But they hadn’t quite managed to leave the sea behind. Roc had suggested the whale watch, and since Melinda considered even the big humpbacks to be close relations to Hambone, she had readily agreed.
“Thar she blows!” someone called.
Everyone came rushing over to the rail to see the spectacular creature.
The humpback descended, and Roc turned his attention to Melinda. “Did you read Connie’s letter yet?” he asked her suddenly.
She shook her head. This seemed like a good time, while they waited for another whale to surface. She drew the letter from her leather handbag and ripped it open. Roc studied her features.
“What?”
“Why—how could they!” Melinda exploded.
“What?” Roc repeated.
Melinda stared at him, eyes full of both anger and amusement.
“They eloped!”
“Connie and—”
“My father!”
“Well, we can hardly be shocked,” Roc advised her. “There’s definitely been something going on between those two for a long time now.”
“I know that, but why would they elope …? I mean, we should have been there!”
“Your father isn’t exactly a spring chicken,” Roc said.
“But still, you’d think he’d want us there—oh!”
She had kept reading. Now she stared at Roc again.
“What?”
She started to giggle. “They, er, had to elope. Roc, I’m going to have a sibling!”
“Sibling?”
“They’re having a baby—Connie’s pregnant!”
Roc sat back and started to laugh. “Well, well.”
Melinda stared thoughtfully at the letter. “Hmm. That makes Connie your stepmother-in-law.”
“I suppose so.”
“But now … my father will be our baby’s grandfather, and Connie will be a mother with a step-grandchild and I wonder what our—”
“Our what?” Roc demanded.
Melinda stared at him. Then she smiled slowly. “Our baby. We’re, uh, we’re having one, too. I didn’t really discuss it with you, but then, I didn’t really plan it.” He was still staring at her. She sighed. “It’s what happens when you make mad passionate love in a cabin.”
He finally started to laugh. Then he said, “Really?” She nodded, and he swept her into his arms, cradled her chin in his hands and kissed her.
“There! Over there! Thar she blows gain!” someone called.
But neither of them paid the least bit of attention. Roc just kept kissing her.
And when his lips parted from hers, she whispered happily, “I wonder if it will be a boy or a girl.”
He held her chin again and met her eyes. “It won’t matter in the least. Because there’s one thing I know it will be.”
She arched a brow at him.
“A treasure,” he said softly. And he smiled. “A treasure from the sea!”
She smiled again, then kissed him.
A Biography of Heather Graham
Heather Graham (b. 1953) is one of the country’s most prominent authors of romance, suspense, and historical fiction. She has been writing bestselling books for nearly three decades, publishing more than 150 novels and selling more than seventy-five million copies worldwide.
Born in Florida to an Irish mother and a Scottish father, Graham attended college at the University of South Florida, where she majored in theater arts. She spent a few years making a living onstage as a back-up vocalist and dinner theater actor, but after the birth of her third child decided to seek work that would allow her to spend more time with her family.
After early efforts writing romance and horror stories, Graham sold her first novel, When Next We Love (1982). She went on to write nearly two dozen contemporary romance novels.
In 1989 Graham published Sweet Savage Eden, which initiated the Cameron family saga, an epic six-book series that sets romantic drama amid turbulent periods of American history, such as the Civil War. She revisited the nineteenth century in Runaway (1994), a story of passion, deception, and murder in Florida, which spawned five sequels of its own.
In the past decade, Graham has written romantic suspense novels such as Tall, Dark, and Deadly (1999), Long, Lean, and Lethal (2000), and Dying to Have Her (2001), as well as supernatural fiction. In 2003’s Haunted she created the Harrison Investigation service, a paranormal detective organization that she spun off into four Krewe of Hunters novels in 2011.
Graham lives in Florida, where she writes, scuba dives, and spends time with her husband and five children.
Graham (left) with her sister.
Graham with her family in New Orleans. Pictured left to right: Dennis Pozzessere; Zhenia Yeretskaya Pozzessere; Derek, Shayne, and Chynna Pozzessere; Heather Graham; Jason and Bryee-Annon Pozzessere; and Jeremy Gonzalez.
Graham at a photo shoot in Key West for the promotion of the Flynn Brothers trilogy.
Graham at the haunted Myrtles plantation, Francisville, Louisiana.
Graham and the Slushpile Band playing the Memnoch the Devil Ball at the Undead Con in New Orleans, 2010.
Graham with dear friend, actor Doug Jones.
Graham (third from left) with F. Paul Wilson, R. L. Stine, Jon Land, and other friends at the seventh annual ThrillerFest, held in New York City, 2011. The authors participated in the “Be Book Smart” campaign organized by Reading Is Fundamental, the nation’s oldest and largest children’s literacy organization.
Graham (seated center) with her local Romance Writers of America group in Broward County, Florida, 2011.
Graham (second from left) with fellow authors Stephen Jay Schwartz, F. Paul Wilson, and Barry Eisler participating in a panel at the Romantic Times Booklovers Convention, Los Angeles, 2011.
All rights reserved, including without limitation the right to reproduce this ebook or any portion thereof in any form or by any means, whether electronic or mechanical, now known or hereinafter invented, without the express written permission of the publisher.
This is a work of fiction. Names, characters, places, events, and incidents either are the product of the author’s imagination or are used fictitiously. Any resemblance to actual persons, living or dead, businesses, companies, events, or locales is entirely coincidental.
Copyright © 1993 by Heather Graham Pozzessere
Cover design by Michael Slavin
ISBN: 978-1-4976-7400-4
This edition published in 2014 by Open Road Integrated Media, Inc.
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New York, NY 10014
www.openroadmedia.com
EBOOKS BY HEATHER GRAHAM
FROM OPEN ROAD MEDIA
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Between Roc and a Hard Place Page 18