Reunited By A Baby Bombshell. Barbara Hannay
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A secret he never knew about
Prima ballerina Eva Hennessey has made her life in Paris—far away from her childhood sweetheart, Griffin Fletcher. But when an invitation arrives for her school reunion, she nervously accepts!
Griff never imagined he would see Eva again, and now he wants some answers. She may be more beautiful than he remembers, but she also masks a pain only he can see. It’s a secret she’s kept far too long. And when she finally tells him, their worlds change forever...
“How are you, Eva?”
He went through the motions, giving her a casual hug and a peck on the cheek.
Ridiculously, her skin flamed at the contact, and she lost her breath as his big hands touched her shoulders, as his arms brushed, warm and solid, against her bare skin. Then his lips delivered a devastating split-second flash of fire.
She took a moment to recover. “I’m very well, thanks, Griff.” Thank heavens she was able to speak calmly, but she hadn’t told him the truth. She wasn’t feeling well at all. She felt sick. And her hip was in agony. She prayed that she didn’t blush as Griff’s glittering gray gaze remained concentrated on her.
“And how are you?” she remembered to ask.
“Fighting fit, thank you.”
With the conventions over, an awkward silence fell. She wondered if he was about to say something conciliatory. It would be helpful to at least share a few pleasantries to bridge the wide chasm of years. Of silence.
And guilty secrets.
Reunited by a Baby Bombshell
Barbara Hannay
BARBARA HANNAY has written over forty romance novels and has won a RITA® Award, an RT Reviewers’ Choice award, as well as Australia’s Romantic Book of the Year.
A city-bred girl with a yen for country life, Barbara lives with her husband on a misty hillside in beautiful Far North Queensland, where they raise pigs and chickens and enjoy an untidy but productive garden.
Contents
WHEN THE INVITATION arrived Eva Hennessey was away in Prague, dancing the role of Odette in Swan Lake. On her return to Paris a week later, she found her mailbox crammed, mostly with an assortment of bills and dance magazines. She was riding the rickety old lift to her apartment on the fifth floor when the bright sunny Australian stamp caught her eye. Then she read the postmark. Emerald Bay.
The sharp pang in her chest made her gasp. It wasn’t homesickness. Eva’s feelings about the beach town where she’d grown up were far more complicated. These days, she rarely allowed herself to unpack the mixed bag of emotions that accompanied memories from her youth.
She always ended up thinking about Griffin Fletcher...and the other harrowing memory that would never leave her.
She’d worked hard to put that life behind her. She’d had to. Long ago.
Today, as the hum of Parisian traffic reached Eva from the street below, she let herself into the apartment that had been her home for the past ten years. Nanette, the concierge, had already turned on the heating and the apartment was welcoming and warm. Eva had loved this place from the day she’d first found it.
Decorated simply in quiet creamy tones with occasional touches of blue, the main living area was dominated by a far wall of windows that looked out over tiled rooftops, chimneys and church spires to the top of the Eiffel Tower. At night, on the hour, the Tower glittered with beautiful lights. It was a view Eva never tired of.
Stopping for a moment, she smiled to herself as she looked about the space she’d carefully assembled over the years—the beautiful cushion covers she’d picked up on various tours, the collection of blue and white pottery from all over Europe, the wide-brimmed bowl full of shells and stones she’d collected from beaches in Greece and Italy, in Spain and the UK. So many happy memories to counteract the sad ones from her past.
She set down her luggage and dumped the envelope from Australia on the coffee table along with the rest of her mail. Then she went through to the bathroom and had a long hot shower, massaging the nagging pain in her hip under the steady stream of water.
She washed her hair, dried it roughly with a towel, letting the damp dark tresses hang loose past her shoulders as she changed into a comfy pair of stretch slacks and an oversized T-shirt.
Soon she would make her supper. A simple herb omelette would suffice. But first a glass of wine, an indulgence she could allow herself now that the performance tour was behind her.
Curled on the sofa, with the wine within reach and a cushion positioned to support her painful hip, Eva retrieved the envelope