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Sam Looked Dangerous. Confidence Radiated From Him In White-Hot Heat.
He said nothing but drew her onto the dance floor, then into his arms.
Dana lifted her face, determined not to let him see how he unnerved her. “So. The prodigal returns at last.”
His eyes softened. Warmed. “How are you?”
“I’m well,” she said, aware of his thighs brushing hers as they danced. “Where have you been, Sam?”
“You want fifteen years condensed into a paragraph?”
“Why are you here?”
“It’s a long story.”
His hand slid a little farther across her lower back, bringing her closer. His thumb brushed her spine through the silk of her dress.
“I have time for a long story,” she said, her voice catching on the last word.
Dear Reader,
Thanks so much for choosing Silhouette Desire—the destination for powerful, passionate and provocative love stories. Things start heating up this month with Katherine Garbera’s Sin City Wedding, the next installment of our DYNASTIES: THE DANFORTHS series. An affair, a secret child, a quickie Las Vegas wedding…and that’s just the beginning of this romantic tale.
Also this month we have the marvelous Dixie Browning with her steamy Driven to Distraction. Cathleen Galitz brings us another book in the TEXAS CATTLEMAN’S CLUB: THE STOLEN BABY series with Pretending with the Playboy. Susan Crosby’s BEHIND CLOSED DOORS miniseries continues with the superhot Private Indiscretions. And Bronwyn Jameson takes us to Australia in A Tempting Engagement.
Finally, welcome the fabulous Roxanne St. Claire to the Silhouette Desire family. We’re positive you’ll enjoy Like a Hurricane and will be wanting the other McGrath brothers’ stories. We’ll be bringing them to you in the months to come as well as stories from Beverly Barton, Ann Major and New York Times bestselling author Lisa Jackson. So keep coming back for more from Silhouette Desire.
More passion to you!
Melissa Jeglinski
Senior Editor
Silhouette Desire
Private Indiscretions
Susan Crosby
SUSAN CROSBY
believes in the value of setting goals, but also in the magic of making wishes. A longtime reader of romance novels, Susan earned a B.A. in English while raising her sons. She lives in the central valley of California, the land of wine grapes, asparagus and almonds. Her checkered past includes jobs as a synchronized swimming instructor, personnel interviewer at a toy factory and trucking company manager, but her current occupation as a writer is her all-time favorite.
Susan enjoys writing about people who take a chance on love, sometimes against all odds. She loves warm, strong heroes; good-hearted, self-reliant heroines…and happy endings.
Readers are welcome to write to her at P.O. Box 1836, Lodi, CA 95241.
For the BABs, Karol, Kathy, Luann and Georgia.
Here’s to getting snowed in, good food, great conversation,
Darcy and Bridget—and that’s just the beginning.
Contents
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
One
An hour before Sam Remington graduated from high school fifteen years ago, he stuffed the sum of his belongings into three grocery sacks and flung them onto the back seat of his 1977 oil-eating Pacer. Five minutes after the ceremony ended he made his final trip through town, his tailpipe spewing a noxious farewell of good riddance.
Today he returned in a black Mercedes so new it didn’t have plates. He’d paid cash for it. But Sam wasn’t here to advertise his success to the people he left behind. Normally he wasn’t one to dwell on the past. Today was different. He’d chosen the day of his return to his hometown specifically. Certainly he could have come another time. Maybe should have. But news of his fifteen-year high-school reunion set the date for him. Some unfinished business of his had gone ignored for too long. He had two people to see. He’d just come from seeing the first one. Now he would deal with the other.
Sam negotiated the winding roads of Miner’s Camp, a community of 3,100 people nestled in the Northern California foothills of the Sierra Nevadas. He kept his gaze straight ahead as he passed the turnoff leading to the house where he was raised—the house from which he’d escaped—although the unusually cool August evening took him back to the nights of his childhood, when he’d roamed the countryside, looking for something he never found.
He ignored the bruising memories and headed to the Elks Lodge. The parking lot was full, the fence posts dotted with red and gold balloons, the colors of Prospector High School, which served a community of several small towns.
Sam pulled off the road and slowed to a stop, gravel crunching under his tires. The party was well under way. Laughter spilled from the open doorways and windows as Madonna sang the 1980s classic “Like a Virgin.”
Nostalgia didn’t overtake him—he’d never understood the appeal of reunions—still, there was that one person he’d come to see. Only one out of a graduating class of eighty-seven. He was sure she would be in the crowd. And he had something to say to her. To Dana Cleary. Dana Sterling, he amended. Her married name. Then he could close the book on his past forever.
He had a choice in the timing. He could wait until the party ended and catch her at her parents’ house, where she would undoubtedly spend the night. Or he could get it over with now and be in San Francisco for his
