Murphy's Child Read online

  Murphy wanted her.

  Letter to Reader

  Title Page

  Books by Judith Duncan

  About the Author

  Chapter 1

  Chapter 2

  Chapter 3

  Chapter 4

  Chapter 5

  Chapter 6

  Chapter 7

  Chapter 8

  Chapter 9

  Chapter 10

  Chapter 11

  Epilogue

  Copyright

  Murphy wanted her.

  And it was separate from sex. This was something much bigger. He wanted her. In his life, as the mother of his kids, as his helpmate and partner, in good times and bad. He wanted to see Jordan every morning when he woke up, and he wanted to go to sleep beside her every night.

  But there was this roadblock between them, and nothing was going to change until they got past that. And maybe things wouldn’t change even then. But he had to take a shot at it....

  Dear Reader,

  It’s summer, the perfect time to sit in the shade (or the air conditioning) and read the latest from Silhouette Intimate Moments. Start off with Mane Ferrarella’s newest CHILDFINDERS, INC. title, A Forever Kind of Hero. You’ll find yourself turning pages at a furious rate, hoping Garrett Wichita and Megan Andrerini will not only find the child they’re searching for, but will also figure out how right they are for each other

  We’ve got more miniseries in store for you this month, too Doreen Roberts offers the last of her RODEO MEN in The Maverick’s Bride, a fitting conclusion to a wonderful trilogy. And don’t miss the next of THE SISTERS WASKOWITZ, in Kathleen Creighton’s fabulous One Summer’s Knight. Don’t forget, there’s still one sister to go Judith Duncan makes a welcome return with Murphy’s Child, a FAMILIES ARE FOREVER title that will capture your emotions and your heart. Lindsay Longford, one of the most unique voices in romance today, is back with No Surrender, an EXPECTANTLY YOURS title. And finally, there’s Maggie Price’s Most Wanted, a MEN IN BLUE title that once again allows her to demonstrate her understanding of romance and relationships.

  Six marvelous books to brighten your summer—don’t miss a single one And then come back next month, when six more of the most exciting romance novels around will be waiting for you—only in Silhouette Intimate Moments

  Enjoy!

  Yours,

  Leslie J. Wainger

  Executive Senior Editor

  * * *

  Please address questions and book requests to

  Silhouette Reader Service

  U.S. 3010 Walden Ave, P.O Box 1325, Buffalo, NY 14269 Canadian PO. Box 609. Fort Ene, Ont L2A 5X3

  * * *

  MURPHY’S CHILD

  JUDITH DUNCAN

  Books by Judith Duncan

  Silhouette Intimate Moments

  A Risk Worth Taking #400

  Better Than Before #421

  *Beyond All Reason #536

  *That Same Old Feeling #577

  *The Return of Eden McCall #651

  Driven to Distraction #704

  Murphy’s Child #946

  *Wide Open Spaces

  Silhouette Books

  To Mother with Love 1993

  “A Special Request”

  JUDITH DUNCAN

  is married and lives, along with two of her five children and her husband, in Calgary, Alberta, Canada. A staunch supporter of anyone wishing to become a published writer, she has lectured at several workshops for Alberta’s Department of Culture and participated in conventions in both British Columbia and Oregon. After having served a term as 2nd Vice President for the Canadian Authors’ Association, she is currently working with the Alberta Romance Writers’ Association, which she helped to found.

  Chapter 1

  Friday, March 29

  A March chinook arch bisected the vast Alberta sky, leaving the bright blue westerly half cloudless and clear, a perfect backdrop for the gray, jagged, snowcapped peaks of the Rocky Mountains. Overhead and to the east, where the blue arc met the furls of cumulus formations, tinges of sunrise cast the underbellies of the fat white clouds in purples and pinks. And beyond that, the upper stratosphere trailed long, thin orange wisps that were slowly dissipated by the warm currents blowing in from the Pacific. It was as if the two mismatched sections had been welded together, creating an artificial dome overhead.

  The early-morning air was crisp and crystal clear, the shrill screams of Skil saws splintering the stillness, the kerthunk, kerthunk of compression guns adding percussion to the discordant sounds of construction. But there was another, sweeter sound. And it was the sound of spring.

  Meltwater gathered in the icy ruts of the unpaved road, the pressure wearing thin channels in the packed snow. Along the gutter the rivulets of spring runoff cut a course to the storm sewer, where they splashed and gurgled on to oblivion, the sound punctuated by the drip, drip, drip of melting icicles.

  Straddling the gable of the attached garage, Murphy Munroe straightened, relishing all the signals of winter’s end. Yep, no doubt about it, the sound of spring was definitely the sweetest sound of all.

  Resting his hand on his hip, Murphy acknowledged the smell of sunshine, damp earth and melting snow, a sense of well-being filling his chest as he surveyed the scene. This new housing development was on the southern outskirts of Calgary, and from his high perch, he could see clear to the foothills and to the mountains peaks beyond. And it was some sight, one that he’d never tired of. There was something about the raw majesty of those mountains, combined with the overwhelming sense of space, that filled him up. This was his place in the bigger scheme of things, and he was rooted here. Just like the big old cottonwoods down by the river.

  Rolling his shoulders, Murphy tried to ease a knot of tight muscles as he surveyed the street below. It was one hell of a mess. Mud, piles of dirt-pocked snow, puddles big enough to float a boat and more mud. But he could live with the mud. After the past few months, he’d gladly take the mud. What he did not want to see was another single snowflake or another thermometer that showed minus-thirty-degree weather.

  To put it in barroom terms, it had been a royal bitch of a winter. It was as if the past few months had been engineered to test him. Everything that could possibly go wrong, had, and if he could have had his way, he’d have taken the joker who’d come up with Murphy’s Law and stuffed him down a well. He was so damned tired of everything going wrong just when he absolutely needed it to go right. If he didn’t know better, he’d swear somebody had put an old Celtic curse on him.

  It wasn’t as if he was some airheaded adolescent screwup. He was thirty-six years old, for Pete’s sake, with a successful construction company and a halfway decent brain in his head. Nor was it as if he was some rotten SOB who deserved a stretch of bad luck. He built good-quality, affordable homes for people, he paid his taxes on time, donated to every charity within a ten-mile radius and he always stopped at crosswalks for dogs, little old ladies and school patrols.

  But this year had been enough to test a bloody saint. For every positive thing that had come his way, there had been a string of things that had gone wrong. He was a small operator in the home-construction business, but Calgary had been hit with a housing boom. Everything should have been coming up nothing but roses—he had good, reputable tradespeople contracted, specialized suppliers geared up for business, good interest rates and an even better cash flow.

  But here it was, the end of March, and he was four—sneaking up to five—weeks behind schedule. Which was nothing new. In fact, he’d been playing catch-up ever since they’d dug the first basement the previous fall. That was when the weather had gone berserk. First it rained. Then it snowed. Then it rained some more. Then the temperatures plunged to record lows, and from the
first lousy raindrop, Murphy’s Law had kicked in. It had been one long nightmare. Problems had cropped up like ragweed. Problems with concrete, with bad rafters, with poorly sealed skylights, with the hardwood for the flooring—even problems with the services the land developer had put in. It was one damned thing after another. And to make matters worse, they had suffered through the most bitterly cold winter in recorded history.

  But winter was finally on its way out now, and maybe a bit of luck was on its way in. For the past few days, everything had gone like clockwork. And he could thank some on-the-ball, hardworking subcontractors, who happened to be mostly in-laws.

  Well, not exactly honest-to-God in-laws. A sister had married into a huge, multigenerational Italian family, and Murphy had discovered that when you got one Rossino as a relative, you got them all. It was such a crazy tangle, he’d given up years ago trying to sort out who was who. Now he saved himself a whole lot of grief and aggravation by accepting it at face value; anyone on the job site who had a name that ended in a vowel was somehow related to Marco, his brother-in-law. Which, through some weird Latin osmosis, also made that person somehow related to the entire Munroe clan.

  Given the ethnic makeup of his own family, Murphy figured it almost made sense. Irish father, Swedish mother, a Ukrainian grandmother, Russian and Native American aunts, a Portuguese uncle. So what were a few unrelated Italians? Hell, he had enough trouble keeping track of his two brothers and three sisters.

  But all that was beside the point. What counted now was that everything was going as smooth as silk. Touch wood. A chinook had blown in a week ago, raising the temperature by forty degrees in six hours, and maybe, just maybe, it was heralding an early spring. And so far this week, no hiccups. Not even a little one. Suppliers on time. Everybody getting the job done. Now, if things just kept clicking along like they were—and with some extra overtime by his crews—Munroe Construction could conceivably be back on schedule before the first possession date. Barring another disaster.

  Experiencing a familiar burning sensation in his gut at just the thought of something else going wrong, Murphy fished a roll of antacid tablets out of his shirt pocket and popped one in his mouth. Maybe now that everything had leveled off a bit, he’d be able to get rid of the lousy things. He had so many rolls of them scattered around, he probably had enough antacid pills to neutralize the whole bloody world.

  Rolling his shoulders again, Murphy let go a sigh and picked up a pair of side cutters, then leaned over and snapped the metal binding around the bundle of cedar shakes. He hadn’t had a decent night’s sleep in months, and he couldn’t remember ever being this tired. And there were at least a dozen other things he needed to be doing right now instead of shingling this garage, but his roofing crews were already working on two other houses. If he was willing to take a chance that the spring winds wouldn’t rip off the tar paper, he could leave it until a crew got to it. But he wasn’t much into taking chances these days.

  He fit the compressed-air staple gun onto the pressure hoses, then yelled down for someone to switch on the compressor.

  There was the sound of the compressor starting up, then a loud crash and the tinkling of glass, followed by some very colorful cursing. Murphy let his arms hang by his sides and tipped his head back and looked at the sky. As long as it wasn’t that custom-made leaded-glass door for the study, he didn’t care.

  There was more swearing, only this burst was in Italian and far more vehement than the last, and Murphy dropped his head to his chest and let out a weary sigh. Damn. It wasn’t the custom-made French door; it was the custom-made sealed unit for the plant window.

  And it wasn’t even 8:00 a.m. yet. Which meant it was going to be one of those days.

  Kicking the red compressor hose out of his way, he shot a staple into the roof to make sure the gun was working, then turned to pick up some of the shakes. And stopped dead in his tracks.

  A spotless silver BMW coupe eased through the slush ruts in the nearly impassable street, pulling up behind his mud-spattered pickup, which was parked across the road. Murphy blinked twice to make sure he wasn’t seeing things. But this was no hallucination. It was, in fact, his worst nightmare. And the source of all his sleepless nights. His stomach released a killer dose of acid, and wearily he rubbed his eyes. This was absolutely the last thing he needed.

  Knowing that there was one chance in a million that someone else in Calgary had that exact same color model, someone who might conceivably have a reason to show up at his building site, someone who could drive through acres of mud and slop and still have a car that looked as if it had just rolled through a car wash, Murphy continued to watch. There was a chance it wasn’t her, but he knew he just didn’t have that kind of luck.

  Not when it came to Ms. Jordan Kennedy.

  Locking his jaws together hard enough to shatter bone, he stared down at the car. Maybe, just maybe, it wasn’t her.

  The driver’s door swung open and a pair of very long legs appeared, then an elegant blond woman emerged, swathed in an equally elegant long white cashmere coat. Murphy swore, resisting the urge to rear back and pitch the staple gun into the next development. Damn it all to hell—Jordan Kennedy was somebody he could do without.

  And if he’d been a whole lot smarter, would have done without. He should have seen right from the beginning that she was going to cause him no end of grief. Tall, elegant, aloof, she was one of those cool, contained blondes that made him think of some fabled Nordic ice queen. Completely untouchable. Unreachable. Unattainable. But that hadn’t stopped him. Oh, no. Not him. Right from the moment he’d laid eyes on her, he had wanted her like he wanted his next breath. Which didn’t say much for his stupidity quotient.

  He should have known better. But he’d gone after her anyway. Which was a double disaster. Especially when she was his accountant.

  He had changed accounting firms the previous year, and when he went in for a preliminary interview with the senior partner of the new firm, the partner had strongly recommended Ms. Jordan Kennedy as the perfect person to handle his business account. So he’d set up an appointment with her, and that had been his downfall. Because Ms. Jordan Kennedy had knocked his socks off the instant she’d turned those big gray eyes on him.

  Watching her pick her way carefully across the chewed-up street, Murphy had to give himself some credit. Even back then, she hadn’t completely short-circuited his brain. Right from the beginning, he’d had enough mental capacity left to realize that this woman had more defenses than Fort Knox. And even then he’d known he was going to have to move an inch at a time with her. No overt moves. No flowers. No romantic dinners. She would have spooked on the spot if he’d shown any kind of male-female interest.

  So he’d planned a careful, strategic attack, and like some half-witted, hormone-driven adolescent, he’d gone after her with a single-mindedness that would have done his Viking ancestors proud. It had taken him months, but that previous summer, he’d finally got through her defenses. And the memories of her hot and naked beneath him still woke him up in hard, cold sweats. But toward the middle of December, just when he’d thought she might not bolt if he started talking permanence, when he was thinking about giving her a diamond for Christmas, she’d abruptly slammed all the doors.

  Just like that. Bam. He’d been dumped out on his ear. He didn’t know why. He wasn’t even really sure if he knew how. The only explanation she’d given him was that it was a mistake—and that she thought it would be a good idea if he moved his account elsewhere.

  That memory still had the power to rankle him. He’d never felt as impotent, as broadsided, as bloody furious as he had then. And he still couldn’t think about it without his blood pressure going through the roof. She’d just walked out as if that entire summer and fall had meant nothing at all, and he’d been left standing there like a big dummy who’d just fallen off the turnip truck.

  But the one thing he hadn’t done was make it easy for her. He hadn’t moved his account. Be damne
d if he was going to accommodate her precious comfort zone.

  But that was then. This was now.

  His expression hardening even more, Murphy watched her pick her way around a mound of dirt, ice and snow, then tiptoe across the mud-spattered planks that bridged the open service ditch, her off-white coat as meticulous and as immaculate as her car: Resigning himself to a face-to-face confrontation, he wondered where in hell he had parked his common sense. Only a first-class lamebrain would have kept her on as his accountant.

  Shifting his gaze, he expelled all his breath and fixed his attention on the old Italian sitting on the doorstep across the street, busy straightening nails on a flat rock. Murphy thought he was Marco’s mother’s cousin’s father-in-law, but he wouldn’t want to swear to it. But his name ended in an o, and he’d been straightening nails for nearly four years. Which, he supposed wearily, made him somebody’s grandfather. It seemed to work that way. He wondered what happened to all those straightened nails. And how much he was paying for them.

  Blowing out another heavy breath, Murphy hooked the compression gun on a stack of cedar shakes, then crossed from the garage to the roof of the house. He lowered himself through the gaping hole where one of the replacement skylights was to be installed later that morning, then dropped to the floor below. Shaking his head, he figured he might as well bite the bullet and get this little charade over with. The only reason for Ms. Cold and Heartless Kennedy to be there was that there was some problem with the company’s year-end. He had sent his bookkeeper in with the account the previous week, and now he was faced with the consequences. Damn it all to hell anyway. Served him right for trying to pull an end run on her.