Read For the Girls' Sake Online
Authors: Janice Kay Johnson
For the Girls' Sake
Can they make this marriage work?
Lynn Chanak is living the nightmare every mother fears. There was a mix-up at the hospital. Her baby
isn’t
hers. And the only way she can have the baby she gave birth to and keep the child she loves is to marry Adam Landry—a man she doesn’t even know.
Adam was devastated when his Jenny died. And his only consolation was their daughter. But as much as he loves Rose, he can’t stand to think that the child Jenny carried for nine months will grow up without him. If marrying a stranger is what it takes to have both his daughters, then that’s what he’ll do. Even though he still loves Jenny.…
Dear Reader,
Home, family, community and love. These are the values we cherish most in our lives—the ideals that ground us, comfort us, move us. They certainly provide the perfect inspiration around which to build a romance collection that will touch the heart.
And so we are thrilled to offer you the Harlequin Heartwarming series. Each of these special stories is a wholesome, heartfelt romance imbued with the traditional values so important to you. They are books you can share proudly with friends and family. And the authors featured in this collection are some of the most talented storytellers writing today, including favorites such as Janice Kay Johnson, Margaret Daley and Shelley Galloway. We’ve selected these stories especially for you based on their overriding qualities of emotion and tenderness, and they center around your favorite themes—children, weddings, second chances, the reunion of families, the quest to find a true home and, of course, sweet romance.
So curl up in your favorite chair, relax and prepare for a heartwarming reading experience!
Sincerely,
The Editors
Janice Kay Johnson
The author of more than sixty books for children and adults, Janice Kay Johnson is especially well known for her Harlequin Superromance novels about love and family—about the way generations connect and the power our earliest experiences have on us throughout life. Her 2007 novel
Snowbound
won a RITA® Award from Romance Writers of America for Best Contemporary Series Romance. A former librarian, Janice raised two daughters in a small rural town north of Seattle, Washington. She loves to read and is an active volunteer and board member for Purrfect Pals, a no-kill cat shelter.
Janice Kay Johnson
For the Girls’ Sake
Contents
CHAPTER ONE
O + O
DOES NOT
= B. So why was she even nervous?
Oblivious to the salt-scented breeze and the familiar whoosh of the broken surf, Lynn Chanak stared at the envelope in her hand.
Open it,
she told herself.
Then you can quit worrying about nothing.
And nothing was just what it would prove to be.
That Portland lab had mixed up somebody else’s blood with Shelly’s. It was dumb to let the results shake her even for a minute. Poor Shelly had had to endure being stuck with a needle again, which still made Lynn mad, but it was done, over with, and now with the results from the new lab she’d be able to refute her ex-husband’s ridiculous accusation.
There was no way a second lab would make the same kind of mistake. Lynn and Brian both had Type O blood; she’d once been foolish enough to think that meant they were made for each other.
With both parents having Type O blood, Shelly had to have the same.
So why not open the envelope?
"Mama!" Lynn’s three-and-a-half-year-old daughter tugged at her sleeve. "See what I found?"
The small hand cupped a flame-red, wave-polished chunk of agate that beachcombing tourists would have killed for.
Lynn smiled in delight and hugged her daughter. "That’s a pretty one! You’ve got sharp eyes!"
She sat on a gray, winter-tossed log on the beach, the pile of mail in her hand. This was a daily ritual for her and Shelly when the shop was closed. Wait for the mail, don sweatshirts against the sharp breeze, and then walk the two blocks from home to the rocky beach, famous for the sea stacks that reared offshore. Otter Beach had been a tiny lumber town until the Oregon coast became a favorite tourist destination. Now streets were lined with art galleries and antique shops, and prime beachfront real estate was taken by inns and bed-and-breakfasts.
Lynn’s bookstore was one block over from the main street. The upstairs of the old house was home, the downstairs her business. During tourist season, she stayed open six days a week. By the time winter storms pounded the coast, she only bothered to open from Thursday through Sunday for locals and for the few hardy souls who came for romantic weekends and beachcombing after storms deposited Japanese floats and agates on the shore.
"I’ll give this to Daddy next time he comes," Shelly announced. "C’n you save it for him, Mommy?"
"You bet, sweetie," agreed Lynn, hiding her dismay. How was she going to explain to a three-year-old why Daddy wasn’t visiting anymore?
Giggling, Shelly wormed her hand into the pocket of Lynn’s faded, zip-front sweatshirt to deposit her find. The chunk of agate joined the crab claw and the mussel shell entwined with dried seaweed that she’d already collected.
For a moment Lynn watched as Shelly wandered away. She looked so cute in her denim overalls and rubber-toed sneakers, her mink-brown ponytail straight and sleek. Lynn tried hard to see what Brian did, but how could she? This was her
daughter.
So what if her own hair was a warm, wavy chestnut-brown, if Brian was blond? So what if Shelly’s eyes were brown, while Lynn’s were green and Brian’s blue? Kids didn’t always look just like their parents. In fact, they hardly ever did. The genes that created a person were like...like the threads of color in a Persian carpet, thousands of bits of wool, woven together with a complexity that defied any ability to say that a certain blue came from such and such a sheep. Shelly might look like some forgotten great-grandmother. Did it
matter
that her face wasn’t a reflection of her father’s?
Apparently it did to Brian. He’d always been unreasonably jealous, both before they were married—when Lynn considered possessiveness romantic—and after. The marriage had been a mistake, a terrible mistake. Guilt ate at Lynn every time she thought about Brian, because she knew the failure was hers. She shouldn’t have married him. He was right when he had believed she didn’t love him enough.
But she had never been unfaithful. There hadn’t been another man; probably never would be, now that she knew she wasn’t capable of the kind of passion a lifetime commitment required. She hadn’t given Brian any reason to suspect she was seeing someone, so it outraged her that now he should claim Shelly wasn’t his.
Lynn bitterly resented having to put a three-year-old through the scary process of having blood drawn, but she’d done it. Not just because she needed Brian to keep paying the child support, but also because Shelly needed her dad.
So why wasn’t she tearing open the envelope? Lynn wrenched her gaze from Shelly, crouched on her heels ten yards down the beach staring with intense fascination at something, and studied the return address on the envelope. McElvoy Laboratories, Seattle, Washington.
A different lab. Lynn hadn’t taken Shelly back to their regular clinic for the second blood draw. She’d driven to Lincoln City. Of course she should have marched back into their doctor’s office, waving that stupid piece of paper and proclaiming her indignation at the mistake. She shouldn’t have had to pay for the second round of analysis. But she’d felt...cautious.
She made a face. Gun-shy. Brian had made her paranoid. She didn’t want to give him any ammunition. If he knew about the first results, he wouldn’t believe the second ones. He’d want more, instead of accepting the truth when she handed it to him.
Anyway,
a voice whispered,
what if it
wasn’t
a mistake? Shelly
doesn’t
look like either parent.
"Oh, right!" she said out loud. For goodness’ sake, she’d been awake and present during her awful labor. Sure, because of the hemorrhaging, she hadn’t seen her newborn daughter for the first hours, but then they’d laid the tiny red-faced baby at her breast, and she’d held her and loved her ever since. And so had Brian! Only, now he had to get suspicious. Or cheap. He was late sometimes with the child-support check. Think what a good excuse this would be not to pay at all!
Lynn glanced up again; her daughter was in the exact same spot. A miniature tide pool, probably. Shelly had learned not to take living creatures from them, only to observe. She’d seen the difference between the rich color of a sea star clinging to a rock beneath the water and the dull hard body of a dead preserved one. She loved the scamper of tiny crabs, the dart of brown sandpipers, the hoarse roar of sea lions on the rocks offshore. This was home, magical and familiar at the same time.
Like having a child. For fleeting moments, Lynn saw through her daughter’s eyes and became three years old again. Wondering, awed, frightened, reassured by simple comforts.
Other times, Lynn was perplexed by this complete, small person her daughter seemed to be. It was as if she’d been born whole, finished, and all Lynn could do was open the world to her. The idea that a parent could shape her child was as silly as believing the same blood type meant two people were mysteriously akin.
Open it.
Lynn couldn’t understand her reluctance. She kept fingering that envelope. She’d peeked at all the bills, even flipped through a couple of publishers’ catalogs as if their spring lists mattered more than the blood that traced pale blue lines beneath the translucent skin of her daughter’s wrists, that beaded crimson when Shelly skinned her knee. Lifeblood.