MILLS & BOON

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      SHERRYL WOODS

      has written more than seventy-five novels. She also operates her own bookstore, Potomac Sunrise, in Colonial Beach, Virginia. If you can’t visit Sherryl at her store, then be sure to drop her a note at P.O. Box 490326, Key Biscayne, FL 33149, or check out her Web site at www.sherrylwoods.com.

      To Pat and Mark and all the others

       who went through the travails of

       Hurricane Andrew right along with me…

       here’s to clear skies from now on.

      Contents

      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

      Epilogue

      Chapter One

      Help me. Please help me. The words echoed in Allison’s head, though she had no idea if she had actually spoken them aloud.

      Everything around her was eerily silent, but it had been that way long before Hurricane Gwen, with its 130-mile-an-hour winds, had struck Miami just after midnight. In fact, her world had been silent for nearly fifteen years now, a long time to go without hearing her parents’ voices, a long time for someone who had studied music to miss the lyrics of a favorite love song…an even longer time to adjust to a life of perpetual quiet.

      Watching the newscasts about the approaching storm, she had read the lips of the veteran meteorologist and sensed, rather than heard, his increasing panic over the size and force of the storm and its direct aim at Miami.

      Then the power had gone out, and she had been left in total darkness to wonder what was happening outside. She’d tried to tell herself it was beyond her control, that she ought to go to bed and attempt to sleep, but for some reason she had stayed right where she was, on the living room sofa, waiting for morning to arrive. Unable to listen to a radio for updates on the storm’s progress, she had simply replayed the last reports over and over in her mind and prayed she had done everything she could to protect herself and her home.

      Anyone who’d lived in South Florida for any length of time knew the precautions to take. From the start of the hurricane season in the spring until it ended in November, they were repeated with each tropical storm that formed in the Atlantic.

      Allie had arrived from the Midwest only a few months earlier, but she was a cautious woman. After living her whole life with the surprise factor of devastating tornadoes, she was grateful for the advance notice most hurricanes gave from the instant they began to brew off the coast of Africa. Unlike some newcomers, she took the potential threat of these powerful storms seriously.

      At the very start of her first hurricane season, she had read every article on preparedness. She had installed electric storm shutters on her pretty little Spanish-style house before she’d spent a dime on the decorating and landscaping she wanted to do. She had a garage filled with bottled water, a drawer jammed with batteries for her flashlight, plus stashes of candles and canned goods. She had double what anyone recommended, enough to share with neighbors who weren’t as prepared.

      She suppressed a hysterical laugh as she wondered where all of those precious supplies were now, buried right here in the rubble with her, but defiantly out of reach and useless. As for the house in which she had taken such pride, there appeared to be little left of it but the debris that held her captive. Obviously, despite all she’d done, it hadn’t been enough.

      It was pitch-dark, though she couldn’t tell for certain if that was because of the time of day or the amount of debris trapping her. She suspected the former since every once in a while rain penetrated the boards and broken furniture that were pinning her down in painful misery.

      Every part of her body ached. She had cuts and scrapes everywhere. The most intense pain was in her left leg, which was twisted at an odd angle under the weight of a heavy beam. She had no idea how long she had been unconscious, but sensed it couldn’t have been more than minutes. Her stomach still churned from the sudden shock of shutters ripping loose, windows blowing in and walls collapsing around her.

      There had been no time to run. Perhaps if she had heard the wind and lashing rain, things would have turned out differently. Instead, out of the blue she had experienced the odd sense that the walls were quite literally closing in, and then everything had begun to break apart around her. Her house had seemingly disintegrated in slow motion, but even at that, she hadn’t been able to move quickly enough.

      She had taken one frantic step toward the safety of a doorway, then felt a wild rush of air as the roof lifted up, then shattered down in heavy, dangerous chunks. Those expensive shutters—which had wiped out the last of her savings—had been no protection at all against the fury of the storm.

      She remembered the slam of something into the back of her head. Then her world had gone blissfully dark for however long it had been. When she’d come to, there had been nothing but pain. A foolhardy attempt to move had sent shafts of blinding agony shooting up her leg. She had passed out again.

      This time she knew better. She stayed perfectly still, sucking in huge