LITMIR.BIZ

       www.millsandboon.co.uk

      To the real Carter.

       Such a character and so much fun. You’re just great!

       Chapter One

      “No, Carter, you can’t eat cheesecake with your hands!” The man groaned. “Oh, sure, now scratch your head with cheesecake hands. Great. Perfect. Cheesecake in the hair. Can you just stop? Please …”

      Heddy Hanrahan was witnessing the fiasco of an intensely hunky business-suit-clad man ineptly dealing with a little boy Heddy guessed to be about two years old.

      They were sitting at a table in her small cheesecake shop. And since they were her only customers late on that Monday afternoon, and the man was having such trouble with the very, very cute little boy with the big blue eyes and the now-cheesecake-laced light brown hair, it was difficult for her not to keep glancing in their direction.

      To distract herself, she turned her back to them and faced the mirror that lined the wall behind her counter.

      This time it was her own reflection that she looked at. And it seemed to her that worry marked her face.

      She’d hoped that business would pick up when the magazine article came out saying that her cheesecakes were Colorado’s best. And it had. But only slightly. And now that it had been two weeks since the article, she was back to business as usual.

      And business as usual meant that business was almost nonexistent.

      Which was not good.

      She raised her eyebrows to relax the line that sometimes formed between them, then lowered them to their usual position over her hazel-colored eyes.

      Her situation was bad enough—she didn’t need wrinkles, too.

      She also thought that worry was making her ordinarily fair skin even paler than it normally was, which wasn’t good, either. The fair skin came with her dark copper-colored hair and it didn’t take much to wash her out. The last thing she wanted was to be the same color as her cheesecakes, so she pinched her cheeks and made a mental note to use more blush tomorrow.

      Her hair was her best asset, though, so she accepted the fair skin as a trade-off. The dark russet locks that fell to five inches below her shoulders were thick and curly—not kinky-curly but wavy-curly. Enough so that even when her hair was pulled up—the way she always wore it in the shop or when she was making the cheesecakes—it was full and just slightly billowy, gently framing her face without being stark.

      Although it was a mystery to her why not looking stark mattered so much to her at this moment …

      Certainly it couldn’t have anything to do with the attractive man who was her customer because that would just be ridiculous.

      She turned away from the mirror and made herself appear busy, leaning into her display case and needlessly adjusting the assortment of cheesecakes that she sold whole or by the slice.

      Too many of them were still uncut, but she tried not to let worry creep in again. She had customers, she told herself, that was something….

      Glancing through the glass front of the display case, she saw the man using paper napkins in a feeble attempt to get the cheesecake out of the child’s hair. Because he was too intent on that to realize she was watching, she went on watching as she stood again, making sure as she did that the white blouse she had tucked into her jeans was still tucked in in back.

      There just wasn’t anything else for her to do but monitor her lone customers. It wasn’t as if she couldn’t keep her eyes off the man. Despite the fact that he was one of the best-looking men she’d ever seen. Things like that didn’t matter to her.

      But he was one of the best-looking men she’d ever seen.

      He had dark, dark brown hair the color of espresso-laced chocolate, cut short on the sides and only a bit longer on top where it was left slightly messy.

      His eyes were as rich a blue as blueberries—even more intense and striking a blue than the little boy’s eyes. His brow was very square, and his nose was perfectly straight and just the right length.

      He had lips that somehow managed to strike Heddy as sexy and a jawline chiseled enough to cut bread.

      Plus, when he’d first walked in she’d been struck by how tall he was—at least an inch or two over six feet. He had wonderfully broad shoulders and what appeared to be a muscular physique under a suit that was so well-tailored she couldn’t imagine why he’d worn it if he knew he was going to wrangle a child.

      “Terrific. Two fists full of cheesecake in the mouth at once,” the intensely handsome man muttered.

      Heddy saw the little boy doing just that: eating cheesecake out of both hands by turns, his head swiveling back and forth between them as if he were eating an ear of corn. She couldn’t help smiling at the child’s clear appreciation of her cheesecake.

      He was an adorable kid, she noted as well, just to prove to herself that she wasn’t focusing unduly on the man. The little boy was dressed like a miniature lumberjack in imitation work boots, tiny jeans with cuffs at the ankles and a plaid flannel shirt. Somewhere along the way the man had thought to push the sleeves of the shirt up to the child’s elbows and the toddler was also wearing a plastic wristwatch on each wrist—one watch bright yellow, the other baby blue.

      The silliness of those two wristwatches made her smile. A sad-feeling smile. But anything to do with kids made her sad; that was why she tried not to pay too much attention to them. It was just too painful for her.

      At least this particular child was a boy not a girl….

      He resembled the man somewhat—certainly not in the cheeks that were chubby rather than chiseled—but around the eyes and nose. Enough to tell her they were probably related. But because there was nothing about the way the man acted with the child to suggest they were close, she assumed he wasn’t the little boy’s father. Maybe he was an uncle, pinch-hitting at caregiving for the child’s mother or father.

      But whoever these two were, it was gratifying to see how much the little boy seemed to like her white chocolate mousse cheesecake when he picked up the empty plate to lick it and then said gleefully, “More!”

      The man glanced in Heddy’s direction and smiled an embarrassed smile that was no less knee-weakening because of the embarrassment. Not that her knees were weakened

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