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Wild In The Moment

Harlequin Enterprises, Ltd.

Chapter One

She didn't, of course. If she'd learned one thing in the past eleven years, it was to shut up and be careful instead of impulsive - but deep down, she sure wanted to scream.

January in Vermont was no new story for her. The wild winds and blizzard snows and bleak-naked trees and mirror-slick roads were as familiar as a tedious TV rerun. It was for reasons like this that she'd left White Hills, Vermont, and never planned to come back.

However, now, in the middle of a life-threatening spin, really didn't seem an ideal time to digress.

The cheap compact she'd rented at the airport was a mighty contrast to the red Ferrari she'd driven on the Riviera, but when push came to shove, a car was a car. The compact spun a complete 360, skidded into the on-coming traffic lane, and then careened toward the crest of the hill. Below was an unpleasant drop. Very unpleasant. In fact, unpleasant enough to likely kill her if she couldn't get the tires to bite - damn soon. Damn, damn, damn soon.

But the tires did bite. For a few hairy moments, the compact faced oncoming traffic, but Daisy battled for traction and eventually turned theson of a seadog around. Since no other vehicles were in sight - thanks to the blizzard - she wasn't hit or harmed. Nothing was endangered at all, beyond her pulse thumping at sonic-boom levels, but that was no special event. Her ex-husband had regularly raised her blood pressure beyond stroke level easier and faster than any old Vermont blizzard.

It could be that she was getting a tiny bit tired, though.

The past two months on the Riviera had been a nightmare rather than a vacation. The past two days of solid traveling and negotiating airports had been nonstop grueling. And the past two hours, she'd been driving in escalating ghastly conditions.

The car clock claimed it was three in the afternoon, but it might as well have been midnight. Black-cheeked clouds kept rolling in low. The wipers could barely keep up with the slashing, bashing snow. Drifts were forming fast, making big, fat white pillows on fence posts and roofs - but where the wind swept the roads clean, the surface was slick ice.

Exhausted or not, she simply couldn't relax. Not yet.

Ten minutes from home - even though Daisy hadn't considered the Campbell homestead to be her real home for more than a decade - her body seemed to sense the ordeal was almost over. She couldn't see Firefly Hollow, where every teenager in the county traditionally made out on Saturday night, but she knew it was there. She couldn't see Old Man Swisher's pond, either, but growing up, she'd spent so many hours in the neighbor's swimming hole that she knew where it was from the curve in the road. A huge, lioness of a yawn escaped her lungs. Less than a half mile, she'd be home free and safe.

Only, right then, a hundred yards from the driveway, the compact found another diamond slide of ice. It was like trying to control a bullet. She did all the things she was supposed to do, but the little rental car went with the spin, then dove, nose first, into a ditch.

The back tires were still spinning when Daisy let out a long, furious blood-curdling scream.

There were times for impulse control - and times when a woman was justifiably fed-up, ticked-off, had it, and every other multiple-guess choice there could possibly be.

She turned off the damn car, grabbed her damn purse and overnight bag, and then wrenched open the damn door. Her elegant Italian boots promptly sank into two-foot-deep snow. Naturally she fell. Abandoning all pride, she clawed and crawled her way up from the damn ditch to the damn road.

In that brief period of time, her toes and nose froze solid. Her red cashmere coat and fuzzy hat were designer French; her bags and gloves were Swiss. She'd have traded all of it - including her Manolo Blahnik boots - for a practical L.L. Bean jacket. The kind she grew up in. The kind she swore she'd never wear again as long as she lived.

Eyes squinting against the battering, blustering snow, she trudged toward home. She was exasperated beyond belief, she told herself. Not scared. Daisy Campbell-Rochard-now-Campbell-again simply didn't do scared. There was a world of difference between being gutless and being careful. She knew exactly how serious a Vermont blizzard could be. There were snowstorms ... and then there were snowstorms - the kind that shut down the community for days. The kind where, if you fell in a drift, no one would likely find you for a good week. The kind where, if you had a brain, you wouldn't be outside at all, much less if you weren't dressed for serious weather.

But then - in spite of the shrieking wind and the fistfuls of snow - she recognized the rail fence. Then the toboggan hill. Then the big old maple tree.

And finally, there it was. Home. The base structure was as old as the first Campbell who came over from Scotland - right after the Mayflower, her dad always claimed. Rooms had been added on, but the house was still basically the same sturdy, serious house with white trim and a shake roof. For a moment, fierce, wonderful memories flooded her of coming home other times - smoke puffing from the chimney, lights warming every window, Colin and Margaux flying out the front door to greet their oldest daughter, Violet and Camille laughing and gossiping.

Just that quickly, though, Daisy's heart sank. It didn't seem like home when there were no lights, no sign of life. The place looked cold and hauntingly lonely. No one had plowed the road in weeks.

She told herself it was totally stupid to feel at such a loss. Obviously, there couldn't be a welcoming committee when no one knew she was coming home - and she'd known ahead of time that the house was empty.

In fact, when it came down to it, Daisy took a ton of credit for everyone being so happy and busy these days. Her mom and dad were retired and basking in the Arizona sunshine, thanks to her researching their ideal retirement home.

Camille, the baby of the family, had stopped home for a few months last summer, needing to recover from a god-awful personal tragedy - but Daisy had stepped in there, too, got the family together and organized some subtle matchmaking. Camille and her groom - and his kids and critters and dad - were hanging out in Australia for the next six months.

Violet, their middle sister, had holed up in the farm house for a longer stretch - at least two or three years after getting divorced from the Creep of the Universe. She'd been scaring off men, and likely still would be - if Daisy hadn't stepped in and sent home a man who was brave enough to take her on. Now Vi was married, too, and not as big as a blimp yet, but due in a couple more months. She was living with her new husband somewhere in upstate New York.

(Continues...)

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Excerpted from Wild In The Moment by Jennifer Greene Copyright © 2004 by Harlequin Enterprises, Ltd.. Excerpted by permission.
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