At First Sight

by Linda Cajio

  At First Sight is a work of fiction. Names, places, and incidents either are products of the author’s imagination or are used fictitiously.

  2013 Loveswept eBook Edition

  Copyright © 1988 by Linda Cajio.

  Excerpt from Roman Holiday 1: Chained by Ruthie Knox copyright © 2013 by Ruth Homrighaus

  Excerpt from Claimed by Stacey Kennedy copyright © 2013 by Stacey Kennedy

  Excerpt from Loving the Earl by Sharon Cullen copyright © 2013 by Sharon Cullen

  All rights reserved.

  Published in the United States of America by Loveswept, an imprint of The Random House Publishing Group, a division of Random House LLC, a Penguin Random House Company, New York.

  LOVESWEPT is a registered trademark and the LOVESWEPT colophon is a trademark of Random House LLC.

  eBook ISBN 978-0-307-79893-0

  Cover design: Susan Schultz

  Cover photograph: © Valentin Casarsa/Getty Images

  Originally published in the United States by Loveswept, an imprint of The Random House Publishing Group, a division of Penguin Random House Company, New York, in 1988.

  www.readloveswept.com

  v3.1

  For Bev, who has kids of her own … and knows.

  Contents

  Cover

  Title Page

  Copyright

  Dedication

  Chapter 1

  Chapter 2

  Chapter 3

  Chapter 4

  Chapter 5

  Chapter 6

  Chapter 7

  Chapter 8

  Chapter 9

  Chapter 10

  Chapter 11

  Epilogue

  Editor’s Corner

  Excerpt from Ruthie Knox’s Roman Holiday 1: Chained

  Excerpt from Stacey Kennedy’s Claimed

  Excerpt from Sharon Cullen’s Loving the Earl

  One

  “Please explain why I need to rest right in the middle of negotiations,” Angelica Windsor whispered fiercely to Dan Roberts as he led her down the hotel corridor, his hand tightly wrapped around her arm.

  “Because you’re tired,” Dan said as he stabbed the Up elevator button. “If you don’t like that one, think of it as lunch.”

  “At eleven in the morning!”

  “It beats watching you fall into Garner’s trap,” he said, shaking his head. “First you seem to be off in space, and then you’re losing your temper, against all the rules. You know better than to tell the opposition he got his law degree from a preschool. What’s wrong with you, anyway?”

  “Nothing,” she muttered. Silently she added, nothing except that Dan Roberts was sexy. And she had found herself paying more attention to him than to the delicate business meeting they’d been attending—with near disastrous results. Everything was always wrong when she was with Dan. Fortunately, she had been with him only five times since they had first met, but that was five times too many for her peace of mind.

  The elevator arrived. They stepped into it, and she sneaked a glance at him. He was definitely the most attractive man she knew. He was tall and slim, almost to the point of thinness, yet she could easily see the strength under his dark gray suit. He wore round, studious-looking glasses, but they didn’t detract from the sharp, rugged planes of his face. His eyes were a deep brown, his nose straight and narrow, and his mouth … his mouth was sensual, enticing.

  Stop looking at his mouth! Angelica ordered herself. Her relationship with Dan was purely business, always had been, always would be. They had met nine months ago when he had tried to buy the rights to her cousin Diana’s latest computer game. Dan’s offers had been straightforward and up-front—but then someone had stolen the game from Diana’s house. Since Diana had been involved with Dan’s brother, Adam, Angelica had accused the two men of stealing the game.

  Of course they hadn’t, and she had felt like a fool when the real culprit was revealed. Perhaps, she mused as the elevator stopped and they stepped out, if she and Dan hadn’t started off on such a very wrong footing, they would now be more friendly with each other. As her cousin’s attorney, though, she had had to negotiate with Dan for the sale of Diana’s new game to his company, Starlight Software. Unfortunately, the relationship between her and Dan hadn’t improved.

  This week she had flown up from San Francisco to Seattle, where Dan’s company was located, to sit in on the negotiations for the licensing of Diana’s game to another company, Mark IV Computers. And he’d just pulled her out of those negotiations because she’d been distracted, not knowing he had been the distraction!

  Dan glanced worriedly at Angelica as they walked down the hall to the Starlight company suite. She was much too quiet, and wasn’t kicking up any fuss about his hauling her out of the room where they had been meeting with Mitch Garner, the representative of Mark IV. That wasn’t like Angelica.

  She had always mystified him, though. It would be easy to miss the tigress in this tall, willowy, always elegantly dressed woman. But there were subtle clues in the tawny brown of her shoulder-length hair and the fire that flashed in her light green eyes. After their initial dealings over her cousin Diana’s game, he had seen her only a few times—once when his brother Adam had married Diana, and he had been the best man and Angelica the maid of honor, twice regarding further legal matters on Diana’s association with Starlight, and once more when he had visited Adam and Diana in San Francisco. Each time he had been more attracted to her, more on the verge of suggesting they change their business relationship to one more … intimate. Yet each time they had ended up arguing over anything and everything. If he said white, Angelica instantly said black. Most times he didn’t know whether to strangle her or kiss her.

  Opposites might attract, he thought as he unlocked the door to the suite, but that was as far as it would logically go between him and Angelica. Yet, illogically, the pull he felt for her grew stronger with each disagreement. He wanted her in his bed, but sensed that a temporary relationship would never be enough for either of them. Yet that was the only one they could have.

  He opened the door and ushered her over the threshold. The sitting room was spacious and had a small wet bar, refrigerator, and stove behind the far alcove. The bedroom was to the right. On the left was an open connecting door that led to another suite, which he used during the weekdays. Weekends he spent at his home on Nadera Island, one of the San Juan Islands. Angelica was staying in the company suite, and he’d been aware from the moment she had stepped into the room last night that the connecting door, normally a necessary barrier whenever people were staying in the company suite, was instead a nearly unbearable temptation.

  She settled gracefully on the sofa and kicked off her shoes. “Okay, Dan, now what?”

  “Now you stay out of the picture for a while,” he said, shutting the door behind him.

  “I beg your pardon.”

  “Angelica, you were letting Mitch Garner provoke you. I warned you that one of his tactics is to anger the opposition while trying to pull a fast one. You almost lost your temper once.”

  “I’m about to lose it again. With you.”

  “I’m going to join Clark and Mitch for lunch.” Clark was Starlight’s own lawyer. “You, in the meantime, will ‘rest.’ ” He had gotten Angelica out of the meeting by saying she had flown in from San Francisco that morning and was exhausted. It was a blatant lie, as anyone could tell by looking at her. Her eyes were bright—probably with irritation at him—and her skin smooth and lightly tanned. He imagined how soft that skin must feel, and imagined stroking a finger across her cheek just to make sure. Then he would—

  Dan cleared his throat and pushed away his lustful thoughts. “Perhaps,” he said, “Clark and I could just handle Diana’s—”


  “No. Diana’s my client. And my cousin.”

  Her words touched several already raw nerves in him. “And she’s my sister-in-law. That’s the problem with you, Angelica. You have never once trusted me. If you’d care to recall when Griegson stole Diana’s game, you’d also recall that I take care of my own as much as you do.”

  “Dan!”

  Angry and frustrated, he ignored her and strode through the connecting door to his room. Dammit, he thought as he passed through the bedroom and on into the bathroom, how did that woman always manage to get to him? She had insisted on attending today’s meeting, and he was sure she had done so because she didn’t trust him to get a good deal for Diana.

  The hell with it, he thought, taking off his glasses and splashing water on his face to cool his skin. That he lived in Seattle and Angelica in San Francisco was probably just as well. Otherwise, she’d always be driving him crazy—in more ways than one.

  Drying his face with a hand towel, he walked back into the bedroom. He knew he was hardly ready for lunch, especially under the present tension. Something out of place in the room caught his eye, and he lowered the towel. He stared. Somehow his bedroom had acquired an unusual addition. He hadn’t seen it there before he went into the bathroom, but he had been preoccupied. Maybe he was dreaming, he thought wildly. He blinked and rubbed his eyes. He opened them again and stared in shock.

  There, lying snuggled in the middle of his bed, was a sleeping baby.

  Angelica’s hands were still shaking in the aftermath of Dan’s anger. She leaned her head on the sofa back and closed her eyes to try to calm herself. She had only meant that the responsibility for Diana’s rights in the agreement was hers. But she and Dan had clashed from the beginning. A dozen clichés about not mixing ran through her brain. They were all true about her and Daniel Roberts, she thought.

  She knew it was better that they didn’t get along. Otherwise, she would have no control with him, for her physical attraction to him was too potent. Losing control scared her. It meant being vulnerable. She had seen what vulnerability could do, and she had vowed never to allow it to happen to her.

  Shoving away her disturbing thoughts, she brought herself back to the matter at hand. She would, of course, apologize to Dan for her remark. But what he was asking of her, she couldn’t do. She represented Diana, and she had to be in on the meetings. It wasn’t that she didn’t trust Dan. She did, but it was vital to her own sense of self-worth to know that she was doing her job. She had once neglected her responsibilities with a client. The result had been tragic, and she had vowed never to do that again.

  “Angelica?” Dan called through the connecting door. “Did you happen to bring any extra … baggage from San Francisco?”

  She sat up. “What?”

  “Did you … You better come in here.”

  Bewildered, she rose from the sofa and walked over to the doorway, stopping on the threshold. Dan was standing in the middle of the room staring at something out of her view.

  “What?” she asked again, and poked her head around the doorjamb to see what he was looking at.

  A baby was lying on the bed.

  She gasped at the tiny sleeping being, then swallowed and said, “It’s a baby.”

  “That’s what I thought.”

  She ventured into the room. “What’s it doing here?”

  “That was my question.”

  “But this is your room!”

  “It might be my room, but it never had a baby in it before,” he said dryly.

  “But—”

  The baby rolled over onto its tummy.

  “He’ll fall off!” Angelica yelped, rushing toward the wide bed.

  Dan got there first. She instantly changed direction and ran into the other side of the bed, in case the baby rolled that way. Dan was leaning over the bed, his hand hovering just above the baby’s back. Angelica sat down gingerly on the edge, not wishing to disturb the baby. It was so … little, she thought in amazement, staring at the miniature features topped by a thin thatch of blond hair. She noticed the one-piece yellow sleeper it was clothed in was grimy.

  Dan picked up a small piece of paper that had been lying under the child.

  “ ‘I don’t want the kid,’ ” he read in a low voice.

  “Oh, Danny,” she murmured as tears formed in her eyes. She reached out and touched the baby’s small curled fist. The skin was so incredibly soft and vulnerable.

  Then she realized how she had said his name in her own moment of vulnerability. She glanced up to find him looking curiously at her, and immediately ducked her head.

  He didn’t say anything to her, but took the other tiny fist in his own. “Poor little guy.”

  She forced a smile. “Could be a girl.”

  He chuckled, then whispered, “Did you notice anything unusual while I was in the bathroom? Did anyone come in here? A maid, maybe?”

  “Well, I was in the other room, but I don’t think so,” she whispered back. “I’m sure I would have heard some noise, at least. Besides, the baby would have woken up or something, if it had just been put there.”

  “Then it must have already been here when I came in.”

  Anger suddenly shot through her. “Who would leave a little helpless baby all alone like this? He could have fallen off the bed. What if we hadn’t come back when we did? He could have been here for hours while we were meeting with Genghis Khan Garner, and nobody would have known!”

  The baby stirred at the rising fury of her voice.

  “Sssshh!” Dan hissed.

  The baby rolled again, and both of them had their hands ready like wide receivers on a thirty-yard pass. They relaxed when the baby settled back to sleep.

  Dan gazed at the infant. The words on the crumpled, cheap white paper swirled through his head, and disgust, anger, and horror rose up in him at the cruelty and callousness of the person who had written it. He would love to have that person in the room right now.

  Another thought occurred to him, and he said, “You’re the lawyer, Angelica. What will happen to him now?”

  “I’m a business lawyer,” she said. “So I really don’t know for sure, but the note makes it pretty clear he was abandoned. I guess the Welfare Department, or Family Services, or whatever it’s called here in Seattle, would have charge of him.”

  “What will they do?”

  “Give him to a foster home. If one’s available.” Fresh tears arose.

  “I saw a piece on TV about foster home abuses,” he said, remembering his shock. “I had thought Oliver Twist didn’t happen in this day and age.”

  “I saw one on the lack of foster homes and how they have to put the kids in institutions.” Her shattered expression shocked Dan even further. “I don’t want that to happen to this one.”

  His face hardened with anger. “For once, we are in complete agreement. The little guy deserves better.”

  The baby stretched, yawned, and opened drowsy blue eyes. Dan immediately shut up, hoping the baby hadn’t understood what they’d been talking about.

  “Hi,” Angelica said softly, after a tense silence. “Have a good nappie?”

  The baby smiled, then frowned. To Angelica’s complete horror, it let out a wail of indignation. Instinct told her to pick it up. She picked it up. The head seemed to rock on the slender neck, and she supported it with one hand as she brought it against her chest.

  “What’s wrong?” Dan exclaimed, helplessly holding out his hands.

  “I don’t know!” She adjusted the small body better on her shoulder. The wails of unhappiness blasted her ear, but she was afraid to move and possibly drop him or her. A nebulous thought about eat, sleep, and cry clicked in her mind. There was only one out of the three the child hadn’t done yet.

  “The baby must be hungry,” she said, and immediately panicked. “What are we going to do? We don’t have any baby stuff!”

  Dan’s eyes widened, then he laughed. “Room service! I’ll call room service.”


  “Room service! Are you crazy?”

  But he already had the receiver to his ear. “This is 2015. We need food for a baby.”

  “A bottle,” she said, not sure whether the child was old enough for baby food.

  “And a bottle.” He listened for a moment. “Send up what you’ve got.… Yes, that was the baby.… No, we hadn’t thought of that. Gas? Are you sure?… Four, eh? Well, that’s wonderful. No, I’m single.…”

  Angelica’s growing amusement subsided into confusion. What, she wondered, did gas have to do with the baby? And why did it sound so ominous?

  “Well?” she prompted, when he hung up the telephone.

  “Well …” he began, reaching out to caress the baby’s cheek. The cries subsided slightly. “Room service is sending up formula. Five different formulas.”

  “Five!”

  “They asked me which brand we preferred. I said all of them.” He added to the baby, “Is that room service or what, Tiger?”

  “Would you …” She swallowed. “Would you like to hold him while we’re waiting?”

  He nodded and held out his arms. She fumbled around before finally getting the baby situated. It quieted and stared intently up at Dan. Her arms felt surprisingly empty without the child. Her dress felt wet.

  Plucking the damp material away from her chest, she smiled wryly and said, “We forgot about diapers.”

  “I’ll call the front desk to see about that.” He grinned. “And valet service for you.”

  “You’ve been living in a hotel too long, Dan.”

  His grin widened. “It beats running to a drug store every five minutes.”

  She knew there was a phone call they should make, and as an officer of the court she was obliged to do so. She drew in a deep breath. “Dan, we do need to call the police and report this.”

  He gazed at her, his expression curiously blank. “I know.”