Wanted: Father for Her Baby: Keeping Baby Secret / Five Brothers and a Baby / Expecting Brand's Baby. BEVERLY BARTON
Читать онлайн книгу.
Andrew had been born because she never went anywhere without him. Use it tonight, she told herself. Get in your Mustang and fly off down the road.
After locking the SUV, she went over to the Mustang, unlocked it and got in, then revved the motor and hit the remote that opened the garage. Within minutes she was zipping along the highway that led from the suburbs of Maysville, Mississippi, into the downtown area where the studios for both WJMM radio and TV stations were located. She’d been doing a late-night radio talk show and a morning TV show for quite a few years and enjoyed being a local celebrity, a psychiatrist who doled out advice over the airwaves five days and nights a week.
When she’d been younger, she had longed to create a family of her own. Having grown up in a series of foster homes and remembering very little about her own parents, she had always felt so alone. Her mother had died when she was four and her father when she was eight. A skinny, gangly girl, who had talked too much and tried too hard to make others like her, she’d never had a real chance of being adopted. From eight to eighteen, she’d been shifted around from foster home to foster home. She’d felt unloved and unwanted all her life and by the time she hit thirty and Prince Charming hadn’t entered her life, she’d pretty much given up hope for that fantasized happily ever after ending in her life.
Although she’d been around the block a few times, as the old saying went, she wasn’t promiscuous. Each time she’d been in a committed relationship, she’d wanted it to be “the one.” And she’d never had a one-night stand. Not until Frank Latimer entered her life. Or should she say breezed in and out of her life. And technically, he hadn’t really been a one-night stand. More like a ten day mini-affair. She’d taken one look at the big lug and fallen hard and fast. They had set the sheets on fire and what she’d thought would be a one-nighter turned into a very brief, extremely passionate relationship.
Leenie wished it wasn’t late November already so she could put the top down on her car and achieve that wild and free feeling it gave her to ride with the wind. Maybe that’s what she needed—some cold night air to clear away the cobwebs. As hard as she tried to relegate Frank Latimer to the back of her mind, to put him into the past where he belonged, she found it difficult, if not impossible, to do. Although Andrew had her blond hair and blue eyes, he resembled Frank or the way she was sure Frank had looked as a baby. And every time she looked at her son, she saw his father. How could she—a psychiatrist who’d been trained to understand the human psyche—have ever thought she’d be able to forget about the man who had fathered her child? Whether or not he was actually in her life, he’d always be a part of it. Andrew was the living, breathing proof of that.
She’d told Debra that she wasn’t having any second thoughts about contacting Frank to let him know he had a child, but maybe she’d been lying to herself as well as Debra. Maybe she should call Frank, feel him out, see if there was somebody special in his life these days. Or maybe she should just fly to Atlanta and take Andrew with her. No, she couldn’t do that, couldn’t just show up on Frank’s doorstep.
Stop debating the issue, she told herself. You’re not going to call Frank. And she wasn’t going to fly to Atlanta. If he had the slightest interest in renewing his relationship with her, he’d have called by now. After all, it was over ten months since he’d said goodbye and walked out of her life without a backward glance. She had to accept the fact that Frank wasn’t her Prince Charming, accept the fact that there was no such animal. Just because he’d been different from the other men she’d known didn’t mean she was as special to him as he had been to her. What they’d had wasn’t love. It was just sex.
Chapter One
Leenie glanced across the table at Jim Isbell, a goodlooking, likable guy. He had asked her out after their initial meeting last week when he’d appeared on her morning TV show in a segment about group therapy. Jim was a psychologist who worked with families in trouble—drugs, alcohol, infidelity and various other problems that plagued many people in today’s complex modern society. This was their first date—one she’d been looking forward to eagerly. It was a simple workday lunch between friends. No strings attached. Nothing that would put pressure on either of them. Everyone who knew her, including Debra, had encouraged her to start dating again. After all, she hadn’t been out with a man since she’d found out she was pregnant. Now Andrew was nearly two months old and adjusting beautifully to having a working mother. Debra brought him to the studio several days a week, but kept him home in his own bed at night. Although Leenie loved her job, her son was the center of her world.
“So, are you interested?” Jim asked.
“Hmm?”
“Dinner and a movie this weekend,” Jim said.
“Oh, uh…yes. That might be nice.” Nice. Such an odd word, with so many meanings. And often a bland word, one that conveyed very little emotion. Oh, jeez, Leenie, don’t overanalyze your response about the date. You meant the word nice in the…well, in the nicest way. She smiled to herself. You like Jim. Obviously he likes you. You’ve had a pleasant lunch, so why not follow up with a dinner date?
Nice? Pleasant? Why not fantastic or great or fabulous or wonderful? What if Frank Latimer asked her out for a dinner date? You wouldn’t be using such lukewarm adjectives, now would you? An inner voice taunted. Stop it! She shouldn’t compare Jim to Frank. They were apples and oranges. Yeah, sure they were, but Jim was such a boring apple and Frank had been such an incredible orange.
Frank with the sexy gray eyes and hard, lean body. Frank, who had memorized every inch of her with his bedroom eyes, with his big hands and his mouth and tongue. Frank, who always looked like an unmade bed and had a way of curling her toes without even touching her.
“Lurleen?”
“Huh?” Apparently Jim had said something to which he expected a response and since she’d been thinking about another man, she hadn’t heard a word Jim had said.
“You’re a million miles away, aren’t you?”
“Sorry, Jim, it’s just that I—”
“No need to explain. You’re thinking about your son, aren’t you? New mothers tend to obsess about their babies. But you really should work your way through those typical feelings about neglecting and abandoning your child in favor of your career. You’re too smart to believe that you have to be the most important person in his life right now. After all, you have a perfectly capable nanny, don’t you?”
“Yes, a very capable nanny.”
“I understand that you have an extra burden of guilt on your shoulders since you’re a single mother.”
Leenie stared at Jim as he continued talking, giving her his opinion about the correct way to rear children, especially a son without a father figure. Not one to take criticism or advice well, his comments aggravated her. Who was he to be giving her advice? Had she asked him to share his wisdom on the subject of raising children?
“Jim!”
With his mouth open midsentence, he stopped talking and looked quizzically at her. “Yes?”
She’d been about to lambaste him, tell him in no uncertain terms that her relationship with her son was none of his damn business. Instead she said, “Let’s order dessert. Cheesecake.”
He arched his eyebrows in a disapproving manner. “Are you sure you want the extra calories? After all, you probably still have some baby fat you want to lose.”
He smiled at her in his good-natured manner. And she wanted to slap him. Baby fat, indeed! She weighed now precisely what she’d weighed before she’d gotten pregnant, having dropped twenty pounds when Andrew was born and another ten in the past two months. Everyone else she knew had marveled over how quickly she’d gotten back in shape.
“Right. No dessert.” It wasn’t the calories she could do without, it was the company. She gritted her teeth to keep from telling him off in no uncertain terms. “Look, I just remembered that I have a previous engagement this weekend, so I’ll have to forego dinner