Special Edition
Found: One Runaway Bride #1049
†Penny Parker’s Pregnant! #1258
Silhouette Books
Fortunes of Texas
The Heiress and the Sheriff
Maitland Maternity
Just for Christmas
A Bouquet of Babies
“Baby on Her Doorstep”
Midnight Clear
“Twins under the Tree”
STELLA BAGWELL
sold her first book to Silhouette in 1985. More than forty novels later, she still loves her job and she says she isn’t completely content unless she’s writing. Recently she and her husband of thirty years moved from the hills of Oklahoma to Seadrift, Texas, a sleepy little fishing town located on the coastal bend. Stella says the water, the tropical climate and the seabirds make it a lovely place to let her imagination soar and to put the stories in her head down on paper.
She and her husband have one son, Jason, who lives and teaches high school math in nearby Port Lavaca.
Dear Reader,
Last spring my husband and I were invited by our county commissioner to join him on a trip to Matagorda Island, a forty-mile strip of land that lies off the coast of Texas and which was once the location of an army air base during WWII and for many years afterward.
Although most of the barracks and military buildings have been dismantled or washed away by Hurricane Carla and the island is inhabited only by a few Texas Parks and Wildlife rangers, the flat landscape is still crisscrossed with concrete runways and landing strips. As I stood on one such strip, I was instantly overwhelmed with the history around me, and my writer’s imagination took flight. The airmen who’d been stationed there to serve our country must have had lovers, wives, families. Did some of them go to war and never return?
I told myself that someday I would write about such an airman on Matagorda Island, and the chance came sooner than I expected when my editor invited me to do a book for the SOULMATES project.
Because of the Ring is more than just a story about a magical ring handed down from one generation to the next. It’s about a love so powerful it can transcend all time and distance and bring two troubled hearts together in the most unexplainable and wondrous way.
I hope you enjoy Claudia and Hayden’s mystical journey and, like them, I hope each of you is blessed with the magic of love.
Love and God bless,
Contents
Chapter One
Claudia Westfield managed to slide into the seat of her car without spilling hot coffee down the front of her dress or dropping the stack of books and papers jammed beneath one arm.
Even though it was only six-thirty, she wanted to arrive at work early. Exams for the final semester were concluding this week and she had a scad of papers to grade and scores to register and average.
The motor was running and she was reaching to pull the gearshift into Reverse when a wave of dizziness suddenly sent her head spinning.
Alarmed, especially when she’d never been sick a day in her adult life, Claudia gently leaned her head back against the seat and closed her eyes. Hopefully, a few moments of quiet would straighten her equilibrium.
The next thing she knew a man’s face appeared against the canvas of her closed eyelids. The image was sharp and focused and so very real, she unconsciously gasped out loud.
Stunned by the unearthly sight, Claudia’s eyes popped open and she glanced wildly around her. The driveway leading up to her apartment and the small manicured lawns of her bordering neighbors looked normal. Yet she could still see the man in her peripheral vision. He had dark wavy hair and cobalt-blue eyes that seemed to be peering straight at her. A somewhat sexy smile twisted his lips and exposed bright white teeth against dark skin.
“Oh. No. No,” she whispered the denial. “This is—you’re not really there. I’m just tired. Too tired.”
Frantically she snatched the coffee cup from its holder on the dash and gulped at the still-hot liquid. The drink scalded her tongue, but she didn’t care. The feeling was real and normal.
More careful now, she took a second sip and then a third. After that she dared herself to look out the windshield again. Thankfully, the man was gone and everything was as it should be.
She allowed herself to breathe again. Then slowly she closed her eyes to make sure he’d disappeared from that aspect of her vision, too. Relief washed through her. The man with the smiling face had disappeared.
Deciding there was nothing to panic about, she put the car into Reverse and backed onto the street. But moments later as she headed into the already busy Fort Worth traffic, she realized her hands were slick with sweat and she was trembling from head to toe.
You’re cracking up, Claudia. Really and truly cracking up.
By lunchtime Claudia had more or less put the incident of the vision out of her mind. At least she thought she had until she met up with her friend, Liz, in the school cafeteria.
Secretary to one of the assistant principals,
