Avon Books (Paperback), ISBN 0-380-81551-6
Langtry Ranch foreman Culley Blackwolf likes Lonely Town, the name he gives to the solitary lifestyle he's lived for the last eleven years, and he doesn't want to leave it. Roark Langtry ended up in Lonely Town seven years ago when his wife and son died in childbirth. Now both men feel threatened when Sable Barclay and Eden Eglantine arrive at the Langtry Ranch outside Shiloh, Wyo.

Sable fears she's the kidnapped Langtry baby, who disappeared 28 years ago. A criminologist for a private laboratory, she discovers the baby hair under her microscope matches her own. She goes to Shiloh to learn the truth, although she hopes her suspicions will prove incorrect. Eden, Sable's best friend and a world-class paleontologist, comes with her.

The Langtry family welcomes her, but Sable backs off. How can she hurt this family who suffered for 28 years, even though she knows all the evidence points to her as their lost baby? Right now she must cope with her own pain. Sable bitterly resents the fact that the Barclays, her adoptive parents, never revealed what they knew about her past until she confronted them.

Sable and Eden go home to Kansas City, and Sable tries to forget the Langtrys. But Culley comes to Kansas City and demands she come back to Shiloh to deal with the truth.

Sable and Eden return, but Sable sets conditions of her own. She moves into Culley's rustic house, much to Culley's alarm. He forced her back, so now he must help her. Culley keeps his own secrets about a past that involves a drunken prostitute for a mother and prison time for killing one of her lovers -- not the kind of man the classy Sable Barclay needs in her life. Culley fights his intense desire for her. Sable senses a caring man underneath the gruff exterior, but his past cuts deeper than the scars evident on his back.

Roark shuns romance, plans never to remarry, and positively refuses to consider producing a Langtry heir. Then this prickly no-nonsense paleontologist shows up and shakes his resistance. Eden wants nothing to do with him or any other man; she's got skeletons of her own to deal with. But Roark possesses something she craves -- a piece of Langtry ranch land could be loaded with fossilized dinosaur bones. Eden treats Roark colder than a dinosaur bone bed, but Roark sees the woman hidden behind the rude, tough exterior.

Leaving Lonely Town serves as the sequel to It Happened at Midnight. It Happened at Midnight kept my interest, but Leaving Lonely Town kept me reading late into the night. Throughout the book, two compelling plot lines merge and cross. Each tale sizzles with conflict and passion. The only glitch in this entertaining book involves London's overly long references to Cleopatra Langtry, the mystical Langtry ancestor, and to her journal. So much Langtry mumbo-jumbo slows the pace and interferes with this finely crafted story.

Doris Valliant

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