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“How could I have destroyed your life?” Cain wanted to know
Holly would have stood, but he was right there, and any move she made would have propelled her straight into him. She didn’t want to touch him, not now. “Please, this is ridiculous” was all she told him, sure she sounded as panicked as she felt. “I just need to go. Forget that I said anything. It doesn’t matter, not at all. Not anymore.”
“You bet it does,” he said, the harshness in his words almost making her flinch. “You know, all my life people have accused me of things that they thought I did. From the start. Back at the orphanage. Right on through the rest of my life.” His eyes narrowed as he looked at her. “I hate the idea of you doing that, too. I really hate it.”
She did flinch at that. She heard her own voice, but it sounded distant and odd.
“Then we’re even, aren’t we?”
Dear Reader,
Cain Stone has always been a gambler and a risk taker. But when he goes home to Silver Creek and meets single mother Holly Winston, he realizes from the start that the gamble he takes getting close to her and her tiny daughter has higher odds than anything he’s ever known.
Holly isn’t into taking chances. She’s tried it and paid for it. At this stage in her life, opening her heart to anyone is a risk she won’t take—until Cain Stone walks into her neatly arranged world.
I’ve always been intrigued by the concept of opposites attracting, and when the stakes are high, this is even more compelling. In Holiday Homecoming, the third installment in my RETURN TO SILVER CREEK four-book series, opposites not only attract, they find themselves in a world neither has entered before. It’s all about love and all about trust, the very elements that neither has experienced.
I hope you enjoy the journey of Holly and Cain as they find each other and each takes the biggest gamble of their life.
Holiday Homecoming
Mary Anne Wilson
MILLS & BOON
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For Joe Geisler
For being part of our family,
For being a terrific father.
Love, Mary Anne
Books by Mary Anne Wilson
HARLEQUIN AMERICAN ROMANCE
1003—PREDICTING RAIN? *
1005—WINNING SARA’S HEART *
1009—WHEN MEGAN SMILES… *
1062—DISCOVERING DUNCAN †
1078—JUDGING JOSHUA †
Contents
Prologue
Las Vegas, Nevada
One month earlier
“I’m not going back to Silver Creek,” Cain Stone said. “I don’t have the time—or the inclination to make the time. Besides, it’s not my home.”
The man he was talking to, Jack Prescott, shook his head, then motioned with both hands at Caine’s sterile penthouse. It was done in black and white—black marble floors, white stone fireplace, white leather furniture. The only splash of color came from the sofa pillows, which were various shades of red. “And this is?”
The Dream Catcher Hotel and Casino on the Strip in Las Vegas was a place to be. The place Cain worked. The part of the world that he owned. His place. But his home? No. He’d never had one. “It’s my
