The Baby They Both Loved

The Baby They Both Loved
Nikki Benjamin

A BABY'S LOOSE IN BELLE…Simon Gilmore was back in town! And that meant trouble for Kit Davenport, who'd just gotten custody of her best friend's baby. Although he'd been strictly off-limits, Simon had always held a cherished place in Kit's heart. But what kind of father abandoned his own son?AND THE TOWN'S PRODIGAL SON IS ABOUT TO CLAIM HIM!A man who thought the child wasn't his. Until Simon walked into the Dinner Belle Diner and saw the spitting image of himself as a toddler in little Nathan. The only stumbling block was Simon's burgeoning desire for his son's alluring guardian. Somehow he had to show Kit that it's never a crowd when daddy makes three…

Curious as to why everyone’s attention had been caught so completely, Kit glanced over her shoulder, checking out the newcomer as he closed the door.

It only took her a moment to recognize the tall, dark, handsome man, his curly black hair a shade too long, his bright blue eyes vivid in his tanned face.

So, too, it seemed, did all local residents in the diner. Hearty greetings echoed around the room as one of Belle’s most favored sons moved slowly down the diner’s center aisle, a charmingly boyish grin on his smoothly shaven face.

Standing all but frozen to the spot, her hands clenched at her sides, Kit eyed him with a growing sense of dread. In that instant she wanted more than anything to take Nathan from his playpen and hurry out the back door of the diner just as quickly as she could.

Her more sensible self knew that taking such action would be foolhardy, though.

She could run from Simon Gilmore now, but she wouldn’t be able to hide from him forever.

Dear Reader,

It’s that time of year again—back to school! And even if you’ve left your classroom days far behind you, if you’re like me, September brings with it the quest for everything new, especially books! We at Silhouette Special Edition are happy to fulfill that jones, beginning with Home on the Ranch by Allison Leigh, another in her bestselling MEN OF THE DOUBLE-C series. Though the Buchanans and the Days had been at odds for years, a single Buchanan rancher—Cage—would do anything to help his daughter learn to walk again, including hiring the only reliable physical therapist around. Even if her last name did happen to be Day….

Next, THE PARKS EMPIRE continues with Judy Duarte’s The Rich Man’s Son, in which a wealthy Parks scion, suffering from amnesia, winds up living the country life with a single mother and her baby boy. And a man passing through town notices more than the passing resemblance between himself and newly adopted infant of the local diner waitress, in The Baby They Both Loved by Nikki Benjamin. In A Father’s Sacrifice by Karen Sandler, a man determined to do the right thing insists that the mother of his child marry him, and finds love in the bargain. And a woman’s search for the truth about her late father leads her into the arms of a handsome cowboy determined to give her the life her dad had always wanted for her, in A Texas Tale by Judith Lyons. Last, a man with a new face revisits the ranch—and the woman—that used to be his. Only, the woman he’d always loved was no longer alone. Now she was accompanied by a five-year-old girl…with very familiar blue eyes….

Enjoy, and come back next month for six complex and satisfying romances, all from Silhouette Special Edition!

Gail Chasan

Senior Editor

The Baby They Both Loved

Nikki Benjamin

www.millsandboon.co.uk (http://www.millsandboon.co.uk)

NIKKI BENJAMIN

was born and raised in the Midwest, but after years in the Houston area, she considers herself a true Texan. Nikki says she’s always been an avid reader. (Her earliest literary heroines were Nancy Drew, Trixie Belden and Beany Malone.) Her writing experience was limited, however, until a friend started penning a novel and encouraged Nikki to do the same. One scene led to another, and soon she was hooked.

Contents

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

Chapter Fourteen

Chapter Fifteen

Chapter Sixteen

Chapter Seventeen

Epilogue

Chapter One

K it Davenport eyed the clock on the kitchen wall of the Dinner Belle Diner as she dumped handfuls of freshly chopped vegetables into the pot of stew meat already simmering on the six-burner stove. It was almost ten-thirty, and her part-time waitress, Bonnie Lennox, wasn’t scheduled to start work until eleven.

Normally Bonnie came in when the diner opened its doors for breakfast at seven in the morning, but that day her young daughter was graduating from kindergarten, an event Kit hadn’t wanted her to miss. Unfortunately, the diner’s crusty old cook, George Ortiz, had called to say he, too, would be late that day due to a painful flare-up of the arthritis that occasionally crippled his gnarled hands and creaky knees but never his indomitable spirit.

Handling the Dinner Belle single-handedly wasn’t a new experience for Kit. Since her mother, Dolores, had owned and operated the little diner in the small town of Belle, Montana, until her death this past December, Kit had literally grown up there. So early in the tourist season, with nearby Glacier National Park’s Logan’s Pass not yet open to vehicular traffic, the breakfast crowd, made up mostly of locals she knew on a first-name basis, had also been relatively undemanding.

Kit had been able to take orders, fry eggs, flip pancakes, bus tables and wash dishes without a problem. But getting a head start on the lunch specials she and George had agreed upon for that Tuesday afternoon had been a bit of a challenge. Following even the simplest of her mother’s recipes involved a lot more time and mental energy than she had to spare, especially when she also had to keep an eye on her two-year-old godson, Nathan Kane.

Though easily entertained by the constant activity going on all around him, as the morning wore on the little boy had been growing more and more unhappy with his confinement in the playpen she had set up for him in a corner by the counter.

Taking a peek at the pans of lasagna, a Dinner Belle favorite, baking in the double oven, Kit made a mental note to start defrosting the loaves of garlic bread still in the freezer. But first she had another breakfast plate to serve up. She slid the eggs out of the cast-iron skillet, added several rashers of bacon, a scoop of hash-brown potatoes and two freshly baked biscuits, then made a beeline for the kitchen doorway.

“Just a little longer, sweet boy,” she cooed to Nathan, shooting a smile his way as she hurried past the playpen.

He called after her in his own special brand of gibberish, his high, young voice more aggrieved than it had been the last time she’d walked through the kitchen doorway. He also waved his favorite stuffed teddy bear at her in an attempt to draw her attention to him rather than her customers. She didn’t dare stop to acknowledge the gesture, though. That would only cause his fussiness to escalate another notch.

“He’s such a good child,” Winifred Averill commented as Kit set the plate on the elderly woman’s table. “Shame about his momma, but that Lucy Kane always was a wild thing. Lucky for her she had you for a friend. Otherwise there’s no telling what might have happened to that little boy.”

“Yes, ma’am, Nathan is a good child,” Kit agreed, trying not to bristle at Winifred’s judgmental tone. She was well into her eighties, had lived her entire life in the small town of Belle and hadn’t ever had a shy bone in her body. Her tendency toward plainspokenness could often be unsettling, but she had never been intentionally malicious. “And I was the lucky one to have had Lucy for my friend. She brightened my life with her fun-loving ways, and she truly cared about Nathan. I was honored when she asked me to be his godmother and named me as his guardian in her will.”

“Hard to believe how his daddy’s shirked all responsibility, and him coming from such a fine family, not to mention seeming like such a fine young man himself.”