Über die Autorinnen und Autoren

Linda Lael Miller is a #1 New York Times and USA TODAY bestselling author of more than one hundred  novels. Long passionate about the Civil War buff, she has studied the era avidly and has made many visits to Gettysburg,  where she has witnessed reenactments of the legendary clash between North and South. Linda explores that turbulent time in The Yankee Widow.

With her roots firmly planted in the South, Sherryl Woods has written many of her more than 100 books in that distinctive setting, whether in her home state of Virginia, her adopted state, Florida, or her much-adored South Carolina. Sherryl is best known for her ability to creating endearing small town communities and families. She is the New York Times and USA Today bestselling author of over 75 romances for Silhouette Desire and Special Edition.

Curtiss Ann Matlock loves to share her experience of Southern living, so she fills her stories with rich local color, basic values and Southern country wisdom. Her books have earned rave reviews, been optioned for film and received numerous awards, among them three nominations for the Romance Writers of America's prestigious RITA Award and two Readers' Choice Awards, given by readers from all over the nation. She currently lives in Alabama. http://curtissannmatlock.com/

Jennifer Archer “captures the voices and vulnerabilites of her characters with precision.” (Publisher's Weekly) She has been a RWA Rita finalist and a Romantic Times Bookclub Reviewer’s Choice Award nominee.  Jennifer holds a Business Degree from West Texas A&M University. She can be contacted through her Web site www.jenniferarcher.net. 

Kathleen O’Brien is a former feature writer and TV critic who’s written more than 35 novels. She’s a five-time finalist for the RWA Rita award and a multiple nominee for the Romantic Times awards. Though her books range from warmly witty to suspenseful, they all focus on strong characters and thrilling romantic relationships. They reflect her deep love of family, home and community, and her empathy for the challenges faced by women as they juggle today's complex lives.

Auszug. © Genehmigter Nachdruck. Alle Rechte vorbehalten.

More Than Words Volume 4

Harlequin

Callie Dorset stood in front of her tilted rural mailbox, one of a row of them jutting from the ground like crooked teeth, a sheaf of bills and flyers clasped in one hand. She stared, momentarily trans-fixed, heedless of the downpour.

Cherokee?

It couldn't be. Her childhood pony had been sold off years ago, along with most of the family ranch. Taken somewhere far away, in a gleaming horse trailer from an auction house, never to return.

And yet here he was.

Callie stuck the mail back into the box, slogged down one side of the grassy ditch separating her from the horse and up the other, then stood close to the rusty barbed-wire fence, spellbound.

"Cherokee?" she said, aloud this time, the name barely audible over the fire-sound of the relentless spring rain.

He nickered, nuzzled her shoulder.

Callie felt almost faint, stricken with a hopeless joy. Her hand shook as she reached out to caress his soft, pink-spotted nose.

She repeated his name, wonderstruck.

Blinked a couple of times, in case she was seeing things.

Somehow, he had found his way back.

But how?

Behind her, snug in the ancient Blazer, Callie's seven-year-old daughter, Serena, rolled down the passenger-side window. "Mom!" she shouted, in her sometimes slurred, always exuberant voice. "You're getting wet!"

Callie turned, drenched with rain and tears, and smiled. Nodded. "Shut the window," she called back. "You'll catch cold."

Serena's round face clouded with concern. Her exotic, slanted eyes widened."Doesn't that horse have a house to live in?" she asked, scanning the pasture, which was empty except for a few gnarled apple trees, remnants of an orchard planted so long ago that only ghosts could recall it as it had once been, green-leaved and flourishing with fruit. An old claw-footed bathtub served as a water trough, and someone had dumped a bale of hay nearby. "Serena," Callie said, trying to sound stern and not fooling the child for a moment.

Serena closed the window, but she watched from behind the silvery sheen of steam and water droplets, troubled.

Callie turned back to Cherokee. Stroked his coarse forelock, trying to find it within herself to leave him?again?here in the cold gloom of an ordinary afternoon, and failing utterly.

But she had to do it.

She had to take Serena home. Start supper. Try to figure out how to pay all those bills, lying limp and soggy in the mailbox.

As if he understood her dilemma, Cherokee nudged her once more in the shoulder, then turned and plodded slowly away to stand, distant, hide steaming with moisture, under one of the lonely apple trees.

Callie ran the sleeve of her denim jacket across her face and oriented herself to Serena, her North Star. She retrieved the bills and the flyers from the mailbox, sniffling, and got behind the wheel of the Blazer, cranking up the heat.

"You're wet, Mom," Serena reiterated sagely, visibly relaxing now that Callie was back in the car.

Callie tried to smile, wanting to reassure the child, but fell short. She'd seen so much loss in her thirty-one years?her parents, most of the homestead, Denny?and Cherokee. There were times when it was impossible to pretend it didn't matter, all that sorrow, even for Serena's sake.

Callie looked back once more, knowing she shouldn't, and saw her old friend watching her. She bit her lower lip, then shoved the Blazer into gear and made a wide turn in the mud of the road, headed for home.

The house was small, its shingles gray, its porch slanting a little to one side, like the mailbox she'd just left. The roof needed patching, and the yard was overgrown, but the windows glowed with warm welcome, because Callie had left the lights on when she drove to town to pick Serena up after school. It was an extravagance, burning electricity that way, but she was glad she'd done it.

Inside, she tossed the mail onto the antique table beside the front door and peeled off her wet jacket. Though considerably drier than Callie, Serena shook herself like a dog just climbing out of a lake, laughing.

She was such a happy child, in spite of so many things.

"Cocoa!" Serena crowed. "Let's have cocoa, with marshmallows!"

"Good idea," Callie agreed, bending to kiss the top of her daughter's head. Serena's hair was chestnut-brown, just like Denny's had been. She had his green eyes, too. "Just let me change."

She helped Serena out of her pink nylon coat, hung it on the peg next to the jean jacket.

Five minutes later, wearing slippers and a bathrobe, her blond, chin-length hair toweled into disarray comical enough to make her daughter point and laugh, Callie met Serena in the tiny kitchen at the back. Serena had already got the milk out of the refrigerator, taken the marshmallows from a pantry shelf and placed two mugs carefully on the table.

"Who does he belong to?" Serena asked.

Callie, busy measuring cocoa powder into a saucepan, stopped, turned to look at her only child, now sitting in her usual chair at the table, legs swinging.

"The horse," Serena clarified.

Callie's throat thickened painfully. "The Martins, I guess," she said. She didn't know her neighbors well; they were renters, according to the local grapevine, and not the sort to mix. When they'd moved in a few months ago, at the tail end of a long, ragged winter, Callie had made a chicken casserole, and she and Serena had gone over to welcome them, wending their way between U-Haul trucks to knock at the front door. No one had answered, and Serena, hoping for a playmate her own age, had been gravely disappointed.

"He's lonesome," Serena said sadly.

Callie's eyes burned. She was standing in a warm kitchen, with her daughter, the person she loved most in all the world, but her heart was still out there in the rain, under the dripping limbs of an apple tree. How had Cherokee come to belong to those people? What hard, winding, convoluted road had led him back, so close, but not-quite-home? He must have arrived recently, or she'd have seen him as she drove to town.

She couldn't speak, so she merely nodded, acknowledging Serena's remark, and went back to her cocoa-making. After the hot chocolate came supper, the beans-and-franks combo Serena loved, and "homework." Serena attended a special education program,with only six other children at the local elementary school. Two, including Serena, had Down syndrome; the others were mildly autistic. Callie was grateful for the program and the people who ran it, under-funded though it was. It gave Serena a place to go, something to be part of, in the larger world, and made it possible for Callie to earn a living.

Not that waiting tables at Happy Dan's Café was much of a living, but it kept the electricity on and the property taxes paid and food in the refrigerator, at least, and all the customers were long-time friends, people she had always known. She had to do a lot of juggling financially, but Callie didn't feel sorry for herself, and neither did anybody else who mattered.

Sure, the roof of the ranch house leaked and the old barn out back looked as though it might fall over at any moment. She had to shuffle the bills like a deck of cards and deal a sparse hand to be paid every month.

But she had Serena, and that made her rich.

She and Serena washed and dried...