No Less Than a Lifetime Read online

  Table of Contents

  Cover Page

  Excerpt

  Dear Reader

  Title Page

  Dedication

  Books by Christine Rimmer

  About the Author

  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

  Epilogue

  Preview

  Copyright

  “Faith,” Price said, “there must be something I can give you. Just name it.”

  A totally preposterous thought popped into Faith’s head: Make love to me.

  She flushed crimson. How could she even think such a thing?

  She wanted real love. A lifetime commitment. A houseful of kids. Spending the night with Price Montgomery wouldn’t move her one inch toward those goals.

  But she did love him. And tomorrow she was leaving him and Montgomery House. Forever.

  One night to remember. Was that such a bad going-away gift to want?

  “Faith?” he repeated. He was looking at her piercingly now.

  Faith had no idea where she got the nerve. But she heard herself saying, “If you really want to give me something—”

  “What, Faith? Tell me.”

  She did. “Make love to me.”

  Dear Reader,

  The skies won’t be the only place to find fireworks this month. Special Edition has six wonderful, heartwarming books for your July.

  Babies are fun in the summer, and this July we’re highlighting “the little ones.” We begin with RITA-award-winning author Cheryl Reavis, and our THAT SPECIAL WOMAN! title for the month, Meggie’s Baby. You last saw Meg Baron in Cheryl’s book, One of Our Own. Now Meg returns to the home she left—pregnant and seeking the man she’s never been able to stop loving. In The Bachelor and the Baby Wish, by Kate Freiman, a handsome bachelor tries to help his best friend achieve her fondest wish—to have a child. And the always wonderful Susan Mallery gives us a man, his secret baby and the woman he’s falling for in Full-Time Father.

  And rounding out the month we’ve got the ever-popular JONES GANG—don’t miss No Less Than a Lifetime from bestselling author Christine Rimmer. Also, it’s time for another of those SWEET HOPE WEDDINGS from Amy Frazier in A Good Groom Is Hard To Find, and Sierra Rydell brings us a sizzling reunion in The Road Back Home.

  A whole summer of love and romance has just begun from Special Edition! I hope you enjoy each and every story to come!

  Sincerely,

  Tara Gavin, 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: P.O. Box 609, Fort Erie, Ont. L2A 5X3

  No Less Than A Lifetime

  Christine Rimmer

  For my mother, Auralee Smith, former PTA prez, leader of

  my Brownie Troop, head of my Girl Scout Troop, cookie

  baker, Christmas maker. And we won’t even get into later,

  when I was supposed to be a grown-up…

  Thanks for all of it, Mom. I love you.

  And thanks to Llewellyn Publications

  for the phases of the moon.

  Books by Christine Rimmer

  Silhouette Special Edition

  Double Dare #646

  Slow Larkin’s Revenge #698

  Earth Angel #719

  *Wagered Woman #794

  Born Innocent #833

  *Man of the Mountain #886

  *Sweetbriar Summit #896

  *A Home for the Hunter #908

  For the Baby’s Sake #925

  *Sunshine and the Shadowmaster #979

  *The Man, The Moon and

  The Marriage Vow #1010

  *No Less Than a Lifetime #1040

  *The Jones Gang

  Silhouette Desire

  No Turning Back #418

  Call It Fate #458

  Temporary Temptress #602

  Hard Luck Lady #640

  Midsummer Madness #729

  Counterfeit Bride #812

  Cat’s Cradle #940

  CHRISTINE RIMMER

  is a third-generation Californian who came to her profession the long way around. Before settling down to write about the magic of romance, she’d been an actress, a sales clerk, a janitor, a model, a phone sales representative, a teacher, a waitress, a playwright and an office manager. Now that she’s finally found work that suits her perfectly, she insists she never had a problem keeping a job—she was merely gaining “life experience” for her future as a novelist. Those who know her best withhold comment when she makes such claims; they are grateful that she’s at last found steady work. Christine is grateful, too—not only for the joy she finds in writing, but for what waits when the day’s work is through: a man she loves who loves her right back and the privilege of watching their children grow and change day to day.

  Chapter One

  “Just what do you plan to do with yourself, Faith?”

  Before he finished the sentence, Price Montgomery knew he sounded harsh. Faith Jones, his housekeeper of over a decade, apparently thought so, too. Her slender hands tightened in her lap and her wide brown eyes shifted away.

  Regret at his own gruffness tugged at him—but not too hard. After all, she certainly couldn’t expect him to be pleased with what she’d just told him.

  Faith was still looking away, out the graceful Palladian window of the library, at the gray January sky and the dense tangle of greenery that clung to the hill on which Montgomery House towered. She held her chin very high. For a moment, Price almost believed that when she faced him again she would inform him that what she planned to do with herself was no concern of his.

  But the moment passed. Price watched as she collected herself. When she spoke, it was in that gentle, reasonable tone she always used. “I’m going to run my own business.”

  “Oh?” This time Price was careful to sound interested, and nothing more. “What kind of business?”

  “I’ve bought a motel. In North Magdalene.” Her soft mouth curved in a slight smile. “You do remember my mentioning North Magdalene, don’t you, Price?”

  Price remembered. North Magdalene was a tiny town in the Sierra foothills. Faith had a sister who lived there. In the past year or so, Faith had visited the place a lot. Price hadn’t thought much about the visits at the time—except to be vaguely irritated at the thousand and one little things that were never quite right at Montgomery House without Faith’s skilled hand to keep them in line.

  “Price? Do you remember North Magdalene?”

  “Of course I do.”

  She was still smiling, a sort of musing, indulgent smile. “It’s a beautiful little town.”

  “I’m sure. You’ve bought a motel, you said?” He stuck with the interested tone, though it wasn’t easy.

  “Yes. A motel. It’s a little run-down. The former owner’s kind of let it go. So I got a great price on it. I’m going to remodel it and manage it myself.”

  “Do you have the money for this?”

  Her soft smile fled; she looked uncomfortable again. His question must have sounded curt. He had to watch himself. He wasn’t taking this well at all.

  Faith answered after drawing a long, slow breath. “Yes, Price. You’ve paid me generously over the years. I have enough money to carry out my plans.”

  She was right. He had
paid her well; she’d earned every penny. And right now, he almost wished he’d kept her at minimum wage. Which wasn’t like him at all. He had his failings, but he’d always treated his employees fairly, at least.

  Right this minute, though, Price didn’t feel like being fair. Or even reasonable.

  The really strange truth was, he wanted to shout at her. He wanted to stand up from behind his massive semicircular mahogany desk and loom over her and tell her that she couldn’t do this. He wouldn’t allow it.

  On his Quotron, which was one of the three computer screens before him, stock prices for companies all over the world scrolled in an endless chain. Price supported himself and his eccentric household by the effective management of a diverse stock portfolio. As a young man, he’d been driven by one goal: to gain and keep the financial stability he and his parents had never known when he was a child. He’d achieved that goal in his twenties, by patenting an invention of his father’s and then effectively investing the income from the patent.

  Price stared hard at the moving columns of numbers. But he hardly saw them, really. He was using the screen as a point of focus, to get himself under control.

  When he felt that he could speak without shouting, Price rose from his leather chair. He came out from behind the bank of phones and computer screens. Slowly he circled the desk and sat on the outer rim of it, a few feet from where Faith perched so straight in her seat.

  She seemed to stiffen even more, to pull into herself at his nearness. He leaned a little closer, feeling cruel—but somehow justified in his cruelty. “I thought you were happy here, Faith.”

  “I have been.” She swallowed. “Happy.”

  “Then why?”

  She looked into her lap at her tightly folded hands, then back up at him. “Why am I leaving Montgomery House?”

  “Yes.”

  “I’m…ready to take a few chances, that’s all. It’s time for me to move on. And I do have a lot of family in North Magdalene.” She looked at him hopefully, seemed to see he wasn’t convinced, and so forged on with more explanations. “I have a wonderful uncle, Oggie Jones. He’s old and lame and smokes cigars. And he’s…magic.” She smiled then, a pleased, secret smile. “Positively magic. And he has five children. All of them are grown and all of them live there, in North Magdalene, with their own families.”

  Her eyes were sparkling now, looking more gold than brown. “And then there’s Evie, my sister. She married over a year ago, which you may remember, and she has three stepchildren. They’re darling children. Two girls and a boy. I want to…get to know them. I want to watch them grow up.”

  All her chatter about her relatives reminded Price of his own mother and father, who inhabited a suite of rooms on the second floor. They weren’t going to like losing Faith any more than he did. And he didn’t even want to consider how his reclusive younger brother, Parker, was going to take the news. Parker lived on the third floor, off the ballroom, near Faith’s rooms. Parker never went out. And Faith was the only person outside the family who was ever allowed in his room.

  Faith was still talking about her dear old uncle and his children, about what a warm, welcoming place North Magdalene was, about how she couldn’t wait to start her new life there.

  Price had heard much more than enough by the time she paused for a breath. He spoke before she could ramble on. “You want to be with your family, is that what you’re telling me?”

  She sank back in her chair a little, her cheeks flushing, probably realizing that she’d let herself get carried away in her glowing descriptions of the Joneses of North Magdalene.

  “Yes.” Her tone was clipped now. “And I want my own business.” She lifted one pale hand and stroked her brown hair in its neat little bun. A few silky tendrils had come loose. They curled around her temples. Combined with the spots of color on her cheeks, the wayward strands made her look very young. Vulnerable. He watched as she dropped her hand to her lap once more, and folded it again with its mate.

  “Don’t laugh at me, Price.”

  He must have been smiling. He made his face a blank. “I’m not.”

  “I know you depend on me. That’s why I plan to give you time to replace me. But I am going.”

  Price looked at the far wall, between two sets of ceilinghigh bookcases, where a gilt-framed seventeenth-century drawing of the head of Hercules hung.

  Give me strength, Price thought wryly.

  He reminded himself that Faith’s life was her own. He was only her employer, and he’d gone about as far as was reasonable toward trying to change her mind.

  It was just damn hard to believe that she was really leaving after all these years.

  Faith volunteered gently, “I’ll be living in a beautiful little town, Price. With people I love. Be happy for me.”

  His first irrational anger was gone. Now he felt like a heel for trying to hold her back. “I am. Of course I am.” The most reasonable thing to do right now would be to iron out the particulars.

  He asked, “How much notice are you giving me?”

  “Price.” Her big eyes begged him not to be upset. “I know this is a surprise to you. But it’s the best thing for me. Please try and understand.”

  Now she was trying to pacify him. Well, he didn’t need pacifying. Just the facts. Just what she intended to do. “How much notice?”

  She leaned forward in her chair, as if she were going to say something really important. But then she just sat back again and sighed. “I thought two weeks would be fair.”

  He felt another surge of senseless wrath. Two weeks was nothing. Not enough time at all.

  He thought fast, then spoke evenly, “You’re the one who created your position. Neither my parents nor I have the vaguest idea what to look for in a replacement. You’re going to have to help us out a little here.”

  “Yes. Of course. I thought in two weeks I could—”

  “How about if you find and train the person, however long that takes—and then go?”

  Faith considered, then nodded. “All right. As long as the time frame is reasonable. I really don’t want to leave you without someone competent.”

  Price hadn’t realized how tense he’d become until he felt the tightness between his shoulder blades melt away. It could take a long time to find an acceptable replacement. And the longer it took, the more chance there was that she would rethink this idea of running a motel in some nowhere foothill town.

  Casually Price suggested a condition. “Of course, the person would have to be approved by my father and mother—and myself.”

  Faith shifted uneasily in her chair. “Parker, too?”

  Price knew he couldn’t go quite that far. “No, we’ll leave Parker out of it. Meeting your potential replacements would only upset him, anyway—assuming he’d do it in the first place.”

  Her uneasy look faded. She even smiled. “That’s wise.”

  He smiled back. “All right. It’s settled.”

  Her smile grew pensive. “Price. I want this clear. I’m not willing to stay on longer than a month or so.”

  “I understand.”

  For a moment, neither of them spoke. Then one of Price’s phones rang.

  Faith stood. “I know you want to get back to work.”

  “Yes. I should.”

  “I’ll go now and speak with your parents. And then Parker, too, I suppose.” She started for the door.

  “Faith.”

  She turned back to him, her face bright and alert. “Um?”

  How many times had she turned just that way, before leaving a room, to receive some final instruction he’d almost forgotten?

  The phone went on ringing. He rose from the edge of the desk and went around to pick it up. “Montgomery here. Hold on.” He put his hand over the mouthpiece and spoke to Faith again. “Let me talk to the family before you do, all right?”

  “But why?”

  “I’d just like to, that’s all.”

  Her expression had become pensive again. But
then she shrugged. “All right. If you want to. I won’t mention it to them for a day or two. But I will begin making arrangements for the interviews.”

  “Great.” He turned his back to her and spoke into the phone again. “Yes?”

  Faith went out through the music room, which in turn opened onto the front parlor. Price hardly heard her go. Her crepe-soled shoes made no sound on the inlaid floors, and she was skilled at the silent closing of heavy doors.

  Price finished on the phone and hung up. Then he went over to the big Palladian window, where he stood looking out. Here, on the first floor, the view was of dense greenery: oaks and palms and cypress trees, and the carpet of ivy and myrtle that spilled down the hillsides toward the Sausalito waterfront below. Far away, Price thought he heard the hollow sound of a boat’s horn: a ferry boat or a river cruiser, carrying passengers back and forth from San Francisco, a few miles across the bay.

  Price and his family had lived in Sausalito for fifteen years now, ever since he’d bought Montgomery House, when he was twenty-five and ready to put his first big profits into a real home. The then-derelict Queen Anne—style manse had looked all wrong, crammed onto its too-small, rock-terraced little plot of land high in the Sausalito hills. It had seemed to him an abandoned fortress, a neglected castle keep. Price had loved it on sight. He’d had it refurbished from basement to third-floor towers. Now it was everything he’d ever dreamed it might be.

  And Faith made it all work. When she started running things, the house had finally acquired what had been missing: ease and grace. Faith made the place livable day to day. Under her expert hand, Montgomery House was a home, as well as a castle.