Morgan's Child

Morgan's Child

Circles of Love Series

Book Three

by

Pamela Browning

Award-winning Author

MORGAN'S CHILD

Awards & Accolades

Waldenbooks Romance Bestseller

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ISBN: 978-1-61417-814-9

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This is a work of fiction. Names, characters, places, and incidents either are the product of the author's imagination or are used fictitiously, and any resemblance to actual persons, living or dead, business establishments, events or locales is entirely coincidental.

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Copyright © 1992 and 2015 by Pamela Browning All rights reserved under International and Pan-American Copyright Conventions.

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Dedication

This book is dedicated with gratitude to the many guiding lights who have illumined my way. Love to all of you!

P.B.

Author Note

My Circles of Love series celebrates untraditional families, all brought together through the love of the hero and heroine for each other. In these four heartwarming books, each loving couple must decide what makes a family. Is family defined only by blood ties? Or is it what we feel in our hearts?

Jane and Duncan, Martha and Nick, Kate and Morgan, Sage and Adam—four couples whose love stories ultimately bring them to the realization that a family is made up of the very special people that we choose to embrace in our ever-widening Circles of Love.

P.B.

Chapter 1

If only I didn't have to go to this ridiculous tea party,
Kate Sinclair thought as she set off lickety-split down the ramp from the Yaupon Island ferry and zigged across the oyster-shell path past Ye Olde Pribble Gift Shoppe and the Merry Lulu Tavern.

She dodged a kid trying to maneuver a skateboard down the sticky asphalt street and spared a worried glance at the sky hunkering too low on the horizon. The storm would probably hit before the party was over, which is what Willadeen Pribble and the Ashepoo County Historical Society deserved for throwing a tea party this time of year. Everybody knew that late June was a time for fierce afternoon thunderboomers in the South Carolina Lowcountry.

At the end of the street loomed Plumm House, home of the historical society and the largest structure in Preacher's Inlet. It was a huge Victorian mansion embellished with lots of unnecessary gingerbread, and once Kate had privately tagged it "plum ugly," much to her father's amusement.

"Why, it's Kate Sinclair," exclaimed Willadeen Pribble, as if Kate's knock was a complete surprise. Willadeen's hair looked like a chocolate kiss piled atop her head with a swirl, and it bobbed when her head did.

"Do come in. Our own little lighthouse lady," said Willadeen, her lips arranged into a forced smile.

Kate, who at five foot ten was anything but little and by Willadeen's standards not even much of a lady, reluctantly stepped inside. She managed to murmur a brief hello to the person in charge of the guest book before her hostess sailed away to the kitchen, leaving Kate thankful to be on her own.

The next person Kate saw was Courtney Rhett. She was surrounded by a gaggle of gray-haired ladies who seemed to have turned the various blossoms of a whole flower garden into fabric and plastered it around their posteriors. Courtney, by contrast, looked slim and chic in stark Mondrian color blocks on a white linen sheath.

"Punch?" murmured one of Willadeen's minions as she pressed a glass cup filled with tepid red liquid into Kate's hand.

The room was crowded, and Kate was relieved that no one was paying her the least bit of attention. She wandered closer to Courtney, mostly because the refreshment table was located to Courtney's right. Kate hadn't eaten a thing since early morning.

She'd managed to grab a few morsels of food from the table and was positioning herself to maneuver around the grand piano, whose upraised lid seemed to provide a screen of sorts, when she distinctly saw Courtney Rhett wink. Not at her, certainly.

But when Kate was standing behind the piano lid wolfing down what tasted for all the world like a cat food sandwich, she noticed Courtney easing away from her group and sauntering casually in Kate's direction. Kate stopped eating in mid-bite, suddenly on alert. Why would Courtney Rhett seek her out?

Kate had read the society pages of the Charleston paper often enough in the past to know that she and Courtney weren't exactly in the same social stratum. Courtney was old-money Charleston aristocracy and a St. Cecilia's Ball debutante, while Kate was of a distinctly scientific bent and longed for nothing so much as to resume her research on the lowly oyster.

"I remember meeting you at something or other around here," Courtney said. "I'm Courtney Rhett."

"Kate Sinclair," Kate said. "We met last year at the board meeting of the hysterical society when they were discussing renovations necessary to turn the lighthouse into a museum."

"Hysterical society?"

"I mean historical society," Kate said, hastily correcting her gaffe.

Courtney laughed, a long, full-bodied peal that caused several of their fellow guests to turn and stare.

Courtney ignored them. "So," she said as she tapped a cigarette out of a gold case and lit it. She blew the initial puff out the window. "How'd these old bags get you to come to this shindig?"

"I beg your pardon?" Kate said.

"I knew the minute I saw you that you don't belong here anymore than I do," said Courtney. "My grandmother donated a fistful of money to preserve Yaupon Light, and now that the society is finally going to turn it into a museum, I'm delegated to represent her."

Kate remembered Courtney's grandmother, with whom her late father had developed an unlikely friendship. "I'm sorry your grandmother couldn't make it," Kate said.