The Second Chance Read online

  She can’t remember the last five years...

  Or the man who says he’s her husband.

  Chuck Mikkelson knows Shana doesn’t remember him...or that she wanted a divorce. But now she’s back in his home, and he vows to save their union at all costs. This may be the only chance he has to win back his wife. Will their rekindled passion be enough to convince her to stay when her memory returns?

  His green eyes glimmered with promise as his gaze held hers.

  What was it about this man that drew her so? Had the attraction between them always been this intense?

  Chuck dipped the spoon back in the ice cream. “This is like when we were dating.”

  She watched him taste from the silverware he’d just fed her with, unable to take her eyes off him. “I wish I remembered.”

  “You will,” he said confidently.

  “And if I don’t?”

  “Let’s work on new memories now.” Chuck angled closer, whispering in her ear. “I have an inside track here, knowing what you like.”

  He pressed his mouth against her neck, just over her leaping pulse. The heat of his breath fanned an answering warmth in her. She lost herself in the sensations he stirred. His mouth grazed up farther to nip her earlobe. He kissed her ear, taking his time.

  Finally, his lips moved to hers.

  * * *

  The Second Chance is part of the

  Alaskan Oil Barons series from USA TODAY bestselling author Catherine Mann!

  Dear Reader,

  Who remembers the television blockbuster series Dallas? Or more recently, Nashville? These shows are full of glitz and drama, heartbreak and love, and I adore them and wanted to create that same sweeping family saga feel in my eight-book Alaskan Oil Barons series.

  And while it’s a blast writing stories with glitz and wealth, I also strive to write characters who are down-to-earth, like those who can be found in the sweeping family sagas of Friday Night Lights and Bloodline. Alaska offered the perfect setting to give my wealthy characters a grassroots vibe. (And how cool that I get to research by binge watching Netflix!)

  Thank you for picking up the next installation of my Alaskan Oil Barons series. I look forward to hearing what you think of Chuck and Shana Mikkelson’s story—and updates on the rest of the Steele and Mikkleson families!

  Cheers,

  Catherine Mann

  CatherineMann.com

  Catherine Mann

  The Second Chance

  USA TODAY bestselling author Catherine Mann has won numerous awards for her novels, including both a prestigious RITA® Award and an RT Book Reviews Reviewers’ Choice Award. After years of moving around the country bringing up four children, Catherine has settled in her home state of South Carolina, where she’s active in animal rescue. For more information, visit her website, catherinemann.com.

  Books by Catherine Mann

  Harlequin Desire

  Alaskan Oil Barons

  The Baby Claim

  The Double Deal

  The Love Child

  The Twin Birthright

  The Second Chance

  Visit her Author Profile page at Harlequin.com, or catherinemann.com, for more titles.

  Join Harlequin My Rewards today and earn a FREE ebook!

  Click here to Join Harlequin My Rewards

  http://www.harlequin.com/myrewards.html?mt=loyalty&cmpid=EBOOBPBPA201602010002

  To my gifted and delightful editor, Stacy Boyd.

  Contents

  Prologue

  Chapter One

  Chapter Two

  Chapter Three

  Chapter Four

  Chapter Five

  Chapter Six

  Chapter Seven

  Chapter Eight

  Chapter Nine

  Chapter Ten

  Chapter Eleven

  Epilogue

  Alaskan Oil Barons - Steele Mikkelson Family Tree

  Excerpt from Love in Catalina Cove by Brenda Jackson

  Excerpt from A Texan for Christmas by Jules Bennett

  Prologue

  Shana had once thought Chuck was the love of her life.

  She’d have bet their marriage would last forever.

  But today, Shana Mikkelson had to accept that she and Chuck were finished.

  Now she just wanted peace, but peace was in short supply as she threw her husband’s jeans into a suitcase on their bed. The musky scent of him wafted up from the denim, filling her every breath like a drug she could only quit cold turkey.

  Her grief was too deep for tears. Truth be told, there weren’t any tears left to shed. She’d just about cried herself into dehydration over this man. She tugged open his dresser drawer, scooped out an armful of socks and strode over to the bed again to dump them into his open luggage.

  She kept her eyes on her task and off the bed where they’d made love so often—although not as much lately. She definitely kept her gaze away from her handsome husband, his strong jaw jutting as he threw gear into his shaving kit. Too easily, she could be drawn into the sensual lure of the bristle on his face or the temptation to stroke his perpetually mussed sandy-brown hair. His headful of cowlicks refused to fall in line with the rest of his traditional good looks in a way that somehow made him all the more appealing.

  He was like his home state of Alaska, majestic and untamed. Commanding the eye, and yet opaque as a dense forest trailing up a mountainside.

  His footsteps sounded along the hardwood floor as he approached her. The storm in his green eyes broadcast his silent protest to her edict that he move out. He was leaving under duress. Well, tough. She’d given him chance after chance. He would cut back at work only to plunge into the office twice as hard again. He wasn’t interested in significant change, and over time, that had diluted their love until there was nothing left.

  Even their marriage counselor wore a defeated look the last time they’d seen him together.

  Every weekly appointment since then? Chuck had canceled. Citing work conflicts—his standard reason for missed dinner dates, too. She’d stopped trusting his word long before that. Trust was already difficult for her, after the way her father had betrayed her and her mother. She didn’t think she would ever recover from the blow of finding out her dad had a secret second family.

  Chuck’s extended absences wore on her. Deeply.

  Shana swallowed back the painful past and focused on the present. The heartbreaking present.

  They were finally expecting a baby.

  After failed fertility treatments and three miscarriages, she’d gotten pregnant by surprise. Very much by surprise as their sex life had been on the rocks along with their marriage.

  Their communication was at an all-time low. She needed the controlled setting of their counselor’s office to tell her husband about the baby. But since Chuck was a consistent no-show, he still didn’t know.

  Sitting alone in the counselor’s office earlier that day, she’d reached the end of her rope. She was done. She would tell him about the baby once their separation was official. She couldn’t afford another emotional breakdown, bad for the health of the baby when Shana was already in such a stressful environment.

  She stormed into his closet, wrapped her arms around four of his suits and lifted them from the rack. “This should get you through work until we can set aside a time for you to pick up the rest of your things.”

  She slammed the bulk of designer suits into his open case on the bed.

  “Shana, I’m sorry for missing the appointment.” He paced barefoot, faded jeans hugging his mu
scular thighs, his long-sleeved tee stretching across his broad shoulders. His hair was still damp from the shower he’d taken after work. “You have to understand the business merger comes with extra hours. I’ve bowed out of as many things as I can.”

  Since the Mikkelson matriarch had married the Steele patriarch, the two former rival oil families were merging their families’ companies into Alaska Oil Barons, Inc. The lengthy process had siblings from both sides making power grabs at a time when stockholders needed to see unity.

  “And yet you’re still secluded in the study every night.”

  They did nothing together except sleep and eat. No more days spent horseback riding, snowmobiling and traveling. And as much as she wanted to trust Chuck that it was only work and that things would change, she could only bury her head in the sand for so long before she smothered to death.

  “I’m doing my best, Shana. Things will get better as the merger takes root.”

  “So you keep saying.” She tossed a handful of silk ties into the suitcase. “Every deadline you give for this magical easing at work just gets pushed back. I feel like a fool for believing you.”

  “Damn it, Shana, you’ve got to see the effort.” He forked his hand through his hair. “I even had my antisocial brother stand in for me at that wildlife preservation fund-raiser. There aren’t as many Mikkelsons as there are Steeles. And with Mom and Glenna both married to Steeles, their loyalties are split in a way mine aren’t. I’m a Mikkelson. Period.”

  As was the baby he knew nothing about.

  Thinking about raising their child alone made her heart and head ache. Chuck would want to be a part of the child’s life. She didn’t doubt that. She just wasn’t sure how much time he would make for the baby.

  Her ability to trust him had been eroded on so many levels.

  Resolve strengthened, she faced him. “It’s quite clear where your heart lies.”

  “That’s not fair, Shana. These are extreme times. If I scale back too much, the Steele family could eclipse our vision and our power,” he said, sitting on the edge of the bed. Their bed. Nearly four years ago, when they’d married and built their dream home in Anchorage, she’d decorated their bedroom with such romantic hope in each detail of the modern French provincial decor.

  They’d spent a lot of hours in this room—making love, sharing dreams. Until the third miscarriage had taken too much of a toll on both of them.

  “Then by all means, don’t let me hold you back. Dig in.” She closed his suitcase with a decisive click and spun away hard and fast.

  Too fast. The room spun and she gripped the footboard of the bed to keep from stumbling.

  “Shana?”

  She blinked fast to clear the spots dancing in front of her eyes, to quell the nausea from her blossoming headache.

  If she could just get Chuck to leave so she could lie down and breathe...

  “Please. Go.” She pushed free the two words, a mammoth undertaking with her stress headache spiking.

  Why was he walking so slowly? She saw his mouth moving, but nothing was coming out. That didn’t make sense. And then he tipped.

  Except no.

  The whole room tipped because...

  Her hand slid from the bed on her way to the floor.

  One

  Thirty-six hours later

  Until today, Charles “Chuck” Mikkelson had run out of ideas for a second chance with his wife. Admitting defeat had never been an option for him, professionally or personally.

  But amnesia as a do-over with Shana was extreme, even for him.

  Surely he’d heard the neurologist wrong. Chuck’s gut knotted. “Do you mean Shana is disoriented? Fuzzy on things like the time or date? Forgot what she had for dinner?”

  After all, she’d suffered a minor aneurysm that had left her unconscious for just over thirty-six hours. The longest day and a half of his life. But finally, she was awake. Alive.

  Two physicians occupied the secluded sitting area where Chuck had been brought after a staffer located him grabbing a bite in the cafeteria while a privately hired nurse sat with Shana. Chuck couldn’t believe his wife had actually woken up the one time he’d stepped away from her hospital room. The neurologist—Dr. Harris—sat beside Chuck. Another of Shana’s physicians stood at the window. Snow was coming down in thick sheets of white, as if the hospital sterility was outside as well as indoors.

  “Shana is disoriented, but it’s more than that,” Dr. Harris explained slowly from the chrome-and-leather chair he’d pulled around to face Chuck. “You need to accept that she has lost her memory.”

  Amnesia. The word still ricocheted around in Chuck’s brain. “She doesn’t know who she is?”

  Dr. Harris closed the tablet that he’d used earlier to show the part of her brain that was affected. “Actually, she does know her name. She recalls details about herself. The memory loss focuses on more recent events.”

  “How recent?” Chuck asked, unease creeping up his spine.

  “She has the month correct. But five years prior.”

  Five years ago? That meant... “She doesn’t remember anything about me.”

  Much less about being married to him. There were some times between them lately he wouldn’t mind forgetting. But the thought of losing memories of the good times with Shana?

  Unthinkable.

  The two doctors exchanged somber looks before Shana’s other doctor took a seat in the other wingback. Dr. Gibson was young, but tops when it came to fertility specialists. It meant a lot to Chuck that the man had shown up to weigh in on Shana’s condition even though they weren’t trying for another baby.

  “Chuck, I’m sorry to say, she does not remember you,” Dr. Gibson said in the quietly comforting tone he’d used during Chuck and Shana’s failed in vitro and three miscarriages. A phantom sucker punch to the gut wracked Chuck.

  It had been bittersweet when Dr. Gibson had assisted in caring for Chuck’s stepsister two months ago, after she delivered twins in a car. Pretending nothing was wrong had been hard as hell for Chuck, and Shana hadn’t wanted his comfort.

  “We were having trouble. Do you think this memory loss is more psychological than physical?”

  He’d blamed himself repeatedly for this aneurysm. If they hadn’t been fighting, if intense emotions hadn’t raised her blood pressure, maybe this wouldn’t have happened.

  “There’s no question she’s had an aneurysm, and she’s incredibly lucky to have come through it so well. But that’s not to say there aren’t psychological aspects in play. The body and mind work in tandem.”

  Staring at the tablet in the doctor’s hand, Chuck moved toward a planter, something to rest on. “How do we proceed from here? What do we tell her, and what’s her prognosis?”

  “I realize that you need answers, but it’s too early to project the long term. For now, the counselor on staff here suggests we answer questions as she asks them, no additional information,” Dr. Harris warned. “A psychiatrist will be consulting. Things are still so very new.”

  The obstetrician leaned forward, elbows on his knees. “Let’s focus on the positives. Shana’s awake and physically fine. The baby’s heartbeat is strong. That’s news to celebrate.”

  Chuck frowned, certain he’d misunderstood. Gibson had to be confusing patients after a late shift.

  Dr. Harris straightened. “The baby?”

  “What baby?” Chuck said precisely. Because no way could Shana be pregnant now of all times. The dark irony of that would be too much to entertain.

  Dr. Gibson’s eyebrows shot up before he schooled his face back into an alarmingly blank expression. “She didn’t tell you about the pregnancy?”

  Chuck shook his head slowly, stunned, half-certain there was an error. Fate couldn’t be this twisted.

  “Shana is expecting,” he said baldly. “Two months along.
And from your reaction, Chuck, she hadn’t told you yet.”

  Chuck sifted through the hell of the past day and a half. There hadn’t been any need to call Dr. Gibson in on the case on a weekend. Chuck had said no to the possibility of pregnancy when the admission staff had asked.

  Now he realized the truth of it. Shana had gotten pregnant without an in vitro procedure.

  The reality slammed into Chuck like a ton of bricks. Against all odds, they were expecting a child.

  Now.

  He couldn’t even sort through the layers of “stunned” to feel anything but shock.

  Chuck’s mind winged back to their attending the baptism for his sister Glenna’s daughter. He and Shana had actually spent a week getting along, drawn into their hopes for the future, loving their niece and considering adoption. Glenna clearly loved Fleur, no biological bond needed.

  Emotions running high, Chuck and Shana had spent a week in bed together. A week that had apparently defied their odds and borne fruit. He had to be there for Shana and their child.

  Dr. Harris opened his tablet again, scrolling through his notes. “While I wish we had known so we could have monitored the fetus, none of the medications she’s received should present a risk to the baby’s development. We’ll keep Shana another night for monitoring.”

  Dr. Gibson said, “We’ll also do an ultrasound and start her on progesterone given her prior miscarriages.”

  Chuck nodded, still reeling. A baby. She was two months along. She’d known and she hadn’t told him. Worse yet, she’d thrown him out without telling him she carried his child.

  She’d probably realized that if she told him about the baby, it would have taken a force of nature to budge him from their house. He didn’t have the luxury of anger right now.

  Dr. Gibson tilted his head, placing a hand on Chuck’s shoulder. “I realize this is difficult for you, too. You’ve both been waiting for this baby for so long, and these aren’t the circumstances anyone could have foreseen.” He gestured toward the door. “Perhaps seeing you will jog her memory.”

 
-->