Baby Be Mine

Baby Be Mine
Victoria Pade

DADDY BY DEFAULTWhen Chicago sophisticate Clair Fletcher hit rough-hewn Elk Creek, Wyoming, seeking custody of her orphaned nephew, she thought she'd landed on another planet. And when she confronted rancher Jace Brimley, the mountain of a man who'd given his all to become the toddler's guardian, the oxygen whooshed from her lungs.Combining tantalizing brawn with heart-stopping tenderness, Jace clearly adored tiny, hero-worshiping Willy, who mulishly resisted Clair's inept parental efforts. Still, didn't Willy belong with his blood relative? Yet how could Clair battle big-hearted Jace when he and little Willy evoked such unthinkable longings…for a future of small-town family bliss?

Maybe she’d caught some kind of country fever, Clair thought.

Some kind of country fever that was making her body react to things she shouldn’t even be aware of. Or maybe it was cowboy fever, she amended. For her gaze seemed to be fixated on Jace Brimley. Cowboy boots, jeans, denim jacket, red Henley shirt, white crewneck T-shirt. Still, it wasn’t the clothes that got to Clair. It was the way the clothes fit him.

The T-shirt molded to impressive pectorals. The waist-length denim jacket was stretched to its limits by the breadth of shoulders and the expanse of Jace’s muscular arms. And the jeans…oh, the jeans! They were just snug enough to cup a derriere to die for.

Clair’s mouth went dry, her heart thumping. Country fever or cowboy fever—she forced her eyes off Jace’s rear just before he spun around.

He nodded toward his black truck and said, “Hope you don’t mind sittin’ in the middle. The baby’s car seat has to be on the passenger’s side.”

No, she didn’t mind sitting in the middle. It was how close she was going to be to Jace that she didn’t know how to handle….

Dear Reader,

Around this time of year, everyone reflects on what it is that they’re thankful for. For reader favorite Susan Mallery, the friendships she’s made since becoming a writer have made a difference in her life. Bestselling author Sherryl Woods is thankful for the letters from readers—“It means so much to know that a particular story has touched someone’s soul.” And popular author Janis Reams Hudson is thankful “for the readers who spend their hard-earned money to buy my books.”

I’m thankful to have such a talented group of writers in the Silhouette Special Edition line, and the authors appearing this month are no exception! In Wrangling the Redhead by Sherryl Woods, find out if the heroine’s celebrity status gets in the way of true love…. Also don’t miss The Sheik and the Runaway Princess by Susan Mallery, in which the Prince of Thieves kidnaps a princess…and simultaneously steals her heart!

When the heroine claims her late sister’s child, she finds the child’s guardian—and possibly the perfect man—in Baby Be Mine by Victoria Pade. And when a handsome horse breeder turns out to be a spy enlisted to expose the next heiress to the Haskell fortune, will he find an impostor or the real McCoy in The Missing Heir by Jane Toombs? In Ann Roth’s Father of the Year, should this single dad keep his new nanny…or make her his wife? And the sparks fly when a man discovers his secret baby daughter left on his doorstep…which leads to a marriage of convenience in Janis Reams Hudson’s Daughter on His Doorstep.

I hope you enjoy all these wonderful novels by some of the most talented authors in the genre. Best wishes to you and your family for a very happy and healthy Thanksgiving!

Best,

Karen Taylor Richman

Senior Editor

Baby Be Mine

Victoria Pade

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

VICTORIA PADE

is a bestselling author of both historical and contemporary romance fiction, and mother of two energetic daughters, Cori and Erin. Although she enjoys her chosen career as a novelist, she occasionally laments that she has never traveled farther from her Colorado home than Disneyland, instead spending all her spare time plugging away at her computer. She takes breaks from writing by indulging in her favorite hobby—eating chocolate.

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 One

Clair Fletcher eased her rental car onto the shoulder of the deserted country road and came to a stop. She wanted to check the map the rental agency had given her to make sure she was going in the right direction, since it seemed as though she should have reached her destination by now.

She was in Wyoming, headed to some hole-in-the-wall called Elk Creek—hardly where she would ordinarily have gone for her vacation. Of course she wouldn’t ordinarily have taken a week of her vacation at the beginning of March, either.

But this was not a recreational trip. She was on a quest.

According to the map she was still on course, and Elk Creek was only another four or five miles up the road.

Good, she thought as she refolded the map and tried to ignore the jittery feeling that suddenly hit her stomach. It was the same jittery feeling she got every time she was on her way to a big client to give a presentation. No matter how great her idea for that client’s newest ad campaign, she always suffered an attack of nerves right before facing them.

But suffering those jitters wouldn’t stop her now any more than the prepresentation jitters stopped her at any other time. Clair Fletcher hadn’t become one of Chicago’s most recognized advertising account executives by letting things stop her.

She pulled her car back onto the road and pressed the gas pedal with renewed determination.

I’ll make things right, Kristin, she swore—the same vow she’d made over and over again since learning that her much younger sister had been killed in an apartment fire.

Clair barely had a basic overview of what had happened to Kristin in the past three years, and even that basic overview had come to her only a few weeks ago. Before that, Clair hadn’t so much as known where Kristin was, let alone that her sister had been pregnant when Clair had last seen her. And she hadn’t known that Kristin had given the baby up for adoption. Clair felt she had only herself to blame for that alienation.

If Kristin’s son’s adoptive parents—Bill and Kim Miller—hadn’t been killed in a car accident, Clair would likely never have known about Kristin’s death at all. It was only due to the fact that in the Millers’ will they’d requested that, in the event of both their deaths, William’s birth mother be the first person offered the opportunity to raise him. Apparently acting on behalf of the will’s executor, the attorney overseeing the will had dispatched someone to find Kristin, and when that someone had discovered that she, too, was dead, the executor of the will had opted for having Kristin’s family notified in case they didn’t know.

Notified. That was all. Clair and her father had been notified of Kristin’s death as a simple courtesy. It didn’t mean her family was left with any rights to her son.

In fact, they might not even have learned she had a son except that the attorney had assumed the family knew and had taken it upon himself to reassure them that arrangements had been made in the will for William’s guardianship and that he was being well cared for.

That’s where the man Clair was looking for came into the picture.

Clair didn’t know much about him other than his name, that he lived in Elk Creek, Wyoming, and that he was now her nephew’s legal guardian. But three sudden, untimely deaths were leading her to him. Two accidents, one of which had cost her her sister.

I’m so, so sorry, Kristin. But I promise I’ll make things right for your William. I won’t leave him to a stranger. I promise….