Brides And Blessings

Cover Page

Expert

About the Author

Title Page

Epigraph

Dedication

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

Dear Reader

Copyright

Josh assured her.

“Who’s everybody?” Suzann demanded to know.

He counted with his fingers. “Well, there’s me…and…” A mischievous grin appeared on his handsome face and he touched his second finger. “Then there’s me, of course, and there’s…”

“You?” She laughed softly. “I think I get the picture.” Suzann shook her head. “Josh Gallagher, you’re impossible.”

“Impossible?”

He gazed down at her, the tender light in his sky blue eyes reminding Suzann of the brief kiss they’d just shared at her doorstep.

Her smile faded and she looked away.

“Nothing’s impossible,” he said quietly. “You just have to go after what you think God wants for your life.”

A lifelong Texan, Molly Noble Bull is married and the mother of three grown sons, Bret, Burt and Bren. She and her husband, Charlie, also have three preschool grandchildren and are hoping for many more. They own a home in the Texas hill country, but currently live in Victoria, Texas.

Both her father and her maternal grandfather were ranch managers, meaning they were real-for-sure Texas cowboys, and all three of her sons are involved in cattle ranching today. Molly spent part of her childhood on a sixty-thousand-acre, south Texas cattle ranch. When she writes about cowboys like Josh Gallagher, her hero in Brides and Blessings, she is writing from personal experience.

Besides her writing, Molly is involved in Christian causes and is interested in Bible prophecy. She also helped form three Internet loops for Christian women who write romance novels. She encourages readers to write to her in care of Love Inspired/Steeple Hill, 300 East 42nd Street, Sixth Floor, New York, New York 10017.

www.millsandboon.co.uk

Bless the Lord, O my soul: and all that is within

me, bless His holy name.

—Psalms 103:1

To my three grandchildren—

Bethanny, Dillard and Hailey Bull, and to my critique partner, Kathryn King Brocato. But to God give the glory.

It was now or never.

Either Suzann Condry exchanged identities with her twin sister within the next ten minutes. Or she flew back to California and forgot the whole idea.

The morning sun streamed through the east window of the rustic living room. Suzann drummed her fingers on the arm of the tan leather couch. When her sister came up with the idea, it had seemed like the perfect solution to Suzann’s problems. But actually going through with the deception produced unsettling feelings that she hadn’t anticipated.

Suzann gazed at her twin sister, seated beside her. “Thank you again, Holly, for agreeing to meet me. Taking a two-week vacation from your job in order to be here couldn’t have been easy to manage.”

Holly’s smile beamed softness and serenity. “Mother always said that at the time of my adoption, she learned that I had a twin sister somewhere. I just didn’t know how to find you until you phoned me from L.A. It was icing on the cake to discover you’re also famous.”

“I wish I’d known about you,” Suzann said, “but I didn’t know a thing until I found my original birth certificate after Mom died. But I mentioned that, didn’t I?” Suzann shook her head, hoping to clear her mind. “I’m more stressed than I realized.”

“That makes two of us.”

The plan sounded simple enough. Suzann would become Holly Harmon. Holly would become Suzann Condry—former child movie star, actress, model, national icon.

For the first time in her life, Suzann would be free of glamour, fans and glitz. A new identity, no matter how brief, would also give her a means of escaping an unhappy relationship, and the clutches of the paparazzi.

But had the past two weeks with Holly in an isolated cabin in the Texas hill country been long enough? Did she know her sister well enough to swap lives with her?

Everything happened quickly. One minute Suzann was going through her mother’s things after the funeral, the next she was phoning her agent, telling him she was adopted and asking him to hire a private detective to search for her birth parents. Mike phoned a reliable detective agency the next day and signed on one of their investigators to handle the case.

Discovering that she was the daughter of an unwed, teenage mother was surprising. She practically fell out of her chair on learning that she had an identical twin sister.

Once she got Holly on the phone, the sisters set up the get-acquainted meeting at the cabin. At their first face-to-face, it was Holly who suggested that they switch lives, perhaps because Suzann had shared how depressed she’d been lately. Suzann’s actor boyfriend, Greer Fraser, had dumped her for another movie actress, and her heartbreak had been smeared all over the tabloids.