Wife, Mother...Lover? Read online

  “You can’t stand the fact that you want me, can you?” Leanne asked.

  Letter to Reader

  Title Page

  Books by Sally Tyler Hayes

  SALLY TYLER HAYES

  Prologue

  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

  Copyright

  “You can’t stand the fact that you want me, can you?” Leanne asked.

  “No. It’s not that.” Mitch put a finger to her lips to silence her when she might have called him a liar. “I’m... surprised.”

  “Surprised?”

  “I didn’t think I was going to be celibate for the rest of my life, but I never expected to want anyone quite this much. Of course, it’s been a long time, and—”

  “I know.” Leanne stopped him. “You just want to be with someone. It doesn’t matter that it’s me. I’m just the one who’s here with you right now.” And the one who was going to share his life and his home for the next year. For a year was what she’d promised. And then she was supposed to walk away.

  “I don’t think it’s that,” Mitch said, then swore softly. “It would be so much easier if it was just that.”

  It was more than she expected—not just that he would want her for herself, but that he would admit it.

  Dear Reader,

  It’s no surprise that Intimate Moments is the place to go when you want the best mix of excitement and romance, and it’s authors like Sharon Sala who have earned the line that reputation. Now, with Ryder’s Wife, Sharon begins her first Intimate Moments miniseries, THE JUSTICE WAY. The three Justice brothers are men with a capital M—and they’re about to fall in love with a capital L. This month join Ryder as he marries heiress Casey Ruban for reasons of convenience and stays around for love.

  Popular Beverly Barton is writing in the miniseries vein, too, with A Man Like Morgan Kane. the latest in THE PROTECTORS. Beverly knows how to steam up a romance, that’s for sure! In Wife, Mother...Lover? Sally Tyler Hayes spins a poignant tale of a father, a family and the woman who gives them all their second chance at happiness—and love. Reilly’s Return also marks Amelia Autin’s return. This is a wonderfully suspenseful tale about a hero who had to fake his own death to protect the woman he loved—and what happens when she suddenly finds out he’s really still alive. In Temporary Marriage, Leann Harris takes us to the jungles of South America for a tale of a sham marriage that leads to a very real honeymoon. Finally. Dani Criss is back with For Kaitlyn’s Sake, a reunion story with all the passion you could wish for.

  Let all six of these terrific books keep you warm as the winter nights grow colder, and come back next month for even more of the most excitingly romantic reading around, right here in Silhouette Intimate Moments.

  Yours,

  Leslie J. Wainger

  Senior Editor and Editorial Coordinator

  Please address questions and book requests to:

  Silhouette Reader Service

  U.S.: 3010 Walden Ave., P.O. Box 1325, Buffalo. NY 14269

  Canadian: P.O. Box 609. Fort Erie, Ont. L2A 5X3

  WIFE, MOTHER... LOVER?

  SALLY TYLER HAYES

  Books by Sally Tyler Hayes

  Silhouette Intimate Moments

  Whose Child Is This? #439

  Dixon’s Bluff #485

  Days Gone By #549

  Not His Wife #61

  Our Child? #671

  Homecoming #700

  Temporary Family #738

  Second Father #753

  Wife, Mother...Lover? #818

  SALLY TYLER HAYES

  lives in South Carolina with her husband, son and daughter. A former journalist for a South Carolina newspaper, she fondly remembers that her decision to write and explore the frontiers of romance came at about the same time she discovered, in junior high, that she’d never be able to join the crew of the Starship Enterprise.

  Happy and proud to be a stay-home mom, she is thrilled to be living her lifelong dream of writing romances.

  As a writer, I find it amazing how often the most obvious things escape me, especially things about my characters. Sometimes I can write all around the obvious for weeks before the little light bulb finally clicks on and I “get it”

  Mitch McCarthy was one of those characters. From the beginning, I understood him. I genuinely liked him, even came to love him. And he seemed so familiar to me. He’s one of those terrific fathers. I could see him, first thing in the morning, wrestling on his bed with his two little boys. I could hear the three of them laughing. I could see them in the backyard tossing a ball back and forth for hours, could see the boys racing for the front door and dancing with excitement just because Daddy was home.

  Mitch is the kind of man whose son, when asked to write a paper in school about his best friend, would say, “My best friend is my dad.”

  Finally I “got it.”

  Mitch’s character was based on my favorite man of all, my husband, whom I’ve come to appreciate and to love even more as I’ve watched the gentleness, the kindness and the love he shows our two children every day of their lives.

  This book is for Bob.

  Prologue

  The postmark, from her suburban Chicago hometown, was enough to give Leanne Hathaway an incredible sensation of longing.

  Inside her tent in the middle of a Nepali jungle, she hunkered down, trying to protect her camera equipment and the rolls of film she’d already shot from the falling rain. The ground was turning to mud, which meant traveling would be miserable and hot food was out of the question for days to come.

  Right then, she would have given anything for a chocolate milk shake from that drugstore around the corner trom her childhood home in Chicago. And some fries—the tiny, crinkle-cut ones that nobody seemed to serve anymore. And a thick, juicy burger off the grill. Her mouth watered at the thought.

  And then it was too late to push the memories away. She pulled her legs to her chest and wrapped her arms around her knees, all her thoughts not of home—or what used to be home—but merely of any place in the States and all the familiar luxuries to be found there.

  A bath with all the hot water she wanted. A steaming cup of flavored coffee from that little specialty store around the corner from her apartment in Manhattan. A copy of the Sunday New York Times. Her own bed. Her darkroom. A phone call from someone with a connection that was so good it sounded like the caller could be in the next room, instead of on another planet.

  Tonight, she missed all those things.

  She was just tired, she tried to tell herself. But the loneliness settled in around her, like the sound of the rain, coming at her from all sides now, falling around her. She couldn’t escape it.

  It wasn’t just the States she missed, either. It was Chicago. Two sisters. A brother. A father. All things familiar. Home.

  Was it the sight of her sister Kelly’s handwriting on the letter that left Leanne so blue? Or knowing that Kelly was pregnant now, that soon Leanne would be an aunt for the first time? Maybe it was knowing that she would see her nephews—for that was what the doctors were predicting—as seldom as she saw her siblings or her father.

  Her choice, she reminded herself. She’d left Chicago twelve years ago, and she seldom went back. Her job, photographing exotic places and animals all over the world for several prestigious travel and nature magazines, kept her on the go. And fo
r a long time, she’d been content to live that way.

  Lately, however, it had become nothing more than a way of life, one that left her weary and wondering about the choices she’d made. Feeling uncharacteristically melancholy, she ripped open her sister’s letter and began to read:

  Dear Leanne,

  I find myself in the odd predicament of missing my mother terribly these days, even though I am a grown woman of twenty-five and she’s been dead for eighteen years. It must be that being pregnant, like getting married, is just one of those times in a woman’s life when she wants her mother nearby.

  There are so many new things I’m feeling and hearing, so many horror stories people have told me about their labors from hell. (Why do people do that to pregnant women?) And stories about what having children can do to your marriage, not to mention your sanity when the kids are really little. I find myself wishing Mom could be here when Mitch and I bring the twins home from the hospital, or when some little thing goes wrong at midnight and I don’t know what to do or whom to call.

  Mitch says I’m being silly for expecting trouble, and I tell him it’s one of those rules of nature—pregnant women worry.

  But that’s not why I wanted to write. I wanted to take this time to tell you that the more I thought about all of us, the more I realized that it isn’t Mom I’m missing now. It’s you.

  Most of my memories of Mom are so vague. I swear they’re more your memories than mine. All those nights when you’d sit up with me because I was scared or worried, and I’d beg you to tell me another story about Mom...those are the things I remember best. The things you told me. And the things you did for me.

  That’s when I knew that you’re the person I want with me when the boys are born.

  Because you’re the best mother I ever had.

  There, I’ve said it. I should have done that long ago, and I hope it’s not too late to make things right between us. I know now that Alex and Amy and I were so unfair to you once Daddy married Rena and you left for college. I know you did everything you could for all of us during the six years we were alone with you and Daddy, that it was more than anyone could have expected from someone who was still a child herself.

  And I love you, for all you did, all that you sacrificed for us.

  I’ve been thinking about what I want for my boys, and one very important thing is for you to be here for their christening, if not for their birth, because I want you to be their godmother. No one but you can do that very special job.

  Mitch and I are also making out our wills. His ever practical partner swears that it’s irresponsible for anyone with kids to neglect to make a will. The biggest decision is choosing someone to take custody of the children in the remote possibility that anything happens to both of us.

  Leanne, there’s no one else I’d trust but you. No one I know who would love my babies and take care of them and raise them as I’d want them to be raised. Please say you’ll do that for me.

  I know how long it takes to get mail to you at times, but I hope when you receive this you can hop on a plane and come home to us. I can’t wait to see you.

  All my love,

  Kelly

  Leanne tried in vain to blot the pale-blue paper dry. She didn’t want her tears to smudge the writing.

  You’re the best mother I ever had.

  Those were some of the sweetest words she’d ever heard, especially after all the years she felt she wasn’t truly a part of her own family anymore. She held herself deliberately apart from them because that was easier than getting her feelings hurt. But now Kelly understood. And forgave her. And missed her. And loved her.

  Leanne had been given a wonderful second chance to be a part of her sister’s life.

  She had another sister, Amy, and a brother, Alex, both of whom she missed terribly. Amy and Alex had been so little when Leanne had left, only eleven and eight to Kelly’s thirteen. Her stepmother’s influence was so much stronger on the little ones.

  Leanne imagined going home to Chicago and being welcomed there. Suddenly, nothing mattered more to her than getting home.

  Checking her watch for the date, she saw that it was already April 28.

  “Darn,” she muttered. Kelly’s babies were due May 15, but her doctor claimed he’d never had a patient carry twins to term. He was happy with anyone who made it to her thirty-seventh week.

  Counting backward, Leanne realized Kelly might have already had the twins. Or that they might arrive any day now.

  There was no time to waste. Leanne had to get home.

  Twenty-four grueling hours later, Leanne made it to an airport where the word schedule was nothing but a pipe dream. The planes arrived when they arrived, and took off when they were good and ready. Sometimes days went by before a seat was available.

  She had a ticket for the first of a series of lengthy flights that would take her home, but there was no telling when she would actually arrive.

  Standing in a long line for one of the few public phones, she hoped to get lucky, that her call would go through and someone would be home. By the time it was finally her turn, the noise in the terminal had reached a dull roar. To her left, three men were arguing in three different languages and a little girl was crying. To the right, a man shouted into another phone to make himself heard.

  Leanne’s connection was filled with static, the signal incredibly faint. It took a minute to figure out she’d reached Amy. Then she asked about Kelly.

  “Too late.” Those words were all that came through at first.

  “I missed it?” Leanne asked. “Kelly’s already had the twins?”

  “Yes.”

  “Both boys?” That was what the sonogram had showed.

  “Yes.”

  “Are they home from the hospital yet? Can I talk to Kelly?”

  More static followed, the voice coming from so far away.

  “Too late.”

  “What? Too late for what?”

  “Kelly.”

  The line cleared for a moment. Amy’s blunt, rushed explanation followed.

  Finally, Leanne understood. The boys were fine, but Leanne was too late to talk to Kelly.

  Because Kelly was gone.

  Chapter 1

  Sixteen months later...

  Exhausted after the series of long flights had finally brought her back to New York from Australia, Leanne dropped her camera bag and her single piece of luggage on the floor.

  Glancing around her apartment, she saw that her pile of mail had grown so large it covered the big chair in the corner and spilled over onto the floor. The plant next to the refrigerator, which she’d meant to pawn off on someone before she’d left four weeks ago, was drooping pitifully, and she was ashamed of herself for not having made better provisions for its well-being. Betsy, from down the hall, threw Leanne’s mail on the chair once a week or so, but she was hopeless with plants.

  “Told you I wouldn’t be around,” Leanne muttered to the fernlike thing, which had been a gift from someone who did not know her well.

  Coffee was her first priority, especially after she found some of her favorite flavored coffee beans in the freezer. While she waited for it to brew, she tackled the mail.

  When she came to a small, cream-colored envelope with a Chicago postmark, her sister Amy’s name written on the return address, she thought for a second that fatigue had made her delusional. But there was no mistake. The letter was from Amy, who hadn’t bothered to write in years.

  Ripping open the envelope, she found a rather formal request that she call home. Amy said she was worried about Mitch and the boys.

  An awful sense of déjà vu came over her when she glanced at the postmark—dated three weeks ago. Unable to help herself, she thought of another letter, from her other sister, one that had arrived too late.

  Sitting down on the sofa and closing her eyes tight, Leanne remembered going home then, but not to the homecoming she’d envisioned. Her relatives had gone through the motions of mourning her sister
with a quiet dignity and restraint befitting the strained relationships within her family.

  Turning to the answering machine on the desk in the corner, she saw the message light blinking. She walked over to the machine on shaky legs and hit the button, then waited until she heard a voice. It was Amy.

  “I don’t know where you are, Leanne, or when you’ll be back. I don’t even know if it matters to you, but Mitch is in trouble. He says he’s not sure he can take care of the boys on his own anymore.

  “I didn’t think he meant it at first, but he’s been saying it for weeks now, and I’m afraid of what he’s going to do. Mitch is...he’s thinking of giving up the boys.

  “I honestly don’t know why I’m even telling you,” Amy continued, her voice breaking now and then. “I don’t know if you even care or what you could do, but...dammit, Leanne, are you ever going to come back home?”

  Leanne just stood there, rooted to the spot.

  Mitch is thinking of giving up the boys?

  The babies? Kelly’s babies?

  Leanne remembered the night she’d first seen those beautiful babies. So tiny, so peaceful, they’d been wrapped up in their blue-and-white sleepers, snoozing quietly in a single crib in their sunny yellow room. She was glad they were so little, because they couldn’t realize they’d just lost their mother.

  Of course, one day they would, and they would mourn her.

  Those precious, little boys were all that was left of Kelly. Mitch wouldn’t give them up.

  Something must have happened, Leanne decided, though she couldn’t imagine what might have pushed Mitch to this point.