Committed to the Baby: Claiming King's Baby / The Doctor's Secret Baby

To the Estrada Family:

Steve, Rose, Alicia, Lettie, Patti and Amanda.

Good friends. Great neighbors.

We love you guys.

Chapter One

Justice King opened the front door and faced his past.

She stood there staring at him out of pale blue eyes he’d tried desperately to forget. Her long, light red hair whipped around her head in a cold, fierce wind, and her delectable mouth curved into a cynical half smile.

“Hello, Justice,” said a voice that haunted his dreams. “Been a while.”

Eight months and twenty-five days, he thought but didn’t say. His gaze moved over her in a quick but thorough inspection. She was tall, with the same stubborn tilt to her chin that he remembered and the same pale sprinkle of freckles across her nose. Her full breasts rose and fell quickly with each of her rapid breaths, and that more than anything else told him she was nervous.

Well, then, she shouldn’t have come.

His gaze locked back on hers. “What’re you doing here, Maggie?”

“Aren’t you going to invite me in?”

“Nope,” he said flatly. One thing he didn’t need was to have her close enough to touch again.

“Is that any way to talk to your wife?” she asked and walked past him into the ranch house.

His wife.

Automatically, his left thumb moved to play with the gold wedding band he’d stopped wearing the day he had allowed her to walk away. Memories crashed into his mind, and he closed his eyes against the onslaught.

But nothing could stop the images crowding his brain. Maggie, naked, stretched out on his bed, welcoming him. Maggie, shouting at him through her tears. Maggie, leaving without a backward glance. And last, Justice saw himself, closing the door behind her and just as firmly shuttering away his heart.

Nothing had changed.

They were still the same people they’d been when they married and when they split.

So he pulled himself together, and closed the front door behind them. Then he turned to face her.

Watery winter sunlight poured from the skylight onto the gleaming wood floors and glanced off the mirror hanging on the closest wall. A pedestal table held an empty cobalt vase—there’d been no flowers in this hall since Maggie left—and the silence in the house slammed down on top of them both.

Seconds ticked past, marked only by the tapping of Maggie’s shoe against the floor. Justice waited her out, knowing that she wouldn’t be able to be quiet for long. She never had been comfortable with silence. Maggie was the most talkative woman he’d ever known. Damned if he hadn’t missed that.

Three feet of empty space separated them and still, Justice felt the pull of her. His body was heavy and aching and everything in him clawed at him to reach out for her. To ease the pain of doing without her for far too long.

Yet he called on his own reserves of strength to keep from taking what he’d missed so badly.

“Where’s Mrs. Carey?” Maggie asked suddenly, her voice shattering the quiet.

“She’s on vacation.” Justice cursed inwardly, wishing to hell his housekeeper had picked some other time to take a cruise to Jamaica.

“Good for her,” Maggie said, then tipped her head to one side. “Glad to see me?”

Glad wasn’t the word he’d use. Stunned would be about right. When Maggie had left, she’d sworn that he would never see her again. And he hadn’t, not counting the nights she appeared in his dreams just to torment him.

“What are you doing here, Maggie?”

“Well, now, that’s the question, isn’t it?”

She turned away and walked slowly down the hall, bypassing the more formal living room before stepping into the great room. Justice followed, watching as she looked around the room as if reacquainting herself with the place.

She looked from the floor-to-ceiling bookshelves on two walls to the river stone hearth, tall and wide enough for a man to stand in it upright. The log walls, with the white chinking between them that looked like horizontal striping. The plush chairs and sofas she’d bought for the room, gathered together into conversation areas, and the wide bank of windows that displayed an unimpeded view of the ranch’s expansive front yard. Ancient trees spread shade across most of the lawn, flowers in the neatly tended beds dipped and swayed with the ocean wind and from a distance came the muffled roar of the ranch tractor moving across the feed grain fields.

“You haven’t changed anything,” she whispered.

“Haven’t had time,” he lied.

“Of course.” Maggie spun around to face him and her eyes were flashing.

Justice felt a surge of desire shoot through him with the force of a lightning strike. Her temper had always had that effect on him. They’d been like oil and water, sliding against each other but never really blending into a cohesive whole. And maybe that was part of the attraction, he mused.

Maggie wasn’t the kind of woman to change for a man. She was who she was, take her or leave her. He’d always wanted to take her. And God help him, if she came too close to him right now, he’d take her again.

“Look,” she said, those blue eyes of hers still snapping with sparks of irritation, “I didn’t come here to fight.”

“Why are you here?”

“To bring you this.”

She reached into her oversize, black leather bag and pulled out a legal-size manila envelope. Her fingers traced the silver clasp briefly as if she were hesitating about handing it over. Then a second later, she did.

Justice took it, glanced at it and asked, “What is it?”

“The divorce papers.” She folded her arms across her chest. “You didn’t sign the copy the lawyers sent you, so I thought I’d bring a set in person. Harder to ignore me if I’m standing right in front of you, don’t you think?”

Justice tossed the envelope onto the nearest chair, stuffed his hands into the back pockets of his jeans and stared her down. “I wasn’t ignoring you.”

“Ah,” she said with a sharp nod, “so you were just what? Playing games? Trying to make me furious?”

He couldn’t help the half smile that curved his mouth. “If I was, looks like I managed it.”

“Damn right you did.” She walked toward him and stopped just out of arm’s reach. As if she knew if she came any closer, the heat between them would erupt into an inferno neither of them would survive.

He’d always said she was smart.

“Justice, you told me months ago that our marriage was over. So sign the damn papers already.”

“What’s your hurry?” The question popped out before he could call it back. Gritting his teeth, he just went with it and asked the question he really wanted the answer to. “Got some other guy lined up?”