The Welcoming

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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. The publisher does not have control over and does not have any responsibility for author or third-party websites or their content.
    THE WELCOMING
    An InterMix Book / published by arrangement with the author
    PUBLISHING HISTORY
    Harlequin Books edition / August 2006
    InterMix eBook edition / October 2012
     
    Copyright © 1989 by Nora Roberts.
    Excerpt from
The Perfect Hope
copyright © 2012 by Nora Roberts.
     
    Cover design by Sarah Oberrender. Photo: Highway 101 © aceshot1/Shutterstock.
    All rights reserved.
    No part of this book may be reproduced, scanned, or distributed in any printed or electronic form without permission. Please do not participate in or encourage piracy of copyrighted materials in violation of the author’s rights. Purchase only authorized editions.
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    ISBN: 978-1-101-56968-9
    INTERMIX
    InterMix Books are published by The Berkley Publishing Group,
    a division of Penguin Group (USA) Inc.,
    375 Hudson Street, New York, New York 10014.
    INTERMIX and the “IM” design are trademarks of Penguin Group (USA) Inc.

For my friend Catherine Coulter,
    because she’s always good for a laugh.

Chapter 1
    Everything he needed was in the backpack slung over his shoulders. Including his .38. If things went well he would have no use for it.
    Roman drew a cigarette out of the crumpled pack in his breast pocket and turned away from the wind to light it. A boy of about eight raced along the rail of the ferry, cheerfully ignoring his mother’s calls. Roman felt a tug of empathy for the kid. It was cold, certainly. The biting wind off Puget Sound was anything but springlike. But it was one hell of a view. Sitting in the glass-walled lounge would be cozier, but it was bound to take something away from the experience.
    The kid was snatched by a blond woman with pink cheeks and a rapidly reddening nose. Roman listened to them grumble at each other as she dragged the boy back inside. Families, he thought, rarely agreed on anything. Turning away, he leaned over the rail, lazily smoking as the ferry steamed by clumpy islands.
    They had left the Seattle skyline behind, though the mountains of mainland Washington still rose up to amaze and impress the viewer. There was an aloneness here, despite the smattering of hardy passengers walking the slanting deck or bundling up in the patches of sunlight along wooden benches. He preferred the city, with its pace, its crowds, its energy. Its anonymity. He always had. For the life of him, he couldn’t understand where this restless discontent he felt had come from, or why it was weighing so heavily on him.
    The job. For the past year he’d been blaming it on the job. The pressure was something he’d always accepted, even courted. He’d always thought life without it would be bland and pointless. But just lately it hadn’t been enough. He moved from place to place, taking little away, leaving less behind.
    Time to get out, he thought as he watched a fishing boat chug by. Time to move on. And do what? he wondered in disgust, blowing out a stream of smoke. He could go into business for himself. He’d toyed with that notion a time or two. He could travel. He’d already been around the world, but it might be different to do it as a tourist.
    Some brave soul came out on deck with a video camera. Roman turned, shifted, eased out of range. It was in all likelihood an unnecessary precaution; the move was instinctive. So was the watchfulness, and so was the casual