The Boy Who Made Them Love Again
The Cattleman’s Ready-Made Family
Rebecca Winters
A brooding Italian...
With a dark family history, single dad Leon Malatesta is determined to keep his baby daughter out of the headlines. And so, when a striking woman starts asking questions around the sun-kissed town of Rimini, Leon’s protective instinct goes into overdrive.
...and a mysterious beauty!
Only, Belle Peterson turns out to be the long-lost daughter of his stepmother! Her innocence touches Leon’s locked-away heart in a way he never believed possible after losing his wife. Now Belle brings the possibility of a new future for them all...if only he can convince her he wants to marry her for love, not just to give them all the family they want so much....
BELLE PETERSON LEFT the cell phone store she managed, and took a bus to the law office of Mr. Earl Harmon in downtown Newburgh, New York. The secretary showed her into the conference room. She discovered her thirty-year-old, divorced sibling, Cliff, had already arrived and was sitting at the oval table with a mulish look on his face, daring her to speak to him. She hadn’t seen him since their parents’ funeral six months ago.
On the outside he was blond and quite good-looking, but his facade hid a troubled soul. He’d been angry enough after his wife had left him, but the deaths of their parents in a fatal car crash meant he was now on his own. Today Belle felt Cliff’s antipathy more strongly than usual and chose a seat around the other side of the table without saying a word.
Now twenty-four and single, she had been adopted fourteen years ago. The children at the Newburgh Church Orphanage had liked her, as had the sisters. But out in the real world, Belle felt she was unlovable, and worked hard at her job to gain the respect of her peers. Her greatest pain was never to know the mother who’d given birth to her. To have no identity was an agony she’d had to live with every day of her life.
The sisters who ran the orphanage had told Belle that Mrs. Peterson had been able to have only one child. She’d finally prevailed on her husband to adopt the brunette girl, Belle, who had no last name. This was Belle’s chance to have a mother, but no bonding ever took place. From the day she’d been taken home, Cliff had been cruel to her, making her life close to unbearable at times.
“Good morning.”
Belle was so deep
