Fortune's Twins. Kara Lennox

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      Chapter One

      Consequences.

      Seven months after her lottery win, Gwen was certainly awash in the consequences of her wild night on the town. Her obstetrician had just given her the startling news. She wasn’t just pregnant, she was carrying twins.

      Dr. Sanders, an older, white-haired obstetrician who practiced in Pine Run, a larger town a few miles southwest of Jester, grinned broadly.

      “Is something funny?” Gwen snapped. She wasn’t normally a moody person, but her hormones were running amok these days.

      “I’m sorry, Gwendolyn,” he said. “It’s just that, when you get caught, you really get caught.”

      Wasn’t that the truth. She’d spent her life living by her grandmother’s rules. Always sit up straight, eat your vegetables, wear clean underwear in case you’re in an accident and never follow a man to his hotel room.

      One little indiscretion—one!—and she was about to be a single mother with twins.

      “I wouldn’t smile at your expense,” Dr. Sanders said, “except I know you’re secretly delighted.”

      “In shock, more like it. I guess I should have known there was more than one baby in there.” She patted her stomach, which was so swollen it made her look like she was near term, though she had two months of her pregnancy to go. Then she found her own smile. “But you’re right. I was raised an only child, and I always wanted a brother or sister. My children will have each other.” She paused. “But couldn’t you have figured this out a couple of months ago when I bought all the stuff for the nursery?”

      Dr. Sanders shrugged. “You wouldn’t come in for a sonogram.”

      Again, he was right. She’d been trying to hide her unplanned pregnancy from her friends and neighbors for as long as possible—and that meant she couldn’t make too many unexplained trips to Pine Run. But as she’d grown bigger and bigger, she’d realized she was being foolish. It wasn’t as if she could hide the pregnancy forever. A couple of months ago, when she’d been delivering some baked goods to the Ex-Libris bookstore owned by her friend Amanda Bradley Devlin, Wyla Thorne had made some nasty comment about Gwen’s weight, and Gwen had spilled the news.

      The whole town had been shocked. She’d always been the good girl, the shy one, who followed the rules and never made waves. To suddenly become a single mother was like a tsunami.

      As she drove back to Jester in her ice-blue Mercedes—one of her many indulgences since she’d received her lottery winnings—the news finally sank in.

      Twins. Two children. What fun. But also, what a challenge for a single mother. Not for the first time, she wished she had a husband with whom to share the joys and fears of parenthood. But she could not find Garrett, the sexy hunk she’d met at The Wild Mustang that cold January night. She’d left him her phone number, but he hadn’t called. And she didn’t know his last name or where he lived.

      As she drove the familiar Route 2 toward Jester, she couldn’t stop her thoughts from migrating back to that wonderful, magical night when she and the other Main Street Millionaires—that was what the press had dubbed them—had won the lottery. She’d been riding high, floating in a surreal cloud of joy and optimism. She and Sylvia mentally spent their winnings a hundred times over on that snowy drive to Roan, North Dakota, though Gwen had put most of her money in blue-chip stocks and bonds for the future.

      When СКАЧАТЬ