Excerpt of One-Night Love Child by Anne McAllister

Chapter One

The letter arrived out of the blue.

"I don’t know what it is, my lord." Mrs Upham sniffed, then
dangled the smudged and tattered pale blue envelope from
between two fingers with clear disapproval. “It’s
very . . . dirty.”

She had put the rest of the post on Flynn's desk in neat
sorted stacks as she always did. Estate business – the
biggest stack. Fan mail and book business – the mid-sized
stack. Personal letters from his mother or brother –
neither of whom seemed to believe in phones or email – in
the third.

All very tidy and organized – as if she could do the same
to Flynn’s life.

Good luck, he thought.

As his life currently consisted of Dunmorey, a dank and
crumbling five hundred odd year old castle full of
portraits of disapproving ancestors who looked down their
noses at Flynn’s efforts to literally keep a roof over
their heads, its attendant farms, lands and tenants, as
well as his horse-mad brother, Dev, who had great plans for
reviving the Dunmorey stud but no money to accomplish it,
and his mother whose mantra since his father’s death seven
months ago, had been, “We need to find you a bride,” Flynn
didn’t think Mrs Upham was likely to find any joy in it at
all

The only joy he could give her would be to tell her to
throw it out.

His father certainly would have.

The late eighth earl of Dunmorey had no patience for
anything that wasn’t proper and traditional. And he had
once thrown out a letter Flynn had scrawled on a piece of a
paper bag from a war zone where he’d been working on a
story.

“If you can’t be bothered to write a proper letter, I can’t
be bothered to read it,” his father had informed him later.

It would have been nice if the late earl had stopped saying
things like that since he was dead. But the fact was, Flynn
spend most days trying to deal with all of Dunmorey’s
demands while inside his head he heard the virtually
unceasing drone the dead eighth earl saying, “I knew you
couldn’t do it.”

Save the castle, he meant. Be a good earl, he meant. Be
dutiful and responsible and Measure Up, he meant.

The implication had always been that Flynn couldn’t.

“My lord?” Mrs Upham persisted.

His jaw tight, Flynn glanced up. He needed to run these
figures again, to see if somehow – this time – there was
enough to put the new roof on and still get the stables in
order by the time Dev brought his new stallion home from
Dubai.
There wouldn’t be.

He had more chance of hitting the New York Times bestseller
list with his new book coming out in the States next month.
At least he had a talent for hard-hitting interviews, for
insightful stories, for the written word.

It was what he’d done – what he’d been good at – before the
earldom had changed his life.

But he was not going to give up on Dunmorey, even though
the battle to keep the grim old Irish castle from crumbling
to bits under his watch was fierce. It was his obligation,
not his joy. And frankly, as a younger son, he had never
expected to have to do it.
But like everything else in his life these days, he'd
inherited while he was making other plans.

His late father would have said it served him right.

And maybe it did.

It wasn’t what he would have chosen, but by God, he was
determined to show the old man – dead though he was – that
he could do it right.

“Everything you need to deal with is here, my lord,” Mrs
Upham said. “I’ll just throw this nasty old thing out then,
shall I?”

Flynn grunted and started again at the top of the column.

“Can I bring you a cup of tea, my lord? Your father always
liked a cup of tea with his post.”

Flynn ground his teeth. “No, thank you, Mrs Upham. I’m fine
on my own.”

He had learned rather quickly that while in Mrs Upham’s
eyes, he would never be his father – and thank God for
that, Flynn thought – he did have his own version of the
Voice of Authority.

Whenever he used it, Mrs Upham got the point.

“Very good, my lord.” She nodded and backed out of the
room. He might as well have been the king of England.

He did the figures again. But they still didn’t give him
the total he wanted. He sighed and slumped back in his
chair, rubbed his eyes and flexed his shoulders. He had an
appointment with a contractor at the stables in an hour to
see what else needed to be done before Dev brought the
stallion home in a fortnight.

As the horse was a proven winner and thus a money-making
proposition, the stables were an absolute priority. Stud
fees and book royalties didn’t seem like enough to keep
Dunmorey afloat.

The castle had been in the family for more than three
hundred years. It had seen better times and, hard though it
was to believe, it had seen worse times as well. To Flynn
it was the physical embodiment of the family motto:
Eireoidh Linn which he knew from his Irish schooldays
meant, roughly, We will succeed despite adversity.

His father had always told English-speaking guests it
meant, We Will Survive!
So far, they had, though since the castle was no longer
entailed, it could sold.
They hadn’t had to sell it yet. And Flynn was damned if he
was going to be the one to lose the fight.

But the post brought more renovation estimates which were
depressingly large and bills that were equally so. They’d
borrowed against the castle to get the money to get the
stud up and running. When it was, things would be better.
If his book did well, they would certainly improve. In the
meantime . . .

Flynn shoved back his chair and got up to prowl the room,
cracking his knuckles. It was on his return to the desk
that his eyes were drawn to the spot of blue paper in the
bottom of the bin.

It was every bit as dirty and crumpled and unappetizing as
Mrs Upham had said. And yet it intrigued him.

It wasn’t another bill or another set of estimates. It
wasn’t a circular about a farm auction or an invitation to
Lord and Lady So-and-So’s house party. It wasn’t s stuffy.
It wasn’t embossed.

And it was, he could see, addressed half a dozen times
over, to him. A call from his old life.

“Junk,” his father would have dismissed it.

But he had never been his father, as they all well knew.

Flynn reached down and fished it out. The original address
had been sent to him in care of Incite magazine in New York
City.

His brows lifted at that. Once upon a time he'd done
entertainment personality pieces and feature articles for
them. But he hadn't written articles for Incite in years.
His father had always called them “fluff” and said it was a
pity Flynn hadn’t been good enough to write real news about
something that mattered.

In fact, he had been. And the succession of addresses
crossed out on the envelope were pretty much a record of
where he had proved exactly that: Africa, the East Indies,
west central Asia, South America, the Middle East. One hot
spot after another, each one hotter than the last.

Now he stared at the envelope, caught up in a flickering
cascade of memories – of excitement, of challenge, of life.

He studied again the firm but neat feminine handwriting
beneath the others. He didn’t recognize it. He was amazed
that the letter had caught up with him at all. It must have
been a labor of love or sheer stubborn perseverance on the
part of the world's post offices. The single US domestic
postage stamp had first been cancelled in November five
years before.

Five years?

Five years ago last November Flynn had been in the middle
of a South American jungle, writing a "real news story" on
twenty-first century inter-tribal warfare – by experiencing
it firsthand.

"You sure you want to do this?" his editor in London had
been sceptical when Flynn had announced he was
going. "You've already been shot once this year. This time
you could get yourself killed."

That had been the general idea at the time.

His older brother, Will – 'the heir,' his father had always
called him – had died just months before. And depending how
you looked at it – certainly if you looked at it the way
the earl did – Will's death had been Flynn's fault.

"He was going to the airport to meet you!" the earl had
railed, feeling only his own pain, never even acknowledging
Flynn's. "You're the one who had to come home to recover!
You're the one who got shot!"

But not the one who'd died.

That had been Will – steady sensible responsible Will who
had stopped on the way to the airport to help a motorist
change a flat tire and got hit by a passing car.
In a matter of an instant, the world changed – Will was
gone and Flynn had become 'the heir' in his place.

It was hard to say who was more dismayed – Flynn or his
father.

Certainly when he'd recovered from his gunshot wound
received pursuing one of those "real news stories that
mattered," – the one he’d come home to recuperate from when
Will had been killed – no one, least of all his father, had
objected when he'd left for the inter-tribal warfare in
South America.

No one had objected when he'd pursued increasingly
dangerous assignments after that.

But no matter how dangerous they were, no matter that he
got shot again, more than once, Flynn hadn't died. He'd
still been the heir when his father had dropped over from a
heart attack last July.

Now he was the earl. He wasn't traveling the world anymore.
He was stuck at Dunmorey Castle.

And a five year old letter that had chased him around the
world and finally tracked him down seemed far less
demanding -- and much more appealing – than thinking about
any of that.

Flynn slit it open. Inside was a single sheet of plain
white paper. He took it out and unfolded it. The letter was
brief.

Flynn. This is the third letter I've written you. Don't
worry, I won't be writing any more. I don't expect anything
from you. I want nothing. I just thought you had a right to
know.
The baby was born this morning just after eight. He was
seven pounds eleven ounces. Strong and healthy. I'm naming
him after my father. Of course I'm keeping him. Sara.

Flynn stared at the words, tried to understand them, put
them in a context where they would make sense.

Expect. Nothing. Right to know. Baby.

Sara.

The paper trembled in his fingers. His heart kicked over in
his chest. He started again – this time with the signature:
Sara.

An image of intense brown eyes, flawless ivory skin and
short-cropped dark hair flickered through his mind. A
vision of smooth golden skin and the taste of lips that
spoke of cinnamon and spice teased his thoughts.

Sara McMaster.

Dazzling delightful Sara from Montana.

Good God.

He stared at the letter as its meaning became clear.

Sara had been pregnant. Sara had had a baby.

A boy . . .

His son.