“Would you like to hold the baby?”
Carson began to answer no, that the joy of being the first to hold this new life belonged to Lori. But one look at the tiny being and he knew he was a goner. He fell hard and instantly in love.
“Yes,” he murmured, and took the infant in his arms.
The baby was so light, she felt like nothing. And like everything. Carson had no idea that it could happen so fast, that love could strike like lightning and fill every part of him with its mysterious glow. But it could and it had.
Something stirred deep within him, struggling to rise to the surface. Self-preservation had him trying to keep it down, push it back to where it could exist without causing complications.
“She’s beautiful,” he told Lori. “But then, I guess that was a given.”
Beauty and the Baby
Marie Ferrarella
To single mothers everywhere, struggling to make a difference in their children’s lives.
I wish you strength and love.
MARIE FERRARELLA
earned a master’s degree in Shakespearean comedy, and, perhaps as a result, her writing is distinguished by humor and natural dialogue. This RITA® Award-winning author’s goal is to entertain and to make people laugh and feel good. She has written over one hundred books for Silhouette, some under the name Marie Nicole. Her romances are beloved by fans worldwide and have been translated into Spanish, Italian, German, Russian, Polish, Japanese and Korean.
You’ll enjoy Marie Ferrarella’s new miniseries, The Mom Squad—four single mothers who come together to experience life’s greatest miracle.
is…
Sherry Campbell—ambitious newswoman who makes headlines when a handsome billionaire arrives to sweep her off her feet…and shepherd her new son into the world!
A Billionaire and a Baby, SE #1528
Joanna Prescott—Nine months after her visit to the sperm bank, her old love rescues her from a burning house—then delivers her baby….
A Bachelor and a Baby, SD #1503
Chris “C.J.” Jones—FBI agent, expectant mother and always on the case. When the baby comes, will her irresistible partner be by her side?
The Baby Mission, IM #1220
Lori O’Neill—A forbidden attraction blows down this pregnant Lamaze teacher’s tough-woman facade and makes her consider the love of a lifetime!
Beauty and the Baby, SR #1668
Contents
Chapter One
Chapter Two
Chapter Three
Chapter Four
Chapter Five
Chapter Six
Chapter Seven
Chapter Eight
Chapter Nine
Chapter Ten
Chapter Eleven
Chapter Twelve
Chapter One
“Y ou look tired,” Carson O’Neill said.
Lifting her head, his sister-in-law smiled at him in response. Carson watched the dimples in both cheeks grow deeper. He wasn’t a man who ordinarily noticed dimples. Involved in his work, he noticed very little these days.
But, in almost an unconscious way, he had become aware of a great many things about Lori O’Neill ever since fate and his late brother, Kurt, had sent the woman his way.
Ever since Carson could remember, he’d been a caretaker. It wasn’t something he just decided to do one day, wasn’t even something he admitted wanting to do. It was just something that needed doing, a hard fact of life. Like the way he’d looked after his mother after his father had left. And the way he’d always looked out for his younger brother. Or tried to.
And the way he’d wound up here, the director of St. Augustine’s Teen Center, a place that had too many kids and too little money, but was somehow—thanks to his all but superhuman efforts—still beating the odds and staying open.
Carson picked up a basketball that had whacked him against the back of his calves a second ago and tossed it toward a boy whose head barely came up to his chest. The boy flashed a sudden grin and ran off with his retrieved prize. As always, there was a game in progress.
His responsibilities weren’t something he’d sought out. They’d just been there, waiting for him to walk in and take over. On his father’s departure, his mother had all but become a basket case, so, at fifteen, Carson had become the family’s driving force.
It wasn’t easy. Kurt had been a screwup, albeit an incredibly charming one, and he’d loved Kurt, so he had done his best to help him out, to set him straight. Done his best to be there with silent support and not so silent money whenever the occasion had called for it. Which, as time progressed, was often.
Despite all Carson’s efforts to set his brother on the right road, Kurt had managed to kill himself in his search for speed. “Death by motorcycle,” the newspaper had glibly reported on the last page in the section that dealt with local news.
Kurt’s death, a year after his mother’s, should have freed him from the role of patriarch, but it hadn’t. There was Lori to think of. Somehow, it seemed only natural that he should take Kurt’s pregnant wife under his wing.
Not that Lori had asked.
She was an independent, spirited woman, which was what he’d liked about her. But she was also pregnant and, after Kurt’s untimely death, faced with a mountain of Kurt’s debts.
The old adage, “When it rained, it poured,” was never truer than in Lori’s case. Less than a month after Kurt’s death, the company for which Lori worked as a graphic artist declared bankruptcy, leaving her jobless. Carson found himself stepping in with both feet.
He’d stepped in the same way when he’d heard that the youth center, where he and Kurt had spent their adolescent afternoons, was about to close its doors because there was no one to take over as director and precious little financing.
His ex-wife, Jaclyn, had called him a bleeding heart when he’d told her he was leaving his law firm and taking over the helm at St. Augustine’s Teen Center. He had discovered that being a lawyer left him cold and gave him no sense of satisfaction. Very quickly it had become just a means to an end. An end that had pleased Jaclyn a great deal, but not him. He’d needed more. He’d needed meaning.
The abrupt change in his life’s direction had left her far from pleased. She had screamed at him, calling him a fool. Calling him a great many other things as well. He hadn’t realized that she’d known those kinds of words until she’d hurled them at him.
The last label had been a surprise, though. She’d called him a bleeding heart. It showed how little, after five years of marriage, she really knew about him. He was pragmatic, not emotional. Taking over at the center had been something that needed doing, for so many reasons.
Besides, his heart didn’t bleed, it didn’t feel anything at all. Especially not after Jaclyn had left, taking their two-year-old daughter with them. His heart only functioned. Just as he did.
Just