by Tara Wylde
The Baby Clause
Tara Wylde
Holly Hart
Red Cape Romance
Copyright © 2017 by Holly Hart and Tara Wylde
All rights reserved.
No part of this book may be reproduced in any form or by any electronic or mechanical means, including information storage and retrieval systems, without written permission from the author, except for the use of brief quotations in a book review.
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Contents
I. The Baby Clause
1. Paul
2. Lara
3. Paul
4. Lara
5. Lara
6. Paul
7. Paul
8. Paul
9. Lara
10. Paul
11. Paul
12. Lara
13. Paul
14. Lara
15. Lara
16. Lara
17. Lara
18. Paul
19. Paul
20. Paul
21. Lara
22. Lara
23. Paul
24. Paul
25. Lara
26. Paul
27. Paul
28. Lara
29. Lara
30. Lara
31. Lara
32. Lara
33. Lara
34. Paul
35. Paul
36. Paul
37. Paul
38. Lara
Epilogue
II. Dark Nights - A USA Today Best-selling Novella
Chapter 39
Chapter 40
Chapter 41
Chapter 42
Chapter 43
Chapter 44
Chapter 45
Chapter 46
Chapter 47
Chapter 48
III. Keeping Her
Chapter 49
Chapter 50
Chapter 51
Chapter 52
Chapter 53
Chapter 54
Chapter 55
Chapter 56
Chapter 57
Chapter 58
Chapter 59
Chapter 60
Chapter 61
Chapter 62
Chapter 63
Chapter 64
Chapter 65
Chapter 66
Chapter 67
Chapter 68
Chapter 69
Chapter 70
Chapter 71
Chapter 72
Chapter 73
Chapter 74
Chapter 75
Chapter 76
Chapter 77
Chapter 78
Chapter 79
Chapter 80
Chapter 81
Chapter 82
Chapter 83
Chapter 84
Chapter 85
Chapter 86
Chapter 87
Chapter 88
Chapter 89
Chapter 90
Chapter 91
Chapter 92
Chapter 93
Chapter 94
Chapter 95
Chapter 96
Chapter 97
Chapter 98
Chapter 99
Chapter 100
Chapter 101
Chapter 102
Chapter 103
Chapter 104
Chapter 105
Chapter 106
Chapter 107
Chapter 108
Chapter 109
Chapter 110
Chapter 111
Chapter 112
Chapter 113
Chapter 114
Chapter 115
Chapter 116
Chapter 117
Chapter 118
Chapter 119
Chapter 120
Chapter 121
Chapter 122
Chapter 123
Chapter 124
Chapter 125
Chapter 126
Chapter 127
Chapter 128
Chapter 129
Chapter 130
Chapter 131
132. EPILOGUE: SARA
IV. Daddy Wanted
Chapter 133
Chapter 134
Chapter 135
Chapter 136
Chapter 137
Chapter 138
Chapter 139
Chapter 140
Chapter 141
Chapter 142
Chapter 143
Chapter 144
Chapter 145
Chapter 146
Chapter 147
Chapter 148
Chapter 149
Chapter 150
Chapter 151
Chapter 152
Chapter 153
Chapter 154
Chapter 155
Chapter 156
Chapter 157
Chapter 158
Chapter 159
160. Epilogue (Elina)
Part I
The Baby Clause
All I want for Christmas... is a baby.
But Lara is giving me an even greater honor.
I’m going to be her first.
It's no secret.
I've wanted to be a dad for as long as I can remember.
Ached for it every night.
And now I ache for her.
Lara.
The woman I'm going to make my wife.
Our eyes met from across the room, and I knew it had to be her.
The woman to bear my child.
This Christmas I'll give her my heart.
And she'll give my the gift I've always dreamed of.
1
Paul
Pushing my way through the Blind Pig’s heavy tinted glass doors was my first mistake.
I should have gone with my first instinct and raided the mini-bar in my hotel room. That’s exactly what I would have done had I not happened to have walked past the window and noticed the elegant old brick building across the street. And the somewhat old-fashioned sign hanging over the huge doors welcoming people to The Blind Pig and promising the best spirits they’d ever tasted.
Given my black mood, I told myself that going there, surrounding myself with people, was smarter than sitting alone in a darkened hotel room. While attempting to drink myself out of my misery, while staring at my laptop and while struggling to read the psychological and physiological profiles of one girl after another.
Now I am here, surrounded by at least a hundred and fifty strangers, each one laughing and having the time of their lives, while black-clad waiters transport trays of drinks from point A to point B. At the far end of the cavernous room, revelers are dancing to the upbeat music provided by an honest-to-goodness live five-piece jazz band.
The entire place feels alien.
It’s like no bar I’ve ever set foot in before. Dim lighting, lots of gleaming chrome and soft glowing wood. In addition to tall tables and chairs, customers can also choose to sit on huge, overstuffed couches with low tables in front of them that are placed along the perimeter of the room.
Halloween decorations that consist of pumpkins, bats, and a few skeletons adorn the walls.
This isn’t the place for me. Everything about it is designed to shake a person out of their foul mood, help them find a silver lining. That’s the last thing I want or need. I should be in a shadowy biker bar where I can nurse one beer after another and stew about just how rotten this entire day has been.
I should turn around and head back to the hotel. But I don’t. I wind my way past the table, ignoring the bursts of laughter and constant din of cheerful conversation until I reach the bar. I sit on the one empt
y stool, which is right beside a couple who are too engrossed in one another to realize I’m there.
My second mistake of the evening.
Three bartenders wearing dark blazers and fedoras fill ornate glasses and pass them to the hovering waitstaff. A long woman dressed in a short, beaded, bright red flapper dress rattles a heavy cocktail shaker while she laughs at something one of the patrons has said. I stare at her, taking in the way the dress hugs her delectable backside and how her generous breasts jiggle with each exuberant move of her arm.
She removes the lid from the shaker and pours the contents into a waiting martini glass, which she pushes toward the customer. Still laughing at whatever joke he’s told her, she turns away. Her bright blue eyes clash with mine.
Mistake number three.
2
Lara
Holy Mother of …
I cancel the direction of my thoughts before they cross into blasphemous territory and rip my gaze away from the dark stare of the man who has just sat down at my bar. His magnetic presence caught my eye the second he pushed his way through the front door. I watched him pause, take in everything the Blind Pig has to offer. For a moment, my heart stopped when it looked like he was going to turn around and leave just as quickly as he’d come.
Please don’t, I silently whispered.
I don’t know why, but there was something about him that spoke to something deep, almost primordial, inside of me, and I knew I needed to get to know him as badly as I needed to draw my next breath.
Responsibilities be damned, if he’d walked out that door, I would have tossed the drink I was mixing aside and chased after him.
But he didn’t leave. Not only is he still here, but he’s sitting at the bar, just a handful of feet away from me.
Now that he’s here, I just need to figure out what to do with him.
A bead of sweat races down the length of my spine as I fight the twin urges to both hurry toward him and to turn and run far away.
I sneak a peek from beneath my lashes. Yep, he’s still sitting there and he’s just as magnetic as he was a second ago when our eyes met.
Shit.
I don’t know who he is or why he’s here, but every single fiber of my being senses he’s going to complicate my life just as much as the revenuer messed up my great-granddaddy’s moonshine empire.
“Earth to Lara.” Tracy’s unmistakable nasal voice captures my attention and I turn to her.
“What is it, Trace?” The sound of my voice makes me wince. I sound too breathless, too distracted. It doesn’t escape Tracy’s attention.
She floats a brow and taps the edge of the black folder she’s holding against the gleaming bar top.
“The Flynns wanta pay their tab. What’s put you in in la-la land?” She glances toward the far end of the bar and spots the dark stranger. “Ah. I see.” Propping her elbows on the bar, she leans closer. “Who is he?”
Grateful for the distraction, I grab the credit card poking out of the folder, slip it into the chip reader and wait for technology to do its thing. “Who?”
Tracy rolls her eyes. “Don’t give me that. You were looking at that guy. Thinking about him. And rightfully so. He’s the hottest thing that’s walked into this place in days. Maybe even weeks.”
“I don’t know who he is.” My little card reader flashes approved. I slip the card out and wait as the printer comes to life and spews out a receipt for the Flynns to sign. I scan the information, making sure everything is in order before passing it to Tracy. I like the convenience of technology, but I don’t trust it, especially not when it comes to getting a bar bill paid. A single mistake can easily add up to over a hundred dollars in this business.
“You need to get your ass over there. Get him a drink and then get his number.”
“Tracy!”
Another eye roll from the waitress. “Hey. You’ve been in a long dry spell. It’s time you got some action with a guy. And he’s a looker. I’d be all over him myself, except—” She waves her left hand so that the small diamond on her finger catches the light. “—I’ve already got me a good one.”
A familiar heaviness settles into the pit of my stomach, the same sense of dread I get each time Tracy flashes her new engagement ring. “Some of us don’t move at the speed of light.”
Tracy met the guy who is now her fiancé about eighteen days ago. They plan on exchanging vows on their three-week anniversary. Personally, I think she’s nuts. When it comes to relationships, I’ve always believed in taking my time and moving slow, making sure it’s the right person, or at the very least, someone I can trust.
She tucks the receipts and the credit card into the black folder. “It’s not like I’m exactly tripping over good guys here. Now that I’ve found one of my very own, I’m not gonna give him a chance to get away.”
Tracy spins away from the bar, her fingers curled around the folder before I have a chance to respond. She knows my feelings on the subject and doesn’t want to hear them again.
Sighing, I turn toward the man seated at the far end of the bar. As much as I’d like to have one of the guys who are working shoulder-to-whiskey bottle with me deal with him, I’m the person who is supposed to take care of the barflies while they handle the orders coming in from the floor. Changing the flow at this point would create problems for the rest of the night.
Plastering my best bright, non-committal, business-like smile on my face, I walk to the other side of the bar, occasionally exchanging a quick word or smile with one of my regulars, but not stopping until I meet the newcomer.
Oh. My. God.
From a distance he was good looking, but up close… It’s almost too much, rather like having Brad Pitt sitting at my bar. Not the current Brad Pitt, but Brad Pitt before his first marriage, Legends of the Fall Pitt. Only with broader shoulders and soulful brown eyes.
It’s as if the Greek gods smiled down on me and decided to create a man that checks off all my turn-ons. Soulful eyes, sexy mouth, high cheekbones, hair maybe a little too long to be fashionable. Long, lean body with shoulders so broad they may actually block out the sun.
Anxiety twists my gut and sets my heart racing.
I’m no good at this. I mean, when it comes to making small talk with customers and listening as they pour their heart out, I’m great. But approaching a guy that flips my trigger—I completely suck at it. I don’t know what to say. Hell, I don’t even know what to do with my hands, let alone where to look.
I’m torn between wanting to crawl across the bar and wrap my legs around his narrow hips and wanting to race to my little office and lock myself in, away from the temptation that is this gorgeous, unnamed man sitting at my bar.
I wrap my fingers around the edge of the bar top, holding on tightly just in case my knees suddenly give way.
“Howdy.”
The sound of my voice, a half octave higher than normal, makes me wince inwardly. I’m supposed to be a worldly woman. I’ve served hundreds of handsome men, though none as good looking as this guy. I don’t think there’s anyone in the world who holds a candle to this guy.
Swallowing, I try again. “Hi. Welcome to the Blind Pig.”
His gaze sweeps over my body, leaving a trail of warmth in its wake. It takes all my self-will not to shiver. “Interesting choice in work clothes.”
His voice is deep and flavored with just the faintest hint of a Southern accent. Why does it have to be deep? I’ve been a sucker for deep voices ever since my hormones kicked in as a teenager. I force myself to concentrate on his words, and not the interesting things the sound does to my body.
I look down at my flapper dress and shrug. “It gets the job done.”
“Mmm.”
He presses one hand flat against the bar top and rises up so he can scan the rest of my body. The move brings him close enough for me to pick up the spicy scent of his cologne.
