He broke off and pressed their linked hands to his chest, as if he could communicate all that was in him directly into her body.
His heart pumped heavily against her fingers. But she had to have the words. She had to hear them to know.
“Michael?”
His heart quickened beneath her fingers. His hands pressed harder against hers. “I love you, Beth. Before, I didn’t know what to call it, this mishmash of feelings, but you’ve got to believe me. Nothing less could make me feel this miserable without you.”
Beth’s heart started pounding in time with his. “You have devious ways of getting what you want,” she said. It couldn’t be. He couldn’t really love her.
One of his hands drifted over her hair. “C’mon, honey. Can’t you believe someone would want you? Because I do so very, very much.”
Someone wanted her? Michael? Maybe that was hard to believe. Beth Masterson, named for the nurse who had found her abandoned on the Masterson Hospital doorstep could be wanted, really wanted, loved by someone?
It was what she’d searched for her entire life.
And here it was, like a shiny toy that just couldn’t be meant for her.
If you want something more than anything, be prepared to stake everything. Alice had said that, too. And this beautiful man beside her, the one cradling her son, she wanted more than toys, and Halloween costumes and valentines.
“If I give you my love…” If she gave her everything, what would he return? New cars, new coats, something brand-spanking-new as if that would make her happy?
“You’ll have mine back ten-fold,” he said.
Her stomach fell. Tears burned the corners of her eyes. But she smiled. “You do love me.”
His face was serious. “Oh, God, I do.” Then he grinned joyously and leaned toward her for a quick, bruising kiss. “Poof! The log becomes the alligator.” His grin widened. “Hey, a whole new take on the frog and the prince.”
Beth laughed, then cried, then dried her tears on Michael’s shoulder as he took her in his arms. When Mischa protested his role as the peanut butter in the parent sandwich, they broke apart and headed into the hospital. Other important business was happening today.
Arms wrapped around each other, they hurried into the maternity reception area. Joseph Wentworth was there and Josie, glowing like a birthday candle.
Beth smiled at both of them. Her family.
She turned to Michael, who was holding Mischa. Her men.
Her husband slanted her a glance. “I like the smile,” he said.
“I love you,” she answered.
A click and a flash accompanied Michael’s kiss, though it was lost to Beth in the burst of passion between them.
But the moment made a nice photograph in the next edition of the Freemont Springs Daily Post. Valentine’s Day had meant lots of exciting doings for the Wentworth family.
People throughout the town sighed over the love shining from former playboy Michael Wentworth for his new bride Beth.
Bea and Millie thrilled to the happy ending for the young woman they had taken under their wing.
Dr. Mercer Manning, D.D.S., closely inspected the gleaming gums of Michael and Beth’s baby boy smiling for the camera. And to think, yet another Wentworth infant—Jack’s—had been born that day! Dr. Manning rubbed his hands together and smiled to himself. Ah. Another generation of dental work.
Life was grand.
FOLLOW THAT BABY
into Silhouette Intimate Moments
in February 1999, when USA Today
bestselling author Merline Lovelace draws
the series to its exciting conclusion with
THE MERCENARY AND THE NEW MOM.
Turn the page
for a sneak preview of the final
FOLLOW THAT BABY title,
THE MERCENARY AND THE NEW MOM
by USA Today bestselling author
Merline Lovelace,
available in
Silhouette Intimate Moments
in February 1999…
Sabrina Jensen would never know what pulled her from a light doze that cold, foggy March afternoon.
It could have been the heightened instincts of a new mom, still on constant red alert to the slightest sound from the newborn napping in the hooded white wicker bassinet.
It could have been the sense of danger that had dogged Sabrina day and night for the past several months. The danger that had kept her on the run, alone and pregnant and increasingly desperate, until finally she’d been forced to accept help from the family of the man she’d loved and lost so many months ago…the same family she’d believed wanted to take her baby from her.
Whatever woke her, Sabrina’s gaze went instantly to the bassinet she’d rolled into the toastywarm living room of the luxurious guest cottage. Still nervous, still frightened for her baby even here, on the heavily guarded grounds of the Wentworth estate, she’d wanted her three-week-old infant near her while she tried to absorb the intricacies of Advanced Marketing Statistics.
When Sabrina saw the bassinet’s snowy-white outline in the dim shadows and heard no fretful sounds from the infant tucked inside, the fear gripping her heart eased. She was safe here. At last, she’d found sanctuary. Tomorrow, her baby would be christened. Everyone was coming tonight for dinner, and would stay over for the ceremony.
Everyone except the baby’s father.
Aching with the constant sense of loss she carried tucked just under her heart, Sabrina felt the need to touch her baby. To brush a finger against the sleeping child’s feather-soft cheek. Tossing aside a fleecy orange-and-black Oklahoma State University throw, she started to push herself off the leather sofa placed to catch both light and warmth from the fire in the stone fireplace. Her statistics textbook tumbled off her lap and hit the colorful, braided rag rug with a thud.
The noise caused a small movement in the shadows. The stir was so slight, so instantly stilled, that Sabrina almost missed it. She blinked once more to clear the last of the sleepy haze from her eyes. This time, her gaze penetrated the gloom beyond the heirloom wicker basket that held her baby.
Shock froze her where she sat. Her chest squeezed. She felt a single instant of piercing joy.
“Jack!”
At her strangled gasp, the gaunt, bearded figure in the shadows turned his head. Slowly, so slowly, his mouth twisted into a travesty of the smile that had melted her bones the first time she saw it.
“Well, well. Sleeping Beauty wakes.”
It was the Oklahoma drawl she remembered all too well. Husky. Masculine. As soft and as tough as rainwater on rawhide.
“And without a kiss from her prince,” he added in a low growl.
His words evoked a memory that sent sharp, stinging hurt piercing through every inch of her skin. The pain needled right through the terror that was rushing in to replace her brief, soaring instant joy. He’d said those same words to her before, the day they’d met. The agony of hearing them again after so many months of heartache almost tore her apart.
Even greater than her agony, however, was her fear for her baby. Her whole body shaking, Sabrina finally pushed herself off the couch and faced the man she’d tumbled headlong into love with a short lifetime ago.
“You don’t…” Her throat tight and aching, she forced out the same response she’d given him then. “You don’t look much like a prince.”
“I guess we’ve both learned that appearances can be deceiving.”
A sudden wave of terror gripped her as Jack stepped around the bassinet and into the light. With his skin stretched taut across his cheekbones and his face stubbled with a rough, straggly beard, he looked as though he’d traveled to hell and back.
He had! She saw it in his eyes. Heard it in his voice.
Oh, God! How could she ache for him? How could she want to throw herself into his arms and at the same time feel her fingers curling into claws at the thought of his hands on her body? How could he raise a flood of heat in her belly with
that twisted smile, even as she furtively searched the shadowy living room for her purse with its concealed handgun?
As if sensing her rising panic, he halted a few steps away. The firelight glinted on his tobacco brown hair, once so short and neat, despite its stubborn tendency to curl when Sabrina ran her fingers through it.
Desperately, she inched sideways. Away from the bassinet. Toward the gun she’d bought after the first attempt on her life.
“They said…” She wet her lips. In a ragged whisper, she begged him to understand what she’d done. What she had to do to protect her child. “They said you died when that offshore rig blew up.”
The look in his eyes was so cruel Sabrina felt its slice where she stood. “There were times I wished I had.”
A million questions consumed her, but the months of fear she’d lived with, the desperation she’d experienced, winnowed them down to just a few.
“How could you?” She fought to drag breath into her aching lungs. “How could you go off like that? How could you rush off to fight a battle that wasn’t your own, like…like some damned mercenary when I…when we…?”
“I came back, Sabrina.” A muscle worked in the side of his face. “I promised you I would…”
eISBN 978-14592-6050-4
THE MILLIONAIRE AND THE PREGNANT PAUPER
Copyright © 1999 by Harlequin Books S.A.
Special thanks and acknowledgment to Christie Ridgway for her contribution to the FOLLOW THAT BABY series.
All rights reserved. Except for use in any review, the reproduction or utilization of this work in whole or in part in any form by any electronic, mechanical or other means, now known or hereafter invented, including xerography, photocopying and recording, or in any information storage or retrieval system, is forbidden without the written permission of the editorial office, Silhouette Books, 300 East 42nd Street, New York, NY 10017 U.S.A.
All characters in this book have no existence outside the imagination of the author and have no relation whatsoever to anyone bearing the same name or names. They are not even distantly inspired by any individual known or unknown to the author, and all incidents are pure invention.
This edition published by arrangement with Harlequin Books S.A.
® and TM are trademarks of Harlequin Books S.A., used under license. Trademarks indicated with ® are registered in the United States Patent and Trademark Office, the Canadian Trade Marks Office and in other countries.
Printed in U.S.A.
Table of Contents
Cover Page
Table of Contents
Excerpt
Dear Reader1
Dedication
Dear Reader2
Books by Christie Ridgway
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9
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Preview
Copyright
The Millionaire and the Pregnant Pauper Page 14
