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His Brother’s Baby
Laurie Campbell
Dear Reader,
Step into warm and wonderful July with six emotional stories from Silhouette Special Edition. This month is full of heart-thumping drama, healing love and plenty of babies!
I’m thrilled to feature our READERS’ RING selection, Balancing Act (SE#1552), by veteran Mills & Boon and Silhouette Romance author Lilian Darcy. This talented Australian writer delights us with a complex tale of a couple marrying for the sake of their twin daughters, who were separated at birth. The twins and parents are newly reunited in this tender and thought-provoking read. Don’t miss it!
Sherryl Woods hooks readers with this next romance from her miniseries, THE DEVANEYS. In Patrick’s Destiny (SE#1549), an embittered hero falls in love with a gentle woman who helps him heal a rift with his family. Return to the latest branch of popular miniseries, MONTANA MAVERICKS: THE KINGSLEYS, with Moon Over Montana (SE#1550) by Jackie Merritt. Here, an art teacher can’t help but moon over a rugged carpenter who renovates her apartment—and happens to be good with his hands!
We are happy to introduce a multiple-baby-focused series, MANHATTAN MULTIPLES, launched by Marie Ferrarella with And Babies Make Four (SE#1551), which relates how a hardheaded businessman and a sweet-natured assistant, who loved each other in high school, reunite many years later and dive into parenthood. His Brother’s Baby (SE#1553) by Laurie Campbell is the dramatic tale of a woman determined to take care of herself and her baby girl, but what happens when her baby’s handsome uncle falls onto her path? In She’s Expecting (SE#1554) by Barbara McMahon, an ambitious hero is wildly attracted to his new secretary—his new pregnant secretary—but steels himself from mixing business with pleasure.
As you can see, we have a lively batch of stories, delivering the very best in page-turning romance. Happy reading!
Sincerely,
Karen Taylor Richman
Senior Editor
About the Author
Laurie Campbell grew up playing paper dolls with her sister, but spent far less time selecting their clothes than creating situations for the characters to act out. By the time they outgrew paper dolls, the characters were so real that Laurie started writing a book about six beautiful sisters who lived next door to six dashing brothers.
She swears she’ll finish that novel someday. But meanwhile, she enjoys writing about ordinary people in extraordinary situations that could happen to anyone who want the best for those they love.
Laurie spends her weekends writing romance, and her weekdays producing TV commercials for a Phoenix advertising agency.
She also works as a marriage counselor, teaches a catechism class, speaks to writing groups on psychology for creating characters, coaches newly diagnosed diabetics, and spends any free time playing with her husband and teenage son (who helps her solve plot problems).
For getaway weekends, they travel to Arizona’s red-rock country of Sedona…which was named for Laurie’s great-grandmother, Sedona Schnebly.
Contents
Prologue
Chapter One
Chapter Two
Chapter Three
Chapter Four
Chapter Five
Chapter Six
Chapter Seven
Chapter Eight
Chapter Nine
Chapter Ten
Chapter Eleven
Chapter Twelve
Prologue
March 12
Not even Kenny could be late to his own wedding.
Could he?
Lucy Velardi dropped her last two quarters into the courthouse pay phone and punched in the number they’d shared for the past five weeks. It was silly to be nervous when he’d probably just missed his flight back to Scottsdale. If she hadn’t left the house early to pick up her dress—a dress that revealed no sign of the reason for this marriage—he would have called to let her know.
Wouldn’t he?
Sure enough, the answering machine held a message in his familiar, lazy voice. “Hey, babe, it’s me. Look, I’m really sorry, but I, uh, I won’t be coming back. I got this chance to play on the Asian tour, and…well, I just don’t think us getting married would be such a good idea after all.”
What?! Lucy almost cried out before realizing the message wasn’t finished yet.
“I mean, I’m really not ready for a baby, you know?” he explained. As if she was ready—but they had until October to prepare. “And once you think it over, I bet you’ll feel the same way…because a baby just wouldn’t work out right now.”
She would never feel that way, no matter how badly this unexpected pregnancy had complicated her life. How could anyone dismiss a baby so casually, so—
“But don’t worry,” Kenny continued, “I’m putting a check in the mail you can use for, uh, taking care of things. Call it a house-sitting payment, okay? Because, listen, you’re welcome to stay in the house until next January.”
He sounded relieved, she realized numbly, as if that offer made everything right. As if all she cared about was his money and his house.
“Nobody ever uses it except for a few weeks after New Year’s,” came his blithe assurance, “so it’s all yours until then. I know you gave up your apartment, but the family really needs a house-sitter, and I bet you’ll do a great job.”
At least she’d have a place to stay until after the baby was born, but what she’d wanted was a family for her baby. For little Matthew, or little Emma—names she’d already begun using in her imagination, because they sounded so good with Tarkington. But now neither she, nor the baby, would share Kenny’s name.
“Anyway,” he concluded, sounding as cheerful as if he’d suddenly finished a difficult task, “I’m really glad I got to know you—we had some great times, huh? Well, take care of yourself…. Bye.”
And that was that.
Lucy held on to the phone receiver, staring blindly at the lobby beyond her. At the flat white wall, the fluorescent light, the cluster of people in line near the door…until a shrill beep in her ear made her realize the message had ended long ago, and her fingers were starting to cramp.
She couldn’t quite draw a full breath, she discovered while hanging up the phone. Couldn’t quite shake the chill from her hands, her lips, her face. Couldn’t quite make herself think, or cry, or even move—although she would have to move, because she couldn’t spend the rest of her life standing here in the courthouse lobby.
But she couldn’t do anything right now except breathe. In short, unsteady gasps. She felt as if she might burst into tears at any moment—which would be a good thing, because tears could be spilled and then forgotten—but right now she was too stunned even to cry. She had never experienced anything too intense for tears before, Lucy realized, anything like this mixture of disbelief and anguish and desperation and—
And, in a way, relief.
Which didn’t make sense, but she needed to hang on to any comfort she could get. Any comfort that would give her the strength to head back to the bus stop for the dismal trip home.
Alone.
No, not alone, she reminded herself as she made her way outside into what felt like blinding sunlight. She still had the baby inside her…a baby who would never hear a word about this day. Who would never know that its father hadn’t wanted a child.
But his belief that she could even consider terminating her pregnancy proved she’d been right in thinking last week, the day before noticing her period was late, that she and Kenny didn’t really belong together after all. Their first three or four weeks had been dizzying; a frenzy of love-at-first-sight exhilaration and passion and fun. But lately, she had begun suspecting that the relationship wouldn’t last.
And that, no matter how much she might have enjoyed the giddy whirlwind of life with a high-flying golfer, because she didn’t really want it to last.
But the baby would never know that, Lucy resolved on a shaky breath as she made her way back to the bus stop bench. Emma or Matthew would hear only the good things about their father, would hear only about the first month when she had loved Kenny.
Because all she could give her child was the comfort of feeling wanted and loved. And no matter what happened, she was going to love this baby.
Her baby.
Hers alone.
Chapter One
November 28
There was a woman in his living room.
And she was tickling a baby.
Before Conner Tarkington could ask how she’d gotten in here and what she was doing on his sofa, the woman shot one startled glance in his direction, grabbed the baby and immediately angled her body to shield the pink-blanketed bundle from view.
“Who are you?” she demanded, rising from the sofa with the baby almost hidden behind her, as if she were facing down an intruder. “How did you get in here?”
Great defense, he had to give her that, Con thought with a mixture of admiration and annoyance. Put the blame on him, act like he was some kind of burglar or something, rather than a bone-weary attorney who’d just flown from Philadelphia to Scottsdale and found a stranger in his family’s house.
“I used my key,” he told her, holding up the platinum key fob his mother had given him last night, after a farewell dinner during which no one even attempted a toast. “Who are you?”
“The house-sitter,” she answered defiantly, although her guarded stance softened a bit at the sight of his carry-on bag. As if she might be willing to consider the possibility that he wasn’t some random invader. “And the Tarkingtons aren’t coming until January. So if you were planning to visit them—”
“I was planning,” Con interrupted, “to bring in my stuff, dump it on the floor and get some sleep.” Nine hours of flying, counting the layover in Chicago, was a small price to pay for escaping the holiday season at home, but it was still nine hours of teeth-gritting torture. He would never admit it to anyone, but flying scared the life out of him, and while the past few weeks of twenty-hour workdays was his own choice, all he’d wanted for the last hour was to collapse into bed.
Alone.
Although, if he were in a mood for company, he couldn’t ask for better than this woman. In spite of her ragged jeans and disheveled tumble of dark curls, she seemed to radiate more sensuality than any woman he’d noticed in a while. But considering the wary suspicion in her eyes, it seemed pretty certain this house-sitter wasn’t a “welcome to Scottsdale” gift.
Not that his law partners would set up that kind of gift, anyway. Not that anyone he knew would—except maybe his brother, and he hadn’t talked to Kenny in months.
“Nobody said the Tarkingtons were expecting a guest,” the woman protested, drawing his attention back to the problem at hand. His family had believed the house was vacant, but she’d obviously appointed herself as some kind of gate-keeper. And when he glanced beyond her to the dining room, where a baby swing rested against the doorway, he realized why.
“Oh, hell,” Con muttered. “You’re living here.”
She didn’t even attempt to deny it, probably because the evidence of a baby in the house was impossible to hide. “Until January,” she confirmed, moving the gurgling baby to her shoulder before repeating her original question. “Who are you?”
He extracted the driver’s license from his calfskin wallet and flashed it at her. If all she wanted was a show of identification, rather than the self-analysis he’d endured when his partners insisted on a shrink, he could answer with no problem. “Conner Tarkington. And you—”
“Conner…” she repeated, and then her face went white. “Tarkington? You’re Kenny’s brother?”
If she knew Kenny, that might explain how she’d gotten in here. Kenny had always attracted the kind of gorgeous women who appreciated fast living and fun times, and this one was beyond gorgeous, with her vivid coloring and soft, full lips. But she wasn’t dressed like the “show ponies” who used to follow Kenny home from golf tournaments. And it was hard to imagine his brother choosing a woman with a baby.
Much less inviting them to stay.
“Yeah,” Con answered, dropping his coat on the chair by the door and watching the color return to her heart-shaped face. “He moved you in here, huh? Told you to make yourself at home?”
She straightened her posture and gave him a cold look. “He told me,” she said, “that his family needed a house-sitter. I’m supposed to leave them the key in January, but…” He saw the moment his look of disbelief must have reached her, because she suddenly faltered and drew a shaky breath. Clutching the baby tighter against her, she whispered, “Oh, no. He was making that up?”
Oh, yeah. Kenny had outdone himself with this one. Instead of sending her off with a charming thanks-for-the-good-time gift, he’d installed her in the Tarkingtons’ vacation home with an imaginary job.
“Look,” Con began, before realizing he didn’t even know this woman’s name, “I’m sorry, uh…”
“Lucy. Lucy Velardi.” Her voice was still very small, but when she shifted the blanket to present the baby—a baby he really didn’t want to look at right now—there was an unmistakable pride in her bearing. “And this is Emma. My daughter.”
Great, so now he had to play bad guy to a woman and a child. It had been almost a year since Kenny’s last discarded girlfriend showed up at Con’s office, but just because he’d been out of touch for a while didn’t mean his brother had suddenly decided to take responsibility for his own messes. No, that was still—as always—Conner’s job.
All right, then. Time to see if he’d retained his skill at smoothing things over during the past six months of rebuilding his life from the bottom up. Time to start the job, get it done…because he already knew there was no sense in delaying a blow.
“Lucy,” he said swiftly, “I’m sorry for whatever my brother told you, but if my family wanted a house-sitter they’d call an agency.” The stricken look in her eyes was all too familiar, but he’d delivered this kind of speech so many times that by now he knew better than to watch the woman receiving it. “I appreciate your looking after the place, but—”
“But it wasn’t a real job,” Lucy interrupted, “was it?”
That was different, Con realized with a flicker of surprise. One more intriguing contrast from the usual show ponies. Normally they protested that Kenny had to be telling the truth when he’d promised them a Porsche or invited them to Hawaii or talked about five-carat engagement rings, because no one had ever shared a love like theirs.
But this woman wasn’t asking for money….
“Well,” he answered, wondering what his brother had promised her, “it’s a real job, in a way.” After all, she had obviously kept the place clean, watered the plants, taken care of whatever the housekeeping service normally handled the day before anyone arrived. “But it’s my job now.” At least until his mother and Warren arrived in January. “So you and Emma can get back to—”
“Right,” she interrupted again, standing up and adjusting the baby’s blanket with a quick, decisive gesture. “Absolutely. We’ll be out of here in no time.”
“You’ve got somewhere else to go, right?” Of course she did, he realized as soon as he’d asked the question, because otherwise she wouldn’t be so ready to leave. Still, any house-sitter deserved more notice than she’d gotten…no matter what she’d already collected from Kenny. “You need any money? I mean, if you’ve been doing this for a while, I owe you—”
“No, you don’t,” Lucy said fiercely, heading for the dining room where a tall stack of envelopes rested against a printer’s box. “Kenny already paid me back in March, and I’ve been addressing envelopes for a temp service, besides. And last week I started the early shift at a diner downtown. They got a Code of Variance, so I can bring Emma. We just—”
“Lucy. Wait a minute.” She was speaking too swiftly, moving too rapidly, and he had the feeling she was balanced on a very thin edge of panic. But when she turned to meet his gaze, he saw nothing but determination in her coffee-brown eyes. “You sure you’re okay? If you need to make some calls, if you need any help—”
“I don’t need any help!” she snapped, shifting the baby from her right arm to her left with a touch as gentle as her posture was rigid. “I take care of myself. And Emma.”
And Emma, right. The baby he still wasn’t letting himself contemplate looked surprisingly small against Lucy’s trim yellow T-shirt, although he couldn’t remember exactly how big a baby was supposed to be. Had Bryan ever been so—
Don’t go there.
“All right, then,” Con answered her as well as himself. He had to stay focused on action, not on his son. “I’ve got some stuff to bring in, but let me know if you need any help, uh, lifting a suitcase or anything,” he concluded. “All right?”
Lucy fixed him with a steely glare. “Look, I don’t know how much clearer I can make this,” she said evenly, “but I am not taking anything, any help, from any Tarkingtons.”
From the fury with which she practically spit his name, Kenny must have really done a number on her. Which meant that, unlike the women who hinted about Porsches, she must have given her heart completely….
God, she must’ve loved him.
His brother had spent the past four years breaking hearts all over the PGA tour, but never the heart of a woman like this one. A woman who obviously wasn’t in it for the money, who wasn’t clamoring for some kind of reward. No, this naturally sensuous, vibrantly fascinating woman had loved Kenny Tarkington.
A fact which left Conner feeling curiously regretful.
“‘Feelings are our friends,’ remember?”
“I hear you,” he acknowledged, mentally shoving his therapist’s reminder aside. He didn’t need—or want—any feelings right now, not while dealing with yet another woman his brother had abandoned. A woman who, unlike the usual two-month girlfriends, must have believed Kenny’s glib promises of love…and who needed to know there was little chance of him returning anytime soon. “Last I heard, Kenny was playing the Asian tour.”
“Well, he can stay in Asia,” Lucy retorted, with a flush of color that seemed to light her entire body. “And you can stay, uh, here. In your house. Emma and I will be out in no time.” She whirled toward the table, picked up a stack of envelopes and shoved it into the box, then turned back to him with a final plea. “Just do like you said. Get your stuff, dump it on the floor, and…and go to bed. Okay?”
She wasn’t going to watch Conner Tarkington bring in whatever luggage he’d left in his million-dollar car. Or watch him unpack in the luxurious master bedroom she’d kept scrupulously untouched. No, Lucy vowed as she headed for the guest room, she was going to grab a change of clothes, Emma’s freshly washed diapers and her milk from the kitchen, then get out of here before the last fragile shreds of her pride collapsed.
Her friend Shawna had offered to make room on the couch for overnight guests, and Shawna’s husband Jeff could pick them up when he got off work at midnight. So all Lucy needed to do was pack whatever she could carry to the nearest all-night donut shop, and wrap the baby in enough sweaters to keep her warm during the walk…because she sure wasn’t going to wait around here.
Not after vowing to raise her daughter with the hard-won knowledge that accepting men’s favors was stupid.
But Conner Tarkington wasn’t making it easy to concentrate on packing. Maybe he wasn’t deliberately trying to distract her—he seemed intent on nothing but the trek indoors and out and back again, with a laptop computer and a series of airline-labeled file boxes—but in spite of his haggard face and crumpled executive shirt, the man looked incredibly good.
And she had no business thinking that way.
So the sooner she got out of here, the better. “We’re going to be fine,” Lucy told Emma, folding a dozen cloth diapers into her pink-plaid bag. She still hadn’t saved enough for a move-in deposit, and asking for help from Kenny’s brother was out of the question, but there was no sense in worrying her daughter. “Because Shawna—you remember her, she’s got those blond corn-row braids—will let us spend the night at her place, and tomorrow Mommy’s going to find another job.”
The diner had been perfect, because she could keep an eye on Emma while fixing sandwiches for businesspeople, but it didn’t pay as well as the upscale restaurant she’d worked at until February. She had quit waitressing when Kenny wanted to spend more time together, although she’d returned to work the day after his farewell message. But by then it was already too late to qualify for health insurance, which made it all the more frightening when she was ordered to stay in bed or lose the baby.
Still, with the rent taken care of, she’d been able to devote every envelope-addressing paycheck to the medical, grocery and utility bills—and to start a meager savings account for moving out in January.
Which was still five weeks away.
“We’re just moving a little early,” she assured her daughter, tucking the flap of the bag into place and heading for the kitchen. “Not into the trailer park with the nice trees, because that costs more, but tomorrow we’ll look in the paper and find, uh, somebody who wants a roommate with a seven-week-old baby. A wonderful baby.”
Emma gurgled as Lucy kissed her forehead, and when she closed the refrigerator door she saw Conner depositing another armload of boxes on the dining-room table. “We’re almost out of here,” she called, and he turned around.
It was bizarre, she thought with a guilty flicker of awareness, how much the man looked like Kenny. Dark hair instead of blond, but the essentials were unchanged. The same rugged build, the same cleft in his chin, the same vivid blue eyes…except Conner’s gaze was harder. Darker.
More intriguing.
And it was a little unnerving to realize that some ancient, feminine part of her still found that look of effortless privilege so…so… Well, so attractive.
“Sure you don’t need any help?” Conner asked, and she flinched. On the surface his question was perfectly polite, but she knew what lay beneath it. She had seen the weary resignation on his face when he told her there’d never been a job, and she knew what he must be thinking. Here’s some good-time girl who fell into a gold mine.
Just like her mother…
“No,” Lucy answered abruptly, heading back toward her room for the stack of sweaters. “We’re fine.” She didn’t need to remember her mother right now, not with such a humiliating parallel staring her right in the face. When she’d begun supporting herself halfway through high school, she had vowed that Lucy Velardi would either pay for her own dance lessons or go without. That she would never, ever depend on the generosity of men with expense accounts and wives back home.
Until all of a sudden she’d let herself move in with a celebrity golf pro who spent money like water.
But at least Kenny wasn’t married.
Oh, God, was he?
He could have lied about that, too, Lucy realized with a sickening lurch in her stomach. They hadn’t spent much time discussing family, which at the time had suited her fine, but surely he would have mentioned a wife.
Wouldn’t he?
After all, he had mentioned a “big-time responsible” brother and a mother “who about died when my brother got divorced,” and he was the one who’d blithely suggested a quick wedding at the courthouse when the pregnancy test turned blue.
So she hadn’t fallen in love with a married man, Lucy decided, standing up straight and surveying the room one last time. Just a scumbag…which was Shawna’s description of the man who’d never once called to ask whether Lucy had given birth to a daughter or a son. The man who probably still hoped she’d gotten rid of his baby.
A hope which justified her refusal to ever contact him again. Although if she had, maybe she would’ve been warned about the arrival of his brother…a beautifully mannered attorney who probably suspected her of using Kenny for whatever she could get.
“He’s not thinking that,” she knew Shawna would protest, but Shawna hadn’t seen the grim set of his jaw when she announced that Kenny had already paid her. Maybe she was overly sensitive at times, but there was no mistaking the rueful look on Conner Tarkington’s face.
Shouldering the diaper bag and wrapping her baby in the pile of sweaters on top, Lucy headed for the front door and found Conner just coming inside with his keys in hand. “That’s the last of it,” he told her, holding the door for them with the kind of reflexive grace she supposed Cinderella’s prince might have shown. Then he stopped, as if only now realizing she was on her way out. “Lucy, where’s your car?”
That was a question she hadn’t expected. She’d been more prepared for a request to examine her bag for stolen silver, although that might be a little crude for someone as well-bred as this man. But instead, he was looking at her with startled concern, as if he couldn’t imagine leaving the house without a car waiting in the driveway.
“I don’t need one,” she said, balancing Emma against her shoulder with one hand while extracting the house key from her purse and holding it out to him. If she could just maintain this confident tone of voice, just let him report to his brother that Lucy Velardi was doing fine… “Tomorrow I’ll come get the rest of our stuff.”
“You—” He glanced from the key to her, then at the sleeping baby, and the frown in his dark blue eyes deepened. “Is somebody picking you up?”
What, all of a sudden he was worried about them walking in a neighborhood like this one? She’d never lived anywhere as luxurious as this secluded enclave of golf villas, not since leaving her mother and Mr. “I’m In Charge Here” the year she’d turned sixteen. “No, we’re going right down the street,” Lucy said, nodding toward the distant lights of Hayden Road, where the donut shop stayed open around the clock.
“At this time of night?” Conner sounded horrified, and he still wasn’t taking the key she held out. “I’m not throwing you and a baby out in the street!”
Maybe not technically, but from the moment he’d broken the news that the Tarkingtons had never requested a house-sitter, there was no other choice. Still, he looked troubled by the realization that she and Emma were actually planning to walk away. “You’re not throwing us out,” she told him, setting the key on the stucco wall that bordered the porch. “We’re leaving.”
“Lucy, wait a minute. I didn’t mean for—” With a swift gesture into the house, he pushed the front door open wider. “Look, there’s plenty of room. Why don’t you stay the night, and in the morning I’ll take you wherever you want.”
That was an unexpectedly generous offer, and it was silly to argue with him when the two-mile walk seemed longer and heavier every minute. Still, her pride wouldn’t allow a complete surrender. “In the morning, I can get the bus.”
He gave her a slight smile, as if conceding that she could take care of herself just fine. “All right. But I’ll tell you the truth,” Conner said, reaching to pick up her discarded key and dropping it on the table just inside the door. “I really don’t want to stay up all night worrying about you. And Emma.”
Oh.
Well…
When he put it that way, Lucy decided, staying one more night in the Tarkingtons’ home seemed like a pretty reasonable choice. And it would certainly make things easier than waiting with Emma at the donut shop. All she needed to do was return to the guest room where she’d spent the past eight months, and remember that nobody could lose their independence by accepting only one night of hospitality.
“All right,” she said, stepping back inside as Conner turned off the porch light and checked the front door deadbolt…the same rituals she’d performed every night since returning here alone in March. “Thank you.”
“No problem.” He started down the hall toward the master bedroom, then turned back. “You can lock your door if you want,” he suggested, and as his dark gaze met hers she realized with a sudden, startling flicker of warmth that they both knew how very little space lay between their bedrooms. “But just so you know, I’m going right to sleep.”
“Good night,” was the only response she could think of, and as soon as she delivered it Lucy ducked into her own room to catch her breath. Lock her door? As if she hadn’t learned a long time ago to protect herself from whatever she had to? It was sweet of him, in a way, to act like she needed such a promise—like she was some blushing virgin who’d never dream of spending the night in a stranger’s house—but she knew perfectly well that a stranger as respectable as Conner Tarkington would never approach her door.
Still, his attempt at reassurance was endearing. And somehow, oddly satisfying. Because it showed that, at least on some inner level, he was as aware of her as she was of him.
Not that anything would come of such awareness, she reminded herself after phoning Shawna and canceling the request for a place to stay. A blue-blood lawyer would probably never look beyond the surface of a woman he viewed as a gold digger…and it wasn’t like she wanted him to! No matter how ruggedly attractive Conner Tarkington might be, no matter how unexpectedly nice he might be, she wasn’t letting herself wonder about him.
But as she put Emma to sleep in the blanket-padded bureau drawer on the floor beside her twin bed, she had to remind herself with increasing severity that she was not going to think about this man. About his intriguing combination of challenge and compassion. About the same compelling gaze and instinctive self-assurance that had drawn her to Kenny in the first place.
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