Who has the best claim on the child?
Itâs been more than ten years since exhausted new mother Dana Stewart took a nap while her baby was sleeping and woke up to find him gone. The loss devastated herâand her marriageâand sheâs never given up hope of finding Gabriel. She never expected that when she finally did, heâd be almost a teen, his name would be Christian...and he and his uncle Nolan Gregor would want nothing to do with her.
Nolan, a former army ranger, proves as possessive of her son as Dana is. Itâs like King Solomonâs worst nightmare: she canât rip her child away from the only parent heâs ever known. But sheâs his mom, and sheâll never lose him again.
The resemblance between this woman and Christian was too obvious.
He watched her as she approached the counter. Tall and yet slight to the point of appearing fragile, Dana Stewart wore her honey-blond hair in some kind of twist on the back of her head. Her bone structure echoed her sonâsâno, it was the other way around. Her cheekbones were almost too sharply defined, leaving hollows beneath. There was a tension to the way she carried herself, shoulders squared, head high, as if she wouldnât let herself relax in any way. The hand not clutching a purse was curled into a fist.
She was a beautiful woman now, but he wondered how much more beautiful sheâd been before her sonâs disappearance damaged her in ways both visible and invisible.
Needing to be battle-ready, Nolan slid off the stool and stood before she reached him.
âMs. Stewart.â
âYouâre guessing,â she said, in a distinctively throaty voice.
âNo.â He made a sound even he couldnât decipher. âYou look like him.â
Pleasure showed on her face. âI do, donât I? Thank you for emailing the pictures. I know you were annoyed at meââ
âIâm not that petty,â he broke in.
Her teeth sank into her full lower lip. âI...would have understood.â
Nolan had to momentarily close his eyes to recover his resolve. Iâll fight dirty to keep you, if it ever comes to that. Of course it would come to that.
No, he might not be petty, but inevitably he would hurt this woman.
Dear Reader,
If youâre a longtime reader of mine, youâll know that A Motherâs Claim isnât the first book Iâve written about an abducted child. An earlier Harlequin Superromance novel, The Family Next Door, began after the heroineâs daughter had been restored to her, too. I think that story must have been at the back of my mind when I started plotting this one. In it, the daughter was young and hadnât been gone nearly as long as is the case in A Motherâs Claim. Long after writing that book, I began to wonder what would happen if so long had passed that the very young child was nearly a teenager and had no memory whatsoever of his real mother and father. Who is this woman, asking him to betray the only mother he remembers?
Dana has dreamed for eleven long years that a miracle could happen. Sure enough, it does, with a phone call letting her know her son is alive and well. After the miracle, though...well, thatâs when the real story begins. As always, I love wrestling with the aftermath of trauma. What more confusing time could there be to fall in love? Plus, as a fiercely protective parent, I identified powerfully with Dana.
I hope youâre as moved by her journey as I was.
Janice
An author of more than ninety books for children and adults, JANICE KAY JOHNSON writes about love and familyâabout the way generations connect and the power our earliest experiences have on us throughout life. An eight-time finalist for a Romance Writers of America RITA® Award, she won a RITA® Award in 2008 for her Harlequin Superromance novel Snowbound. A former librarian, Janice raised two daughters in a small town north of Seattle, Washington.
To my dearly loved daughters, Sarah and Katie.
CHAPTER ONE
IDIOT BOYS.
Having gotten Christian to the emergency room, Nolan Gregor was trying hard to be mad instead of sick to his stomach and scared out of his skull.
As a former army ranger, Nolan would have felt concern if heâd seen this much blood in the field. Panicâno. But this was Nolanâs eleven-year-old nephew with the ugly ax wound to the shoulder, which made everything different.
Yeah, heâd done his share of idiot things when he was a kid and later put his life at risk for his country. But even with a bullet wound he had never bled like this. Christianâs shirt was saturated by the time the EMT cut it off. Blood continued to flow despite the efforts to stanch it.
It took everything Nolan had to pretend nonchalance, to keep his posture confident and reassuring. A big man, he had retreated to a corner to be out of the way of the medical personnel clustered around Christian. He braced a shoulder against a wall of the emergency room cubicle. Nothing and nobody could have made him leave.