Harlequin Romance October 2015 Box Set by Cara Colter

Author:Cara Colter
Language: eng
Format: epub
ISBN: 9781459290860
Publisher: Harlequin
Published: 2015-01-15T00:00:00+00:00

CHAPTER TWO

THE SHOCK WAS MIND-NUMBING.

The pain this stranger was feeling was so powerful that Alice could feel it seeping into her own body to mix with the fear of knowing that she was alone with an angry man who was capable of violence. Compassion was winning over fear, however. His sister had been married to André Laurent. Presumably she’d been in the car with him in that fatal crash. She wanted to reach out and offer comfort in some way to Julien. To touch him...?

No. That would be the last thing he would accept. She could see the agonised way he was standing with every muscle clenched so that male pride could quell the need to express emotion. With a hand shading his eyes to hide from the world.

And self-pity edged its way into the overwhelming mix.

Alice had lost something here, too.

Hope.

She’d tried to keep it under control. Ever since she’d finally found the courage to return to the cottage that had been the only real home she’d ever known because it had been time she faced the memories. Time to accept that she’d lost her only family and that she had to find a way to move forward properly from her grief. To embrace life and every wonderful thing it had to offer and to dream of a happy future.

It had been time to sort through her mother’s things and keep only those that would be precious mementos.

She’d grown up in that tiny house with two women. Her mother and her grandmother. Strong women who’d protected her from the disapproval of an entire village. Women who had loved her enough to make her believe that the shameful circumstances of her birth didn’t matter. That she was a gift to the world simply because she existed.

Maybe it had been a bad choice to make the visit so close to Christmastime, when the huge tree was lit up in the village square and the shops had long since decorated their windows with fairy-lights and sparkling tinsel. The sadness that this would be her first Christmas with no family to share it with had been the undercurrent threatening to wash away the new direction she was searching for, and finding that envelope that had provided the information about who her father was had given that undercurrent the strength of an ocean rip.

Had given her that hope that had exploded into something huge the moment she’d walked into this room and seen that portrait. She had been ready to love this man—her unknown father.

She’d still had a family member. Someone who’d been denied any connection with the women who had raised her but with a connection to herself that had to mean something. She was a part of this stranger.

His daughter.

It felt quite possible she had loved him already. And now she had lost him before she’d even had the chance to meet him. She would never know if there were parts of her personality she might have inherited from that side of her gene pool.

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