Underfoot

Underfoot
Leanne Banks

Bellagio, Inc. public relations genius Trina Roberts had been a bad, bad girl when she'd gone to bed with a recently jilted groom and wound up pregnant. She knew Walker Gordon wasn't looking for forever–at least not with her. So when he took a job overseas, she sort of neglected to tell him about the baby on the way.Well, now he's back…and he's just figured out the truth.Walker had been reeling from a very public breakup when Trina had offered solace he couldn't deny. He'd never expected the result would make him somebody's daddy! Trina claimed not to need anything from him, but he was determined that his child have a father; he just didn't know if it should be him. Because a father's shoes…well, those he wasn't sure he could fill.

Underfoot

Leanne Banks

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

This book is dedicated to all of you who have stepped up to the plate to help a child or a parent or a sibling when it was inconvenient, difficult or painful for you to do so. You make the world a better place.

Underfoot

If you’re going to walk down a primrose path,

make sure you’ve got a great pair of shoes.

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

CHAPTER EIGHTEEN

CHAPTER NINETEEN

CHAPTER TWENTY

CHAPTER TWENTY-ONE

CHAPTER TWENTY-TWO

CHAPTER TWENTY-THREE

ABOUT THE AUTHOR

Thank you to my readers, great friends and family who encouraged me to write and finish this book. Cindy, Rhonda, Cherry and Pam, thank you for being there for me. Special acknowledgments to other people who inspire me, my sisters Janie and Karen, my husband, Tony, and my children, Adam and Alisa. And always, the best parents in the world—mine! Thank you, Mom, for not being like Trina’s mom and for teaching me common sense, and Daddy, for the gift of persistence.

CHAPTER ONE

IT WAS LATE when she sank onto the barstool. Still wearing her best dressed-to-kill sexy tuxedo dress, Trina Roberts had received immediate attention from the bartender.

“Hot night?” he said. “What’ll you have?”

Hot didn’t cover it. Train wreck didn’t cover it. Nuclear explosion didn’t cover it. “Mojito, please.”

“Coming up,” he said.

While she waited, she took a deep breath and glanced around the bar. The crowd had thinned out. Her gaze stopped on a man seated at the other end of the bar, his head bowed over a squat glass of amber-colored liquor.

His tux tie was unfastened along with the top buttons of his shirt. She knew that profile, the hard jawline, straight nose and dark hair uncharacteristically mussed over his forehead.

Walker Gordon.

Her heart clenched for him. He looked miserable, desolate, destroyed. She couldn’t blame him. After all, he’d just been publicly dumped at the altar by Brooke Tarantino, the great-granddaughter of the founder of Bellagio Shoes. That was bad enough, but the dumping had been conducted on live television with millions of witnesses.

Trina had attended the wedding because she worked for Bellagio in PR. In fact, she’d worked with Walker, an advertising contractor that Bellagio had hired several years ago. From the beginning, she’d liked his combination of quick intelligence and sense of humor. And it didn’t hurt that he had a great body and sexy eyes.

The bartender returned with her drink and she paid her tab, sipping the mojito and trying not to look at Walker. Her gaze, however, kept wandering toward him. She’d never seen him missing an ounce of confidence. He oozed solid assurance and even though she hadn’t totally understood his relationship with Brooke Tarantino, he’d once revealed part of the attraction. Brooke was entirely too self-involved to ever want children. That suited him fine because he didn’t want children, either. Being a father, he’d confessed, would be a surefire path to failure for him. He’d made a joke in that way that people did when they weren’t completely joking, that he’d come from a long line of bad fathers and he was determined not to continue the trend.

His broad shoulders were folded forward. He leaned against the bar, his gaze vacant.

Pity mixed with anger. Why had Brooke done this? Especially this way. With a sigh, she picked up her mojito and wandered to the stool beside him.

He glanced at her and closed his eyes, but gave a nod of recognition.

“Sorry,” Trina said. “Sucks to be you.”