His Secret Baby. Marie Ferrarella

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      It took her a second to realize that the sigh she heard echoing in the small, converted bedroom that served as her office was her own.

      Lost in thoughts of the past and preoccupied, Dr. Eve Walters had thought that the deep sigh had come from Tessa, the German shepherd she’d rescued from a sadistic owner a little more than two years ago. On occasion Tessa, currently curled up under her desk, was given to sighing just like a human being. Considering the life she’d led both B.R.—before rescue—and A.R.—after rescue—the sighs were more than merited. Before, Eve was certain, the dog’s sighs had been of the fearful, hopeless variety while now, with Tessa’s weight a third more than what it had been when she’d first been rescued, the German shepherd’s sighs sounded as if she was exceedingly content with her new life and just couldn’t believe her good fortune.

      Lately, Eve had become aware of sighing a great deal herself, as if she couldn’t catch her breath. And couldn’t believe the twists and turns that had brought her to this point.

      She supposed she could just shrug her shoulders and attribute her deeps sighs to the fact that she wasn’t accustomed to carrying around this much weight, but if she were being honest, the cause for her sighs went a great deal deeper. Never in her wildest dreams did Eve think she would find herself in this position: approaching thirty in a few months, single, alone and very, very pregnant.

      Tears suddenly gathered in her eyes and she held them back by sheer will. God, but she was emotional lately. Well, she was not going to cry. She wasn’t.

      Another sigh escaped.

      How in heaven’s name had she come to this state?

      Okay, she was gregarious and fun-loving, but never, ever would anyone have called her reckless. She was always known as the stable one, the one everyone else turned to in times of crisis.

      When her mother, Evelyn, had died suddenly on Eve’s second day of middle school, Eve was the one who was there for her veterinarian father, Warren, and her older sister, Angela—not the other way around. This while she secretly yearned for someone to comfort her. But she couldn’t indulge herself, couldn’t sink into self-pity no matter how much she wanted to. Others depended on her. And she always came through.

      Beneath her genial, warm smile she was the living embodiment of the old adage, “Look before you leap.” Not only did she look, she would take out a surveyor’s level and plot every single step from there to here each and every time. It wasn’t that she didn’t like surprises; she just didn’t like being caught unaware. And it certainly wasn’t like her to give in to impulse and allow herself to be so completely swept away, especially by a man she’d hardly known.

      A man she didn’t know at all, Eve thought bitterly.

      Eve blew out a breath and dragged a hand through the flowing mane of wayward dark blond hair. She stared at the computer screen on her laptop, silently seeking answers she knew weren’t about to materialize. Barring that, she needed a distraction.

      My kingdom for a distraction, she thought whimsically.

      After shutting down the animal hospital for the night, the animal hospital that had once borne only her father’s nameplate across the front door and where she had grown up, surrounded by animals in need of care and a kind, gentle father, Eve had gone home and retreated to her inner office. She’d turned on her computer to do a little research into the condition of the near-blinded dachshund that had been brought in today, searching for a possible way to reverse, or at least halt the condition. Searching, she supposed, for a miracle.

      How she’d gotten to a chat room for expectant single moms was almost as mysterious to her as how she’d gotten in this condition in the first place.

      Actually more so, she mused.

      Of course she knew all about the mechanics of becoming pregnant, but it was how and why she’d gotten to that point that utterly mystified her. In hindsight, it just didn’t seem possible.

      She knew exactly what she wanted to do with her life, had known ever since she could remember. At least she’d known professionally. She was exactly what she wanted to be: a veterinarian, caring for a host of dogs and cats just the way her father had.

      What she wanted for her private life was another matter. Oh, she knew that she wanted to go the traditional route. Wanted a husband and a family. Eventually.

      She would have sworn that she hadn’t wanted to reverse that order, but apparently she had no choice in the matter now.

      Unless, as her sister in Sacramento had urged, she give up the baby.

      There was no way Eve wanted to do that. Not because she viewed the little passenger she was carrying around as a love child, the living testimony of the passion that had existed between her and Adam. No, that didn’t enter into it at all. The baby, whose due date Eve’s ob-gyn had calculated was still a long two weeks away, was an extension of her, a little person whom for reasons that were beyond her, God had seen fit to entrust to her.

      She was even looking forward to holding the baby in her arms. But she wasn’t looking forward to dealing with being alone at a time when the baby’s father’s emotional support would have meant so much.

      The latter was her own fault, she supposed.

      No one had told her to pick up in the middle of the night and flee from Santa Barbara, secretly running back home to Laguna Beach.

      “But how couldn’t I?” she said aloud.

      Tessa, dead to the world only a heartbeat ago, raised her head and looked at Eve with deep brown eyes. The next second, seeing that there was no emergency, Tessa went back to sleep.

      Leaning over, Eve ran her hand over the dog’s head, struggled to bank down her agitation. Petting her dog usually helped calm her.

      But not tonight.

      Tonight, the agitation refused to leave, refused to budge.

      Maybe it was because tonight was Halloween, she thought. Maybe that was why she couldn’t seem to shake the feeling that someone was watching her.

      She sighed again.

      Adam Smythe had been almost stereotypically handsome, not to mention the last word in “sexy.” Added to that he was charming and he had taken her breath away from the very first moment she’d walked into his rare, first-editions bookstore. The moment he had looked her way, she’d felt as if an arrow had been shot straight into her heart.

      At the time she’d been looking for a special birthday present for her father. Warren Walters loved everything that had ever come from Mark Twain’s pen. What she’d wound up getting, along with a fairly well-preserved first edition of A Connecticut Yankee in King Arthur’s Court, was a prepackaged heartache.

      Oh, Adam hadn’t looked like a heartache at first or even at tenth glance. He looked like a drop-dead gorgeous specimen of manhood who, given that this was California, she wouldn’t have been surprised if the tall, dark-haired, green-eyed man had said he was just running the bookstore until that big acting break came that would propel him into being the country’s next great heartthrob.

      To add to this image, Adam was soft-spoken, slightly reserved, and he exuded such a powerful aura of authority that he’d instantly made her СКАЧАТЬ