For Momma's Sake Read online

  Desperate times call for desperate measures!

  So when general’s daughter Darcy Stanton abruptly balked at marrying a macho military man, she shamelessly fled her wedding and hit the road running. But fickle fate delivered Darcy into the arms of irresistible air force sergeant Billy Hays, whose Southern charm and gentle embrace nearly hijacked her heart.

  Fortunately, this sergeant was a confirmed bachelor. Unfortunately, his beloved, ailing Alabama momma dearly wished to see him wed. So in a twinkling Darcy was back at the altar—conveniently pretending to be Billy’s bride. Trouble was, his sweet kiss and tenderness made Darcy secretly long for a real happily-ever-after…as Sergeant Billy’s wife!

  Dear Reader,

  Home, family, community and love. These are the values we cherish most in our lives—the ideals that ground us, comfort us, move us. They certainly provide the perfect inspiration around which to build a romance collection that will touch the heart.

  You’ve told us how much you enjoy these stories, and so we are thrilled to continue to offer you the Harlequin Heartwarming collection. Each of these special stories is a wholesome, heartfelt romance imbued with the traditional values so important to you. They are books you can share proudly with friends and family. And the authors featured in this collection are some of the most talented storytellers writing today, including favorites such as Tara Taylor Quinn, Roxanne Rustand, Jillian Hart and Kara Lennox. We’ve selected these stories especially for you based on their overriding qualities of emotion and tenderness, and they center around your favorite themes—children, weddings, second chances, the reunion of families, the quest to find a true home and, of course, sweet romance.

  So curl up in your favorite chair, relax and prepare for a heartwarming reading experience!

  Sincerely,

  The Editors

  BONNIE GARDNER

  After a varied career that included such jobs as switchboard operator, draftsman and exercise instructor, Bonnie went back to college and became an English teacher. As a teacher, she took a course on how to teach writing to high school students and caught the bug herself.

  She lives in northern Alabama with her husband of more than thirty years, her own military hero. After following him around from air force base to air force base, she has finally gotten to settle down. They have two grown sons, one of whom is now serving in the air force. She loves to read, cook, garden and of course write.

  Bonnie Gardner

  For Momma’s Sake

  To Mud, as always.

  To Sue, who reminds me that I am woman

  and can roar, and Kathie and Kathy and Brenda. You know why.

  To all the combat controllers and their families

  I have known through the years

  and even those I haven’t. You all have tough jobs and manage to do them well.

  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

  PROLOGUE

  DARCY STANTON SAT in the bride’s room in the chapel at Hurlburt Air Force Base and clenched her hands in her lap with a grip of death. She couldn’t believe she was really going through with it.

  She wasn’t ready to be a bride. She didn’t know what she was doing in this room getting ready to marry First Lieutenant Richard Harris III, a man she’d known all her life but wasn’t sure she knew at all. At this moment, she wasn’t sure she liked Dick, much less loved him.

  She didn’t want to be Mrs. Dick Harris, the daughter of General and Mrs. Harrington Stanton. She didn’t want to play the role of the prim and proper niece of Colonel John Harbeson, the commander of the Special Tactics Squadron at Hurlburt. She wanted to be just plain Darcy. Not Tracy D’Arcy Harbeson Stanton, the namesake of four decorated generals.

  She wanted to know how it would feel to work for a living, not to have to worry about protocol and which fork to use and what the other officers’ wives were wearing and what they would think of her. She’d planned to put her degree from Duke University in North Carolina to good use after graduation, but Dick would hear none of it.

  Darcy drew in a deep, shuddering breath and tried to still her racing heart. She was a registered nurse as of last Tuesday, and she knew the signs. She was in severe stress, verging on a full-fledged panic attack.

  “Mom,” Darcy whispered, her voice coming out in short, breathy gasps. “I’m not sure I can do this.” There, she’d finally said it, she’d voiced the doubts she’d been harboring for weeks, months—almost from the moment she’d let her mother convince her that accepting Dick’s proposal was the right thing to do.

  Since her parents had been out of the country because of Daddy’s posting at NATO Headquarters in Belgium, Mom had transferred much of the mother-of-the-bride wedding planning duties to Aunt Marianne. However, even from long distance and via e-mail, Mom had ruled with an iron hand.

  Mom had enumerated a list of reasons for marrying Dick Harris and joining the Harris family. The Stantons had had a long history of military service. Though Darcy was their only child—and not a son, much to Daddy’s dismay—her parents believed that the Stanton military tradition, if not the name, would live on if their daughter married into another long-standing military family.

  But Darcy wasn’t ready for offspring to carry on the family tradition. The thought of bearing any man’s child, much less Dick’s, set her into a panic.

  Her mother, just in from Europe, took Darcy by the hands and turned her away from the mirror. She brushed a flyaway strand of hair away from Darcy’s face and looked into her eyes. “It’s normal to have jitters, Tracy. I felt that way before my wedding. Once it’s over, you’ll be fine.”

  Darcy just looked at her and tried to blink the tears of frustration and panic out of her eyes. How could she explain that the wedding wasn’t making her nervous? It was the prospect of marriage…that was scaring her.

  Swallowing, Darcy forced herself to sit still in front of the makeup mirror. She had to do something before she made the biggest mistake of her life. She moistened her lips gone suddenly dry as the Sahara and looked at her mom. “May I have a few minutes to compose myself?”

  Her mother nodded and shooed the bridesmaids out, then stepped out of the small room.

  No sooner had the door closed behind them than Darcy leapt to action. She shot to her feet and locked the door. She knew what she had to do.

  And it wasn’t marry Dick.

  Darcy rummaged through the drawers of the makeup table for paper and a pen or pencil. Finding none, she grabbed an eyebrow pencil from the new makeup case her mother had insisted she use and scrawled a note on the mirror.

  She hated that she’d let it go this far, but it wasn’t too late. There would be no wedding. She removed the engagement ring that had always weighed too heavy on her hand and left it on the dressing table.

  Then, leaving her mother’s bridal ve
il hanging on a hook on the wall beside the mirror, she grabbed the backpack that contained her wallet and her other important papers and stuffed her jeans and T-shirt inside. Then she pushed open the window.

  Taking a deep breath, Darcy unhooked the screen, hiked up her long skirt and perched on the windowsill. Then she swung her legs up over the edge. It wasn’t that far to the ground, and the bride’s room was on the blind side of the chapel so nobody would see. She could be in her car, still in the parking lot from the rehearsal the night before, and on the road before anyone missed her. A quick change at an out-of-the-way gas station would remove any evidence of the wedding that wasn’t to be.

  Breathing a silent prayer, Darcy lowered herself to the ground and made her getaway.

  CHAPTER ONE

  IN THE SINKING afternoon sunlight, Technical Sergeant Bill Hays pulled out of the parking lot of his apartment complex. As he drove onto Highway 98, he glanced at the clock on the new dashboard and frowned. Eight o’clock.

  Surely the clock hadn’t been properly set before he’d taken possession of his new Jeep. He glanced at the government-issue dive watch on his wrist and muttered. He was running even later than he’d thought.

  It was bad enough that the two-week field exercise with his Special Tactics Squadron’s Silver Team had made him miss his regular trip to his family home in Alabama, but a maintenance problem on the transport plane bringing him back yesterday had delayed his departure for a week’s leave by yet another day. And the long debriefing had made him even later.

  Hurlburt Air Force Base might have been the closest Special Tactics Base to his home in Mattison, Alabama, but he might as well have been at his last assignment in California, as difficult as it had been to get home lately. Since he’d been in Florida, it seemed as if circumstances had contrived to keep him away from home.

  His late start would keep him from arriving before his mother went to bed. And the fifty miles or so of country road he had to traverse before he crossed the state line would make it impossible to save time. The roads wound and twisted enough in the daylight, but in the dark they were treacherous. He’d traveled these roads plenty of times, but as night had fallen, a thick, clinging fog had formed, making visibility next to nothing.

  Hoping that each curve in the road would reveal a break in the fog and clearer conditions, he inched along.

  Just after Bill drove into Alabama, he rounded a curve in the road and had to swerve sharply to avoid hitting something barely visible through the mist.

  Bill slammed on the brakes and skidded to a halt some twenty or thirty feet beyond the apparition. He blinked and looked back over his shoulder to see what he had missed. A girl materialized and loped toward him with a duffel bag in one hand and a backpack slung over her shoulder.

  “What do you think you’re doing out here in the middle of the road in the dead of the night?” Bill yelled as she reached the car. “I could have hit you.”

  She yanked open the passenger door without waiting for an invitation and tossed her bags over the seat to the back. “My old Volkswagen Beetle got me all the way through high school and nursing school, but it finally gave up a mile or so back. I was beginning to think that another car would never come along,” she said breathlessly.

  “You can’t—” Billy stopped himself. It was late, and they were in the middle of nowhere. “Get in,” he muttered.

  “Hi, I’m Darcy,” she said, sticking out her hand as she slid onto the seat. “You aren’t a serial killer, are you?”

  “Bill Hays,” he said, then laughed. “No,” he finally managed between chuckles. “I’m one of the good guys according to Uncle Sam.”

  “Your uncle’s recommendation works for me,” Darcy said as she buckled herself in. “Where’re you heading?”

  Bill didn’t know what to make of this unexpected passenger, and he wondered what had made her throw caution aside and hop into his car in the middle of nowhere, in the middle of the night. “Mattison, Alabama,” he said. “About three hours up the road.”

  “You came from Florida, then? Me, too.”

  He nodded, then glanced sideways at her. Darcy might have said she’d been through college, but she didn’t look much older than fourteen in that T-shirt and jeans.

  Her hair was short, wispy, and flew around her face as she spoke using animated gestures and expressions. She was clean-scrubbed and fresh-looking, with a delicate mouth that seemed very kissable.

  Now, where had that thought come from?

  Hadn’t he just assured her that she could trust him? It might have been a long time since he’d been out with a woman, but he wasn’t that hard up that he’d fall for the first one he came upon. The first one close enough to allow him to smell her perfume.

  He had a hard-and-fast rule about remaining free of complications while he was in Special Ops, and this girl—woman—looked like a keeper. He had no room for a woman in his life. Hadn’t he seen enough families torn apart because of the demands of the job? Not to mention families broken apart when the service member didn’t come home. He would never leave a woman in the same desperate situation his mother had found herself in when his father had died too young and too poor. Or in the same dire straits his sister Lougenia was in when that skunk of a husband had left her.

  Women were to be loved, protected, cherished. A man couldn’t do a decent job of that if he was off attending to hot spots on the other side of the world.

  He shook his head. If he continued to think about kissing her, he might not be able to trust himself. He drew a deep breath and cleared his throat, if not his thoughts. “Where were you going?” he finally managed after he realized that she hadn’t said. She hadn’t told him much other than that her car had broken down.

  “Don’t really know,” she told him after what seemed to be a long, pregnant silence. “I just graduated nursing school, and I haven’t quite figured out what to do with my life. I just knew I had to get away from my family and be on my own for a while.”

  Bill thought about that for a minute. Maybe her reluctance to talk about herself told him volumes more than if she’d prattled on. He shrugged. “I can take you to the next town,” he allowed. “You can get a motel and somebody to tow and fix your car.”

  He wondered about this small woman who had apparently climbed into a stranger’s car without a second thought. She was either desperate or stupid.

  He glanced at her and decided that desperate was more the thing. He’d bet she was escaping an abusive family, and climbing into a car with a man she didn’t know was probably preferable to going back to a situation she did.

  “You sure you want to ride with me?” he wondered out loud before he put the car into gear.

  She did what almost seemed to be a double take, then flashed a grin that seemed impossibly large from that small mouth. “I’m game,” she said. “It beats walking.”

  Darcy settled against the seat and breathed in the wonderful, new-car scent. She had worried that she’d be picked up by some weirdo, and that she’d have to fight for her life. But the minute she’d seen the clean-cut man in the driver’s seat, she’d known she’d be fine. As soon as her gaze had settled on his face, her doubts had vanished.

  One look and she knew she’d be safe in his arms.

  In his arms?

  What had made her think that? The last thing she needed was to be thinking about another man, considering the close call she’d just had. No, as soon as they reached civilization, she was going to thank Bill Hays sweetly for picking her up, then she’d get out of his car and do her best to get on with the rest of her life.

  Darcy risked a glance at the man driving, his eyes trained steadfastly on the dark road ahead. It was hard to tell much in the dim glow of the dashboard lights, but what she could see was pleasing to the eye.

  He was yo
ung, maybe a few years older than she. His clothes were clean, and he smelled like he’d just come from a shower. Was he hurrying to meet a sweetheart?

  If he was, Darcy thought, she was one lucky girl.

  Though he’d made that remark about Uncle Sam, he didn’t look much like a soldier. He looked like the college boys she’d known in school, a little bigger, maybe, and rougher around the edges. He wore jeans, faded but not too worn. His pullover shirt stretched tight across a broad chest, not too muscled, but lean and taut. Physical activities were obviously a regular part of his life.

  “Say, Darcy,” Bill said, interrupting Darcy’s thoughts. “I took off without eating. I could sure use a burger or something. What say we stop in Brewton for some eats?”

  Why was he asking her? Darcy wondered as they rolled into the marginally congested area of a small, country town. He was the one doing her the favor. She spotted the brightly lit sign of a familiar fast-food chain looming above the trees. Though she’d recognized the fast-food logo, she had yet to see a chain motel she was familiar with. After all, he was just supposed to take her to a motel so she could arrange to have her car towed.

  There was no harm in stopping for a bite, though. Sure, she wanted to get as far away from Hurlburt and Dick as she could, but a ten-minute delay to grab a burger wouldn’t make that much difference in the scheme of things.

  “Thank you. I’d like that,” she finally said. “I skipped dinner, too.” And breakfast and lunch, thanks to pre-wedding jitters, she didn’t say. Darcy pressed her hand against her stomach to silence the rumbling that Bill surely must have heard. Maybe that’s why he’d decided to stop.

  She felt her face grow hot, and Darcy thanked the powers that be that the car was dark, and Bill wouldn’t see her red face. Maybe he wasn’t hungry at all, and he’d only decided to stop because of her noisy stomach.

  “Let me buy your meal,” Darcy suggested. “My way of thanking you for rescuing me. It’s the least I can do.”