LITMIR.BIZ

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wouldn’t trade the time, Zack. I wouldn’t give back those years of friendship, not for anything. They made us who we are. They made us right for each other.”

      “I don’t know if you can ever know how much your friendship has meant to me, how much your love means to me now. You’re the only person I’ve shared myself with in so long, the only person I’ve wanted to share with. Without you … there would have been nothing in my life but work. You brought color, flavor.”

      “Cupcakes.”

      “That, too. And as you can see, I need someone to provide them for me because I’m useless at doing it myself. You make my life worth living, Clara. You make me better.”

      “I can say the same for you. I never felt beautiful, never felt special, until you.”

      “You’re all those things. Never doubt it.”

      “I never will again.”

      “I have something for you,” he said.

      She smiled through a sheen of tears. “I love presents.”

      “I know.” He reached into his pocket and pulled out a box. This one wasn’t black and velvet. It was pink silk with orange blossoms. “Because you like flowers. And pink.” This was for her. Only for Clara.

      “I do,” she said, opening the lid with shaking fingers. The ring inside was an antique style, a round diamond in the center and smaller diamonds encircling the band.

      “It reminded me of you,” he said. “Mostly just because it’s beautiful. And so are you.”

      She laughed through new tears and held her hand out. “That’s so lame, Zack.”

      “I know. It is. It’s really lame. I make bad jokes sometimes, but you know that. You know everything there is to know about me, and if you can do that and love me anyway, I consider myself the luckiest man on earth.”

      “I do,” she whispered. “Put it on me.”

      He took the ring out of the box and got on his knee in front of her. “Will you marry me? Clara Davis, will you be my wife, in every way. Will you understand that you are first for me, in every way. Will you love me, and let me love you?”

      She wiped a tear away that was sliding down her cheek. “I will.”

      “And will you bake me cupcakes for as long as we both shall live?”

      A watery laugh escaped her lips. “Without a walnut in sight.”

      He stood and kissed her on the lips. “I love you. As my friend, my future wife, my everything.”

      “I love you, too.” She kissed him again.

      “Would you mind if I stayed the night with you?” he asked, his lips hovering near hers.

      “One night only?” she said, turning to him.

      “No. It would never be enough. I want you every night for the rest of our lives, does that work for you?”

      “Yes, Zack. I think a lifetime sounds about right.”

       EPILOGUE

      CLARA Parsons looked at the mostly uneaten cake. Three tiers of blue frosting that had been perfectly smooth just a few hours earlier, before two, chubby hands had taken some fistfuls out of the side.

      “That was the most extravagant cake I’ve ever seen at a one-year-old’s birthday party,” Zack said, looking down at the crumbs all over the kitchen floor. “And I don’t think Colton ate half of it. He mostly just spread it around.”

      “That’s what kids do, Zack.”

      “He’s asleep. I think we put him in a sugar coma. Anyway, you only get one first birthday, I suppose. You might as well live it up.”

      Clara looked at the cake again. “This reminds me of another cake I made that didn’t really get eaten. A wedding cake.”

      “I’m still very thankful that one didn’t end up being used for its intended purpose.”

      “Oh, so am I. Because then we wouldn’t have had our wedding cake, or our wedding.”

      “Or our son,” Zack said.

      “So, all things considered, it was a pretty important uneaten cake.”

      Zack advanced on her and pulled her up against his body, resting his forehead against hers. Her heart stopped for a moment, like it always did when she looked at him. Like it had from the moment she’d first met him.

      “A lot has changed since that day,” he said, dropping a kiss on her lips.

      “A whole lot,” she agreed.

      “Do you know what’s stayed the same?”

      “What’s that?”

      “You’re still my best friend.”

      She kissed him, deeper this time, love expanding her chest. “You’re my best friend, too.”

       Pirate Tycoon, Forbidden Baby

       Janette Kenny

      For as long as JANETTE KENNY can remember, plots and characters have taken up residence in her head. Her parents, both voracious readers, read her the classics when she was a child. That gave birth to a deep love of literature, and allowed her to travel to exotic locales – those found between the covers of books. Janette’s artist mother encouraged her yen to write. As an adolescent she began creating cartoons featuring her dad as the hero, with plots that focused on the misadventures on their family farm, and she stuffed them in the nightly newspaper for him to find. To her frustration, her sketches paled in comparison with her captions.

      Though she dabbled with articles, she didn’t fully embrace her dream to write novels until years later, when she was a busy cosmetologist making a name for herself in her own salon. That was when she decided to write the type of stories she’d been reading – romances.

      Once the writing bug bit, an incurable passion consumed her to create stories and people them. Still, it was seven more years and that many novels before she saw her first historical romance published. Now that she’s also writing contemporary romances for Mills & Boon she finally knows that a full-time career in writing is closer to reality.

      Janette shares her home and free time with a chow-shepherd mix pup she rescued from the pound, who aspires to be a lap dog. She invites you to visit her website at www.jankenny.com and she loves to hear from readers – e-mail her at [email protected]

       CHAPTER ONE

      KIRA MONTGOMERY pressed her forehead against the massage table’s padded face cradle and shifted again to loosen the tension knotting her shoulders and neck. Impossible.

      Her masseuse had “stepped out for a moment.” The term obviously meant something different to her than it did to Kira. Leaving a client waiting fifteen minutes was unsuitable.

      Chateau Mystique couldn’t afford more bad press. The tragic deaths and ensuing scandals associated with the five-star hotel on the Las Vegas strip had hurt business. Hurt her in ways she’d never imagined.

      To make her life more of a jumble, her doctor had confirmed the one thing

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