Surprise Inheritance

by Charlotte Douglas

  Courteous, courageous and commanding—these heroes lay it all on the line for the people they love in more than fifty stories about loyalty, bravery and romance. Don’t miss a single one!

  AVAILABLE FEBRUARY 2010

  A Vow to Love by Sherryl Woods

  Serious Risks by Rachel Lee

  Who Do You Love? by Maggie Shayne and Marilyn Pappano

  Dear Maggie by Brenda Novak

  A Randall Returns by Judy Christenberry

  Informed Risk by Robyn Carr

  Five-Alarm Affair by Marie Ferrarella

  AVAILABLE MARCH 2010

  The Man from Texas by Rebecca York

  Mistaken Identity by Merline Lovelace

  Bad Moon Rising by Kathleen Eagle

  Moriah’s Mutiny by Elizabeth Bevarly

  Have Gown, Need Groom by Rita Herron

  Heart of the Tiger by Lindsay McKenna

  AVAILABLE APRIL 2010

  Landry’s Law by Kelsey Roberts

  Love at First Sight by B.J. Daniels

  The Sheriff of Shelter Valley by Tara Taylor Quinn

  A Match for Celia by Gina Wilkins

  That’s Our Baby! by Pamela Browning

  Baby, Our Baby! by Patricia Thayer

  AVAILABLE MAY 2010

  Special Assignment: Baby by Debra Webb

  My Baby, My Love by Dani Sinclair

  The Sheriff’s Proposal by Karen Rose Smith

  The Marriage Conspiracy by Christine Rimmer

  The Woman for Dusty Conrad by Tori Carrington

  The White Night by Stella Bagwell

  Code Name: Prince by Valerie Parv

  AVAILABLE JUNE 2010

  Same Place, Same Time by C.J. Carmichael

  One Last Chance by Justine Davis

  By Leaps and Bounds by Jacqueline Diamond

  Too Many Brothers by Roz Denny Fox

  Secretly Married by Allison Leigh

  Strangers When We Meet by Rebecca Winters

  AVAILABLE JULY 2010

  Babe in the Woods by Caroline Burnes

  Serving Up Trouble by Jill Shalvis

  Deputy Daddy by Carla Cassidy

  The Major and the Librarian by Nikki Benjamin

  A Family Man by Mindy Neff

  The President’s Daughter by Annette Broadrick

  Return to Tomorrow by Marisa Carroll

  AVAILABLE AUGUST 2010

  Remember My Touch by Gayle Wilson

  Return of the Lawman by Lisa Childs

  If You Don’t Know by Now by Teresa Southwick

  Surprise Inheritance by Charlotte Douglas

  Snowbound Bride by Cathy Gillen Thacker

  The Good Daughter by Jean Brashear

  AVAILABLE SEPTEMBER 2010

  The Hero’s Son by Amanda Stevens

  Secret Witness by Jessica Andersen

  On Pins and Needles by Victoria Pade

  Daddy in Dress Blues by Cathie Linz

  AKA: Marriage by Jule McBride

  Pregnant and Protected by Lilian Darcy

  CHARLOTTE DOUGLAS

  SURPRISE INHERITANCE

  CHARLOTTE DOUGLAS

  has loved a good story since she learned to read at the age of three. After years of teaching that love of books to her students, she now enjoys creating stories of her own. Often her books are set in one of her three favorite places—Montana, where she and her husband spent their honeymoon; the mountains of North Carolina, where she has a summer home; or Florida, near the Gulf of Mexico on Florida’s west coast, where she’s lived most of her life.

  CONTENTS

  PROLOGUE

  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

  PROLOGUE

  “EVERYTHING?”

  Jennifer Faulkner’s knees buckled. Clutching her portable phone with a white-knuckled hand, she sank into the nearest chair in disbelief.

  “Including Cottonwood Farm.” The Montana attorney’s Western twang resonated in her ear. “And your grandfather’s recent lottery winnings. He left all he had to you.”

  “I see.”

  But Jennifer didn’t see at all. For the last ten years, her grandfather had wanted nothing to do with her. He’d ordered her off the farm after her grandmother’s death. Why had he made her the sole beneficiary of his estate?

  “There would have been a hefty inheritance tax,” the lawyer continued, “but your grandfather anticipated that and put the money in a trust for you, one worth over a million dollars.”

  “A million dollars,” Jennifer murmured, while her mind reeled with shock.

  She didn’t want the money. She wanted Gramma Dolly and Grandpa Henry, alive. She longed for the warm cozy kitchen of Cottonwood Farm outside Jester in southeast Montana, where she’d spent all her holidays and vacations as a child while her jet-setting parents traveled the globe. But even a million dollars couldn’t bring her beloved grandparents back.

  “Ms. Faulkner? Are you still there?”

  “Sorry. What were you saying?”

  “It would help if you’d come out here and look over the farm. And I have papers for you to sign. My office is in Pine Run, the county seat, just southwest of Jester. Are you familiar with the town?”

  “I was, ten years ago.”

  “Hasn’t changed,” the attorney said with a laugh. “My office is directly across from the entrance to the courthouse.”

  “And your name again, please?” In her shock, she’d forgotten it.

  “Durham. Hank Durham.”

  She couldn’t help smiling. In Montana, even lawyers had names like rodeo riders.

  Montana.

  Home.

  “When can I expect you?” the lawyer asked.

  She swallowed hard against her rising nostalgia. “I have to make some plans. I’ll let you know.”

  Jennifer clicked off the phone and sank deeper into her chair. The day had certainly taken an unexpected turn. When she’d awakened this morning with wind-blown snow howling between the Chicago high-rises on the street where she lived, she’d known instantly she couldn’t face another day as administrative assistant to Brad Harrison at Lake Investment Consultants. She’d called in sick, planning to use the day to write her resignation letter.

  So Hank Durham’s revelation couldn’t have come at a better time. She was ready to move on and leave Chicago behind. She glanced around the tiny apartment with its rented furniture. Moving would be easy. Except for the terra-cotta saucer filled with fragrant paperwhites, the framed photograph of her grandparents on their fortieth wedding anniversary and the translucent, highly polished moss agate Luke McNeil had given her that special summer ten years ago, nothing else in the apartment besides her clothes belonged to her.

  Luke McNeil.

  The man had broken her heart and now his memory often stalked her waking hours and sometimes haunted her dreams, even after an entire decade without her laying eyes on him or hearing his voice. But what did she expect? How could she forget a man she’d loved for twenty-three years, ever since he’d saved her life when she was five years old?

  Closing her eyes, she could see the high prairie that ran between the Faulkner and McNeil farms, could feel the warm summer breeze that had rippled the thick blue grama grass and sent yellow and pink wildflowers bobbing on that long-ago June afternoon, could smell the prairie coneflowers dancing in the wind.

  “Race you to the creek,” Vickie McNeil, Luke’s younger sister ha
d called. “Loser has to slop the hogs.”

  Jennifer loved the McNeil piglets, but she hated the big sows and shivered with fear whenever she was near them. Vickie’s challenge put wings on her feet. Jennifer’s sneakers pounded the packed-earth path that led to the creek and the footbridge. The sun baked her face, and the sound of Vickie gaining on her spurred her faster. Her momentum carried her onto the rustic log bridge where spray from the creek, swollen over its banks with snowmelt, slicked the surface. Before she could slow down, she found herself pitching headfirst into the swiftly moving stream.

  She didn’t know how to swim, and even if she had, she was no match for the raging current.

  The last sound she heard before the freezing water closed over her head was Vickie’s panicked scream.

  Then, miraculously, strong hands grasped her arms and yanked her to the surface.

  “Kinda cold for a swim, short stuff.” Ten-year-old Luke’s voice was teasing, but worry etched his face as he dragged her onto the bank next to his fishing pole and creel.

  “I fell.” She bit her lip, holding back tears. Luke McNeil was her hero, and she didn’t want to embarrass herself further in front of him. Her good intentions, however, ended up on the creek bed, along with the creek water she’d swallowed. Mortified at throwing up, she sat shivering in her wet clothes.

  “Hell, Jenny, your knee’s bleeding like a stuck pig.” Luke yanked a rag from his fishing creel, dipped it in the creek, then wrung out the excess water. He sponged the blood from her leg with the same gentleness she’d often seen him display with a newborn foal or a sick calf. “You must have banged it on a rock when you went under.”

  “I heard you, Luke McNeil. Hell’s a bad word, and Mama’s gonna wash your mouth out with soap.” Vickie stood beside him with her hands on her hips, outrage mixed with concern as she craned her neck, peering over Luke’s shoulder to inspect Jennifer’s injury.

  “She won’t know if you don’t tell her. Besides, now you’ve said it, too.”

  Luke’s face lit up in a slow grin, and Jenny’s childish heart flip-flopped. His coal-black hair, straight and thick, his high cheekbones and his tanned skin indicated a Native American ancestor—probably Crow or Sioux—in his otherwise Scottish family tree. His only Celtic feature was his eyes, deep and blue as a Highland loch. Otherwise, with the exception of his jeans, boots and T-shirt, he could have been mistaken for a young brave. Jennifer had watched him run like the wind and ride as if he’d been born in the saddle, hence her hero worship. The strength he’d exhibited in pulling her from the powerful current had been extraordinary for a boy his age, another reason for admiration.

  With a tenderness that won her heart, he cleaned her scrapes in the shade of the willows and cottonwoods, then tore a section off his shirttail and tied it around her knee as a bandage. His mother had later given him a tongue-lashing for ruining his newest shirt.

  Jennifer had secretly washed the scrap of cloth and kept it in her box of special treasures until the year she left Cottonwood Farm for good, the same year Luke had asked her to marry him.

  Yes, she’d fallen in love with Luke McNeil that morning twenty-three years ago, and in spite of a heap of trying, she hadn’t been able to get him out of her mind or heart since. Luke was probably the reason things hadn’t worked out with Brad Harrison. Or any other of the dozen men she’d dated before Brad. Who could compete with such a paragon?

  As if conjured up by her thoughts, the phone rang and Brad was on the line.

  “I need you here on the double, Jen. You know the Radner-Whitcomb account by heart, and they’re due any minute.”

  “Call a temp. I’m not coming in.”

  “Not at all today?”

  “Not ever. You’ll have my resignation on your desk in the morning.”

  “But what’ll I do? You’re the only one who knows where everything is.”

  “Everything,” she said with immense satisfaction, “is in my office. Help yourself.”

  She clicked off the phone before he could protest, and experienced only the slightest twinge of conscience. She’d looked at Brad Harrison in a new light ever since that disastrous trip to Paris a few weeks ago. He had promised her a romantic vacation, just the two of them in the City of Lights. He’d neglected, however, to mention there would also be a consortium of French brokers and investors, meetings that ran from early morning to past midnight, and enough work for a secretarial staff of five—which Brad expected Jennifer to handle on her own.

  Some romantic vacation.

  Worst of all, when they returned to Chicago, Jennifer had a message waiting from Finn Hollis, her grandfather’s friend. When she returned Finn’s call, she’d learned that while she was slaving away in Paris, her grandfather had died, and she had missed his funeral.

  Guilt racked her. She should have contacted her grandfather two months ago. For days, every time she had picked up a newspaper or turned on the television, she had seen pictures of Grandpa Henry and the others from Jester who’d pooled their money and won the Montana Big Draw. According to the reports on the “Main Street Millionaires,” the participants had each put in a dollar a week for over eight years. Her grandpa’s pal, Dean Kenning, the local barber, had driven to Pine Run every Monday morning to play twelve different tickets. When one of the tickets won, the participants had split forty million dollars twelve ways. Her grandfather’s share, after taxes, was a little more than one million.

  “Awesome.” Brad knew she’d lived in Jester and had recognized her grandfather’s name. “You should go visit the old guy. Tell him I’ll give him good advice on investing his windfall.”

  Jennifer, who’d been contemplating contacting her grandfather before the publicity, changed her plans. “I can’t call him now.”

  “Why not?” Brad asked.

  She longed for Grandpa Henry and Cottonwood Farm with all her heart, but she’d left under awkward and unpleasant circumstances. Resuming their relationship after a ten-year hiatus had seemed un likely before. Now it seemed downright impossible. “After all these years, he’ll think I’m only after his money.”

  “You can convince him otherwise,” Brad reasoned, but Jennifer hadn’t been so sure.

  She’d never understood why her grandfather had asked her to leave in the first place. All he’d said was that he couldn’t stand the sight of her. Not an auspicious basis for reestablishing a relationship.

  For months after leaving the farm, Jennifer had written her grandfather and called repeatedly. Her letters had been returned and her calls had gone unanswered. Even three years ago when her parents died in a plane crash, and she’d discovered they’d squandered all their money on bad investments and high living, her grandfather hadn’t called. She’d left more messages, but he hadn’t responded. Fearful of another rejection, she hadn’t called again. And now it was too late. Forever. Filled with grief and homesickness, Jennifer watched the blizzard rage outside her window.

  Hank Durham had just provided her with the perfect excuse for returning to Jester. But with her grandfather dead and Luke McNeil only a memory, what was the point?

  CHAPTER ONE

  One week later

  SHERIFF Luke MCNEIL ran his fingers through his thick, black hair and scowled at the white stuff swirling outside the window of his office. March had come in like a lion. Looked like it would go out like a lion, too. How could he conduct a proper investigation of the collapse of the pavilion in the town park when its ruins were buried under four feet of ice and snow?

  Without further evidence, he didn’t know whether he had an accident, malicious mischief or even an attempted homicide on his hands, and not knowing made him edgy. His job was to protect the people of Jester, and he couldn’t do that without knowing all the facts.

  Thank God no one had been killed, although what Jack Hartman and Melinda Woods, the town vets, had been doing in the structure, no one knew.

  Scratch that, he thought with a slow grin. He didn’t have to be Sherlock Holmes to fi
gure out the purpose of their secret meeting. Barely revived from her concussion and sporting bruised ribs from the pavilion’s collapse, Melinda had laid her claim on Jack last night right outside Doc Perkins’s clinic, with half the town as witnesses. Luke rubbed the back of his neck, remembering how Jack had watched in amazement when Melinda called Buck, a stray mutt no one else could tame, to heel. And just as docile as that wily dog, Jack had wrapped his arms around Melinda and asked her to marry him.

  Luke’s smile faded. But why had the blasted pavilion collapsed in the first place? And if it hadn’t been an accident, were the vets the intended victims? If so, a motive eluded him. Although some farmers had balked at having a female veterinarian treat their animals, Luke hadn’t picked up on anyone with enough animosity toward Melinda or Jack to wish them harm.

  He shifted in his chair and propped his feet on his desk. If the damned snow would just stop long enough for the sun to come out and melt the accumulation atop the collapsed structure, he could inspect the wreckage, instead of sitting cooped up in his office, badgered by what-ifs.

  Even if he hadn’t heard the weather report, the evidence outside his window was overwhelming. The snow wasn’t going to abate anytime soon. He might as well catch up on the paperwork stacked precariously on the corner of his desk, ready to slide into an avalanche if he didn’t tackle it immediately.

  He was reaching for the top folder when the door to the office opened and slammed against the wall.

  The same frigid blast that banged the door blew Wyla Thorne into the room.

  An ill wind blows nobody good, Luke thought and suppressed a grimace.

  He liked most folks just fine, but Wyla Thorne always set his teeth on edge. Maybe it was her knack for sticking her nose into other people’s business that repulsed him. Or maybe it was how she flirted so shamelessly with him, despite the fact that she was over ten years his senior and had been through two nasty divorces.

  She grabbed the door and struggled to shut it. Although she was about five foot eight inches tall, the woman didn’t have an ounce of spare flesh on her, and even bundled up like an Eskimo, she appeared toothpick thin. Just as he was about to rise to help her, she managed to close the door against the bitter wind. When she turned back toward him, wisps of short red hair stuck out from the parka around her face, which displayed its usual pinched look, as if she’d just smelled or tasted something bad.