Father Most Wanted

Father Most Wanted
Marie Ferrarella

Never let anyone get too close were the words single father Tyler Breckinridge chose to live by. And except for occasional bouts of loneliness, he did just fine…until his three little girls led him to lovely bookstore owner Brooke Carmichael.She was a woman whose sweet temptations made him forget his best-laid plans. And Tyler longed to woo Brooke with kisses that left her hungering for his touch. But he knew their future was one he could never claim, for he had secrets he kept under lock and key. Still, he would do almost anything to find a home in her arms…

Moonlight, coupled with longing and loneliness, did strange things to people, Tyler thought.

The moon was the loneliest of the heavenly bodies. He could feel its pull right now. Could feel, too, the pull of the woman standing before him.

For the past nine months he’d lived every day with an emptiness he hadn’t known what to do with. Tonight, for a small amount of time, he’d forgotten about that emptiness. Forgotten because Brooke’s words had somehow filled it. Her words, her laughter.

Her.

Had he thought it through, he wouldn’t have done it. But he wasn’t thinking. He was reacting.

As if hypnotized, Tyler lowered his head and touched his lips to hers, kissing Brooke very, very slowly. Just the way his heart was suddenly beating.

For the first time in nine months, he felt alive.

Father Most Wanted

Marie Ferrarella

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

This one’s for

April,

who always makes me

smile

Contents

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 One

“Ow.”

Brooke Carmichael pressed her lips together, sealing in any further sounds. The tips of her fingers where the hot espresso had sloshed over the side of the coffee container pulsed with pain. That’s what she got for not waiting for a cover, she thought.

Still hurrying, her eyes now riveted to the guilty container, she switched hands and shook the excess moisture off her fingers. The barely-out-of-puberty boy who was single-handedly manning Coffee Heaven’s counter had told her he was all out of lids, but there were some in the back.

Since he moved with the speed of a snail, his finding one didn’t sound like a feat that was going to be accomplished any time within the next half hour. Brooke didn’t have a half hour. She didn’t even have five extra minutes to spare. Since Heather had called saying she’d be late, there was no one to watch Tell Me a Story, the bookstore Brooke had owned for the past two years.

Ordinarily when Isaac, the regular clerk, was behind the trendy coffee-shop counter, the whole transaction took less than two minutes. But Isaac had been nowhere in sight and there was no way Brooke could begin the day without molten sludge oozing through her veins, waking her up. The coffee she’d had at home only got her as far as the store and no farther. She needed something guaranteed to jump-start narcoleptics before she could begin her work-day.

Her sister would pick today to be late. “When it rains, it pours,” Brooke muttered to herself.

Next time she’d bring a thermos, the way she used to when she’d been the only one tending to the bookstore. Having help had made her lax. She blew on fingers that still stung.

“Tiffany, where are you?” a male voice called.

Intent on not spilling her espresso again, Brooke didn’t see the tall, somber-looking man until it was almost too late. Coming to an abrupt halt, she barely avoided launching the contents of her container at him.

Her heart hammering, the fingers of her left hand christened in the exact same manner as the ones on her right and now smarting, Brooke narrowly avoided what could have been a very nasty accident.

Stepping back and to the side, Brooke realized that the man was not alone. He was flanked by matching bookends in the form of two identical little girls, no more than about five or six. Their dresses were similar, if not exactly the same, but one face was as close to a mirror image of the other as anything Brooke had ever seen. The man was holding their hands tightly and seemed to look through Brooke as if she wasn’t there.

Brooke’s gaze dropped to the twins again. What must it be like, she wondered, to know there was someone else walking around with a face exactly like yours? It might make an interesting children’s-book series. Something her father would have deftly written about, she thought with a bittersweet pang.

“Sorry,” she apologized when she caught her breath.

Oblivious to the near collision, the man hardly spared her a look. He seemed far more intent on finding this Tiffany person. Then, nodding vaguely in Brooke’s direction, as if the apology had replayed itself in his head, he hurried past her, the two little girls held fast in tow.

“Tiffany,” he called.

“No harm done, I guess,” Brooke murmured to herself, heading out into the mall.

The man no doubt had misplaced his wife, Brooke mused. He had that father-on-an-outing harried look. Turning back, she squinted, looking intently at the hand that held on to the little girl on his left. There it was, a wedding ring.