Three top-selling Silhouette authors present this new collection in the Montana Mavericks series that introduces new characters and the town of Rumor. When the residents of Rumor throw a Crazy Moon Festival celebrating the lunar eclipse, there's no telling what will happen when three sassy waitresses from the Calico Diner discover the truth behind a local legend. Original.

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Jordan Rush was looking for a pregnant woman. Not just any pregnant woman, of course, but the one who carried his child. Illegally.

Following this quest, he turned left off Highway 212 rather than continuing down the road to Whitehorn. The paved country road to the town of Rumor was relatively straight. For a Montana road in the foothills abutting the Beartooth Mountains, that fact was gratifying.

The Beartooth pass to Wyoming was one of the most treacherous highways he'd ever traveled. Tourists coming up from Yellowstone were still talking about it upon arriving in Billings, where his home was located, about an hour east of there.

He gave a grunt of amusement that wasn't in the least funny. He was on a damned treacherous course right now and had no idea where it might end. In court, probably.

Spotting a doe and two fawns grazing in the hilly pasture of a local ranch, he concentrated on the road. A friend of his had rolled a brand-new SUV when a deer had jumped out in front of him. The vehicle had been totaled. Fortunately, his friend had escaped with minor injuries.

One thing Jordan didn't need at the present was more accidents in his life, not that this desire seemed to make much difference to the Fates who controlled people's destiny and laughed at the results.

He rounded the sweeping curve of a hill and saw the town of Rumor nestled in a verdant little valley. With a natural water source, aptly called Cave Springs, tumbling out of a cavern under a limestone cliff, the town was a prosperous community serving ranchers, hunting, fishing and camping enthusiasts and the white-knuckled tourists who braved the winding mountain roads.

A shudder of ... dread? fear? apprehension? ... ran over him. Anger buried the undefined emotion. He gripped the steering wheel and drove down Main Street, his eyes moving restlessly from store to store and person to person.

A pregnant woman should be easier to spot than the proverbial needle in a haystack. He hoped.

As soon as he got through the three blocks that made up the heart of the town, he signaled a left turn onto Cave Springs Road. A mile farther along, he swung right into a driveway and parked under the carport of a modern cabin with a rustic look.

The rusticity was deceiving. The cabin was less than a year old and belonged to Billings Forestry Products, the company he had founded and nurtured into the largest forestry operation in Montana. The company was a sponsor of the Crazy Moon Festival, a month-long celebration of the lunar eclipse coming up at the end of the summer, designed by the town council to lure in tourist dollars.

The festival suited his real purpose for being there - to find the woman who had been impregnated with his sperm, which the fertility clinic was supposed to have destroyed.

He'd given direct orders to that effect three months ago - as soon as he remembered that little detail - only to find the technician had accidentally transposed two numbers and used his semen instead of that of a sperm donor the previous month.

So now some woman was four months pregnant, carrying his child by mistake. The damn clinic was supposed to have been foolproof about things like that; otherwise, he and Nicole wouldn't have gone there.

Stopping on the porch that wrapped around three sides of the cabin, he gripped the support post until the pain of overbearing grief passed. After a moment, he sat on the top step and stared at the mountains with their rows of sharp white jags, exactly like huge teeth protruding from the earth, rising to the west of them.

Nicole. His wife of eight years. Lighthearted and fun-loving. An imp who had loved to tease him about being serious and goal-driven. Not beautiful exactly, but pretty and vivacious and sexy and loving ... until the obsession to have a child overtook their lives.

Making love became a matter of ovulation dates and thermometers, of "fertile days" and finally of desperation and the fertility clinic and the attempt at in vitro fertilization. He'd sometimes found himself resenting the demand for a child at any cost.

It had been hopeless from the first. The Fates had laughed at their efforts for his wife had never conceived. Instead she died on the first day of May, exactly one year and one month ago, of ovarian cancer.

Nicole, the precious gift in his life. Gone. Taking a ragged breath, he waited out the grief, knowing it would pass, a cold, cruel wind flowing over the barren plains of his soul. The Bard had been wrong - it wasn't better to have loved, not if a man had to face this kind of bitter loss.

Leaping to his feet, he carried his luggage inside, glad that there were no memories associated with the cabin. After checking the messages in the office next to the master bedroom, he unpacked and tried to plan his next move.

The doctor had let it slip that the woman lived in this tiny town, but had declared the law forbade disclosing the name. It had cost a bundle using the services of a private detective, but the man hadn't been able to pry or bribe the information out of anyone at the clinic.

So here he was, determined to find out on his own just who the woman was. Laughter, harsh and unbidden, welled up in him. How the hell did one find a pregnant woman and ask her how she got that way?

(Continues...)

Excerpted from Under Western Skies by Laurie Paige Copyright © 2002 by Harlequin Enterprises Limited
Excerpted by permission. All rights reserved. No part of this excerpt may be reproduced or reprinted without permission in writing from the publisher.