Carry Me Home

By Alexa Bourne

After six months in the city, Mary MacDougall returns to the Scottish Highlands to finalize her divorce. Because of a past tragedy, she doubts her husband Jamie can possibly love her with the same unbridled passion as before and insists ending the marriage is best for both of them. But Jamie has other ideas....

Jamie MacDougall has no intention of letting his bonnie lass go. At least not without a fight. Aye, they’ve suffered heartache, and she may be ready to call it quits, but he refuses to throw away the partnership they’ve built since they were children. Instead, he’ll remind her they were meant to be together, forever.

Can this marriage survive pride and grief to allow love to carry them home?

• Language: English
• Publisher: Decadent Publishing
• Release date: Jun 2, 2013
• ISBN: 9781613335130

Alexa Bourne

Alexa Bourne is a teacher by day and a romance writer by nights, weekends, and all school holidays. She also teaches online classes for writers throughout the year. She writes romantic suspense and contemporary romance for Decadent Publishing and is thrilled to have the chance to share her love of Great Britain with readers everywhere. When she's not concocting sinister plots and steamy love scenes or traveling and exploring new cultures, Alexa spends her time reading, watching brainless TV and thinking about exercising. She loves to interact with readers, so visit her web page, hang out at her blog, follow her on Twitter or drop her a note at : www.alexabourne.com or http://alexabourne.blogspot.com, http://www.facebook.com/AuthorAlexaBourne or follow her on Twitter @AlexaBourne.

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This book is a work of fiction. Names, characters, places, and incidents are the products of the author’s imagination or used fictitiously. Any resemblance to actual events, locales or persons, living or dead, is entirely coincidental.

Carry Me Home

Smashwords Edition

Copyright © 2013 by Alexa Bourne

ISBN: 978-1-61333-513-0

Cover art by Scott Carpenter

All rights reserved. Except for use in any review, the reproduction or utilization of this work, in whole or in part, in any form by any electronic, mechanical or other means now known or hereafter invented, is forbidden without the written permission of the publisher.

Published by Decadent Publishing Company, LLC

Look for us online at:

www.decadentpublishing.com

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Carry Me Home

By

Alexa Bourne

~DEDICATION~

For Meredith Cole.

Thank you for having enough faith in me to request this project.

Chapter One

Mary MacDougall tossed the edge of her scarf over her shoulder and reached for her suitcase handle in the overhead compartment of the train. Six months was a long time to be away from everyone she knew and loved. Much had changed with her. Would anyone notice? Or would she fail and return to the woman she used to be?

With her case in her hands, she descended the stairs. When she stepped onto the Glenhalish platform, her stomach curled. Sunshine brushed across her face. She turned up to it, closed her eyes, and inhaled the scents of her home. Sweet heather and freshly cut grass from somewhere.

Aye, she loved Edinburgh, but Glenhalish held her soul.

Had held it until she’d run away in the dead of winter.

As the train closed its doors and chugged onward, Mary reopened her eyes. She’d be reboarding in four days’ time, with everything she owned and the signed papers that granted her freedom.

Hopefully.

She crossed the brick bridge over the track, her heels clacking against the stone in time to the rhythm of the wheels of the case. By the door to the one room station house, she stopped.

You. Standing by the stairs to the parking lot with his hands behind his back was the man who’d stolen her heart and trampled it until there was nothing left. Jamie, her husband.

And yet, her old ticker still stuttered.

Damn. She had hoped to have at least a few hours to steel her nerves before confronting him. But no, here he stood, tall and big and so tempting. Her gentle giant with his well-trimmed beard and his wild red hair hanging too long.

Hello, love. His smooth voice enveloped her like a perfect summer dress.

All she’d learned about herself over the last six months came to her brain. She was her own woman—confident, sexy, independent. He had lost the right to call her love when he’d all but forgotten about her…back then. When she had needed his strong arms to hold her up, he jumped into work at the family’s pub and left her to deal with her pain alone.

With all the courage she could muster, she strutted over to him. Immediately the familiar musk of him wrapped around her and made her long for all of him again, for the way things used to be. How did you know I’d be coming in today?

Meggie.

Ah. She nodded. Of course. His gossip-queen sister told him.

"It’s