest neighbor’s house, the Eriksens, a retired couple who had gone stateside a couple of weeks ago to visit their kids in Seattle.

The dog continued to follow the shoreline where the forest was generally thinner. Gradually the bright stars faded, and the eastern horizon began to lighten. The black of night gave way to a gray-predawn gloom.

Ahead she saw Sly sniffing about. A moment later he took off at a dead run, and she knew they were getting close.