www.millsandboon.co.uk

      Marisa Carroll is the pen name of the award-winning writing team of Carol Wagner and Marian Scharf, two sisters born and raised in northwestern Ohio. They have won several industry awards, including Romantic Times magazine’s Career Achievement Award, and have appeared on numerous bestseller lists, including USA TODAY ’s. Together, Marian and Carol have published over thirty romance novels in the past fifteen years, and have established a goal of fifty published books, a kind of golden anniversary for the partnership. And they intend to stick to it—no matter how many arguments it takes.

      Contents

      PROLOGUE

      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 THIRTEEN

      CHAPTER FOURTEEN

      CHAPTER FIFTEEN

      CHAPTER SIXTEEN

      CHAPTER SEVENTEEN

      CHAPTER EIGHTEEN

      CHAPTER NINETEEN

      EPILOGUE

      PROLOGUE

      SHE COULD SEE the sign as soon as the taxi turned the corner. It was halfway down the block in a row of sand-blasted brick storefronts. It was pink and blue neon, with a baby cradled in a diaper hanging from a stork’s beak. The name Oh, Baby! hung beneath it. The style was nostalgic, in keeping with the twenties-era feel of the street. Trees in wooden planters with waves of red and pink petunias at their bases lined the brick sidewalks, and wrought-iron tables and chairs in front of coffee shops and German delis were shaded by green canvas awnings. People sat at the tables and strolled along the street looking in the windows of art galleries and vintage clothing stores, enjoying the unusually cool and clear early September day.

      The neighborhood had a cozy, small-town feel. It was hard to believe she was only three blocks away from bustling Mayfair Avenue in the heart of downtown Austin, Texas, and the noisy lunchtime crowd at Austin Eats Diner.

      “Park there, driver,” she said, motioning. “In front of the baby shop.” The taxi driver maneuvered into the space and waited for her to make up her mind.

      He caught her eye in the rearview mirror. “You want to get out, ma’am?” he asked. He’d seen how difficult it was for her to open the heavy door when she went into Austin Eats.

      “No, not yet.”

      She had given him fifty dollars when she got into the cab. She didn’t want him to be tempted to leave her stranded somewhere along the route or to worry that she would stiff him for a large fare. “Just let me know when you want to go inside,” he said, and settled back in his seat, content to wait.

      She didn’t know if she was going to go inside. She wanted to, she wanted to as badly as she’d ever wanted anything in her life. But if there was one thing LeeAnn Larrimore had learned in forty-seven hard years, it was that you didn’t always get what you wanted.

      Forty-seven. Not young anymore, but not old enough to die. She looked at her hands, clutching the cardboard box in her lap. They were skeletal, her wrist bones jutting below the sleeves of her shirt. Her whole body looked like that. She was dying of cancer and she didn’t have much time left. But even that sense of urgency couldn’t overcome the reluctance she felt at going inside her daughter’s store.

      What if Lana should recognize her? She didn’t know how that was possible, though. The last time she’d seen her daughter, she had been an infant. For twenty-five years LeeAnn hadn’t even known what had happened to Lana, or her brothers and sister, after she’d left them on the doorstep of Maitland Maternity Clinic with a note pinned to Garrett’s shirt asking Megan Maitland to find a home for her babies.

      It wasn’t until she had been told her condition was terminal that she had given in to that ruthlessly unanswered need to learn their lot in life. It hadn’t been hard. She had gone to the library and searched the Internet for news of Maitland Maternity. Not only the clinic’s high-tech and professional Web site, but all the news outlets she could find. And there had been news, lots of it. Maitland Maternity, it seemed, had been embroiled in a scandal throughout the past year.

      But none of that tangle of false identities and lost sons returned to their families had meant anything to her after she read of the shoot-out that had wounded Garrett Lord, the adopted eldest son of a prominent Austin family, and Megan Maitland’s godson.

      Garrett Lord, adopted son and godson. Garrett. Her son’s name. Her long-dead husband’s name. She had searched further. And there it was, a matter of public record. Four children, infant triplets and a toddler boy, had been adopted by Terrence and Sheila Lord, a well-respected banker and his wife, twenty-five years ago.

      God had answered a desperate young mother’s prayers and given all four of them a loving home. More than that. He had given them parents who could supply them with all their earthly wants and needs.

      But that wasn’t enough now. She had to know if the Lords had also given them love. The kind of love that had driven her to give them up in the first place, rather than subject them to the hand-to-mouth childhood she had experienced. And that her circumstances dictated would be all