Authors: Vanessa Grant
Tags: #Canada, #Seattle, #Family, #Contemporary, #Pacific Island, #General, #Romance, #Motherhood, #Fiction, #Women's Fiction
Think About Love
Think About Love
by
Vanessa Grant
© 2001, 2012 Muse Creations Inc
If You Loved Me - Sample
© 1999, 2012 Muse Creations Inc
Cover design © Angela Oltmann,
angieocreations.com
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This book is a work of fiction. All names, characters, places and incidents in this book are either products of the author's imagination or used fictitiously. Any resemblance to actual events, locales, or persons, living or dead, is entirely coincidental.
All rights are reserved. No part of this publication can be reproduced or transmitted in any form or by any means, electronic or mechanical, now known or hereinafter invented, without the express written permission of the copyright owner.
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Think About Romance
The last thing successful businesswoman Samantha Jones envisions is her beloved grandmother in a nursing home - and having to fly to remote Gabriola Island to care for her orphaned infant niece. But family is as important to Samantha as her job with Cal Tremaine, and she’s determined not to let instant motherhood interrupt her career … until headstrong Cal offers something more tempting.
Think About Me
Cal’s rapidly growing software empire owes a lot to Samantha’s skills, and Cal isn’t about to let her get away. Yet when Cal gets his first look at Samantha outside the office, he realizes that he wants her to see him as a man - instead of as her boss. Suddenly he’s offering a marriage that will satisfy the judge in gaining custody of her niece, but what he wants is Samantha as his true wife … in every sense of the word.
Dedication
Thanks to Ann and Anne for the hearts,
Janice and Missy for baby calendars,
Grant for the open house and "that thing they do,"
and Janyne for family court.
Chapter One
The call came on Samantha's direct line at thirteen minutes after three Wednesday afternoon. Cal, she assumed, because he'd been hovering restlessly all week. With a multimillion dollar contract just signed and fifty high-tech jobs to fill, Calin Tremaine was at his most restless.
She let the phone ring a second time, then a third as she finished answering an e-mail from the security company she'd hired for Friday night. Then she picked up the phone, ready for Cal's next question.
But the voice on the phone wasn't her boss's.
"Samantha?"
"Grandma Dorothy?" Samantha eyed the stack of unanswered messages on her desk. "How are you and the baby? Still terrorizing Gabriola Island?"
She expected her grandmother's breathy laughter, felt a shaft of unease when it didn't come. "I'm in Nanaimo, Samantha. I need you."
"Is it Kippy? An accident?" It was no use telling her heartbeat to slow, her breathing to quiet. Ever since the plane crash, she'd been too jumpy, too quick to assume the worst.
"No accident, sweetheart, but we need your help."
Marcy stuck her head in the door, mouthed Cal's name, and pointed to the phone. Samantha held up one hand, fingers spread, indicating she'd be five minutes.
"Tell me," she urged her grandmother, her voice taking on the calm tones that had become habitual for her in times of stress. "Tell me what the problem is. If you need help with Kippy or money—" Money, she thought. Dorothy was probably short of money. Samantha kicked herself for not insisting she accept a monthly check to help with Kippy.
"Moonbeam, you have to come up here."
Moonbeam
. It was years since Dorothy had called her that.
"I can be there at the end of next week. I'll take a long weekend and we can work out whatever—"
"Sam—Samantha..."
Dorothy was
crying!
"Grandma, what's wrong?"
"They say I'm not fit to look after Kippy."
"That's crazy. You're fitter than most forty-year-old women. Grandma,
who...?"
A hiccup that might have been a sob. "I was in overnight. I shouldn't have been in at all—it was just a little pain, but Diana insisted. You know Diana Foley?"
"Yes, of course I—
in?
What do you mean,
in?
In the hospital?"
"I told the doctor I mustn't be in more than overnight, but he insisted and Diana said it would be fine. Absolutely fine, that Kippy was no problem. Samantha, you must do something!"
"Grandma, I'll look after everything. Explain to me exactly what's happened. You're sick?"
Dorothy had perfect health. At the age of sixty-nine, she walked three miles a day, pushing Kippy's baby carriage to the mailbox each day. "Why are you in the hospital?"
"It's nothing serious. It's Kippy we need to worry about."
"If Diana needs help with Kippy, I'll arrange for someone, and I'll come up this Friday night. We'll sort everything out." If necessary, if Dorothy really
was
sick, Samantha would bring Kippy back with her until her grandmother recovered.
"You have to come
now,
Samantha."
"I promise you, I'll look after everything. We talked about this last winter. If there's any problem, I can look after Kippy. We'll—"
"The social worker put Kippy in a foster home."
Samantha felt a lurch of nausea. "Kippy in foster care?" She remembered how frightened Sarah had been all those years ago, how Samantha had hidden her own fear and pretended confidence for her sister. How Dorothy had come and saved them both.
She found a pen in her hand. "Give me the name of the social worker. And Diana's number. Have you called a lawyer yet?"