A Time To Come Home Harlequin Superromance January 2007 EXCERPT With only the dim glow of the bathroom night light to guide her, Diana Smith moved silently through the upstairs hall of her older brother's pricey townhouse. The low heels of her boots sank into the plush carpeting, muffling her footsteps. Shifting the weight of her backpack more comfortably on her shoulder, she stopped in front of the bedroom where her nine-year-old daughter Jaye slept and carefully eased open the door. The hinges groaned in protest, the sound gunshot-loud in the quiet house. Diana froze, her breath catching in her throat. She glanced down the darkened hall to her brother's bedroom door, waiting for Connor to emerge and find her awake and fully dressed. But the door remained closed.

She exhaled, her breath coming out ragged. Careful not to nudge the door, she peered  around the crack into the room.

Jaye was still asleep but stirred restlessly, turning over onto her side. Diana stood perfectly still until the girl settled into position and her chest expanded and contracted in a rhythmic motion. Weak moonlight filtered through a crack in the blinds, bathing Jaye in soft light.

Her face was relaxed, her cheeks rosy and her full lips slightly pursed as she slept. Her long, blonde hair spilled over the pillow like a halo.

A wave of love hit Diana so hard she nearly toppled over. She'd decided on the course of  action she must take three days ago, but gazing upon her daughter she wasn't sure she  had the strength to carry through.

She was reminded too vividly of another place, another time and a man whose features she glimpsed in the sleeping child. She'd done right by Tyler Benton, too, but the doing had nearly ripped out her heart.

From necessity and long practice, she shoved Tyler from her mind and concentrated on the here and now. Before she could muster the will to retreat, she broke into a cold sweat, her muscles and her very bones aching. She fought off a bout of nausea as her stomach pitched and rolled.

If she needed a sign that leaving Jaye was the right thing to do, her physical condition  couldn't have provided a better one.

She'd felt ill since losing control of her car on a slick stretch of road and crashing into a  towering oak tree, but not due to injuries sustained in the crash. She'd walked away from the one-car accident remarkably unscathed, considering she might have died if she'd struck the tree a few inches left of impact.

The police had attributed her accident to bad luck, but Diana feared the pain pills she'd  popped after leaving her job at a Nashville clothing warehouse had been the true cause.

She'd been using the drug since straining her back six months before, devising new and  clever ways to secure the tablets long after her prescription ran out.

Horrified that Jaye could have been in the car with her, she'd faced the fact that she was addicted. Then she'd flushed the rest of the Vicodin down the toilet, only to find a new stockpile a few days later in one of her hiding places.

Since then, she'd lost her job after failing a random drug test at work and confronted some more harsh truths. She needed help to kick her habit and she wasn't fit to be around her daughter.

After much thought, she'd packed up Jaye and the child's meager belongings and boarded a bus for the two-day trip from Tennessee to Connor's townhouse. They'd arrived in Silver Spring, Maryland, not even six hours ago, surprising a brother she hadn't seen in years.

Jaye made a sweet, snuffling sound in her sleep and hugged the soft, stuffed teddy bear that Diana had bought her when she was a toddler. Diana longed to rush over to the bed and kiss her one last time, but couldn't risk waking her.

"I'm sorry, baby," she whispered.

Tears fell down her cheeks like rain as she memorized the planes and angles of the sleeping   child's face before moving away from the door. She left it ajar, unwilling to risk making another sound.

She crept down the hall and descended the stairs as silently as a ghost. When she reached Connor's state-of-the-art kitchen, she turned on the dim light over the stove, dug Jaye's school transcripts and birth certificate out of her backpack and set them on the counter.

After locating a pad and pen, she thought for long moments before she wrote: Connor, I  need to work some things out and get my head on straight. Here's everything you need to enroll Jaye in school. Please take good care of her until I come back. I don't know when that will be, but I'll be in touch.

She put down the note, read it over, then bent down and scribbled two more words: I'm sorry.

A fat teardrop rolled from her face onto the note paper, blurring the ink of the apology.

Wiping away the rest of the tears, she headed for the front door. Her chest ached. Whether it was from being without Vicodin or from heartache, she couldn't be sure.

Within moments, she was trudging down the sidewalk by the glow of the street lamps   toward the very bus station where she and Jaye had arrived.

She knew that abandoning her child was unforgivable, just as what she'd done to Tyler  Benton ten years ago had been unforgivable.

But it couldn't be helped.

She'd been barely seventeen when Jaye was born, no more than a child herself, grossed out by breast feeding, impatient with crying and resentful of her new responsibilities.

A tidal wave of love for her daughter, which gathered strength with each passing day, had helped Diana grow up fast. She tried her best, but harbored no illusion that love made her a good mother.

Diana waited for the sparse early morning traffic to pass before crossing a main street,  placing one foot in front of the other when all she wanted was to turn back. But she   couldn't. Not only did she lack the courage to confess to her brother that she had a drug problem, she couldn't risk having him say Jaye couldn't stay with him.

Despite his bachelor status, Connor represented her best hope. Her parents, to whom she hadn't spoken in years, were out. She had no doubt that her brother would take good care of Jaye. Until Diana kicked her habit and put her life back on track, Jaye was better off with him. And without Diana.

She blinked rapidly until her tears dried, then turned her mind to her uncertain future. Once she spent a portion of her dwindling cash on a return bus ticket to Nashville, she'd need to find a cheaper apartment, search for a job that paid a decent wage and somehow figure out how to get into drug treatment.

Even now she craved a pill so badly her entire body hurt.

She reached into the front pocket of her blue jeans, her fingertips encountering the reassuring presence of the three little white Vicodin tablets left from her stash.

Despite her desire to do right by her much-loved daughter, she couldn't say for sure   whether the pills would still be in her pocket when she reached Nashville.