“Can we go somewhere? Just the two of us?”
ABOUT THE AUTHOR
Books by Pamela Browning
Title Page
Chapter One
Chapter Two
Chapter Three
Chapter Four
Chapter Five
Chapter Six
Chapter Seven
Chapter Eight
Chapter Nine
Chapter Ten
Chapter Eleven
Chapter Twelve
Epilogue
Copyright
“Can we go somewhere? Just the two of us?”
Neill spoke the words with quiet intensity and was looking at Bianca so earnestly that she didn’t want him to stop. She wanted him to go on looking at her that way forever. It was the openness of his expression that was so disarming, and it made her feel as if she could keep no secrets from him. And that was ridiculous; she had one big secret that she must hold in her heart forever. She pushed the thought into a separate part of herself, isolating it from what was happening here and now.
“I need to pick up the baby at the sitter’s.”
“You know, you’re biding behind that baby,” Neill said.
Bianca attempted a laugh, but didn’t carry it off very well. “Don’t be silly,” she said.
“Maybe. . .but why don’t you indulge me?”
Bianca didn’t think that being alone with Neill was the wisest thing to do. A sick feeling stole into the pit of her stomach, and she turned away in an attempt to hide her anxiety. If Neill asked her who her baby’s father was, she wasn’t sure she could put him off again.
ABOUT THE AUTHOR
Pamela Browning is the award-winning author of thirty romance novels—many of which appeared on numerous bestseller lists. Her books consistently win high ratings from reviewers and readers alike. She makes her home in North Carolina.
Books by Pamela Browning
HARLEQUIN AMERICAN ROMANCE
101—CHERISHED BEGINNINGS
116—HANDYMAN SPECIAL
123—THROUGH EYES OF LOVE
131—INTERIOR DESIGNS
140—EVER SINCE EVE
150—FOREVER IS A LONG TIME
170—TO TOUCH THE STARS
181—THE FLUTTERBY PRINCESS
194—ICE CRYSTALS
227—KISSES IN THE RAIN
237—SIMPLE GIFTS
241—FLY AWAY
245—HARVEST HOME
287—FEATHERS IN THE WIND
297—UNTIL SPRING
354—HUMBLE PIE
364—A MAN WORTH LOVING
420—FOR AULD LANG SYNE
439—SUNSHINE AND SHADOWS
451—MORGAN’S CHILD
516—MERRY CHRISTMAS, BABY
565—THE WORLD’S LAST BACHELOR
600—ANGEL’S BABY
632—LOVER’S LEAP
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RSVP. . .Baby
PAMELA BROWNING
TORONTO • NEW YORK • LONDON
AMSTERDAM • PARIS • SYDNEY • HAMBURG
STOCKHOLM • ATHENS • TOKYO •MILAN • MADRID
PLAGUE • WARSAW • BUDAPEST • AUCKLAND
Lambert Family Tree
Chapter One
Lake Geneva, Wisconsin
The best sex I’ve ever had.
That was the way Neill Bellamy thought of the elegant blonde who stood with her straight shoulderlength hair wafting languidly in the breeze off the pond. Every other woman at the garden party was decked out in voile or dotted swiss, tucked linen or lace for this event on the gently sloping lawn of Swan’s Folly, an exclusive hotel in the small Wisconsin resort town of Lake Geneva. Bianca, standing apart from a swarm of guests chattering and trilling their excitement, wore black.
She had always been different. In the years since her mother had divorced his father, she’d acquired the patina of sophistication and glamour befitting a fantastically successful designer of fine jewelry. Her company, D’Alessandro, was well-known in Paris and Rome. And she was beautiful enough to stir up all kinds of problems.
Nana Lambert, grandmother of the bride, clutched Neill’s arm, digging lavender-tinted acrylic nails into the sleeve of his blazer. Neill was supposed to keep her out of trouble at this event, the first of many during the next four days. Fifteen minutes ago when the eighty-something-year-old Nana had pranced out of her suite trailing a purple print scarf and wearing jeweled lavender fetish shoes with ankle straps, he knew he had problems.
Neill wished he were still in South America. He wished he’d never heard of the Knoxes or the Lamberts. And he wished he didn’t have to see Beans again.
Not Beans. Bianca. She was all grown up now. But back in the days when her mother Ursula had been married to his father Budge, Neill had called her Beans.
Bianca. She’d been named for her Italian grandmother, a contessa, and it was an exotic name, like her. It put Neill in mind of pale swaying flowers amid cool Roman ruins. It made him think of windswept pines on a rocky coast. It was the whisper of the wind, the rush of the sea to shore.
Hell, it reminded him of that night in the gazebo when they hadn’t been able to get enough of each other, when she’d torn at his clothes and he at hers, when she’d gasped his name against the hollow of his throat and he’d cried out hers for all the world to hear.
Bianca. He’d thought of her too much ever since.
Nana pushed him inexorably across the sprawl of velvety green grass toward the creek and in Bianca’s direction. He tried, not so subtly, to nudge Nana toward a far corner of the garden where his brother, Eric, the groom, was holding forth with Caroline, his bride, under an arbor clotted thick with climbing roses. But Nana, lurching along on those impossibly high heels, wasn’t having any of it. She pressed on, sinking into the bouncy turf as if intent upon wrenching her ankle.
One by one, Neill considered his options. He could feign a sudden attack of appendicitis. He could forcibly pick up Nana and deposit her in a chair, all one hundred pounds of her, and then figure out some way to keep her there, like sitting on her. He could yell “Fire!”
Of course he couldn’t. His former stepbrother Joe, a Chicago fireman, would heartily disapprove.
As they drew closer, the crowd parted. The guests’ pastel kaleidoscope shapes drifted away toward the Folly to reveal Bianca in her stark black silk knit. Her figure was more voluptuous than Neill remembered—high round breasts, narrow waist, impossibly slim hips. And long, long legs. Limousine legs, Eric called them.
One of Bianca’s impeccably manicured hands rested lightly on the handle of a baby carriage. A big gray English pram. The baby’s mother was nowhere in sight
Nana stopped stock-still. “Who’s the blonde with the baby?” she said loudly into a sudden silence. “Who is that girl?”
Nana was hard of hearing. And getting worse, from the sound of things.
“It’s Bianca D’Alessandro,” Neill said, leaning closer. “You met her a year ago at Caroline and Eric’s engagement party.” He couldn’t imagine how Nana could have forgotten. Bianca had caused no end of trouble that day.
Everyone else resumed talking, their words rising and falling in genteel murmurs. There was nothing genteel about Nana’s tone of voice, however.
“I want to talk to that girl. She looks interesting. More than I can say about these other folks.” Bianca’s style had always charmed people, and Nana was no exception. She released Neill’s arm and plunged through the narrow path between guests.
> No time to think about how much Bianca had hurt him by disappearing the morning after that memorable night. No time to figure out what to say to her.
Bianca was staring straight at him, through him, an enigmatic smile playing across her lips. The crowd disappeared for Neill, their chatter muted; the sky seemed wider and bluer than before, and colors more brilliant. He wanted to say something clever, something memorable.
But all he said was, “Bianca.”
A GUST OF PANIC shook Bianca when she first saw Neill Bellamy; she fought it down, contained it deep in the pit of her stomach where it nestled like a litter of homed lizards. The moment she had dreaded for months was finally here, and all she could do was brazen it out.
She forced herself to smile as if she were only taking time out from a cheerful conversation with fascinating friends, which was anything but the case in this gathering. Neill advanced across the lawn, a shaft of sunlight blazing a shimmering path across his dark wavy hair. He was the kind of man whose easy masculinity called out to be tamed, but not just by any woman; she’d have to be a match for him. Last year, when she’d seen him again after years of no contact, Bianca had decided she was the woman for the job.
Not any more. A year ago, Bianca had scuttled her chances with Neill Bellamy once and for all at Eric and Caroline’s engagement party.
As Bianca’s smile stiffened and she briefly wished for a moving train under which she could fling herself, Neill continued to move easily through the crowd, bigger than life, handsomer than any man had a right to be, and tempting as the devil. Just for a moment she remembered the thrill she’d felt glancing at the dark outline of his profile as he led her by the hand into the blue dusky shadows of the gazebo on that night exactly a year ago, and her breath caught in her throat.
It wouldn’t do. She couldn’t think about things like that, about the comfort he’d offered after that dreadful day, about her compliance when he first kissed her and even her eagerness and then her passion and then—no. She wouldn’t think about it.
But how could she not think about it when faced with the commanding presence of this man she’d known half her life and with whom she had briefly dreamed of spending all the rest of it?
Nana Lambert peered up at her. “Do I know you, honey?” she blurted in a voice so loud that Bianca, pulled back from a precipice too dangerous, cringed.
Neill cleared his throat. “Nana, this is Bianca. Bianca, you remember Caroline’s grandmother, don’t you?”
Who wouldn’t? The woman insisted she had long been inhabited by the spirit of Isadora Duncan.
“Of course,” Bianca said smoothly, marveling that she sounded so remarkably ordinary. “How are you, Mrs. Lambert?”
“Blissfully light-spirited. And please call me Nana.”
Bianca saw Neill looking at her, looking at the baby. She moved slightly forward to position her body strategically between the pram and Neill.
Nana batted lavender-lidded eyes and fluttered her scarf in the direction of the swans skimming the surface of the pond. “There’s something so hopeful about a wedding, don’t you think? Music! Poetry! Dancing! Such enthusiasm and joy. I do believe my heart will break of it.”
Caroline’s grandmother, Bianca thought, didn’t know anything about heartbreak if she thought it had something to do with joy. On the other hand, Nana might find out about heartbreak soon enough if the looks on the bride’s and the groom’s faces were any clue to the way they felt toward each other. Caroline was storming across the lawn in the direction of the gazebo with Eric in full pursuit. Bianca resolutely turned away. If they were having prewedding jitters, she wanted no part of them.
Neill, wearing a navy blazer and pearl-gray pants, stood too close. He was invading her space. And a blazer didn’t fit his personality; Bianca always pictured him wearing khakis as he grubbed around in that mine of his in Colombia where he had something to do with producing emeralds. And money.
Eric had told her that Neill’s net worth was even greater than Budge Bellamy’s. Which was really something considering that Neill was only thirty-three. Budge, his father, was the famous Pretzel King. Worth millions. And so were his three ex-wives, including Bianca’s mother, Ursula, whose motto for divorcing a mate was, “Don’t get even. Get rich.”
Another of the groomsmen—Kevin, who was Neill and Eric’s half brother, and Joe, their ex-stepbrother—swooped in from the sidelines.
“Mrs. Lambert, here’s a plate of strawberries in Devonshire cream,” said Joe.
“Nana, you’re looking as elegant as ever,” said Kevin.
“Why, you charming young men,” she gushed, accepting the plate and thus distracted from Bianca and the baby. “You must both promise to dance with me at the reception. Joe, I hope you’ve been practicing. One, two, cha cha cha!” With her free hand, Nana latched onto Joe’s arm, launching fully into her freespirit act. The three of them moved slightly away into the dappled shade of an oak tree, leaving Neill and Bianca to stare blankly at each other.
Neill said, “You’re looking well, Bianca.”
“So are you,” she replied evenly, staring straight at him. He hadn’t called her Beans. Her heart sped up a little, wondering what that meant That he considered her a grown-up at last? He should; she was twentyeight. But with Neill she always felt like the awkward fourteen-year-old she’d been when they first met.
Bianca lifted her chin ever so slightly. It made her feel taller, more in charge. But Neill’s height was well over six feet, so the unnatural angle put a crick in her neck.
“Did your mother come with you?” he asked.
“No. She’s on her honeymoon. With my new stepfather, Claudio Zepponi. He owns wineries.”
“I didn’t know. How nice for her.” Neill looked surprised at the news of the marriage, but Bianca couldn’t fathom why. His own father had been married five times including twice to Neill and Eric’s mother.
“Nice for her? Well, maybe. Right now I’m steeling myself to make nice to Caroline and Winnie and what’s the name of Caroline’s cousin? The one who always looks as if she has a slight head cold?”
“Petronella Lambert Thorpe. Petsy. Your fellow bridesmaid,” informed Neill.
“Oh yes, how could I forget dear Petsy? Tell me, Neill, how’d we get into this? And why couldn’t we get out of it?”
He grinned in the lopsided way that had always intrigued her. “We’re Bellamys.”
“Not me,” she retorted.
“You’re a Bellamy by association, Bianca. Your mother was married to Budge for a year and a half.”
“Fifteen months. It only seemed longer.”
“It was long enough for you and Eric to teach each other to raise hell.”
“We had more fun than our elders, no doubt about it,” Bianca said wryly. “And Eric and I ended up being friends, which is more than we can say for our parents.” She paused for an awkward beat. She and Eric had barely spoken since shortly after the engagement party.
“When did you get back from Colombia?” she asked, not knowing what else to say. She couldn’t very well tell Neill what she was thinking: that if it had been remotely possible, she’d have stayed in Europe, where, although she was an American citizen by birth, she lived and worked most of the time.
“I arrived here last week, and it’s a good thing. The waistcoat they rented for me was almost two inches too short. We had to place an order for another one.”
“At least you don’t have to wear a dress of putrid pink taffeta with a butt bow as big as Rhode Island,” Bianca said. Rhode Island was where Bianca wished she were at this very moment. Anywhere would be better than here.
Neill laughed, a long deep-throated chuckle. “They’re not calling the shade of the bridesmaids’ dresses putrid pink. The dresses are pink-on-pink, cyclamen-on-camation. Caroline said so.”
“Putrid-on-Pepto-Bismol is more like it. Anyway, the combination makes my stomach heave, never mind those horrible little embroidered swans. Sorry, Neill. Maybe I’
d see it differently if I weren’t jet-lagged and exhausted.” Bianca couldn’t help letting her weariness creep into her tone.
She was also tense; she kept expecting Neill to ask about Tia. No one else, in the few minutes since she’d arrived at the garden party, had mentioned the baby either. Besides Caroline and Nana, only Lizzie, a college acquaintance, had greeted her at all. Perhaps their consternation over the continuing battle of bride and groom made them wary of talking to Bianca, especially since some might think she had something to do with it. Which she did not. But try telling that to Caroline’s mother, the redoubtable Genevieve.
Bianca hadn’t expected Caroline and Eric to be having a tiff; she’d thought they’d worked through all their differences during a lengthy courtship. What she had expected was that after a year of conferring and planning and anticipating the big Knox-Bellamy society wedding, this reunion of the wedding party would be punctuated by Caroline’s friends’ squealing and laughing and exchanging the usual banalities.
And it was, in a limited way, which assured that they’d get to Bianca eventually, and then someone would catch on that last year she hadn’t had a baby; this year she did. She’d fluff it off, evade explanation, think of something to say. Word would get around that she didn’t want to talk about it. She’d be mysterious, European, oblique. They’d all assume that Tia was the product of some unspecified love affair, consummated far away.
Or at least that had been the plan. But Neill had found her first.
Okay. So if Neill did ask about her baby, what then? Many sleepless nights hadn’t provided an answer to that question. The only thing Bianca knew for sure was that Neill Bellamy was a confirmed bachelor and had never wanted children.
Sudden tears weighted her lower eyelids. In confusion, she bent over the pram under the guise of fussing with the baby’s blanket, and one crystalline tear fell on the sleeping baby’s cheek. Bianca hastily brushed it away, but Tia was startled awake and began to wail.
RSVP...Baby Page 1
