More Than Words, Volume 6 Read online

  Dear Reader,

  It’s no secret that Harlequin Books has long been a steadfast supporter of causes that are of concern to women. It is our commitment to this principle that led us to establish the Harlequin More Than Words program in 2004. As our primary philanthropic initiative, the More Than Words program celebrates and rewards women who make outstanding contributions to their community.

  We are delighted to present our current More Than Words honorees in this, the sixth More Than Words anthology. The dedication of these real-life heroines to their respective charities and their conviction that each of us, whether as individuals or through uniting together, can make a difference in the lives of others serves as an inspiration to the rest of us. It is in this spirit that we are proud to publish these five wonderful stories by some of our most celebrated authors—Joan Johnston, Robyn Carr, Christina Skye, Rochelle Alers and Maureen Child—each inspired by one of our recipients. These authors have generously donated their time and creativity to this project, and all proceeds will be reinvested in the Harlequin More Than Words program, further supporting causes that are of concern to women.

  Please visit www.HarlequinMoreThanWords.com for more information, or to submit a nomination for next year’s awards.

  Now, it is my great pleasure to present More Than Words: Volume 6. I’m sure you will enjoy this book, and we hope you will be as inspired by it as we are.

  Sincerely,

  Donna Hayes

  Publisher and CEO

  Harlequin Enterprises Ltd.

  JOAN JOHNSTON

  ROBYN CARR

  CHRISTINA SKYE

  ROCHELLE ALERS

  MAUREEN CHILD

  MORE THAN WORDS: VOLUME 6

  CONTENTS

  STORIES INSPIRED BY REAL-LIFE HEROINES

  ALMOST LOST

  by Joan Johnston

  Inspired by Katherine Chon

  CHAPTER ONE

  CHAPTER TWO

  CHAPTER THREE

  CHAPTER FOUR

  CHAPTER FIVE

  CHAPTER SIX

  CHAPTER SEVEN

  CHAPTER EIGHT

  CHAPTER NINE

  CHAPTER TEN

  CHAPTER ELEVEN

  CHAPTER TWELVE

  CHAPTER THIRTEEN

  SHELTERING HEARTS

  by Robyn Carr

  Inspired by Rhonda Clemons

  CHAPTER ONE

  CHAPTER TWO

  CHAPTER THREE

  CHAPTER FOUR

  CHAPTER FIVE

  SAFELY HOME

  by Christina Skye

  Inspired by Barbara Huston

  CHAPTER ONE

  CHAPTER TWO

  CHAPTER THREE

  CHAPTER FOUR

  CHAPTER FIVE

  CHAPTER SIX

  EPILOGUE

  NO LIMITS

  by Rochelle Alers

  Inspired by Lara Tavares

  CHAPTER ONE

  CHAPTER TWO

  CHAPTER THREE

  CHAPTER FOUR

  CHAPTER FIVE

  THE PRINCESS SHOES

  by Maureen Child

  Inspired by Roni Lomeli

  CHAPTER ONE

  CHAPTER TWO

  CHAPTER THREE

  CHAPTER FOUR

  CHAPTER FIVE

  CHAPTER SIX

  KATHERINE CHON

  Polaris Project

  In 2001, not long after the towers fell on 9/11 and the world changed forever, Katherine Chon sat at a dinner party discussing the intricacies of international affairs and ethics with friends. She was a student at Brown University, the Ivy League school in Providence, Rhode Island, and soon the conversation veered to the U.S. abolitionist movement that saw courageous people lead the antislavery fight years before.

  During this impassioned discussion, Katherine learned that slavery was far from dead in the United States and across the globe. In fact, human trafficking, or selling people into human slavery, is the third-largest criminal industry on the planet, trailing only arms and drug dealing.

  “I was just so shocked that slavery could still exist in this world,” she says now.

  But it wasn’t until her friend Derek Ellerman e-mailed her an article the following week that Katherine decided she had to act. The story told of six Korean women who had been lured away from their country with promises of legitimate jobs and forced into prostitution at a U.S. massage parlor—just down the street from Katherine’s house. They lived like slaves, unable to leave and horribly abused. For Katherine, whose native country is Korea, the small news piece hit her hard.

  “It could have happened to me had my own personal circumstances been different,” she says. “That really opened my eyes to how this could be happening in any community.”

  Katherine started searching for relevant organizations to volunteer or intern at, but it did not take long before she realized there were few ways for people to get involved in the issue in any meaningful way. So in her senior year she and Derek set out to start their own nonprofit, fashioned on the historical Underground Railroad in the U.S.

  The duo won an entrepreneurship contest for a Web site that provided training and resources on human trafficking. The day after graduation in 2002, they hit the road in a U-Haul truck and traveled to Washington, D.C., to launch their first office.

  They called it Polaris Project, named after the North Star, which guided slaves toward freedom more than a century ago. It has since become one of the largest anti-trafficking organizations in the United States and Japan, with programs operating at international, national and local levels in Washington, D.C.; Newark, New Jersey; Denver, Colorado; and Tokyo, Japan.

  “One of the deepest values within humankind is the search for freedom. At Polaris Project, we’re able to see that dream and desire for freedom realized on a daily basis,” she says of her work. “To dream of it is a great thing, but to see the implementation of that dream is even greater.”

  The big picture

  Many more people than Katherine and Derek hold those dreams today. Polaris Project, with its staff of forty, dozens of volunteers and interns, not to mention about 8,000 members affiliated with its national grassroots network, is one of the few organizations that tackles human trafficking in all forms—violations perpetrated against the country’s citizens as well as victimization of foreign nationals. Fifty percent of its funding is government-based, while the remainder must be generated by private donation.

  “There are a lot of bodies behind Polaris,” Katherine admits.

  And there needs to be. Polaris Project’s holistic approach to combat human trafficking includes reaching out to victims, identifying them and providing social services and transitional housing until they can get back on their feet. It’s helped hundreds of women and children escape modern-day slavery. It also operates the National Human Trafficking Resource Center, serving as the country’s central twenty-four-hour national hotline.

  Katherine says that the on-the-ground work is important and needed, but so is looking at the big picture and finding ways to take real-life experiences and translate them into stronger policies to protect everyone. Polaris Project has testified before Congress four times and has worked with more than thirty states to create stronger laws.

  Yet in spite of so many successes over the years, Katherine admits she’s been hit with her fair share of challenges and frustrations. Bureaucracy, politics and differing ideologies get in the way, but so does the nature of victimization itself.

  In fact, bringing someone out of slavery is usually no easy matter, simply because the victim has been so traumatized that the daily violence starts to become normalized.

  “When most people think of slavery, they think of people
being held in bondage, so that if they were given an opportunity to leave, they would easily choose to do so,” she says. “The reality is human traffickers have become smarter in using other methods of control. So victims don’t necessarily embrace freedom immediately. When you live a life where you haven’t experienced freedom, it’s a very scary thing.”

  Polaris Project counselors help victims get over the hurdles of early independence and offer a shoulder to lean on.

  Much more to do

  With such a growing need in North America and around the world, Katherine admits one of the bravest things she can do each morning is get out of bed and face the day. Listening to the horrors of victimization and plunging herself into the darker side of human nature can definitely take its toll on her and the dedicated people she works with.

  “It’s hard to sit across from a young woman or a child who has been through so much violence and try to explain to her how life can be different from what she has experienced. That it could be more hopeful and beautiful,” says Katherine.

  So how does she keep her sanity?

  “With hope and all the positive work that is happening,” she says.

  The work done at Polaris Project is important, no doubt. The U.S. government estimates that each year as many as 800,000 foreign nationals around the world are trafficked across international borders—17,500 of them in the United States alone. There are additional estimates of American children, in the hundreds of thousands, who are at high risk for sex trafficking in the U.S. With so much more to accomplish, Katherine hopes to take the mission to combat slavery to a new level and develop a more outward-facing role for herself.

  She wants Polaris to reach out into the international community to implement coordinated strategies to stop human trafficking of children too young to understand why their parents are sending them away, young women who become trapped in brothels and are afraid to leave, and migrant workers forced to toil for nothing.

  She wants to do what she can to stop it all.

  “There’s still a lot of work ahead of us. We’ve certainly learned a lot and progress has been made, but—” Katherine sighs before finishing her thought “—there’s more ahead.”

  For more information, visit www.polarisproject.org or write to Polaris Project, P.O. Box 77892, Washington, D.C., 20013.

  JOAN JOHNSTON

  ALMOST LOST

  JOAN JOHNSTON

  Joan Johnston is a New York Times and USA TODAY bestselling author of fifty award-winning historical and contemporary novels and novellas. She has been a director of theatre, a drama critic, a college professor and an attorney on her way to becoming a full-time author. Joan was first published by Harlequin Books in 1988 in the Silhouette Desire series, where she began one of her most beloved miniseries, Hawk’s Way. When she’s not traveling to research her next book, Joan lives in Florida.

  DEDICATION

  To Sally Schoeneweiss, for her enduring friendship.

  Thanks! jj

  CHAPTER ONE

  “You got someone here wants to report a missing person, Lieutenant.”

  Lieutenant Karen Toller looked up from her paper-cluttered metal desk and caught the smirk on the face of the Dallas Police Department sergeant who’d spoken. He was staring down at a pubescent girl he had trapped in front of him in the doorway to her tiny office. Karen was in charge of missing persons for the Dallas P.D. and didn’t usually do intake interviews, but she could see why the sergeant had brought the girl to her.

  She did a quick survey of the complainant—curly red hair, leaf-green eyes dominating a freckled face, approximately five feet tall, maybe ninety pounds. The girl was wearing a gray pleated skirt a half inch above her knobby knees, a white button-down shirt and a maroon jacket Karen recognized as the uniform of a nearby Catholic school, along with high white socks and Mary Janes. As she reached out to catch her lower lip in her teeth, she exposed a mouthful of metal braces.

  Karen rose and came around her desk. “Thank you, Sergeant Peters. I can take it from here.” She approached the girl, who was trembling slightly, and said in a soft voice, “Please come in and sit down.”

  She gestured to one of the two battered metal chairs with well-worn padded seats in front of her desk. The girl hesitated, warily eyeing the hundred or so posters of missing children—boys and girls of all ages, sizes and ethnicities—that covered every available inch of Karen’s office wall. Then she crossed and sat in the chair on the left, setting a book bag on the floor beside her.

  Karen eased carefully into the chair on the right, as though the girl was a wild bird that might take flight at any sudden movement, and asked, “What’s your name?”

  “Miranda Burnett.”

  “How can I help you, Miranda?”

  “I want to report a missing person,” she said earnestly. “Something’s happened to my best friend, Jackie Kirkland. She wasn’t at school today.”

  “What makes you think Jackie’s missing?” Karen asked.

  “She texted me this morning that she’d see me in homeroom, but she never showed up,” Miranda said in a rush. “And she hasn’t texted me all day.”

  “Maybe her phone is—”

  “She would have texted. She would have called. She would have gotten in touch. Jackie would know I’d be worried,” the girl said in an anguished voice.

  “Have you checked with Jackie’s parents?” Karen asked gently.

  “Her parents are divorced. I went to Jackie’s house after school, but Mrs. Kirkland said she and Jackie had another fight this morning and Jackie ran out of the house yelling that she’d come home when she was good and ready.”

  That sounded about right, Karen thought. Especially for a hormonal teenage girl. “You don’t agree?”

  “Jackie wouldn’t go this long without texting me or letting me know where she is,” Miranda said. “We’re like sisters. We share everything. Something bad has happened. I just know it. Something—or someone—has to be keeping her from contacting me.”

  “Maybe she doesn’t have her cell phone with her,” Karen suggested.

  “She’d call from a pay phone,” Miranda insisted. “Jackie’s my best friend. Ever since my mom died—” The girl suddenly choked up and tears welled in her eyes. “I can’t lose Jackie, too.”

  Karen looked at her watch. “It’s still early.” It was barely six o’clock, but in mid-October, it would soon be dark. “Maybe we should trust Jackie’s mother to know—”

  “Her mother’s a drunk and she doesn’t care and I think Jackie went with this girl from the mall to meet some older boy and my dad’s busy with work and he thinks we should let Jackie work this out with her mom and if you won’t help I don’t know what I’m going to do!” the girl wailed, all in one breath.

  Karen noted the drunken mother and the dad who was busy with work, but homed in on the middle sentence. “A girl from the mall?”

  “Jackie and I met this older girl named Susan a couple of weeks ago at the food court at the mall. She kept trying to get Jackie to take a ride with her to meet this friend of her boyfriend. Susan said he’d probably buy her all sorts of nice clothes if he liked her. Jackie would have gone with her last Saturday except I talked her out of it.”

  “Take a deep breath, Miranda,” Karen said.

  But the anxious girl kept talking. “Jackie texted me this morning before school that her mom told her not to come home until she was ready to say she was sorry. But it wasn’t Jackie’s fault!”

  “What wasn’t her fault?” Karen asked.

  “Jackie found a bottle of gin her mom had hidden and tried to pour it down the sink. But Mrs. Kirkland caught her and got mad and told her she was being a bit—” Miranda stopped herself and substituted, “Bad. But Jackie just wants her mom to stop drinking. She’s not going to say she’s sorry for pouring out her mom’s gin, because she’s not!”

  “So Jackie wasn’t planning to go home tonight?”

  The girl nodded. “I texted her that we’d work
something out. She texted me that she’d see me in homeroom. But she never showed up.”

  “Is there any chance Jackie might have decided to run away?” Karen asked gently.

  Miranda’s brow furrowed in thought. “Jackie’s told me before that she wanted to run away, but I know for a fact she doesn’t have money for a bus ticket or anything like that.”

  “Do you think she might have tried to hitchhike?”

  The girl chewed on her thumbnail while she considered that possibility. At last she said, “I’d be too scared to do that. I think she would be, too. That’s why I think maybe she went to the mall to try to find Susan.”

  “Why do you think she’d do that?”

  “Because Susan kept promising her some boy she knew would buy Jackie nice stuff, like a necklace and a purse and a sweater,” Miranda retorted.

  “But you don’t believe her?” Karen asked.

  The girl was thoughtful again. “Jackie’s really pretty. She’s got long blond hair and blue eyes and she… She’s the exact opposite of me,” the girl said, gesturing awkwardly at a bosom that hadn’t yet developed. “But she’s the same age as me—thirteen—and Susan’s sixteen or seventeen, at least. Which means her boyfriend’s friend is going to be older, too. I’m afraid of what he might want in exchange for all that nice stuff,” the girl finished in a rush.

  She was right to be concerned, Karen thought.

  “Jackie’s in trouble,” Miranda said. “Please believe me.”

  “I believe you,” Karen said.

  “You do?” Miranda said, amazed.

  “Yes, I do.” Karen recognized the modus operandi the girl had described as one used by sex traffickers, villains who ruthlessly deceived young women and turned them into sex slaves for profit.

  What Miranda had described was a variation on the “Lover Boy” con, in which an older man would act benevolently toward a young girl to entice her away from the safety of home and family. But once the girl got into his car…