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      MILLS & BOON

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      JOAN ELLIOTT PICKART

      is the author of over eighty-five novels. When she isn’t writing, she enjoys reading, gardening and attending craft shows on the town square with her young daughter, Autumn. Joan also has three all-grown-up daughters and three fantastic grandchildren. Joan and Autumn live in a charming small town in the high pine country of Arizona.

      For my grandsons,

       Jeremiah, Frankie and Wolf,

       The next generation

      Contents

      Prologue

      Chapter One

      Chapter Two

      Chapter Three

      Chapter Four

      Chapter Five

      Chapter Six

      Chapter Seven

      Chapter Eight

      Chapter Nine

      Chapter Ten

      Chapter Eleven

      Epilogue

      Prologue

      Home, Mark Maxwell thought as he set his heavy suitcase down. He was finally back in Boston after living and working in Paris for what had proven to be a very long year.

      The research project he’d been invited to take part in had been fascinating and challenging, and it had certainly been an honor to participate. The problem with his stay had been that the preconceived vision most Americans had about the city had turned out to be absolutely true. Everywhere he’d gone, it seemed, he had been surrounded by couples who were deeply in love.

      Maybe the same could be said of Boston, but he’d sure never noticed it if it was. He’d gone to Paris with a mind-set which no doubt made him more aware of the love-in-bloom, or some such thing. To his own self-disgust, he’d also been thrown back in time to when he, too, had been in love, had lost his heart and youthful innocence to a sweet smile and sparkling brown eyes.

      They had made plans for a future together, a forever, had talked for hours about the home they would share, the children they would create, the happiness that would be theirs until death parted them.

      But none of it had been real…not to her.

      She’d smashed his heart to smithereens, leaving him stunned, bitter and determined never to love again.

      He’d been convinced that he’d dealt with those painful ghosts, had long since forgotten her and what she had done to him. But while in Paris in the crush of the clinging couples, the pairs, the twosomes, the old memories had risen to the fore, taunting him, making him face the realization that he really had neither forgiven nor forgotten her.

      He strode across the living room toward the kitchen. While he’d been gone, he’d rented his apartment to his buddy Eric, a recently divorced doctor at the hospital, and Eric had told Mark on the phone the other night that he’d have some food in the refrigerator when Mark returned. He’d also put the magazines and junk mail that had come in Mark’s absence in a box in the corner of the kitchen.

      As Mark scrambled four eggs in a frying pan, adding shredded cheese and chunks of ham, he inhaled the delicious aroma, then frowned as he scooped the mound of eggs onto a plate and carried it to the table at the end of the kitchen. He poured himself a glass of milk, then settled onto a chair and took a bite of the hot, very-needed food.

      Yep, he thought, after a nourishing meal and hours of sleep, he’d be the same ol’ Dr. Mark Maxwell who’d left Boston a year ago.

      But he was still frowning as he stared into space as he chewed, then swallowed.

      The same ol’ Dr. Mark Maxwell, his mind echoed.

      Dr. Mark Maxwell, who had avoided becoming involved in any kind of serious relationship with a woman for the past fourteen years.

      Dr. Mark Maxwell, who had buried himself in his work, who was the whiz kid of medical research at only thirty-two-years-old.

      Dr. Mark Maxwell, who was just as lonely here in Boston

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