LITMIR.BIZ

      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 One

      Clair Fletcher eased her rental car onto the shoulder of the deserted country road and came to a stop. She wanted to check the map the rental agency had given her to make sure she was going in the right direction, since it seemed as though she should have reached her destination by now.

      She was in Wyoming, headed to some hole-in-the-wall called Elk Creek—hardly where she would ordinarily have gone for her vacation. Of course she wouldn’t ordinarily have taken a week of her vacation at the beginning of March, either.

      But this was not a recreational trip. She was on a quest.

      According to the map she was still on course, and Elk Creek was only another four or five miles up the road.

      Good, she thought as she refolded the map and tried to ignore the jittery feeling that suddenly hit her stomach. It was the same jittery feeling she got every time she was on her way to a big client to give a presentation. No matter how great her idea for that client’s newest ad campaign, she always suffered an attack of nerves right before facing them.

      But suffering those jitters wouldn’t stop her now any more than the prepresentation jitters stopped her at any other time. Clair Fletcher hadn’t become one of Chicago’s most recognized advertising account executives by letting things stop her.

      She pulled her car back onto the road and pressed the gas pedal with renewed determination.

      I’ll make things right, Kristin, she swore—the same vow she’d made over and over again since learning that her much younger sister had been killed in an apartment fire.

      Clair barely had a basic overview of what had happened to Kristin in the past three years, and even that basic overview had come to her only a few weeks ago. Before that, Clair hadn’t so much as known where Kristin was, let alone that her sister had been pregnant when Clair had last seen her. And she hadn’t known that Kristin had given the baby up for adoption. Clair felt she had only herself to blame for that alienation.

      If Kristin’s son’s adoptive parents—Bill and Kim Miller—hadn’t been killed in a car accident, Clair would likely never have known about Kristin’s death at all. It was only due to the fact that in the Millers’ will they’d requested that, in the event of both their deaths, William’s birth mother be the first person offered the opportunity to raise him. Apparently acting on behalf of the will’s executor, the attorney overseeing the will had dispatched someone to find Kristin, and when that someone had discovered that she, too, was dead, the executor of the will had opted for having Kristin’s family notified in case they didn’t know.

      Notified. That was all. Clair and her father had been notified of Kristin’s death as a simple courtesy. It didn’t mean her family was left with any rights to her son.

      In fact, they might not even have learned she had a son except that the attorney had assumed the family knew and had taken it upon himself to reassure them that arrangements had been made in the will for William’s guardianship and that he was being well cared for.

      That’s where the man Clair was looking for came into the picture.

      Clair didn’t know much about him other than his name, that he lived in Elk Creek, Wyoming, and that he was now her nephew’s legal guardian. But three sudden, untimely deaths were leading her to him. Two accidents, one of which had cost her her sister.

      I’m so, so sorry, Kristin. But I promise I’ll make things right for your William. I won’t leave him to a stranger. I promise….

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