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  “Oh, God, I’ve missed you, Emily.”

  “Shh. Don’t talk, Jake. Just hold me. Hold me.”

  They kissed until their lips felt bruised, and then they lay down together, fully clothed, and caressed each other. Simply caressed.

  He didn’t speak. Didn’t dare. Words might shatter the spell.

  And this was surely a spell they were under, the same bit of magic that had overtaken them in Mississippi. With the door shut against the world, they might have been in a time before the avalanche, a time when there was no doubt about their future together.

  Still silent, they cast their clothes aside and came together with the fury of two storm fronts colliding over the peaks of Everest.

  But what about afterward? Would this power turn against him?

  Dear Reader,

  ’Tis the season to ask yourself “What makes Christmas special?” (other than a Silhouette Special Edition novel in your stocking, that is). For Susan Mallery, it’s “sharing in established traditions and starting new ones.” And what could be more of a tradition than reading Susan’s adorable holiday MONTANA MAVERICKS story, Christmas in Whitehorn?

  Peggy Webb’s statement of the season, “The only enduring gift is love” resonates in us all as she produces an enduring gift with The Smile of an Angel from her series THE WESTMORELAND DIARIES. Along with love, author Patricia Kay feels that Christmas “is all about joy—the joy of being with family and loved ones.” And we are overjoyed to bring you the latest in her CALLAHANS & KIN miniseries, Just a Small-Town Girl.

  Sylvie Kurtz shows us the “magical quality” of the holidays in A Little Christmas Magic, a charming opposites-attract love story. And we are delighted by Patricia McLinn’s My Heart Remembers from her WYOMING WILDFLOWERS miniseries. For Patricia, “Christmas is family. Revisiting memories, but also focusing on today.” Crystal Green echoes this thought. “The word family is synonymous with Christmas.” So curl up with her latest, The Pregnant Bride, from her new miniseries, KANE’S CROSSING!

  As you can see, we have many talented writers to celebrate this holiday season in Special Edition.

  Happy Holidays!

  Karen Taylor Richman

  Senior Editor

  The Smile of an Angel

  PEGGY WEBB

  For my magical, marvelous, magnificent Unicorn.

  Books by Peggy Webb

  Silhouette Special Edition

  Summer Hawk #1300

  Warrior’s Embrace #1323

  Gray Wolf’s Woman #1347

  Standing Bear’s Surrender #1384

  Invitation to a Wedding #1402

  *The Smile of an Angel #1436

  Silhouette Intimate Moments

  13 Royal Street #447

  Silhouette Romance

  When Joanna Smiles #645

  A Gift for Tenderness #681

  Harvey’s Missing #712

  Venus DeMolly #735

  Tiger Lady #785

  Beloved Stranger #824

  Angel at Large #867

  PEGGY WEBB

  and her two chocolate Labs live in a hundred-year-old house not far from the farm where she grew up. “A farm is a wonderful place for dreaming,” she says. “I used to sit in the hayloft and dream of being a writer.” Now, with two grown children and more than forty-five romance novels to her credit, the former English teacher confesses she’s still a hopeless romantic and loves to create the happy endings her readers love so well.

  When she isn’t writing, she can be found at her piano playing blues and jazz or in one of her gardens planting flowers. A believer in the idea that a person should never stand still, Peggy recently taught herself carpentry.

  My dearest Emily,

  I know that your heart must be breaking. You worry if I will be strong enough to make it through while your father lies in a coma. You worry about him. Will you ever feel his embrace again? And you worry about Jake, lost atop K2, the second largest mountain in the world. Your heart is feeling empty because the last words the two of you exchanged were far from loving.

  You must have faith that love needs no map, no pathway for two hearts to find their way back to each other. When I was a young girl, there were times when I thought that it would be impossible for your father and me to last a lifetime. But love always pushed pride and fear out of the way, somehow bringing us home.

  Emily, don’t lose hope. I would bet all the roses in my garden that Jake is going to come down from that mountain and head straight for your arms.

  With all my hope and love,

  Mom

  Contents

  Prologue

  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

  Chapter Sixteen

  Chapter Seventeen

  Chapter Eighteen

  Chapter Nineteen

  Chapter Twenty

  Chapter Twenty-One

  Chapter Twenty-Two

  Chapter Twenty-Three

  Chapter Twenty-Four

  Chapter Twenty-Five

  Chapter Twenty-Six

  Chapter Twenty-Seven

  Chapter Twenty-Eight

  Chapter Twenty-Nine

  Chapter Thirty

  Chapter Thirty-One

  Chapter Thirty-Two

  Chapter Thirty-Three

  Chapter Thirty-Four

  Chapter Thirty-Five

  Chapter Thirty-Six

  Chapter Thirty-Seven

  Chapter Thirty-Eight

  Chapter Thirty-Nine

  Chapter Forty

  Prologue

  From the diary of Anne Beaufort Westmoreland:

  May 10, 2001

  I have always loved May in Mississippi. And never more than this year. Not because the azaleas are more spectacular than usual and the forsythia is so heavy with blossoms it looks as if the bushes will break in two. Not because I spotted the bluebirds yesterday coming back to nest in the houses Michael built.

  It is Michael who makes this May special, my beloved husband who has made all the days of all the seasons of my life a time to remember. Whether he is here at Belle Rose or off trekking through the wilds, my dearest Michael is always with me.

  He’s on Everest now, the climber’s ultimate challenge, the most unforgiving of places, the mountain I fear most. But he’s promised it will be his last climb. After all these years of capturing the world’s most forbidding places on film, he’s finally coming home, settling in, returning to the antebellum house we bought and restored together just in time for the family reunion. I hope.

  All our children will be here, with the possible exception of our oldest. With Hannah nothing is ever certain. Like her father, she has wanderlust in her blood. She’s down in the Amazon doing a story on the disappearing rain forest, right in the thick of things, I’m sure, taking risks that nobody else would take in order to get the right interview, the right picture.

  She’s Michael’s child, all right. As is Emily, our youngest, who doesn’t have a domestic bone in her body. Why she prefers to live in a cabin in the woods keeping company with as many wild animals as she can rescue is beyond me. I had hoped that she, at least, would inherit a few traits and talents from me. Well, I can’t say she didn’t try. When she was ten she volunteered to take piano lessons. Just to please me, I later found out. I thought she was doing so great, too. I’ll never forget the day Michael called me to come
to the door of the study where she was practicing. Naturally I thought he was pleased as punch, considering he’s always loved the way I play the piano. But no, he was grinning like a possum eating berries, holding his sides to keep from bursting out laughing. When I peeked through the crack I saw Emily stretched out on the rug reading a book about the mating habits of the wolf while a tape recorder nearby played a simplified version of “Minuet in G.” To this good day I don’t know who she bribed to record it for her. Probably Jimmy Clark. She could always get him to do anything she wanted. He married that nice girl from Jackson, Glenda Jean Phipps’s granddaughter.

  Emily never would go out with him, claimed he was boring.

  Well, I guess I ought to understand that. Lord knows, if Michael Westmoreland is anything in this world, it’s certainly not boring. He marches to the beat of a different drummer. I never understood the meaning of that phrase until I met him. I never understood a lot of things until I met Michael—how two hearts can recognize each other even before you speak, how neither time nor space can separate two lovers when their souls are irrevocably joined, how a simple touch can become the single most important thing you’ve ever done.

  I think it’s no accident he’s named for a celestial being, for he’s certainly my dear sweet angel. And if I sound like an old fool, what do I care? He’s the most important person in my life.

  Don’t get me wrong. I love my children, all of them, but it’s Michael who completes me. With him and only him, I am whole.

  I can’t wait to see him. The way we carry on together you’d think we were sixteen, instead of fifty-six. Thank goodness not one of our children acts embarrassed or shocked, not even Daniel. Someday some lucky girl is going to find out that underneath those staid and steady pastoral robes of his is a man who is pure gold.

  Daniel, our middle child, the son I wanted to look exactly like Michael—thick dark hair and dancing green eyes—but who turned out looking just like me. Except tall.

  I guess I’m the luckiest woman alive. And even though I’ve wished through the years that Michael was here with me, instead of in Nepal or Italy or some other farflung part of the world, I wouldn’t trade places with anybody else. I’ve had the best part of him—his generous and loving heart—and in spite of the lonely times when I’ve reached to the other side of the bed and found it empty, I still wouldn’t change a thing about my life, for even a small percentage of Michael is better than a hundred percent of another man.

  So I’m sending a prayer winging upward to speed my beloved’s return to me. And a prayer for all my children, that they will someday know the enchantment, the amazement, the absolute joy of finding their one true love.

  Chapter One

  Emily Westmoreland drove with the windows open so that the musk coming off the skunk curled beside her on the front seat would escape. Hopefully. A skunk’s noxious fumes are its only defense, and Gwendolyn had not been defumed. Nor would she ever.

  Emily lived in a small cabin in the Tallahatchie River Bottom and worked in animal rescue and rehabilitation. Her job was not to domesticate animals, but to help them return to their natural habitat. Gwendolyn was her latest rescue, but so far she’d shown no signs of preparing to return to the wilderness where Emily had found her with her front leg caught in a trap.

  In fact, just the opposite was true. She acted as if she were preparing to move in permanently with Emily, stripes, tail, malodorous fumes and all. And although she only sprayed when she was scared, she was never free of the musky scent.

  The sign to Vicksburg came up, and as Emily turned on her blinker, Gwendolyn sat up and peered out the window. Just like a child.

  That was how Emily always felt coming home. As full of anticipation as a kid at Christmas. It was more than the prospect of seeing her parents that made her heart beat fast: it was the city itself. Vicksburg, the red-carpet city of the South.

  With her windows down Emily could smell the rich black earth, the fecund fragrance that rose up from a place fed by two mighty rivers, the Mississippi and the Yazoo. She could hear the echoes of long-ago battle cries as the Confederates held the bluffs until starvation forced them to surrender. She could hear the soft susurration of wind through the 880 regimental markers that presided over the graves, now grass-covered, of more than twenty thousand Union and Confederate soldiers.

  She could see the influence of the Spanish and the French in the little shops and houses that dotted her hometown, a riverport city founded in 1812 on the plantation of William Vick and John Lane. It was a town with such stiff-necked pride in its Southern heritage it didn’t celebrate the Fourth of July until late in the twentieth century.

  Just ahead stood her parents’ house, a glorious 1840s Greek Revival mansion with a union cannonball still lodged in the parlor wall. Though the house had its original gaslit chandeliers and many of its original antique furnishings, Anne Beaufort Westmoreland had made it a home. She’d put cozy touches throughout and plenty of rocking chairs on the verandahs so that you could sit in comfort while you listened to the music of two rivers converging.

  Emily stopped just inside the gates to gaze at the rivers and breathe the greening air of spring. It wrapped its arms around her like a warm blanket, dear, familiar and comforting. And though she’d lived in a small log cabin for the past seven years, this was the place she called home.

  “We’re almost there. Now listen, Gwendolyn. Mother and Daddy are going to love you. Still, this is new territory. You stick by me. Understand?”

  Emily felt better for having given instructions. Not that the skunk understood. Or even needed them. She followed Emily everywhere. If she walked in figure eights, so did Gwendolyn. If she zigzagged, so did Gwendolyn.

  And when Emily put her in her cage, Gwendolyn cried. That was why Emily had ended up going to her family’s reunion with a skunk in tow.

  There really wasn’t any reason for her to worry, though. She’d brought home wild animals even as a child. Her parents wouldn’t be surprised by one little skunk.

  She’d have a lovely visit with them, and after all the Westmoreland kin arrived, she’d stick around just long enough to say hi to the aunts and uncles and cousins with their husbands and all their babies, then head back to the deep woods.

  Not that she had anything against husbands and children, or even love, for that matter. Lord knows, her parents set such an example that Emily was absolutely certain love existed. It just wasn’t for her, that was all. It didn’t fit her lifestyle.

  She was a free spirit, and that was the way she planned to stay. No encumbrances. No messy emotions. No entanglements.

  One last look at the water, one quiet, meditative moment, and Emily drove up the winding drive to Belle Rose, where her parents waited. Following the sound of laughter and music, she found them beside the gazebo in the garden behind the house, her father looking rugged and handsome, and her mother looking as if she’d been given the moon.

  “Mom! Dad!” Emily was racing toward them with Gwendolyn hard on her heels when the most outrageously gorgeous man she’d ever seen stepped out of the gazebo.

  All of a sudden she took back everything she’d ever said or thought about freedom and independence and living all by herself in the deep woods.

  The man was a complete stranger to her, and yet her heart recognized him, knew him as intimately as if they’d spent the past hundred years together.

  Riveted, her breath caught in her throat, her heart beating double time, Emily smiled. It was a good beginning, wasn’t it?

  Her father held out his arms. “Emily, come over here. I want you to meet Jake Bean.”

  His name flowed through her like a river, like a poem, like a song. And so, smelling suspiciously of skunk, Emily walked toward the gazebo to meet the man who had just turned her world upside down.

  Jake had known that Michael Westmoreland had two daughters. What he hadn’t known was that the youngest would pack such a punch. She was enchanting, a dark-haired sprite with the smile of an an
gel and the wicked gleam of a mischief-maker in her green eyes. Altogether charming and totally off-limits.

  Not only because she was Michael’s daughter, but because she set Jake’s blood astir. He wasn’t about to allow any woman to do that to him. First the libido got out of hand, then the heart, and the next thing you knew you were waltzing down the aisle with a woman who cried every time you packed your gear and headed to the mountains. A woman who didn’t understand why you’d want to leave her all alone while you risked your life challenging the highest peaks.

  Besides that, he was a man whose life depended on getting the details right. He’d read every book and knew every rule about mountain climbing. But he’d never seen a manual about romance, and he was far too intelligent to embark on an adventure that had no rules.

  And so he returned her smile. Anything less would have been impolite, wouldn’t it?

  “My goodness,” she said, sounding suddenly out of breath. “Daddy’s just like me. Always bringing somebody home.” She held out a small hand that got lost in his. “Hello, Jake. I’m Emily, the family’s answer to Marlin Perkins.”

  That was when he saw the skunk behind her. Smelled it, too. Both the exotic creatures standing in front of him gave off a slightly musky scent that wasn’t altogether unpleasant.

  He’d say one thing for Michael’s daughter: she certainly was different from most of the women he met. They wore fragrances like Chanel No. 5 and wouldn’t dream of keeping company with a skunk, much less bringing one to a family reunion.