Girl Trouble

Girl Trouble
Sandra Field

He wanted a lover… Cade McInnes had fallen in love with Lori when she was sixteen and he was old enough to know better. But he hadn't known better. They had parted bitterly. Not a family! Now it was ten years later. Lori had a bad marriage behind her and two adorable daughters, Liddy and Rachel.Except they didn't seem all that adorable to Cade. Liddy had taken an instant dislike to Cade. Which was fine with him - he wanted only one blonde in his life, not three. But getting Lori into his bed meant accepting two little girls into his heart!MAN Talk There are two sides to every story - now it's his turn!

Letter to Reader (#uae63c360-70e7-5b06-a25f-3bf5e74f32a1)Title Page (#u694f5fd1-9277-593b-89c2-094dc08d579e)CHAPTER ONE (#ua0791302-2a1d-5119-87a7-31a1f1590233)CHAPTER TWO (#u406194e3-0d54-5fd6-bb08-11752e2b0502)CHAPTER THREE (#u025914ad-63ea-5f6e-9120-a7170b19b2b8)CHAPTER FOUR (#litres_trial_promo)CHAPTER FIVE (#litres_trial_promo)CHAPTER SIX (#litres_trial_promo)CHAPTER SEVEN (#litres_trial_promo)CHAPTER EIGHT (#litres_trial_promo)CHAPTER NINE (#litres_trial_promo)CHAPTER TEN (#litres_trial_promo)CHAPTER ELEVEN (#litres_trial_promo)CHAPTER TWELVE (#litres_trial_promo)CHAPTER THIRTEEN (#litres_trial_promo)Copyright (#litres_trial_promo)

Dear Reader,

Reflecting on the twenty-fifth anniversary of Harlequin Presents

has led me to contemplate other milestones. It’s twenty-four years since my first book was published by Mills & Boon in the U.K., and fifteen since my initial appearance in Presents. Over the years I trust my values have deepened and expanded, causing the conflicts and conversations of my characters to break new ground. Growth is one thing anniversaries commemorate—my congratulations to Harlequin for the phenomenal growth of Harlequin Presents

. May it continue!

Warmly,

Sandra Field

Girl Trouble

Sandra Field

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

CHAPTER ONE

Two shocks in one day.

The first had been pleasurable, rife with possibilities and potential. The second was like a kick in the gut.

Cade MacInnis stood very still in the middle of the sidewalk of one of Halifax’s busiest streets. It was a sunny day in June and he was back in Nova Scotia on vacation. He should have looked relaxed and happy. Instead, his mouth was a slash in his face and his shoulders were hunched, his fists thrust in the pockets of his jeans. He looked like he was ready to explode.

The jostling crowds on the sidewalk—it was noon and the offices had emptied—swirled around him, avoiding him, although some of the women sneaked backward glances at this tall, broad-shouldered figure with its air of pent-up emotion and physical prowess. But Cade was as oblivious to his observers as he was to the sun’s rays glinting in his black, curly hair. Rather, his gaze was fastened on the large photograph framed and mounted in a glass case on the brick wall of a photographer’s studio. A photograph of a woman with two children. Both girls.

Most people looking at the photo would have smiled, for all three, woman and girls, were dressed in denim dungarees, white shirts with the sleeves rolled up, and scarlet bandannas tied in jaunty bows around their necks; all three had baseball caps perched on their blond hair, and all three were clowning at the photographer, leaning on each other in casually exaggerated poses, laughing comically. The woman was clearly the mother of the two girls, for the resemblance was strong, the girls already showing the promise of a beauty possessed in abundance by their mother.

One girl, the one with the fall of straight, shiny hair, looked about nine; the other, who had an untidy tumble of curls around a heart-shaped face, was possibly five or six.

And then there was the mother.

Cade’s eyes, eyes of so dark a brown as to be almost black, returned to the woman and stayed there, fastening on her as though the very intensity of his gaze could make her step from the frame. appear before him, and speak as he hadn’t heard her speak for over ten years.

He’d known the instant he’d seen the photograph that it was Lorraine. Lorraine Campbell, daughter of Morris Campbell, a man wealthier than Cade ever aspired to be. Cade had fallen in love with Lorraine when she was sixteen and he twenty. Old enough to know better, be thought now. But he hadn’t known better. Hadn’t had the common sense of a flea.

She was Lorraine Cartwright now, of course. Wife of Ray Cartwright, businessman and entrepreneur, a man Cade had distrusted and disliked from the first time he’d met him eleven or twelve years ago.

She’d changed in ten years. The photo, he thought cynically, was no doubt touched up. But there was no disguising the new maturity in her face, the way it had fined down to an essential elegance of design: high forehead and long-lashed blue eyes over taut cheekbones and a generous curve of mouth. Her hair was different than he remembered. In its natural state, he knew, it was as straight as her elder daughter’s, with the sheen and flow of river water in sunlight. In the photograph it was a tangle of bouncy curls that somehow echoed the laughter in her face. Lorraine obviously liked being Ray’s wife. Ray, too, of course, was rich. Would keep her in the style to which she was accustomed, cocooned by the society in which she had grown up.

She’d always been out of reach.

Except once.

With a huge effort Cade tried to bring himself back to reality. He was making a fool of himself. Gaping at a photo as though it were alive.

Perhaps it was, he realized with a jolt. In one way. Because ever since he’d seen it, every cell in his body had become a roil of emotion, every muscle a tightly coiled spring. Anger, hatred, humiliation, helplessness, despair...the list was endless and he felt them all. He could have been twenty-three again, the intervening years vanished as if they’d never been.

By the time he was twenty-three everything had fallen apart. That was the year she’d married Ray.

Then, like another hard kick to the gut, he finally admitted something else, something he’d been doing his damnedest to avoid. He’d left out one emotion on the list. Omitted it purposely. And no wonder, because it was the most powerful of them all. Desire. A raging and all-consuming desire. For even in baggy overalls with scarlet sneakers on her feet and a silly cap on her head, Lorraine Cartwright was utterly and irresistibly desirable.

As she had been ever since she’d turned sixteen and he’d seen her in her very first evening gown standing in the moonlight. She’d looked so young and beautiful, so touchingly vulnerable, that Cade had for the first time in his life understood what those overused words “falling in love” meant. For it was as though he had indeed fallen, a vast, swooping descent into a mystical place he’d never known existed, a place illuminated by her very existence, a place where he would have done anything in the world for her. A place where—at first—he’d been content to worship from afar.

Furious with himself, Cade tamped down a flood of memories that, if he ever gave them place, could drown him. He hated her. Had hated her for years, and with good reason. He’d do well to remember that.

Love was an emotion long gone; it was no longer on the list. She’d killed it. Cruelly and deliberately, in a way he’d never forgotten or forgiven.

Stop it! he berated himself. For God’s sake, quit while you’re still ahead. It’s only a photograph, a piece of colored paper stuck in a gold frame. A printed image of a woman who’s as inaccessible now as she ever was, and not worth the time you’re wasting on her. That’s all it is. Nothing more.

You’ve got more important things to do than stand on the sidewalk as if you’ve been hit on the head and don’t know which way is up. Like think about Sam’s offer. Like get some lunch.

He strode around the corner and pushed open the door to the photography studio.

It was cool inside, the decor an attractive blend of glossy-leafed plants and cleverly arranged portraits. The middle-aged woman behind the counter gave him a friendly smile. “Can I help you, sir?”

Cade should have smiled back; but his face felt as stiff as a board. “There’s a photo in your showcase outside,” he said abruptly. “Of a woman with her two daughters.”

“Oh, yes...it turned out rather well, didn’t it?”

“I—I knew her years ago. But we’ve gotten out of touch. I wondered—does she live around here?”

The woman’s smile became a little guarded. “I’m very sorry, sir, I can’t really give you any details. We—”

“Her name’s Lorraine. Lorraine Cartwright. I used to work for her father, Morris Campbell.”

“We have a policy of client confidentiality, as I’m sure you understand,” the woman said. “Is there any other way I can be of assistance to you?”

Leave, Cade, he thought. Get out of here. Now. You’re making a total ass of yourself. “Can I get a copy of the photo?” he said hoarsely.

The woman was now regarding him through narrowed eyes. “That wouldn’t be possible without the express permission of my client,” she said briskly. “And now, if you’ll excuse me, sir?”

Cade turned on his heel and left the studio. Without giving the showcase a second look he marched down the street, blind to the tourists, office workers, students and children who thronged the pavement. Good work, MacInnis, he jeered. That woman in the studio—a thoroughly nice woman by the look of her—now thinks you’re a combination of a weirdo, a psychotic and a stalker.

You’re none of the above. But you’re an idiot. Letting Lorraine Cartwright jerk you around as if you were thirteen. not thirty-three pushing thirty-four. Grow up, will you? Quit reliving a fairy tale.

For hadn’t that whole three years between twenty and twenty-three had the remoteness, the otherwordly air of “once upon a time”? Lorraine, with her long blond hair and her cool blue eyes, had been cast as the princess, who one night in a fit of pique had thrown herself at Cade the commoner, the peasant, the tall, dark and—so he’d been told—handsome young worker on her father’s estate. Manfully the commoner had refused to take advantage of the princess’s youth, beauty, and undoubted virginity. Had the princess very prettily thanked the commoner? Had she presented him with a silk scarf she’d embroidered with her own fair hands as a memento of his noble act of abstention? No, indeed. She’d turned on him like a virago and then she’d engineered that her father fire Cade from his job.

Nor, he thought bitterly, had the peasant ever turned into a prince.

Unfortunately the story hadn’t ended there; and the rest of it was more difficult to fit into the mode of fairy tale. For someone from the village had seen him and Lorraine in the woods that evening, had witnessed their initial, impassioned embrace, and gossip had spread like wildfire through the little village of Juniper Hills. Cade had fought several pitched battles on Lorraine’s behalf, defending her virtue like a true knight of old. At which point three hired thugs—paid for by Lorraine’s father, spurred on by Lorraine—had given Cade the beating of his lifetime. Afterward Lorraine had made a point of calling at the garage where he worked, where she’d let him know with humiliating accuracy how little his militancy on her behalf was appreciated.