Partners In Parenthood

by Raina Lynn

  Even pregnant, Jill looked good.

  Letter to Reader

  Title Page

  Books by Raina Lynn

  About the Author

  Dedication

  Prologue

  Chapter 1

  Chapter 2

  Chapter 3

  Chapter 4

  Chapter 5

  Chapter 6

  Chapter 7

  Chapter 8

  Chapter 9

  Chapter 10

  Chapter 11

  Chapter 12

  Chapter 13

  Copyright

  Even pregnant, Jill looked good.

  No, she looked incredibly sexy.

  He’d never found pregnant women a turn-on, at least not until Jill. Maybe it was just her. Maybe he was just nuts.

  Just the thought of the life growing safely beneath Jill’s heart brought a lump to his throat. He wanted to wake up Saturday mornings to a little body jumping on the bed and falling into his arms. He wanted to rub his beard-stubbled chin into a warm neck just to listen to a happy squeal. He wanted Little League games and dance recitals.

  He wanted to be a dad. And he wanted Jill for his wife—in every way.

  Dear Reader,

  This is it, the final month of our wonderful three-month celebration of Intimate Moments’ fifteenth anniversary. It’s been quite a ride, but it’s not over yet. For one thing, look who’s leading off the month: Rachel Lee, with Cowboy Comes Home, the latest fabulous title in her irresistible CONARD COUNTY miniseries. This one has everything you could possibly want in a book, including all the deep emotion Rachel is known for. Don’t miss it.

  And the rest of the month lives up to that wonderful beginning, with books from both old favorites and new names sure to become favorites. Merline Lovelace’s Return to Sender will have you longing to work at the post office (I’m not kidding!), while Marilyn Tracy returns to the wonderful (but fictional, dam it!) town of Almost, Texas, with Almost Remembered. Look for our TRY TO REMEMBER flash to guide you to Leann Harris’s Trusting a Texan, a terrific amnesia book, and the EXPECTANTLY YOURS flash marking Raina Lynn’s second book, Partners in Parenthood. And finally, don’t miss A Hard-Hearted Man, by brand-new author Melanie Craft. Your heart will melt—guaranteed.

  And that’s not all. Because we’re not stopping with the fifteen years behind us. There are that many—and more!—in our future, and I know you’ll want to be here for every one. So come back next month, when the excitement and the passion continue, right here in Silhouette Intimate Moments.

  Yours,

  Leslie J. Wainger

  Executive Senior Editor

  * * *

  Please address questions and book requests to:

  Silhouette Reader Service

  U.S.: 3010 Walden Ave., P.O. Box 1325, Buffalo, NY 14269

  Canadian: P.O. Box 609, Fort Erie, Ont. L2A 5X3

  * * *

  PARTNERS IN PARENTHOOD

  RAINA LYNN

  Books by Raina Lynn

  Silhouette Intimate Moments

  A Marriage To Fight For #804

  Partners in Parenthood #869

  RAINA LYNN

  is married, the mother of three, mother-in-law of one and grandmother of two. She lives in a peaceful, secluded corner of paradise in Sierra Nevada. To her unending joy, not even the U.S. Postal Service comes out there. Her favorite way of unwinding at the end of a long day is to disappear into the forest on her horse for a couple of hours, then curl up with a good romance novel. She would love to hear from her readers, at P.O. Box 739, Foresthill, CA 95631.

  To my son-in-law, Travis,

  one of the world’s true heroes.

  Prologue

  It was one in the morning when Mason Bradshaw flipped on the stairwell light and trudged up the steps, grateful to be home. Exhaustion burned through muscle and bone. After the day he’d had, he wanted two things—a hot shower and the chance to sleep like the dead until noon.

  As he stepped through the open doorway to the master bedroom, shock and agony nearly buckled his knees. He grabbed the doorjamb for support, still not believing his eyes.

  Across the room, Karen—his Karen!—writhed in the arms of another man, the pair so caught up in the frenzy of lust that neither noticed him. Clothing had been dropped on the way to the bed like a trail of bread crumbs. Sheets and blankets hung to the floor, torn loose from the mattress.

  Pain congealed into rage, creating a dangerous stew of emotions boiling out of control. On the night table sat a bottle of wine—his wine!—two glasses and a cheeseboard. The knife had bits of brie stuck to its polished blade. Odd how the trivial detail registered with such stark clarity. In his mind’s eye, Mason watched his fingers close around the polished mahogany handle. So tempting. So easily done.

  A tiny voice of reason screamed above the din of burgeoning insanity. He could kill them, yes, but he’d destroy himself in the process. Jealousy roared at him to cross the room, pick up the knife and end her betrayal, but reason countered that it would change nothing, that he needed to survive. Mason couldn’t think of a single reason why survival was relevant or even desirable at that point, but he kept his place by the door.

  Beyond speech, he forced badly needed air into his lungs and announced his presence by clearing his throat. If a bomb had gone off, it couldn’t have had more impact.

  Karen whirled around, her dark eyes huge with shock. “Oh, God, Mason, no!”

  Her lover leapt from the bed and backed against the wall. Raking his long pale hair from his face with one hand, he grabbed his pants from the floor with the other and covered himself. Karen scrambled for a blanket. Neither dared take their eyes from the dangerously still husband standing in the doorway.

  Devastated and nearly blind with fury, Mason stepped forward. Karen’s lover cringed, lifting his hand in a warding-off gesture. “Let’s not overreact here, man.”

  His young voice quavered and Mason, for the first time, took a good look at him. He couldn’t have been more than twenty-two or twenty-three, and was as fair as Mason was dark. He was a good head shorter but had the physique of a bodybuilder and the advantage of a dozen or more years. Mason wondered if he could take the guy in a straight-up fight. God, how he wanted to find out.

  Wild-eyed, Karen’s boy toy looked to her for help. “Talk to him!”

  The outburst turned the tide. If the bastard had shown any backbone at all, Mason would have beaten him to a pulp—or at least attempted to. But what would it accomplish? Inside, a dam broke, and the urge to fight drained away.

  Deliberately, Mason turned his attention to his wife. “I suggest you both get dressed. We have some things to discuss.” The dead cold in his baritone was a strange companion to the howling grief in his soul, but the control pleased him. He’d always taken comfort in his ability to withdraw behind a cool facade when trouble threatened to upend his world. Never before had he needed that ability as he did now; never before had he been so grateful for it.

  Unable to watch any longer, he left the room. In a fog of shock and disbelief, he wandered down to the kitchen, sagged against the counter and stared blindly into the sink. Willpower alone kept him upright.

  Love was something he’d never had much experience with growing up. And as an adult he’d been reluctant to open himself to that kind of vulnerability. Being a loner wasn’t comfortable, but it was, at least, familiar.

  The day he’d met Karen, her beauty had staggered him. Women often pursued him, a nuisance he preferred to avoid. When she’d expressed an interest in him, he’d tried his usual evasive tactics, but this time his brittle, barely adequate responses to attempts at conversation had lacked their usual conviction. She’d seemed to view getting beneat
h his guard as a personal challenge. Gradually, over several months, she’d worked her way in. Once she’d reached his heart, he’d fallen hard.

  Muted voices sounded from the entry. He heard the front door open, then close—but he stayed where he was. Then Karen stepped into the kitchen alone.

  “Mason, please,” she whined. “I’m sorry.”

  Slowly, he turned to face the death of his marriage, of his dreams. His wife of seven years stood in the doorway, her lion’s mane of pale blond hair in sensual disarray and looking as if she’d been doing exactly what he’d caught her doing.

  He sighed wearily, too angry and hurt to raise his voice. “Where’s your friend?”

  She squirmed and wrung her slender hands, her big brown eyes liquid. “I didn’t know how civilized you were going to be about this, so I asked him to leave.”

  “Civilized!”

  Flinching, she stepped back. “Don’t make it worse,” she protested. “This isn’t my fault. You weren’t supposed to be here.”

  He blinked at that. “You’ve never been one to take responsibility for your actions, Karen, but blaming me for this is outrageous, even for you.”

  “That wasn’t necessary,” she snapped. A heavy silence widened the distance between them. Her gaze skated across the room, and she asked softly, “Why aren’t you at the conference?”

  The pain ripped him up so badly inside, each breath came hard fought. “I blew the transmission halfway there. By the time the shop replaced it, I’d missed all of today’s meetings, so I drove straight back to Los Angeles.” He didn’t know why he bothered to explain. His reasons for being home weren’t relevant, not anymore. “A divorce won’t be a problem.”

  She paled. “I don’t want a divorce.”

  Silently, Mason studied the woman he had loved beyond all reason. For the first time, he noticed the sullen lines around her seductive mouth, the unbending selfishness in the aristocratic line of her jaw. Before he had married her, he’d truly believed he’d found an end to the loneliness he’d known his whole life, found a woman with whom he could settle down and have a normal family—something he’d craved since childhood.

  Before he’d proposed, Karen had gushed over the prospect of a house full of kids, but it hadn’t taken long after the wedding for her tune to change. For seven years she’d invented one excuse or another why babies weren’t a good idea right then. Now he saw how badly he’d been duped, realized how many of his own dreams he’d buried or killed for her.

  He grabbed her purse off the counter and stuffed it into her hands. “Go now.”

  Karen recoiled, and the designer bag dropped to the floor. “I’m not going anywhere.”

  “Oh, yes, you are.” He took a step forward. “You have two minutes to gather enough clothes to last until your lawyer can contact mine.”

  Her expression opened into an incredulous smile. “You can’t be serious.”

  Deliberately, he looked at his watch. Staring at the digital readout certainly beat looking into her deceitful face. “You’re down to a minute and forty-five seconds.”

  At the low menace in his voice, her smile faltered. Cautiously, she backed away from him and darted up the stairs. Mason choked down a bourbon as he listened to her slam closets and drawers. The liquor sat in his stomach like lead.

  By the time she had packed, better than twenty minutes had passed, but he didn’t comment. She pulled open the front door to leave, glowering at him over her shoulder. “I’ll come home when you’ve calmed down and decided to stop acting like a dinosaur.” The door slammed behind her so hard the windows shook.

  Mason wasn’t sure how long he stood in the silence before soul-deep fatigue forced him upstairs. He didn’t want to look in the master bedroom, much less go in there, but he couldn’t seem to help himself. The room was as he remembered it—disheveled and smelling faintly of heated bodies and sex. It was also as silent and empty as all the secret hopes he’d had for his life.

  Taking another large swallow of bourbon, he dropped the glass beside the bottle of wine. With a vicious jerk, he tore the sheets and blankets from the bed and stuffed them into the laundry hamper. Then he trudged woodenly to the guest room and spent what remained of the night stretched out fully clothed on a twin bed far too short for his tall, lean frame.

  “Never again,” he vowed into the dark. “No one will ever get that close again.” Mason stared at the ceiling until the sun came up, then mechanically changed clothes and left for work.

  As usual, the L.A. traffic was gridlocked for miles, and as he sat inhaling carbon monoxide, something deep inside snapped. He was sick of the smog, the crowds and the cold-blooded attitude of the people he knew. Surely, there had to be another way to live.

  Chapter 1

  Jill Mathesin swept into the Stafford Review-Journal, feeling rested, sassy and considerably younger than her thirty-two years. After two weeks of decadent luxury, it was time to return to the real world.

  Vicki Haynes, the struggling newspaper’s secretary, came from around her desk and enveloped Jill in a fierce hug. “You look fabulous, girlfriend!”

  “Amazing what the vacation of a lifetime will do,” she chirped. With no one else in the reception area, Jill impulsively slid her blouse off one shoulder to flaunt her new tan. “Not bad, huh?”

  Vicki gave the darkened skin exaggerated scrutiny then compared it to her own mahogany tones. “Well,” she drawled in mock disdain, “if one’s not born with it, one must compensate, I suppose.”

  Jill latched onto the familiar byplay and arched an eyebrow. “Seems to me you coveted my hair until you went to braids.”

  “Yes, but now I’m perfect.”

  After being gone for so long, Jill’s wit had lost some of its razor edge. Left without a retort, she groaned in defeat, and the pair dissolved into more hugs and laughter.

  “A cruise,” Vicki breathed. “I still can’t believe it.” She leaned back on her desk and crossed her arms. “Tell me everything. I want details, girl.”

  Jill chuckled. It had been years since she’d felt this good. The pain of her failed marriage still nagged at the shadowy corners of her heart, but after eighteen months, it was more scar than open wound, and no longer ruled her life. The cruise had been a declaration of independence, a celebration that she’d exorcised most of the mangled dreams. Life held promise again.

  She didn’t quite feel like her old self yet, but close. Loneliness was an all too frequent companion in the night now. Maybe that was a good sign. During the worst of her divorce and its aftermath, being alone had been comfortable, like a warm blanket on a winter night. Now it chafed. “Vicki, I’m broke. You wouldn’t believe how much money I went through.”

  “Meet any interesting men?”

  The thought of taking that kind of risk again still didn’t hold much appeal, but her best friend believed the best cure for a broken heart was finding someone new.

  Jill shrugged. “A couple, but none I wanted to wrap up and take home.” Before Vicki could ask if she’d actually looked, she rattled off a rapid-fire account of her time of self-indulgent bliss, ending with, “So, what’s new around here?”

  “Hang on to your bikini. Ralph sold the paper.”

  Jill felt herself gape. “He can’t have. My charge card is maxed out. I can’t afford to be unemployed.”

  Vicki sighed in contentment. “I’m so glad you’re back. This place isn’t the same without you.”

  “I should hope not,” she retorted, feigning an air of injured hauteur. Fear of the unemployment line gripped her. Granted, the new owner would need a bookkeeper. But he—or they—might not want her. “Seriously, what’s the deal?”

  “Ralph said enough is enough. Believe it or not, the paper sold three days after he put it on the market. The new publisher takes over this morning.”

  “Are our jobs okay?” Jill had no one to depend on but herself. More to the point, she liked her job and didn’t want to lose it.

  Now it was Vicki’s
turn to shrug. “That’s the impression he gave when he went through here to check things out.”

  “What’s he like?”

  Vicki looked thoughtful. “Hard to describe. Mid- to late-thirties. Tall. Built like a runner. In the looks department, he’s no Denzel Washington, but not bad for a white boy.”

  “I’m sure he’ll appreciate your noticing,” Jill said dryly. It was good to be home and back with friends again.

  Vicki’s expression turned inward, all trace of humor gone. “The thing I noticed most about him was he’s very reserved. Almost defensive. Like he’s carrying the weight of the world on his shoulders.”

  Jill mulled that over. A new employer was not designed to ease her concerns over her uncharacteristic spending binge, especially one who had all the earmarks of being vain and moody. That type tended to hire and fire at the slightest provocation. “What’s his background?”

  “Managing editor of a special-interest paper in L.A.”

  She groaned. “Just what Stafford needs, another Los Angeles squirrel. Those people are nuts.” Shuddering with distaste, she headed for her office and called out over her shoulder, “Who did the books while I was gone?” Then she saw the grotesque pile of assorted invoices, receipts and expense account vouchers on her desk. It looked like something from a comic strip.

  “Nobody, girlfriend,” Vicki called back. “Welcome home.”

  Mason parked his car, got out and allowed himself to inhale the pine-scented air. Then he stared—not for the first time—at a sky so blue it looked painted. One drive through the small rural town of Stafford, Washington, with its clean air and cleaner streets, and he’d been hooked. Warm, friendly people. No gang shoot-outs. Houses with only one lock on the door. The idea that this was home washed a little more of California from his system.