A convenient proposal

A convenient proposal
C.J. Carmichael

She was doing her duty. Now he'll do his.While investigating a local murder, Kelly Shannon, an officer with the Royal Canadian Mounted Police, is forced to kill in the line of duty. Afterward she feels the terrible responsibility of having taken a human life. Especially in this case, where she's killed the father of two young children.Because the children's mother falls apart after her husband's death, his brother, Mick Mizzoni, steps in. But juggling the demands of his job with the needs of a three-year-old and a five-year-old is difficult.Kelly feels that the only way she can cope with her guilt is by helping these children. So she makes Mick an offer…an offer he can't refuse.The real problems begin when Kelly starts falling in love with Mick.

“You can’t be serious.”

Mick concentrated on Kelly’s determined expression. She didn’t appear to be pulling his leg.

“Let’s go to my place and talk,” he suggested.

Kelly nodded. She hadn’t spoken since telling him…. Perhaps she’d gone into shock.

The drive to his house took less than five minutes.

“I understand that you must feel terrible about my brother,” he told her.

And he did. His journalistic training was too ingrained for him not to see both sides of the story. Despite his grief, he knew that Kelly had tried to defuse his brother’s fear, speaking to him calmly and gently. But his brother had been too worked up. He’d cocked the trigger of his handgun and that was it. Kelly had aimed, fired…

“Don’t think it’s guilt behind my suggestion,” Kelly said now. “Mick, I genuinely care about those children. I would do anything to help them. Anything.”

Something in him wanted to give her whatever she asked for. And, face it, she was offering him a solution to his own dilemma. “How will you feel in a year, or two, or ten? Kelly, I’m not interested in a temporary fix here.”

“I understand that. I do.”

In the small, bookshelf-lined room, her words echoed like a marriage vow….

Dear Reader,

“Shooting to kill is an officer’s nightmare.” This is the headline that caught my eye a few years ago when I was reading the Calgary Herald at my breakfast table. Years of Westerns, cop shows and mystery novels had ingrained in me the simple maxim that good guys shoot bad guys. But I had never before contemplated the complex dilemma an officer faces when making the choice to pull the trigger and end another life.

That morning the seed for A Convenient Proposal was planted. I knew I wanted to write a story about a cop who responds strictly by the book in a dangerous situation, then reacts like a sensitive human being in the months that follow. The cop is Kelly Shannon, the youngest of the three Shannon sisters.

If you read the first book of this trilogy, A Second-Chance Proposal, you may have wondered what Kelly was doing during her lengthy, unexplained absences from the Larch Lodge Bed and Breakfast near the end of the story. She wasn’t at work—she’d been suspended, remember?—and she certainly wasn’t out having fun.

Now I invite you to find out. To dive into Kelly’s story and meet the children and the man who will change her life forever.

Sincerely,

C.J. Carmichael

P.S. I’d love to hear from you. Please send mail to the following Canadian address: #1754-246 Stewart Green, S.W., Calgary, Alberta, Canada T3H 3C8. Or send e-mail to: cjcarmichael@shaw.ca. For more information visit: www.cjcarmichael.com.

A Convenient Proposal

C.J. Carmichael

www.millsandboon.co.uk (http://www.millsandboon.co.uk)

This trilogy is dedicated to my editors, Beverley Sotolov and Paula Eykelhof, with my thanks and affection.

ACKNOWLEDGMENTS

Thanks to those who assisted me in my research, in particular Corporal Patrick Webb of the RCMP in Calgary, Constable Barry Beales of the RCMP Canmore Detachment and Lynn Martel, a reporter with the Canmore Leader.

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

CHAPTER FOURTEEN

CHAPTER FIFTEEN

CHAPTER SIXTEEN

CHAPTER SEVENTEEN

CHAPTER EIGHTEEN

CHAPTER NINETEEN

PROLOGUE

SHE COULDN’T STOP SHAKING as she stared at the gun—her own Smith & Wesson—in a carefully labeled plastic bag. The weapon was Crown evidence; she wouldn’t see it again for months.