LITMIR.BIZ

      THE BABY

      SURPRISE

      BRENDA HARLEN

      THE FATHER

      FOR HER SON

      CINDI MYERS

       www.millsandboon.co.uk

      THE BABY

      SURPRISE

      BRENDA HARLEN

      About the Author

      BRENDA HARLEN grew up in a small town surrounded by books and imaginary friends. Although she always dreamed of being a writer, she chose to follow a more traditional career path first. After two years of practicing as a lawyer (including an appearance in front of the Supreme Court of Canada), she gave up her “real” job to be a mum and to try her hand at writing books. Three years, five manuscripts and another baby later, she sold her first book—an RWA Golden Heart winner—to Silhouette Books.

      Brenda lives in southern Ontario with her real-life husband/hero, two heroes-in-training and two neurotic dogs. She is still surrounded by books (too many books, according to her children) and imaginary friends, but she also enjoys communicating with “real” people. Readers can contact Brenda by e-mail at [email protected]

      Dear Reader,

      “Write what you know” is advice frequently given to writers. So maybe it’s not surprising, considering my legal background, that several of the characters I’ve written have been lawyers.

      Paige Wilder, the heroine of The Baby Surprise, is one of those characters. In this story, she is trying to balance the demands of her career with the needs of the baby in her custody. It isn’t a unique struggle and many women juggle not just these conflicting responsibilities but various other duties and obligations every single day.

      It’s hard to keep all those balls in the air and, when faced with a similar dilemma, I chose to give up the practice of law and stay home with my kids. Luckily for me, I also found a new career path—writing stories with happy endings!

      I hope you enjoy this one.

      Best,

       Brenda Harlen

      For Courtney & Terri—

      representatives of the new generation

      of romance readers.

      Thanks for being such loyal fans

      (and for Zach’s name).

       Prologue

      Paige Wilder had less than zero experience with kids, but when Olivia Lowell, a friend and coworker at Wainwright, Witmer & Wynne, asked if she would be her birthing coach, she didn’t know how to say no to the single-mother-to-be. And despite her initial apprehension, the event of Emma’s birth was the singular most amazing experience of Paige’s entire life.

      So when, several months later, Olivia asked her to watch the baby overnight, Paige had agreed. With both Ashley and Megan—her cousins and two best friends—now in the early stages of pregnancy, she figured it was a good time to get some babysitting experience and that she was up for the challenge.

      A decision she was fervently regretting by 5:00 a.m. when she laid Emma in her crib and fell facedown on the narrow bed in Olivia’s guest room. Around midnight, she’d finally set aside the pretrial memorandum she’d been working on and decided to go to sleep. About the same time, the usually-charming infant woke up screaming like a banshee, and she’d repeated the performance almost every hour on the hour since then.

      If nothing else, the experience reminded Paige why she’d never thought about having a child of her own. She was simply in awe of any parent who could deal with a crying child through all hours and still manage to get up and go to work the next morning.

      As she finally drifted to sleep, she sent up a weary prayer of thanks that this babysitting assignment was only for one night.

      Three days later, she found out otherwise.

      Owen Wynne, the senior partner who had hired her to work at the firm almost six years earlier, set aside the pages from which he’d finished reading and looked across the desk at her.

      Paige, still reeling from the shock that her friend had been killed in a car accident, struggled to comprehend the words he had spoken. “But what does that mean?”

      “It means that you are now Emma Jane Lowell’s legal guardian,” he said patiently.

      “That can’t be right,” she said, her tone tinged with equal parts desperation and disbelief.

      Owen frowned. “I’d assumed, when Olivia came to me about drafting her will, that she’d already discussed this with you.”

      She could only shake her head.

      “Well, then, you’re certainly entitled to deny her request,” he assured her.

      And Paige knew what would happen if she did—nine-month-old Emma would end up in the system. It was possible that the baby would be adopted by a wonderful couple and loved as if she was their own. Or she might bounce from one foster home to another until she’d reached an age where the state was no longer concerned with her care.

      Either way, Olivia’s daughter would never know anything about her mother; she would never know how much she had been loved.

      But still Paige hesitated. “I don’t know anything about kids.”

      “Neither did I, when I first became a father,” Owen admitted.

      “What about Emma’s father?” she asked, clearly grasping. “Are you sure Olivia never mentioned his name?”

      “Not to me.”

      Not to Paige, either, other than to insist that she’d had no contact with him since she’d told him she was pregnant. Her friend had always been a private person, but Paige had worried that, in this instance, she’d been so tight-lipped because the man already had a family.

      “You don’t have to make a final decision today,” Owen told her.

      Except that the decision had been made for her when Olivia named Paige as her daughter’s legal guardian. Why Olivia had chosen her would probably always be a mystery, but she couldn’t disregard her friend’s final wishes.

      “Yes, I do,” she said. “I want this settled, for Emma’s sake.”

      Paige wanted to ensure that Olivia’s baby had the kind of stable childhood that she herself had never known.

      But when the papers were signed and she walked out of Owen’s office with Emma in her arms, she felt anything but settled. And she couldn’t shake the feeling that even the best-laid plans could go awry.

       Chapter One

       Five months later

      As a little girl, Paige had never really felt as if she had a home, as if there was anywhere she truly belonged. Growing up as the only child of a divorced Army colonel, she’d left too many homes and too many friends to count, an experience that had taught her early on not to get too attached to anyplace or anyone.

      When she was fifteen, her father had decided that Paige was too much trouble to keep with him and had sent her to live with his sister and her family. Even then, Paige had mostly kept to herself. In fact, for the first six months she’d refused to put her clothes in the dresser of the room she’d been told was her own, certain she would need to pack up and leave again as soon as she felt settled.

      But six months had turned into a year and then two,

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