CHAPTER ONE

      FAMILY MEANT EVERYTHING to Hallie Hatfield.

      Family meant home. It meant being safe and protected even when times were bad. Even when the money ran out at the end of the month. Even when the kitchen cupboards were bare. Family meant always having someone to watch your back, as you watched theirs.

      As Hallie had grown up, in an old wooden house built by her great-grandfather, playing in the woods with her brother, learning songs from her mother, tinkering in the garage with her father, she’d known, even as a child, exactly how she wanted her life to be.

      Someday she’d get married. She’d raise children, just as her own parents had, without much money but with lots of love. She and her future husband would grow old together, living close to her family, in a cottage with a view of the soft, green Appalachian hills where she’d been born. Their lives would be full of music and comfort. Because family meant everything.

      Then, at nineteen, without warning, Hallie lost everything. Her family. Her home. All the meaning and security in her world.

      Now, at twenty-four, the only family she had was the tiny newborn baby in her arms. Living in New York City, she had no job, no money and, as of today, nowhere to go.

      But this as a solution?

       No.

      Hallie took a deep, furious breath. “No. Absolutely not.”

      “But Hallie—”

      “Tell my ex-boss about his baby?” Keeping her voice low, not to waken the newborn baby sleeping in her arms, Hallie glared at her friends. “After the way he treated me? Never!”

      The other two women looked at each other. The three friends had been introduced months earlier at a single-moms support group, when a mutual acquaintance had realized that all three were pregnant with their first child, and, shockingly, none of them had yet told the fathers.

      In Hallie’s case, it was for good reason.

      Her whole life, she’d tried to see the best in people. To be sympathetic and kind and good.

      But she hated Cristiano Moretti. After what he’d done, he didn’t deserve to know their three-month-old baby existed.

      “But he’s the father,” Tess Foster said gently. A plump, kindly redhead who worked at her uncle’s bakery, she cuddled her own tiny baby. “Hallie, you need help. It only makes sense to ask him.”

      “You’re an idiot if you don’t get child support,” said Lola Price, who was blonde and fiery, and extra-irritable lately—which was saying something—as, unlike the others, she was still heavily pregnant. “Are you an idiot?”

      Hallie ground her teeth. That question had already been asked and answered in her own heart. Yes, she’d been an idiot, letting her boss, a billionaire hotel tycoon, seduce her so easily into giving up her long-held dreams of a forever family, a forever home, for one night of passion.

      One night? Ha! Half a night, since Cristiano had tossed her out of his bed at midnight and then had her fired from her housekeeping job the very next morning!

      Who did that?

      A selfish bastard with no heart, that was who. A man who’d ruthlessly thrown her into poverty and homelessness—since she’d also lost her company-paid housing—just because he’d wanted to avoid feeling awkward if he ran into her in the hallway of his hotel.

      Hallie looked down at the sweet sleeping baby in her arms. Jack had been over nine pounds at birth, and he’d only gotten chubbier. She loved him with all the ferocious love in her heart. She’d always dreamed of having children. Now Jack was her only dream. Keeping him happy. Keeping him safe.

      “You don’t even have a place to stay tonight,” Tess pointed out. “Unless you’re going to call the police on your landlord.”

      “And you can’t stay with me,” Lola said, putting her hands over her huge belly. She didn’t explain, but then Lola never explained anything.

      “I wish you could stay with us, but my aunt and uncle would never allow it,” Tess said mournfully. “They’re already threatening to kick me out.” She sighed. “If only you hadn’t ripped up the check your boss stuck in the envelope with your severance pay.”

      Hallie lifted her chin. “I have my pride.”

      “But it was for a hundred thousand dollars,” Tess said.

      “And is pride going to feed your baby?” Lola said tartly.

      Hallie’s shoulders sagged. Lola wasn’t sweet and comforting like Tess, but she sure had a way of forcing people to see hard truths.

      After her supervisor had fired her, Hallie had stumbled out of the hotel in shock, then opened the severance envelope to discover a check signed by Cristiano personally. As if he thought paying her for taking her virginity would make it all right to toss her out like trash the next morning. Furious and heartbroken, she’d torn it into a million pieces.

      Now Hallie realized painfully how that money would have changed her whole life—and Jack’s. Because a year later, she had nothing.

      But she hadn’t known she would end up pregnant. She ran an unsteady hand over her forehead. So much for pride. She would have given anything to have that check back now.

      “Come on.” Lola stood up abruptly in the middle of the community-hall basement, surrounded by the folding chairs and a crowd of other single moms standing by a punch bowl and cookies that Tess complained constantly were stale. “We’re going.”

      “Where?”

      “To see your baby’s father. Right now. It’s your only option.”

      Hallie feared her friend was right. But thinking of facing Cristiano, her courage failed her. “I can’t.”

      “Why?”

      “I told you. I was just a notch on the bedpost. He was cruel—”

      “Cruel?” Lola’s eyes became fiercely protective. “You never said that. What did he do? Hit you? Threaten you?”

      “Of course not,” Hallie replied, taken aback.

      “Then what?”

      A lump rose in Hallie’s throat. “He ignored me.”

      The blonde’s shoulders relaxed slightly.