Babes In Arms

Babes In Arms
Sara Orwig

BABY CHASEPregnant Katherine Manchester was on the run and about to become a mom any minute! She had to find a safe place for her baby to be born, fast - and what better place than in rugged rancher Colin Whitefeather's welcoming arms? SURROGATE DADColin had a weakness for strays and beautiful women. And when he delivered Katherine's baby, baby girls were added to his list. Katherine affected him like no woman ever had, but she was afraid of something - or someone.Well, she was about to learn that Colin Whitefeather feared no one - and that nothing would keep him from making them a family.

Colin Marveled At The Tiny Baby He Had Helped Bring Into The World. (#u826b557e-52f4-5710-b744-037d6335982b)Letter to Reader (#u4bdbf8aa-010b-5981-abde-9656a498500c)Title Page (#u4970bf9d-74d1-56d9-9252-d6d07a9c4a64)About the Author (#u304e992c-13dd-5949-98c0-119ac9807a13)Acknowledgments (#ucea4f77e-ef17-5e1f-a304-d3d33c88edf7)Chapter One (#u51e9c1b6-dd37-5b52-8a23-aacc187bf422)Chapter Two (#u9be170c9-3cff-5c73-87cd-4d145010a40f)Chapter Three (#u94ef6e51-50c9-50f6-93f9-6c5a6f4065e2)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)Copyright (#litres_trial_promo)

Colin Marveled At The Tiny Baby He Had Helped Bring Into The World.

Her fingers were doubled into small fists, her arms thrown up over her head while she slept propped on her side. He touched her soft cheek, wondering about her, imagining a little girl with long red hair and big green eyes, a tiny version of Katherine. He felt a tightening in his chest.

He turned and looked at Katherine. She was on her back, one arm flung out, her red hair spilling over her shoulders. His gaze traveled over the hospital gown, the sheet that was across her hips and legs. He drew a deep breath. All his tender feelings stirred by the sight of the baby were transformed to desire for the sleeping woman.

He moved to a chair, placing it closer to the bassinet, not trusting himself to sit too close to Katherine. He propped his booted feet on a table, settled back and closed his eyes....

Dear Reader,

This month: strong and sexy heroes!

First, the Tallchiefs—that intriguing, legendary family—are back, and this time it’s Birk Tallchief who meets his match in Cait London’s MAN OF THE MONTH, The Groom Candidate. Birk’s been pining for Lacey MacCandliss for years, but once he gets her, there’s nothing but trouble of the most romantic kind. Don’t miss this delightful story from one of Desire’s most beloved writers.

Next, nobody creates a strong, sexy hero quite like Sara Orwig, and in her latest, Babes in Arms, she brings us Colin Whitefeather, a tough and tender man you’ll never forget. And in Judith McWilliams’s Another Man’s Baby we meet Philip Lysander, a Greek tycoon who will do anything to save his family...even pretend to be a child’s father.

Peggy Moreland’s delightful miniseries, TROUBLE IN TEXAS, continues with Lone Star Kind of Man. The man in question is rugged rogue cowboy Cody Fipes. In Big Sky Drifter, by Doreen Owens Malek, a wild Wyoming man named Cal Winston tames a lonely woman. And in Cathie Linz’s Husband Needed, bachelor Jack Elliott surprises himself when he offers to trade his single days for married nights.

In Silhouette Desire you’ll always find the most irresistible men around! So enjoy!

Senior Editor

Please address questions and book requests to:

Silhouette Reader Service

US.: 3010 Walden Ave., P.O. Box 1325, Buffalo, NY 14269

Canadian: P.O. Box 609, Fort Erie, Out. L2A 5X3

Babes in Arms

Sara Orwig

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

SARA ORWIG

lives with her husband and children in Oklahoma. She has a patient husband who will take her on research trips anywhere from big cities to old forts. She is an avid collector of Western history books. With a master’s degree in English, Sara writes historical romance, mainstream fiction and contemporary romance. Books are beloved treasures that take Sara to magical worlds, and she loves both reading and writing them.

With thanks to Lucia Macro, Lynda Curnyn,

Cathleen Treacy, Tina Colombo and Maureen Walters.

One

“You can pick up your check from Della. Thanks again on this last case,” Abe Swenson, the red-haired Payne County sheriff said. “You know if you ever want to go full-time with us—”

“Sorry,” Colin interrupted him. “As an honorary deputy I have more freedom, and I’m enjoying ranching.” He didn’t add that every time he took on police work, he swore it would be the last.

“You better head home soon. I’ve been getting weather bulletins. Highways are closing all across the northern and eastern part of the state. Our bus terminal closed twenty minutes ago.”

Colin nodded. “Old Blue does pretty well in snow.”

“Yeah, well, we may have an ice storm before tonight.”

“Thanks, Abe.” Colin stopped by the desk, flirting a moment with Della while she gave him his check. He pulled his shearling coat closed, jammed his black Stetson on his head and pushed open the glass door.

Snow swirled and fell silently, coating sidewalks, frosting the yellow dried Bermuda grass, turning to slush in the streets. Striding to the bed of a battered robin’s-egg-blue pickup, he adjusted the tarp over the sacks of groceries piled in the back and then climbed inside, moving into the Friday afternoon traffic. He headed down Sixth toward the university. Bumper-to-bumper student traffic slowed him to a creeping pace.

He turned onto the strip, moving past shops, beer parlors and restaurants, watching two guys throw snowballs at three pretty coeds, feeling a moment’s pang of loneliness, which was gone as swiftly as it came.

He crept to the next light and slowed as the yellow switched to red. To his right at the curb across the intersection, a woman stepped out of a car. She closed and locked the car and glanced up and down the street. Taller than average, yet looking thick through the middle in her bulky hip-length brown parka, she had a wrinkled gray cap pulled over her head, owlish glasses perched on her nose and baggy jeans. She carried a bulky leather bag held over her shoulder by a strap.

The woman dashed across the side street against traffic, crossing in spite of the light. A car slid on the snow and honked at her as she turned to cross the street in front of Colin. She glanced his way and he gazed into wide green eyes. Beneath the gray cap, her hair was pulled back into a bun. She reached the curb and disappeared into a bookstore.

“Stupid broad,” Colin muttered. He adjusted the rearview mirror. Behind him in the next block two men in black topcoats climbed out of a shiny car and hurried toward the bookstore.

Overdressed for the day, the men were not typical of the small university town, and Colin’s cop’s instinct kicked in as he remembered the wide-eyed look the woman had given him.

“You’re imagining things, Whitefeather,” he said aloud to himself while the light changed. He shifted and drove on, looking at the two men as they walked down the street. They didn’t glance to the right or left, and every instinct in him screamed muscle. “Stay out of it.”

He hunched over the wheel, listening to the clack of the wipers when he turned in front of the fire station and glimpsed the campus. Snow bathed it in pristine beauty, the red brick of Old Central looking warm and solid, its green cupola at the peak of the roof still showing beneath an icing of snow. Boughs of evergreens draped in white dipped earthward and students clad in bright parkas reminded Colin of colorful birds as they crossed the sprawling campus.

“Oh, hell,” Colin said, signaling at the next corner and circling the block. “You’ll stick your nose where it doesn’t belong,” he grumbled to himself, yet he couldn’t get the woman’s face out of his mind, the big eyes that looked frightened. Because of one-way streets, he had to drive two blocks to circle back onto Station Avenue again. As he paused at the intersection and glanced up and down, he noticed another burly man in a parka headed toward the bookstore from a block away to the south.

“Someone should give you guys a lesson in how to blend into your surroundings,” Colin mumbled, shifting and swinging into traffic on Station.

It was a moment before he spotted her walking toward him on the right side of the street. Except for her height, she would have faded into the crowd. The two topcoats were striding toward her from the north end of the street, so she was boxed in.

A voice inside him, screaming to stay out of it, lost its battle as Colin swung the car closer to the curb and threw open the door on the passenger side. “Get in. I’m a cop and I’ll get you away from them.”

Her big eyes focused on him and for an instant he forgot the danger and felt lost in depths of green. The moment became timeless. He became conscious of everything around him, the noise of car engines, the swishing sounds of tires in slush, the swirling snow. She stared back, an unwavering, probing look that narrowed the world into an awareness of just her. Other sounds and sights faded from his mind as he stared at her with as much intensity as if she had reached out and touched him.

Then she shook her head, her eyes widening while she glanced around, reminding him of a trapped animal. The topcoats had increased their pace and were only half a block away. When Colin looked at her again, she was entering a restaurant. Colin slammed the door and drove past the two men as they rushed toward the restaurant.

Ignoring gut feelings to stay out of her problem, he turned at the corner and signaled, swinging into the alley. He guessed right. She emerged from the back of the restaurant and hurried toward him. He opened the door again.

“I’m telling the truth. I am a cop.”

She glanced over her shoulder as the two men stepped into the alley. With a swirl of her coat, she climbed into the pickup and slammed the door. Telling himself he was every kind of fool, Colin threw the pickup into reverse while a faint, sweet scent of roses filled the interior.

As soon as the pickup rolled out of the alley into the street Colin accelerated, taking the next corner without slowing. He fished his billfold out and flipped it open, turning to the badge that he carried.