www.millsandboon.co.uk

      VICTORIA PADE

      is a USA TODAY bestselling author of numerous romance novels. She has two beautiful and talented daughters—Cori and Erin—and is a native of Colorado, where she lives and writes. A devoted chocolate lover, she’s in search of the perfect chocolate chip cookie recipe. For information about her latest and upcoming releases, and to find recipes for some of the decadent desserts her characters enjoy, log on to www.vikkipade.com.

      To Jill Megan Morian, acupuncturist extraordinaire.

      Contents

      Chapter 1

      Chapter 2

      Chapter 3

      Chapter 4

      Chapter 5

      Chapter 6

      Chapter 7

      Chapter 8

      Chapter 9

      Chapter 10

      Chapter 11

      Chapter 12

      Chapter 1

      MEGAN BAILEY DOUBLE-CHECKED her treatment room to make sure everything was ready. Her muscle testing vials were in order and all ac counted for. The Soft Sounds Of Nature CD was in the CD player. There was a crisp sheet over her treatment table and she fluffed the pillow at the head of it just for good measure. Her needles were in the drawer of the corner cupboard where cotton balls and alcohol were also amply stocked. The dimmer on the light switch was working.

      She was all set. All set for her first client in her new office. Hope fully the first of many. Not that she was expecting a sudden surge of business, because she wasn’t. She was realistic. She knew she was only breaking the ice in the small town and that it would take a while to build any kind of practice here.

      After all, Elk Creek, Wyoming, was about as old fashioned, traditional, and conservative a small town as anyone could find anywhere. Which probably didn’t make it the wisest choice for a place to open an office for Megan to practice acupuncture and her sister Annissa to do massage therapy.

      But Elk Creek was the site of the sole piece of property that the Bailey family owned—the twenty acres on which sat the old farm house Megan’s and Annissa’s maternal grandfather had built. It was also the place Megan and Annissa had lived for the longest amount of time—from birth until Megan was twelve and Annissa was eleven.

      That made it seem like home. Like the place to come to when she and Annissa decided they wanted to finally put down roots.

      So that’s what they’d done. They’d moved back to Elk Creek, into the old farm house that was costing them a fortune to get into livable condition, and they’d set up shop in this store front on Center Street.

      But the office had been open for two weeks now and so far Annissa hadn’t had a single call for her services as a massage therapist and herbalist, and Megan’s days had been filled only with putting up posters and a single meeting with the town doctor to introduce herself, lay out her credentials and talk about the uses and success rates of acupuncture and how it might be applied in conjunction with Western medicine or when Western medicine failed. Particularly her specialty—allergy elimination acupuncture.

      We knew it wouldn’t be easy, she reminded herself as she checked the clock on the wall and realized she had less than fifteen minutes until her appointment.

      She and Annissa realized that introducing non-traditional forms of health care was bound to meet some resistance. But after being raised by two eternal hippie-flower children, neither Megan nor Nissa were unfamiliar with being considered out-of-the-norm weirdos and they were determined to make a go of it here no matter what.

      And today could be the start of that, Megan thought. The start of establishing them selves in their old hometown. Especially since Megan’s appointment was with Josh Brimley.

      She had only the vaguest memory of who he was. All she really recalled was that the Brimley family lived on a small ranch down the road from her family’s place and that there had been a lot of them. Six brothers, if she wasn’t mistaken.

      She wasn’t sure in what order they came but she did know that Josh had not been in her grade in elementary school or in Nissa’s class one year behind hers. Nissa had known a Devon Brimley and Megan thought it was Scott Brimley who had been her age, but beyond that neither of them was sure where in the pecking order Josh Brimley fell. Or anything about him. Except that he was now Elk Creek’s sheriff.

      Their paths hadn’t crossed in the three weeks Megan and Annissa had been in town but they were hoping that the very fact that he was the sheriff would carry some weight. Getting a man who held a respected public position to come in for acupuncture seemed like a good way to get word out that she and Nissa could provide valid services to the community.

      At least that was what they were counting on and why Megan felt as if there was a lot riding on this single appointment, and why she’d accepted it for five o’clock on a Saturday afternoon.

      When she was satisfied that she was prepared for her client, she left the treatment room and went into the bathroom to check her appearance. She wanted to make a good first impression so she’d opted for a loose cotton jumper that went nearly to her ankles and covered the white crew necked T-shirt she wore underneath it. She also had on her best clogs and her lucky bracelets—ten thin copper bracelets she wore on her left wrist.

      A quick check in the mirror told her she looked all right but still she ran a brush through her hair until the pale-blond straight strands lay smoothly all the way to the blunt-cut ends that fell about six inches below her shoulders.

      She didn’t wear makeup but she had used a henna mascara to darken her eye lashes so her blue eyes didn’t seem too washed out and she decided it didn’t need any freshening. She was also grateful that her skin had always been good—some thing she attributed to a healthy diet—and that her cheeks had a natural rosiness to them. It helped boost her confidence to see that she appeared fresh-faced even though she hadn’t really done anything since early that morning.

      She did apply an organic moisturizing lip balm to add some gloss to her lips, and she blotted a bit of shine from her thin, straight nose before she judged herself pre sent able and went out to the desk she and Annissa shared in the waiting room of the office.

      Not that they were sharing it at that exact moment. Nissa was doing free chair massages at a Ladies’ League meeting and potluck dinner—again in an effort to spark some interest in their services.

      Two huge windows made up the waiting room’s front wall, leaving it exposed to the street and the street exposed to Megan as she sat behind her desk to gather together the packet of papers she would give the sheriff on his way out after their initial appointment. There were two articles—one explaining acupuncture in general and the other outlining the merits of allergy elimination acupuncture. There was also a brief biography that listed her education and experience, a pay schedule, and another sheet that touted Annissa’s services, along with coupons for a ten-percent discount on either an acupuncture treatment or a massage.

      Megan tapped all the pages into line, added one of her cards and one of Annissa’s to the top left hand corner and stapled the whole packet together just as a rotund man who looked about her age paused outside.

      She smiled at him through the window and he inclined his head, clad in a cowboy hat.

      Was he Josh Brimley?

      There wasn’t a badge of any kind in sight and he wasn’t wearing a uniform. At least not an officer-of-the-law