New Arrivals: Surprise Baby for Him: The Cattleman's Adopted Family / The Soldier's Homecoming / Marriage for Baby. Melissa McClone

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СКАЧАТЬ piercing blue gaze swung back to study her for a heart-stopping stretch of time, and then he rose abruptly.

      ‘Thank you,’ he said simply, and she knew their conversation was over.

      They went back inside the house and Amy shivered as breeze from a ceiling fan chilled her damp skin. She felt miserable as she stood outside her bedroom door.

      ‘Goodnight,’ Seth said. ‘I hope you’ll be comfortable.’

      ‘I’m sure I will.’ Then she remembered. ‘Just a minute, Seth. I have something you might like to see.’ She went into the room and fetched a photo album that she’d brought with her, especially for him. As she gave it to him his hands brushed hers and her breath caught as she felt the heat of his skin.

      ‘Thanks,’ he murmured, gripping the album tightly.

      The house was silent, listening.

      He seemed to remember his manners as a host. ‘Are you sure you wouldn’t like something to drink before you turn in?’

      ‘Could I make myself a cup of tea?’

      ‘I can get it for you.’

      ‘No, it’s OK, honestly. I can find my way around the kitchen.’

      ‘Be my guest,’ he said, gesturing down the hallway to the kitchen, and with a curt nod he left her.

      Amy’s sense of anticlimax was overwhelming, and a warm shower and a brisk rub down with a luxuriously thick bath towel didn’t help her to feel any better. Standing in her nightgown between the twin beds, she looked down at Bella, sound asleep and blameless, hugging her plush pink pig, her mouth slightly ajar as she slept.

      She felt an urge to climb into the bed and to cuddle the little girl close, seeking comfort and reassurance from her small, warm weight in her arms.

       Have I done the right thing, baby?

      She padded on bare feet down the darkened hall to the kitchen and found an electric jug and the makings for tea. On her way back, mug in hand, she saw light coming from beneath a door just across the hallway.

      Was it Seth’s room?

      The possibility made her skin flush hot.

       Fool.

      In her room, she piled up her pillows and sat in bed in a small pool of lamplight, nursing a mug of hot, sweet tea.

      She thought about Rachel, and was swamped by a tidal wave of grief. If only she hadn’t invited Rachel to the launch party. For the trillionth time, she wished that she could go back into the past and change that night. Rachel had always been so full of life, so brimming with can-do confidence and charisma. She shouldn’t be dead.

      Their friendship had been so strong, an attraction of opposites. Rachel was brilliant and wild and she’d always claimed that Amy was calming and steadying.

      ‘Amy’s my anchor,’ she used to tell people.

      Guys were forever falling in love with Rachel—so much so that she should have had a warning light, like a lighthouse. Amy’s brother, Ryan, had been smitten, but he’d come to his senses eventually and married his sensible, sweet Jane instead.

      For her part, Rachel had loved the attention of men, always had a boyfriend on tap, but somehow she’d managed to stay immune, never really falling in love.

      Until her trip north.

      ‘You should have been there, Ames,’ she’d said, on that night she’d finally opened up. ‘I needed you there, to keep me on the ground. I lost my head completely.’

      Swiping at tears, Amy thought about Seth. She wondered if he was looking at the photo album now. Would he sleep tonight? Or was he totally calm again?

      Was he thinking about Rachel? About Bella?

      He’d looked so terrible tonight when she’d told him her news, and the memory of the deep lines of pain etched in his face sent a throbbing ache to the middle of her chest.

      It was so silly to care so much about a man she’d only just met, but she couldn’t help it. There was something about Seth Reardon that got to her—something elemental and deep. Whether he was happy or sad, whenever she was near him, she felt in danger of drowning.

      She’d known, from the moment she first saw him—gosh, had it only been this morning?—that he wasn’t a man who would take fatherhood lightly. Chances were, Seth wouldn’t take any relationship lightly—which meant there was a distinct possibility that he’d really, really loved Rachel.

      Without warning, Amy’s tears began to fall in earnest, and she buried her face in the pillow so she wouldn’t wake Bella.

      The photo album lay abandoned on the nightstand.

      Seth had taken a look at it, leafing quickly through the pages, catching glimpses of Bella as a tiny newborn, and later, as a gummy, smiling infant…later still, as a sturdy toddler, learning to walk…

      He’d seen pictures of Rachel looking surprisingly maternal, and healthy and happy. There’d even been a shot of Amy, hovering somewhere in the background behind a cake with pink icing and two striped candles. But he’d had to set the book aside. It was too hard to look at these happy snaps.

      Amy had offered them to him in all innocence, but she had no idea of the size and force of the bombshell she’d dropped this evening.

      She thought he’d fathered Rachel Tyler’s baby.

      He’d never dreamed that Rachel was pregnant when she left Serenity, but, hell, in many ways everything would be a whole lot easier if he were the little girl’s father. He would face up to the responsibility, and he could have worked something out with Amy—a way to share custody of Bella, perhaps. Truth be told, the thought of spending more time with Amy was enticing.

      But it was a fantasy.

      He wasn’t Bella’s father. He hadn’t slept with Rachel.

      Not once.

      Never.

      The real story was something else entirely, and it smothered him with a mountain of guilt and heartache.

      While Rachel had flirted openly with him almost as soon as she’d arrived at Serenity, Seth had sensed she could spell trouble and he’d given her the brush-off, so she’d set her sights…elsewhere…

      With tragic consequences.

      Those consequences were the cross Seth had to bear, but they were too painful to share this evening with a warm-hearted, soft-eyed girl like Amy.

      With a harsh groan, he launched to his feet and began to prowl.

      This whole business was more complicated than Amy could possibly have imagined and he needed time—days, weeks, years—to work out the best way to explain it to her.

      Damn it, he didn’t СКАЧАТЬ