The Ready-Made Family (Silhouette Special Edition) Read online

  Table of Contents

  Cover Page

  Excerpt

  Dear Reader

  Title Page

  Books by Laurie Paige

  About the Author

  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

  Copyright

  She was still a mystery to him,

  Harrison fumed.

  Isadora. His wife.

  She was a wildly passionate woman who set his blood on fire.

  A keen-minded con artist who could play poker like a man.

  A wily female who had blackmailed him into giving her his name and a year out of his life.

  But neither passion nor cunning would ultimately outsmart him, Harrison vowed.

  He wasn’t sure exactly what the stakes even were between him and his baffling, beautiful new wife. But Harrison swore he would win.

  Whatever the cost…

  Dear Reader,

  As the long summer stretches before us, July sizzles with an enticing Special Edition lineup!

  We begin with this month’s THAT SPECIAL WOMAN! title brought to you by the wonderful Jennifer Greene. She concludes her STANFORD SISTERS series with The 200% Wife—an engaging story about one woman’s quest to be the very best at everything, most especially love.

  If you delight in marriage-of-convenience stories that evolve into unexpected love, be sure to check out Mail-Order Matty by Emilie Richards, book one in our FROM BUD TO BLOSSOM theme series. Written by four popular authors, this brand-new series contains magical love stories that bring change to the . characters’ lives when they least expect it.

  Pull out your handkerchiefs, because we have a three-hankie Special Edition novel that will touch you unlike any of the stories you’ve experienced before. Nothing Short of a Miracle by Patricia Thayer is a poignant story about a resilient woman, a devoted father and a cherished son who yearn for a miracle— and learn to trust in the wondrous power of love.

  If absorbing amnesia stories are your forte, be sure to check out Forgotten Fiancée by Lucy Gordon. Or perhaps you can’t pass up an engrossing family drama with a seductive twist Then don’t miss out on The Ready-Made Family by Laurie Paige. Finally, we wrap up a month of irresistible romance when one love-smitten heroine impulsively poses as her twin sister and marries the man of her dreams in Substitute Bride by Trisha Alexander.

  An entire summer of romance is just beginning to unfold at Special Edition! I hope you enjoy each and every story to come!

  Sincerely,

  Tara Gavin,

  Senior Editor

  Please address questions and book requests to:

  Silhouette Reader Service

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

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

  The Ready-Made Family

  Laurie Paige

  Books by Laurie Paige

  Silhouette Special Edition

  Lover’s Choice #170

  Man Without a Past #755

  †Home for a Wild Heart #828

  †A Place for Eagles #839

  †The Way of a Man #849

  †Wild Is the Wind #887

  †A River To Cross #910

  Molly Darling #1021

  Live-In Mom #1077

  The Ready-Made Family #1114

  Silhouette Desire

  Gypsy Enchantment #123

  Journey to Desire #195

  Misty Splendor #304

  Golden Promise #404

  Silhouette Yours Truly

  Christmas Kisses for a Dollar

  Only One Groom Allowed

  *All-American Sweethearts

  †Wild River

  Silhouette Romance

  South of the Sun #296

  A Tangle of Rainbows #333

  A Season for Butterflies #364

  Nothing Lost #382

  The Sea at Dawn #398

  A Season for Homecoming #727

  Home Fires Burning Bright #733

  Man from the North Country #772

  *Cara’s Beloved #917

  *Sally’s Beau #923

  *Victoria’s Conquest #933

  Caleb’s Son #994’

  †A Rougue’s Heart #1013

  An Unexoected Delivery #1151

  Silhouette Books

  Montana Mavericks

  The Once and Future Wife

  Father Found

  LAURIE PAIGE

  was recently presented with the Affaire de Coeur Readers’ Choice Silver Pen Award for Favorite Contemporary Author. In addition, she was a 1994 Romance Writers of America (RITA) finalist for Best Traditional Romance for her book Sally’s Beau. She reports romance is blooming in her part of Northern California. With the birth of her second grandson, she finds herself madly in love with three wonderful males—“all hero material.” So far, her husband hasn’t complained about the other men in her life.

  Chapter One

  It would definitely be a mistake, Isadora Chavez re- flected, to fall in love with the man you planned on blackmailing.

  The irony inherent in that thought brought a grimace of impatience to her lips. She would never be so foolish.

  She refreshed her lipstick, then watched his reflection in the tiny mirror on her compact as Harrison Stone riffled through the papers he’d taken from the wall safe in his office, his handsome face preoccupied and seri- ous.

  Earlier, when they’d gone to the community center where she worked as manager, then stayed for a party, he’d been smiling and lighthearted. She wondered how he would react to being blackmailed. She snapped the compact closed and replaced it and the lipstick in her purse.

  Staring out at the skyline of Reno etched against the night sky in colored banners of glittering neon, she re- minded herself of all the reasons she was going to do this—had to do this—no matter what the consequences.

  Isa clenched her hands as misgivings rose like a choking mist inside her. She wondered if a person could be sent to jail for forcing a man into marriage, no matter how justified the act.

  It didn’t matter. She’d made a promise to her mother, a deathbed promise, to look after Ricky…Rick, as he insisted on being called since he’d become a teenager.

  She hadn’t done a very good job of keeping that promise.

  Her brother was fourteen years old, defiant, head- strong and in custody at a juvenile detention center in Oregon. She had one month left to prove she could provide a stable home for him before the judge made a final decision in the case.

  Hearing movement behind her, she turned and faced her escort. Maybe people would think she was his tro- phy wife.

  Except Harrison was only thirty-five, not old enough to need a trophy to add to waning masculinity. His mas- culinity was in full flower. He was a powerful, virile example of the species.

  It was time he took the plunge, she told her con- science, which had a tendency to nag her about truth and honor and all that. As if she didn’t have enough worries.

  “Isa,” he said, demanding her attention in his low, lazy way of speaking, an enticing Western drawl clipped just a bit by back-East schooling.

  A tremor of yearning went through her. She loved the way he said her nickname. Eye-sa. Soft, drawling, making the two syllables a verbal caress. He’d said her na
me just like that right before he’d kissed her the first time.

  The tremor became a shiver of need fed by a sense of despair and hopelessness. If only things could have been different….

  But this wasn’t a fairy tale. This was real—life as it had to be lived, not as her foolish heart dreamed it could be.

  “Isa? Ready?”

  She pulled herself out of the introspective trance. Her course was laid out before her. All she had to do was follow it to the end. She glanced at the papers in his hand.

  “Yes,” she said, dredging up a smile. “I’m ready.” Then she made the mistake of gazing into his eyes.

  Harrison had unusual eyes. They had a narrow band of brown around the pupil that turned to dark blue on the outer edge. They were striated with golden strands like tiger’s eye—the gemstone, not the animal.

  He called them hazel, but that didn’t come close to describing their unique coloration. A woman could get lost in those fathomless depths. She sometimes wished she would….

  Her heart lurched wildly. She quickly looked away and cleared her throat while waiting for the unreliable organ to settle into a smooth beat once more.

  “You seem distracted tonight. Are you having sec- ond thoughts about spending the weekend at Tahoe?” He took her arm to lead her toward the door.

  She licked her lips and tried to think of a truthful answer that would give nothing away. “And third and fourth ones,” she finally admitted. If he only knew!

  Instead of chuckling as she’d thought he would do, he laid the papers on his desk and grasped both her upper arms. There was a question in his eyes as he gazed at her.

  At five foot nine, she could look most men eye to eye. With Harrison at six-three, she couldn’t. For that reason, she’d worn high heels tonight, something she rarely did.

  Tilting her head back, she returned his stare, her eyes carefully, artfully blank, an expression perfected by Bri- gitte Bardot in her early movies. It could hide a multi- tude of tormented thoughts…or treacherous plans.

  “There are no strings attached, you know,” he said quite gently. A smile flitted across his mouth.

  She wished he’d make love to her right now before all the conniving began, before she was eaten up by guilt, by doubt, by fear. She wished she could forget all the carefully thought-out plans she’d made before she’d moved to Reno from Oregon.

  “I know.” Her voice was so husky, she had to clear it twice after she said the words. He could be incredibly intuitive about her inner feelings. She reminded herself he was the son of the man who’d cheated her family of its rightful inheritance. In reality, he was a tough, ar- rogant tycoon.

  “You’re trembling.” He looked puzzled as he rubbed her arms, arousing the longing, the desires that flooded her heart—not just passion, but other, stronger desires for things she couldn’t, wouldn’t name. They had no place in her schemes.

  “I’m a little nervous.”

  He studied her, a frown notching two faint lines be- tween his eyebrows. “Are you afraid of me?”

  She shook her head, then changed her mind. “Maybe. Or myself.” She spoke the truth, but felt as if she were reading lines prepared in a script.

  “I shake, too, when I think of…” He let the words trail away into the silence of the office and the whisper of warm air from the overhead vents. “It’s powerful, isn’t it?”

  It wasn’t really a question. She nodded anyway.

  “I wasn’t sure you felt the same.” He stroked up and down her arms, causing heat to slither into her abdo- men, clustering there like a tiny sun burning out of con- trol. “From the moment I saw you…no, before that. I heard you laugh, and I found myself smiling even though I didn’t know the joke.”

  “At the center…”

  “Yes. Your first day there.”

  Harrison studied the woman he held with such con- scious care. He’d never before been as aware of a fe- male in all the ways he was aware of this one. He didn’t understand it, and if there was one thing he insisted upon in his life, it was understanding all facets of any- thing that touched him.

  He watched her glance at him, a smile flickering un- easily on her lips, then she looked away, refusing to hold his gaze. She was as elusive as a bird flitting through a forest.

  It was one month since they’d met, and he still didn’t understand her reserve. Usually women opened up to him immediately. Maybe that’s why he found most of them shallow and soon lost interest in their obvious ploys. He mentally shook his head at his uncertainty and confusion over this particular female.

  One month. Sometimes it seemed as if he’d been waiting for her. That was how he’d felt the first time he saw her.

  The community-center group had thrown a party to welcome her. They’d been delighted to get someone with her experience to take over as manager of the shoe- string operation.

  Harrison had declined the invitation to attend, but then changed his mind and dropped by to say hello before heading for another meeting. He’d become in- trigued the moment he’d entered the building.

  He’d heard her laughter—throaty, filled with husky delight, a purr of sound that had whetted his appetite to see the woman. He’d entered the manager’s office and stopped dead in his tracks.

  Her hair was shiny and black, inherited from a Latino father, he’d later learned, while her skin was porcelain- fair, her eyes green, gifts from her Scottish mother.

  She had thick eyelashes, all natural, and brows that arched and lifted like a gull’s wing. As tall as a runway model, she walked with a casual feline grace, indifferent to her own charm. He’d gotten hot and bothered the minute he’d seen her. He was that way now.

  He’d taken her out to dinner that first night and had seen her nearly every night since. A whole month of going home to bed, but not to sleep. Instead, he lay there and thought about her, his body aching and rest- less and hard with needs not met.

  When she’d agreed to go to his cabin near Lake Ta- hoe, he’d nearly whooped for joy like a kid.

  Now he was afraid she’d change her mind before they could get there. Sometimes he thought she was afraid of him. An odd thought, that. And sometimes she be- came quiet, withdrawn….

  “I wish we were going to be alone at the cabin. I could call and tell everyone I have the flu,” he sug- gested, and was surprised at the wistfulness of his tone.

  Hell’s bells, did he have a case for her or what? He mocked the feeling but it didn’t go away. For the first time in his life, he wanted a woman exclusively to him- self with no distractions. It was a little unnerving.

  “You have a deal to conclude,” she reminded him.

  He grimaced. “I know. You know what? I don’t give a damn.” And for a second, he didn’t. Then reality set in.

  A year ago, his father had told him the silver mining and jewelry-manufacturing company was in trouble, not because the mine was played out, but because of the slump in the price of silver, a recession in the consumer market, a large debt and poor management. His father had asked for help.

  That had been shocking enough, Then, finding out his father was dying of cancer, probably from years of breathing the arid desert dust stirred up by the mining operations, had been the final pull to bring him back here from his mountain home.

  Call it filial obligation, stubbornness, whatever, he’d felt duty bound to save the company if he could. After his father died, he’d taken over completely, putting his own successful brokerage business on the back burner in order to do so.

  He’d managed to hold things together for the past year. Things were looking up. He’d found a deep- pockets investor.

  Then, last month he’d found the woman of his dreams.

  He tilted her chin up and gazed into her eyes. Was he the man of her dreams? Hard to know. She was such an elusive creature…warm, womanly, solid in his arms…but elusive.

  Isa felt her bones go soft at the look he gave her. “I wonder what the other company directors would say to that,” she tease
d, putting them on the solid ground of commerce and reason.

  Harrison .nuzzled along her temple to her ear. “I don’t give a damn about them, either. I want to be alone with you. There are things I’d like to do….”

  “What?” she asked, hardly capable of speech but unable to hold the word in. His lips burned her neck with passionate kisses.

  “Hold you.” He lifted his head. “I know you’re an adult woman—you feel that way in my arms—but sometimes you look so innocent, so lost in the world, and I want to…”

  “To what?” Her heart pounded as if trying to escape.

  He laughed briefly, ironically. “I want to slay drag- ons for you. Crazy, huh?”

  “Not so crazy. Poetic. Heroic, even.” She smiled and kept her tone light, but she didn’t feel that way.

  She’d been eighteen when she’d made that promise to her mother. Nine years she’d lived with it burning before her, a constant goal in her uncertain world. The weight of it sat on her shoulders along with the worry and love she felt for her brother. She wouldn’t fall for Harrison’s smooth line. But it was hard not to dream of a home filled with love….

  When he moved closer, she let herself be gathered in. His body was muscular and warm, a solid wall of strength under her hands as they roamed his chest, then around to his back.

  “I could take you right now,” he whispered hoarsely. “On the floor, in a chair, standing. It wouldn’t matter. Not to me. But I want more than that for you.”