“I’ve Seen You In The Morning, Claire,”
Nick rallied quickly. “Lots of times, if you’ll recall.”
“More than a decade ago,” Claire hastened to add.
“Yeah, and you look even better now than you did then.”
“Oh, right,” Claire remarked. But she couldn’t stop the warm fizzle of heat that wandered through her entire body at his words, at his look. Gee, waking up every morning to have a man like that give you a look like that… Well, it was certainly something a woman could get used to, Claire thought.
Of course, she shouldn’t get used to it.
She couldn’t get used to it.
She wouldn’t get used to it.
Dear Reader,
Please join us in celebrating Silhouette’s 20th anniversary in 2000! We promise to deliver—all year—passionate, powerful, provocative love stories from your favorite Desire authors!
This January, look for bestselling author Leanne Banks’s first MAN OF THE MONTH with Her Forever Man. Watch sparks fly when irresistibly rugged ranch owner Brock Logan comes face-to-face with his new partner, the fiery Felicity Chambeau, in the first book of Leanne’s brand-new miniseries LONE STAR FAMILIES: THE LOGANS.
Desire is pleased to continue the Silhouette cross-line continuity ROYALLY WED with The Pregnant Princess by favorite author Anne Marie Winston. After a night of torrid passion with a stranger, a beautiful princess ends up pregnant…and seeks out the father of her child.
Elizabeth Bevarly returns to Desire with her immensely popular miniseries FROM HERE TO MATERNITY with Dr. Mommy, about a couple reunited by a baby left on a doorstep. Hard Lovin’ Man, another of Peggy Moreland’s TEXAS BRIDES, captures the intensity of falling in love when a cowgirl gives her heart to a sweet-talkin’, hard-lovin’ hunk. Cathleen Galitz delivers a compelling marriage-of-convenience tale in The Cowboy Takes a Bride, in the series THE BRIDAL BID. And Sheri WhiteFeather offers another provocative Native American hero in Skyler Hawk: Lone Brave.
Help us celebrate 20 years of great romantic fiction from Silhouette by indulging yourself with all six delectably sensual Desire titles each and every month during this special year!
Enjoy!
Joan Marlow Golan
Senior Editor, Silhouette Desire
Dr. Mummy
Elizabeth Bevarly
For David,
Slayer of icky bugs,
Finder of lost computer files,
Stay-at-home dad,
Perfect husband.
Thanks, Sweetie.
ELIZABETH BEVARLY
is an honors graduate of the University of Louisville and achieved her dream of writing full-time before she even turned thirty! At heart, she is also an avid voyager who once helped navigate a friend’s thirty-five-foot sailboat across the Bermuda Triangle. Her dream is to one day have her own sailboat, a beautifully renovated older-model forty-two-footer, and to enjoy the freedom and tranquillity seafaring can bring. Elizabeth likes to think she has a lot in common with the characters she creates, people who know love and life go hand in hand. And she’s getting some firsthand experience with motherhood, as well—she and her husband have a five-year-old son, Eli.
Contents
Chapter One
Chapter Two
Chapter Three
Chapter Four
Chapter Five
Chapter Six
Chapter Seven
Chapter Eight
Chapter Nine
Chapter Ten
Epilogue
One
Dick Clark had just announced that there was less than five minutes left to this New Year’s Rockin’ Eve when Dr. Claire Wainwright heard the chime of her front doorbell erupt downstairs. Ignoring the interruption—doubtless it was just some New Year’s reveler playing a joke, because heaven knew she wasn’t expecting anyone—she noted that Dick, as always, looked suave and cheerful and eternally young. And she tried not to dwell on the fact that she herself felt…well, not. Not suave. Not cheerful. Not eternally young.
Au contraire, Claire.
When the doorbell chimed again, she exhaled an errant sigh and waited to see if maybe, possibly, perchance, hopefully, she had only imagined the doleful, lonely sounds of that single, solitary dingdong. Because—speaking of doleful and lonely—she had just settled into bed with a flute of flat-going champagne, had just opened the latest issue of JAMA to an article about C-sections and had just gotten as comfortable as she was likely to be in this lifetime. And—speaking of single and solitary—she was home alone. On New Year’s Eve. Again.
Of course—speaking of dingdong—she could have accepted that one offer of a New Year’s Eve date that she had received, but noooo…
Claire still wasn’t sure what had possessed her to turn down Evan Duran’s invitation to spend the evening with him at his cottage in Cape May. It would have been a lovely, lovely event, she told herself now. Snowy moonlight on the ocean, a fire crackling merrily in the hearth, lobster and pâté and champagne every bit as good as what she’d bought for her own solitary celebration.
Of course, the evening would have inevitably stretched into the night, she thought further. And, of course, Evan would have been there, too. Which, now that she thought about it, was doubtless why she had declined his offer.
Nevertheless, he was a handsome, intelligent, decent guy, she reminded herself, a man who had a lot of ambition and drive. He was exactly the kind of man who should interest her, the kind of man with whom she should spend the rest of her life. She didn’t know why she found him so unappealing. There was just nothing there—no spark, no heat, no magic.
The doorbell chimed a third time from way downstairs, and Claire told herself it would be pointless to try to ignore it any longer. Still, she was more than a little puzzled by who might be summoning her at such an hour on such a night. Shoving back the plush, pale blue comforter, she ran one hand through her straight, black, shoulder-length hair, smoothed the other over her amethyst-colored silk pajamas, then tucked her feet into the slippers by her bed. She wasn’t working, obviously, but that didn’t mean she was free to do as she pleased with her time off. An OB-GYN’s work was never done, Claire knew, and babies didn’t exactly come on schedule.
But she wasn’t accustomed to having her patients show up at her house in Haddonfield, either. If an expectant mom found herself on the brink of delivery, she usually went to Seton General Hospital in neighboring Cherry Hill. If Claire wasn’t on call—and tonight, she wasn’t—then one of the other four doctors with whom she was in practice delivered the baby. All of her patients knew that. And it was a system that worked well.
Except when people rang her doorbell at midnight on New Year’s Eve.
Unable to fully shake her wariness, she thrust her arms through the sleeves of the tailored silk robe that matched her tailored silk pajamas, then made her way down the long hallway and curving staircase of the roomy, exuberant Tudor she had bought nearly a year ago. Still not quite over the fear of the dark she’d had when she was a child, Claire kept night-lights placed strategically throughout the house, so she found her way now with little