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      BARBARA BOSWELL

      loves writing about families. “I guess family has been a big influence on my writing,” she says. “I particularly enjoy writing about how my characters’ family relationships affect them.”

      When Barbara isn’t writing and reading, she’s spending time with her own family—her husband, three daughters and three cats, whom she concedes are the true bosses of their home! She has lived in Europe, but now makes her home in Pennsylvania. She collects miniatures and holiday ornaments, tries to avoid exercise and has somehow found the time to write over twenty category romances.

      Contents

      Chapter One

      Chapter Two

      Chapter Three

      Chapter Four

      Chapter Five

      Chapter Six

      Chapter Seven

      Chapter Eight

      Chapter Nine

      Chapter Ten

      Epilogue

      One

      Jury Duty!

      Luke Minteer was still in shock. As of tomorrow morning he was supposed to be a juror in a civil case. And from the few facts the opposing lawyers had revealed about the case during the juror interview, Luke already deemed it a major time waster. Of his valuable time!

      This, after he’d been such a good sport about the situation. Despite the major inconvenience of being summoned to join his fellow citizens in the potential jury pool, he had dutifully—albeit grudgingly—shown up at the courthouse for the selection. That should have been the end of it, as far as he was concerned.

      He expected to be rejected; he was counting on it. For the first time ever, rejection was infinitely appealing, and his past days as a tarnished hotshot political operative seemed to guarantee it. Who would want the likes of him on a jury?

      Apparently the judge and the attorneys on both sides would—because he’d been selected.

      Desperately he looked around at the other chosen jurors sitting with him in the box, while a bailiff instructed them on their upcoming obligations. They were now expected to put their lives on hold, to be held captive in a courtroom—and all because two idiots, aided and abetted by their mercenary lawyers, had decided to sue each other.

      He was Luke Minteer! He didn’t do jury duty!

      Eight of the chosen were years older than he was. Decades older! Two young men who appeared to be in their early twenties sported multiple tattoos and piercings on various parts of their bodies—their eyebrows, their noses, their lips and of course their ears, with at least ten earrings per lobe.

      Luke glanced at the final juror, the young woman sitting next to him, who was very visibly pregnant. She looked like a teenager, though he knew she couldn’t be. In the state of Pennsylvania, jury duty fell only to those who’d reached the legal age of twenty-one.

      Luke couldn’t gauge how advanced her pregnancy was. Unmarried and not a parent, he steered clear of the mysteries of pregnant women.

      What mattered in this situation was that she was unmistakably pregnant, the young men looked like circus freaks, and the elderly people were very, very old. One of them coughed continually.

      Luke groaned. “I don’t have a prayer of getting out of this.”

      “You just said exactly what I was thinking,” said the pregnant woman, looking surprised.

      Luke was surprised, too. He hadn’t intended to speak his own thoughts aloud like that. Another sign of how rattled he was by his unexpected inclusion.

      “They must be desperate for jurors to pick this crew,” she murmured, now voicing his observation. “I’m due to deliver my baby in six weeks. The lawyers for both sides said the trial would be all wrapped up long before then, though,” she added hopefully.

      “Don’t believe everything you hear,” Luke grumbled. “Especially when a lawyer says it. I worked in politics. I know.”

      “Didn’t you tell them you worked in politics?” Her gray eyes widened. “It seems that would instantly disqualify you.”

      “Why would I be disqualified on those grounds?” Never mind he’d believed the same thing—wrongly. “This case has nothing to do with politics, it’s a battle-of-the-sexes case.”

      “And a really stupid one,” she added glumly.

      “You took the words right out of my mouth.”

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