Wild About Harry

by Linda Lael Miller

  Amy leaned back against the blue plastic bathtub pillow and closed her eyes. "I'm hallucinating," she said, "When I open my eyes, you will be gone."

  But when she looked again, Tyler was still standing there. "Are you through?" he asked a little impatiently. "I told you before, Amy...my energy is limited and I don't have time to play is he or isn't he?"

  Amy's mouth dropped open, and she closed it again.

  "Harry's taking you to the Stardust Ballroom," Tyler went on. "He's very attracted to you, but he's also having some conflicts. It bothers him that you were my wife."

  Amy waited, in shock.

  "You've got to reassure Harry somehow, before he comes up with some excuse to go back to Australia and stay there. I'm counting on you, Amy."

  There was an urgency in Tyler's voice that troubled Amy, but she had her hands full just trying to cope with seeing him. She blinked, that was all, and when she looked again her husband's ghost was gone.

  * * *

  "Her characters come alive and walk right off the pages and into your heart."

  —Rendezvous

  Dear Reader,

  I'm so pleased to have the chance to reintroduce some of my early titles in this special series of reissues. Wild About Harry, Just Kate, Part of the Bargain and Daring Moves take place around the globe, from New York to Seattle—even Australia—and I hope you'll enjoy the journey as much as I did. And the gorgeous new cover art makes a terrific setting for these classic tales...as well as just a taste of my upcoming hardcover for HQN Books, McKettrick's Choice!

  You've met my wonderful McKettrick men (and women) before, in High Country Bride, Shotgun Bride and Secondhand Bride, but many of you wrote and e-mailed to say you were very intrigued with Holt, the eldest brother. You wanted his story, and I very much wanted to tell it.

  McKettrick's Choice is a big-scope story, with all the elements of a classic Western and many new ones, as well. It's longer dian the earlier books, so you'll get to spend more time with Holt, his wonderful lady, Lorelei—has he ever met his match, and that's saying something, with a hardheaded McKettrick!—and a crop of secondary characters who really stole my heart. Living with these people was a delight, and I hope you will share my enthusiasm as you read. My goal was to take you along on the big cattle drive, as well as several other adventures, and to give you a place at the McKettrick table, where you will always be warmly welcomed.

  In the not-too-distant future you will meet more McKettrick men—the modern variety. For further updates, check out my Web site at www.lindalaelmiller.com. You'll find some other interesting information there, too, including my scholarship program for women and a variety of fun contests. You might also enjoy following my blog, if you're interested in following the day-to-day saga of life at Springwater Station.

  Last but not least, I would like to thank my longtime readers for their support and interest, and welcome the new ones. Let's sit down around the kitchen table and talk about cowboys.

  All best,

  Linda

  Table of Contents

  Chapter 1

  Chapter 2

  Chapter 3

  Chapter 4

  Chapter 5

  Chapter 6

  Chapter 7

  Chapter 8

  Chapter 9

  Chapter 10

  Chapter 11

  If you purchased this book without a cover you should be aware that this book is stolen property. It was reported as "unsold and destroyed" to the publisher, and neither the author nor the publisher has received any payment for this "stripped book."

  ISBN 0-373-77090-1

  WILD ABOUT HARRY

  Copyright© 1991 by Linda Lael Miller

  All rights reserved. Except for use in any review, the reproduction or utilization of this work in whole or in part in any form by any electronic, mechanical or other means, now known or hereafter invented, including xerography, photocopying and recording, or in any information storage or retrieval system, is forbidden without the written permission of the publisher, Harlequin Enterprises Limited, 225 Duncan Mill Road, Don Mills, Ontario M3B 3K9, Canada.

  All characters in this book have no existence outside the imagination of the author and have no relation whatsoever to anyone bearing the same name or names. They are not even distantly inspired by any individual known or unknown to the author, and all incidents are pure invention.

  This edition published by arrangement with Harlequin Books S.A.

  ® and TM are trademarks of the publisher. Trademarks indicated with ® are registered in the United States Patent and Trademark Office, the Canadian Trade Marks Office and in other countries.

  www.HQNBooks.com

  Printed in U.S.A.

  Classic tales from Linda Lael Miller and HQN Books

  WILD ABOUT HARRY

  JUST KATE

  PART OF THE BARGAIN

  DARING MOVES

  and look for her brand-new hardcover

  McKETTRICK'S CHOICE

  available in bookstores now!

  For Jim Lang,

  who married the girl with snowflakes in her hair, thereby proving what a smart guy he really is.

  1

  * * *

  Amy Ryan was safe in her bed, drifting in that place where slumber and wakefulness mesh into a tranquil twilight, when she distinctly felt someone grasp her big toe and wriggle it.

  "Amy."

  She groaned and pulled the covers up over her head. Two full years had passed since her handsome, healthy young husband, Tyler, had died on the operating table during a routine appendectomy. She couldn't be hearing his voice now.

  "No," she murmured. "I refuse to have this dream again. I'm waking up right now!"

  Amy's toe moved again, without orders from her brain. She swallowed, and her heart rate accelerated. Quickly, expecting to find eight-year-old Ashley's cat, Rumpel, at the foot of the bed playing games, she reached out and snapped on the bedside lamp.

  A scream rushed into her throat, coming from deep inside her, but she swallowed it. Even though Tyler was standing there, just on the other side of her blanket chest, Amy felt no fear.

  She could never be afraid of Ty. No, what scared her was the explicit possibility that she was losing her mind at thirty-two years of age.

  "This can't be happening," she whispered hoarsely, raising both hands to her face. From between her fingers, she could still see Tyler grinning that endearing grin of his. "I've been through counseling," she protested. "I've had grief therapy!"

  Tyler chuckled and sat down on the end of the bed.

  Amy actually felt the mattress move, so lifelike was this delusion.

  "I'm quite real," Tyler said, having apparently read her mind. "At least, real is the closest concept you could be expected to understand."

  "Oh, God," Amy muttered, reaching blindly for the telephone.

  Tyler's grin widened. "This is a really lousy joke," he said, "but I can't resist. Who ya gonna call?"

  Amy swallowed and hung up the receiver with an awkward motion of her hand. What could she say? Could she dial 911 and report that a ghost was haunting her bedroom?

  If she did, the next stop would not be the Twilight Zone, it would be the mental ward at the nearest hospital.

  Amy ran her tongue over dry lips, closed her eyes tightly, then opened them again, wide.

  Tyler was still sitting there, his arms folded, charming smile in place. He had brown curly hair and mischievous brown eyes, and Amy had been in love with him since her freshman year at the University of Washington. She had borne him two children, eight-year-old Ashley and six-year-old Oliver, and the loss of her young husband had been the most devastating experience of Amy's life.

  "What's happening to me?" Amy rasped,
shoving a hand through her sleep-rumpled, shoulder-length brown hair.

  Tyler scratched the back of his neck. He was wearing slacks and a blue cashmere cardigan over a tailored white shirt. "I look pretty solid, don't I?" He sounded proud, the way he used to when he'd won a particularly difficult case in court or beaten a colleague at racquet ball. "And let me tell you, being able to grab hold of your toe like that was no small feat, no pun intended."

  Amy tossed back the covers, scrambled into the adjoining bathroom and frantically splashed cold water on her face. "It must have been the spicy cheese on the na-chos," she told herself aloud, talking fast.

  When she straightened and looked in the mirror, though, she saw Tyler's reflection. He was leaning against the doorjamb, his arms folded.

  "Pull yourself together, Amy," he said good-naturedly. "It's taken me eighteen months to learn to do this, and I'm not real good at sustaining the energy yet. I could fade out at any time, and I have something important to say."

  Amy turned and leaned back against the counter, her hands gripping the marble edge. She sank her teeth into her lower lip and wondered what Debbie would make of this when she told her about it. If she told her.

  Your subconscious mind is trying to tell you something, her friend would say. Debbie was a counselor in a women's clinic, and she was working on her doctorate in psychology. It's time to let go of Tyler and get on with your life.

  "Wh-what did you want to—to say?" Amy stammered. She was a little calmer now and figured this figment of her imagination might give her an important update on what was going on inside her head. There was absolutely no doubt, as far as she was concerned, that some of her gears were gummed up.

  Tyler's gentle gaze swept her tousled hair, yellow cotton nightshirt and shapely legs with sad fondness.

  "An old friend of mine is going to call you sometime in the next couple of days," he said after a long moment. "His name is Harry Griffith, and he runs a multinational investment company out of Australia. They're opening an office in Seattle, so Harry will be living here in the Puget Sound area part of the year. He'll get in touch to offer his condolences about me and pay off on a deal we made the last time we were together. You should get a pretty big check."

  Amy certainly hadn't expected anything so specific. "Harry?" she squeaked. She vaguely remembered Tyler talking about him.

  Tyler nodded. "We met when we were kids. We were both part of the exchange student program—he lived here for six months, and then I went down there and stayed with Harry and his mom for the same amount of time."

  A lump had risen in Amy's throat, and she swallowed it. Yes, Harry Griffith. Tyler's mother, Louise, had spoken of him several times. "This is crazy," she said. "I'm crazy."

  Her husband—or this mental image of her husband—smiled. "No, babe. You're a little frazzled, but you're quite sane."

  "Oh, yeah?" Amy thrust herself away from the bathroom counter and passed Tyler in the doorway to stand next to the bed. "If I'm not one can short of a six-pack, how come I'm seeing somebody who's been dead for two years?"

  Tyler winced. "Don't use that word," he said. "People don't really die, they just change."

  Amy was feeling strangely calm and detached now, as though she were standing outside of herself. "I'll never eat nachos again," she said firmly.

  Ty's gentle brown eyes twinkled with amusement. When he spoke, however, his expression was more serious. "You're doing very well, all things considered. You've taken good care of the kids and built a career for yourself, unconventional though it is. But there's one area where you're really blowing it, Spud."

  Amy's eyes brimmed with tears. During the terrible days and even worse nights following Tyler's unexpected death, she'd yearned for just such an experience as this. She'd longed to see the man she'd loved so totally, to hear his voice. She'd even wanted to be called "Spud" again, although she'd hated the nickname while Tyler was alive.

  She sniffled but said nothing, waiting for Tyler to go on.

  He did. "There are women who can be totally fulfilled without a man in their lives. Give them a great job and a couple of kids and that's all they need. You aren't one of those women, Amy. You're not happy."

  Amy shook her head, marveling. "Boy, when my subconscious mind comes up with a message, it's a doozy."

  Tyler shrugged. "What can I say?" he asked reasonably. "Harry's the man for you."

  "You were the man for me," Amy argued, and this time a tear escaped and slipped down her cheek.

  He started toward her, as though he would take her into his arms, then, regretfully, he stopped. "That was then, Spud," he said, his voice gruff with emotion. "Harry's now. In fact, you're scheduled to remarry and have two more kids—a boy and a girl."

  Amy's feeling of detachment was beginning to fade; she was trembling. This was all so crazy. "And this Harry guy is my one and only?" she asked with quiet derision. She was hurt because Tyler had started to touch her and then pulled back.

  "Actually, there are several different men you could have fulfilled your destiny with. That architect you met three months ago, when you were putting together the deal for those condos on Lake Washington, for instance. Alex Singleton—the guy who replaced me in the firm, for another." He paused and shoved splayed fingers through his hair. "You're not cooperating, Spud."

  "Well, excuse me!" Amy cried in a whispered yell, not wanting the children to wake and see her in the middle of a hallucination. "I loved you, Ty. You were everything to me. I'm not ready to care for anybody else!"

  "Yes, you are," Tyler disagreed sadly. Quietly. "Get on with it, Amy. You're holding up the show."

  She closed her eyes for a moment, willing Tyler to disappear. When Amy looked again and found him gone, however, she felt all hollow and broken inside.

  "Tyler?"

  No answer.

  Amy went slowly back to bed, switched out the light and lay down. "You're losing it, Ryan," she muttered to herself.

  She tried to sleep, but images of Tyler kept invading her mind.

  Amy recalled the first time they'd met, in the cafeteria at the University of Washington, when she'd been a lowly freshman and Tyler had been in his third year of law school. He'd smiled as he'd taken the chair across the table from Amy's, and she'd been so thoroughly, instantly besotted that she'd nearly fallen right into her lime Jell-O.

  After that day, Amy and Tyler had been together every spare moment. Ty had taken her home to Mercer Island to meet his parents at Thanksgiving, and at Christmas he'd given her a three carat diamond.

  Amy had liked Tyler's parents immediately; they were so warm and friendly, and their gracious, expensive home practically vibrated with love and laughter. The contrast between the Ryans' family life and Amy's was total: Amy's father, one of the most famous heart surgeons in the country, was a distant, distracted sort of man, totally absorbed in his work. Although Amy knew her dad loved her, in his own workaholic way, he'd never been able to show it.

  The free-flowing affection among the Ryans had quickly become vital to Amy, and she was still very close to them, even though Tyler had been gone for two years.

  Alone in the bed where she and Tyler had once loved and slept and sometimes argued, Amy wept. "This isn't fair," she told the dark universe around her.

  With the morning, however, came a sense of buoyant optimism. It seemed only natural to Amy that she'd had a vivid dream about Tyler; he was the father of her children and she'd loved him with her whole heart.

  She was sticking frozen waffles in the toaster when Oliver and Ashley raced into the kitchen. During the school year she had trouble motivating them in the mornings, but now that summer had come, they were up and ready for day camp almost as soon as the morning paper hit the doorstep.

  "Yo, Mom," Oliver said. He had a bandanna tied around his forehead and he was wearing shorts and a T-shirt with his favorite cartoon character on the front. "Kid power!" he whooped, thrusting a plastic sword into the air.

  Ashley rolled her beauti
ful Tyler-brown eyes. "What a dope," she said. She was eight and had a lofty view of the world.

  "Be careful, Oliver," Amy fretted good-naturedly. "You'll put out someone's eye with that thing." She put the waffles on plates and set them down on the table, then went to the refrigerator for the orange juice. "Look, you two, I might be home late tonight. If I can't get away, Aunt Charlotte will pick you up at camp."

  Charlotte was Ty's sister and one of Amy's closest friends.

  Ashley was watching Amy pensively as she poured herself a cup of coffee and joined the kids at the table.

  "Were you talking to yourself last night, Mom?" the child asked in her usual straightforward way.

  Amy was glad she was sitting down because her knees suddenly felt shaky. "I was probably just dreaming," she said, but the memory of Tyler standing there in their bedroom was suddenly vivid in her mind. He'd seemed so solid and so real.

  Ashley's forehead crumpled in a frown, but she didn't pursue the subject any further.

  Fortunately.

  After Amy had rinsed the breakfast dishes, put them into the dishwasher and driven the kids to the park, where camp was held, she found herself watching for Tyler—waiting for him to come back.

  When she'd showered and put on her best suit, a sleek creation of pale blue linen, along with a matching patterned blouse, she sat on the edge of her bed and stared at the telephone for what must have been a full five minutes. Then she dialed her best friend's number.

  "Debbie?"

  "Hi, Amy," Debbie answered, sounding a little rushed. "If this is about lunch, I'm open. Twelve o'clock at Ivar's?"

  Amy bit her lower lip for a moment. "I can't, not today...I have appointments all morning. Deb—"

  Debbie's voice was instantly tranquil, all sense and sound of hurry gone. "Hey, you sound kind of funny. Is something wrong?"

  "It might be," Amy confessed.

  "Go on."

  "I dreamed about Tyler last night, and it was ultra-real, Debbie. I wasn't lying in bed with my eyes closed—I was standing up, walking around—we had an in-depth conversation!"

  Debbie's voice was calm, but then, she was a professional in the mental health field. It would take more than Amy's imaginary encounter with her dead husband to shock this woman. "Okay. What about?"