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       www.millsandboon.co.uk

      MARIE FERRARELLA, a USA TODAY bestselling and RITA® Award-winning author, has written over one hundred and fifty novels for Mills & Boon, some under the name Marie Nicole. Her romances are beloved by fans worldwide. Visit her website at www.marieferrarella. com.

       Available in September 2010

       from Mills & Boon®

       Special Moments™

       The Texas Billionaire’s Bride

      by Crystal Green

      &

       The Texas Bodyguard’s Proposal

      by Karen Rose Smith

       Kids on the Doorstep

      by Kimberly Van Meter

      &

       Cop on Loan

      by Jeannie Watt

       The Texan’s Tennessee Romance

      by Gina Wilkins

      &

       The Rancher & the Reluctant Princess

      by Christine Flynn

       Loving the Right Brother

      by Marie Ferrarella

       A Weaver Baby

      by Allison Leigh

       A Small-Town Temptation

      by Terry McLaughlin

       A Not-So-Perfect Past

      by Beth Andrews

      To

      Gail Chasan,

      for being kind enough

      to include me in this

      celebration of families

      and for always being

      such a mensch.

      Chapter One

      There was wilderness everywhere she looked. For all intents and purposes, civilization had vanished since she’d left Anchorage.

       Nothing’s changed. Except for me.

      After all this time, it seemed odd to return to a place she’d sworn she’d never set foot in again. A place that she had spent the first eighteen years of her life dreaming about leaving. And when she finally had, there’d been tears. Tears that had nothing to do with anticipated nostalgia.

      They were the kind of tears generated by a broken heart.

      In a way, it was a little like trying on an old sweater you knew you no longer wanted. Even so, the familiar feel of it against your skin evoked bittersweet memories you were heretofore certain you had either forgotten or at least successfully blocked out of your mind.

      She didn’t want to remember.

      But wasn’t that why she was coming back? Because she remembered?

      Irena Yovich stared out the window, watching Hades, Alaska, growing from a speck to a 500-citizen town as one of the several “taxiplanes” owned by Kevin Quintano and his wife, June, drew closer.

      The young woman piloting the small passenger plane was June Yearling, the best damn mechanic for two hundred miles the year that Irene had left Hades for Seattle and college. Everyone in Hades knew that if it had an engine, June could fix it. And now, according to what June was saying on this hundred-mile run from Anchorage to Hades, she was not only a successful businesswoman but she was a wife and a mother of two, to be expanded to three in the not-too-distant future.

      June had been her best friend once. She’d been one of the very few who hadn’t gone behind her back to betray her. Possibly the only one, Irena thought with a trace of cynicism born in the wake of her rude awakening ten years ago.

      “But when I heard you needed a ride from the airport, I told Kevin there was no way anyone else but me was flying the plane to bring you to Hades. He likes to give me a hard time because he doesn’t think a woman in my condition should be piloting a plane, but I got him to give in.” June ended with a gleeful, triumphant laugh. Her voice swelled with affection as she added, “Kevin’s really a good guy.”

      Undoubtedly the last of a dying, if not dead, breed, Irena thought.

      Since, as far as she could see, her friend wasn’t showing and, more to the point, when June had thrown her arms around her and hugged her, June’s stomach hadn’t made contact first, she couldn’t help asking, “Just how far along are you?”

      “Only three months,” June tossed over her shoulder, then added, in a somewhat quieter voice, “and four weeks.”

      Irena felt just the slightest bit of a smile touch her lips. June always had a way of twisting things in her favor. “Unless my math’s totally off, that’s actually four months.”

      June sighed dramatically. “I know, I know, but I just had to see if it was you or someone else with the same name.”

      Irena laughed out loud for the first time since she had gotten her grandfather’s phone call yesterday morning, telling her that Ryan Hayes was dead by his own hand. Thanks to June, some of the tension drained from her.

      Temporarily.

      “And just how many Irena Yoviches could there be?” she asked her old friend.

      She saw June’s shoulders rise and fall beneath her fur-lined parka. “In Alaska, maybe not all that many, but in Russia, who knows? There’s no telling, but one of them might have wanted to check out a place that was named after hell and is frozen over for six months out of the year, cut off from the rest of the world except for our little passenger service. And the doctors’ planes, of course. Did I tell you that April’s married to a doctor?” June said, referring to her older sister. “Jimmy’s Kevin’s younger brother,” she added quickly. “He came to Hades to visit their sister Alison. She’s a nurse here—and married to Jean Luc. Max married their sister Lily. They met when she came up here to visit, too. Come for a visit and stay forever. We’re thinking of making it a city motto,” June teased.

      God, the people in Hades certainly had been busy,

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