LITMIR.BIZ

      Dear Reader,

      Welcome back to Grantham and back to school! Ever since writing Falling for the Teacher, I have wanted to tell Sarah and Hunt’s story. Sarah intrigued me because on the surface she looked like someone in control. But I had a feeling there was more lurking underneath. What I found was a woman like many of us, someone who has made choices in life, but still wasn’t sure where she was going. In short, she was in search of her story. By contrast, Hunt was someone who had his life all figured out, only to find it pulled out from under him. He realized he needed to change direction, but to where and for how long? In essence, he questioned his future. Together, then, Sarah and Hunt were just too good to leave in the background!

      Lastly, cancer has an insidious way of touching many families. This book deals with the impact of lymphoma. For those readers seeking more information about blood cancers, the Leukemia and Lymphoma Society provides helpful and unbiased information at www.leukemia-lymphoma.org.

      Best,

      Tracy Kelleher

      Family Be Mine

      Tracy Kelleher

       www.millsandboon.co.uk

      ABOUT THE AUTHOR

      Tracy sold her first story to a children’s magazine when she was ten years old. Writing was clearly in her blood, though fiction was put on hold while she received degrees from Yale and Cornell, traveled the world, worked in advertising, became a staff reporter and later a magazine editor. She also managed to raise a family. Is it any surprise she escapes to the world of fiction?

      Many thanks to Dr. Morton Coleman for sharing his expertise and understanding.

      CONTENTS

      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

      CHAPTER FIFTEEN

      CHAPTER SIXTEEN

      CHAPTER SEVENTEEN

      CHAPTER EIGHTEEN

      CHAPTER NINETEEN

      CHAPTER TWENTY

      CHAPTER TWENTY-ONE

      CHAPTER TWENTY-TWO

      CHAPTER TWENTY-THREE

      CHAPTER TWENTY-FOUR

      CHAPTER TWENTY-FIVE

      CHAPTER ONE

      May…

      “YOU KNOW, SARAH DEAR, today’s blessed event makes up for that whole Brooklyn calamity…” Penny Halverson bit her bottom lip. “No, I promised I wouldn’t bring that up. What I mean to say is that you having a wedding in the Grantham University Chapel is…is…like a dream come true. To think that a member of our family is about to be married in a place like that! It’s practically like being in England! Or Disney World!”

      Penny dabbed the corner of her eye with the all-cotton hanky that she had ironed just before packing her suitcase for the flight from Minneapolis to Grantham, New Jersey. Even within the confines of the church vestry, the mullioned windows and ornate woodwork conveyed the Gothic grandeur of the Ivy League university chapel. But the fact that Penny’s face shone with a rosy hue had nothing to do with the light piercing the stained glass windows. It was the glow of a mother’s joy—and maybe unexpected heat of this early May day.

      Outside, visible through an open door, were beds of Rembrandt tulips edging the green of the courtyard. Their variegated petals flopped in exhaustion. They had managed to survive the ravenous appetite of the local deer population, perhaps a show of respect by the animal kingdom for this hallowed spot, but they were now succumbing to the heat.

      “Oh, I know I promised, but I can’t help it.” Penny pursed her lips and squinted her eyes in a mixture of remorse and pride. “It more than makes up for the embarrassment that your father felt when you…ah…when you…ah.”

      “When I was living with Earl? Is that what you’re trying to say, Mom?” Sarah Halverson rolled her shoulders backward and worked at adjusting the neckline on her strapless wedding dress. The fitted bodice tapered to hug her long torso a tad too tightly for comfort. “I know you and Dad didn’t approve, and I’m sorry. But, you know, it’s really not a crime,” she said as she yanked at the stays under her arms and hunched her shoulders together to try to get all the pieces to work in harmony.

      “Practically everybody I know is doing it or has done it at one time.”

      Actually, that wasn’t true. Take her two best friends. Katarina had come back to Grantham to recuperate from a terrible shooting, found the love of her life, and was now happily married to financial wizard Ben Brown. Ben pretended to be cantankerous but was really a pussycat, a pussycat with a teenage son. Besides acquiring a family, Katarina had also started a new business of advising retirees on total financial and lifestyle planning.

      And her other best friend Julie was a dedicated obstetrician, way too busy to form any lasting relationship—or so she claimed. More likely, she was too tall for most men and too…well…frank. “I’m not brutal, merely blunt,” Julie would protest over her third Rolling Rock. Julie pooh-poohed high-priced beers, describing microbrews as “fancy labels for dilettante, candy-assed drinkers.”

      Sarah, who cherished Julie more than most, found that proclamation more than blunt. After all, her fiancé and very-soon-to-be husband, Zach, thought of himself as something of an expert on high-end beers. He regularly lectured Sarah on the pros and cons of various Belgium brews. “I’m just trying to expand your horizons,” he was fond of saying after a typical fifteen-minute discourse.

      Not that Sarah minded. Because while she might chide her mother about her parochial concerns, the truth of the matter was, Earl had been a deadbeat. Back in her callow youth, Sarah had thought Earl was a rebel who had needed to burst the bonds of rural Minnesota to pursue a rock music career. But Earl hadn’t been a rebel. Just lazy. He had demonstrated a congenital failure to expend any effort at anything that required work, including his music. And as Sarah quickly

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