Expecting a Miracle. Jackie Braun

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      Jackie Braun is a three-time RITA^® Award finalist, a three-time National Readers’ Choice Award finalist and a past winner of the Rising Star Award. She worked as a copy editor and editorial writer for a daily newspaper before quitting her day job in 2004 to write fiction full-time. She lives in Michigan with her family. She loves to hear from readers and can be reached through her Web site at www.jackiebraun.com.

      “There’s something inordinately sexy about a man who is as good with his hands as he is quick with his mind.”

      —Jackie Braun, Expecting a Miracle.

      For Will, our unexpected miracle

      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

      EPILOGUE

      CHAPTER ONE

      LAUREN Seville pulled her car to the side of the road and stepped out. The summer day was gorgeous, the sky impossibly blue and bright with sunshine. Standing in front of a picturesque pasture in rural Connecticut, she breathed in the mingled scents of wildflowers and listened as the birds chirped and chattered overhead. Then she bent at the waist and retched into the weeds.

      The day might be gorgeous, but her life was as unsettled as her stomach at the moment. She was pregnant.

      Long ago—long before she’d met and married investment broker Holden Seville and had embarked on a career as the Wife of a Very Important Man—doctors had informed Lauren that she would never conceive. Now, four years into a marriage that had proved as sterile as she’d believed herself to be, she had.

      She straightened and stroked her still-flat stomach through the lightweight fabric of her sundress. The news, received just two weeks earlier, still filled her with elation, awe and a sense of anticipation. She was nearly three months into what she considered a miracle.

      Her husband did not share her joy about the baby. In fact, quite the opposite.

      “I don’t want children.”

      She could still hear the cold dismissal in his tone, but his words were hardly a news flash. He’d made that fact perfectly clear when he’d proposed marriage one year to the day after their first date. Children were disruptive, messy and, most of all, needy, he’d said. They were an improper fit for the career-and-cocktails lifestyle Holden enjoyed and planned to continue enjoying.

      Lauren didn’t share his view, but she hadn’t argued it at the time. Why bother when the point was moot? Or it had been.

      A fresh wave of nausea had her bending over a second time.

      “Oh, God,” she moaned afterward, staggering back a few steps to lean against the passenger side of her car.

      How foolish she’d been to hope that her husband’s rigid opinion would soften now that the deed was done. It still came as a painful shock to discover that he wanted it undone.

      “End your pregnancy,” he’d told her. Your pregnancy. As if Lauren was solely responsible for her state. As if he had no tie—by blood or otherwise—to the new life growing inside of her.

      He’d finished his ultimatum with: “If you don’t, I’ll end our marriage.”

      So, a mere twenty-four hours after refusing, Lauren found herself standing alone on the side of a country road gazing at a pasture, feeling queasy, exhausted and longing for the comfort of the king-size bed in their Manhattan apartment. She would go back eventually. She’d left with nothing but her purse and painful disillusionment. But she wasn’t going to return until she had formulated a plan. When she faced Holden again she would do so with dignity, with her hormone-fueled emotions under check. This time she would offer him a few СКАЧАТЬ